you have did the right thing when you put that SHIPPING in: June 20, 2007

Yay, stuff to buy for a change -- Brave and the Bold and Spirit.

add this to last week's two comics and I'll probably make an appearance at the shoppe this week:

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4 - PLEASE GIVE ME FAITH IN DC AGAIN!
FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #13 - Already got five copies of this for sale on EBay.
ROBIN #163 - Am trying not to hold Countdown against Beechen (which is not too hard, since I haven't held Countdown against Dini)
SPIRIT #7 - yeh, yeh, KYLE BAKER!
CAPTAIN AMERICA #27 - more Kyle Baker? No.
HERO SQUARED VOL 1 TP (JAN062925) - Because I am desperate for fun comics.
TICK 20TH ANN SP ED #1 - see above.

I found a copy of Death Note Volume 12 at a book store on friday. Do the manga companies not follow the typical Wednesday release schedule?

as for wednesday:
BRAVE AND THE BOLD
CHECKMATE
SPIRIT
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST PROLOGUE
CAPTAIN AMERICA

I almost picked that TICK special up last week, but after flipping through it didn't seem worth six bucks, even with three pages from Edlund.

okay, great, scratch that, then. thanks!

but then, y'know, your tastes may differ.

X-Men: Endangered Species, Captain America, Justice League of C'mon You Guys I Love The Legion Of Super Heroes, and okay, fine, the Flash.

Oh, and Brave and the Bold, didn't see that in there!

I haven't been looking forward to the Tick thing or anything, I just saw it on the list and thought what the heck. Impulse may return if I see it on the shelf.

I found a copy of Death Note Volume 12 at a book store on friday. Do the manga companies not follow the typical Wednesday release schedule?

Not suprising - Diamond/Direct Market and the mainstream bookstore distribution rarely cohere. Though DEATH NOTE's appearance is suprising, because I haven't seen it anywhere.

AS FOR ME-

BRAVE & THE BOLD #4: Can this title get even braver and bolder????
NEW TALES OF OLD PALOMAR #2: REALLY BETO - ARE WE GONNA LEARN ABOUT CHELO'S LOST EYE????
DEATH NOTE VOL. 12: Beaurecratic clauses and subclauses in an unreadable font??? YES!
THE GIRL FROM H.O.P.P.E.R.S.: Sorry KRAZY KAT and SLEEPWALKER - this may be the greatest comic ever.
HUMAN DIASTROPHISM: Extraordinary, yet not quite as good as the title right above it on this list.
YOTSUBA&! VOL. 4: I'm very happy right now.

omg my list is SHRINKING!

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4 -- yayayay COME ON NU-FLASH
COUNTDOWN 45 -- YOU ARE DEAD TO ME after this week, I think
SPIRIT #7 -- yayayayay

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #541 -- unnnnnngh - I want to see this godawful penultimate JMS "epic" through, but it's really really hard for me to give a shit about Vengeful Spidey chasing down gunrunners & talking tough to a seemingly out-of-character Kingpin
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST PROLOGUE -- sorely tempted to not go w/ this, but I enjoyed the 1st one, & have enjoyed DNA's Nova, so I'll give this a go
CAPTAIN AMERICA #27
INCREDIBLE HULK #107 -- yayayayay
IRON MAN #19
IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY #6 (OF 6) -- reminder: purchase that Adam Warren big-breasted-spandex commentary-on-big-breasted-spandex manga thing?
SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #38 -- and if I can't see through JMS' nonsense, then I'll have to cut bait on this, as his FINAL Spidey story will cut through all the Spidey books, before they close shop on 2 and start shipping AMAZING 3 times a month - HUH?
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #110

Garrett, bless you for sticking it out w/ CHECKMATE, because I couldn't stands the OUTSIDERS x-over horseshit.

I have a hard time saying goodbye.

The secret is to read Outsiders so fast that you don't really have time to think about it. Or wait 'til you're really, really drunk.

OMG you're actually buying OUTSIDERS? I was getting irked @ the Winnicking "read my book!" garbage in CHECKMATE!

I'm honestly amazed at how quickly my patience w/ Big Two shenanigans is dwindling.

Just Palomar for me. :>

ONLY the Outsiders that tie-in with Checkmate. And then only so that I may understand what exactly is happening. Not that those happenings are really worth understanding, of course.

Army @ Love yay
Mome when it turns up in bookshop
I'd buy Dave Sim's Collected Letters vol 2 if it wasn't $22 for a fucken POD (and only 230 pp)
what's the Jack Staff special? if it's ace I might stave off the next few years cravings for another TPB. though the last one was so badly printed it might do the job for me.

I wish they'd stagger the Beto and Jaime versions of the new L&R collections. I'm interested in gratuitously rebuying, but instead of "aw twenty bucks, might as well," it's always got to be "hmm forty bucks? don't think I'll bother."

Hopefully last week's TCJ turns up in bookshop.

Army @ Love
Checkmate
Spirit
Captain Americorpse
and Kirby willing, this will be the week I can finally shake free of Countdown.

Oh, and probably some of that Hernandez stuff, too.

From DC solicits:
The Countdown to the end is on! Karate Kid battles Equus!

This... this is shit. I'm not completely unfamiliar with the DC Universe, but when I read this the only thing it brings to mind is a Pat Morita movie fighting a Peter Shaeffer play (now starring nude Harry Potter actor). Sheer madness.

I'm not sure I "get" the new Hernandez collections. There's still stuff missing, yeah? They seem pretty incomplete, just glancing through. Like hardly any of <i>Poison River</i> is in the new Gilberto edition, which is just totally criminal. I like the format, but I have to say I'm glad that I already have all of the original trades.

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #10
EC ARCHIVES TALES FROM THE CRYPT VOL 2 HC

Like hardly any of <i>Poison River</i> is in the new Gilberto edition, which is just totally criminal.

uh that's because ALL of it is in the NEXT one

I guess I'm the only one on board for this X-Men thing huh?

Nope - forgot to list it, tho. I trust Mike Carey (as much as I can someone mired in the House of Ideas these days). FWIW, I also trust Matt Fraction, Eddie B, Greg Pak, Jeff Parker, and, um, I think that's it. Dan Slott RIP ;_;

there's an X-Men thing?

I've been enjoying World War Hulk, which is weird, as I've NEVER cared for the Hulk before. Between that and the next Annihilation (which I can't imagine will be even half as good as the first one), I don't think I can fit another event in. Plus, like this Checkmate / Outsiders nonsense referenced above, it would involve me buying books I have never had any interest in reading otherwise.

I gave Carey's X-Men a shot. Between Bachalo's art, which is great to look at but often really hard to follow, and a completely uninteresting cast of characters, I had to bail after a few issues.

GM, you didn't hear about the WORLD-SHATTERING MIND-CRUSHING NON-SKRULL-HAVING X x-over, ENDANGERED SPECIES? You lucky duck.

I think I'm giving Bachalo way too much rope, but he's definitely gotten better, and there's been a "come on, little buddy" aspect to his recent work that I can't seem to resist - "oh, dude, yeah, three intelligible panels in a row KEEP IT UP!"

Wait, that thing starts this week? I thought that was happening more autumn-ish.

This week is the preamble. Then there's ENDANGERED SPECIES. Then another x-over event right on its ass.

My question: am I the only sucker still slogging thru the non-Ultimate Spidey nonsense?

I couldn't help but notice, David, that your list did not include one BMB. Did I finally (psychically) disabuse you of him?

That wasn't a mistake - he's still OK, but (aside from USM) VERY spotty & inconsistent. I'm just kinda down on him right now. Tho I'm pretty much down on the Big Two right now in total.

Well, "Endangered Species" is just one long preamble -- it's a series of backups that carry us into Messiah Complex, which will come in the fall. I'm just hoping and praying that this upcoming storyline will BRING BACK THE MUTANTS.

It's increasingly obvious that the NO MORE MUTANTS thing was done just so that they could do Civil War.

Uh, I don't really think so, especially given the severe lack of mutie involvement in Civil War garbage. If anything, Civil War came about thanks to a perfect storm of bullshit that some genius thought would be kewl to bring together & use as a springboard for further bullshit.

And I'm not going to give Marvel (or especially DC) any credit for planning ahead, given that most of their writers / editors seem to willfully ignore both the details surrounding these events and the implications of these events.

Someone please start a World War Hulk thread and summarize it all for me. I only know about it through She-Hulk but it doesn't seem too horrible.

so who specifically is gonna have the Messiah complex? at least half the X-Men have risen from the dead, by this point.

Jordan: WORLD WAR HULK

Not knowing all the future events that Marvel is planning and then seeing you guys mention them is entertaining like car wrecks are entertaining.

Endangered Species
Messiah Complex
Annihilation Conquest Prolapse

ARMY @ LOVE #4 (Then watch me bitch over at the Army@Love thread.)
GHOST RIDER #12
INCREDIBLE HULK #107
IRON MAN #19
HEROES FOR HIRE #11 (Likely. We must start preparing for the Day of the Tentacle.)
X-MEN ENDANGERED SPECIES

"aw twenty bucks, might as well,"

More like "fifteen bucks for, like, three-hundred pages of Jaime - hell, yeah!". Plus, it's gonna have "Spring 1982" (which I've yet to read, but important enough for Fantagraphics to list on the FOTC solicit) and "Flies On The Ceiling" (which is worth about a buck a page, by my evaluation), neither of which are in LOCAS.

Nah, I definitely think that Marvel has had a longterm marketing plan with the interest of revitalizing stagnant properties with blockbuster crossovers that dovetail into one another. House Of M was key in boosting the Avengers franchise by tying it with the X-Men franchise, and the second phase was to do Civil War, which is a storyline that would have been impossible in a world overrun with mutants. They put the X-Men in a holding pattern for a year, set things up for another big story, and if they bring back the mutants, they come into a world in which being a mutant is extremely dangerous again thanks to registration.

There's a lot to fuck up because there's a lot of writers and artists and editors, but it's all one big plan, no question.

And I'm not going to give Marvel (or especially DC) any credit for planning ahead, given that most of their writers / editors seem to willfully ignore both the details surrounding these events and the implications of these events.

Um that last sentence there is an accidental quote of David if you didn't already notice.

I figure the Messiah Complex will be Magneto and or Xavier, A-GAIN.

I'm not going to give Marvel (or especially DC) any credit for planning ahead, given that most of their writers / editors seem to willfully ignore both the details surrounding these events and the implications of these events.

anyone reading gutsville?

There's a definite narrative through-line w/r/t Marvel's big crossovers of the past several years. Intimations of some as-yet-revealed power (Skrulls?) behind the scenes and pushing buttons, tipping scales. I only read these things once they're totally over, so it definitely holds together better than it might seem month-to-month.

Well, this is all obviously borne of editorial mandate, and so it's not entirely shocking that some writers and editors might choose to ignore some details, or just be misinformed. It's a workplace like any other, full of egos and miscommunications.

But it's a workplace where continuity is key! If they're going to tout these things as universe-spanning events with widespread ramifications reverberating like amplified farts throughout all corners, AND all but insist that fans follow all these different books in order to get The Real Story, then it'd behoove them to follow through and make sure that Tab A does actually fit into Slot B.

And, note to DC, it'd be better to actually do the fact-checking BEFORE you publish the story, instead of backtracking & fixing boo-boos when collecting the series, like w/ Infinite Crisis. And it'd also behoove you to not tie up loose ends in your year-long footloose whoop-dee-do by spitting out 4 books last-minute addressing these threads in a slipshod manner. But I digress.

Also, Matthew, if you'll allow me my Comic Book Guy moment, the following statement:

"House Of M was key in boosting the Avengers franchise by tying it with the X-Men franchise"

is total bunk. The Avengers boost came w/ Bendis clumsily cleaning house (#500-503) & essentially rebooting the franchise while establishing the foundation that lead the to House of M. There's a ten-month gap between New Avengers #1 and House of M #1. & the Avengers definitely weren't riding any X-coattails during their resurgence, except maybe for Wolverine's involvement, which has been minimal - it's been the Luke Cage / Spider-Man Show from Day 1, and that's what's been selling books. Call me naive - I mean, I'm expecting these ginormous multi-part stories to actually cohere, of course I'm naive - but I'm pretty sure that the OOH WOLVERINE IS IN IT factor doesn't mean a damn thing anymore.

Also: Gutsville (IRVING FRAZIER) is swell, if you can get past the semi-corny gut-related affectations & slang, and just enjoy the story (AND IRVING FRAZIER).

More like "fifteen bucks

A$47.30 for both.

for, like, three-hundred pages of Jaime - hell, yeah!".

300 pages I already have!

<i>But it's a workplace where continuity is key! If they're going to tout these things as universe-spanning events with widespread ramifications reverberating like amplified farts throughout all corners, AND all but insist that fans follow all these different books in order to get The Real Story, then it'd behoove them to follow through and make sure that Tab A does actually fit into Slot B.</i>

In theory, yes! But in practice: NO NO NO NO NO. It's sort of a miracle that Marvel and DC are as cohesive as they are given the chaos that goes on behind the scenes.

I thought Quicksilver would be Messiah - considering he's already fulfilling a similar role right now in X-Factor.

Re: Gutsville: pretty good, like David said, once you ignore the belly-slang. It's like Klarion inside a giant sea monster!.

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4
COUNTDOWN 45 (I'm downloading, and well...wanna go where things go...But if I was paying I'd cut it like most of you guys).
FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #13 let's see what the fuzz is all about
SPIRIT #7

CAPTAIN AMERICA #27
INCREDIBLE HULK #107 WWH is hyper-fun so far
X-MEN ENDANGERED SPECIES ONE-SHOT

Oh, Quicksilver is a good guess!

AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #53
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4
CATWOMAN #68
EX MACHINA #29
FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #13
HELLBLAZER #
SPIRIT #7
WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF KING SIZE SPECIAL #1
INCREDIBLE HULK #107
IRON MAN #19
IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY #6
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #110

I might buy the Dave Sim letters too. But then I guess I'm kinds stoopid.

Well, I bought Countdown after all, so you will not be the only one to bring shame to ilc.

I have purchased Countdown as part of my biweekly mail swag, but have removed the title from my pull list. I weep for my loss.

The post-52 hangover never ends at the ILC!

So what's the comic equivalent of Head-On?

Adamantium claws.

B&B=A1

Man--I _really_ liked Incredible Hulk 107, so much so that I went back and bought the also-quite-good 106.

Jordan, the summary is: Hulk smash.

BASTARDS FORGOT WORLD WAR HULK #1

bastards = me

In other news: WTF SKRULL BABY?!?!?

Also: I read the last 2 issues of Countdown. I do not regret dropping it.

I officially dropped it today, having made up my mind a few weeks ago, but haven't been to the comic shop IN AGES. I felt kinda bad, so I didn't put back the issue of Grifter/Midnighter that somehow made it into my pile instead of The Spirit (which I had to go back for!).
So far I've only read Brave & Bold, which is awesome, despite featuring two characters I didn't really wanna read about (though Batman and Blue Beetle get plenty of face time).

I hate when They Fuck Up My Pull-List! But I have no shame wrt putting the mistakes back on the shelf, even if the store owner is looking directly @ me. (Nowadays, I am in charge of my own pull-list, which means I have to look myself in the eye, which is very unpleasant.)

Oh my god, why I am reading Countdown?.

At least you're not paying for it! (Oh, but I think we all are.)

PS - ENDANGERED SPECIES ONE-SHOT was pleasantly pointless.

Can someone explain to me (although I'm really not sure why I care anyway) what happened in the Lightning Saga? Read very confusing.

um, Legion of 70s Heroes+(wax on, wax off jokes x4)/Wally West=Lightning Lad?

Chuck OTM re: Lightning Saga. That didn't make a damn bit of sense.

As far as I can tell, the version of the Legion that we see in the Lightning Saga is working on a plan that won't be explained until some later date, and it almost certain is key to this Nu-Crisis story that's coming up on the horizon.

I'm actually more confused on what happened to Wally West -- wasn't he just displaced in time or something?

The Endangered Species one-shot was almost certainly the single best X-Men comic in the past two years or so.

Which isn't saying much, but...

okay so i know i don't post here so much anymore, but i did want to pop in and say that Iron Man 19 was perhaps the most awful thing i read in a long time. i also got action comics this week, but maybe i was late on it; i dunno. it's mediocre at best. with an annoying cal ripken insert.

i went to MoCCA's comic art fair thing today, and got a neat Finnish book called "Mystic Sessions" which is great charcoal(?) drawings of a woman playing a drum alternating with "psychedelic"/mostly non-representative full page (BIG) drawings and abstractions. i like it. i was talking to my friend Br1an Ch1pp3ndale about how it is hard for me to go to things like the MoCCA event because I don't read many indie comics, and the ones I do read I mostly read for the art, whereas I follow superhero comics for the writers mostly.

http://www.pitkamies.net/kauppa/index.php?productID=318&PHPSESSID=da194a163a27b415ef22a3c3990a58a8

Mystic Sessions volume 1

a comic book inspired by drone music from sunno))), prurient, melvins, etc. airdrumming is one of the characteristics when listening to this kind of music, because that's what i do. waiting for dale to hit the cymbals and then mimicking that, with force. This combines the almost photographic like drawing style of images from a girl playing drums with more primitive looking images (they reminded me of those 19th japanese horror scrolls). The introduction is in english the rest without words. Quite big format (broadsheet) so if you order this, email me for instructions.

okay so i know i don't post here so much anymore, but i did want to pop in and say that Iron Man 19 was perhaps the most awful thing i read in a long time.

You need to read more! (OR: it wasn't bad! Unless you're objecting re: Marvel's recent usage of Iron Man, in which case - he's probably a Skrull, so don't sweat it.)

Also: ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST = fun! The Phalanx (rubbish X-book villain type; related to Warlock, I think) is the main baddie! Stuff creeped me out! ROM Spaceknights & the Kree homeworld are sucked up! ROCKET RACCOOON: COMING SOON!

Also: me coming into work @ 6:30 AM (after 5ish hrs of sleep) = I need joists installed under my eyelids.

oh dave don't say it was good cuz c'mon you know it wasn't. if i were at home i would point out instances of godawful dialogue. bring back the carnivale d00d, his stuff i liked.

I can't help what my heart doesn't not like!