Category — Comics

This weekend, I’ll be in New York City at Comic Con, Twittering like crazy.  I’ll be hanging out with my fellow Alert Nerd Sarah and 3/4s of the Fantastic Fangirls rhombus - Caroline,  Jennifer and Anika  (Honestly, I feel like Bosley). I’ll also be trolling around the BOOM! Studios, Zuda, and Marvel booths rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful.

If you see me schlepping around, say hey.

I have this niece.  I may have mentioned her before.

At around a year old, she started giving people hi-fives.  As a doting uncle, I thought that this was, in fact, awesome, but I wanted to expand her education (read: teach her a new trick).  So I tried to get her to emulate the notorious Obama fist bump with me.

No dice.

However, last Wednesday, when Amazing Spider-Man #583 was released, Alana toddled up to me and, instead of waving or blowing a kiss or hi-fiving me, she giggled and extended her fist toward me.  I punched it, and she thought it was the most awesome thing.  So did I.

Now, I understand why Erik Larsen is so angry with me.  He did, after all, invent fist bumps.  And nieces.  Both in the pages of Savage Dragon.  I’ve infringed on his intellectual property, and that’s not right.  So, Mr. Larsen, I’ve prepared the following statement: “My bad. It won’t happen again.”

Now let’s stop all the grousing and move on.

Listen, I know all three of you reading this probably already subscribe to Chris Sims’s blog, but on the off chance that you don’t, you need to check out his latest post, which is guaranteed to crack the Internet in half.  I have no words.  None.

Word to the wise: Chris is talking about the most recent issue of Tarot, which means that the post is extremely unsafe for work.  And for your sanity.  Read it and then come back.

Think about this: Of the ten thousand plus visits that Chris has gotten for this post, at least a tenth of these people have clicked through because someone told them it was “the hottest thing ever.”

Think About It, Won’t You?

I like Matt Wagner a lot.  I like Francisco Francavilla (of Black Coat fame) a lot.  And I love Zorro.  Zorro hits two of my very largest buttons - the Batman button and the swashbuckling button - with equal zeal.  I also like Isabel Allende, and her Zorro novel is mostly fantastic.

So, when Wagner and Francavilla were attached to Dynamite’s new Zorro book, I freaked out a bit,  Especially when Wagner confirmed that he was basing Don Diego de la Vega’s origin on the Allende novel.

I’ve been largely quiet about the book since that time, but when it made Rachelle’s best of 2008 list, I resolved to spread the word about how swashmazing it is.  The book is iconic and awesome.  The action, which is all swordfights and horse chases, feels fluid and effortless.  If I had a scanner right now, I’d share the double page spread of Zorro fencing with Sgt. Gonzalez from issue #8, which is basically perfect.

Zorro is one of those books that is probably not getting the word of mouth because it’s simply too good.  There’s no controversy around it, no infamous creators getting into a kerflaffle with the fans, no severely laughable scheduling issues.  It’s just a good, high-quality comic book quietly coming out and kicking ass.

Wagner has really been doing amazing stuff over the past year (check out his Madame Xanadu mini with some absolutely gorgeous art by Amy Reeder Hadley) and the tubes have been relatively quiet about it, at least in the corners I read.  I guess it’s tough to blog about consistent excellence with any real verve.

When I moved off of Blogger and onto Wordpress, it effed up Sims’s links to my 30-Second Recap posts.  So, if you’re here looking for them, my recap of Grant Morrison’s 7 Soldiers is right here, as is my recap of J. Michael Straczynski’s Thor.

As for this year’s 30-Second Recap, I have something fun planned; now I just have to hope I don’t ruin it in the execution.

I’ve been hyper-critical of DC Comics’ marketing efforts for a good half a year here on Conditional Axe, and have griped about them offline for longer.  And it’s gotten to the point where I read more Image books than DC books each month (when Noble Causes ends, they’ll be neck and neck).

Maybe, though, I should give DC the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe they want to craft a long-term strategy that capitalizes on the most valuable outposts available to them.  Maybe they want to create a message that truly communicates with their userbase.  Maybe they don’t want to half-ass it, and rushing in blindly can lead to half-assery.

But I could be wrong.

The DC_Nation Twitter initiative lasted for about 48 hours.  It updated 18 times, 12 of which are links to aggrandizing press about DC.  There’s also one possibly combative reply to Marvel Art Director Rich Ginter and four Good Morning/Good Afternoon messages.  There’s no give and take here, no community, and no promotion of the artists and writers and other staffers under the DC umbrella.  It did help me find Karl Kerschl on Twitter, though, so that’s a good thing.

It’s entirely possible that DC didn’t set up the account; that some zealous fan did, and that’s why it stopped.  But then DC’s publicist is following it.

I would love to see the account come back in the new year with a new direction. I don’t hate DC; I just want them to be better.
EQUAL TIME: Several of DC’s imprints do have a good, interactive Twitter presence - like Zuda - and it’s no surprise that the social media webcomic arm of the publisher is doing it right.

The confluence of the first major winter storm of 2008 to strike the eastern seaboard and the unreasoning tizzy created by the announcement of Geoff Johns’ departure from Justice Society of America threaten to shut major eastern cities down entirely for the rest of the week.  Meteorologists are predicting that “heavy winds and incessant whining” are the biggest potential dangers and cautions everyone with a 4 wheel drive vehicle or a tolerance for Alex Ross’s unsubtle Silver Age revisionism to stay off the streets.  “It’s going to be terrible,” one scientist warned.

Some are speculating that the cold front may replace Johns on the DC Comics title.

Posting about comics with something approaching regularity again?  Say it ain’t so!

Noble Causes #38: Noble Causes is always one of my favorite books on the week it comes out, and this week was no exception.  It was a solid, sometimes poignant one-off about Rusty Noble, the character on the team that’s been given the shortest shrift since the 5YL story began.  The revelation at the core of this story is satisfying but not shocking in the least, though it’s good to hear it out of the character’s mouth.  Yildiray Cinar’s clean, emotive art shines here, especially because he loves drawing Rusty.  With only two more issues left, I’m missing Noble Causes already.

X-Men Noir #1: What I’ve read of Fred Van Lente doesn’t make him my first choice to write a hard-boiled crime saga, but this first Marvel Noir title really kills.  The best alternate take on the X-Men since Age of Apocalypse 12 years ago.  Yeah, no powers, but there is a taut, moody, desperate story that nails what the X-Men have always been about.

X Infernus #1: Picking up where Kyle and Yost left off with New X-Men’s Childhood’s End V. 5, C.B. Cebulski writes a compelling first issue of the series that seems poised to bring Magik back into the Marvel U proper.  It’s competent and gives readers a few scenes that they’ve been wanting to see: Colossus confronting Cyclops about his sister’s fate, Nightcrawler coaching Pixie on teleportation.  Also, beheadings.

Secret Invasion #8: Unlike some other people, I read it.  While Bendis always gets me with his long-view plotting, the short-term stuff is unsatisfactory and honestly, though the set-up intrigues me, I think the execution of the finale (especially in the way the story abruptly changes from as-its-happening to after-the-fact narration for the final installment) loses some of the series’ energy.  The major death, in particular, does not play as emotionally as the narration says it does - which may be a function of Leinil Yu’s art.  Bendis does nice character work, as always, but I feel like Secret Invasion could have done more.

New Avengers #47: What a thoroughly solid issue of Alias.

BONUS: Ghost Rider: Hell Bent and Heaven Bound: Why did I not read this sooner? Jason Aaron delivers what is basically the perfect Ghost Rider comic book, even in light of the character’s drastically changed status quo.

From the letters page of All Star Squadron #48:

Life’s too short, though, to worry about letter-writers whose folks have brought them up wrong, so most of those letters get confined to the trashbasket….  If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a comics fan with an infinite supply of righteous indignation….

Is it ironic that Roy Thomas is complaining about nitpickers, especially when he goes on to spend most of a column’s length running down the core membership of the All Stars to correct an incomplete Who’s Who entry?  I’m gonna go with yes.

ASS #48 is a prime of example of the sort of thing I liked about that particular title as a kid.  There are guest appearances from the Blackhawks and Winston Churchill, and Firebrand II, Robotman and Dr. Fate have an aerial fight with the Luftwaffe.  It’s fun, Nazi-fighting goodness that is almost totally disposable afterwards.  The best part?  The real plot of this two-issue arc involves Wotan fooling Shining Knight into thinking he’s King Arthur in order to turn him against the All Stars, because he thinks it would be more traumatizing to have Fate killed by one of his friends.

I haven’t been reading a lot of comics since the divorce.  I started cutting into my backlog last week, though, and I’m glad I did because I’m missing out on some great stuff.

Some highlights (including some stuff that isn’t new):

Incredible Hercules: If you’re not already reading Herc, I really suggest you try it out.  The current “Love and War” arc manages to be goofy on the surface, mythic at its core and ties into a larger metaplot that spins out of the criminally under-read Ares mini from a few years back - so it’s really a perfect example of the way the Prince of Power rolls every month.  Marvel’s interpretation of Herc is probably my favorite in all of pop culture, and Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente nail it month after month.  Buddy action comedy done in the mighty Marvel manner.

Uncanny X-Men: Brubaker and Fraction’s new direction for this title is basically perfect; San Francisco is the place for the X-Men, and the duo juggles a big, diverse cast without any major fumbles and manages to make the issue-to-issue plots and character beats interesting.  Uncanny is a slick modernization of the X-Men that everybody fell in love with under Chris Claremont.

Umbrella Academy: Dallas: Gerard Way promised that this issue would have the best comic book fight ever in it, and a bunch of little kids, a giant stone Abraham Lincoln and a giant stone John Wilkes Booth certainly live up to that hype.  It took me until issue #3 to really warm on the previous volume, which I ended up loving, so I’m willing to overlook the lack of a clear throughline right now in turn for the collection of really strong moments that show up in the book.  And the art, of course, is made of awesome.

Batman: The ending of RIP is pretty easy to follow, but doesn’t have the requisite daily value of omgfuckawesome that it should have.  That Joker, Damien and Talia are the characters who get the really rewarding spotlight moments (and not Tim or Dick or whoever else) is kind of unexpected.  I think in the long-run, Morrison will have done a good job of shedding the “My Parents Are Dead” shtick from the character, but we’re only halfway through that particular chrysalis right now.

Secret Wars II: So bad it’s good.

Dynamo 5: Issue #18 has a really good superhero beat-em-up that plays on some existing Faerberverse continuity, and the preceding issue is a surprisingly strong origin story for Maddie.

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War: Nazi-punching at its best.