blogging about blogging is a sin

Please let me know if you can see this post in your blog reader, Johanna.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, sir-links-a-lot 2 Comments

My blogging comrade Johanna mentioned to me that yesterday’s post didn’t pop up in her Google blog reader, and I’ve had one or two other people note similar issues. And, as I think about it, I think I noticed at least one post not making it through to my own feed reader.

Looking at my RSS feeds, this link (the one found via the “syndicate” button in the upper right hand corner of the site) gives me a feed where the posts are timed and dated with the actual times I’ve finalized them, while this link (which happens to be the feed I use in my own reader) gives me my posts with the times I put on them (usually 12:01 AM). Other than that, is there any real difference between the two RSS feeds I’m not aware of?

Anyway, I’m sure that’s all very interesting. Perhaps it’s just a glitch in the system, but if you don’t see a new post from me in the feed reader when you expect there to be one, just come straight here to progressiveruin.com. There’ll probably be something goin’ on.

Well, except today, since I got in late Thursday night, and I’m too tired to do anything but do some linky-linky:

  • Pals Dorian and Ken present their monthly trailer reviews, which is always one of my favorite things to read on the internettings.

  • Quite possibly the best thing to come out of this whole Fear Itself crossover nonsense.

  • A little late linking to this, but pal Andrew presents a Nobody’s Favorite entry with a character I remember seeing on covers and such way back when, but I don’t think I ever read an actual comic involving her (aside from a brief appearance in 52, I guess). I honestly had no idea what her deal was all these years ’til reading Andrew’s post.

  • And I hope Johanna got a laugh out of the title to today’s post!

To be frank, I’m not even sure I’m quite following what’s going on in this comic.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, swamp thing 5 Comments

As you may have noticed, I’ve been in bit of a Low Content Mode for the last few days. Sorry about that, but on the days I wasn’t feeling under the weather, I was otherwise occupied with Real Life stuff and haven’t had the time or energy to put together my typical way-overwritten commentary on things barely anyone cares about.

I’m not going anywhere, but I’m just going about it a bit more slowly at the moment. I’ll be back to normal operating standards, such as they are, soon.

In the meantime, here’s the variant cover by Ivan Reis for Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #2, due out this week at your local funnybook store:


Yes, the Constantine/Superman interaction is about as awkward as you’d think. More details here at the DC Comics blog, where it was apparently posted a month ago and I somehow missed it. …It’s a hard thing, gettin’ older and slower.

This site does not condone the concussing of ponies.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, retailing, this week's comics 8 Comments

So now that I finally started using my Tumblr site, I believe I finally found a purpose for it (aside from using it to comment on friends’ posts and reblogging awesome things, like this unused Superman versus Titano cover by Curt Swan). I think I may be using it as a “commentary track” or “greatest hits” supplement for this site, revisiting old posts and images and providing some additional info, background material, or just reminding folks of some of the older, sillier stuff. Okay, I did just repost that recent Klarion pic but c’mon, that pic is fantastic.

In other news…I’m sure most of you are aware by now of the Diamond street dates thing, in which retailers can get their comics on Tuesday in order to prep them for Wednesday sale, and woe betide you if you sell them early. I hear tell that Diamond has “secret shoppers” out there in the wild, enforcing the Wednesday street dates. Well, considering I yell even at Employee Aaron if he even looks at the books as I’m breaking down the order, I think I’m pretty safe there.

But anyway, this Tuesday, we had a large order of gaming product come in from Diamond, along with our usual comics order. I mean, a very large order. It was all prepaid for by a customer, so we had the coin of the realm on hand to take care of it, but still, it’s a bit imposing when you check the status of your UPS shipment and discover sixty boxes waiting for you. There’s always that fear that maybe your finger slipped while placing your orders three months ago and you accidentally ordered 15,000 copies of Green Hornet: Aftermath #4 and they all turned up today and OH GOD. But no, it was just the games stuff, and it was about fifty boxes all of approximately the same size and shape and while Aaron and I were tempted to build a fort with them, alas, we were too busy.

It was also a fairly sizable comics ship week as well, with a handful of notable items, like Superman #713, the next issue after the surprise Krypto fill-in for the scheduled Muslim superhero story. Some folks claimed the fill-in had something to do with the powers-that-be not liking the originally-planned story showing Superman rescuing a kitten, as it undermined the strength of the character or something. Well…guess what happens in this new issue? Go on, guess. Okay, it involves a roof, not a tree, but if anyone’s really going to split hairs over that, they are welcome to jump up my hinder.

Oh, and Superman #713 has this awesome Jeff Smith variant, and they should totally give Smith his own Superman series to do. (And speaking of Smith, the new issue of Rasl is out this week, too.)

The next issue of the Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown mini is also released this week, which turned out to be the only Flashpoint book I’m reading. I wasn’t going to be reading any of them, but those cats over at the War Rocket Ajax podcast convinced me to give it a try via their discussion of it on the show, and they were right: this is the stuff.

And this action figure is out this week. This is a gargantuan hunk of plastic. You could probably concuss a pony with this thing. I am praying this is how Tom Hardy looks in The Dark Knight Rises.

Or you didn’t interact with me there because you just plain don’t like me.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, sir-links-a-lot 11 Comments

 

  • Those of you who are on the Tumblr, and didn’t want to interact with me there because my regular Tumblr site Estate 4.1 depressed the hell out of you…well, I remembered that I had grabbed the “mikester” user name there a long time ago, but never did anything with that account, so Mike Sterlng’s Progressive Tumblr is now open for business. Mostly I’m just using it so I can comment on and occasionally reblog friends’ posts without breaking the Estate 4.1 “character.”

    Estate 4.1 will still be continuing, so don’t you worry your pretty little heads over that.

  • Bully, the Bull Who Is Stuffed and a Bull And Is Stuffed Also, sticks it to comic book stickers!

  • This week’s Nobody’s Favorites is a character that…I actually sort of liked the idea of, just for how crazy it sounded.

  • MAVERICK PUNCH!

  • So the Dark Knight Rises teaser poster for the film is out. Kind of a neat design.

  • H at the Comic Treadmill writes about currently taking a hiatus from comics and the previous times he’d done so.

    …I was trying to think if I’d ever had a comics hiatus, and…well, not since I’ve started selling the things, obviously, but before that? I think once I started buying comics regularly, I never stopped. My purchasing dipped a bit at times, sure. And even now, the number of comics I actually pick up each week is pretty low. But I’ve never hit a point where I felt the need to give them up entirely. I suspect even at my lowest ebb I’d still be buying Swamp Thing. If there was one coming out, of course.

  • And I wanted to post a special thanks to Matt and Lynnea, readers of the site who were nice enough to stop by the store, say “hi!” and see me in all my disheveled, unshaven and sweaty glory. Yes, they were just that lucky. Thanks again for visiting, guys!

Sluggo Saturday: The Postmortem.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, sluggo saturday 5 Comments

So it was several years ago, back in the glittering Golden Age of the late ’80s/early ’90s, when pal Rob was perusing one of the then-new Kitchen Sink Press Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy strip collections and he showed me a particular panel that tickled his funnybone:


And though I was not a Nancy fan at the time, I shared in Rob’s amusement at that particular panel, one of a sequence of Sluggo blatantly goofing off at work while his boss glared at him. But that one panel, with him playing the harmonica, seemed especially transgressive and hilarious. The pure joy on Sluggo’s face was particularly endearing.

As I said, I wasn’t a Nancy fan. By that I don’t mean I hated the strip, or was actively opposed to it. I simply hadn’t been exposed to enough of it. I was aware of it, certainly, but mostly through second-hand sources, such as Bill Griffith’s occasional forays into Bushmillerian topics in his Zippy the Pinhead strips, or via the occasional parody (such as in Mad, or Mark Newgarden’s “Love’s Savage Fury” from Raw Magazine). And I’d read enough articles in comic ‘zines and historical overviews to know that Bushmiller’s Nancy strips were, to some extent, not held in the highest regard.

But given that my early exposures to the strip were via people and sources who enjoyed and outright celebrated (while acknowledging the peculiarity) of Bushmiller’s Nancy, that is probably what inclined me toward learning to appreciate it in all its oddball simplicity, with its surreal charm and its cornball gags. I acquired my own copies of the Kitchen Sink reprint volumes, and would pick up copies of the various Nancy comic books (containing both Bushmiller reprints and new stories by other creators) when the opportunity arose.

I’m not sure what really prompted me to start doing Sluggo Saturdays, other than 1) I tended to use Saturday as a “down” time on my site, simply posting an image or two, and 2) I’d been going to the Sluggo well an awful lot on my site at the time, and figured I could confine his appearances to just one specific day a week. And 3) this was a fantastic picture.

Also, I originally planned to only run with this feature for a year, but #52 ended up being on Free Comic Book Day, and that didn’t seem right to me. So I decided to shoot for 100, since you know how we comic book dudes like our round numbers, but realized that’d put me four short of a two year run. And we comic book dudes like our anniversaries, too, so the two-year run won out.

I was trying to pin down which Sluggo Saturday was my favorite, and it’s rough. There were a few missteps along the way, to be sure: I was never happy with the caption on this one (a bit too on the nose), this one doesn’t even really have a gag, sometimes I tried too hard, and…um, I meant well, honest. Plus, I notice that I hadn’t quite figured out what exactly my take was going to be on Sluggo Saturday by the second installment.

But the most popular Sluggo Saturday on the site, I think, and one of my own personal favorites, was this one, where it was hard to believe that that particular bit of dialogue actually appeared in a comic. Though I do like this one for being appalling, and this one for being a great example of how off-model the comic book versions of Nancy and Sluggo would occasionally be. And for this I can only apologize.

I always enjoyed when someone would be inspired by a Sluggo Saturday post to generate their own variations of the image, such as what Kevin did to this panel using my own face, and Nat and Bully both had some fun with the same pic.

And this pic has been the wallpaper on my cellphone almost since the day I first posted it on the site.

The other odd side effect from my parade of Sluggo appreciation comes from its pairing with my other funnybook obsession, Swamp Thing. Now, this image predates Sluggo Saturday, and I’d actually requested the pairing, but I feel I should re-present this Christmas gift hand-drawn by Employee Aaron:


However, a year or two later, Awesome Hospital‘s Matt Digges was good enough to gift me with this fantastic House of Secrets #92 tribute featuring You-Know-Who:


And I am still regularly emailed, Twittered, and Facebooked with links and images regarding our favorite unkempt ruffian. In fact, just a couple of days ago, reader Dan sent along this Bill Sienkiewicz convention sketch obtained a while back by his friend Jaan. WARNING: cannot be unseen:


This is currently the wallpaper on the store computer. None who gaze upon it can look away.

Special thanks to readers Alan and Paul and to pal Nat for sending along material for use in this project of mine. And special thanks to pal Andres, who loaned me all kinds of great Nancy and Sluggo material that I used here, and was even good enough to gift me with my own copy of Brian Walker’s The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy.

I suspect I’m not done with Nancy or Sluggo on this site. After all, we have the complete Nancy collections forthcoming from Fantagraphics to look forward to. I can’t wait to dig into those once they start coming out. And you never know when I may come across another great image I absolutely have to share. In the meantime, there’s this Tumblr site which is presenting Bushmiller panels, allowing us to contemplate the weird world in which Nancy and Sluggo live, without the burden of context or meaning. Strangely smoothing. There’s also this site offering up scans of vintage Nancy and Fritzi Ritz strips clipped from newspapers. Remember newspapers? And here’s this link post of mine from (Good Lord) about five years ago, which probably has suffered a bit of link-rot since then, but the YouTube video link, at least, is still good. Plus, I explain that one panel. You know which one.

Of course, the question still stands: why Sluggo? Why spend two years’ worth of Saturdays scanning assorted panels and attaching occasionally-amusing captions to them? What is it about Sluggo that is so compelling?

Because Sluggo is the kind of dude who’ll sit there at his work desk and happily play his harmonica while his boss watches, that’s why.

• • •

Like I said at the end of the last Sluggo Saturday entry…thanks for reading and enjoying this little project of mine. I heard from more than a few of you telling me that you’ve gained a new appreciation for Nancy and Sluggo, and that makes me very happy.

Thanks again, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

I may have twisted my arm while trying to pat myself on the back.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, cartoons, superman 3 Comments

From the Superman: The Animated Series episode “The Late Mr. Kent” (originally aired November 1997) comes this bit of editorial commentary:


…”Fans Nix New Duds,” almost certainly referring to the new costume hoohar which began in the early 1997 Superman comics :


Oh, those Superman Cartoon guys. (For more on that costume, here’s a post on that topic that I did nearly a year ago which I still think isn’t half-bad.)

• • •

So long as I’m congratulating myself, I was reminded a few days ago of a particular entry on my site…an entry that, if I were to pick my top ten favorite posts I’ve ever done here, would almost certainly be near the top. So, today’s Progressive Ruin Phunnybook Phlashback: BEHOLD.

• • •

Hey. Hey, you. If you’ve got your blog set up that your sidebar links to other blogs include the title and / or the first line or two of said linked blogs, and you were good enough to include me in that sidebar, please do me a favor. Take a look at my link there. If the excerpt from my site reads “REMINDER! Update your Progressive Ruin feed links,” then…well, please update your Progressive Ruin feed links. Here’s the current feed, which is also linked to by the “SYNDICATE” button at the upper right hand corner of my site. Thank you!

In which I discuss my favorite topic.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, sir-links-a-lot 2 Comments

So I’ve become involved in more online funny business…some of my fellow Bureau Chiefs (the gang responsible for the still-ongoing Fake AP Stylebook and the forthcoming book Write More Good) have started a new project: specifically, Matt Wilson and Ken Lowery have created The Content Farm, a parody of those “how-to” instructional sites that pollute all your attempted Google searches. There is also a related Twitter feed with links to the Tumblr site, as well as original short gags. Anyway, I’ve been contributing to the shenanigans, with my first full-length piece “How to Make A Peanut Butter Sandwich” making it to the main site a couple of days ago. Ken wrote this piece, “How to Tell If You Are Bleeding from The Scalp,” which is my personal favorite and the entry I always cite when trying to explain this site.

We have lots more planned, so please keep visiting The Content Farm for more helpful hints and life strategies.

In other news involving me:

The truest thing ever said in the streets of Tijuana.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, Christmas, does mike ever shut up 7 Comments

So subscribers to Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin, Premium Edition may have seen an early release of yesterday’s post with a few embarrassing typos, for which I apologize. All I can say is “don’t write posts for your weblog when you’re really, really tired.” Anyway, thanks to an alert by a helpful reader, the errors were fixed by the time the Progressive Ruin Free Edition was distributed.

If you’d like to sign up for the Progressive Ruin Premium Edition, here’s what you get:

  • The secret phone number for the Mike Sterling Hotline, with prerecorded messages from me, just for you, about life, love, and dealing with the little problems that drive us all crazy!

  • All the latest news about UFO abductions, crop circles, and psychic predictions!

  • And this personalized and hand-signed color photograph, suitable for framing!

So what are you waiting for? Sign up today!

• • •

In other news (assuming you’re still reading):

  • Thursday afternoon, I was gifted with two wonderful, wonderful things.

    First, from Kid Chris, this swell Blue Demon matchbox/refrigerator magnet purchased during his last visit to Tijuana:


    Kid Chris informed me that he had the following exchange with the little girl who was selling these:

    Kid Chris: “El Santo…es bueno?”

    Little girl: “El Santo es fabuloso!

    I think we can all agree on this.

    • Later in the day, pal Casie brought in a big plate of cookies with the following homemade and completely awesome Christmas tree ornament attached:


    Oh man, this makes me want to run out and chop down a tree so I’d have something to hang it on, which is, um, a tad ironic, considering. Plus, the picture is green and red, so it’s totally Christmas-y!

  • So anyway, read this article about the forthcoming “death” in the Fantastic Four comic, and then immediately follow that up by reading this post I wrote in 2007.

    I wonder if we’ll get any bump in sales on this comic from the general public. I suspect this gimmick’s been pulled often enough that even the non-fans are as jaded as the fans when it comes to the “in this issue [Big Name Superhero] dies!” hoohar.

  • Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my readers!

In which I tell you more about how I sort out my Superman comics than you ever wanted to know.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, peanuts, superman, triangle numbers 21 Comments

So thanks to pal Nat for dropping by yesterday’s post, being a good sport, and laying down some Peanuts knowledge re: the production of those Charlie Brown ‘Cyclopedias. If you missed that comment, go back and check it out. Thanks, Nat!

Another comment, from reader “Masonic Youth” (good nickname!) mentioned a book I hadn’t heard of before, called Will Eisner’s Gleeful Guide to Living with Astrology, a picture of which you can find on this Amazon listing. I didn’t find a whole lot of information about it via the Googling, though Gary Groth describes the book as “satirical” in this appreciation of Eisner’s work. Would kind of like to see a copy of this…or maybe Mr. (or “Ms.” or “Mrs.” — I shouldn’t presume) M. Youth, who has a copy, would be nice enough to give us a brief description of the book. (You can see images and descriptions of some of the other books in this series…but not the astrology one…on this page under “Humor.”)

Boy, that was a whole lot of links squeezed into a small space. Let me try to talk about something that doesn’t involve linking anything. Well, maybe one thing.

So, on Monday, I was recovering from some follow-up root canal business, and I decided to sort through and put away some comics that’d been piling up in the “Hey, Mike, log these and sort them into your Vast Comic Archives someday” boxes that occupy a corner of the bedroom. I’ve actually been doing this on and off as I’ve been finding the time over the last few weeks, putting away some Hulks here, some Justice Leagues there…and finally, I decided to tackle the Superman books.

Now, here’s the thing about the Superman books, particularly the (for the nerdy) post-Crisis (or for the non-nerdy) mid-1980s and forward run of the series: as some of you may know, the three, sometimes four, and very briefly five ongoing Superman series had “triangle numbers” on the covers, a separate numbering system (presented within a little triangle shape also bearing the year, hence the name) indicating what order the comics should be read in. This ran for little over a decade, starting in the early ’90s and running ’til the early 2000s (and popping up again briefly in the last couple of years). So, those comics I have sorted in triangle-number order, making for ease of rereading in all this copious free time I have to reread long runs of my old comic books.

In addition, at some point during the ’90s, back when I was still young and full of hope, I decided to “chronologically” sort the post-Crisis, pre-triangle number issues as well, even though at that time the books weren’t quite as intertwined as they would be later. And if that weren’t enough, even after the triangle numbers ended, I continued sorting the Superman books into the boxes in chronological order. Because I’m crazy.

Anyway, I realized I was, ahem, a couple of years behind in getting the books sorted into the proper boxes, so without doing a little research I wouldn’t be able to sort out the Superman books in exact order. Oh, sure, I could do them by month, putting all the May ’09 books together and so on, but I wouldn’t know for sure if the May ’09 Action Comics came before the May ’09 Superman comic or not, without having to pop ’em all out of the bags to check the “coming soon/next week/next issue” box, and who’s got that kind of time?

As you may be able to tell, this is stupid. Sure, it made sense when the multiple Superman series were effectively a weekly serial, and you had to read them in a certain order, but nowadays, with one Superman book actually featuring Lex Luthor with a Jimmy Olsen back-up and is totally awesome, and the other Superman book featuring Superman walking across the country and being a smug asshole to the locals, and never the twain shall meet, the need for maintaining the exact release/reading order of the various series as they related to each other is hardly necessary.

Just so you know, I am aware of how obsessive-compulsive this all sounds. Thought I should mention that, the further along into this I get.

But I decided just to make the cut-off issue for this chronological sorting Action Comics #800 (April 2003). There are a few inter-series storylines past that, but I figured that was far enough beyond the constant intertwining of the series to allow for splitting the titles back up into their individual runs without causing too much inconvenience when I’m in my 90s and I decide I want to reread all my Superman comics. Plus, given how often I seem to be able to put comics away at home, I no longer need the additional time-sink of sorting the damned things chronologically. “Title” and “issue number” are enough, thank you.

I pulled myself back from the brink. There’s a happy ending after all! I’m no longer obsessed about comics, he said in his nearly seven-year-old daily-updated comics blog.

In case you didn’t get enough Superman triangle-number talk, and boy, I’m sure you didn’t, I actually made a category for it so you can see what I said about these things the last time DC tried to implement them.

Oh, hey, comics…they still publish those?

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, peanuts, retailing, this week's comics 7 Comments

So apparently what the people want is creepy hobo Charlie Brown, judging by the linkage and traffic I’ve been receiving lately. Thanks for encouraging my behavior, Other Internet Sites, though sadly I don’t have much else in the vagrant Peanuts character vein. However, it does remind me that I haven’t mentioned pal Nat‘s new book The Peanuts Collection, a neat compilation of photos and replica tchotchkes (like trading cards, rare booklets, cels, and such. He brought a copy by for me to poke through, and it’s certainly a neat and beautifully-done package. No Hobo Charlie Brown that I noticed, but you should probably buy a copy anyway, courtesy this little box here:


In other non-Peanuts news, people have been sending me the link to Our Valued Customers, a collection of one-panel cartoons presenting things said by customers and Overheard at The Comic Shop. Reminded me a bit of that mini-comic I did back in ’96, and posted here on my site, though my examples are more general “everyone’s heard ’em” quotes, and Our Valued Customers’ examples are more of the frothing-at-the-mouth type. As has been noted by a pal of mine, I’m not sure I’d draw actual caricatures of my customers and post them online, but hell, I can enjoy ’em and not have to worry about taking the heat if any of them find out. (Though, as I admit in that old post, one person in my mini, aside from the self-portrait, was an intended caricature…she hasn’t come back and killed me in the 14 years since, so I think I’m safe. …So far.)

In other news, some new comics came out this week:

  • The new Smurfs volume The Smurf King is out…still the same complaint about the lettering I had last time, but that still remains really my only complaint. Some fine, funny, witty cartooning that holds up all these decades later. Don’t dismiss it just because of the ’80s cartoon show…this is genuinely classic stuff.

  • Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6 – I think maybe if the only superhero comics I’d read from now on were ones written by Grant Morrison, I’d probably be okay with that. I get all the wonderfully strange and inventive and near-celebratory superheroic storytelling that I want from his comics, compared to some other titles where it just feels like pages are getting filled. In this particular case, it’s a shame about the series’ timing, but still remains a satisfyingly odd exploration of the history of Batman and a solid chapter in Morrison’s ongoing Bat-saga.

  • Glamourpuss #16 – I’m the only person still reading this at our shop. I’m still enjoying it. Not even quite sure how or why I’m enjoying it, but Sim’s goofy combo of fashion industry parody and in-depth examinations of classic comic artists still keeps my attention.

  • Green Lantern Emerald Warriors #4 – I’m a sucker for still getting this. I just really like the Green Lantern concept, so I’m an easy mark.

  • Comic Book Guy The Comic Book #5 – End of the series, kind of wish there was more actual Comic Book Guy action throughout the story, but still a funny parade of knocks on the comics industry and the folks who enable it. In-jokey, but not overly so.

  • Muppet Sherlock Holmes #3 – The parody Muppet minis aren’t as strong as the ongoing Muppet Show series, which means they’re only excellent instead of perfect. Plus, I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and parodies, so this is right up my alley.

  • Hellblazer: City of Demons #3 – Really have no idea why this didn’t just run in the regular series. It’s not a bad comic by any means, but the market doesn’t really need two Hellblazer comics on the stands at the same time. Nor does it need three Wolverine titles, but I think I’ve mentioned that enough.

  • The Incredible Hulks #616 – I was kinda hard on this title last time, since the proliferation of Hulk characters (hence the title change) was wearing on me a bit, but I find myself enjoying Bruce Banner/the Hulk’s responses to the situations they’re finding themselves in. But I’m pretty much ready to be done with the whole Sons of the Hulk thing.

  • T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 – Okay, first, it’s a pain in the butt to type all those periods in that name. Second, I may have mocked this comic a little in the past, but the fact that Nick Spencer, the man currently writing the fantastic Jimmy Olsen back-up in Action Comics, is also writing this is very positive sign. It’s still an uphill battle, trying to get people invested in yet another new revival superhero series, but maybe it’ll actually have a chance if the writing is strong.

  • Dungeons & Dragons #1 – By all accounts, a good comic, I’m hearing. Yes, everyone is completely surprised by this fact. The retailer incentive variant had a cover that resembled the old D&D adventure modules from TSR, and even included an actual playable adventure that wasn’t in the regular version. IDW has this habit of making the incentive editions the cool thing that might actually sell well, instead of making the regularly-available issue awesome. Don’t put that photo cover of handsome bastard 1960s William Shatner on your variant, put him on your regular Star Trek cover…and don’t make just the variant D&D book look like a module, make ’em all look like that. That variant grabbed the eye of everyone who looked at it, far more than the generic fantasy covers of the regular editions that simply blend in on the rack.

  • Avengers: Children’s Crusade #3, Avengers Prime #4, New Avengers #6, I Am An Avenger #4, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1 – sigh.

  • Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali hardcovers – one version is at the original “treasury edition” size, the other at the standard comic book size (but containing additional unpublished art), and I’m unclear, since they arrived shrinkwrapped…are they both recolored by Neal Adams’ studio? If so, that’s a shame, but the fact remains that this really is one of the greatest Superman stories of all time, and if you can’t get your mitts on the original, I’d recommend the treasury-sized hardcover over the smaller one, regardless of the extra material. This comic needs to be read BIG.