Mikester

In case you were wondering what was up with B.D. in today’s Doonesbury strip, here’s a big ‘ol spoiler.

Get Fuzzy is addressing a similar topic.

Well, first one out of the AiT/Planetlar box is Last of The Independents by Matt Fraction and Kieron Dwyer. There is a minor spoiler ahead (more about the structure of the story, than any specifics).

It’s a “tough people doing bad things but you root for them anyway” story, where three people (an older gentleman, his younger lady lover, and a big muscular fella who’s a bit on the slow side) rob a bank, but end up with several million dollars that belong to a mob boss. The majority of the story is our gang of three staying ahead of the mob’s army of enforcers…it’s a fast-paced story, told with a minimum of dialogue and a focus on action. Fraction’s thank-yous in the back of the book (Clint Eastwood, Segio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, etc.) probably tell you more about the story than I ever could. As far as the actual plot goes…it’s very slight, but that’s by intention. You only get just enough information to move the story along.

One of the nice touches is that the characters’ backstories wait until there’s a lull in the action, and given that the action doesn’t let up for most of the book, that means we really don’t get these backstories until just before the climax. At that point, though, it doesn’t really matter…just from what we’ve seen in the interaction among the characters up to that point, any questions we had about the relationship among these three people have either 1) been answered in our own heads, or 2) relegated to the position of “oh, we don’t need to know those stories anyway.” When the backstories do come, then, it’s a nice surprise.

Visually, the book is very attractive. It’s printed in sepia tones, it’s comic-sized but formatted on its side (like Liberty Meadows or those Garfield strip reprint books), with few panels per page. The art has a rough, sketchy look to it, which adds to the down-and-dirty western feel of the story. It looks like a spaghetti western translated to the printed page, in tone if not in content.

It’s an afternoon movie, not deep but certainly entertaining. Recommended for fans of Eastwood and Leone (as mentioned previously), Straight to Hell, and Preacher (which, in an odd way, I was reminded of while reading this comic).

Yesterday I received my parcel from Big Larry, so here we go…here’s my review of my AiT/Planetlar box:

Well, the box is about 18 inches long, 13 inches high, and about 3 inches deep; it weighs about, say, 15 pounds, and there’s some heavy scuffing along the sides. I find it to be a very satisfactory box, and I recommend it to…

…Ah, I’m just messin’ with you. I’ll start reviewing the actual contents this coming week.

Actually, I’m very grateful to get this box of goodies. I don’t really get a lot of comics on a weekly basis anymore, especially compared to the buy-lists that some of my comic-weblogging brethren (and sister-en) will post on occasion. This is not due to lack of interest so much as due to lack of time and lack of extra funds, both mostly as the result of being a (relatively) new homeowner. I do however attempt to at least glance through most comics and books as they pass through the store…if I’m gonna be selling them, I’d better know a little something about them.

This means that an awful lot of those original graphic novels that have been coming out I’ve been having to pass up buying for myself, and that includes a goodly chunk of AiT/Planetlar’s output. I’ve noticed how well they’ve been selling at the store (especially Couscous Express) but I never had more than a brief look between the covers…until now. And no, I just can’t read them at the store…one, I don’t like to sell used goods as new, and two, unlike what some people think, running a comic shop doesn’t mean you get to sit around and read comics all day. It would be nice, but that’s not the case.

So, again, thanks to Big Larry for sending these my way. My reviews (such as they are) will follow soon.

from Fantastic Four in The House of Horrors Big Little Book (Whitman, 1968) – courtesy pal Cully

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #29 (DC Comics, Nov 1961) – cover by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye

He asked, and I agreed; I’m apparently to expect some AiT/PlanetLar comics in the mail pretty soon, which will be fun. However, I’m not all that great of a reviewer, especially when compared to some of the other people who have already done their part for Big Larry…their reviews are like “counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor“* while my reviews tend to be like “duh…pictures purty,” so don’t expect too much. Here, I’ll give you an example:

Action Comics #814, first of the “new direction” (again) Superman titles, features the work of the much-maligned Chuck Austen (sometimes deservedly so). But, as someone who has been reading the Superman comics uninterrupted since the ’86 reboot (and for several years prior), I can honestly say Austen does a perfectly acceptable job here. It’s fast-paced, entertaining, amusing in parts, and sets up future plotlines nicely. It’s not groundbreaking work, but it’s enjoyable. People complaining about Supes and Lois and others acting out of character…well, their characters are no more different than what occurs during any creative team change. So, this comic isn’t the war crime people seem to think it is.

Okay, there you go. Expect more like that when the AiT/PlanetLar box shows up.

* If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.

Okay, so you know the Undersea Kingdom serial that the Comedy Central version of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 had run in front of some of their fourth season episodes? Well, the cliffhanger on one of the serial’s chapters had the hero and his boy chum standing on a mountaintop that gets blown up real good by the bad guys. Certain death for the hero and the boy, right? Well, with the next episode of MST3K, we get the next chapter of the serial, where we see a repeat of the cliffhanger from the previous chapter…only this time the hero and boy very clearly jump away from the mountaintop before it explodes. Joel and the ‘bots, watching in the audience, shout and hoot in disbelief, upset that the makers of the serial had so obviously cheated.

And that’s what I was reminded of when I read the new issue of JLA, #96, when it was explained how Batman escaped being shot point blank in the previous issue. I fully call “no way” on that. But, hey, it’s still nicely drawn.

I haven’t had much time to read everything else yet, not that I got a whole lot. I did read the last chapter of 1602 (hello, room for a potential sequel!), the new Fables (more clues to the Adversary’s true nature…though a particular person is mentioned as a slave of the Adversary at the very end, I think there’s a hint in the story that this slave may actually be the Adversary…anyone else think that?), and JSA (I love me some Golden Age DC characters).

I also picked up the new issue of Mad, though this may not be the best issue for me, as the main parodies include Alias, Everwood, and Survivor, TV shows I’ve never seen. It does have “A MAD Look at Bowling” by the always-funny Sergio Aragones, so that’s nice.

Oh, and Larry? Don’t worry ’bout me…I’ve got plenty of energy! I’ve posted on this weblog of mine every single day since I started in early December (whether I’ve had anything to say or not, har har), and I plan to keep up that streak, though I’m sure I’ve jinxed it just by mentioning it here.

I have no idea why I’m posting every day…at first, I think it just to let early visitors to my little corner of the interweb-thingie know that this wasn’t just some fly-by-night weblog, that I intended to keep adding new content as often as possible and they should all visit equally often. Plus, I had this fear that if I didn’t post every day, all my visitors would vanish overnight, and I’d turn into one of sites featured here. Now, I think I’m mostly driven to post every day by that very same obsessive/compulsive behavior that drives me to collect comics and make “want lists” for issues I don’t have.* Maybe I need a good week-long power outage to break me from the habit, to shake the feeling that if I don’t post, something terrible will happen…like, I don’t know, the Earth will spiral out of its orbit and fly right into the sun, maybe.

Until that happens (some kind of enforced break, not the destruction of the Earth…though that would do it, too), I still intend to post every day for at least the near future. It may not always be posts of this length, it may occasionally be just an amusing comic cover if I happen to be busy that day**, but I’ll have something up here.

Unless, like I said, I just jinxed myself.

* Just fanzines and some issues of Sugar & Spike and Herbie. It’s not a big want-list!

** Contrary to the belief of many people, I appear to have a “life” that sometimes may prevent me from weblogging as much, or as long, as I’d like. This surprises no one more than me, I assure you.

Flash #177 (DC Comics, March 1968) – cover by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

I miss seeing this type of story. Stuff like this never seems to happen to Wolverine.



Actually, if you think about it a little…unless that big noggin of his is filled with helium, certainly you’d think he’d notice the huge amount of extra weight bearing down on his neck.

For some reason, the expression on the woman’s face on the left hand side of the cover cracks me up every time I see it. Apparently the sheer horror of the Flash’s enormous head has driven her completely insane…or at least cockeyed.

1. Alas, The Hurting has retired his comics link-a-thon efforts. They were much appreciated, especially in these Journalista-free times.

1a. Re: Journalista, in the silver lining department – being mentioned in the last entry means that the link to my site has been featured for nearly two months…and I’m still getting traffic from there. Woo-hoo!

2. The only thing I’m wondering about this whole Marvel ICON imprint thing (Fanboy Rampage has got it covered, starting here) is when Milestone is going to send the cease and desist letter.

3. Still haven’t seen Hellboy. Oh, well, I’m sure the DVD will be out in a couple months.

4. In case you haven’t noticed, the Great Losers giveaway contest from Ringwood has finished, and he’s posted the winning entries and some runners-up (starting here. Mature audiences only…you are all mature, aren’t you?

5. Comics Continuum has got the DC solicitations up…everyone else has covered it very thoroughly (am I the only person on the planet outside the John Byrne Forum actually kinda sorta looking forward to his Doom Patrol series? …don’t answer that), but I did want to point out a couple things in the DC Direct section. Though I already have the previous Golden Age Green Lantern action figure, I am sorely tempted by the First Appearance version of same (he’s got a cloth cape…a cloth cape!)…and while this Brian Bolland Flash poster is very nice…I hope they center the image a bit, throw a logo on it, or something…it looks a little awkward to me as is. Oh, and they really need to stop doing stretching action figures (like the Elongated Man figure…link not working) until they perfect that stretching technology. You know, like Stretch Armstong, but on a scale suited to 7-inch action figures.

“These hands…these hands have done terrible things….”

Pal Dorian: “I signed on to make how many of these crappy films?”

Pal Kurt: “My thumbs! Doc Ock stole my thumbs!”

Pal Winterlady: “Look out fetishists…Here I come!”