Saturday, December 4, 2010
GOOD COMIC / BAD COMIC
Wet my pants love titles:
Billy The Kid's Old Tyme Oddities - The first round was OK but took forever to come out, making it less than worth it. This time, the art is way dope (Elephant Man spread is raaaaaad), revolves around Jack the ripper and Powell is finally writing some fun stuff. The Goon back-ups are the best shit he's drawn in ages. Straight-up one off fun stuff, no over-arching story that drags. Just goofery and hobos.
Baltimore: The Plague Ships - A fast read, but the art by Stenbeck that is guided by Mignola is a real treat. I read the novel a few years back and thought it was so-so. This is pure fun though. Zombies, mushroom men, gribbly zombies, batlike-vampires, weird war elements - so much good in this. To bad the 1st arc is over and I have to wait awhiles.
Scalped - No comic should be this good for as long as it has been. Like Breaking Bad in comic form with an artist who nails it every time.
Likin':
Walking Dead: Shambles on in a fantastic manner. Still has shocking stuff after all these dang years. The TV show is a bit iffy, but the comic is still solid.
Mignola-verse - Hellboy, BPRD, Withcfinder etc. All this stuff is consistently entertaining and creepy. Late October was an awesome month thanks to a Corbin/Mignola one shot and Evan Dorkin's Beasts of Burden/Hellboy team up. BPRD has never let me down.
Fantastic Four - Still enjoying this title a bunch. Namor stabbing people in the chest and yelling Imperious Rex is almost always a win.
Batman Detective Comics - At least for a little whiles this should be good. Scott Snyder (American Vampire) is writting some dark and gory shit, with some fucked criminals, the way Gotham should be. Plus there's more Gordon. I'm a Gordon fan. Batman to me needs to be more like Gotham Central, ie creepy. Brubaker did wonders with that book.
Fear agent - It's ending soon, and I'm still dealing with that.
Fables - Yes Fables please more yes. Issue 100 is around the corner and conflict has to occur.
SHIELD: So weird! Galileo vs Galactus and other crazy stuff! Art is pretty nice as well.
Meh:
Marvel-titles - ASM, Mighty Avengers, Cap, I'm looking at you. The Spider-man creative team is switching up a bit and I miss the stable of dudes that did The Gauntlet already. Mighty avengers is crazy and I have mixed feelings on it all.
Jack Of Fables - I'm a Fables sucker. Jack was funny stuff early on and made for a Deadpool like book. The past year has been weird storywise, but the art has been worth it for the sci-fi locales and elements. I'm still curious as to where it's all going though.
Deadpool - I know, I'm part of the problem. But it's the only one I read. The rest can suck it hard. This book makes me laugh out loud each issue, so it wins me over. I can understand how he is reviled though.
Hatin':
Irredeemable - This one has gone on for too long. Fun concept about a superman gone apeshit, but it needs to end.
S'all for now. I'm liking all the stuff I'm picking up as of late, no real gripes. Mr. Canada, perhaps you should dump the majority of the Marvel junk and get back on the Hellboy train or step to Scalped.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Books I'm likin' and some I'm not
Sunday, April 11, 2010
HE'S BAAAACK!
Monday, March 1, 2010
GO VOTE FOR NON-SUCK CHARACTERS. YOU CAN'T LET AQUAMAN WIN ANYTHING!
Best comic shop in Maryland (Cosmic Comix) is doing a nerdy March Madness type thing with comic characters. Dorky fun. And all online. Just click away. This week it's the DC and Newbie bracket. Easy. You might learn something too as each character has a rad write up. (Aquaman stands no chance)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
POWER OF A MILLION BORED READERS
"SIEGE BLOCKBUSTER TIE-IN!! The secrets of the Sentry are revealed but is it too late? Is this a hero reborn or a eulogy? The most pivotal moment in this controversial character's life yet is here, and how it affects the siege on Asgard will leave you breathless."
What we got in terms of the sizzlin' shockin' Sentry was:
Ooooooooooo dark and spooky sky! Oh noes black eyes!1!!1 Wooooooaaaaah same dull Sentry shit as ever!
What a lame rip-off. "Breathless"? No way. More like 4 bucks-less.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
MARTIN/PULITO/AZACETA ON SPIDERMAN. FOREVER.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
BLOG CHALLENGE: WHO IS RULK?
As you can see from my recent Top 10 of 2009 post, I've been reading Hulk for a while now. One of the burning questions in the series is "Who is Rulk?" aka Red Hulk. There have been plenty of red herrings thrown out there including Doc Samson, Rick Jones, Bruce Banner, and Betty Ross. The current likely candidate is Colonel Glenn Talbot:
At this point I really don't care who it is. It's bound to be someone I've never heard of and Talbot is just too easy, so I've taken to thinking who would be the most ridiculous candidate. Here's my current choice:
This is Devil Dinosaur. A favorite of mine when I was a boy from the awesomely madcap mind of Jack "The King" Kirby. Obviously they are both red and Devil is prone to transdimensional exploits so he's a prime suspect. Now here's the challenge: Tell me who Rulk is. You have to show your work with some sort of reasoning - the more ridiculous the better, the candidate doesn't even need to be a Marvel character, and the most entertaining to me will be declared winner for all the interwebs to see on this very blog. Get your thinkin' caps on and post your answer in the comments!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
COACH'S TOP 10 OF 2009!
10. Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
I like Hellboy, I like giant pig monsters, I like Celtic legends, and I like characters that shout "Boom!" when they knock the snot out of something with their giant stone whammer hand.
9. The Destroyer
Robert Kirkman is a great writer and the artwork by Cory Walker was more than sufficient. This was an ultra-violent retrofit of a Timely Comics character from the Golden Age. There's some great black comedy here as The Destroyer works out new and creative ways to destroy (go figure) villains in each issue. Get the trade and read the whole thing at once.
8. Witchfinder: In the Service of the Angels
Another choice from the Dark Horse imprint. This tale of Victorian supernatural investigator Edward Grey started out slow but by the end I was eagerly looking forward to each issue. More monsters and protoplasmic fun for all.
7. Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds
Ah, George Perez. This was one of the last if not the last Final Crisis story to be finished up from DC but boy was it ever worth it. I believe Perez draws the best 2 page spreads in the business. Some of the battle scenes in this series as well as the creative panel-to-panel continuity continues to show that even though Perez is getting older and a little slower, he's still getting better. I missed this one in the local comic shop's hardcover blowout but I'll pay full price for it simply to read it all in one volume. Great story to introduce someone to the DC universe as Perez packs hundreds of characters in there. The image is shown slightly hugified because this is just a one-sheet ad for the series and so you can see it. It all looks like this and better. Insane!
6. Grimjack: The Manx Cat
We're going back to the 80's on this one. Tim Truman's dimension hopping, semi-immortal, reincarnated anti-hero has long been a favorite of mine since First Comics (long gone by now) started producing the series and it's great to see that Truman still has a place in heart for the scarred old fella. The story combines a touch of Moorcock, swords, science fiction, and a guy named Saint John of the Knives. Are those that know me well at all surprised?
Wolverine: Old Man Logan
I've ranted about how good this story was in previous posts but the double-sized conclusion really made this one worth the long wait in between the final two issues. Mix Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, an apocalyptically shattered Marvel Universe, an infestation of gamma-irradiated inbred rednecks, and a reluctant human/mustelid/Canadian hybrid with Steve Mcniven and Mark Millar having a ball and you've got a real winner. Some of Mcniven's best work to date and the fate of the Red Skull really made my day.
4. Hulk
This one snuck up on me. When Jeph Loeb started on this one I got the feeling that he was kind of flailing in the dark trying to find his footing on the writing. Was it a serious restructuring of the Hulkiverse following World War Hulk (aka Conclusion of the Energy Splashes from hell) or was it a comedy book where Rulk (aka Red Hulk) punches out Uatu the Watcher and gets away with it (ridiculous). However, this book has grown on me throughout the year and every time I tried to drop it, Loeb would improve something that hooked me back in. I have to say that its become one of my looked forward to reads if only for the fact that I might see some more clone M.O.D.O.K.s getting their giant brains harvested while Rick Jones tries not to barf.
Astro City: The Dark Age
This book is far too overlooked by most people which is just fine by me. It makes me feel "leet." For my money the most original and consistently well-written non-Marvel/DC super hero book around. It has its own self-contained, separate universe and it is obviously a labor of love for Kurt Busiek, Brent E. Anderson, and Alex Ross(!). All of the character designs are by Ross and they have a way of just dropping new characters into the story so cleanly that it's a wonder that other companies with lots more people and street cred can't do it as well. I pick up the separate issues as they come out and the trades/hardcovers when they are produced as well as the one or two-issue specials they do in-between the major story arcs. You never know what era you might be seeing next in Astro City, but no matter where it is, you're sure to be get your four bucks worth of fun (and a real letters page too).
2. Green Lantern Corps/Blackest Night/Green Lantern
Surprise! It wasn't number one. For all the ranting about this series I've been doing over the last year or so, I'm sure you all thought that this would be my top pick and if it wasn't for one thing they did in the marketing and it being a super-giant crossover maxi-series (I've really had just about enough of 'em) you would be right. For my money this is the best book and the best big crossover DC has ever done since Crisis on Infinite Earths. All of the stories in the little books tie into the main books and you have the option of just reading Blackest Night, Blackest Night and the two Green Lantern titles, or the whole spectrum (Hah! A light joke. Ha-Ha! Another!) of one shots and mini series and you can still follow what's going on. The thing that knocked this down for me was that DC made the fatal error of revealing the big baddie for the series on the cover of a Diamond Comics Previews which I didn't read but which was sitting on a shelf at my local shop in plain view. A real misstep after keeping the secret under wraps for so long only to reveal it 2 months early (and no I won't spoil it even now). Even so, this book/series is tops and I really can't wait to see how it is all resolved with Geoff Johns at the helm.
And so we're here, my number one pick of 2009. I have to say that this is totally based on my month to month satisfaction with the entertainment my comics dollar is providing. This book has truly kept me looking forward to the next issue for the last twelve months and has taken what could have been a poorly handled gimmick book and has turned it into a monthly must-read. So, my top book for 2009 is:
1. Dark Avengers
At first the concept was ripe with potential for lame. Take a bunch of villains and messed up heroes in the aftermath of Marvel's Civil War/Secret Invasion and have them replace the Avengers who were on the lam from now top lawman Norman (Green Goblin for life) Osborn. However, veteran draftsman Mike Deodato and wunderkind scribe Brian Michael Bendis have managed to return the old school Marvel month to month excitement I felt as a kid in this book in a way I haven't seen in a long time. With tons of guest stars, straight up good times action and ridiculous, world-shattering threats, they continue to keep my running to the comic shop each month to see what happens next. I hear this book is ending soon and perhaps that's a good thing for it to go away at the top of its game in Bill Wattersonesque fashion. Get it, read it, and see what makes Marvel Comics great again.
That's it! My tops for the year 2009. Agree or disagree in the comments and write your own list if you don't like mine. There you go Fatty, how's that for a post? Continue to entertain me with your godless scientific ramblings and write something about comics yourself some time. And Ack x3, I probably would have sat on this until 2011, but the insult of Lord Chunkula telling me to get to work was too much to bear.