this week’s comics

The transition from self-contained gag-oriented issues to ongoing occasionally humorous soap opera seems to have been generally a successful one as far as sales go, at least at my shop. However, the comic now sells almost exclusively to adults, whereas the classic version…well, also sold almost exclusively to adults, just in lesser numbers. One thing I’ve noticed over the decades is, despite having dedicated sections of children’s comics with plenty of younger clientele in two different stores, the regular monthly (or so) Archie comics have gradually become harder sells to actual kids. That’s not to say I never had any younger customers for Archie, but they were few and far between. I think I first realized there was a problem during one of my regular bulk comic sales to a local library, when my contact person at said library requested I send them no Archie comics. “They just don’t circulate,” she lamented. Quite the change from my long-ago librarian days, when we had subscriptions to multiple Archie titles.

None of this applies to the Archie digests, which I can still sell to kids just fine. And I certainly don’t mean to criticize these New Look Archie comics, which I think are pretty good. Just…well, like Marvel and DC, Archie had to age with its audience in order to keep up their sales. It’s a tough market, and with decades-old characters as your primary product, you’ve got to do what you can to keep them viable.

I know the writer on this comic takes a lot grief and inspires some significant eye-rolling, usually for good reason, and I can’t say there wasn’t any of that going on in just this series alone. But, there were some interesting takes on Young Clark Kent here and there that you certainly wouldn’t find in the classic Silver Age Superboy stories, and I think this functions just fine as an alternate version of Superman’s younger years. No idea if this is intended as “canon” or not, which hardly matters nowadays since superhero canon lifespans are generally measured in the months between reboots/relaunches.

This particular issue has Journalism Student Clark meeting several future friends and enemies in the context of “exclusive interviews,” showing Clark different takes on growing into a hero, as well as what he will face when he finally does become one himself…leading into a final confrontation that, while in hindsight certainly should have seen coming, genuinely caught me off guard with its intensity. That’s hard to do to a guy who’s read about a million Superman comics. And it’s all beautifully illustrated with Jae Lee’s strong but delicate linework…boy, Lee’s work just continues to impress me. This issue was probably the best of the run so far.

The Star Wars line continues to do well, even as the new movie nears the end of its theatrical run. It’s nice that there hasn’t been an oversaturation just yet…three ongoing series and a rotating fourth spot for minis seems to be working out just fine. Given their sales, I’m honestly surprised Marvel hasn’t canned its lower-selling superhero titles and filled their slots with Ugnaught Adventures and Lobot, P.I. and another dozen-or-so titles any of which I would happily write, but I am glad that Marvel…Marvel…for once let the goose live to continue laying golden eggs. …Okay, none of this specifically addresses the book pictured above, which kicks off a new storyline based around a Rebel prison, which at least gives us a new location in the Star Warsian universe, unlike some sequels I could name. Leinil Yu joins up as penciller, continuing the current tradition of swell artists on this series. It all looks and feels like good old fashioned Star Wars adventure, which may not be cutting edge groundbreaking comics, but it’s entertaining all the same.

C’mon, it’s a new Love and Rockets. You don’t need me to sell you on this. Just get it already. (And yeah, it’s not technically “this week’s comics,” since it came out last week. It’s my site, I’ll do what I want.)

It’s a weird thing when you have a second title start up that essentially duplicates the first title, which probably seems like an outdated commentary in an industry that throws a half-dozen Avengers or Batman titles on the new comics shelves at regular intervals. It just seems a little stranger here with a new Justice League title that’s featuring the same team that’s in the already-existing Justice League title, as part of a franchise that, historically, would at least present different casts across the various series. The promise of “massive widescreen action” almost implies a mild criticism of the other title, which doesn’t give you said “massive widescreen action.” The other novelty is that it’s tied to the vision of a particular creator, though as soon as that creator leaves that novelty is gone, leaving the title either to cancellation (i.e. Superman Unchained) or focusing on the vision of Another Big Name Creator, or just becoming a second regular monthly Justice League book, indistinguishable from the other.

Again, probably a dumb complaint in this brave new-ish comics world of Every Character or Team Stars in Two Titles or More, but there it is. This first issue was pretty good, however. It certainly delivers on the “widescreen action,” as promised.
 
 

This is almost even more…perverse (but not in a bad way…lemme ‘splain) than its line-crossing cousin Afterlife with Archie, in that it straight-up looks like an Archie comic. Afterlife at least is visually distinct from the rest of the Archie line, both covers and contents. Archie Versus Predator, at first glance, looks just like other Archies, at least inside (the cover pictured above is just one of the several variants available, and the only one that resembles traditional Archie). I do like that Archie is fully willing to do peculiar things with their bread-and-butter properties, probably inspired by the need to more firmly establish themselves in the direct market…hence Afterlife, the Sharknado crossover, another attempt at New Look Archie, and this very series I’m talkin’ about here. The comic is a hoot, though given that this comic contains a significantly larger amount of blood and exposed spines than most Archie titles, I’d definitely keep it out of the hands of young’uns. And for God’s sake, if you’re a store, keep it off the kids rack! Assuming you have a kids rack.
 
 

Hard to believe this series is just about done…only two volumes to go, and it was just announced that the final book will include Schulz’s early pre-Peanuts “Li’l Folks” strips! Of note is the introduction for this current volume pictured here, written by a couple of fellas from Rifftrax, which includes a few riffed strips from the founders of Rifftrax, former Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast members Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. A brief sample:

It reminds me of that long-ago missed opportunity when the MST3K gang were to delve into the world of comics, but cutbacks at Acclaim canned the book. (And I see the name of a certain stuffed bull‘s pal mentioned in that long-ago Usenet posting!)
 
 

Yet another installment in the ongoing saga of Superman’s No Longer Secret Identity that has yet to see the publication of the first part. A little annoying, yes, but I’ve been actually enjoying the story thus far…it’s a direction that the New 52 Superman needed, one where the character could be explored on its own merits rather than sloppily slapped together as something New and Different and Exciting!
 
 

I’m totally in the bag for the Minions, those cute little critters from the Despicable Me films (and their own movie, coming soon to a theater near you), so I thought I’d take a look at this little ol’ funnybook here. And surprise, it’s beautifully illustrated, with one-page mostly pantomime gag strips and a surprisingly detailed and hard-on-my-aging-eyes two-page spread of their secret underground lair. A couple of the gags are on the hokey side (oh no, the Minions are painting the floor and they ended up trapping themselves in the center of the room!) but I’m sure there’s a kid out there somewhere for whom those jokes are completely new. And it all looks so nice it’s hard to hold that against it.

SPOILERS ahead, but mostly just for All Star Western:

I don’t read the regular monthly Simpsons titles, for ultimately no good reason whatsoever except perhaps “I already get too many comics and I have to draw the line somewhere.” It’s clearly good work, very representative of the show and an all-around professional package…I just never got into the habit of following the ongoing series.

On the other hand, I do pick up the minis and specials, particularly the character-focused one-shots they release every few months. That’s generally enough Simpsons funnybookin’ to keep me going…they probably appeal to my childhood enjoyment of the treasury editions, the extra-sized anniversary issues, and what have you. Basically, I’m a cheap bastard who wants more bang for his buck, though if you’re going to be one of those people that does a page count and “number of cents per page” breakdown to tell me I’m better off buying the regular-sized $2.99 issues if I’m that concerned about pinching a penny…well, off with you, then.

Besides, these specials usually come with some kind of fancypants novelty insert, like the “Don’t Blame Me, I votes for Kang”/”…Kodos” bumper stickers that accompanied the special pictured above. Okay, I’m still too anal-retentive a fanboy to want to remove those stickers, but it’s nice to know that they’re there and I can enjoy ’em every time I open this comic. Well, until that glue dries out and the stickers come loose, but that’s a problem for whatever creditors come digging through my house after I’m gone. So, you know, in a week or two.

This isn’t a specific review about Red Lanterns, though of the Lantern Bunch (“Here’s the story of some lovely Guardians / Who were bringing up 3600 very lovely GLs”) it probably is my favorite series, which is not something I’d expected to say way back when DC was originally threatening to publish such a thing. But there it is: the characters and situations are more exciting and compelling than those in the other Green Lantern books. Not that the other GL books are bad…I still like them, but Red Lanterns kind of brings it in a way the others don’t.

Anyway, not what I wanted to mention. It’s just that the DC Universe books (at least, most of the ones I read) are sort of wrapping up storylines in order to make way for the “Futures End” one-shots with the 3D covers an’ all that are debuting this Wednesday and hopefully not bankrupting all of us retailers by contributing to insane distributor bills. I talked about trying to order these things before, and at the time it didn’t occur to me that the weekly series event-thingie the one-shots are tying into might turn out to…well, underperform, thus cutting off that entry avenue. With not a lot of interest in the event, there is the danger of ending storylines giving readers jumping-off points on titles they were sort of iffy on, or maybe just to cut reading costs and spend that money on, I don’t know, feeding the kids or something. Hopefully the novelty of the 3D covers will still entice people to continue, but that sort of thing does make me worry.

I am getting requests from customers to pull all the fancy covers for them, so the interest in there. Still wondering if we’re going to get anything like the rush from last time.

When DC, and then everybody, cut page counts down to 20 pages from 22 in their standard books, it felt like the story content were slighter. I mean, technically, it was; comics were two pages shorter. Maybe it was just psychological, but it felt like there was some kind of event horizon crossed, that the two pages significantly affected the amount of content present, far in excess of the actual storytelling loss caused by the truncation of the page count. The feeling’s lessened a bit, as creators have adjusted to the page loss and I’ve just sort of become used to it, but I occasionally read a comic, come to the end and think “what, already?”

That’s a long intro to say I didn’t have that feeling with Flash Gordon #5. In fact, this is the first standard-sized comic book I’ve read in quite a while where it seemed like things just kept going, where I kept expecting to come to the end of the comic, but nope, there was still more comic coming! After I finished reading it, I even went back and counted the actual number of story pages in the comic, convinced this was some kind of unannounced extra-sized issue.

20 pages. Including a two-page spread. Amazing.

A clever twist on what has been one of the more…macabre and great “ultimate fates” for any of DC’s characters. We all know how Hex is supposed to go out (I cover his death and adventures afterward here) and it’s nice that the last issue of All Star Western pays homage to that famous death while finding a new spin on it, one that also doesn’t necessarily reset Jonah’s life to the pre-time travel adventures status quo.

And it’s all drawn by Darwyn Cooke, so it’s very pretty looking, which is not a descriptor one usually uses for Jonah Hex, but, well, there you go. I do wonder what they’ll do with Hex after this, but now that time travel adventures for the character are once again on the table, look for his future Justice League membership. …Actually, he’d fit right into Justice League Dark, wouldn’t he?

I’m just going to remind you that a new issue of this has come out whenever it does come out. It’s pretty great.

Jim Starlin, the creator of Thanos, returns with artist Ron Lim to fill in a gap or two in the character’s past while setting up yet another Infinity Something-or-other series, which is fine with me, actually, so long as Starlin will be involved. The annual comes with three variant covers, and of course there’s only one choice as to which I’d get.

Collecting Jason Yungbluth’s longform post-apocalyptic Peanuts (and other comic strips!) parody, both from previous print appearances and the online strips, plus other goodies new to this collection. I’ve been a fan of Weapon Brown since first encountering it in Yungbluth’s Deep Fried comics, though I sort of fell behind keeping up with the webcomic and am glad to have it all here in one giant lump.

This is supposed to be the “Batman ’66” variant, though that mostly has translated to “‘characters drawn by Mike Allred in the usual Mike Allred style’ variant,” which is perfectly fine, don’t get me wrong. But everyone’s costumes need to be, I don’t know, a little baggier, maybe? At least one giant “KA-POW!” sound effect, somewhere? Swamp Thing (looking more like the Dick Durock portrayal from the first film) dancing the Swamptusi with an Abby Arcane who looks suspiciously like Eartha Kitt in a white wig with black stripes?

Been digging Matt Kindt’s covers on this series. The story’s interesting as well, giving us outsiders’ views of the Original Trilogy’s core characters. I suspect this and the other ongoing Star Wars monthly may be the last hurrahs for these characters in this form for a while, as the franchise switches over to Marvel and the ramp-up to Episode VII begins.

This issue goes a long way to establishing that the Fantastic Four are dangerous and possibly crazy people, which is something that probably should have been obvious from the get-go but James Robinson has a lawyer really go after the team on this and it’s hard to argue that the lawyer is wrong. It’ll all wrap up with our heroes coming out of it just fine, surely, or at the very least forgotten when the next writer comes along or the new first issue comes out, or both, but it makes for a compelling story in the meantime.

Was actually sort of surprised this wrapped up as quickly as it did, in only six issues, but there probably isn’t much more to say on the topic, really. A lot got squeezed into these comics, and the tone of the last issue swings from touching to appalling and back again, in true Garth Ennis fashion.

REMINDER: Swamp Thing appearance in Aquaman this week, about seventeen years since the last time that’s happened, so, you know, we were about due. Also, I have just dropped dead from old age, in case you were wondering.