Hokey smokes, I’ve had a handful of people link to my little contest: big thanks to Ken at Ringwood, Johanna at Cognitive Dissonance, David at Precocious Curmudgeon, Bill Sherman at Pop Culture Gadabout, Dave at Yet Another Comics Blog, Jog, Jason at Trickle of Consciousness, pal Ian at Brill Building, Steve at Gutterninja, Kung Pow Pig, H at the Comic Treadmill, and Laura at Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog. And pal Dorian begrudingly links to the contest as well. Beaucoup Kevin also links, and has a contest of his own, so go check it out!
If I missed anybody, let me know, and I’ll add you to the list.
And now, A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Ken Lowery has graciously offered to donate two more copies of Swamp Thing: Bad Seed to the cause, making a total of three copies to be given away in my contest! So, please, if you haven’t entered yet, you have until the 31st of this month to do so.
And now, some brief looks at goodies from last week:
The first volume of Dark Horse’s Little Lulu reprint series is absolutely wonderful. As always, whenever I get a black and white reprint of something that was originally in color, there’s a little tiny anal-retentive part of my mind that wonders if the lack of color will detract from the stories…and of course, it doesn’t. This is classic stuff; funny, witty, and silly in all the appropriate amounts, and thank goodness Dark Horse is publishing it in a format that’s affordable and easily accessible. (Now if only someone would do nice reprint collections of Herbie….)
Zippy the Pinhead: From Here to Absurdity collects another year’s worth of Bill Griffith’s strips, organized thematically rather than chronologically (a nice touch that I’m sure most other strips couldn’t get away with), plus footnotes. I’ve been a big fan of Zippy for many years, though I’ve only ever been able to read the strip in reprint form. The only time I’ve seen the strip in the “wild” locally was in a weekly paper, but that was years ago. I have a hard time picturing Zippy squeezed between Drabble and Tumbleweeds on your regular comics page, given that Griffith’s work would come as a fairly surprising contrast to an audience accustomed to fat cats making jokes about lasagna. It’s fine work, still entertaining and challenging after all these years.
Madrox #4 – yes, after Zippy and Lulu, I’m gonna talk about an X-Men spin-off book. Actually, all I wanted to mention was that this is probably the first time that I’ve noticed just how downright creepy Madrox’s power really is. You get a shot or two of some of his duplicates in the process of reabsorbtion…distended, distorted, being pulled back into his body (in at least one case, unwillingly). It’s downright grotesque…and it’s yet another permuation in Peter David’s ongoing reinvention of the character. The actual “hard-boiled detective” aspect of the story is fun as well, providing an entertaining framework for the exploration of Madrox’s abilites.
