Review: Prophet #21

Before Wednesday, I knew nothing about Prophet. I'd heard some rumblings, I think, from the dark corners of the comics blogosphere, but nothing that really caught my attention, not even when the book moved into the light. No, none of that was all that interesting, and none of it would have made me go out and by the book.

My guy, though, he hooked me up. You see, I have an at-home-guy and an at-school-guy. Both are really good dudes, both run really great shops. But I see my at-school-guy a lot more. What's great about my at-home-guy, who runs my at-home-store, what's great about him is that he sort of knows me, even though I go in to his shop six times a year at the outside, once or twice over the summer and on breaks. In part, he knows me because we have similar taste, but in part he knows me because he's very, very good at what he does, but, anyway, when he asked me if I had ever read King City and I told him that I hadn't, but that I had heard good things, he told me about this Rob Liefeld relaunch stuff that actually looked like stuff he wanted to read, and so I took a copy and...

...well, sure enough, this is stuff I'd like to read, which is amazing considering how generally and utterly miserable I find Rob Liefeld's work. What's so amazing about this John Prophet, though, the first we've heard from the character since Rob Liefeld's last period of general relevancy, is how much gold Brandon Graham and Simon Roy have panned for out of what was apparently a shit river of a Cable clone. This stuff is really good, as if the apparent volume of John Prophet's muscles is inversely proportional to the quality of the book he's in. Obviously, part of what makes it so good is Roy's art, which about as far from Liefeld (that's the last time his name will come up, I promise), as you can get; it's got this fantastic and malleable thin line, with a deliberately sloppy hesitancy that reminds me of Frank Quitely. That line is what makes the book work: it defines a world that appears to be like ours (and in fact is, in a technical sense, ours) but which is actually nothing like the world that we inhabit. Roy's compositions, too, tend towards mid-range and distance shots: John Prophet, in other words, is inhabiting a world, rather than moving in a world that appears to exist only because of him (although, of course, this is precisely what is going on). Of course, what helps the world Roy made be so convincing is how willing he appears to simply stay out of his colorist's way, and the ambiance that Richard Ballermann gives to the book only just stops short of magnetic.

Brandon Graham does an excellent job, too, considering he's had not only to remake someone else's concept, but explain that remaking to both a brand new audience and those people who actually did like Image Comics in the nineties. I expect he failed on the second front: anyone who dug Youngblood is probably not going to like this too much.

Obviously, this is a good thing.

Prophet's joy is in its subtlety, which is sort of a weird thing to say about a comic that features post-coital cannibalism (did I mention that the sex was with a creature that was definitively non-human? And that the scene transitions with the alien smoking her equivalent of a pipe, and then cutting John Prophet open in order to retrieve an organ that belongs to her? An organ helps her reproduce?). At the end, all we're left with is a man (familiar to some, although only vaguely recognizable) on a mission in a strange new world.
And its a big, wide, dangerous, wonderful one.

Review: Fatale #1

For years, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been making, on and off, what may be the best straight crime stories in post-Code comics. Criminal, at the very least, runs neck and neck with Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s work on 100 Bullets and, although the two series were good at very different things and had very different styles, publishing schedules, and kinds of serial narrative, they shared the same sort of mentality, a quality that I’m just going to go ahead and call “high pulp.” Now, pulp has come to mean a lot of things and, although I’m sure this will be maddening for some you, I’m not going to fight through an attempt to actually define it, only to come up with an overdetermined clunker or a meaning so broad as to be functionally useless. Instead, I’m going to hope that some of you have read Criminal and 100 Bullets or both and know what I mean, that is, that the two share a general luridness and violence which is definitively in the grand tradition of the lowbrow dime-store novel but done so well, with such care and of such obviously quality, that they force a reader, even a reader disinclined towards comics, to remember that sex and murder are two of the great themes of Western literature. Thus, high pulp. 

Of course, the fact that 100 Bullets and Criminal are pulpy doesn’t say very much about their genre, but you don’t have to think very hard to realize that both are, over and above their general pulp qualities, ultimately crime stories (that is, as opposed to detective stories or procedurals). Similarly, although clearly influenced by pulp super heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow rather than their perhaps better known comic book counterparts, Incognito, the second creator-owned universe to spring from the imaginations of Brubaker and Phillips, is unquestionably a superhero story which strives towards (and achieves) a specific kind of aesthetic, a certain recognizable quality.

All of this is basically a long way of saying that pulp, although you sometimes see it used this way and despite the fact that it has some relationship to genre (or at least a certain number of genres which, at the beginning of the twentieth century through to today, tended to be published in anthology magazines or inexpensive paperbacks on low quality paper), is definitively not a genre in itself, not a word that can be used to describe the type or essence of a thing, but one that can be used to describe the way something looks and feels. Or, at least all of this is typically true: with the publication of their new series, Fatale, Brubaker and Phillips have brought their considerable collaborative talents to Image, and have turned those talents away from legitimizing pulp (something I would argue that they were successful at, although, if I’m being completely honest, its pretty obvious that filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino have a lot more to do with this cultural shift than any writer or artist of comic books, although I would also argue that Brubaker and Phillips and Azzarello and Risso and also people like Warren Ellis were at the vanguard of a movement to repulpify comics after the more overtly grim ‘n gritty realism of the eighties and the stylistic excesses of the nineties) towards attempting to transcend pulp’s almost century old status as a style, as a mere lowbrow window dressing, and to reframe it as a genre in itself. 

I know this is a pretty bold claim, and I am also going to admit upfront that what I’m going to talk about has pretty obvious precedents (Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy being examples that I can think of without having to strain myself). But, with that said, bear with me for a second. Fatale is a pretty clear coming together of many of the stock elements that make up pulp stories: there’s the accidental protagonist, there’s a mysterious and beautiful woman (presumably the Fatale of the book’s title), and that woman may or may not be the same as another woman who’s a damsel in distress, there’s a reporter who is nosing around in business that he shouldn’t be, there are crooked cops working a gorey and occult multiple homicide, and an oblique reference to World War II and Occult Nazism and very mysterious strangers and magic and so on. Even more than that, though, I think Sean Phillips has expanded his style a little bit, so that it has the not only the stilted action and comics classicism that is essential to the “high pulp” of Criminal and Incognito but also what looks to me like influences from romance comics, so that not only is the story (that is, the literal story, the plot) a chop shop coupe, but its not trying to hide it, either, and, in fact, it takes a certain pride in emphasizing what it is. Now, the kinds of stories that are labeled “pulp” tend to share elements; this is why I think sometimes the description ends up being totalizing (well, that and the fact that some people just dismiss stories that carry such a label out of hand), but what is going in Fatale is different because it doesn’t appear to have any recognizable genre, or, maybe, because it has bits and pieces of so many recognizable genres and because none of those dominate it, that calling it a horror-romance-procedural-noir seems absurd and that calling it pulp is so much more reasonable and satisfying. 

Here, another comparison with Azzarello and Risso seems enlightening: their new series, Spaceman, is also a nine issue mini (or does nine issues a maxi make?) that features the two creators operating inside the language of dystopian science fiction, that is, outside their typical location at the intersection of sprawling crime epic and allegorical (and, initially, startlingly real) ethical dilemma. Now, if you’ve read 100 Bullets or some of their other work, together and apart, you might be able to see why the two of them might be attracted to this new genre: the application of allegory (a technique, I might that add, that is complicated and almost by its very nature highbrow) was something of an innovation in crime stories, but is a basic part of what makes sci-fi tick. It makes sense, too, that the two creators have added some crime and procedural elements to Spaceman as well. Despite this, however, the story is definitively science fiction, although I suppose the argument could also be made that its a crime story merely set in the future, but it does beg to be labeled as one or the other. Fatale, on the contrary, seems perfectly happy to just be a pulp and, more importantly, pulp seems to be a perfectly satisfying way to describe it.

The two books have other things in common as well, namely a problem with pacing: the second issue of Spaceman followed through on a couple of elements which were introduced in the first, but some of the others were left by the wayside for the third issue. Azzarello and Risso handled it pretty well, though, and it wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been, and that gives me hope for the next few installments of Fatale; still, I would like to have seen some more definitive horror elements. Presumably, they are coming, but after seeing everything else fall into place so nicely, there is a sort of interesting, if expected, small reveal at the end, in the place of what I had hoped would be a much more shocking, much more clarifying, ending. One of the joys of serial storytelling, however, is that pacing is important in the long run as well as in the short and, since one of the other joys of serial storytelling is the consistently awesome team-up of Brubaker and Phillips, I have little doubt that they’ll recover with no problem and in good time.

Mudman #2

The second issue of Paul Grist's excellent Image series, Mudman, seems to exist mostly so that the holes of the first issue, intriguing though they were, might be plugged. Reading it on its own, is, accordingly, a little frustrating; I'm not sure if this way of telling Mudman's origin story, first from the perspective of hero Owen Craig and then again from the perspective of the bank robbers who set in motion the creation of our hero, separated by covers and two months of actual time, is an effective narrative technique. In fact, here it seems like Grist is committing the great sin of comics writing, a sin that he wrote he was trying to avoid in the introduction to the series' first issue, namely, writing for the trade. This part of the story, certainly, is going to read better in a collected edition than it does here, simply because, in order for the story to make sense, a relatively intimate knowledge of what has come before (that is, before in our frame of reference, but concurrently to the events of the first issue) is necessary.

Having read that issue a few times (because it was one of the best single comics of 2011), knowledge isn't really an issue here the way it can be sometimes; my recall on this one seems to be pretty good. That said, it shouldn't be an issue at all; a link in the chain of a serial story is a good, strong, link only when it depends on a basic understanding of what went on, not the ability to exactly review the timeline at any given moment. Because this issue occupies the same timeframe as the last issue, with certain parts lining up so that the two issues make a whole, neither issue actually hangs together on it own, at least plot-wise. I was sort of willing to forgive this last issue, because I thought Grist was doing something formally clever, but it's pretty clear here that, even if he is intentionally mirroring the way comics come together in the construction of his plot, it doesn't really work, at least not here.

Still, Mudman is still an excellent comic book, precisely because this issue, like the last issue, is a masterpiece of the form. If the series so far doesn't appear to quite have the hang of serial storytelling, what it does do well is show that Grist is a master comicsmith, someone who really understands what it is that makes comics (as a medium fundamentally different from other mediums that have a tendency towards serials, say, television or blockbuster movie franchises) tick. There are two, opposite, reasons for this mastery. The first, the more obvious one, is that Grist has an intuitive way of representing sensory input that we usually understand as non-visual in a visual way, particularly subtle things like emphasis in speech. He does the big, bold, BLAMs and so on in an incredibly user friendly way too, but it's the little things, like the increasing line weights on each letter in a climactic use of "SHUT UP," that really shows how good Grist is.

The less obvious evidence of his mastery, though, is how good he is at working with what isn't there, namely, how excellently Grist uses the gutter, how innovative and well-used the interplay between the panels and the absence (that is, the infinity) that exists in the between is. I've dealt with this before, so I'm not going to gush too much about it now, except to say that Mudman is how a comic should be laid out, with a view towards both an aesthetic appeal and a narrative one. The art is similarly consistently brilliant, although Grist has a little trouble with perspective and relative size, a trouble that seems to have to do with his otherwise excellent understanding of negative space.

Mudman, although not a perfect comic book by any means, is a great one, maybe one of the few great ones around right now, and it is this way precisely because it is flawed, precisely because Paul Grist is trying something new and interesting and risky. In some ways, the book is a cautionary tale, a reminder that comics, unlike the visual fine arts, has to have a good working relationship, the appropriate balance, between form and content. Still, although formalism and abstraction are by no means new to the medium, they are new to the populist version of it at the base of what Image Comics (and, by extension, most of the American comics industry) does, and what Grist is doing is gutsy and worth purchasing, particularly if we hope to see more medium bending work like this in the future, from Grist or anyone else.

Quote for the Week 12/20/11

"... I have more of an emotional attachment for these characters than I thought possible. I don't know what else to say that hasn't been said hundreds of times before so I'll just say thank you. Thank you for revitalizing my love of reading. Thank you for making me see comics as valuable entertainment. Thank you for all the wonderful stories you've given me. And thank you for all the ones you still have to tell. ..."

~ "The Walking Dead" reader Jason Winchell writing in to his favorite comics' letter column Letter Hacks with gratitude for the work of writer Robert Kirkman, printed in the back of last week's "The Walking Dead" #92.

Not Just More Grist For The Mill

I didn't even have a chance to get to the comics to figure out that Mudman was just a little bit different. On the inside cover, just to the right of the indicia (you know, the information about the comic and the publisher, that little bit of a periodical that no one but Jon reads) is a little column written by the comicsmith, like the kind you find just before an old letters page. It's got the same sort of pop-philosophizing that those columns have, the same sort of short, terse, joyful sentences that remind you that rarely does anyone do comics just for the paycheck, that everyone who is in the medium is in the medium because they love comics.

It's pretty clear, from reading that little column, that Paul Grist loves the medium, and not only the medium, but the traditional understanding of the medium, and the medium's traditional delivery system: the comic book, "not," he writes, just to be sure that we understand, "floppies of pamphlets or any of those other slightly derogatory terms that people use to belittle the format." He's not talking, either, about "'sequential art' or any of those other terms folks use when they're trying to be clever about comics," nor is he "Writing for the Trade" or "planning on cramming the collections full of 'DVD extras' like deleted scenes, sketches, and 'directors commentaries.'"

Mudman, then, starts out with a little bit of a manifesto, with an explicit declaration of what it is and what it isn't, with a clear warning: what you have in your hands, says Paul Grist, is nothing or more less complicated or clever than a comic book. It's a pretty bold statement, when you think about, and it's one that's entirely unnecessary: Mudman is a hell of a comic book, the kind that is, actually and despite what Grist might like to claim, quite smart in what it has to say about comics, simply because it does well what comics do well, that is, it tells a story through only the essential parts of that story; everything else is left to the reader to fill in.

All comics, of course, operate in that way; the gutter is what makes comics comics. But Grist uses it particularly well, in part because the story he's beginning to tell, of a young Englishman, Owen Craig, who wakes up one morning and finds that he has the capability to become mud, is as much about the gaps in what happens as it is about what we (and he) know to have happened. The plot comes to us in bits and pieces and, in this way, reflects the way that the medium works. Grist is saying something about comics, and he really is being quite clever about it.

It helps that Grist gives the gutters such an important role on his page: rather than force them towards the edges with too many busy panels, the lines that surrond the action are thick and, although he isn't afraid to draw into them every once in a while, more often they invade the space normally occupied by action than the other way around. What's really impressive about it is he doesn't give a centimeter on this particular principle: the gaps are pretty uniformly twice or three times the size they are in most comics. When he does do something funky, it's a good clue that you're supposed to be paying attention: something outside of the normative boundaries of the universe has happened, or is about to happen. The panels, they really are the world that Grist is building, but there's something intriguingly ephemeral and metaphysical about what surronds it.

And that's all before you get to the art. I've wondered for a long time about Chris Samnee's influences and, if Grist's stuff on Jack Staff looks anything like this stuff here, he has got to be one of them. Mudman's got this great look, blocky and stylized and flat, and the characters move without seeming too loose or slippery. Sometimes it gets hard to tell his characters apart, particularly when they're wearing school uniforms, but that very well may be the point. Another side effect of the gutter-width, perhaps intended and perhaps not, is that the art has room, the characters don't feel cramped even though his art is relatively detailed. What's so amazing about that detail is that there is this preponderance of random seeming lines, but even those add to the art, and, upon closer examination, they make the figures complete.

If there's one thing that seems a little off it's how, on initial reading, the plot seems to barely hang together; there are a few things that just seem to be missing. What's sort of goofy about that, though, is that those holes, rather than being frustrating, draw you back into the book, make it seem really interesting and subtle. Whether or not it all fits together, I suspect everything is going to become clear in the next few issues but, whether or not it does, Paul Grist, by not trying to be clever, by embracing the medium as it was, has put together what may very well be the most interesting and important mainstream comic of 2011.

Quote for the Week 11/20/11

"Thing is, I really like comics. Now, when I say comics, I'm not talking about 'sequential art' or any of those other fancy terms folks use when they're trying to be clever about comics. I'm talking about 32 pages of folded paper together with a couple of staples. Comics. Not floppies or pamphlets or any of those other slightly derogatory terms that people use to belittle the format. Comics."

-Paul Grist, on the first page of the first issue of his Image comic Mudman, convincing me to put it on my pull-list even before I've read the damn thing.

The Thin Red Line Between Crap and...

"Red Spike" #1 from Image Comics

In our industry, the decade before the previous decade is commonly considered a dead zone of quality for American comics. The truth of that belief is a matter of some debate. The mainstream seemed to put emphasis on the pure visuals over the story. The characters in these comics tended to be muscle-bound men and women carrying huge guns, covered in gear (mainly pouches) constantly blowing things up. I'm sadly here to tell you comics like that are still being made today. And one of them is the first issue of Image Comics' (@imagecomics) currently ongoing comic-book "Red Spike".

The bombastic cover, at left, by fan-favorite Mark Texeira is pretty emblematic of the interior stuff too:

+ The two male main characters are nearly indistinguishable from each other. One has brown hair, one has black hair. One is a macho adrenaline-junkie, one is... a macho adrenaline-junkie who's also a bit of a jerk.

+ The scientist who made them into controlled-adrenaline ultra-soldiers and the military man who approved it are depicted as nefarious but entirely without unique personalities or even contextual existence. Why are they doing this? Who knows? Is there a mystery at the core of it?

Who knows?

Sometimes, a project just goes wrong. In this case the editor Dave Elliott is also credited as a developer thus no one ever got a chance to say 'Hey, these characters are pretty thin. Maybe we could think a little harder about who they are and show that to the readers before we thrust them into a war-zone.' or 'Is this the whole main conceit of the story? What else could you add to this concept to give this more meat for the reader beyond this one action-oriented idea?' Deadlines loom ever-closer and nobody speaks up and nothing changes.

I fear this project might have been one of those times. @ProjectRedSpike just went wrong.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
I truly and sadly believe this comic does not have a single redeeming quality on which I can recommend it.

I'm shocked to see positive reviews of this material on other sites. [ComicsBulletin.com, I'm looking at you.] There is NOTHING happening in this comic other than entirely predictable action scenes where lots of things explode followed by entirely predictable argument scenes with lots of shadowy military figures. Regular readers of my work know I do not cruelly savage other people's work, nor do I tear people down, but I would be remiss in not steering my readers away from this comic. You won't be seeing a review of issue #2 from me anytime soon.

~ @JonGorga

I Stand Corrected: Here is the San Diego Comic-Con COMICS News

I wrote on the site's Twitter account last night:

LongandShortbox LongandShortbox.com

The #comics news from #SDCC this year was more like a lack of news. Non-news? Nobody's talking much. ~ @JonGorga

13 hours ago

I stand by the third sentiment, i.e. nobody's talking about any of San Diego's announcements. And a great deal of the announcements that were made really were about video games, movies, and television adapted from comics, and had very little to do with Comics. The only thing I hear about again and again is DC's (@DC_NATION) complete loss of the opportunity to salve fears over their relaunching of 52 series at the end of this month, which Josh (@IamJoshKopin) and I have already spoken a great deal about here, here, here, here, and here.

Marvel (@Marvel), Image (@imagecomics), and IDW (@IDWPublishing) were the only companies with new COMICS news at the San Diego Comic-Con this year.

The few small announcements:

+ Brian K. Vaughan is returning to monthly comics with his first series at Image, called "Saga".

[via CosmicBookNews.com]

+ IDW is bringing back the character The Crow in a new series and complementing it with a series of reprint collections.

[via @Robot6]

+ Marvel and J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) will finally be completing "The Twelve" after a hiatus of roughly two years. Some covers are already drawn by the awesome Paolo Rivera (@PaoloMRivera)! This is a long, long time coming.

[via @iFanboy]

+ Josh already posted on the site about Marvel's "Avengers: Origins" series of one-shots giving us new takes on several characters' inceptions here.

Thorough description from Marvel here.

[via @Marvel.com]

+ Marvel has also given us a run-down of their "Fear Itself" aftermath series: "The Fearless", "Battle Scars", and "Shattered Heroes". Superhero characters dealing with death and loss in the wake of the war-like events of "Fear Itself".

"Battle Scars" especially sounds pretty exciting to me because it's being written by "The Sixth Gun" co-creator Cullen Bunn (@cullenbunn)!

[via @Marvel.com]

+ But the most exciting? Marvel intends to counter DC's wildly successful "Earth One" series of graphic novels with a line of GNs called "Season One"!

I covered, in detail, the stages of development and release for "Superman: Earth One" and I will do my best to offer comparable coverage to Marvel.

"Spider-Man: Season One" [preliminary art from which is to the left] will also be written by Cullen Bunn (@cullenbunn). This man is going places. Hell, I'd almost go so far as to say he's arrived.

Surprisingly, unlike DC's original graphic novel line, these stories will attempt to 'play nice' with established continuity. The goal being a shelf-full of fully-fleshed-out book-length comics that lead-into the comic-books on Marvel's New This Week racks. Ambitious. Impossible? Pointless? We'll see.

More original graphic novels giving the characters I love 'feature-length' sequential art stories makes me very happy so, no matter the continuity, I'm looking forward to giving these comics a read.

[via @iFanboy]

And DC had... no news other than the release of some of the costume designs for a few of the relaunching/re-booting characters. This lends credence to the rumor bouncing around that DC rushed to announce their big plans because Rich Johnston (@richjohnston) of BleedingCool.com was going to beat them to their own story. That's the game folks. But if it's true that the company making the boldest move in comics in a decade is playing catch-up? Heaven help us all.

~ @JonGorga

P.S. ~ Side note: It appears Jeph Loeb and the new MARVEL TV division I announced the creation of back in July of 2o1o does still exist and has actually been hard at work on pushing through some new stuff. At least enough to merit a panel talking about it at the big show as iFanboy posted here. Jessica Jones getting her own live-action TV show? And a new live-action Hulk? Cool.

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 1/13/2o1o!

Okay, in light of the epic kinda-sorta-defeat of last week I really should/will buy something this week. But I still need to finish some reviews for stuff from the end of last year, not to mention the 2oo9 year in review posts all three of us are working on!


The weeklies...
"the Amazing Spider-Man" #617
"The Gauntlet" moves on to revamping the Rhino.

"Batman: Wydening Gyre" #4
This Batman mini penned by Kevin Smith has been good fun so far. If the cover is to be taken as a real indication of the contents I think we're finally going to see a lot of the Joker in this title.

"Daytripper" #2
Issue #1 might be on all three of our personal best of 2oo9 lists. That should tell you everything you need to know.

"the Invincible Iron Man" #22
This series might just be the best in mainstream superhero comics right now.

"X-Men Origins: Cyclops" one-shot
Again, these "Origins" one-shots are hit or miss to me. I'll take a look and make a full report of my opinions to you, the consumer.

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #2 of 4
Still haven't read ish #1, but it looks like the comics equivalent of french fries drowned in ketchup, salt, and vinegar. Smells a bit sour, tastes totally sweet, goes down easy.

The books...
"Ed Hannigan: Covered"
I've never heard this man's name but I do know that there were some awesome covers wrapped around some issues of "Peter Parker: the Spectacular Spider-Man" back in the 70s and 80s. So when you combine this with the fact that there's some money going to a guy in bad health who gave something to the industry and the medium, it is something we should all really pick up.

"Rocketbots: Trouble in Time"
This looks like good fun. Sounds like something Pixar would dream up, right?


Okay, the truth? Although I didn't buy anything out of the new material this past week, I ended up breaking and buying some ridiculously good deals yesterday.

I bought: "MySpace Dark Horse Presents" Vol. 3 (which includes an excellent "Serenity" story) and "Acme Novelty Library" #19 for $16.30! That would have been $36 at full retail price. Both were things I'd wanted and planned to get for a while, so I did good.


UPDATE: 1/14/2o1o
There are those weeks when I just think comics are getting better across the board and I'm just lucky enough to be along for the ride.

I picked up the "Ed Hannigan" booklet. It's nice to learn about someone in the industry who I'd never heard of before. I hope that if the day comes when I'm a professional on in years without pension that something like this would happen to give me some badly needed money and recognition.

I picked up "Daytripper" #2, "Widening Gyre" #4, "Amazing" #617, and "Iron Man" #22 because they are excellent comics. All of them.

I picked up "Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #2 because it's continuing to flesh out one of my favorite stories from 80s Marvel history: "The Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars".

I passed on "Origins: Cyclops" because it just seemed to be running over territory we'd seen a billion times and trying to tie it into the current stories. I'm sure those current stories are great, but I don't see the point in structuring an origin revamping one-shot to lead-into ongoing stuff. Unless I missed something, I thought these "X-Men Origins" one-shots were supposed to be cool, timeless re-presentations of X-Men characters in their youth. Why can't they all be like "X-Men Orgins: Jean Grey"? Timeless and of high quality.

I also passed on "Rocketbots". Mainly because I couldn't find it to decide if I wanted to buy it or not.

When are the reviews coming, I could not tell you. But come they will. And they will be good.

We are all three really hard at work on whipping up year-end review posts for you. So be patient!

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 12/16/2oo9

I'ma lookin' forward tah:

"Amazing Spider-Man" #615 (definitely)
Well... someday I'll read this series instead of just buy them and plan to read them. I still need to read #602.

"Ex Machina" #47 (definitely)
I'm not going to NOT read this. The last issues of this series (we're leading up to the final one, #50) have to go out with a bang.

"Cowboy Ninja Viking" #3 (probably)
Jeez read that solicit. How can I not buy this? It is my intention to re-read the first issue with the understanding that it is a comedy and then review it for this site. Then buy and read #2.

"Chimichanga" #1 (maybe)

Huh.

"X-Factor" #200 (maybe)
THIS looks interesting.

"Cable" #21 (maybe)

I must admit the idea that Marvel is doing an X-Men crossover event named "Second Coming" about the red-haired baby-girl who was the first mutant born since the events of the "House of M" crossover returning to the present after escaping to the future and becoming a fully-grown lady is... remarkable. For many reasons.

"Captain America: Reborn" #5 (maybe)

Hey, I'm a sucker for alternate past world stories. Read the preview pages. See what I mean. So cool!

NOTE: The collected paperback edition of "The Life and Times of Savior 28" is solicited to come out this week (earlier than we'd gotten word previously). Although I almost certainly won't be buying this since I have all five issues of the mini-series, I highly recommend the series to all fans of superhero comics. If you 'waited for trade' on this one, you really, really should stick to your guns now.

Well, that's all he wrote.... for now! Be sure to check back in this space to see what I buy!

UPDATE: 12/20/2oo9

Once AGAIN this week some comics could simply not be located: "Chimichanga" #1 and "Cowboy Ninja Viking" #3 are either delayed or got lost in a shipment or something.

Cap Reborn #4 didn't look very good. The preview pages are kind of misleading and... dammit, I don't care about this series anymore. We'll have to see how the last issue is.

"X-Factor" #200 turned out to be an expensive book with a lot of reprints in the back. Short story, bunch of pages of reprints, 5 bucks. Does not compute.

Seeing "The Brave and the Bold" #30 on Josh's pull-list made me curious and when I flipped though it I decided it looked awesome and so I picked it up. It is wonderful.

"Cable" #21 was surprisingly good and you will probably see a review of it from me in the coming weeks.

You will definitely see a review of "Ex Machina" #47 from me soon.

And I picked up Amazing Spidey #615. No surprise there.

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 12/9/2oo9

My thoughts on the comics that interest moi this week!

BIG week:

"the Amazing Spider-Man" #614 (definitely)
Still only beginning to catch up with this book...

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #1 of 4 (probably)

The "Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars" was one of my favorite comics to dig through boxes for in comic shops (sometimes all around the world) when I was a kid, so the idea of dropping in at the BEST moment of the series (the opening of issue #4) and depicting it from my favorite character's POV? I don't even care if this turns out to be out-of-continuity I think I will buy all four!

"Web of Spider-Man" #3 (maybe)

So far I didn't buy #1 and then I bought #2, but mainly only because it was a sale weekend at St. Mark's Comics... Spider-Man never seems to actually show up in these, but I get the feeling they really need to be read to follow the story-line "The Gauntlet" currently going through "Amazing".

"New Avengers Annual" #3 (maybe)
I loved the first annual from a few years ago, felt kind of lukewarm about the second one. Depends on whether the Web-Head shows up. We shall see.

"the Invincible Iron Man" #21 (probably)

Well, the first part of "Stark: Disassembled" in last issue was great (as can be seen in Josh's review here), so we'll see how things move along here. Considering the connections this story should have to the upcoming 'events' from Marvel I should read all of it just to best appreciate "Siege" and whatever the hell "The Heroic Age" will be.

"Daytripper" #1 (probably)
A completely original work from the remarkable team of twins Fabio Moon and Gabriel Bá? Why wouldn't I pick this up?

"Ghostbusters: Past Present Future" (maybe)
The Ghostbusters take on the mythical ghosts of Charles Dickens' classic story "A Christmas Carol"! Deeeeee-lightful!

"God Complex" #1 (maybe)

This looks pretty good to me. Fun, cool, smart.

UPDATE: 12/10/2oo9

So Spidey appears in the "New Avengers Annual". Also? It looks like Bendis is finally going to make sense of the muck he has made out of the character of Hawkeye in this issue. Exciting!

"Web of Spider-Man" by comparison looked okay, but had no Spidey... His name is in the title, right?

"Invincible Iron Man" is really about as excellent as superhero comics get.

"Daytripper" is equally excellent. I can't wait for this series to be complete! It could be truly brilliant.

"God Complex" and the Ghostbusters one-shot? Well, they just seemed a bit too rote, you know? Standard choices being made.

I also took a long and hard look at "Wolverine: Under the Boardwalk" and seriously considered it. Looked very good, but I have TOO MANY COMICS. I passed on it.

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #1? I bought it. I make no apologies.