Comic Core

Spider-man 3 or Sandman can fly?? WTF??

2007-05-16T10:03:00.000-03:00

8/10

I saw Spider-man 3 last week and delayed posting about it so that it had time to sink in and so I had enough time for initial reactions to wear off. That being said, I did enjoy it and didn't find that it suffered from "Multiple Villain Syndrome" as much as I thought it would. Expect spoilers and some "quick hits" as to what was good and bad.

However, the movie did lack where it came to developing the villains in detail like the previous 2 movies did. In the first one there was a nice gradual buildup to the Goblin reveal and a similar scenario with Dr. Octopus in the second. Here though, because there are 3 villains, screen time is precious and each villain could have been fleshed out a bit more. The back stories that they did show did get the job done though and the audience can easily understand their motivations. The second Green Goblin, Harry didn't need much to get his story out there as it has been building for 2 movies. The nagging thing about the Sandman is that he didn't really need to team up with Venom as he had no real reason to want Spidey dead. It would have made more sense for his character to just run and hide.

Emo Spidey = annoying
Song and dance numbers = ditto

The special effects in the film were top notch and the Sandman scenes were particularly exciting (though why he can fly as a sandstorm is beyond me). The fight at the end where we have a good old fashioned comic-book team-up was really neat and I was pleased to see the redemption of Harry seen in the comics come through on the big screen.

The fight with Venom was great and it was especially rewarding to see Peter use his brain to defeat him instead of sheer brawn.

Basically, if you liked the first two, you'll probably like this one as well.

New Comic Book Day 2007

2007-05-07T08:46:00.000-03:00

Man, did Elfsar comics ever spoil me on Free Comic Book Day (FCBD). For those that need a refresher, Elfsar was a wonderful little comic shop in the heart of Downtown Vancouver that I used to get my comics from. They made a huge deal about FCBD. They would have a barbeque, guest signings, prizes, a large selection of free comics and above all, excellent sales such as the buy-2-get-1-free that I took liberal advantage of during the previous 2 FCBDs here and here. As well, the proprietor Ethan, puts a big push on it for kids because he figures so long as you can get kids reading something, it's a good thing

That being said, I can never pass up a chance for free swag, so I ventured to Lightning Bolt comics to snag the goods. Though it was fine, I was somewhat disappointed with the selection as not all the comics sent out for FCBD were sitting on the table. If you go here you can see a list of the titles available and the ones at Lightning Bolt were mainly the Gold Sponsor Titles with a smattering of the Silver. I picked up a few items but nothing was fantastic. Here's a list of what I got:

Bongo's Free for All 2007 (the best one I read thus far)
Umbrella Academy Zero Killer Pantheon City 2007
Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st Century 2007
The Lone Ranger / New Battlestar Galactica Flip Book 2007
Transformers the Movie Prequel # 1 2007 (picked this up for Mark as I have 0 interest in Transformer comics)
Tokyopop Choose Your Weapon 2007
Amazing Spider-Man Swing Shift 2007 (this was actually not too bad either)
Owly & Korgi 2007 (very cute book)

I was very disappointed that they didn't have Comics Festival! - 2007 FCBD Edition as it supposedly had a Scott Pilgrim strip in it. No sales or fanfare either unfortunately. Maybe next year I can schedule a trip to Vancouver...

An Update

2007-04-12T23:22:00.000-03:00

Hi folks,

Sorry about the lack of updates. However, I am working on a Graphic N review and will hopefully start posting about some downloaded (Sshhh!) comics. As well, I have a growing interest in financial planning and increasing my personal wealth. My ideas, thoughts, goals, and actions about such matters can be found (soon) at my new blog. This will be a nice way to track the increase of my "financial intelligence" and any progress I make with acquiring more moolah. Or it will mean I have two blogs that never get updated.

Ghost Rider: A Pleasant Surprise

2007-02-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

8/10

So as you might guess from the title of this post, I enjoyed the movie Ghost Rider starring none other than Nic Cage. Believe you me, no one is more shocked than I.

Maybe it was unfamiliarity with the source material that made me like what a die-hard Ghost Rider fan might have hated, or perhaps it was the fact that I had low expectations to begin with, but GR was a fun super-hero movie that didn't try to take itself too seriously. I mean come on, it's a friggen biker dude on fire for God's sake!

So short thought review time: the movie told the origin of the Ghost Rider legend as well as provided a solid backstory for our hero Johnny Blaze. The addition of the romantic interest fueled Johnny's fire (so to speak) and the elemental villains gave a good show, though they were snuffed out a bit too quickly in my opinion. The final fight with the main villain Blackheart was well done and the way in which Johnny thought to extinguish him was rather clever.

The special effects in the film were scorching for the most part, as they should be when trying to convincingly convey a person with a flaming skull for a head. The only slip was some of the villain shots which left me a little cold. I guess the CGI folks decided to burn most of the money on the Ghost Rider effects and it definately shows as all his scenes looked incredible (especially driving up and off the building - hot momma!).

So from this movie we have learned a few things: Nicolas Cage CAN pull off playing a super-hero (thank god they didn't choose him for Superman though), Eva Mendes HATES her top three buttons, and guys with flaming heads that ride flaming transportation (bikes and horses) kick major ass. And it was better than the Hulk movie, so that's at least worth something.

A Great Way to End 2006

2006-12-31T23:23:00.000-04:00

I write this after polishing off a bottle of 2005 Pieroth Riesling in celebration of the turning of the calendar. I was checking my gmail account and off to the side I noticed the names of the people I sent e-mails to. Surprisingly, there were different colored icons next to some of the names (I realized later that this was for people that had gmail accounts). The one next to Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog fame was highlighted orange. I clicked on it and a chat window opened up. The face-kick master was online! I then sent a message as my inhibitions were a tad loosened from the aforementioned wine. Here is the chat in it's (almost) entirety (it has been edited for content and may not be suitable for all viewers.

me: what are you up to Mr. ISB?

Chris: Writing an article for Cracked.
(Which is code for watching a movie and making up jokes about it)

me: Wow! I can't believe I'm in a live chat with Chris Sims

Chris: Live and in person.

me: That's pretty fucking awesome
considering you likely don't know who I am

Chris: Don't let it go to your head, kid.
(This is where, in a movie, I'd put on aviator shades and spit an entire cigarette out or something)

me: and I just finished a bottle of wine

Chris: Yeah, I had to look it up real quick, I'll admit.
I haven't had a single drink yet tonight.
Keyword: YET.

me: so HAppy New Year
what time is is where you are?

Chris: 9:42

me: 10:42 here
thats something that i dont recall being made explicit on the ISB. where does it originate from?

Chris: It says it right in the sidebar.. Oh, no wait, I took that out.
It's there if you go to my Blogger profile, though. I'm from South Carolina.

me: do you have a tracking thing for the blog that shows where hits are coming from?

Chris: Like where as in what webpage, or where as in where on the planet?
Because the answer's yes to both, but I only pay attention to the former.

me: planet

Chris: Yeah, it's got a little map feature on it.

me: so if you ever DO look at the map, the daily hit from Prince Edward Island in Canada is from me

Chris: You're from Canada?!
GET BACK, VAMPIRE!
Or possibly werewolf!

me: well I don't think i can defend the vampire claim, as Canada does leech one hell of a lot of shit from the states
but werewolves are only in northern alberta, jeez

Chris: Oh, right.
And as we all know, Newfoundland is the province of the Newfie, or EL CHUPACABRA.

me: a rare and elusive prey, they are. they can be captured with vassive amounts of alcohol and cod fish

Chris: It's a mysterious land in which you dwell.

Chris: I'm just funning about the vampire part.
I used to date a Canadian girl. It... ended poorly.

me: you just weren't into poutine and very low budget TV and movies eh?

Chris: She stole my Swamp Thing trades!
And no, poutine is utterly vile.
Gravy and french fries were never meant to lie in a foul union.

me: well we only get 10 shipments of comics for each province so her reaction was typical.
but my guess is she took them because you didn't like poutine

Chris: Well that's to be expected. $2.99 US is what, eighty, ninety CAD and a goat?

me: well, quite frankly yes, but you can leave off the goat and knock off 20% if you include your first born child

Chris: 1 Canadian Child = Goat + 40 CAD.
Got it.

me: we don't want to over populate

Chris: What?!
But..
That means..
DEAR GOD!
POUTINE IS PEOPLE!
PEEEEEEOPLLLLLLE!

me: no, it's just americans that go into the wrong hockey rink

me: anyways, i'll let you get back to your movie (which one is it?). It was cool talking with you and keep up the good work on the ISB

Chris: Right now?
Zoolander.

me: good lord

Chris: But I'm also writing about Night at the Museum and Starsky & Hutch.
Zoolander, sir, is a CLASSIC of modern cinema.

me: only if you're high while watching (or so I hear)

Chris: It's profoundly underrated.
Truly, it's THE PRODUCERS for our times.

me: well have a Happy New Year Chris. I look forward to the mind-blowing-awesomeness you have in store for 2007

Chris: Thanks!
Happy New Year to you too.
Go drink another bottle of wine and shout loudly about Etrigan the Demon.
That is the true way of the ISB.

me: should I shout in rhyme?
I don't do that all the time

Chris: Of course you should. If you don't, it's no good.
Sent at 11:11 PM on Sunday

me: well then, perhaps I will. The wine though, will have to chill

Chris: You should drink 'til you're purple.
And then you could..
...
Shit.

me: haha
have a good one Chris

Chris: Happy New Year!

me: my resolution is to give people more kicks to the face

Chris: That's a good one

There you have it. My chat with Chris Sims, a great way to close out 2006. Happy New Year!

Another Reason why Civil War is Stupid

2006-12-20T10:07:00.000-04:00

For those not in the know, Civil War is Marvel's current "BIG EVENT" where tons of stuff happens but is ultimately unsatisfying. The premise is that after a large scale tragedy as a result of Super-human activity, the Gov'ment wants to introduce a policy (The Superhuman Registration Act) whereby anyone with super powers has to register as a super-human and receive training if they want to fight bad guys. If you don't register you go to jail. And not just any jail either. A secret jail in another dimension where you will be put without trial that was designed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four and built by Iron Man. Waitasec. Aren't Iron Man and Reed Richards good guys? Well that's a whole other kettle of fish.

I have not bought an issue of Civil War. Why? After the mess that was Infinite Crisis I decided not to be sucked in by company wide crossover events. The info I've learned about the event has come from the net as EVERYONE is talking about it. Either how good it is or how god-awful it is. In that respect, the event can be seen as successful: it has people talking about comics enthusiastically. It likely hasn't brought many non-comic fans into the medium, but at least it's generating some excitement within the industry, however short lived that excitement may be.

On to the point. In Civil War #2, this happened:

That's right folks, Spider-man revealed his secret identity to the world. Big news right? Cool shite right? Well, no quite frankly. Why? Well you can make arguments about how it's pretty irresponsible to do that because it's basically painting a target on you and your family. Especially coming from the super-hero who's whole shtick is being responsible. He must have had a brain fart or something because just two years prior (our time) we have the following panels during Brian Micheal Bendis's run on Daredevil where Matt Murdock was outed as Daredevil in the press. The ~55 issues Bendis worked on dealt with the ramifications of a super-hero losing his secret identiy. Spider-man made a guest appearance in a few issues. Here we go (click on images for large view):

and let's not forget

So there you have it. Spider-man basically saying he would never in a million years reveal his secret identity because he knows exactly what would happen if he did. That is why Civil War is stupid; not only did Peter Parker reveal his identiy, he did it willingly, which in my books is a big no-no.

And yes this post would have been more appropriate when Civil War #2 first came out, but I only got around to reading the Daredevil trades last week. Sue me. Or better yet, lock me in a prision that exists in another dimension.

Online Comics - piracy at its finest

2006-12-13T23:01:00.000-04:00

I haven't really been one to download much media off the internet. Sure I have some mp3s but I'm not really a music guy. I have some TV shows that aren't available elsewhere, but I usually go for boxed set DVDs. Recently I have downloaded some comics, but I'm more of a staple-and-paper type reader. That being said, I stumbled onto a torrent site (the Pirate Bay) where a user named Devourer combines many scanned comics into one torrent so that you can download all the new comics that come out every week. I believe he collects individual torrents from many other users (as scanning 70+ comics in a day would be a lot of work) to provide this lump sum of issues.

So far I've download things that are expensive that I was thinking of buying (Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall and Pride of Baghdad) and some issues from new series that I didn't want to spend money on before I knew if I liked it or not (Pirates of Coney Island, the Escapists, and Dr. Strange: the Oath).

I think this use of torrents is worthwhile and justifiable. I prefer my comics as real, physical objects as opposed to images on a screen so I think the downloading is an excellent way to see if expensive items are worth paying for and whether or not a mini-series is worth getting in the trade. As well, it's a nice way for me to sample things I wouldn't get normally (like Pirates of Coney Island, which was pretty good) at no cost. Image Comics is a good example of a company trying to do this by offering many first issues of series as online freebies.

Of course there will be nay-sayers shouting that downloading comics is hurting the industry. That you're taking money away from small comic shops that are struggling as it is. Well I have a question for those people: do you enjoy spending money on things you don't enjoy? Do you regularly go into a CD shop and pick out random stuff because the cover looks cool? Of course not. You buy things that you like or have a good idea that you will like based on previous experience.

Even if you buy that CD, most of it is likely crap and you only like 2-3 songs. That's why I don't buy CDs. However, if you can sample CDs for free to filter out that crap then you ensure that you will have a quality listening experience. The same is true with comics. 90% of the comics out there (and there are a lot of comics out each month) are garbage. There has to be a filter there for the consumer to know what they will like. Thus downloadable comics. Items that would have passed through my real-world, in-store filter can now be trapped and viewed from the comfort of my faux-leather desk chair.

To sum up: I now download comics. If I like it, I will buy it. If it was something that I wouldn't normally have bought to try out, then an angel gets its wings.

Comics: diversification of the medium and why Batman knows everything

2006-12-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

Dan's comments on the previous post fueled a long-winded response from me. While I was writing it, I thought it better to post it as a new entry as opposed to being buried in the comments section.

Here were Dan's remarks:

"Maybe comics should make the transition to the internet, where print is actually a secondary product. Although there would obviously be a difference between Ultimate Spiderman and PvP as far presentation and etc. is concerned, I think it's still do-able. The medium is the message, peoples."

followed by

"Keep in mind that other people, the people the comic industry wants to attract to their wares, may not share your particular tastes or opinions regarding comics and affiliated paraphernalia. Creators have to walk a high wire, to attract new fans and not alienate the hard core following (supposing they have one). Look at the newer Star Wars movies as a classic mis-step in the effort to grow the fanbase.

And just to get it out there, I have the following complaint against comics, which may be a source of problems to the attraction of a new fanbase: campiness. My god I hate campiness! It isn't cool if everyone and their dog has a superpower, or that batman always has the answer. I'm probably out of touch with today's comics, but do you remember all the craze around Superman's death? Marketing aside, I think that the thought that a main character could actually die, albeit temporarily, was such a strike against campiness that everyone wanted to see if other comics had changed as well. Boom! All of these new people reading comics.

Your thoughts?"

Don't mind if I do.

The thing about online comics I mentioned stems from current views I've seen on the subject. However, this is mainly from people who read comics already so they are used to the format it is in now. I don't know if a pole of non-comics readers (all other things being equal) would reveal
the preference for online comics or not. It would be an interesting study and the marketing wizards at Marvel and DC should look at it.

That being said, allow me to elaborate. In my opinion the problem with online comics, as they are now, is as follows: They are difficult to read! The comics that Image and Marvel offer online are presented in the same dimensions as a real physical comic. What's annoying is when you have to zoom in to read the thing then scroll down to read the rest (granted a larger moniter might help things). That extra activity, I think, takes away from the reading experience the same way commercials take you out of the story when watching television. It's hard to be immersed in a story when you are constantly scrolling around and waiting for the images to load, etc... Does that mean you can't enjoy an online comic? No. It just means the reading experience could be better.

Can creators/publishers find a better way to present the material online? Yes, but that means the artists and writers basically have to learn a new way of storytelling. The writer has to adapt his/her pacing to perhaps smaller online pages and the artist has to break the mold when it comes to page layouts in order to effectively tell the story. Is that a big deal? Maybe not for consumers, but for those whose livlihoods depend on this artform the change might be a scary thing.

Some creators have already done this of course. I don't read many online comics though I know Penny Arcade and PvP are pretty popular. These are short comic strips similar to those you find in a newspaper. For some people these strips offer a few minutes of enjoyment each day and there's nothing wrong with that at all. However what if you want a more in depth story and reading experience? I don't like the idea of clicking constantly through the archive reading strip after strip of (though often funny) stories that don't particularly link together as a cohesive unit.

Is there a happy medium between the regular 32 page paper comics and the online interweb? Likely but the industry is a long way from finding it. This comes into the realm of the publishers unwillingness to take short term losses for future gains. The can try to do online stuff, but that costs money and time with no guarantee of return. They have to get out of that mentality.

My idea is that you have the same product in multiple formats. Print your comics to tailor to the hardcore fanbase, but also offer the same product online in a better package - minimize the things that can take you out of the reading experience. Less clicking = better in my opinion.

Dan's other point about campiness has also sparked a response. I still don't quite understand the wiki definition of it but I'll discuss it a bit.

Is it cool that everyone and their dog has a super-power? Not really but it does show diversity in what is basically a new race/species. The "world with very few super-powered beings" idea has been done many times, sometimes done well (The Authority) and others not so much (Supreme Power). And it is a good idea to show what a "real-world" would be like with super beings in it. The flip side of the coin is the Marvel and DC universes where there are lots of super people running around. Does that take something away from a good story? I don't think so. But if you have a problem with too many people being able to walk through walls or shoot laser beams out of your head then super-hero comics likely aren't for you anyways.

Is it bad that Batman always has the answer? No. Why? Because he is the goddamn Batman, that's why.

But seriously, Batman is a character who is supposed to be the greatest detective in the world. If there's something he can't figure out, then it makes him look stupid and it undermines the character. Have there been problems that are tough? Hell yes. The recent trade paperback, Batman: Crime City, is a good example. It would be the same as if someone beat the Flash in a race. Flash is supposed to be the fastest man alive and if someone beats him, then it undermines the character. Finally, HE'S FUCKING BATMAN for christsakes. Another example of Batman's awesomeness can be found here.

In closing let's talk about the Superman death thing. This was a big deal and sparked a media event the likes of which the comics industry had never seen. However, how many of those people that bought Superman #75 actually stayed with comics? If current sales are an indicator: not many. Now "deaths" of heroes are commonplace and are basically used as a gimmic and a storytelling copout.

That being said, comics have been trying to get away from the campiness and "comics are for kids" personna. More mature themes can be found, not only in creator owned independant publications, but from the main companies as well. A few years ago a series came out called Identity Crisis that had the rape of a main character's wife as a plot point. Though you'd be hardpressed to find a positive review about the 7 issue mini-series on the net (mainly citing the use of the rape as a plot point, rather than dealing with the ramifications of rape as a concern), the fact is comic book writers are trying to put shades of grey into their work rather than the black and white of good vs. bad and that's at least something.

Sins of the Past...Hope for the Future

2006-11-29T12:32:00.000-04:00

Since my comics are coming in monthly installments now, I find I'm often in search around the house for something to read. Thus I tapped into my Wizard back issues. I know, I know, it's Wizard, but that's not the "sin" I refer to in the title of this post.

In my search through the gigantic stack of Wizards (I've been getting it since issue #9 and they are currently at 183), I decided to start at the beginning with #9. What a difference in the style of the magazine compared to now as well as the difference in what was going on in the industry! There were actual in-depth articles with creators and comic coverage wasn't exclusive to Marvel and DC. However the differences, or more so, the change in Wizard magazine over the years will be reserved for a future series of posts.

The point? I came across an editorial letter written by Patrick Daniel O'Neill, a scan of which is shown below on the left (click for larger image) along with a follow-up from issue #11 (on the right).

Now you have to remember, this is 1992, 14 frigging years ago! The problem that the comic book industry had then is still very much present today: that of an aging and declining fanbase. In fact I'd hazard to say it's worse today then now because when I was a kid, at least you could get comics at the grocery store; they were more accesible. Today? The only comics you'll see at Sobey's or Shoppers Drug Mart are in the newspapers and even those are on the way out.

It's pretty irresponsible of the main comic makers to keep pandering to the same fanbase with no real initiative to grow that fanbase. I mean honestly, who are the trade paperbacks with DVD-like extras or the Absolute Editions of everything for, except for those people who already had the single issues anyways? You think the average consumer will drop $100 for a comic? I don't. You think a kid has enough money to follow the main Marvel universe these days where you have to get like 12 different comics to understand what's going on in Spider-man? I don't.

A lot of this stuff has been said before and obviously the problem has been long-lasting. It just goes to show the laziness of publishers and the lack of creativity in getting their product out into the mainstream. Not to mention the unwillingness to take short-term losses for future gains. Business is risk - deal with it.

That being said, it's nice to see a new initiative from DC where they have budgeted $250,000 to market a new line of comics and original graphic novels to teenage girls. This is the only real push I can remember to grow a new fanbase for comics, though there have been some failures in the past (as mentioned in the 1992 articles). This is old news by now, but the new line is called Minx and will consist of slightly larger than digest sized graphic novels which will run close to 200 pages and retail for $10 or less.

So good for DC. Why are they doing it? You can debate all you want, and people have since the news was announced on message boards and on blogs, but obviously they are doing it to make more money. Is that a bad thing? Of course not. They are a business and they have finally realized that they aren't taking advantage of the demand for stories that interest young females (as evident by the popularity of Manga titles - lots of story in a cheap, portable format). They have corrected that situation and I wish them well. People are complaining that there aren't enough female creators on the books, that DC is a sexist corporation and by publishing comics designed for girls they look like a greedy corporation not interested in the medium/artform of comics. Get a grip. They are making a product to make money and if people like the product then they will. Should we fault them for that? No. Do female creators necessarily equal better comics for girls? I doubt it. The editorial staff in charge of this new initiative just picked the talent they thought was best. Did they do it based on the writer or artist's gender? I doubt it. It's about finding the right person for the job - same as in every profession (but that's a whole other issue altogether).

In my books, anything that can make comics more accesible to people (the GNs will be sold in bookstores) and make reading comics more socially acceptable is definately a good thing. It's about time a comapny did something about it too.

Confessions of a Comic Book Junkie

2006-10-31T13:30:00.000-04:00

So it's been 2 months and change since my last post. The responsibilities of a "real job" in the "real world" take up a surprisingly large amount of time and hence, my blogging has suffered for it. Anyways, I've found some free time and here we go, not with a graphic novel review, but with something I've been thinking about since way before Greg discussed it, here (and better than I could do it too): Comicoholicism (my word not his). Yes, I, John Gallant, am a comicoholic and this is my story.

My addiction (or "hobby" as I called it in those days) began at the tender age of 7 in 1989 with the purchase of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #4 published by Archie Comics. You see, I was an avid fan of the cartoon show, which at that time had been running for about 2 years. My enthusiasm for the green foursome was unrivaled (save for perhaps Neil Moore) and I wanted anything to do with the TMNT. Thus the destructive cycle began.

This comic, this 32 page of 4 color ink wonder, was friggin' awesome! Thus you can imagine that as soon as I got the chance, I was right back at that comic rack in Shoppers Drug Mart looking for more printed adventures of my favourite ninja quartet. Well I didn't find any (how was a naive 7 year old expected to know about monthly schedules?) but what I did find made me almost as happy. In addition to watching cartoons, I also had many action figures (as any growing lad should have in my opinion) so much to my surprise, not only were they making comics about the TV shows I watched, they were making comics about the toys I played with! Most notably Batman and Superman. Hence my first exposure to the superhero comic genre.

Things went that way for a while as I discovered new super heroes at the comic stands: Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, more Superman titles, more Batman titles. It wasn't just the super heroes either; they were still making comics based on my cartoons: Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and the Turtles were still going strong. This is the "non-satiety" stage of my comics addiction. I was so enamoured with the characters on TV and through action figures, that I constantly needed more material about those characters and was forced to use the medium of comics to satisfy the craving.

Then in 1991-92 Wizard Magazine happened. The first issue I got was #9 with a sweet cover of Venom on it. This blew my mind. I was reading comics, but now I could read about other people reading comics and what new comics were coming out. And waitasec...my comics ARE WORTH MONEY??? Yes it was with Wizard that I discovered the price guide and started to think of the value my so-called-hobby had. Herein lies the trap. Comic fans are obsessed about their comics and despite the fact they might have a collection worth thousands of dollars, it would kill them to part with any of it. So in fact, their collection is worth nothing. But this didn't concern me; I was just content to know that the stuff I was buying every week (and it was every week at this point) could actually be worth money.

Wizard was my gateway to a comic book world I never knew existed. There were how-to-draw articles, interviews with the people that were creating the comics I read, and all done with a sense of humour that really appealed to an impressionable 9 year old. Thus my spending increased as Wizard was recommending comics left and right. Some of which that I'd never even heard of or saw at the comic stands: Bone, Cerebus, and Sandman to name a few.

Around this time is also when Image comics started up and I was regularly getting Spawn, WildC.A.T.S and the rest because I thought they were kewl. I like to think of this stage of my comics addiction as the Sheep stage as I was blindly following what Wizard said was good and not really putting too much stock into the story development of the comics.

Also around this time, I discovered The Comic Hunter (CH) in Charlottetown. This was a store that's sole focus was on selling comics and comic related paraphernalia. I just about died. This was just about the greatest thing that could ever happen. I spent literally hours in that place looking through everything and buying quite a bit. Not only could I go to one place and find anything I wanted to buy, but they had (and still do) a rewards program that gave me $10 bucks off for every $100 that I spent. Wicked! Free comics! You can imagine though that at this point in my life I didn't have a large income so I would save up for those rare days when we'd make the 45 minute journey to the "big city."

In addition to the "sheep" stage, this is where I enter the "collector" stage. You see, Wizard was telling me that my comics were worth money, but they were only worth money if they were in good condition. Yikes! I better take care of those beauties. So on one of many trips to the CH, I bought my first set of comic book supplies: bags and boards which the comics go into and boxes which the newly bagged and boarded comics go into, sometimes never to be read again - gotta keep them in near mint condition don't you know. Thus floor space in my small bedroom diminished as the number of clean, white, and heavy boxes increased. Both room and money for comic boxes were soon in short supply, so I began a frequent cycle of removing old comics from their bags to make room for newer ones, shipping the old ones to liquor boxes underneath the stairs. In this way, I suppose, the addict in me overtook the collector mentality as anyone who’s anyone knows, a basement is likely the best place to store comics if you are looking to sell damp, discoloured bits of paper several years from now.

Fast forward to 2004. At this point I am planning to move to Vancouver, British Columbia with (my then girlfriend now fiancé Pam) to pursue a Masters degree in Astronomy. To make extra money for the trip and for living expenses, I decide to sell a large chunk of my comic collection (which at this time is upwards of 4000-5000 comics – I kept track of the actual number in the late 90s but gave that up). Luckily I have a friend, Mark Richardson, who wanted to get into comics for the investment side of it. Thus I unloaded 2000 comics to him for the reasonable price of $1000. This was material that I didn’t follow very much: the Batman, Superman, X-men, and main Spider-man titles as well as some of the stuff I had gotten as a kid: TMNT, Chip N’ Dale, etc… I sort of drifted away from the main super hero titles, preferring more story based comics rather than action, but would still purchase the crossover events like JLA/AVENGERS and Marvel vs. DC, that sort of thing.

So off I was to Vancouver and one of the first things I did was to scout out the local comic shops. Conveniently, The Comic Shop was less than two blocks from our apartment so that was the shop of choice for several months. However, I soon discovered another shop in Yaletown: Elfsar comics. Elfsar made a good first impression on me as they have all their stock well organized and have an excellent computer system to keep track of everything. To top it off, people who had accounts with Elfsar who bought more than 5 titles a month would save 20% on their order AND get free bags and boards. I was sold and made the switch.

It was at Elfsar were I realized some symptoms of my addiction. I would go faithfully every Wednesday for New Comic Day (an important day worthy of capitalization) to pick up my order which consisted of on average 4-5 titles. Symptom the first: On the rare occasion that I couldn’t get to Elfsar until Thursday, or God forbid, The Weekend, I would get extremely cranky. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Not having new comics annoyed me. Symptom the second: On the rare occasion that the shipping schedule was such that only one or two of my monthly titles came out that week, I would not only get extremely cranky, but would actively stay in the store for upwards of an hour looking for stuff I could convince myself to buy. I knew right then I was a full blown comicaholic. Here I was, not content with the stuff that I enjoy every month, but willing to buy something I probably wouldn’t enjoy just for the sake of having some comics to read. I needed help.

I didn’t join a support group. I didn’t seek advice from the multitudes of twenty-something OCD (obsessive comics disorder) afflicted fanbase. I didn’t even check to see if Dr. Phil had some advice on the subject. All I did was move across the country.

You see after my Masters degree wrapped up, Pam and I headed back to good ole’ Prince Edward Island. As it happens Elfsar has a great mail order program so I decided to stick with them rather than going to one (of two) local shops on the island. In this way, I am no longer trapped in the weekly buying cycle. My comics arrive nicely packaged once a month and I no longer feel the burning need to have comics all the time. I’ve also eliminated some chaff from my monthly pull list, both due to cost considerations (it doesn’t seem like much spending $20-$30 a week but when you get hit with a $140 comic bill once a month it kind of wakes you up) and the fact that I find myself less interested in some of the comics I was getting. Yes gone are the Teen Titans, 52, and the Ultimate titles. No more will I be a slave to the new Justice League of America, The Boys, or Justice. I was mainly getting them for the sake of getting them hoping they’d either, get better or be more fulfilling (see next topic).

Another great thing I’m planning to due to wean myself away from the single issues is to wait for trade paperbacks. I figure there’s not much sense in getting the single issues unless you are in it for the investment. I’m not. I’d rather just sit down and read a good story rather that worrying about what the thing is worth. Thus my foray into Amazon and Chapters online ordering. This is a great way to save a few dollars (wait until you get more than $35 to get free shipping) and get a more satisfying read rather than wait for the story to play out over 6 months.

Only time will tell if my online ordering will run as rampant as my “real world” purchasing has been in the past, but with a fiancé and other responsibilities on the horizon, $ towards comics might not be in the cards. My name is John Gallant and I’m still a comicaholic. But I’m getting better.

Do not open until...

2006-08-20T00:00:00.000-03:00

...I say so Dammit!

As I mentioned, I will be moving from British Columbia back to Prince Edward Island to start living in the "real world" (whatever that is). I will still be purchasing many of my comics from Elfsar here in Vancouver through their very convenient mail-order program. Due to logistics, the comics will only be sent once a month, thus henceforth "New Comic Day" will change to "New Comic Month" with posts appearing (obviously) every month when new product arrives.

To not leave my faithful readers (all 2 of them) without content, I will endeavor to give reviews on original graphic novels and trade paperbacks (which I will be purchasing through Amazon) periodically throughout the month. As well, if I happen to pull something out of the collection that seems interesting enough to chat about, I might do so, but I'm not making any promises.

Check back during the third week in September for new content! (hopefully)

New Comic Day August 16

2006-08-17T01:40:00.000-03:00

Once again I get comics very near my birthday (tomorrow) which is always a nice treat. This will be the last update in terms of new comics for a while as I am moving and will only be getting comics about once a month.

Boys #1

I liked Preacher a heckuva lot and when I saw the solicitation for this ("We're going to out-Preacher Preacher), I figured I'd pick it up. The story is basically about a group of government sponsored toughs that take down super heroes if they get out of line. At least that what the story will be about once the standard recruitment phase is overwith. This issue introduces us to Butch who is the leader and seems to have heightened levels of perception. The first recruit joins the team because his girlfriend was very brutally killed as collateral damage from a super hero fight. In short, she was between a wall and a villain of Juggernaught like size as said villain was moving at high speed. It wasn't pretty, though it seemed to be thrown in for the sake of goriness. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I enjoyed it enough to get monthly.

Casanova #3

This was a neat issue that structured around a theme seen in the classic Star Trek: TNG episode where they're stuck in a time loop and only Riker's plan will save them. Data figures out that the occurance of the number three in everyday events is the clue and the say is saved...What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Casanova #3. Here we see the ramifications of Cass's mission from last issue in three different peroids of time: the present (a), 7 days ago (b), and 97 days ago (right after the mission)(c). The pages switch from a to b to c and back for the whole of the issue and it makes for an interesting read. We get the sense that Cass wants to be in control of his own life and to not be such of a bad guy. It's not the best series I've ever read, but it's definately something different and worth the low price point.

Phonogram #1 (of 6)
I didn't order this when it came out in previews, but since then I've read interviews with the creators and saw the sample pages so I decided to pick it up. The central idea with this is that music is magic and people that can use music are phonomancers. It's a cool idea and the book is "hip" (if that's the right term for it), but here's the problem: I don't listen to a lot of music and whatever message the authors are trying to project will likely be lost on me. When I listen to music, I don't pay attention to the lyrics. I don't know what (insert song here) is "about". If I like it, I like it for the sound and that's probably it. I think that if I was a music freak like Jon Ben, the comic would speak to me a bit more. As such, it was a good comic, not super-duper.

However, the main character, David Khol looks a helluva lot like a good friend of mine and thus I present:
Neil Moore as a comic character (albeit somewhat cockier - if that's possible):

Ultimate Fantastic Four #32

This is the end of the zombie FF storyline and the end of Mark Millar and Greg Land's run on the title. Doom in Reed's body does a spell to exorcise the demon from Johnny, but makes a "mistake" and instead of transporting it directly to the N-Zone, it just pops out onto his chest, thus endangering all life on Earth. I think this was intentional on Doom's part because once the demon is out, it looks for the most powerful being to posess next. Instead of it being Thor though, it's Reed in Doom's body. This gives Doom the opportunity to switch back to his body and perform a selfless act to appear heroic. I would have liked to see a longer story of how Reed deals with being in Doom's body. I'm glad that Land is not the artist anymore. Man he stinks.

Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #2

This was a good issue and I liked it better than last week's Ultimate Spider-man annual. It told a fun super hero story without seeming like random events thrown together to try to make a story. It features the Moleman as the villain, who sinks a lab full of brilliant youngsters in order to recreate a sub-terranean utopia. The FF show up an try to stop him and FAIL! The smart kids whip together some cool weapons and take MM down. A cool twist is that the smart kids want to stay underground because they are sick of building weapons for the government. All in all a good issue with lots of action and a great story. Definately something to pick up if you're even a passing fan of the FF.

New Comic Day August 9

2006-08-10T02:00:00.000-03:00

Fables #52

So this looks like the beginning of the end for our friendly fables. In retribution for Bigby burning down the sacred grove, the leaders for the Adversary get together to plot the final invasion and destruction of Fabletown and our mundy world. In addition, we get to see more of the Red Riding Hood subplot and a neat backstory about Rapunzel illustrated by Gene Ha. In addition to that, we get introduced to a few new faces in the Adversary's army: the Nome King from the Oz lands and Hansel, the Inquisitor General for the entire imperium, to name a few. All this adds up to another excellent issue in an excellent series.

Emissary #3

Wow! Two issues of this in two weeks = awesome. We see the Emissary exhibit more powers (teleportaion of himself + healing powers) and tell the mob to stop being so mobbish. He struggles to understand why people are acting the way they do and the female FBI agent (forget her name) does a good job of trying to explain it. Though I can see why Cronin thinks it's boring, I really like the premise of showing how people would react to this type of event for the first time. There's still not a lot of characterization from the supporting cast which is too bad since issue #1 made it look like that would be the main focus of the book. Next issue should be interesting as the Emissary takes on the Pope.

Ultimate Spider-man Annual #2

I can't decide if I liked this annual or not. Even though it's a self contained story and we get to see Spidey interact with some ultimate characters we haven't seen in a while (Daredevil, the Punisher, and Moon Knight) with some decent fight scenese, the story seems to exist solely so that Captain Jean DeWolff can take a cue from her regular Marvel Universe counterpart. I didn't care for the lack of explanation for how both Moon Knight and the Punisher escaped custody either. This wasn't nearly as good as last years annual which focused on Peter starting to go out with Kitty Pryde of the X-men.

Ultimate X-men #73

This is the second part of the "Magical" storyline where the shite hits the fan. Here is is revealed that the Magician has been using his powers to mess with the heads of the rest of the X-men, making them do/say/beleive things they normally wouldn't do/say/beleive. There are some theories that the Magician is an illusionist similar to Proteus from the regular marvel universe which makes sense because he seems uber powerful enough to hold his own against the entire X-men team. The last page reveal of Jean phoenixing up and confronting the Magician was cool so I look forward to next issue. The art isn't the best which is a surprise as this is one of Marvel's big titles so you'd think they'd have some stellar talent on it.

New Comic Day August 3 because comics were a day late...@$$holes

2006-08-04T02:00:00.000-03:00

Wow, there certainly is a buttload of comics this week, which makes up for the fact I had to wait a whole extra day to get them. Without further ado...

Detective Comics #822

I liked the idea behind this issue. Some girl is killed and her father hires the Riddler to figure out the mystery behind her death. Batman gets involved too, propting an unlikely teamup between the dark knight and the riddling rapscallion. I also liked the fun way Batman shows up the Riddler in the end by figuring out who the real killer was. Dini provides good dialouge throughout and seems to really "get" the Riddler.

That being said, it seemed a little too easy and the finale was kind of just thrown at the reader from left field. Maybe that's the drawback with a done-in-one issue - there's just not enough space to provide a bit of (IMO needed) filler. It was still an enjoyable issue despite that reservation.

Ex Machina #22

Yay! A non-colourform cover! The creepy cover aside, this was a good second installment for this latest arc. We get to see some backstory with the Great Machine, some interesting politiking, a guy getting a hummer from a fireman respirator, and a guy get blown in half from a shotgun. This issue also sees a style change from Tony Harris. Here he does an ink wash over his inked pencils. I'm not sure what it means, but it's different. Not sure if it's good, but it's definately different. The only thing I didn't care for was Mitchell referring to homosexuals as "your kind". Seems out of character, but he was agitated at the time, so it might have been a slip of the tongue.

Y: The Last Man #48

This is another one of those issues where it is dedicated to telling the backstory of one of the major players in the series. This time around it's about the Israli commando chick. While interesting, I don't really care too much about her character and it seemed to be a weak issue this late in the series (it's ending at #60). Art by Goran Sudzuka is great though and he captures emotion really well.

Emissary #2

I'm glad I am getting this series because it centres on an idea that I think is pretty interesting: what would it be like if people with powers existed in real life? A notable example is the Authority. And this is another. I think the writer, Jason Rand, nails how lots of people would react: with fear, hostility, violence, etc. Though, from last issue, I thought we'd be seeing more of the reactions from the supporting cast members than we do in this issue and its much more about the city's response. I hope Rand doesn't lose the focus of the book and make the characters cardboard cutouts.

As well the Emissary shows a new power which is damn cool. He can apparently teleport things, without seeing them, to wherever he is. The example in the comic is that to overcome the apparent language barrier between himself and the FBI agents, he teleports a case file out of an unseen officer's hands to his own. He does it again for several books. Very cool.

Invincible #34

Ah, the white wine spritzer of the comic book month. Exceptionally refreshing and leaves you wanting more. Here we see that Mark is very shaken up about killing Angstrom Levy last issue and is very morally torn about whether or not he did the right thing. You don't often see that in comics. Usually it's just a shoot-em-up adventure where killing is the norm. It's nice to see something different.

Before I tell you what bugged me about this issue I need to recap a bit. When Mark (Invincible) was fighting Angstrom, they travelled through different dimensions and once Angstrom was killed, it left Mark stranded. This issue sees the Guardians of the Globe rescue Invincible. However, they are from the future as it took many years to figure out which dimension Mark was trapped in. My problem is thus: it seems like the GotG are from the future of Mark's home reality which is fine, but for some reason Invincible asks what happened to the Invincible that was present in the current dimension that he's trapped in. (1) why would he care and (2) if the GotG are from his home dimension, then how would they even know about an Invincible in that dimension? Maybe it will be clear with a re-read, but with alternate realities and time travel, it seems unlikely.

Agents of Atlas #1 (of 6)

This is a neat idea for a comic though it's been done before I'm sure. A group of heroes who fought decades ago against EEEEVVVIIILLLLL, disbands and then is brought back together under unusal circumstances. In this case, said unusual circumstances being ex-group leader Jimmy Woo leading a band of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on an off-the-books mission that results in death and destruction. Life hanging by a thread, Woo is taken from the S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital by his former comrades. It was a good issue and the dichotomy in the artwork between the past events and current ones proved effective. And hey, who can say no to a comic with an uzi-toting gorilla?

Ultimate Spider-man #98

Part two of the clone saga! This wasn't as great an issue as the last one becuase it basically consists of Peter FREAKING OUT and getting his ass kicked by (obviously) a female version of himself. The cameo by the fantastic four was cool though as well as the revelation that the cloning business has something to do with Oscorp (suprise!) and that Mary Jane has been relocated to the abandoned Oscorp facility. Bagley continues to be great with the art chores as we near the penultimate #100 issue. I can't believe I didn't like his art when he was on Amazing Spider-man in the mid 90s.

Mouse Guard #4 (of 6)

Mice fighting! Cute! This is an excellent series and I can't wait for more. Bravo Mr. Peterson. This issue sees Lieam being found out by members of the Axe who take him to their mysterious leader (foreshadowing!) who isn't revealed, but is referred to as a male and whose voice Lieam seems to recognize. Saxon and Kenzie are found by a legendary member of the guard, Celanawe who agrees to help them stop the Axe, but not until after he and Saxon lay into each other in a pretty brutal fight. Good stuff. Go buy it. Now...right now. Why are you still reading this? Buy Mouse Guard god damn it!

New Comic Day July 26 + Fireworks!

2006-07-26T20:39:00.000-03:00

Thus ends the explosive posting in the effort to get caught up with "New Comic Days". Speaking of explosions, this week was the beginning of Vancouver's Celebration of light, where over the course of 4 nights, 4 countries compete in 30 minute fireworks shows. As a special treat, some photos I took of the event are included with your irregular dose of comic reviews. As another extra-special treat, this week's post will feature "Best line in the comic".

Let's start it up shall we?

Jack of Fables #1

This is a spin-off series of Fables, as you might have guessed from the title, staring Jack. Once again I remind the un-edjumicated that Fables concerns itself with storybook characters that exist in the real world. Jack (of "and the beanstalk" and "jumped over the candlestick" fame) was expelled from Fabletown and left to make his way in the world. He was great in the main series so I was looking forward to this new off-shoot.

That being said, the Jack from the main series was more of a prankster who always seemed to come up short with his schemes, whereas this Jack is a bit of a prick. He's still interesting, but his attitude is distinctly different from when he was in the main series (likely has something to do with his being expelled - natch).

The short of this isssue is that Jack gets kidnapped and relocated to basically Fables jail, though they call it a retirement home. The story is well done and told in first person through Jack. The art seems a bit sloppy at times, but hopefully will improve as the series progresses. It was also nice of Willingham, the writer, to give background information so a reader unfamiliar with the regular Fables series wouldn't feel lost.

Best line in the comic: "Well, guess what, boys and girls? We really exist, we're immortal and we've been secretly living among you for centuries. And yes, we're all better than you." See, what did I tell you? Prick.

Casanova #2

Like many people, Casanova #1 confused the hell out of me. I read it again before reading this issue and it made a wack more sense, so that's good. Another good thing is #2. We get to see Cass in a futuristic/old-fashioned spy story where he's playing the double agent. The story moves along at a brisk pace though there is alot of material here (does that make sense) and it feels longer than it's 16 pages. I don't think Fraction's statement about the issue being all about Fathers and Sons comes through but maybe a re-read will prove otherwise. I continue to believe this book has great potential. We'll see if it gets there though.

Best line in the comic: "All this potential and you flipped your shit."

Batman #655

I was really, really, really looking forward for this to come out but I was mildly disappointed even though it was still a good issue. I think it was because of the action packed Detective #821 a few weeks ago that spoiled me. This comic should have come out first. Whereas Detective had tons-o-ass-kicking, this is a more character driven story featuring Batman trying to regain the Bruce Wayne persona after being "grim-and-gritty" for the last (real-time) ten years or so. Morrison does a good job of showing the familiarity of the Bruce-Alfred friendship as well as the relationship Tim (Robin) has with his mentor. The acting Bruce does in his playboy-mode is pretty cheesey but that is how it should be. Bruce should act somewhat aloof without a care in the world. I know I would if had more money than God. Anyways, a good if not great first issue from Morrison and Kubert. Maybe I'll wait for the trade for this one...

Best line in the comic: "Look, how about I make this easy and take all of your numbers? Then everybody gets to be happy. Especially me." That Bruce. Such a player. No wonder he has a bastard kid running around.

The Next #1

This was a funky comic and bought it somewhat on a whim. It's very science-fictiony with phrases like "singularity harpoon", "hold onto a key concept", and "past the nexus point with this cluster." Not to mention that the main characters are nth dimensional beings that can manipulate matter in three dimentions at will.

Said characters (the Next) are pretty interesting though they are made up of tweaked cliches: there's the level headed leader taking the name Cindy Cindy Cindy, the smart guy Ben (short for Benjamin Jefferson State-Sponsored Thomas Alva Global Franklin Warming Baseball Cake), the destructive one Poetry Slam, the artsy guy Tweet, and a dumb guy who is essentially a dog (though he's actually "a rehearsed concept--an algorithm with some free will" - see? science fictiony!). Anyways, of course they meet up with a regular earthling and befriend her. That's really the only point of the book that takes away from the story. The girl (Monikka Wong) doesn't freak out nearly enough and takes the crazy antics the Next perform a bit too easily. However, she is portrayed to be "punk" so maybe that stereotype is more willing to accept strange transpirin' do-ins. Oh yeah Superman is in it too to investigate the rift the Next made in TTTTIIIMMMEEEE and SSSSSPPPPAAAACCCCEEEE!

Best line in the comic: "At least the africanized killer bees never showed up, and aren't they glad."

So what have we learned today? That new comics are good. But reading new comics by the light of fireworks? Difficult! Both in one day however: AWESOME.

New Comic Day July 19

2006-07-19T20:29:00.000-03:00

Almost caught up to the present-day with this installment.

Ultimate X_men #72
I'm on the fence (Eamon Graeme reference!) about this issue. On the one hand we see the Magician kick a LOT of ass, but on the other, not much else goes on. The battle seems to be just filler to get to the twist at the end which is a bit disappointing. However, it might just be my way of looking at it and Kirkman might just be setting up lots of sub-plots like in Invincible which I really like. I think I can make a better judgement nest issue.

The back up story with the Masked Marvel was kind of cute as it features the theme of a comic about comics which is a good idea in principle. In this case, though it's kind of interesting, it's Marvel trying to milk the fans for opinions on new characters (there's a plug for the marvel site and a feedback e-mail) which would be better served as an online endeavour only.

Eternals #2
Neil Gaiman might be falling flat with this series. While issue #1 had some cool moments, this one seems to only serve the purpose of introducing two of the Eternals to each other while not much else happens. Icarus is tortured in creative ways so I guess that's something, but we all know how that's going to turn out thanks to goddamn Previews. I'm thinking of dropping this title, but unfortunately, since I order stuff two months in advance, I'm already obligated to get up to issue #4, so another two won't hurt. I still have some faith in Gaiman though to turn it up a notch soon.

Justice League of America #0
I liked this issue despite the odd structure it had. To show the importance of the JLA and the link between the big three (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman), the writer, Brad Meltzer, shows various points of the JLA history as well as possible futures. In other words he switches from scenes taking place "yesterday" to those which happen "tomorrow". It took a few pages before realizing what was going on, but I think it works despite the fact that introducing future continuity is likely a BAD idea. Ultimately the issue ends with a scene taking place "today" where the big 3 get together after the one year later business to discuss who will be on the new team. I think Meltzer captures the spirit of the JLA with this one and each different era is distinct from the others, both in look and the character's personality. There is an ensemble cast of artists on this issue and all of them do a good job, though Ed Benes pulls regular artist duty next issue. I think I'll be getting this either monthly or in trade form as there is just something so appealing about the JLA - these larger than life heroes battling larger than life threats. I'm sorry that I let go of my Grant Morrison run...

Franklin Richards: Son of a Super Genius Super Summer Spectacular
Not too much to say about this one except that it is a very cute and humourous comic similar in style to Calvin and Hobbes. This issue consists of short strips where Franklin gets into trouble and H.E.R.B.I.E. has to bail him out and try to teach him the error of his ways. Marc Sumerak does a great job at facial expressions of both Franklin and H.E.R.B.I.E. (despite his being a robot - H.E.R.B.I.E. not Sumerak), ranging fromterror, inquisitiveness, boredom, and excitement. Good stuff all around and I think I will get these comics whenever they come out.

Elephantmen #1
Another something that is outside the norm for me. In the world of Hip Flask, SCIENCE! has created animal-human hybrids (kind of) for the purposes of running around in battlefields and killing lots of other animal-human hybrids. However, the wars are over, and the surviving animals are left to eek out a living in any way that they can. The main story is told via a little girl named Savannah and her meeting with Ebony the elephant as he sits alone and forelorn on a city bench. The dichotomy between Savannah's innocence and the flashbacks to Ebony's gruesome past is well done and makes for an interesting read. The artwork is pretty as it features big animals carrying guns and making scary faces. Showing expression on weird shaped animal heads must be tough, but Moritat does a great job. I may have to start getting this on a monthly basis.

New Comic Day July 12

2006-07-12T23:39:00.000-03:00

This is the first of my posts to attempt to get caught back up. Since blogger has a nifty feature where you can change what day you posted, it'll look like it was posted when it was supposed to. I'm sneaky that way. Read and enjoy!

Onto two weeks ago's comics! It was a good week!

Ultimate Fantastic Four #31
So the FF zombies finally escape from their cell this issue (after waiting like a year) using the most lame-ass trick possible. As soon as I saw them "de-materialize" from their room, I was like "god-damn it, this will be stupid." I turn the page and sure enough, I was right. Here's the dilly-o: Zombie Reed and zombie Sue (henceforth ZR and ZS) start talking to the guards about how ZR customized a ballpoint pen using distilled ink, food chemicals, and a strand of hair to build a teleportation device. The zombies form a huddle and promptly disappear. This is the point where the guards freak the hell out and rush into the cell to see where they might have gotten to. What they should have done was say "Oh yeah, the FF has a member called the Invisible Woman and realized that of course, the zombies were still in the cell. LAME!

Apart from that though, it's not a badly written issue (still crappy poser-riffic Greg Land art though) and the ending with Dr. Doom forcing Reed to switch bodies with him (it's the Fantastic Four, that's why) is pretty neat. I hope this problem isn't resolved next issue though (it's a three parter - hopefully just about getting rid of the zombies) as I think it could be explored quite well. This isn't likely a high possibility though as issue #33 gives a new creative team on the book.

Fables #51
Ah, Fables. This is a tasty installment from Willingham and guest artist Shawn McManus. It features super-spy extrordinare Cinderella trying to negotiate a treaty with the folk that live above the clouds that beanstalks grow through. Over the course of the issue Cindy turns into a mouse, skydives off a beanstalk, tells off some giant quacks, makes a shady deal with Frau Totenkinder, and helps in a delicate operation to cure the reigning king of the high ground in the sky. Whew! All this and the subplots are managed to be moved forwards too!

McManus does a very good job with the art chores and you can tell he was having fun when he did this issue. He's also very adept at conveying character's emotions through facial expressions, a feat that many artists fall short on. A very enjoyable issue.

The Escapists #1 (of 6)
This was a fun little book that is outside of my normal comic book buying box. It cost a dollar so I was willing to try something very different as I had no idea about the Escapist. Anyhoo, this issue has a theme which is always sort of neat when done well. It's basically a comic book about comic books. The main character is a comic book geek that wants to reintroduce the comic book character he loved as a kid, The Escapist, to the modern day world. We see the kid grow up and how much he loves the medium. He meets up with a sultry artist who agrees to draw the comic and his longtime friend dresses up as the Escapist to promote the book. Despite the rotating artists for this comic, I think it has potential to be a very interesting series.

Ultimate Spider-man #97
Part one of the Ultimate Clone Saga is here! You may go now.

Still here? Actually this issue was good as it had a little bit of everything which I will now enumerate: (1) There's a good dynamic between Kitty and Peter after she finds out he went to Mary Jane (MJ) about the Morbius stuff from the last two issues. (2) We finally get some explantaion as to why MJ is being more friendly towards Peter after her freaking out at him a while back. (3) MJ listens and gets the hell out of dodge when a fight starts instead of hanging out on the sidelines like a damn fool. (4) A pretty decent fight scene between Spidey and the Scorpion (though it had a predictable ending and why are cops so stupid?). (5) We get left with an exciting cliffhanger. So five awesome things about this issue. I know I've said in the past that this comic series is, well basically shitty, but that was only for a an arc or two and it's been pretty above average otherwise. Thumbs up for Bendis and Bagley.

Bang for your Bbbb-ucK!

2006-07-08T17:10:00.000-03:00

For those that don't know, I'm moving next month from sunny, cool Vancouver back to boring ole' P.E.I. This poses a problem for my comic buying habit as there are only two shops back home and one of them I don't buy stuff from due to friendship loyalties and the other, while run by a cool guy and friend, isn't the most organized. Fortunately, Elfsar does mail orders. Thus I will receive my comics by mail once a month and "New Comic Day" will change to "New Comic Month" beginning in September.

As well, I've been thinking about the cost of comics lately and realized they're bloody expensive. I could change my habits extensively and instead of getting single issues, I could switch to trade paperbacks (collections of ~ 6 of those single issues). This is usually the cheaper option. I've decided that I'll meet somewhere in the middle because there's a measure of pride in knowing you have 100 straight issues of Ultimate Spider-man or 50 issues of Invincible. So I'm going to continue getting singles from Elfsar for most titles, but any graphic novel that tickles my fancy will likely be ordered from Amazon because it is even cheaper than the 20% discount I get from Elfsar.

That's my mentality right now, but who knows, maybe next year I'll sell off all my singles and rebuy the stuff in trade form.

New Comic Day July 5

2006-07-05T13:46:00.000-03:00

In addition to picking up my second copy of Casanova #1 reviewed two weeks ago, I picked up the follwing gems. This week's theme will be: "Reason to buy this book."

Teen Titans #37

So it looks like this is the last issue with the Doom Patrol in it (thank god). I actually feel like I was buying a Teen Titans instead of "Doom Patrol featuring the Teen Titans because Geoff Johns has a man-crush on them." I didn't mind this issue as much as the others because Dr. Niles Caulder (aka The Chief) gets his comeupins for manipulating the Doom Patrol team members and we get to see just how important Cyborg is to the Titans through the eyes of temporary members during the missing one year. That aspect of the issue is nicely done by Johns, though it's just a way to introduce more characters. Robin's efforts to bring Superboy back from the dead by cloning him is also well done as it shows how much he cared about his friend. Though again there is some problems here as I can't recall a particular instance when he was alive that they were showed to be really close.

Tony Daniel's art is hit and miss with me. Some panels look really great and others not so much. Sometimes his characters are flat and static while at other times very dynamic. It's somewhat jarring. As a bonus, this is the first time I noticed the inking! The last 4 or so pages were obviously done by a different inker than the rest of the book. When I noticed this, I checked the credits and sure enough, two inkers: Kevin Conrad and Norm Rapmund. It would have been nice to have consistancy within the issue, but maybe they were trying for a different mood. I dunno, I'm not that deep.

Reason to buy this book: A disembodied brain in a newly cloned body declares his love to his intelligent servant ape. As Chris Sims is wont to say: You are now freaking out.

Y: The Last Man #47

We finally get the backstroy og Dr. Mann with this issue. I thought it was entertaining and showed her development from child to adult rather well. There are also hints as to who/what is really behind the event that killed all the men. Good thing too as this series is coming to a close with issue #60 and there's alot of loose ends to tie up.

The issue opened a bit weird though as Dr. Mann is bleeding profusely yet she seemed fine after last issue despite being stabbed in the shoulder. She kind of explains it at the end saying after she miscarried she expected some long term effects, so I guess that's the reason. Still, an odd opening.

Reason to buy this book: Titties!

Detective Comics #821

Here's the first offering from new creative team Paul Dini (of Batman: the Animated Series fame) and J.H. Williams III and damn is it good. I can't recall the last time I picked up a monthly in-continuity Bat-title but I'm glad I'll be getting this one regularly.

Dini gives us a "done-in-one" story where it is told from Batman's perspective. It empasizes the detective part of Batman where there is a new villain in town stealing from Gotham's elite and Bats has to figure out how he's doing it and who he is. The opening action sequence hooks us in and we then get to see some good character interaction between Batman and Comissioner Gordon. However, their dialogue is a bit to expositiony to seem natural and the same information could have been gained through a narrative from Batman while perusing case files in the Batcave. But I think Dini wanted to get Gordon in there so it's a bit of a trade off. We also get the sense of how much Batman cares about Robin when he won't let him help with the case because they are dealing with an unknown player. Alfred's dialogue is brilliant. Dry, sarcastic wit that you would expect from a Brit.

We are right there with Batman as he puts the pieces together and the journey is highly enjoyable. Excellent first issue from Dini.

The art from J.H. Williams III is great and some of his page layouts are very nice. The choice to highlight exactly where Batman is hitting his opponent in the opening sequence is a neat idea. Batman is always shown to be somewhat in the shadows just as he should be. Good stuff all around.

Reason to buy this book: Batman is a total player and thinks the word "corn" in his narrative.

Graphic Novel Reviews

2006-07-04T14:21:00.000-03:00

It has been suggested that in addition to the weekly reviews of stuff I buy, I occasionally write about longer comics, known as Trade Paperbacks (TPBs) or Graphic Novels (GN). As I thought about this, I wondered what definition I could use to consider something a Graphic Novel. At first, I decided that it would only be original works that were not just collections of monthly issues (TPBs), but self-contained stories that were only found in this longer format.

Then I realized that would be silly as many comics these days are quite obviously meant to be read as collected works, where each monthly issue is a chapter in a larger work. Thus any work longer than the regular 23 pages that tells a self-consistant story, is eligible. Here are some definitions I found on google by the way:

#1: Generally, any self-contained story in a single binding that uses a comic book-like page layout. In the comic book industry, the term is sometimes used to refer only to self-contained stories of 48 or more pages that has not been previously published serially. (The minimum page count varies; 64, 72, and 96 pages are other popular cut-off points.)

#2: Term created by Will Eisner; comic book with high quality storyline and artwork.

My favourite as it is quite silly
#3: A comic that cannot be read in one sitting.

#4 "Graphic novel" (sometimes abbreviated GN) is a term for a kind of book, usually telling an extended story with sequential art (i.e. comics). It is not strictly defined, and is often used to imply subjective distinctions between a given book and other kinds of comics.

I'll try to do one or so a month so keep checking back!

Superman Returns Review

2006-07-02T12:40:00.000-03:00

Spoilers be ahead so ye be warned.

Rating: 7.5 Superman Shields out of 10

I saw this yesterday and I liked it quite a bit. I almost gave it an 8/10, but we'll get to why it lost that extra 0.5 in a moment.

So a short plot outline to get you up to speed: Astronomers think they've observed remnants of Superman's home planet of Krypton and Superman leaves Earth for 5 years to investigate. He returns to find that the love of his life, Lois Lane, has moved on (not really) with a fiance and a child. Lex Luthor gets out of prison and steals some of the crystals from Superman's fortress of solitude in Anarctica with the plan to use the crystals to create new landmasses and sell the property (the crystals react with water and minerals around them to grow exponentially). Superman finds out about it and needs to stop him. I think that's all you need. Let's begin!

I hadn't seen the original in theatres but I think I can imagine what it must have been like after seeing this film. The opening credits scene was wonderful and I'm very happy that they chose to do it in a style similar to the original movies. My chest swelled when the John Williams score turned up. Excellent choice of using the same music.

Then we get into the movie proper. I'll get one thing out of the way first: the suit. I went on a bit of a rant about it when the initial photos were released because it was such a departure from what I was used to and I might have posted in shock/horror. I am officially changing my stance on the movie suit. It looks really good in the film and I think the darker palette grounds the movie a bit more than bright primary colours would.

Most people going to this movie likely expected Superman to be doing Superman-type things throughout the movie, with lots of punching and general super-heroics. There was some of that, but I knew going in that they wanted to focus more on character development rather than big slugfests. So depending on what you were expecting, this movie might fall flat for you. I think Bryan Singer, the director, took the right road for the "first" movie in this franchise. This has been stated before, but with Superman you need to show his human qualities so that the audience can relate to him a bit. If you don't he's just an alien strong guy who can fly around and do cool shit. This is very different from Batman who is just a regular guy who trains his body to near-perfection. That concept is easier for people to "get" than a baby put in a ship and sent into space before his planet blows up. The best example in the movie is that when Superman finds out that Lois has moved on, he wants to get his mind off it and just throws himself into his "work", saving people from harm.

Thus, while occasionally lagging, the character moments were quite good. The half point from an 8/10 is lost becuase Brandon Routh (who is playing Superman) gives a bit of flat dialogue at times. Not much, but enough to distract and knock a half point off. Despite this, I think he did a very good job of portraying that Clark Kent is very different from Superman. He's not as bungling as in the originals, but still gives the sense of awkwardness. The other 2 points are deducted for the movie being just a tad on the slow side. It could have used one more action sequence to better balance the character moments (which were good). Included in this deduction is the reveal of the S-shield when Clark tears open his shirt when responding to an emergency. This is a classic Superman moment and it wasn't as impressive as it should have been.

As Superman, Routh is really channelling Christopher Reeve and even sounds like him at times. There was much debate from fans wheter Routh was the right choice to play Superman because he's not the most muscular of lads. I think the tall, lean Superman works though and Routh delivers lines and expressions that suits the Man of Steel rather well.

Kate Bosworth does a much better job as Lois Lane than Katie Holmes did as Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins. Her interaction with Clark was as it should be - vague disinterest with a bit of professional friendship. She gives some bland lines too, but they aren't too noticable.

I was hesitant to see Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, but he does a marvelous job of portraying the brilliant yet crazy villain. You could hear a pin drop in the theatre when he berates Lois after she says "Superman will stop you". He exuded evil. Leaving him on a deserted island at the end of the movie was a bit goofy though.

Main actors done, how about scenes, special effects and sound? Glad you asked. The airplane/space shuttle save sequence was amazing as was the "bullet-proof eyeball" one. The scene when Superman gets the shit kicked out of him was hard to watch as it was pretty visceral. The special effects guys did a great job with the flying sequences though there were a couple that could have used a bit more polish. As for sound, you can NOT beat a John Williams soundtrack. Excellent stuff.

So that's my mishmash of thoughts on Superman Returns. Good movie with a few picky things. Definately worth seeing though.

Continuing the Madness...

2006-06-30T18:28:00.000-03:00

This has been done by two of the Boys Boys, Neil and Daniel, so I thought I'd go ahead as well.
It has nothing to do with comics per se, but it gives a chance for my loyal readers (2 at this point I think - the aformentioned members of the Boys Boys) to learn some information about me (despite the fact they likely already know this stuff).

1. FIRST NAME? John
2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Probably, what's it to you?
3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Listening to a World of Warcraft audio file of a guy freaking the hell out while commanding his clan on a raid. I laughed my ass off to the point of tears
4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HAND WRITING? At times. It's a pleasant mix of printing and script
5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE LUNCHMEAT? Pastrami, the most sensual of all meats
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Maybe...probably not though.
7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Not since we were forced to write them in gradeschool.
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes, and they're tonsilriffic
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Nah, save that for the crazy folk
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE CEREAL? Raisin Bran
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Only my good pairs
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Both in mind and body. Double threat!
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE ICE CREAM FLAVOUR? Cookies and Creme (in a box!)
14. SHOE SIZE? 10.5
15. RED OR PINK? Red.
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Thinning hair. Damn you MPB!!!
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? The Boys Boys.
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? If they do, that's a paddling.
19. WHAT COLOUR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? White and in sock-feet (too hot for shoes Dr. Jones).
20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Honour Roll sushi and a Diet Cherry Vanilla Coke
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Damn library construction right outside my office window
22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? polka dot
23. FAVOURITE SMELL? cinnamon
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Pam wanting me to get the oil changed in the car. Women...always wanting something
25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Their polarity
26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? No one sent it! I copied it from Daniel's Blog, mwa-ha-ha!
27. FAVOURITE DRINK? Jones' Cream Soda
28. FAVOURITE SPORT? Poker (it's a sport! according to TSN anyways).
29. EYE COLOR? Brown
30. HAT SIZE? adjustable
31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? nope, the idea of sticking something in my eye everyday isn't appealing
32. FAVOURITE FOOD? Corn on the Cob
33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? A scary movie with a happy ending. Take that meaningless survey!
34. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? White
35. SUMMER OR WINTER? winter all the way. much rather be too cold than too hot
36. HUGS OR KISSES? depends who's giving them
37. FAVOURITE DESSERT? my homemade cheesecake
38. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? I'm guessing Neil will have the first comment
39. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Teh Cheeze -> Since this is cut and pasted from Daniel's blog, I assume The Cheeze is me, so suck it Dan.
40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martain
41. WHAT’S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? Bubbles!
42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? The Simpsons and I do, let's Eat! (don't ask)
43. FAVOURITE SOUNDS? One hand clapping
44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Beatles.
45. THE FURTHEST YOU’VE BEEN FROM HOME? League City, Texas
46. WHAT’S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? I am a jack of all trades and master of none, so I guess that means I kind of suck at everything
47. AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Summerside, PE.
48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Stolen from Daniel's site.

And to make it relavent to comics: Hawkman.

New Comic Day June 28

2006-06-28T21:16:00.000-03:00

Ultimate Spider-man #96

This is the second (and last) part of the Morbius storyline. It had some cool moments such as Morbius laying the smack down on the vampires, Spidey getting bit and freaking out. However if you were considering picking up this issue, I'd recommend against it for the following reasons: (1) Morbius claims that he can save Ben Urich's life (he got bit last issue) and it looks like to do so, he has to bite him. Spider-man prevents Morbius from doing so but Morby chucks SPider-man through a wall where he fights some vampires. During this though, Morbius has fixed Urich up right good, then helps Spidey. What bugs me is that the healing takes place off panel and we get no explanation whatsoever about how Morbius can save him. (2) At the end, Peter is contemplating continuing his life as a crime-fighter and Mary Jane comes up to him all friendly asking what's wrong then ends up hugging him. That would be fine except for the fact that last issue, Peter and MJ had a pow-wow ending with her not wanting to be around him. Why the change of heart? Again no explanation.

For the two issues as a whole though it's good to see the writer, Brian Michael Bendis, tell a shorter story instead of the usual decompressed stuff he does in New Avengers and that god-awful Hobgoblin arc a year or so ago.

Invincible #33
Invincible continues to be one of my favourite comics. This issue sees Mark (aka Invincible) confronting Angstrom Levy as he threatens his mother and newly found half-brother. Angstrom wants to kill Mark because he blames Mark for his silly looking head. In order to acomplish said killing, Angstrom sends Mark through a myriad (your word of the day) of parallel universes where he fights various WMDs. This is done in the effort to weaken Mark so that Angstrom can finish Invincible off himself. The plan backfires though as Mark pounds the living tar out of Levy and ends up killing him (or so I assume - there was a HELLUVA lot of blood) while they are in another reality. I expected the Angstrom confrontation to last more than one issue and I think it might have worked better as a two-parter, but it was still good.

I enjoyed this issue because we get to see a nice turning point in Mark's character. This is the first time he's killed someone whilst in a rage so watching how he deals with that will prove interesting. As well, Mark is trapped in an alternate reality so seeing how he gets home will be fun as well.

I'm one of those comic readers who is more about the words than the art, but Invincible is always good in both departments. The facial expressions are well done and the colors are very vibrant. Top notch comic from Kirkman and crew.

Young Avengers #12

And then we have Young Avengers. Plagued by lateness, I really didn't give two shits about what happened in this issue (which is the last one). I won't bore you with a detailed plot summary, but in short: Young Avengers + Old Avengers = Kree and Skrulls getting punched ALOT. There wasn't even that much story as there were no less than 5 splash pages. The only good thing is the art by Jim Cheung. Hard to believe this comes from the same guy who wrote the excellent Wonder Woman #1.

New Comic Day June 21

2006-06-22T02:37:00.000-03:00

Lots of stuff this week so dig in! A recurring theme this week will be comics that come out out on a very irregular basis (ie. less than one per month). As well, I'm going to do a break down of cents/page (CPP) and see if the best value is also the best comic.

Eternals #1

This is the newest offering of uber-writer Neil Gaiman to the comic reading populous. This is a story based on characters called, yep you're right, The Eternals who were created by Jack Kirby in the seventies. I will freely admit that I am an Eternals virgin and hadn't heard of them at all until Gaiman was announced to be writing this 6 issue mini-series. I trust Neil Gaiman to entertain me and that trust is justified with this comic.

The idea behind this new series is that Ike Harris (Ikaris) is an Eternal in the present day but is the only one on Earth that remembers there ever were Eternals. The other members of the team are leading ordinary lives and have only the vaguest of sub-conscious thoughts that there's something not quite right in their everday experiences. Ike tries to convince a med student, Mark Curry, that he's actually Makkari, an Eternal, and gets the typical "you're crazy" response one might expect. Gaiman does a very good job of portraying Mark as the sceptic and of introducing the other characters, Sersi, Sprite and Thena. Though we are pretty sure that these characters are Eternals, Gaiman still plants the seeds of doubt through Mark and it makes for a very intriguing read. On a bad note though, I realize that he's trying to update the Eternals to the current Marvel Universe, but I didn't really care for the references to the Super-hero Registration Act going on in Civil War.

John Romita Jr. has always been a favourite artist of mine and most of his panels are very well done. The Celestials look fantastic and the expressions Mark has while Ike is telling him some Eternal history are spot on. However there were a few panels that were somewhat jarring. Ike leaping off Mark's fire escape looked very static was a main one and a few other minor things I noticed that I don't expect from JRJR.

All in all, it's not as great as I thought it would be from the oreview pages I read, but it was still decent.

CPP: $5.75/39 pages = 14.7 cents per page!

Ultimates 2 #11

To begin, if you don't know, the Ultimates are the Avengers in Marvel's ultimate universe line of comics. They are a big grittier than their regular Marvel Universe counterparts and more morally ambiguous, which makes them more interesting characters in my opinion. I really like the Ultimates so let's get that out of the way, but I don't particularly like this issue because all it really is, is a set up for the grand finale in issue #12.

So what's good about this issue? Well Thor gets out of his plastic room (somehow), lots of punching, and the Hulk comes back. Other than that though this issue is about getting all the players in place. Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) goes to his space station to activate something called "Iron Man Six, " Captain America gets creamed only to look up to see the leader of the enemy super-villains looming over him, Loki appears to be over confident, which will likely be the cause of the villains' downfall, etc... So while I'm sure #12 will be excellent, #11 sure isn't. As well, this book has been plagued by lateness, but it can be forgiven somewhat because the writer, Mark Millar, has been quite ill lately, battling Crohn's disease. Though he might have had the script done long ago and it might all be the fault of the penciller, Bryan Hitch, who doesn't give a great performance this issue. The inclusion of George W. Bush being a pansy was also a bit tacky I thought.

Last time an issue came out: March 1, 2006 (nearly 4 months ago!)
CPP: $3.40/28 pages = 12.1 cents per page!

Astonoshing X-men #15
Despite what others may claim, I think this is a damn fine comic book series. To catch you up, this is an X-men series that doesn't really care about the shared universe of other X-men titles and is pretty much standalone (as it should be). Written by Joss Whedon (my hero) and John Cassady (the object of many a man-crush), the combination being known as Jossady, the team consists of Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, and Colossus. But wait! Isn't that Emma Frost, the White Queen on the cover with several notable X-men villains!? Yes, and it is in this issue were her betrayal comes to fruition. The new Hellfire Club, consisting of Sebastian Shaw, Cassandra Nova, the White Queen, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (that's not a typo and NTW from now on), and a mysterious fifth member lay the smack down on the X-men and truly hand them their asses.

Ass-handedry:
Emma does a great job pretending to be upset and we get a very nice visual right on page one. Cassandra Nova turns the normally brilliant Beast into his namesake, virtually eliminating his higher thought processes. NTW loosens Kitty's ability to control her phasing powers, and she literally phases down through the Earth's crust. Colossus beats down on Sebastian Shaw and forgets his power is to absorb kinetic energy. Shaw then gives Colossus the mother of all boxed ears and we see some metallic blood drip down his nose before he collapses. Nova removes Wolverine's agressiveness, turning him into the equivalent of a 5 year old girl (it's very cute). It's all very reminiscent of the fight against a previous incarnation of the Hellfire Club way back in Uncanny X-men #132, complete with an homage to a classic Wolverine moment:

Cool no? Anyhoo, this issue is a plot mover and hints at bigger stuff to come. Go Jossady!

Last time an issue came out: March 29, 2006
CPP: $3.40/23 pages = 14.9 cents per page!

Casanova #1

There's a bit of a story with this purchase so I'll bore you with that before I talk about the comic. I was really looking forward to this after I read the online preview. It looked really good and was certainly something different that what I was used to. I told Elfsar to pull it for me last week and to my surprise, it wasn't in the stack of comics Ethan plopped in front of me as I walked in. I checked the rack and there were none there. "Do you have a Casanova #1 for me?" I asked? Apparently they didn't receive the entire order and since I asked for one after their order cutoff date, I got shafted. It will be July 5th before I get this comic from Elfsar. However, not wanting to take the risk of getting a second printing, I went to Golden Age and snatched up a copy there. So I'll end up having two copies but it's cheap ($2.35) so it's not all bad.

Anyway what about the comic? It's kind of an espionage book (spy for the layman) which is a nice change of pace for me as the last one I followed was Mystique (the Vaughn run). This is written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Gabriel Ba. Instead of being black and white, the comic has a two-tone color scheme mixing blacks and green/grey. It's very effective in creating a noirish feel which helps the book tremendously. The story is told from the perspective of Casanova Quinn, our "hero" and starts with a decent action sequence that ends with a girl's head getting blown off (nice). Cass's father is the head of E.M.P.I.R.E (Extra-Military Police, Intelligence, Rescue, and Espionage) a world-wide organization deicated to maintaining the peace and it is this organization that ends said action sequence. There's some sci-fi elements to this book as well, in the form of alternate universes and a big mutant brain originating from the fusion of occult zen worshipers, which is always nice.

Thinking about it, the things I really liked about this comic were the little things like the one panel cuts of other character's point of views and the powerpoint reference in the Newman Xeno scene. I really liked the panels with the empty word balloons as it lets the art tell the story and in the funeral scene we can see that Cass is so caught up in grief that, though the minister is talking to him, he's not really hearing him. The main story was a tad on the confusing side, but maybe that's because I read it at work and the sound of construction outside was a bit distracting. A nit-picky thing is that some of the dialouge is in French (Cass was in Paris), but I can't read French!

I didn't like it as much as the Lord and Master, but liked it much more than Greg. I'm sticking with it as I think this book has a lot of potential.

CPP: $2.35/28 pages (with no ads!) = an amazing 8.4 cents per page!

Justice #6 (of 12)
In case you don't know, this 12 issue series is about villains trying to save the world from destruction which they think will be the fault of the world's heroes. I've always liked the concept of heroes upsetting the status quo by trying to fix "real-world" problems (ie. the Authority) and having the villains do it while still being villains is a neat idea. However, this issue doesn't really move the plot forward as much as I'd like and the only interesting thing to happen is that Green Lantern's ring translates his being into a series of electronic impulses and "saves" him inside itself. Neat idea. I enjoy Alex Ross's painting style, but the penciler he's painting over, Doug Braithwaite, could use some improvement. Not much else to say about this one. It was a very "meh" comic.

Last time an issue came out: April 19, 2006
CPP: $4.75/30 pages = 15.8 cents per page!

Ex Machina #21

New storyline and some obvious new plotlines. Check out last week's review if you need an Ex Machina Primer. First, Mitch gets a hot new intern who is not all she seems to be, some potheads get the beat down from a fake fireman, politcal fires are lit over marijuana legalization, and a woman douses herself with gasoline on the steps of city hall and lights herself on fire! Notice a trend here? Anyways this seems to be standard fare lately with Ex Machina, but it's not boring and the juxtaposition of political and super-hero antics is a nice mix. I'd like to see more resolution with the "where did Mitch get his powers from" plotline, but I'm sure Vaughn will get to it as this will be a finite series. He has stated that it will show Mitch's five years in office so it will be a nice arc for the character to go through. The new intern's deviousness may be the starting point of the downfall of mayor Hundred.

Last time an issue came out: May 10, 2006 (it's monthly)
CPP: $4.00/22 pages = 18.2 cents per page!

All Star Superman #4

Ah, the best for last. This is a truly wonderful comic. In the world of crossover this and crossover that, mainstream comics have become pretty inaccessible to the average guy on the street. Not so with this comic. Any kid could pick this up and be entertained to no end. See, this issue revolves aroud Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen. He's a regular joe who is best buds with the big man and routinely gets him out of jams. How awesome is that?

With this issue, writer Grant Morrison harkens back to the old Jimmy Olsen/Superman teamups without being bogged down by years of pointless continuity, which is the idea behind the All Star line in the first place.

There's so many good things about this issue I'm tempted to stop this post and just tell you to go out and buy it so you'll see for yourself. I won't, but you should do that anyways.

The plot of this issue has Jimmy looking for something to write about for his "For a Day" columns in the Daily Planet. He chooses to go to the moon and take over the science institute P.R.O.J.E.C.T. from Leo Quintum. Unfortunately, Jimmy has been cursed with bad luck by a gypsy until the next full moon (sounds silly but it works), so you know something's gonna go wrong. Something does when the Bizzaro workers find some Black Kryptonite in the superheavy gravity underverse (where time itself cools to a solid). It's little extras like this that makes this comic fun and Morrison is a master at adding them. Anyways, the Black K makes Superman evil and Jimmy has to take a super-soldier syrum to prevent Superman from going on a rampage. In a classic comic book explanation, Superman gets weaker and dumber the worse he acts so he goes down pretty easily. I'm definately not doing this issue justice as you really have to see it to appreciate it.

The artwork from Frank Quitely is absolutely wonderful and combines with Morrison's exciting "done-in-one" story to produce a real gem. I don't often mention the colouring of a comic, but I will here as it is exceptionally vibrant. The pages really pop. Jamie Grant digitally inked and coloured the book and he deserves a hand. Using a computer to colour the book likely makes the difference between this and other comics, though I'm not sure what the traditional method is.

Excellent series and I only wish it came out more often.

Last time an issue came out: March 29, 2006
CPP: $3.20/22 pages = 14.5 cents per page!

Let me sum up:
Rank by Favorite (1 best - 7 worst)
1. All Star Superman #4
2. Astonishing X-men #15
3. Casanova #1
4. Eternals #1
5. Ex Machina #21
6. Justice #6
7. Ultimates 2 #11

Rank by CPP (1 best value - 7 worst value)
1. Casanova #1: 8.4
2. Ultimates 2 #11: 12.1
3. All Star Superman #4: 14.5
4. Eternals #1: 14.7
5. Astonishing X-men #15: 14.9
6. Justice #6: 15.8
7. Ex Machina #21: 18.2

Rank by time since last release (1 shortest - 7 longest)
1. Casanova #1: n/a
2. Eternals #1 n/a
3. Ex Machina #21: May 10 - 42 days
4. Justice #6: April 19 - 63 days
6. (tie) All Star Superman #4: March 29 - 84 days
6. (tie) Astonishing X-men #15: March 29 - 84 days
7. Ultimates 2 #11: March 1: 113 days

So All Star Superman is my #1 read this week and it has a decent CPP and Casanova, while good, isn't as good as I thought. It may require multiple readings to "get" everything as it is pretty dense. Bringing up the rear is Ultimates 2 #11 for both it's set-up nature and lateness. Boo-urns on that one.

A Worthy Cause

2006-06-16T14:18:00.000-03:00

Mark Millar, writer of the really good Ultimates, and perhaps not so good Civil War, recently (and is still) had a flare up from his Crohn's disease. Crohn's is a systemic inflammatory bowel disease which can result in severe inflammation of the intestinal tract and can effect the entire gastrointestinal tract, from mouth to anus, in the worst cases. He is organizing an auction to raise money which will go towards Professor John Hermon-Taylor's mission of finallizing a cure for this very serious disease. You can read the article at Newsarama here and send some bling if you can.

2 MSN Messenger Quotes of the Night

2006-06-15T02:46:00.000-03:00

"you dont get to kill goblins as part of a house-building quest"

"i told a chick the other day 'your so hot you give my dick a +4 bonus'"

Nothing to do with comics, but meh.

New Comic Day June 14

2006-06-15T02:44:00.000-03:00

Ultimate X-men #71
This is the "conclusion" to the three part Ultimate Phoenix storyline by Robert Kirkman and Ben Oliver. Much like the third X-men movie, I enjoyed the first 2/3 of this issue then something happened where I was like "Kirkman, you are a tool. Fuck you." HOWEVER, unlike the third X-men movie, this ended ok and all is forgiven. We'll get to that.

The first page has the Blob giving a description of his powers while about to pummel someone. A very typical super-villain type thing to do I might add. In short, he got fat but the fat is super dense, thus his mass is really high and thus he is nigh-unmovable. We won't get into the fact he would have a severe case of atherosclerosis to support his weight - not a good idea to overthink superhero physics too much.

So we get a few pages of the X-men getting thrashed and Storm using a line from the second X-men movie "hold on to something," which I really didn't like, but the fight was entertaining and the hero of the day is the new character Elliot who uses his powers to give us a physics lesson about mass being constant and proceeds to decrease the gravity around the Blob to 0.05g. The X-men then kick him around like a soccer ball high into the air where Elliot returns the Blob's personal gravity to normal and he plummets to the Earth like the fat ass he is. So although the fight was good, we don't really learn why the bad guys were there, but since it's Kirkman and he likes to write lots of sub-plots I'm sure it will be revealed later on.

So that's one stoyline, what about this Phoenix business. Well the Shi'ar in the Ultimate universe is a religious group who worship the Phoenix as a creation/benevolent god and they think the young Jean Grey may be the reincarnation of this god. Jean agrees to some blood tests and while they are processing, the truth comes out that the Phoenix is really an evil destoyer type entity ala the third X-men movie and standard X-men continuity, who says things like "let's see how powerful your brain is once it's liquified and pouring out your nose". She tries to kill Lilandra, the head of the organization, but Prof. X is there to stop her. He brings out Jean from the Phoenix with the cool trick saying "I love you." During this momentary lapse, Chuck shuts down her mind.

The aftermath has Lilandra's colleague coming in with the results from the blood tests and reports that she isn't the Phoenix and that her parents were members of the religion. He suggests (and here comes the Fuck you, Robert Kirkman moment) that she heard some stuff about the Phoenix as a child and DEVELOPED A MULTIPLE PERSONALITY TO DEAL WITH HAVING POWERS!!! This is the EXACT SAME explanation for the Phoenix in the third X-men Movie. Man THAT pissed me the hell off. So now Jean (recovered on a basic level) thinks she's crazy, but the bit of redemption comes at the end with the colleague talking to someone on the phone saying Jean definately is the Phoenix, which is a much more satisfactory explanation and is the reason for the quotes around "conclusion" at the start of this review.

How bout the art? Well to tell you the truth, Ben Oliver doesn't float my boat. He gets the job done but some of his images look pretty static, though he does make Jean look good and evil so that's something.

Overall it was a satisfactory conclusion to this 3-parter despite a few choices by Kirkman and mediocre art. And don't ask what those goblin things are on the cover, because I'm not really sure.

Ex Machina Special #2
I really liked this 2-part special showing the history of the Great Machine in flashback and his encounter with someone who could be considered his arch-enemy. Let's play catch-up again shall we? Mitchell Hundred is the mayor of an alternate New York city and gained the power to talk to and control machines and also prevented one of the planes from hitting the World Trade Centre on 9-11. His enemy, Pherson, gains the powers to talk to animals after a mishap in trying to duplicate Hundred's power by listening to digital recordings. He goes off the deep end and goes around setting animals free from zoos and terrorizing an animal shelter.

Hundred meets him at said shelter and after Pherson uses his power to tell some dogs to "rip his worthless throat out", The Great Machine dispatches him in a very comic book fashion. He plays a recording of that command backwards which makes the dogs turn on Pherson. So day saved. The real story here is the moral decisions Mitch plays with as his partners encourage him to cross the line and kill Pherson and the way he handles the radio interview taking place in the present.

I thought the art was quite good despite not being done by regular Ex Machina artist Tony Harris. No complaints.

Good two-issue series that provides a good intro to the Ex Machina series and the type of character Mitchell Hundred is.

Fables #50

Now this is a comic! 64-pages of pure gold and my favourite book this week. For those not in the know, Fables feature fairy tale creatures in our "real" world. So Snow White, The Big Bad Wolf (Bigby - who can change into a regular looking guy), Mowgli, Prince Charming, etc. all really exist. They are magical type creatures and depending on how ingrained a character's story is in our culture, the harder it is to kill a particular fable. A prime example is when Snow White got shot in the head and made a full recovery. Her sister Rose Red, being not as popular, would not have survived. The fables used to live in fairy tale realms called the Homelands, but an enemy called the Adversary showed up and started killing folk and building an empire. The Fables retreated to our mundane or "mundy" world. Got the gist?

So this is a very good story filled with espionage, murder, romance, a wedding, beanstalks, and a very apt analogy. What more could you ask?

We open with Bigby (big bad wolf) returning to Fabletown after being exiled. He is tasked with infiltrating the Homelands on a mission called Operation Israel. He has to get to the empire capital and confront the Adversary and does so in a very cool, albeit fantastical, spy sequence. He kills some guards and gives the Adversay a message from fabletown. They plan to take an Israelite philosophy when it comes to dealing with the bad guys: Mess with us and reap the consequences tenfold. Awesome.

The second half of the comic has Bigby reconciling with Snow white and they plan to get married and look after their kiddies (yeah they have 6 or 7 depending on who you ask in Fabletown from an earlier storyline that I won't get into). And this isn't some 2 page affair either, the build up is there including the planning and nervousness and is complete with full wedding vows. Again Awesome. I was actually hesitant to turn the last page as I expected some "Bwah ha-ha" type thing from the Adversary showing that he doesn't take kindly to threats and that a massive attack is on the way. I was pleasantly surprised when the last page simply has a close up of a table you would find at a wedding reception - complete with cake, champagne and an invitation to the wedding. Classy. As well the art of Mark Buckingham perfectly suits the nature of Fables and only serves to enhance an already excellent story. I almost want to go out and buy another copy.

My predictive powers leave something to be desired...

2006-06-14T16:49:00.000-03:00

Since I'm in British Columbia, many folk will have bought and read Civil War #2 already and as such, have posted many comments as to the "shocking event" which takes place therin. I predicted that Spider-man would kill Tony Stark after realizing that revealing his identity is a stupid thing to do. Apparently that did not happen, but I almost wish it did. You may not want to read anymore of you don't want to know what happens.

So the big shocker is that Spider-man reveals his identity to the world saying: "My name is Peter Parker and I've been Spider-Man since I was 15 years old. Any questions?" Dumb, dumb, dumb. Peter has too high a sense of responsibility to the people he cares about to put them in the obvious danger of publicizing his secret identiy. SO assuming the Thunderbolts didn't see Peter do the reveal on T.V. (which apparently they did, but anyway...), I see an easy solution which leads to my next prediction: The press conference will be revealed as a holographic illusion created by Tony Stark in order to test Peter's loyalties to his side. This will make Peter see Tony as the manipulative turd that he is and Peter will then switch sides to Captain America's anti-registration camp.

Civil War #2 Prediction

2006-06-13T17:27:00.000-03:00

Hey all,
I'm not following the Marvel Civil War thing but I've heard lots about it. In short, because a bunch of school kids got killed as a result of a super-hero battle, the government wishes to impose a Super-hero registration act. This means if you want to be a super-hero, you need to publicly reveal who you are and get a license or something. Sound familiar? The mutant registration act is old hat and this is pretty much the same thing, except for everybody. The story revolves around the two opposite views of the Act: the heroes that are in favour of the registration, led by Iron Man, and those opposed, led by Captain America.

Moving on, apparently there will be something in "Civil War #2 (that) marks the beginning of what could be the most tumultuous time in Spidey’s life in quite a long time. It’s going to take us to places that folks thought would be impossible." That's a quote from Joe Quesada, the editor in chief at marvel comics from a recent interview he did at Newsarama. Read the rest here. If you don't know, Spider-man is on the side which is in favour of the registration (which is dumb, but people are saying he's only there because he feels like he owes Iron Man ie. Tony Stark for making his new goofy outfit), and at the end of a recent issue of Amazing Spider-man, it looks like Spidey is about to reveal his secret identity. So the thing in Civil War #2, might be that he does the reveal, but I don't think so. Here's what I think will happen and I should note that I have no prior knowledge of the events which are to take place in Civil War #2 and I have not recieved an advance copy or anything like that:

In the last moment, Peter changes his mind and he and Iron Man get into a fight. As a result of this fight SPIDER-MAN KILLS TONY STARK. That's right folks, Spider-man will become a killer ala Wonder Woman in the whole Infinite Crisis debacle. Whether it be by accident or Peter gets super man, that's what I think will happen and is just retarded enough to be plausible in this age of comic book super events.

Early New Comic Day June 12, 2006

2006-06-13T00:14:00.000-03:00

Wonder Woman #1

I resisted this last week when it first came out, but caved when I was at the Comic Shop yesterday. I'm not super familiar with the Wonder Woman comics and have only a handful in my collection (issues #190ish to 204 or so). The good thing about this comic is that it should be able to be enjoyed by people that either had no previous experience with Wonder Woman, and those that have been following it since the early bondage days. However, if you have a mediocre knowledge of WW then you might be left a little confused like I was.

Despite that though Allan Heinberg and the Dodsons bring us a good comic. We open with some close up shots of the various armaments in Wonder Woman's arsenal: lasso, sword, breastplate, etc then the next page reveals that this incarnation of Wonder Woman is Donna Troy, formerly Wonder Girl. The switch has to do with the One Year Later business DC is doing. The previous WW went into self imposed exile after the events of Infinite Crisis and is still missing, thus Donna took up the mantle. Heinberg does a good job introducing us to Donna and the fact that this is a new job for her ie. "I am the new Wonder Woman." If you weren't familiar with WW, then this line tells you ok, there used to be another Wonder Woman but something happened to her, now we have this newbie trying to fill her boots. This adds an element of mystery that encourages us to keep reading.

So we do and we find out that some villains are holding Steve Trevor, a friend of Wonder Woman, hostage. Here Heinberg does an excellent job of introducing some of the main villains in the WW rouge gallery. We get to see a new and improved Cheetah, who can turn herself into and control cheetahs, as well as Giganta, a woman who can change her size. Dr. Psycho shows up too, but more on him later. The goal of the villains was to lure the real Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, out of hiding and it looks like they did as the old Wonder Woman shows up and proceeds to beat the living hell out of Cheetah. WW looks to make sure Cheetah never hurts anyone again and tries to kill her ala Max Lord, but Donna tries to stop her and gets stabbed through the chest for her efforts. So the reader thinks WW has gone off the deep end, but it is revealed that it was all a telepathic projection from Dr. Psycho... I think. It's pretty unclear and here is where Heinberg drops the ball a bit. With Cheetah and Giganta their powers are explained sufficiently but with Dr. Psycho, not so much. As well, if that is what happened, did Cheetah really get beaten up? If so does it make sense that Psycho would beat her ass down? Maybe the beat down was all in Donna's head...I'm not sure. If it was though, then it's unclear how Donna gets stabbed. Anyways, I would have preferred more explanation and it was weird that Dr. Psycho didn't get his own little caption box explaining his powers like Cheetah and Giganta did.

In a surprising twist, Steve Trevor is not actually Steve Trevor but Tom Tresser, the master of disguise known as Nemesis who is working for a police-type agency. For new readers, this won't be too much of a shocker because they probably never heard of him. I've been reading comics for a while and I never heard of him. The exposure I got was from a recent post at Chris's Invincible Super Blog found here (there's two parts). Finally on the last page, we get the big reveal that Tresser's new partner will be none other than Diana Prince in a hot white jumpsuit. Again for new readers, this might not be too shocking. For a long time reader though, it's cool because Diana Prince was an alias of the real Wonder Woman when she lost her powers. This is what left me kind of confused. I thought Diana Prince was Wonder Woman and the idea of her teaming up with Nemesis to rescue Donna from the terrible trio seemed weird. Apparently, through reading some other articles online, this is the new persona that WW took on after going into exile and I guess no one knows that she's really Wonder Woman. I think this is only a problem for people who've had a passing interest in the character over the years as new readers will eventually find out that WW is incognito and longtime fans will already know.

So enough praise about the story, what about the art? Terry Dodson has a penchant for drawing buxom beauties, and damn he draws them well! I have no complaints about the artwork save for the panel shown in flashback where WW is crouching over the newly deceased Maxwell Lord. Is that a look of surprise on her face? You just killed the guy! An expression of smug satisfaction would be better suited I think. The fight scenes are handled well and there is never any clutter that distracts from the story.

So this is issue is recommended with the reservation that to truley enjoy it, I think you need to either know nothing about Wonder Woman, or tons about Wonder Woman.

And always remember kids, Wonder Woman is cool because she can kick your ass and tie you up (not necessarily in that order), a hallmark of any good woman.

FUN FACTOID: the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Marston, also invented the modern polygraph (ie. lie-detector) machine!

Warm and Fuzzy Part Two

2006-06-10T20:18:00.000-03:00

Mouse Guard #1-3

So this is Mouse Guard, a new series from Archaia Studio Press, that has been heralded as the new Bone, and renowned across the blog-o-sphere. I don't know if it's as good as Bone, as at least 2/3 of that series was some of the best comiking I've ever read. Regardless, Mouse Guard is quite good and after getting you up to speed, I'll tell you why.

Mouse Guard stars mice as the heroes of the tail (ba-dump), as you might expect from the title and the pretty pictures above (hence the title of the post: mice are mammals, thus warm, and hairy, thus fuzzy), who are part of an organization called, you guessed it, the Mouse Guard. Their job in times of peace (the Guard was formerly a military unit), is to protect travellers and the like against various woodland enemies. They can also act as pathfinders, weather watchers, and body guards. The characters thus far in the series are Lieam, a reddish coloured mouse who upholds the traditions and honour of the Guard, Saxon, a hothedded brown mouse that doesn't take guff from anyone, Kenzie, a more experienced grey mouse who leads Saxon and Lieam on missions, Sadie, a female mouse who, though courageous, knows the meaning of sacrifice, and finally, the mysterious leader of the Guard, Gwendolyn, who we have yet to meet.

Issue #1 opens with a grain merchant on his way from Rootwallow to Barkstone who tells us that he waived the protection of the Guard because he thought they were more needed elsewhere. Dumbass. Needless to say, the merchant meets misfortune and it is up to Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon to solve the mystery once it is noticed that the merchant never made it to his destination. They come across his cart only to be attacked by the snake that (presumably) finished off the merchant. The trio puts up a good fight, but make a tactical retreat as Kenzie thinks they can't take it down. In their hiding place, Kenzie delivers the great line: "It matters not what you fight, but what you fight for." After a bit, the snake seems to have left and they emerge to find a nest full of snake eggs, which Kenzie and Saxon promptly destroy. This leaves poor Lieam to deal with the returning snake. And deal with it he does. He jumps into the snakes mouth and stabs it through the head. If that isn't awesome, I don't know what is. Once the snake is dispatched with, the plot thickens as we find out that the unfortunate merchant was a traitor providing secret documents to someone in Barkstone. The issue ends with the trio determined to find out who the documents were going to.

Issue #2 focuses on Sadie who has been tasked with finding a missing Guard member, Conrad, who was last seen in Cologero. Conrad is an older, alcoholic mouse with a peg leg. Again, awesomeness. He surprises Sadie as she rummages through his house then tells her about secret meetings the grain merchant of issue #1 had with a mysterious stranger. They plan to leave for Lockhaven in the morning, but are thwarted by no less than 6 crabs bent on VENGEANCE! What do crabs have to be mad about? I don't know. Who understands the complex phsyche of the multi-legged crustacean? Anyways the duo try to take them down and put up a good fight, but superior numbers win out and Conrad is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice so that Sadie can escape with the information he gave her.

Issue #3 features the Boyz Boyz of issue #1 on their way to Barkstone. They encounter another guard member on the road by the name of Midnight. He can only be described as the token Ninja of any well put together organization. He's all black and carries a bunch of swords and as we all know, black + swords = Ninja. You can't beat that...well maybe with Samurai Pizza Cats, but I digress. They arrive in the city and try to track down some leads on the merchant's delivery location. They realize that they are being followed and Saxon creates a diversion so Lieam can slip away. The diversion? A no-holds barred duel between Saxon and Kenzie! We get to see two of the Guard's elite throw down in a sword vs. staff fight, which Saxon takes a wee bit too seriously and seems to really knock Kenzie out. Meanwhile, Lieam finds that a cartographer (map maker for those non-book learnin' type folk) was the destination for the documents and that there is a coup planned by an armed group of militants called the Axe (no, not that Axe Doug). Lieam joins to gain more information and the other two Guardsmen are tied up and ejected from the city.

Is it good? Yes. Next question. Haha I kid. The book is written and illustrated by David Petersen and his story is very engaging. His illustrations are abso-fucking-lutely (I'm listening to "Usages of the Word Fuck" by Monty Python as I write this) gorgeous and you wouldn't think that expressing emotions on mice is easy, but Petersen sure makes it look that way. The format of having a square comic really adds to the effect of his art because everything is a bit more spread out than the trasitional comic format. Despite being someone of a straightforward tail (haha I love that), of good guys trying to do the right thing, we get elements of mystery and action as well that really engage the reader. Each of the characters has a unique personality and they interact very well together. I actually didn't see what the big deal was when I first read through them, but I did a re-read for this article and I am impressed. Petersen has said in a recent Wizard article that he has lots of stories to tell about the Guard and I for one can't wait. I'll make a prediction right here on June 12, 2006 that the mysterious stranger that was meeting with the merchant is Gwendolyn, the leader of the Mouse Guard.

New Comic Day June 7

2006-06-08T02:23:00.000-03:00

Y: The Last Man #46

This is the conclusion to the Kimono Dragons storyline. Vaughn does some nice work wrapping things up as well as plant the seeds for some future storyines. The main one is that Yorrick and 355 open up to each other a bit which leads me to beleive there will be some romance...or at least some hot luvin', in their futures. Another is the resolution of who/what caused the death of all the world's males. I'm guessing that will be saved for issue #50. After this reveal, I'm wondering how much longer the series will run as most Vertigo books tend to be finite in length. As well, it's good to see Ampersand reunited with Yorrick after the incredibly daring Monkey-rescue operation.

The artwork is good as always and the sword fight between Dr. Mann and the mysterious ninja was exciting and left Mann PINNED TO A WALL!

Emissary #1
This is a neat book that I bought based on the review found here. In short is deals with this guy walking in Time Square then flying up and pronouncing that he is the Emissary and will bring people to enlightenment. What's the natural response? The military flies in two fighter jets to "BRING HIM DOWN" (that's a quote from the general who orders the strike). Since the event takes place with 100s of onlookers, the pilot doesn't want to fire missles or guns or anything, so he's ordered to ram him. That's right folks, he's told to fly his jet INTO a man hovering in Times Square. The pilot gets owned though when the Emissary holds up his hand and stops the plane in mid-air. There is also some interesting characters who I'm guessing will be the meat of the book and we will experience the Emissary's actions through their eyes. Good book and I'll follow it until at least issue #6 to see where it's going.

Invincible #32
Ah, the joy of Invincible. What can be said really? This issue takes place mostly in Africa where Mark and his girlfriend are visiting Atom Eve. We get to see that during her time away Eve has become sort of a super-hero snob ala the White Queen from the X-men and kind of thinks she is superior to "mere mortals." As well, her attitude likely results a bit from jealousy as we get the sense she would like to be going out with Mark.
The tranquil setting is interrupted by a call from Cecil and Mark rushes home to see his mom bruised and battered with Angstrom Levy with her. I forsee Mark breaking up with Amber or likely vise versa, because he can't be a normal guy and he doesn't really let her into his world because he takes off with no explanation whatsoever. The artwork is sexy as always and if you aren't getting this book now, I recommend getting the big ass hardcover that collects issues 1-13.

Action Philosophers Trade Paperback
This is a neat series as it combines history with humour. The first Action Philosopher is Plato who is a beefy fellow saying things like "Plato Smash!" It's really well done and I suggest you check out the website for some previews. I'm still not finished with it so I may add some things here later.

What an age we live in...

2006-06-03T01:06:00.000-03:00

This doesn't really have anything to do with comics, but I thought I'd let everyone know that I just ordered a pizza online. Amazing what computers can do these days. Here's a screenshot of my order confirmation from Pizza Hut so you can see exactly what I got:

Pretty neat eh? Maybe I'll read some comics while I eat...hhmm bad idea as grease stains are notoriously difficult to get out of paper. Maybe a comic book movie so I can justify posting this here...yeah that's the ticket. Maybe Serenity. It was a comic right?

Warm and Fuzzy...

2006-06-01T14:06:00.000-03:00

On May 31st I experienced the warm fuzzy feeling one gets when one receives a heavy parcel in the mail. I new what it was of course, but DAMN getting shit in the mail makes you feel important! Said parcel was none other than the

Runaways Hardcover

I'd been hearing scads of good things about this series so I finally bit the bullet and got it. I was very tempted on Free Comic Book Day to get it as part of the buy 2 get one free deal they had, as this series is also collected in three digest books. However, buying the hardcover (which just looks sexy) new at Elfsar would run $44 plus tax, so I turned to my old friend Ebay. Here I was able to snag it for $36.30 including shipping. It's very pretty and in reasonably good condition (some minor wear on the dustjacket). I'll do a review of it once I read it so stay tuned...

New Comic Day May 31

2006-05-31T23:12:00.000-03:00

Ultimate Spider-man #95

This was a good issue for the most part. In terms of fitting in with the rest of the series though, it seems like it's just a two parter to fill in some space before Bendis redoes the Clone Saga (barf). I thought the scene with Peter and MJ was well done and seemed to be the sort of things that two people in that situation would say. Same thing for the Peter/Kitty relationship. However the vampire stuff, as stated just seems to be there for the sake of being there. I would have preferred that instead of a two issue Morbius thing, we get two issues of Peter's love life on the go. Still what's there is good enough for me to recommend the issue.

Robotika #4 (of 4)
This is a weird series, but in a good way. I really liked the artwork and samurai that get annoyed with their former masters and leave to become mercenaries always makes for a good romp. Another thing that I liked was the vertical text used in one of the characters word balloons (see example here). I have never seen this before in comics and thought it was a clever way to portray a character talking in a different language. Apparently there was a fan outcry about it and in this issue, they urge readers to email in with comments and suggestions for how they reprint the series in trade paperback. I think it should be left as is because, although it makes the text hard to read), you really pay attention to what that character has to say. Many times I find myself just burning through a comic in like 5 minutes, but here you have to slow down and pay attention. It's been a while since I read issues #1-3 so I'll re-read them and do a review as a whole in a week or so. It would have been nice to get a greater sense of closure with the series as it ends with saying something like "a new adventure begins" and there will be another series in 2007. I don't really understand why it isn't an ongoing title. Maybe it takes a while to do the artwork. Definately recommended for those that want to try something different.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #30

This issue begins to resolve the Zombie Fantastic Four sub-plot that was begun back in issue #22 or so. I enjoy Millar's writing but it would have been better to do one of the two things he's trying to accomplish here: namely do another Dr. Doom story OR do the Zombies, not both. As well Greg Land does 2/3 of the issue and the the other third is done by someone else who looks like he REALLY rushed through it. Greg Land hasn't really impressed me too much as his characters tend to look pretty stiff and his poses are nearly identical everytime you see the same character. I think the second issue of this three parter will be better as we (hopefully) get to see the zombies in action. This issue is not particularly recommended.

X-men 3: The Last Stand Review

2006-05-29T00:15:00.000-03:00

WARNING!! This post contains spoilers for the movie as I talk about specific events which happen. If you have not seen it, I recommend NOT reading this review.

Overall: 6/10

Well sir that's about as close to 2/3 as I can get (rounded down) and I gave it that score because I only really liked the first two acts of the movie. Now lets get into specifics.

Things I Liked

Despite the lackluster score I gave, there was some things I really liked seeing on the screen.

The inclusion of the Danger Room in the beginning was really cool (though it would have been nice to see the full sentinel). I actually thought they were doing a MI3 move where they start at the end of the movie, show credits, then do a flashback and work up to where you start. I never really clued in, but when I did I thought it was awesome.

I liked the way they did Jean's powers. The Phoenix is supposed to be the unmaker of worlds and I feel that really came across as she basically "unmade" everything that got in her way by disintegrating objects. They also made her look kind of scary when she used her powers which was a nice touch. Very creepy.

I thought Kelsey Grammer did an excellent job as Beast/Hank McCoy. It's too bad he wasn't in it a bit more and it would have been nice to get some backstory on him.

Seeing Iceman "ice-up" at the end was a nice treat as well as seeing Jean burn off Logan's skin only to have it keep growing back.

Really awesome thing: Two, count 'em TWO fastball specials (where Colossus throws Wolverine).

Things I Didn't Like and/or Things That Were Dumb

I didn't like how Colossus turned another teammate into organic metal in the Danger Room sequence. He can't do that. That was dumb.

UPDATE: I've been informed that it was actually Rogue that Colosus was protecting, so she must have absorbed his powers for a bit to steel up. I missed it the first time around as it was a quick scene. So -1 dumb points for X-men 3, bringing the total dumbness to a nice round 75%.

Why the %&#@ was EVERY OTHER MUTANT EXCEPT THE MOST FLEXIBLE AND DEXTROUS (ie. Mystique) INSIDE A FULLBODY CAGE THAT YOU COULDN'T SEE THROUGH?

Juggernaut's dialouge was terrible. "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch!" Just awful.

Speaking of Juggernaut. Juggernaut is NOT NOT NOT a MUTANT!!! He is a regular guy who picked up the Gem of Cyttorak and was granted powers. THEREFORE KITTY PRIDE'S TRICK TO GET HIM TO RUN INTO A WALL AND KNOCK HIMSELF OUT (WHICH WAS DUMB IN ITS OWN RIGHT) WOULD NOT NOT NOT HAVE WORKED. She and Leech would have been jelley. I know it's a knitpick cause I know more about X-men that the average movie goer, but %&#@, GET IT GODDAMN RIGHT OR DON'T HAVE HIM IN THE %&#@ING MOVIE! Ahem, sorry about that. Moving on...

This movie suffered from the same thing as the first. There were too many new characters which weren't dealt with deeply enough. The second movie was good because you already know the characters from the 1st one so you can get right into the story. Here there seemed to be characters that were in it just for the sake of having them in it. Examples include Angel (he REALLY didn't need to be there), Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, and Psylocke (even though I don't think she was mentioned by name).

The Golden Gate Bridge scene was pretty silly and the special effects for it weren't as well done as I expected. It looked very fake. As well one minute it is broad daylight and the next it is nighttime! WHAT IN THE %&#@??!! Then Magneto sends his "pawns" in as a first wave to absorb alot of the cure weapon ammo and they all get taken out. Then there's a second wave after the X-men show up? I don't get it. Where the hell did they come from. It felt very much like the earlt Batman movies where you just get wave after wave of faceless drones. Not cool.

Jean didn't really do a whole lot eh? She spent alot of the movie just standing around, dicking around. That's bullshit. They really needed to develop her more and I think the movie would have worked better if Magneto wasn't in it and you just did the original Dark Phoenix storyline with the Hellfire Club. But I guess they wanted to resolve the whole "Mutant War" thing that's been brewing.

Finally, the deaths and the cure thing in general. I figured Cyclops would die but as comic books go, no body = probably not dead. Professor X's death was unexpected but I thought was well done. HOWEVER, we were told to wait after the credits for a clip. In this clip we see Moira McTaggert tending the man she explains to the students is brain dead during Charles's lecture on the ethics of using powers. In his lecture he said something to the effect if we are able to transfer someone's consciousness into his body are we ethically allowed to do that? Anyways, in this post-movie clip, we here Prof. X's voice from the person in the bed! For those slow on the uptake, this means he transferred his consciousness into this brain dead body! WHAT IN THE %&#@??!! I will discuss this again in a bit after we talk about this cure business.

To %&#@ over Magneto, Beast stabs him with 4 (!) vials of the cure (to de-power him obviously) and at the end of the movie we see Magneto move a metal chess piece. Therefore I see two problems with this. (1) The cure doesn't work or only works for a limited time. Which is dumb because what was the point of the movie in the first place? And Rogue is in for a wake up call once her powers kick back in. (2) The cure only works on certain mutants. Also dumb because every mutant has the "X" gene which causes mutation and we are explicitly told that the cure suppresses that gene.

So let's sum up. Proffesor X isn't dead and Magneto is still Magneto. My problem with this is it is TOO comic-bookish. I realize it's a comic movie, but with comics, these types of things are kind of expected. I really don't think that type of thing works in a movie though. As well, because Prof. X is still alive and Magneto is still Magneto, there was NO POINT to do anything to them in the first place. When X's death happened, I was surprised but expected him not to be gone forever. When they start the scene at the end with Magneto in the park, I thought "He still has powers." Why did they do this? Because you can't kill Charles Xavier and you can't get rid of the X-men's greatest villain. The status quo must remain unchanged. So the "death" and the "depowering" were only there for shock value and by the end of the movie are undone anyways.

Halt mutant!

2006-05-27T16:01:00.000-03:00

Despite my initial reservations, I ended up getting a fully assembled Sentinel action figure. However the caveat here is that I didn't buy all the individual figures (though I did during Christmas 2005 break and took them back cause it was too much $$$) and instead won an auction on Ebay. I almost ended up winning two of them because I was bidding on 2 different auctions! Luckily I was outbid with an hour to go. Anyways, my figure arrived on Thursday and here are some pictures!

This one has me holding a 12inch ruler in front so you can get the idea of how big this sucker is.

Here's another showing the scale of the Sentinel with Juggernaut beside him and The Flash between his legs.

That's all for today! I'm debating whether or not to take it into work so there might be some more pics in the future with Green Goblin vs. Sentinel!

New Comic Day May 24

2006-05-24T14:48:00.000-03:00

Ah my life is made easy again this week as I only got one comic today, namely:

Teen Titans #36

This was kind of an odd issue as I am not really familiar with the Doom Patrol, who feature prominently in this issue. I can't tell if the writing by Geoff Johns is to help readers understand a bit of backstory about them or if it's just him showing off his knowledge of the DC universe (or maybe both). There wasn't anything really exciting in this issue. We get to see Robin kind of acting more like Batman in his paranoia and we're reminded of his efforts to clone the now deceased Superboy. The artwork by Tony Daniel (check his blog by clicking the link) is a bit hit and miss this issue. Some panels are really nice looking (ie. some of the Robin close up, moody shots) and others look plain weird (something just don't look right with Wondergirl). I'm not recommending it unless you're already familiar with the Doom Patrol. As well I am a bit annoyed when I get an issue of Teen Titans that may as well be an issue of Doom Patrol guest starring the Teen Titans.

New Comic Day May 17

2006-05-18T01:00:00.000-03:00

Finally back to some comic reviews, I only got two today which is a big incentive to get back into the swing of things.

All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #4

I don't really know why I keep getting this book. I guess it's because it comes out so rarely (this one is two months late) that I don't mind splurging every now and then. It's been a while since I read the last one, so I have no clue why Vicky Vale is in the hospital nearly dead. After reading this issue I realize that Frank Miller must be in need of some serious bling because he's S-T-R-E--T---C----H-----I------N-------G things out SO much that really nothing happens. Honestly folks, NOTHING happens except they get to the batcave. That's it. Do not cross go, do not tell a good story, collect big paycheck for writing a story which looks like it will take upwards of 300 issues to complete. Oh yeah, and a goofylooking Superman says "Damn!" twice and carries a car from Paris to Gotham (however the arrival of the car in Gotham likely won't be seen for another 5 issues). Despite the lack of story, Jim Lee does offer some nice eye candy with his art work and his 6-page(!) spread of the batcave looks pretty snazzy and on retrospect is the reason I bought the thing. I mean how often do you see a 6-page fold out nowadays.

Not too shabby eh? Anyways, I really, really, really should stop buying this and I will once Grant Morrison and Paul Dini start on Batman and Detective Comics respectively. They know how to write. And Batman is such a dick in this series. Batman shouldn't be a dick.

Ultimate X-men #70

And yes that is the blob dropping a hoagie on the cover. This issue was ok. Elliot seems to be a real power house, but cocky. I don't know who his parallel is in the original marvel universe, so it's nice they're introducing some new characters (maybe). Not a whole lot happened here either except the Phoenix comes out at the end looking to rock the house. Just put a bullet in her already. I can't help but think this arc is coming out now because of the new X-men Movie which opens in a few weeks, which will of course have Jean Grey as the Phoenix. Anyways, it was entertaining, but just barely. And what's with Nightcrawler looking like he's taking advantage of a chick in a coma? Something I did notice in this issue was the use of a sound effect which I think is awesome. For those of you that don't know, a "sound" effect in comics is just some text that is supposed to repesent the actual sound something would have in real life. Nightcrawler goes "Bamf" when he teleports (see Nightcrawler link) and Wolverine's claws go "Snikt." Tutorial done. So what is the cool sound effect you might ask? Well it takes place when Elliot actually moves the Blob, which is impressive because the Blob's mutant power is the ability to NOT move if he doesn't want to (pretty shitty power, but there ya go). So here goes:

BRAKKA-RAKKA-BA-CHOOM!

That is just awesome. I should note that the punctuation is part of the sound effect, so I will leave you with something to philosophize on: What is the sound of an exclamation point?

New Action Figures

2006-05-13T01:12:00.000-03:00

Today was a glorious day. It had been several months since the last time I got an action figure (due mostly to the insistance of Pam that I stop buying them), but today series 13 of Marvel Legends came out and I couldn't help myself. I picked up Green Goblin and Loki from a store at Metrotown called Ages 3 and Up, which sells action figures, magic cards, and other assorted goodies. It is a very good store and I'm pleased I found it. This ties in with Neil and Daniel's thoughts on EB Games as they are a very good specialty store. Anyways here they are in a few different photos.

This is them set up on top of my computer shuttle box (ie. small tower) at work.

This is a rather dramatic pose I set up with an older Spider-man figure that I had. Note the kick ass huge playing card I have hanging in my office.

This is a shot showing where I have them set up in on my desk at UBC. Note the layer of dust by my computer "tower," the kick ass River Rock Casino coffee mug, the little stikfas man from last year's free comic book day, and some pens.

I should note that these figures are part of the Onslaught series

where they come packaged with a piece to make a larger figure. I've commented on this in the past but have since changed my stance as the sentinel figure is really cool. However, I opted to buy these figures out of the package because I only wanted them and didn't want two pieces of Onslaught sitting around forever. They were out of the packaging because the store has to open a set of figures so they can build the big figure and sell it to some poor schmo. In addition to me not having two pieces of Onslaught sitting around forever, I also saved a couple of bucks!

This likely has a record for most imbedded hyperlinks (at least for my blog).

Free Comic Book Day 2006

2006-05-06T19:02:00.000-03:00

My FCBD lasted a good two hours. Elfsar, my preferred comic shop in the Vancouver area, always makes Free Comic Book day a huge event. Last year I arrived when the doors opened at 11am and I was pretty much the only one there. This year I got there about 11:10 and the place was packed! There was a good 30 people in there snatching free comics left, right and centre. I was very pleased to see the large turnout of young people (ie. kids) as comics are a gateway to reading. And reading is good, m'kay.

They had all the comics setup on a table with a buffet-line going around. You were allowed as many titles as you wanted, but only one of each (which I think is reasonable). I feel sorry for the poor employee who had to supervise the table to keep things orderly and in nice stacks. A downside was a few jerks who didn't understand why they couldn't just take huge stacks of the free comics.

They also had several creators in such as Darren Davis and Diana Greenhalgh of Victoria Secret Service fame, the owner of Arcana studios, Sean O' Reilly, and Todd Demong, a Star Wars Artist.

There were also free heroclix demos and the best part was the storewide sale. Prett much anything in the store was buy 2 of something, get the third free. For example: if I want 2 Grant Morrison New-Xmen trades, I get a third trade free. I took advantage and bought 67 bags/boards and got 33 free. I also picked up 3 issues of Robotika. As well there was a back issue sale where you buy one, get 10% off, 2 and 20% off, etc.. up to 50% for 5 and up.

All in all it was a successful FCBD for myself and the store (I was in again on Sunday and they said they had at least 500 people through in the day) and props to Elfsar for promoting it so well.

Another year, another Free Comic Book Day. Once again my comic shop, Elfsar did an incredible job promoting this event. As a neato-keen bonus, I found another issue for the "100 Best Single Issues Since You Were Born." That comic was Batman/Planetary. Anyhoo, I'm off to read some comics and piss away the afternoon.

The Comic Hunt Continues or Two Post in a Row??? WTF?

2006-04-30T22:12:00.000-03:00

Hi

Yesterday I posted about how I would begin searching for Wizard's "100 Best Single Issues Since You Were Born" list. What I failed to mention was that I already had 17 of them in either single or trade paperback form and that yesterday I picked up 14 more of the 100 at The Comic Shop, bringing the total to 31. Consider that a reconnaiscance mission. There were a few I wasn't sure of the volume, so today I brought the Wizard issue and checked off 3 more.

I wasn't about to stop there though, no siree. I then ventured downtown to Golden Age Collectables and scoured their back issue bins. There I discovered 10 gems, sure to give me minutes of entertainment. Then it was to my comic shop, Elfsar. I say "my" because it's where I regularly buy my monthly titles. I didn't expect to find much though as they focus on more current stuff and trade paperbacks. Be that as it may, I found 3 comics there from the list and got a bunch more goodies besides.

As I left for home I realized I had forgotten about another comic shop in the downtown area! Namely ABC Book & Comic Emporium. First off, gotta love the use of the ampersand in the store name and second, it's an emporium and that just sounds cool. As Doug would say, this is where you get "bargain basement" comics. It has a very flea-markety feel too it, but that's ok because they have a TON of comics in the basement and all the back issues are always 50% off. So in this instance, they truely are bargain basement comics. I should have went here first instead of last and saved myself a bit of bling, but c'est la vie. Here I found an even dozen comics and now have more than half of the 100.

Actually I now have 59 + - 7.7 for poisson statistics. There are a few on the list that I may have back in Prince Edward Island and had before I sold them to Mark (grumble grumble). So after getting 42 comics over 4 comic shops and dropping $200 + , I think I'll take a break from the hunt for a while to let my wallet recover. I don't plan to get all of them as single issues. The Sandman ones in particular I'll get in trade paperback form. Anyhoo here's the list and the ones I have so far:

Ranking	Name of Comic	Year Published	Owned Prior to Article	Owned After Article	Date Purchased
1	Top 10 #8	2000		X	30-Apr-06
2	Sandman #8	1989
3	Batman: The Killing Joke	1998	X
4	Superman Annual #11	1985	X
5	Ultimate Spider-man #13	2001	X
6	Astro City #1/2	1998
7	Saga of the Swamp Thing #21	1984	X
8	Ultimate Spider-man #28	2002	X
9	Batman: Gotham by Gaslight	1989		X	30-Apr-06
10	Daredevil Vol. 1 #191	1983		X	30-Apr-06
11	100 Bullets #27	2001
12	Superman Vol. 2 #9	1987		X	30-Apr-06
13	Planetary #3	1999		X	30-Apr-06
14	Starman #11	1995		X	30-Apr-06
15	Uncanny X-men #159	1982		X	29-Apr-06
16	Amazing Spider-man Vol. 1 #239	1983
17	Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #245	1982		X	30-Apr-06
18	Justice League #1	1987
19	Spider-man Vs. Wolverine	1987	X
20	Planetary #13	2001
21	Action Comics #775	2001	X
22	The Flash Vol. 2 #182	2002
23	Ultimate Spider-man Annual #1	2005
24	Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #341	1988
25	Batman: Holy Terror	1991		X	30-Apr-06
26	Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #420	1994
27	Preacher #18	1996	X
28	Batman #424	1988
29	Green Lantern #188	1985	X
30	Avengers Vol. 1 #189	1979
31	Spider-man: Tangled Web #4	2001
32	Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #340	1988	X
33	Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography	1989
34	Birds of Prey #8	1999
35	Omega Men #26	1985		X	29-Apr-06
36	Amazing Spider-man Annual #15	1981
37	Fables: The Last Castle	2003	X
38	The Spectre #5	1993
39	Captain America Vol. 4 #7	2005		X	30-Apr-06
40	X-Factor #87	1993		X	29-Apr-06
41	Iron Man Vol. 1 #128	1979
42	New Teen Titans Vol. 1 #38	1984		X	30-Apr-06
43	Hero #11	2004		X	29-Apr-06
44	G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Vol. 1 #21	1984
45	Sandman #18	1990
46	Hitman #34	1999
47	Flinch #1	1999		X	29-Apr-06
48	What If…? Vol. 2 #4	1989
49	Ghost Rider Annual Vol. 2 #2	1994
50	Iron Man Vol. 1 #237	1988			29-Apr-06
51	Classic X-men #25	1988
52	100 Bullets #11	2000		X	29-Apr-06
53	Hellblazer #63	1993		X	30-Apr-06
54	Secret Origins Special #1	1989
55	Legion of Super Heroes Vol. 2 #13	1985		X	30-Apr-06
56	Animal Man #7	1989		X	30-Apr-06
57	Dark Horse Presents #1	1986		X	30-Apr-06
58	Doctor Strange Vol. 2 #56	1982		X	30-Apr-06
59	The Thing #2	1983		X	30-Apr-06
60	Sandman #50	1993
61	Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #393	1992		X	30-Apr-06
62	Batman Black & White #1	1996
63	Avengers Vol. 1 #217	1982		X	30-Apr-06
64	Sandman #40	1992
65	Avengers Annual #10	1981		X	30-Apr-06
66	Adventure Comics #466	1979
67	Nightwing #25	1998
68	Batman: Gotham Knights #8	2000
69	Sandman #17	1990
70	Planetary/Batman	2003
71	New Teen Titans Vol. 1 #20	1982		X	30-Apr-06
72	Preacher: Tall in the Saddle	2000	X
73	Justice League Annual #1	1987		X	29-Apr-06
74	Batman Black & White #4	1996
75	American Century #9	2002
76	Batman Adventures Annual #1	1994
77	Web of Spider-man #1	1985
78	Fantastic Four Vol. 3 #3	1998		X	30-Apr-06
79	Astro City #1	1995	X
80	Preacher #50	1999	X
81	Legion of Super Heroes Vol. 1 #296	1983		X	29-Apr-06
82	Adventures of Superman #474	1991		X	30-Apr-06
83	Conan #100	1979		X	30-Apr-06
84	Amazing Spider-man Vol. 1 #248	1984	X
85	Robin #46	1997		X	29-Apr-06
86	Tales of the New Teen Titans #1: Cyborg	1982		X	30-Apr-06
87	Fantastic Four Vol. 3 #60	2002		X	29-Apr-06
88	Semper Fi #1	1988
89	Preacher: Cassidy	1998	X
90	Batman: Devil's Asylum	1995		X	29-Apr-06
91	Exiles #16	2002		X	30-Apr-06
92	Legion of Super Heroes Vol. 2 Annual #1	1985		X	30-Apr-06
93	Hitman #22	1998		X	30-Apr-06
94	Demo #3	2004
95	Animal Man #15	1989	X
96	Legion of Super Heroes Vol. 5 #3	2005		X	30-Apr-06
97	Uncanny X-men #268	1990		X	29-Apr-06
98	Punisher #10	1988
99	Alias #10	2002
100	Ghost Rider #68	1982		X	29-Apr-06

Holy $#%!, A New Post!!

2006-04-29T21:13:00.000-03:00

Hello,

I apologize for my lack of posting in the last few months. But today marks my triumphant return to the Blogosphere! What was the catalyst for this momentous occasion you might ask, well I'll tell you.

As far as comics go, I find it difficult to know what is good or what I will like. Since I started collecting comics, Wizard: The Comics Magazine has been their for me, showing what is out there. Over the years though, Wizard has become just a conduit with which DC and Marvel can advertise (or so it seems anyway), and they show little in the way of small-press material. Despite this degradation of a once critical and objective magazine, I continue to buy it to stay current with big events and movie news. "Where is this going?" you might be asking. Well occasionally, Wizard has articles showcasing the top 100 of something. In issue #60 it was "The 100 Comics That Every Modern Day Collector Should Own." More recently, there was a "Top 100 Trade Paperbacks of All Time." I have used these articles to track down what Wizard thinks are high quality comics. Regardless of their publishing practices, they do a good job and the comics they pick are generally good.

So onto the purpose of this historic return to the Internet. In issue #175 a new article was published entitled "Wizard ranks the 100 Best Single Issues Since You Were Born." It has been a LONG time since I went on an old fashioned comic hunt and it felt good to walk into The Comic Shop today and spend over an hour scouring the bins for my goodies. I spent $80 which is a lot, but worth it for high quality comics. The only bad thing is an apparent error in Wizard or the Fantastic Four comic I got...The Volume and issue # I picked up matched the one Wizard listed, but the story is obviously wrong... Anyways, something else to track down.

I will make a spreadsheet listing all the comics and which ones I already had and continue to pick up so you can all watch my progress.

The End is Nigh...

2006-01-29T23:27:00.000-04:00

As Neil and Daniel are right to point out, Comic Core seems to have suffered a bout of cardiac arrest. Unfortunately, I forget my CPR training and Comic Core will not see attention until I regain interest and have more free time. So check back in, oh let's say...August.

Poker Night was bittersweet...

2005-11-29T08:08:00.000-04:00

Another poker night come and gone. We seem to be getting fewer people as of late. I wonder if the fad is starting to wear off for some. We had seven people for the first game and 5 for the second. I won the first game going heads-up with Chris Blake at the end. The second game was lots of fun as I lost a big hand to Simon when we were down to 3 but ended up tripling up later on with 8s full of 2s. Simon and I ended up going toe-to-toe and I took a shot at two pots in a row, but Simon had amzing cards to beat me.

The reason why the post title says "bittersweet" is because while waiting for the last number 4 bus I took off my school bag as I didn't want to wear it for another 10 minutes while I waited. Anyways when the bus arrived, for some reason I LEFT THE FRIGGING THING THERE!!! ARG!! I was (and still am) very upset about this because the bag had my glasses, my notes for work, as well as a good poker book and my really nice new card box with cards. Here's hoping that some good samaritan found it and will return it to the UBC Security office.

I like the Ladies

2005-11-12T00:44:00.000-04:00

Today was rememberance day and both Pam and I had the day off. We planned to clean up the apartment - her the kitchen and surrounding, me the living room. We would them combine our efforts to clean the bedroom. Suffice to say, this ideal situation did not happen (though I did put laundry away and the dishes and cooked supper and put my comics away). The reason this didn't happen was because of a suggestion Pam made:

Pam: "You know what we should do?"

John: "What?"

Pam: "We should go to the casino."

At this point I say "Sure, awesome, sounds good." Then after lunch she gets lazy and says she doesn't want to go anymore. I'm kind of annoyed because I was looking forward to trying my first cash game in poker (for the ill-informed: a cash game is where your chips represent real money ie. I sit down with $100 in chips and if I leave with $50 in chips I've lost $50. This is not the same in a tournament, where you pay a fixed amount for a certain number of chips which DO NOT represent the initial investment).

Eventually I convince her to go and she does her girly thing for 30 minutes trying to get ready. We get there around 2 o' clock or so and I put my name down for the $1/$2 no-limit hold'em tables. The guy tells me it will be a half hour wait at least so Pam and I walk around the casino and she plays some slots. It amazes me how much she seems to win playing those. I was with her when she was up to $15 from $10 and I told her to stop while she was ahead. She did, but then lost it all while I was playing poker (eventually).

At 3:00 a table opens and a busy looking gentleman tells me what table I'm at and to give my money to the dealer for chips. I buy in for $100 and I'm good to go.

I play pretty tight for a while but throw in a few bluffs for good measure. There a few (somewhat) agressive players at the table and I manage to win a few pots till I'm at around $250 (which is frigging awesome on it's own right). Then this situation comes up:

I'm second last to act before the flop in seat G above and I've been dealt pocket Queens (hence the title of the post). Player A folds and B - F all call for $2. Pot now $13. I raise to $15 total (this is the typical sort of thing at this table, rather than standard raises of multiples of the Big Blind). Players H-E all fold and then player F comes over the top making it $50 to go. Pot is now $63 and it costs me $35 to call. I do. Pot now $110 or so. Flop is

As 6c Qs

This is good because I've hit my set of queens and I have position on player F (meaning I act after him). He leads out for $100. If I call and lose I'm right back where I started at $100 not to mention the betting to take place on subsequant rounds. This is a hard call for me (I'm not too experienced yet) because he may have AA. However I take my time with this and think it through carefully. AA is the only hand beating me right now so what does his betting tell me that his chances are of having it? Well he only called the BB pre-flop after seeing many people limp in. Although AA is good you typically don't want to be up against a whole whack of people with ANY hand (unless you have suited connectors and want to see a cheap flop with the potential to win a big pot). Usually with AA you'd want to make a small raise to get some more money into the pot and drive it down to only one or two opponents.

Now after I put in my $15 raise, he re-raised to $50. Thats a big bet. By this time (around 5:00 pm) I think I was projecting a pretty tight image although I did pick up 3 pots in a row about 30 min before without showing cards, so he might think this is one of my bluffs. If he thinks I'm tight then it looks like he wants to scare me out of the pot.

I'm also taking a really long time to make a decision, so he probably puts me on a pair other than Aces or Queens, maybe 10s or Jacks. Ultimately though, I decide that his bet of $50 preflop is too big to have AA and expect a call so I go all in, calling his $100 and raising another $135ish. I see him start to finger his chips and he calls. I wince because I think I'm beat. In retrospect I probably SHOULDN'T have gone all in because if he thinks I'm tight, then I'm screaming that I have trips. However, if he thinks I have a small pair or am bluffing he might think I'm trying to scare him. The re-raise is a good play if I thought he was on a drawing hand like K J. However, this is only good if I had more money such that he wasn't getting good enough odds to call. As it was he needed to put in about $130 for the chance at a $450ish pot so I was giving him about 3.5 - 1 odds, not enough to justify a call with just the straight draw, but he might think that the remaining kings (if he has KK) or the aces/queens (if he has AQ) were outs.

However, with two cards to come, he doesn't flip over his cards and I ask him "Do you have the bullets (Aces)? He looks away and says "Maybe..." At this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to win and after the turn comes K and river 4, he flips over K9 off-suit! He was trying to bully me around! His call was a mistake if he thought I was tight because he had to put me on a good hand. Even if those three pots in a row were stuck in his mind, K9 is NOT a great hand.

The best part was that Pam had come back from slots while I was deciding what to do and saw me win! I tell the dealer I'm done and cash out for a whopping $568 - 5.5 times my initial investment.

New Comics

2005-11-12T00:07:00.000-04:00

Hi
It's been a while since I've talked about the comics I've been getting so I figured it was time to break that bad habit. If you're a regular you know that I dropped Ultimate Spider-man after the awful Hobgoblin arc and Ultimate X-men after the not-so-awful "Collosus is gay arc." Recently my interest in both titles has return and I picked up all the back issues I missed. This includes the "Warriors" arc from USM #79-85 and most of the "Magnetic North" arc in UXM. I'll review the arcs rather than the single issues.

WarriorsI was VERY pleased at the improvement over the last big arc. This had an interesting plot and was well paced. Rather than pointless trade filler, each issue held up on its own and stuff ACTUALLY happened. As well I enjoyed the introduction of some new Ultimate characters (ie. Hammerhead, Moon Knight, Iron Fist). The only negative was the repeated "people being thrown out of windows" theme in one of the issues and sometimes Bagley's art looks a little rushed. I'll stay with it until the big 100 issue.

Magnetic NorthReturn of the most evil version of Magneto ever! That alone should get people into this story. Ultimate Mystique is also around which kicks a bunch of booty. These comics are good. Period.

Lady Luck is my Beeatch

2005-11-01T03:26:00.000-04:00

Well luck from the tournament seemed to follow me to the weekly poker night at UBC ($5 buy in run tournament style). There was an unimpressive showing of only five people compared with last weeks 10+. Damn Hallowe'en. Anyways the first game consisted of myself, Kory, Simon, Chris Blake, and Gaelen. It went on for about two hours with Simon and I heads up, with him having a monstrous chip lead on me. Matt showed up as well around this time so we'd have six players for the next game. Simon ended up winning that game with a win of $20 and I broke even by winning $5.

The next game was also of good quality and had plenty of action. Once again it ended up with Simon and myself playing heads up. It would have made for interesting TV as chip lead swung from me to Simon, and back to me (I've only seen that happen once on TV - the 2003 ladies night tournament on the WPT). There was one had the Simon made a great bluff. He had K 10 of clubs and I had pocket Jacks. There was a bit of raising pre-flop and flop comes down A 8 3 (one club - not the ace) or something like that. I bet about $500 (the blinds were around $100/$200) and Simon re-raises for $1000 more. Now I think he has an ace with mediocre kicker. I debate for a bit and decide to call. Next card is a 7. I raise again and Simon goes all in for like $3000 or something. I'm in a pickle now. If he's bluffing then its a hell of a bluff but if he has an ace, I'm a big underdog with only one card to come. I maybe should have thought a bit more about it and figures the pot odds a few times and put him on a 40% bluff. I let the jacks go face up and he is shocked. He shows me the K 10 of clubs and I congratulate him on a good bluff. I'm not convinced I played the hand wrongly, though I'm sure Daley will tell me otherwise. On the final hand, Simon raises to $600, I reraise and he goes all in. I have K9 off suit and he has 33. Flop has a King and for extra luvin' the River is also a king. I win and get $25 for my efforts. With my win yesterday I'm +$72 in my poker career.

I should also mention some very good books I picked up recently from Chapters online. I bought them because of an article in Bluff magazine. Phil Laak taught Jennifer Tilly how to play and recommend these books first on the list so I figured if a WPT winner thinks they're good, they're probably good.

I read Theory of Poker in about a week and I'm more than half way through the first Harrington book. Sklansky's book is consisdered to be the best poker book ever written and out of the 2.5 poker books I've read, I agree. It teaches some simple concepts and others that are not so simple (implied odds). Very indepth and can be applied to most if not all poker games.

Harrington's books seemed a little shaky at first because the books are at least half full of example hands, which I wasn't sure would be useful. I was quite wrong. There are several pages explaining concepts and then the examples reinforce whatever you were supposed to learn in that chapter. They also act as quizzes by explaining the situation to you and then asking what you should do. I suggest thinking about each problem before skimming down to the answer. It WILL improve your game.

Early, Early Bird

2005-10-30T18:31:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone,
This is my first post about poker, so bear with me. I started a weekly poker night at the University of British Columbia within the Physics and Astronomy department. It's been going really well and I hope it continues to do so. However, one night a week was not enough to satisfy my felt-lust, so I started entering the Early Bird Tournaments at the River Rock Casino. A $23 entry fee gets you $1000 worth of chips but you have the option of paying an additional $5 when you sit down to get another $500, which I don't think anyone forgoes. Furthermore, registration starts at 8:00 am and the tourny doesn't begin until 10:00, so the casino wants you to spend money while you wait I guess.

Anyways, my first venture met with dissapointment as the bus was late and I got there at 7:45 am, much too late as the line up was HUGE and they cap the tournament at 60 players.

The following Sunday, last week, two of Monday night's players came along with me: Kory and Simon. I didn't do particularly well, going out right before the first break after an hour or so. Simon lasted an additional half hour and Kory, being the bruiser that he is went for 2 hours total.

I should stop for a moment and give you the breakdown for prizes:
1st: $600
2nd: $240
3rd: $180
4th: $120
5th: $60

Thus I was VERY happy that today, October 30th, 2005 I CAME IN FREAKING FOURTH!!!!! WOO HOO!!! YAY ME!!! I also put out two people at the final table. However, I think I could have done better if I hadn't made two mistakes:
1. getting pocket aces and telling the big blind that I'll put him all in, instead of making a small raise to sucker him in.
2. raising on a pure bluff with J2 off-suit. This was dumb I'll be the first to admit it. I didn't consider how I was being perceived by the remaining 3 players. I was raising quite alot, so eventually one of them was going to call me with any decent hand. I should have quit that tactic when I was ahead.

The next hand after mistake number 2, I got A4 off-suit and went all in again. I got called but he had AA so that was the end of me.

As a side note, the reason this post is called, "Early, Early Bird, is because I showed up TWO HOURS early. I woke up at 2:30 and realized that people might not have remembered to set their clocks back the night prior, so they'd start showing up at 6ish thinking it was 7. Sure enough, 6:10 rolls around and the first people start coming in. There was a decent crowd by 7:00, so I'm glad I did what I did.

Now if only my luck holds out tomorrow night...

New Comic Days: September 14, 21, 28 and October 12

2005-10-18T08:58:00.000-03:00

So I've been a bad blogger the past month but I have a good excuse: I have stumbled into the magical world of Texas Hold'em Poker! It's a really fun game and it's been taking up most of my free time (and money). Since Monday was poker night I couldn't sleep (damn you Jon Ben for brewing vast quantities of coffee) when I got home, I decided to watch some World Poker Tour, do the dishes and update this here thing. So here goes: all the comics I've gotten in the past month. However, due to time and budget constraints, I'll just give my quick impressions of the issue along with a "RECOMMENDED" or "LEAVE ON THE SHELF" or "UNDECIDED."

September 14

JLA #118 OK, but is really just a lunchbox comic (ie. a tool that performs some function - in this case advancing some plot issues with Batman vs. the JLA. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

Fables #41 The end of the Homelands storyline. Good but nothing really surprising happened other than we find out Blue was there with Charming's knowledge. Some forshadowing that Gepetto's not going to let the matter with Blue rest and maybe another Fabletown war is on the way. RECOMMENDED.

ALL Star Batman and Robin #2 "I'M THE GOD DAMN BATMAN!" pretty much sums up this book. Miller is making Bats even crazier than he usually does. At least from Year One, we see Bats is intelligent and at least somewhat rational about what he's doing. Here, though, he's (to quote a line from Batman Begins) just some nut. LEAVE ON THE SHELF (after flipping through it and getting a chuckle).

September 21

Ultimate Fantastic Four #23 The conclusion to ZOMBIE MARVEL is here. I was pleased with this three issue story as it went out of the box of what people were expecting. RECOMMENDED.

Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #1 The idea of annuals is cool. The idea of having annuals with no content other than to introduce more characters to the Ultimate Universe is NOT cool. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

Girls #5 I expected more from the guys that brought me Ultra. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

Ultimates 2 #8 Well I'm sure we're not really surprised that Captain America is thought to be the traitor. I think it will end up being some Skrull/Loki ploy to ruin the Ultimates. RECOMMENDED.

New Avengers #10 Last issue of the Sentry storyline. Bendis single-handedly took away all the mystery regarding the character and now he's just another Superman archetype with electricity and telepathic powers. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

September 28

Invincible #26 I GOT A LETTER PUBLISHED IN A COMIC. NOT JUST ANY COMIC, BUT THE BEST COMIC OUT THERE. YAY FOR ME!! On a serious note, Mark meets up with Daddy dearest and hijinxs/sucker punches ensue. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Ultimate Secret #3 Glad this is almost over. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

JLA #119 Zatanna is one of the most underrated characters in the DCU as in this issue she shows what a badass she can be. RECOMMENDED.

The OMAC Project #6 Things finish up with the JLA watchtower being blown to smithereens (how many times is that now?). Nothing really exciting happens and the end encourages you to read Infinite Crisis. Big Surprise. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

New Avengers #11 Start of the Ronin arc. Man, Bendis really knows how to annoy the internet fanboys. All along he's claimed that Ronin will not be Daredevil. All along, the internet fanboys have thought that it will be revealed that Ronin is Matt Murdock and Bendis will say "See Ronin ISN'T Daredevil, he's Matt Murdock, there's a difference!" In this issue though he makes it look SO much like Ronin is MAtt Murdock it would be funny if it didn't fill up so many pages. Reminds me of the new Secret War where we know something happened, but won't find out forever. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

Ultimate Iron Man #4 I don't recall anything being particularly BAD about this issue, but then again I don't recall anything GOOD either. Pick it up on a coin flip if you want.

Young Avengers #7 Teenage angst belongs on TV, not in comics. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

October 12

Infinite Crisis #1 IT'S HERE! IT'S FINALLY HERE! That aside, it definately reminded me of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and it was entertaining. RECOMMENDED.

Ex MAchina #15 Yet another storyline about Mitch's past that I don't really care about. GET TO THE FREAKIN" ALIENS ALREADY! LEAVE ON THE SHELF. And I'm dropping this title.

Fables #42 The start of the Arabian Nights Arc and it looks good so far as we see the return of King Cole. RECOMMENDED.

Y: The Last Man #38 Lunchbox issue to fill up a trade. LEAVE ON THE SHELF.

New Comic Days: August 24, August 31, and September 7

2005-09-07T21:09:00.000-03:00

As I mentioned, I was away for a few weeks so I have quite a backload of comics to put up. Here are the ones for the last three weeks. I apologize for the delay.

Here's a little review for each (from left to right, top to bottom, with spoilers throughout):

Astonishing X-men #12So here is the (on time for once) conclusion to Joss Whedon and John Cassady's first year on Astonishing X-men. It did not disappoint. Despite my mixed feelings about a few of the issues between 6-11, overall, the second arc was good. Joss writes very believable characters (as much as a 6 foot, blue-furred genius can be believable) and even though they're in the midst of action, there is no lack of characterization. You really believe that Peter cares for Kitty when she wants to go into the uber-sentinal. Another good thing about Joss's X-men, is that he doesn't have Wolverine be the main focus of the team like some X-books (and movies) have done. He's just there as a little ferocious tank that gets the job done like he should be. Somewhat surprising was Beast's ferocity whilst attacking Danger. I didn't know he had it in him, though one might have expected it from his and Wolvie's fight a few issues ago. As well, we get to see exactly who it was Emma was talking to in issue #4:
**SPOILER**

The Hellfire Club!
I knew Emma couldn't be good. Cassady's work leaves nothing to be desired. He can go from a fight sequence to an emotional revelation seamlessly. My favorite panel in this issue was probably the one showing Xavier's face as he tries to explain why he ignored Danger's initial moment of sentience. Very expressive. I look forward to the next 12 issues, though they won't be coming out until after House of M(alarkey) is over with (see Wizard #168 for interview with Whedon).

Ex Machina #14Here's the conclusion to the Fact vs. Fiction arc. I thought the mystery surrounding the new Machine man thing was well done and it wasn't who I expected (Kremlin), but rather the owner of Hundred's comic shop. As well, I enjoyed seeing Mitchell "power up" by talking to nearly all of the electronic signs in the city at the same time. It gives us a new feel for just how powerful he is and is probably tidings of things to come. I prefer to read short storylines rather than the "made-for-trade" arcs that seem to saturate the shelves. That, or ongoing stories with lots of sub-plots that are resolved as you go (ala Invincible). Too often there are 3-4 issues of (usually annoying) buildup while everything is wrapped up in the final 2 issues (I bring up the Hobgoblin arc in Ultimate Spider-man AGAIN to illustrate this point). However, Vaughn has changed things lately and that change is good. I'm sure that there will be other 5 issue arcs, but by haveing stand-alones and 2-3 issue ones thrown in the mix every now and then, he avoids the repetitiveness of having the same story structure. Not much to say about the art other than that Tony Harris does a bang-up job of drawing realistic people and conveying the various tense moments that occur in the series. I might try "reading" this just by looking at the pictures to see if I can still get a sense for the story.

Teen Titans #27Boo-urns for Infinite Crisis taking Geoff Johns away from this book for a few months. I didn't care for this issue. The writing by Gail Simone wasn't what I was used to and I think that threw me off, but the main reason is Rob Liefeld's art. I'm not art critic, but I've started drawing again and I know that comic book pencillers should have clean lines before they pass their work over to the inker. His are not clean. There are extra little lines where they shouldn't be and it just looks sloppy. Shame on the inker too for not fixing it up a little. Some of his characters also look disproportioned (as in heads to small for bodies, not extravagant chesticular regions) as well (Wonder Girl comes to mind). I'm glad that there are only two issues in this particular run and that Johns or someone equivalent takes over with issue 29.

New Avengers #9Finally the Sentry takes centre stage in his arc. What a friggin' suprise! I can almost forgive Bendis issue #7, because this one is quite interesting, despite the fact that not too much happens. Emma Frost enters Bob's mind and we see all the craziness it contains. And since when is the Void a huge vaguely reptillian creature? Not very Voidish if you ask me. Regardless, the mystery surrounds a shadowy figure (Stan Lee perhaps) that tinkered with Bob's brain and memories and we get hints of how powerful the Sentry actually is. I thought this was only a three issue arc, but it looks like #10 will be the finisher. Hopefully its good. I'm planning to drop this title after issue #13, the completion of the Ronin/Daredevil arc.

Young Avengers #6It was a long wait for this one and it was very "meh". In short, young Kang realizes that if he doesn't become old, evil Kang that the present day MU will be all effed up, so he goes back to the future. Kind of sucks though for him knowing that when he becomes older, he's going to go back in time to help his young self, only to be skewered by his counterpart. Time travel makes my head hurt. We get to see the reintroduction of the Vision after his untimely demise in Avengers Disassembled. Doesn't beat the return of Hawkeye though in terms of turnaround time from death to reincarnation. This one is dropped after issue 12.

Girls #4Now back into the good stuff though Girls post #1 aren't AS good as #1. They just don't have the same punch (no pun intended - if you read it, there is alot of punching). However, this issue was better than #2, not quite as good as #3. We see the chicks run amok in the town, beating many of the women senseless and it's revealed at the end, that for some reason they ONLY attack women. The pacing for the book is quite good and you really get a sense of urgency from the egg-girls in needing to get away and of the townspeople's fear. The art is very pretty, with good facial expression, though not as much detail as there could be. I'm amazed that with so many naked chicks running around that Jonathan Luna is able to hide nipples so well :D. Im looking forward to the rest of the series.

Y: The Last Man #37No hiding of anatomy here though as we see a full frontal of Yorrick on the last page. This story is shaping up to be quite good and it's answering the question (I think): "What would happen if a large population of women found out that there was a surviving man running around?" Some will likely think it's a hoax and others will probably form some militia thing thrying to get at him. Yorrick's desperation at trying to find Beth comes off really well and the fact that he kept a scrap of paper with him with her last known address with him for three years is representative of how much he wants to be with her again. I think the reporter chick was bluffing when she said she would up the voltage through 355, because for some reason I don't think there are different settings for it. The issue leaves you in suspense as to whether the story will get out or not, which is kind of exciting. Pia Guerra's art, as always, is very well done and Yorrick's pleading expression to 355 to let him leave the ship comes off as genuine. Wish I had have gottent the single issues from the start though. Anyone that wants to get rid of issues 1-5 let me know.

Invincible #25A milestone in the series and double-sized to boot, Invincible #25 brings some new sub-plots into the game and we see the return of Omni-man as a ruler of a distant planet. I new before I turned that last page that it was gonna be him though. All the origin stories to bulk up the issue were good as well and it was nice to see some of the characters drawn by different artists. As well, rather than just have these stories to tell some backstory, it seems as though there are some additional sub-plots introduced. For example, Dupli-Kate's brother, Dupli-Paul will likely show up in the future. Anyways, there's nothing really to be said about this issue other than it is consistant in its greatness month after month.

Serenity #3This one was actually a bit of a letdown compared to issues 1 and 2. I had to read it twice to absorb everything in fact. Don't get me wrong, it's still good though. However, this issue seemed a tad rushed, with an important scene taking place off panel to save space (I think). And I'm not sure the scene I'm thinking of actually took place. Book picks up a wrench and it loks like he's going to kill the blue-hand dudes but it doesn't show it. Now, if he DID kill them off panel, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because I swear I saw them in a preview for Serenity. If he didn't kill them, then I have no clue what happened off panel. Anyways not a huge deal, just something I found that could have been handled better. Oh yeah, last issue I said something about a character coming back from the dead. It was agent Lawerence Dobson from episode 1. Not to worry, no spoilers for the movie, because Mal shoots him in the eye again and shoots him an additional time just to make sure. Book leaving the ship was a surprise which makes me wonder how much he's actually in the movie. Inara makes her preparations to leave which makes me wonder how she's going to come back to the ship. My prediction: the Blue Sun group comes after her once she leaves Serenity and use her as bait to lure River and the rest of the crew to them.

For Tomorrow Review

2005-08-25T16:06:00.000-03:00

Since I'm not getting comic this week because I'm away from my comic shop, I decided to try something a little different this time around. I recently re-read the Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee arc called "For Tomorrow," that ran from issues 204-215. So I decided to review the year-long run after digesting the material in one sitting rather than the original 12 months. I didn't care for it the first time around, but again that may be due to the month long wait between issues, not going back and re-reading. Anyways, here are the covers and the review.

When I first started reading this series, I thought the story was complete garbage and not very well put together at all. Upon a second reading and one that was all in one sitting, I've revised that initial proclamation and updated the story to only mild garbage. There was an overtone of faith and belief throughout the arc which was kind of annoying and once again DC gives us a story that only comes together in the last two issues. The part where Superman created a haven within the Phantom Zone was cool, but more explanation was needed like how exactly he did it. I liked Azzarello on 100 Bullets, but Superman he just can not do.

Jim Lee's art is always fun to look at and that's what really saves this arc. However, what's with Zod's outfit? It looks retarded with that big Z on it. There was no need of that. Even though he's a general, he doesn't seem to be the type to wear armour, especially crappy armour. The designs for Metropia were good and the fight between Supes and Wonder Woman was really well done.

Another interesting thing was the link to Infinite Crisis. The thing they turned the priest into was One Man Army Corps number four and the silhouette looked very much like one Maxwell Lord. It is pretty neat to see the different seeds they planted for October's big event when you look back.

Note

2005-08-19T19:24:00.000-03:00

I'll be gone back to P.E.I. until the first of September, so there won't be any updates until then.

Drawing

2005-08-19T14:33:00.000-03:00

Like most kids, I used to draw quite a bit and my love of comics added to that passion. It's been at least 5-6 years since I last drew something and here is a drawing I finished last night. It's not the best, but I like it considering the time it's been since last picking up a drawing pencil. As well, I'm a copier so I definately didn't come up with this one off the top of my head. Finally, I apologize for the quality of the left hand scan, it didn't really pick up on some stuff. The image on the right is the left one only digitally inked with Gimp. The only thing I don't care for is the "S" shield, but I think the head looks pretty good. The symbol could have looked better if I had a flexi-curve, but they're like $12 and I haven't gotten one yet.

New Comic Day August 17

2005-08-18T03:48:00.000-03:00

Well today is my 23rd birthday and I can think of no better gift than to get new comics (well, I can, but this is a family oriented Blog). Here are the ones that I got today:

Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #5

Here is the conclusion to a worthwhile series. We see Lex orchastrate an elaborate plan to lessen Superman's name in the public eye. Although the story kind of jumps around (ie. the Superman/Batman fight in issue 2 or 3) the main isea is that Lex wants humanity to strive for perfection but he feels they can't when they're already in its prescence. It was an ok series but worth it just to see Lex's perspective on things. Brian Azzarello can't really write Superman stories though in my opinion and he seem to loses focus throughout the story. Lee Bermejo's artwork, however, is very good in this issue and I really like the tweaking of Superman's costume and his physical apperance. Nice that DC actually allows a little creative freedom in this area.

The Walking Dead Series

So I spoiled myself for my birthday and got the trades for The Walking Dead which, in total, collects the first 18 issues of the series. I was staying away from this for a while even though it's pretty popular and I don't really have a reason why other than I was trying to save money. However, I'm glad I got in a TPB mood and got these because it is very good. If you don't know the premise, it focusses on a character named Rick Grimes and his family, along with a bunch of other people trying to survive in a "post-apocolyptic" world where zombies are running rampant. You might be groaning at that, but there is much less focus on the zombies than the survivors and the characterization thereof. It's more of a how-to guide to survive in a zombie infested world and I really enjoy the pacing and the shock value of some of the events that occur. However, if you choose to get this series, I strongly suggest getting the trades rather than getting it monthly. Not only will you save money, but the story is such that you want to devour a buttload of issues in one sitting rather than just get a taster every month.

New Comic Day August 10

2005-08-11T02:25:00.000-03:00

Fables #40

Finally, the Adversary is revealed! I won't tell you who it is, but it's someone that's been mentioned although never seen. I was a bit disappointed myself, since I guessed at it a long while back and I wanted to be surprised. However, the explantion was pretty cool and it makes sense. We see a captured Boy Blue have an interview with the Adversary and I'm looking forward to seeing how he will get out of the Homelands (assuming he does that is). I'm sure people will be pleased and upset with this issue depending if they figured it out like I did or not. A whorthwhile pickup if you've been with the series for a while, but definately not something to read to get into the series.

JLA #117

This was sort of a lackluster issue and the only redeeming point is the end where Superman is faced by the "League within a League" and their decision to vote on the fate of the defeated Secret Society of Super Villains. My guess is that Superman will vote to wipe their minds again, adding further tension between the big three. There's still two parts to this arc and I'm thinking next issue will be Zatanna doing her thing and #119 will be the aftermath leading into Infinite Crisis (which ships the same week). I'm so DC's whore for buying all these tie-ins...

Ultimates Annual #1

The concept of annuals was very prevelent in the 80's and 90's but they fell to the wayside. I really liked them and some Batman and Superman ones come to mind as personal favorites. It's good to see Marvel taking the initiative and bringing them back. This was a very good issue, made better by the fabulous art of Steve Dillon of Preacher fame. It follows the backup super heroes S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Directorate)has created. That in itself is interesting, but as well there is the political aspect as well. By creating and deploying mwta-humans, the states and other countries are kind of entering into a new arms race: who can create the bigger and better super-soldier for example. The cool thing is that if super heroes existed in the real world, this is probably what would happen.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #22

I really enjoyed the surprise factor of this current storyline. Everyone thought it would be a big crossover with the original marvel universe but instead we get a does of zombie super-hero cannibals! I wonder if it will be explained how the original host got the zombie virus or if the final part will just be a zombie bash-fest. I'm really glad Mark Millar is back on the title. I'm not really sure about Grag Land's art though even though he's supposed to be a superstar.

New Comic Day August 3

2005-08-04T02:20:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today and it was a real joy to sit down at kits point and read them while waiting for the fireworks

Serenity #2

WARNING!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS DON'T READ ANY FURTHER BECAUSE THERE MAY BE SPOILERS FOR SERENITY (opening in a theatre near you September 30th). I am such a browncoat it's not even funny! The dialouge in this comic is awesome and you'd think it was a script for an un-dvd-isized episode. Once again the actors were speaking in my head (think I should get that looked at?) and although there wasn't much action from the Serenity crew (aside from Book REALLY clocking Mal), the sub-plot involing the Blue hand guys was really interesting. As well, a character from the series makes an unexpected return (if you're a Firefly nut, you'll likely be able to figure it out.) I said there might be spoilers because this character might die (again! ;) ) in issue 3 and might not make it into the movie. Anyways, top notch issue and if you are a Firefly fan, you owe it to yourself to pick this up.

Ultimate Iron Man #3

This issue was very good (despite my annoyance at waiting an extra week for it) and we get to see Tony grow to be about 15-16. His genius is already evident as he starts making a crude suit of armour that he wants his friend James Rhodes to try on and zap him with. We also learn more about his natural abilities (can regrow limbs) and the ideals that his Dad tries to instill in him. It's really too bad that this series suffers from an erratic shipping schedule which is the only reason I dislike it.

Y: The Last Man #36

Fantastic issue! What a great week for comics! This issue finally reveals what's going on with Beth in the land down under and gives alot of backstory into her and Yorick's relationship. She goes on a aboriginal mind journey that shows her past in flashback and at the end she comes to the realization that Yorick is still alive. Should be interesting to see how she tries to find him, seeing as he's on his way to Japan. Excellent use of the old dot colour technique during the "Beth is a super hero" scene. Very nice touch.

New Avengers #8

Stuff actually happens in this issue! Who would have thought? Spider-woman takes care of The Wrecker in a neat way and we get to see how Tony convinced Wolverine to join. There could have been more Sentry stuff though, but what was there was good and interesting and it sets up the innevitable fight with the Void next issue. It's been suggestd to me that The Sentry is really Thor come back with Loki of Odin messing with him to teach him a lesson or humility, respectively. I can kind of see that because he does look a heckuva lot like the God of Thunder and there was a cameo of thor in flashback that might hint at something. However, I'd like to think the Sentry has been re-included in the MU, but if he is Thor then Bendis likely won't reveal it for another 50 issues or so. Long, drawn-out bastard.

Justice #1

Alex Ross's foray back into a semi-monthly comic series and it doesn't disappoint. However, waiting 2 FRIGGING YEARS to see the completion of the series is a bit of a downer. It will be interesting to see who has been broadcasting the dreams into the minds of the super villains. The only drawback is Braithwaite, whose characters I find to be kind of droopy, flat, and non-dynamic. This wasn't the case throughout the whole issue, just a few spots jumped out at me. Very gorgeous sea-horse though that Aquaman was riding. Here's to 23 more months of Rossy goodness, even though he's a bit of a jerk (See the most recent wizard for an interview).

New Comic Day July 27

2005-07-28T02:30:00.000-03:00

Sorry for the delay folks, last week's comics are up as well as this weeks. My excuse is that I was working on a presentaion for the Graduate Student Seminar series at UBC. I did it on the Science of Superman. You can download the powerpoint presentation by clicking on the superman shield below or on the right toolbar. Look for a pdf as well at some point.

The Science of Superman

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Wonder Woman #219

So here is the conclusion to Sacrifice and it was promised to really change things in the DC universe between the big three, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. Usually when a company says something like this, the even falls short, but not this time. Wonder Woman does something that will definately have severe ramifications as well as people taking sides as to whether she was right or not. I really enjoyed this issue. It had a huge fight scene between Supes and Wonder Woman as well as told a good story. The various artists on the book had ups and downs though with the pages by Rags Morales being the best.

The OMAC Project #4

So I was right when I gave the review where Batman is shown to have gotten the crap kicked out of him. For someone that didn't get the 3 Superman issues as well as Wonder Woman one above, they would be lost, so shame on Rucka for not tying things together a bit better. WE get to see Max's backup plan though and it looks like there's going to be a very Matrix like scenario sometime in the near future for the DC universe. Also an interesting ending which leaves the mystery of Sasha's experiment up in the air. Hopefully Batman gets up and running again soon.

New Comic Day July 20

2005-07-21T20:39:00.000-03:00

Ultimates 2 #7

I really thought that the traitor would be revealed in this issue, but I guess not. We do get to see some retalliation from someone though in regards to the Ultimates middle-east activity which was a surprise. The only thing about this book that is annoying is the shipping schedule (ie. constant lateness). Otherwise it's really interesting. My money is that Hank Pym is the traitor but we'll see what the next year (probably, even though there's only 5-6 issues left in the series) brings. It's also cool to see how the military uses super-beings. If they existed in the real world, I expect, they would be used in military engagements and further the "American Way" across the world. Asses.

Teen Titans #26

Nothing much happened in this issue. It's kind of the aftermath of Superboy's rampage and his thoughts as to whether or not, since he's a clone, he has a soul. Raven shows him that he does. It was a mainly character driven issue which was O.K. but in a week with little action in my books, I was wanting a bit more.

Ex Machina#13

This was a pretty good issue as we see some more of Kremlin. I guess my prediction that this new machine guy was actually him is bogus as he and Bradbury find it and find its blood. The other plot of Mitch doing jury duty also took us for a loop as we see what that crazy guy was up to and why he wanted on the jury as well. I think I'd like it a bit more if the subplots connected a bit more, like the last one did. Maybe things will be tied up later on.

Adventures of Superman #642

So this was the third part of "Sacrifice" and we get to see what's been going on with Superman. The JLA find out it was Maxwell Lord who took control of Supe's brain and when they do he kind goes apeshit on them. It ends in a cliffhanger with Lord makeing a blowjob reference to Wonder Woman. It was a good issue and I'm pleased to see the direction they're taking Superman. He's treated as much more of an outsider rather than a part of the Human race as he should be because he's likely the most powerful being on the planet. It was really cool to see the implications of someone being able to control that power to do bad things to good people.

Girls #3

Attack of the Multiple Women! All hell breaks loose in Ethan's house as the newly hatched egg women attack Ethan, the sheriff and Ethan's ex. Its quite funny to see how easily the poeple of the town think Ethan has powers. Bunch of dumb hicks. This is pretty different from the Luna Brother's former work on Ultra as there seems to be more of a build up towards something rather than having every issue tell a good story. It's still good though; I just liked Ultra a bit more.

All-Star Batman and Robin #1
Well, I caved and jumped on this band wagon too. I think I might only go a few issues though, as Frank Miller's writing style for Batman has definately changed since 1987. And Bruce Wayne saying "I've had my eye on him for quite some time" in reference to a pre-pubescent Dick Grayson is downright unsettling. I don't think it's cool that Batman seems to make the decision for Dick to join him in his "war", They should just left the story well enough alone.

Astonishing X-men #11

Not a very satisfying issue, but I can forgive Whedon if his excuse is that he was finishing up Serenity. It wasn't very well explained how the X-men aren't dead and Prof. X ramming a bus into Danger seemed kind of silly. Huge freakin' sentinal at the end was cool though.

New Comic Day July 13

2005-07-14T02:22:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Serenity #1 (of 3)

Take me out, to the black, tell 'em I ain't comin' back...
Wow. I was really looking forward to this comic as it bridges the gap between the Firefly TV series and the upcoming Serenity movie. Since the TV series only lasted one season it is really nice to see some new stories take place in this 'verse. As I read it, I could hear the actors speaking the words in my head, complete with how I think they would deliver the lines. It was like seeing old friends again. Even though there are two writers to this comic you can see that Joss Whedon did most of it as the dialouge is exquisite and very reminesent of the series. The comics only downfall was the artwork, which I think could have been better, though it wasn't as bad as John Byrne on Action Comics #829 (discussed below). And yes, I did buy three copies of this comic, one for each cover. I can not wait for September 30th. So in summary, if you like science fiction, hell, even if you DON'T like science fiction and just enjoy a well told story with interesting and well developed characters, and haven't seen Firefly, get the DVD collection. Then buy these comics. Then go see Serenity 42 times. You'll be glad you did.

Action Comics #829
The plot thickens a little bit from last week's Superman title as we get into part two of Sacrifice. So we see that Supes is having hallucinations and that when he fought with Brainiac and Darkseid (in this issue), he wasn't really doing that. The end of the issue reveals that he was actually laying the smack down on Batman. I think this is the tie in to the OMAC project as it looked like Max was going to send Supes to do some dirty work at the end of OMAC #3. I'm guessing that part three will show what actually happened and part four, in Wonder Woman #219, there will be a split amongst the big three. I am really interested to see how they explain Batman's injuries (that is, if it's not another hallucination) in OMAC #4 without confusing the hell out of readers who didn't buy into all the crossover junk and just stuck with OMAC. Oh yeah, and John Byrne needs to go back to the 80's where he belongs. His artistic style really rubs me the wrong way.

Fables #39
An excellent issue by all accounts. Prince Charming's character seems to be expanding with his new responsibilities as Mayor, as he is more sympathetic to the Fables than he used to be. As well, the character of Mowgli from the Jungle Book makes his debut and we are left with a cliffhanger telling us that the search for Bigby is on! Definately a great series that you should be reading.

JLA #116

The second part of the Batman showdown with the JLA continues and gives further evidence to the fact that DC's continuity is non-existent until at least Infinite Crisis happens. Batman examples: suffered injuries in OMAC #3, appears to parapalegic in Action Comics #829 (see above) and helps the JLA fight a bunch of super-villains and punch out Hawkman (really cool by the way). When are these events supposed to take place relative to one another? It would be really nice to know. Anyways, the issue isn't too bad if you ignore the above problem. A decent fight scene with the Society of Super-Villains shows them to be quite badass and Batman stonewalling the league's attempts to apologize to him. Good stuff.

New Avengers #7
The first part in the three issue arc regarding The Sentry was as about expected. Bendis draws things out to a ridiculous degree by having a random fight with the Wrecker, with a random meeting between Stark and a bunch of marvel characters (Black Bolt, Prof. X, Namor, Dr. Strange, Reed Richards) which, as far as I can tell, amounted to a wasted 4 pages. And surprise! The Sentry is ACTUALLY in the issue! WOW! Despite the arc being called "The Sentry" he shows up for the final 3 pages and had 15 (short) dialouge ballons and doesn't move from his fetal position hidden in a cave. Brav-fucking-o Bendis; you can force hard earned money out of people's pockets like no bodys business. The only cool thing about the issue, is the very good Spidey quips and the last page which harkens back to the Grant Morrison Animal Man (#19) days.

Invincible #24

After a lengthly six weeks, issue 24 finally comes out. Although good as always, this issue seemed to go by very fast. Some interesting plot threads arise such as, Mark's reunion with his mother, tension with William, a possible arch-nemesis with Angstrom Levy (didn't see that one coming!), and possible upping of Invincible's powers. Lots of cool stuff. I eagerly await issue 25 which is a 48 pager. Maybe that's why this ish didn't seem up to its usual lustrous shine.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #21

So this is the storyline every fan has been waiting for since the Ultimate Universe came out: the crosover between the Ultimate and (so-called) 616 (or original - don't ask) Marvel Universe. Oh the possibilities, the mass marketing, oh the hijinks that could ensue. I can see my wallet draining as we speak....
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Do not continue if you plan to read this book...you have been warned...
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Howevr, this IS NOT that crossover. Throwing everyone I think for a loop, Millar sets up what looks like the original Marvel universe, only to reveal that it was a trick by a Reed Richards from some post-zombification universe, where the FF appear to be, well, zombies. Congradulations Mark Millar, you've kept me on this book. Honestly folks, I am EXTREMELY pleased that the story wasn't what people we expecting and firmly beleive that the two universes should remain seperate. Kudos.

Fantastic Four

2005-07-10T01:40:00.000-03:00

Not a bad flick. Maybe because I had less than zero expectations going in. It's no Batman Begins though. Oh yeah... DR. DOOM IS NOT ELECTRO!!!!

Story

I was very surprised at how good the story was for this film. I went in expecting some weird and goofy film that had nothing of the elements of the FF that I envision. This was definately not the case. An excellent job was done portraying Reed's absent-minded/genius dichotomy, the animosity between Victor and Reed, and the tragic nature of Ben. I was pleased to see Victor offering to help Ben only to betray him. Right out of the comics. The movie could have been a bit longer though, as some parts of the film seemed rushed. As well, Doom's motivation for killing the 4 didn't seem particularly well motivated. For some, losing a girl would be cause for revenge, but Doom shouldn't be the type of guy to be that petty. Another good point was the publicity the heroes received. If you don't know, in the comics the FF's identities are public knowledge and it was good to see this incorporated into the film.

Acting

No qualms about the actors here. Despite the fact FF didn't have a blockbuster cast like Batman Begins, all the actors portrayed their characters very well. Michael Chiklis did a great job showing emotion even through the Thing suit. Chris Evans was such a smart ass that the cheesy lines they showed in the previews are NOT cheesey when you see them in the context of the film. It was also good that the lines were limited to Johnny rather than everyone spouting humourous quips. Despite the obvious T&A factor from Jessica ALba, I think she gave a good performance as Sue Storm. She could have been written to be a bit more scientific, but that's a nitpick. Ioan Gruffudd was a good choice for Reed, but again as a nitpick, he should have been made a little more distracted and absent minded. Julian McMahon was the failing in this movie I think. He didn't come off as megalomaniacal enough and I pictured him having a heavy Eastern-European accent (he is from Latveria). He didn't really have an arrogance about him that I would have liked to see. However, that might come after he becomes the ruler of Latveria.

Special Effects

It was neat to see the powers of the FF come to life. Theere were both good and bad things about them though. First, the good. Invisible Woman is easy, you just fade her out. Her force fields were done well too, although they were blue and not invisible ;) The Thing was not CGI but rather a full body suit that surprisingly didn't look goofy. Human Torch was very cool (haha) and it didn't look too fake. Mr. Fantastic was a tad silly looking at times though, and I think they could have done a better job. Now, Dr. Doom. I knew he had electricity powers going into this film and was prepared to accept it if it made sense for him to have them. Again, DR. DOOM IS NOT ELECTRO!!!! The only reason they gave him the powers is so they could have a big fight at the end. As well, why couldn't they change Doom's voice when he put on that mask, make it more metallic or something. It was terrible. He wasn't menacing at all.. Boo-urns.

Overall

Definately better than I was expecting and might even be worth a purchase. Best scene in the movie is definately the Johnny/Thing/Whip Cream one. Once you see it, you'll know what I mean.

New Comic Day July 6

2005-07-07T00:33:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Superman #219
So I caved and bought the first part of the four part crossover which supposedly takes place between OMAC Project #3 and 4. I don't really see what this issue had to do with OMAC at all and I suspect the link, if it shows up, will be a loose one at best. Poor writing hurts this issue. Since when is Superman a moody, angst ridden hero? Isn't that Batman's job? There wasn't any real tension when Clark's friends were in danger from Brainiac and I actually found it humourous the way they died. Now that I think about it, if the cabin was pressurized, despite the water rushing in, couldn't Supes weld a quick fix and bring the entire Brainiac sub to the surface? Meh, maybe I'll just read the next issue in store to see if it's worth getting.

Y: The Last Man #35
This is the conclusion to the "Girls on Girls" storyline and it wasn't too bad overall. We get to see Yorrick stand up to 355 and try to be a hero to no avail. The last two pages also reintroduce us to the Czech (?) militant who wants to kill Yorrick for some reason. There was a cliffhanger a while back regarding Beth, Yorrick's girlfriend, that I seem to recall was promised to conclude quite soon. I'm looking forward to that. Dr. Mann also finds herself a new woman and that's always nice to see :).

New Comic Day June 29

2005-07-04T13:49:00.000-03:00

Sorry for the delay folks.

Here are the comics I purchased on Wednesday:

I also got The Outsiders #25, the conclusion to the Teen Titans crossover thingy, but couldn't get a cover for it because DC wanted it to be a surprise by having Indigo on the cover standing over defeated comrades. This is what they had on the website:

Pretty dumb eh? Especially since the issue has been out for a week already.

Here's a little review for each (from left to right, top to bottom):

The OMAC Project #3

I expected a big fight between Batman, Sasha, and the OMACs, but all I got was a few page sequence of Batman being all mushy about his former chick. Boo to that. As well, Superman comes out of nowhere to save him when he was supposed to be off investigating something or other . Batman doesn't need to be saved. He could definately swim while being handcuffed. And surprise, surprise, the ending tells the reader to pick up no less than four issues (3 Superman and 1 Wonder Woman) to lead into OMAC #4. There is no reason that this title can not be self contained and it really annoys me.

The Outsiders #25
Speaking of annoyances, this issue was definately not well written. I really liked Judd Winnick on Barry Ween, Boy Genius, but writing superheroes is not his forte. Lines from Lex Luthor like "I guess this is falling on deaf ears." or some such while using a sonic disruptor are not characteristic of the Luthor I envision. The romance between Shift and Indigo was sappy ala Star Wars Episode 2 and 3. Not a book I would EVER get again.

Young Avengers #5

Man, what a week for shitty comics. This one made little to no sense, as do many time travel stories. Ant Girl macking with Iron Lad really came out of nowhere; there was no buildup at all to that. The Vision returned after being dead for like 3 months, only to be shunted to a hard-drive within Iron Lad's armour by Kang. The only thing good about this issue was the ending. Nothing like a good sword through the chest to get the blood pumping, out that is. I may not continue with this series after issue 6.

Wizard #166

This was a decent issue having such articles as "Does Death in Comics Really Matter", and a GL: Rebirth commentary. Some of the news they reported gets my goat though. Another Spider-man event destined to "change the web-slinger's life forever!" is coming up where the teaser is that he gives up being Spider-man. Haven't they done this story like a bajillion times already? God! And don't get me started on "The House of M" junk. This multi-series crossover event is just what comics DIDN'T need. Just because DC is coming out with Infinite Crisis, doesn't mean you have to have Bendis come up with some ridiculous What If...? story in order to sell comics. If the stories are consistent and well written, you shouldn't need this huge event, the fans will still be there. As well, nobody cares about consistency or continuity anymore. Does House of M take place outside of continuity? If so, how do they explain what happened with Wanda and if not, how do they explain all the other Marvel titles happily going about their business? Blarg...I should be E.I.C.

New Comic Day June 22

2005-06-23T01:53:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Girls #2

This is the second issue of the second series by the Luna Brothers and although not quite as good as the first issue, it still has it's moments. The argument between the cop and the main character is pretty good and the dialouge throughout the issue is quite realistic. The second half of the issue has more science fictiony stuff in it and concludes with a VERY bizarre scene. All in all though, this series is shaping up to be very good.

Teen Titans #25

This is the 3rd part in the crossover with the Outsiders and it was much better than the second. Superboy returns and lays another beatdown on the Titans under the orders of Lex Luthor. I'm guessing the next few issue will tie in with the whole "Return of Donna Troy" malarchy that DC is putting out as this issue made several references to her. I for one won't be getting into that kettle of fish and pick up what I need to from Wizard and any other Prolouge that DC puts out. Some of the art in this issue seemed a bit sketchy and rushed though, so that took away from the story somewhat. I imagine there will be a lot of that in the coming months as DC has been faced with some release problems recently, for example the aforementioned "Return of Donna Troy" mini-series. Well the arc finishes in the next issue of Outsiders so it will be interesting to see how things get wrapped up. Hopefully it's better than the previous Outsiders ish.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #20

This was a lackluster finish to the 2 part arc involving a super-smart female villain. I'm seriously considering dropping this series unless this next arc is good. It features a crossover event between the ultimate universe and what I think is the regular marvel universe (groan). If it's not good, then it's going the way of Ultimate Spider-man and X-men

New Avengers #6

Not very much happened this issue other than a bunch of foreshadowing for a conspiracy within S.H.I.E.L.D. The Sentry makes a reappearance next issue so hopefully things pick up. Wolverine so does not need to be on this team. So much for Marvel's continuity.

Batman Begins

2005-06-20T13:09:00.000-03:00

Best. Batman. Ever. There, I've said it, it's out there. Why should you beleive me? The fact of the matter is that this is not only a great Batman movie, it's a great movie all on its own.

Story

It's about time they did this one right. Every Batman movie shows Bruce's parents getting murdered, then cut forward like 20 years and then he's Batman. This one actually fills in the gap between the two showing the struggles he faced on his path towards becomming the Caped Crusader. His training by the League of Shadows was a cool twist in the origin story and made for an interesting personal grudge between Bruce and Ra's Al Ghoul (which I'm not entirely convince should be pronounced "Rawz". I preferred "Raysh" from the animated series.). The way Bruce obtained all his goodies (from Wayne Enterprises R&D) was a good idea rather than having him make all the stuff himself. I was a little worried about having the whole two villains thing (Ra's and Scarecrow) but it was pulled off with neither character being diluted, though it would have been nice to see more Scarecrow action.

Acting

Just because you have a cast of big name actors, doesn't mean you're going to get a great movie (we all remember Ocean's 12). However, the players in this film did a very good job of portraying the essence of every character. Michael Caine gave a wonderful performance as Alfred and though I was sketchy about Gary Oldman as Jim Gordan, he very much reminded me of the cop in Frank Miller's Year One storyline. Cudos. The actor playing Ra's Al Ghoul seemed like a frightening villain who could very well exist out in the real world. Cillian Murphy showed us a weird and demented Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow and as I mentioned above, it would have been nice to see a bit more of him. And last but not least, Christian Bale. Hot damn he makes a great Batman! When he's interrogating Flass (the crooked cop) by dangling him above the street, I got goosebumps from his sheer intensity. This is Batman to a tee. I look forward to seeing him reprise the role (hopefully) several times. I gave it a 4 out of 5 because of Katie Holmes. She didn't really need to be in this movie and I think they included some sort of love interest, just to show Bruce was still human. As well, it kind of takes away from having Batman as this purely singular-goal driven creature. That being said, the ending scene with them was well done and kind of addressed that issue. So maybe 4.5/5.

Special Effects and Sound

Honestly, there didn't seem to be many special effects in this movie. I expected to see an animated Batman (ala Spiderman) sneaking about the rooftops, but there was no instance (that I could tell) of this. The fight scences also all seemed to be done with stuntmen as opposed to digital actors, which I enjoyed. As well, the fight sequences weren't long and drawn out. They were quick and dirty just like a Batman fight should be. If he comes after you, you're going to go down, and go down hard. They really captured the legend of Batman with this movie, not by making it flashy and sexy, but my staying true to the source material.

Now the Batmobile had me worried when I first saw pictures of it, but on screen and in the context of why it was built, it makes perfect sense and it looks really, really cool tearing up the streets of Gotham.

The sound in the movie is top notch and gave a spooky feel to the film. I'll see it again and elaborate a bit more.

Overall

I was really impressed with this movie and it might have to take Spiderman's place as my favorite comic movie ever. I'll definately be seeing it again in theatre and buying whatever "Special Deluxe Edition" dvd they come out with. If you haven't seen it, go see it. If you've seen it, see it again. It's worth it. Hopefully the Superman movie is this good...

New Comic Day June 15

2005-06-16T02:00:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Ex Machina #12

This is the beginning of a new storyline and I notice a pattern developing. There is the regular mayor/political stuff, though it sounds boring, is actually quite interesting then there's the more science-fictionay part about Mitch's powers which is also good. Although having them together in each storyline is done well, I'd rather if one was focused on for several issues then switched up. This might deter from the mystery though regarding the subplots. A good issue with the main thing being the mayor being summonded for jury duty with two subplots: a guy who's very interested in getting on the jury with Mitch and a new Great Machine-like character is seen who fights crime. My prediction is it's Kremlin. Check back when I get issue 16 to see if I'm right.

Prelude to Infinite Crisis

This is a 96 page trade paperback-like issue that collects 3 issues and several parts of issues which have little Infinite Crisis tidbits that have been seeded in the DC Univers for the past 2-3 years. I for one think this was a really good idea on DC's part. Instead of forcing consumers to purchase all the individual issues which lead to Infinite Crisis so they know what's going on, they present key information wrapped up all in one place (and for ONLY $8.00!). As well, like any good movie thats based on a book, it leaves the reader with interest in the original material. I can easily see someone that only had interest in the main mini-series for Infinite Crisis reading this and then going out and searching for all of the back issues to try and piece together the puzzle. Not me personally, but someone. I don't want to know too much about Crisis before it happens because that's what happened for Identity Crisis when I went on the message boards looking at theories. None of that this time around.

Oh yeah, don't let the cover fool you, the actual cover has some cool blue lightning effect around the eye and along the divisions between the four panels.

New Comic Day June 11

2005-06-12T23:03:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased yesterday:

Fables #38

This is the third part of the Homelands storyline and sees Boy Blue enter the Imperial City to dispatch with the Emperor. I enjoyed the previous issue more than this one and it seemed overwith too quickly. However, the surprise cliffhanger ending left me wanting more and judging from the tag for next issue, it seems like we'll be hanging on for quite a while.

Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #4

The true motives behind Lex's Science Spire start to become a bit more clear in this issue, but the series itself seems somewhat disjointed. There is an overall theme of mankind reaching beyond itself, but the context with which that theme is embedded doesn't seem to fit. This is mainly because of issue three I think with the random Batman/Superman encounter. Seems like Azzarello can't be consistent (see his and Jim Lee's recent run on Superman). With one issue left in this mini-series, I don't really see how it will come together.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #19

This is a fill in issue as will be the next, but it wasn't too bad. It was definately more science-fictiony than other issues as a rejected think tank candidate takes over the Baxter building and takes out all the FF members but Reed. Jae Lee's art goes very well with the story and I look forward to the conclusion next issue to see what Reed does to get himself and his teammates out of this pickle.

JLA #115

This is the arc that leads in to Fall's Infinite Crisis series and it wasn't what I was expecting at all. That's not a bad thing though. Someone is giving old villains all of their memories back and they take out the JLA with frighteningly fast efficientcy. Batman is also supposed to confront the JLA about his mindwipe, which is what I was looking for only to be dissapointed. Hopefully next issue.

New Comic Day June 8

2005-06-09T02:54:00.000-03:00

Hi all,
I'm in beautiful (but cloudy/rainy) Whistler, BC this week so won't be able to get my comics until Sunday :( Look for a post then.

New Comic Day June 1

2005-06-02T02:31:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

WE3 Trade Paperback
I was pretty blown away by this three issue mini-series. Morrison's tale of three cybernetically enhanced animals (a dog, cat and rabbit) is very well done and is made more so by Frank Quitely's art and pacing. Several of the pages had a style that I've not really seen before. For example, during the breakout scene there were 4 pages of 18 or so panels each which really slowed down the action to the benefit of the reader! As well, different panel shapes and sizes offered a refreshing visual experience. I could easily see this comic being made into a movie, sort of a Homeward Bound meets Terminator type dealy. Anyways, I highly recommend this trade and here are some more shots of the interior artwork.

Y: The Last Man #34

This was somewhat of a lackluster issue and we see 355 kind of act out of character by yelling at Yorrick. More detail is given as the to the nature of the heroin operation being run, but I didn't really find it interesting. I really want the reason for all the men's death's to become clear/ I realize that's what the book is about, but I feel it's being dragged out a bit too much. At this point in the story, I'm just looking for 355 and Dr. Mann to get bizay again.

Strange #6

This wraps up the mini-series and it did not meet my expectations. I felt the Dormammu fight was way too short and I didn't care for how Strange got godlike. I figured under the extreme stress of the situation, something would open up inside him and enable his inert powers, rather than the Ancient One sending his power to Strange before he died. It didn't seem like Strange was really special and was simply given great power, which didn't really work for me. However, the issue did have some good points. I enjoyed the idea of Strange having to sacrifice everything he ever knew in order to be the sorceror supreme. The artwork was also quite good, despite the cover not being as cool as last month's.

Superman/Batman #20

I didn't really want to get this issue, but was obligated to buy it because I cancelled it after Elfsar had already ordered it. Not a big deal really. This issue starts a new storyline that seems as confusing as the last one. That's one thing about comics lately that really starting to annoy me. The writer's have a story arc in mind, but instead of making each issue of the arc consistent and enjoyable, they make them really confusing for the first 2/3 of it (usually 4 issues) then start explaining stuff in the last few issues. I read comics to be entertained and this method does not do a good job. This is also part of the reason why I stopped getting Ultimate Spider-man. The Hobgoblin arc was SO dragged out, and a few of the issues lacked any real substance. This is the last SB issue I'll get.

Invincible #23

On a similar note to the rant in SB #20, the fact that there aren't really story arcs in Invincible is what makes this series so great. Every issue is consistent and enjoyable without the subplots and forshadowing over-powering the story. #23 is no exception and it was written a little differently that other issues. There were references made to events that happened in previous issues and an editor's text box telling you what issue to find it in. This harkens back to the pre-90's comics where these notes were everywhere in DC and Marvel comics and I thought it was pretty neat. There aren't many times in comics when my eyes bulge out in surprise/shock, but turing the page to see the result of the Viltrumites beating on Allen the Alien. It was like "wow". Again this is why this comic is so good. It actually gives the reader "wow" moments. It's one of the few comics that does.

New Comic Day May 25

2005-05-25T23:42:00.000-03:00

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Secret War: From the Files of Nick Fury #1

Since this series has been so late, Marvel decided to hash out this piece of garbage. I thought it would be an actual comic describing the Secret War Mission and how things went down, but instead I got character profiles of the secret team and a look at Nick Fury's thought process when deciding who would be suitable for the covert ops in Latveria. I didn't even finish it and I doubt if I will. Just goes to show you folks, flip through your comics before you buy them!

Ultimates 2 #6

This was a pretty interesting issue as it had Hank Pym trying to regain some glory by joining the Defenders. It backfires of course and hilarity ensues. The ending is such a tease too! You think the last page will be a reveal of the team's traitor but Millar leaves the reader hanging. This is a series I consistantly enjoy and will be definately sticking on my pull list for a while.

Outsiders #24

This isn't normally a book I get monthly and I only got it because of the tie-in with the Teen Titans. I wasn't terribly impressed and it seemed like the last issue of the Titans except replace Superboy with Indigo and butt-whipped Titans with butt-whipped Outsiders. It may deserve another read though, as I might have missed some things along the way. As well, the art is a different style that what I'm used to, much more dark and gloomy...not sure if I like it or not.

The OMAC Project #2

Finally! Batman explicitly tells the reader that he knows he was mind wiped! Its awesome to see that even though Batman is the ultimate hardass, he's the hero that won't cross the line that the wipers did. I am looking forward to the rest of the run, but supposedly later issues tie in with other books which I'm not a fan of.

Ultimate Iron Man #2

After a long delay, issue two finally arrives and it's not quite as good as the first one, but it's close. We see young Tony being born and the steps his father takes to keep him safe from Stane. Stane comes off as a Lex Luthor type villain rather than just the ambitious buisiness man from #1 and I look forward to him meeting a grisly end (keep your fingers crossed!).

Girls #1

This is the next project from the Luna Brothers (Ultra) and I absolutely loved it. The main character has trouble dealing with girls and goes on a great drunken rant. Every guy can relate to this book because every guy does not understand women. Besides this, there is a mystery regarding a naked girl :D

New Comic Day May 18

2005-05-19T02:09:00.000-03:00

So I've been tinkering around with the Comic Collector program and I really like it. As mentioned in the previous post, I have a link to my collection on the sidebar. Every Wednesday I'll update that as well to include everything I've added in a week for those that are interested. I'm debating whether to include a zipped file of images as well as I'm sure many of you can use them. Let me know if you want this available.

Here are the comics I purchased today:

Here's a little review for each (from left to right, top to bottom):
Ex Machina #11
This issue shows Mayor Hundred as a bit of a prick as he cracks down on the fortune teller "industry" in New York. I can see his point that people are losing their money to these con artists, butI think that's their own problem. His justification is that it will help the economy by diversifying tourist funds, but I disagree. For example: tourist gives money to fortune teller, fortune teller gives money to drug dealer, drug dealer gives money to car salesman for 1976 Ford Mustang. See? That still helps the economy as much as a tourist spending $30 to visit the Empire State Building. But I digress. Similar to the theme of the story, this issue also acts as a portent of things to come, suggesting Hundred will be a super hero again, which should be interesting.

Teen Titans#24
AS you can see by the cover, this issue has Superboy dealing with the fact he's half Lex Luthor. A subliminal command (boy those are popular these days: see Hobgoblin Arc in Ultimate Spider-man) from Luthor has SB shaving his head and ruthlessly attacking the rest of the Titans. All in all, a good issue and I'm sure it has something to do with Infinite Crisis this fall. As well there is a tie-in with the Outsiders for the next two months so I may pick that up as well to get filled in.

The OMAC Project #1 (2nd Printing)
As mentioned in previous posts, I missed the first printing of this and passed on paying $10 for it a week after it was released. I'm glad I picked this up though because it was an interesting read and I assume Sasha Bordeaux will have a big role to play in the (assumed) downfall of Checkmate and Max Lord. Batman's dialouge seemed odd though and I don't think he'd really talk to himself, prefering instead to mull things over in his head. It was somewhat sad to see the way they disposed of Blue Beetle but many people are thinking Ted Kord will reappear as the new Spectre. Seems likely enough knowing DC.

Young Avengers #4
The first three issues were kind of slow in pacing and this one is as well, but it makes up for it by revealing new powers of some of the team and the nature of those powers. The story has to due with time travel though and that usually hurts the brain if you think about it too much. For instance, the fact that current events in the timeline are changing indicate young Kang doesn't return to the future to become old bad Kang, because if he did then time wouldn't change in the first place. Unless however, things are still able to be changed and the longer young Kang remains in the present, the more likely the changes will be permanent (which begs the question why the regular Avengers aren't asking who this strange purple guy is because they never would have met him). I didn't care too much for Kate Hudson's outfit: it looks to much of a Huntress ripoiff to me.

Comic Collector Program

2005-05-17T11:23:00.000-03:00

Hey folks,

I've been made aware, by Jon Ben, of a program called Comic Collector. In short, you can enter all your comic book information and it presents it in a nice, visually appealing way. I played around with it for about 6 hours last night logging some 66 comics into my database. Mark, if you're reading this, then this would be a good program to get.

Although the payoff is nice, the program definately has a drawback: you have to input EVERYTHING yourself. This is fine if you're just getting started in the collecting hobby, but if you have thousands of comics like I do, then it can be a real pain. This failing comes about because there is no online database for comics and comic information. I would like to see the big publishers collaborate to come up with a program like this and have it so if you type in Ultimate Spider-man #60, the cover and all the credits and publishing information come up automatically. Despite this time consuming task, I kind of enjoy it because it gives me an excuse to look through all my comics.

You can literally spend years with this program if you have an extensive collection and if you're a perfectionist like me. I say this because not only can you input the comic information mentioned above, but you can fill in which characters appear in the comics so you can then search your collection for all your books that have that character. A nice feature in my opinion. As well, the program also offers statistical information such as number of comic by a given writer, or with a character in it. Furthermore, it gives me an idea of how much I spend on comics because it keeps track of cover prices as well.

If you're interested, you can download the trial version here. I'll also post a permanent link on the sidebar as well as my collection file which you can download to see exactly what I have in my collection. Furthermore, to help out anyone who chooses to use this program or another one, I'll post some links to websites that have a good amount of cover images that you can associate with your collection.