Shipping This Week! (040714)

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Because I just found a Skittle under my keyboard! This is the best Friday EVER! Would you like to see what shipped, perchance?

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 14:43 (twenty years ago)

Reasons why my comic store is giving me the gasface (though it might be my own fault):

- Pulse #4
- Gotham Central #21

THEY ARE ON MY PULL LIST YOU HAIRY GNOLLS!

Also, god forbid the store should actually order copies of, say, _Love Fights_ & _Eightball_ on the offchance that a non-subscriber might want to check them out. But buy 50 more copies of Chu(k Aust3n's X-Men Donkey Punch, please! (Commerce sux.)

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

Dude, new Fables and new Freaks of the Heartland. It's a good week for F!

And new Battle Royale!

Not much for me beyond that, but I didn't go last week so stuff will have accumulated.

Has Pulse been good?

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

I made a rare Wednesday appearance at the comic shop.
Got:
Green Lantern/Green Arrow Vol. 2: collecting the classic early 70s "socially aware" run by O'Neill and Adams. Rocks pretty hard and is full of stuff that seems pretty goofy by today's standards, like Green Arrow discovering he likes that rock & roll sound while Green Lantern prefers Dixieland! Dixieland!
Identity Crisis #2: Holy cow!
Superman/Batman #12 (which was scheduled for last week, but shipped this week): I'm such a loser for continuing to buy this. The first 3 issues were great, the next 3 were all right, but since then it's been Turd City.
Gotham Central #s 19, 20, 21: Haven't read them yet, but I'm really excited to. Very finely written and drawn series.

They were all out of the Green Arrow again. I guess this means I need to start a file. Boy do I suck.

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago)

I don't know! I was grown-ass poor when the series started, and the eBay dealer I bought the first 3 issues from decided to go AWOL. (And the bastard was gonna send me some _New Frontier_ backs, too!) The preview of the 1st issue (I read it in a Marvel Previews) didn't strike me as unadulterated Bendisy greatness, but I have faith.

Also - if anyone drops any spoilers about the newest issues of Identity Crisis or Ultimate Spidey on this thread before I get to readin' them, I will eat your genocide.

Speaking of eating genocide, I'll link to my post regarding the return of ROB LIEFELD'S X-FORCE so StanLeeee Leeeeeiber won't have to content with any direct taint.

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago)

I was wondering if the GL/GA TPB was the O'Neill stuff or not -- I have it printed as "Hard Travellin Heroes" (and "vol 2" or "More HTH," I forget which). The mix of cheesiness and rockingness really is amazing. (Like the famous "working for the blue skins to save the orange skins, but what about the black skins?" scene, or however it went: simultaneously cheesy and GREAT.)

Oh my God, if anyone spoils Ultimate Spidey for you I will COOK THEM for you to eat them.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 14:58 (twenty years ago)

Also - if anyone drops any spoilers about the newest issues of Identity Crisis...

What you mean like the revelation that Ronnie Raymond is actually the love child of Solomon Grundy and Big Barda?

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 14:59 (twenty years ago)

Or that Zatanna is actually a MAN!!!

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 15:00 (twenty years ago)

OMG did they kill Oberon?!?!?

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:02 (twenty years ago)

MANTANNA

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:03 (twenty years ago)

Back the GL/GA, it drives me nuts that the only thing you ever see Oliver Queen eat is chili. Okay, he likes chili, and he likes it hot. But there's no way a guy who eats that many kidney beans soaked in tobasco would ever be allowed into a controlled atmosphere like the Justice League Satellite. I'm just saying, maybe it's not just his politics they disagreed with.

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 15:04 (twenty years ago)

Dude, he has an epazote arrow, obviously!

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:06 (twenty years ago)

Sinep, kcut rednu sgel!

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 15:06 (twenty years ago)

Also from the GL/GA, there's the story "What Can One Man Do?" where GA ponders running for mayor of Star City. He calls his buddies to get advice, and one of them includes FORMER SENATOR Bruce Wayne!
When was Bruce Wayne a senator? Was he a state or federal senator? I remember when Batgirl was a congresswoman and when the Batcave moved downtown, but Senator Bruce Wayne?

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 15:08 (twenty years ago)

PS x-postorama - her/his fishnets make an appearance in the 1st issue of _Books of Magic: You'll Buy Anything Vertigo_. (Decent first ish, BTW - Dean Ormston (sic?) draws neat floating eyeballs.)

Huck, would you be shocked if there was a version of Neal Adams' "Speedy shooting up" cover somewhere in the DC morgue, with GA in Speedy's place holding a tube of Prep H instead of a syringe?

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago)

Wait a sec - the cave went DOWNTOWN?

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:10 (twenty years ago)

I won't be able to make it to the comic shop until next week, but I'm all about the Fables and the Grant Morrison Mystery in Space.

Btw, have we yet discussed the too-good-to-be-true news that Chuck Austen QUIT ALL OF HIS X-MEN BOOKS?!

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 16 July 2004 15:11 (twenty years ago)

Xpost

Oh yeah, in the very late 60s, at Dick Grayson's suggestion (he was off to Hudson University anyway) Bruce Wayne moved in to the penthouse at Wayne Towers and had a cave built underneath. He even took a few of the trophies. The idea was that being centrally located gave him a much better vantage point for fighting crime in the city.

― Huck, Friday, 16 July 2004 15:29 (twenty years ago)

BONE CROWN OF HORNS TPB!!!!!

Ok last week but still.

― The Dreaded Rear Admiral (Leee), Friday, 16 July 2004 16:59 (twenty years ago)

Jordan, your excitement almost makes me forget that Senor Austen was only on 1 of the 382 X-books. Actually, I believe Austen is leaving Marvel totally, supposedly because (according to an interview I shall liberally paraphrase) he couldn't be as blue as he wanted to be. Here's the actual interview.

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 18:00 (twenty years ago)

I guess it only seemed like more when he was writing fill-in issues for Uncanny, Ultimate, Exiles, whatever else. Not that I read them...hope he has fun writing edgy and independent shit instead of X-shit.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 16 July 2004 18:38 (twenty years ago)

what's the appeal of X-Men anyway? I've never been into them or even read them, though the movies are okay.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Friday, 16 July 2004 18:53 (twenty years ago)

Unless you read the books during puberty (or you've given Grant Morrison's run a try, as that might actually appeal to non-fans as well as obsessive hairy palmed folks like yrs truly), you'll never know.

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 16 July 2004 18:58 (twenty years ago)

I classify it as one of those Rewarding Investment things -- X-Men, maybe Dr Who, definitely Babylon 5, Legion of Super Heroes, Buffy, the X-Files, maybe some other stuff -- that rarely makes its appeal known in a glance unless it's with a filler episode (which is, itself, least appealing to the long-term fans). But it gets better as you become more invested in it and recognize the tropes and typical stories of the sub-sub-sub-genre of that one show/comic/whatever. Eventually it becomes something you can stop paying attention to altogether and still appreciate, on some level, hearing about new developments in it even years later.

From another point of view, one of the appeals of the X-material relative to the rest of the Marvel Universe is that -- with respect to each individual character -- it cuts a major element out of the Superhero: the origin story. Every damn mutant has the samn damn origin story: something blipped instead of blooping, and instead of being born with hypercephalopodia or no testicles, they got wings and laser eyes.

Boom. There you go. Get it accepted once, and it'll always be accepted: you won't write your 1000th mutant character and suddenly have readers go, "Waaaait a minute, I don't buy this origin story." You're eliminating a possible weakness right from the start -- no more worrying about radioactive spiders or mongoose blood transfusions, but it's somehow more resonant and believable (probably because we already have thousands of years of stories about people being born special) than "a comet passed by and gave people magic powers" or "the white event" or whatever the Wild Cards thing was.

(The flipside is that you remove "problems or revelations vis-a-vis the hero's origin" as a trope of the genre, which wound up being balanced out by "problems or revelations vis-a-vis ALL OF MUTANTKIND" taking its place ... a little too often.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 19:24 (twenty years ago)

(The movies are a remarkable achievement in that they manage to be good without having the resources necessary for that "Rewarding Investment" thing. Imagine the difficulty of making an X-Files movie that not only didn't share continuity with the TV show but was aimed at an audience so wide that the movie had to be aimed at people who'd never even heard of the show.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 16 July 2004 19:26 (twenty years ago)

Since we decided not to bother seeing I Robot unless we're really in the mood for a new theatrical movie later in the summer, I went to the store today instead of tomorrow (there's a causal relationship there):

Powers: woo! No more a woo than the last few issues, though, and maybe slightly less of one -- not because I didn't like this issue but because I liked the others a lot. The recent events, though, I don't know, more has to happen before I'm excited about them.

Y the Last Man: actually, same reaction. One of my favorite things about this series is the worldbuilding, but this issue felt like it was just another slow sitdown with the setting. Very little happens between the first and last page.

Swamp Thing: Hrm. I don't know. I dig it, but it's still dealing with old loose ends, so I have no sense yet for what the series will be like when it comes into its own. Constantine seems off tone.

Supreme Power: This is the first issue since maybe #2 to really intrigue me, because of the series' pace -- I'm glad the girlfriend is into it enough to keep it on the list, or I would've dropped it by now, as much as I love this creative team.

Picked up, but haven't yet read, Fables, Mystery in Space, and the last two issues of G.I. Joe.

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 17 July 2004 00:05 (twenty years ago)

Oh, and the stuff I subscribe to --

Ultimate Spidey: Damn I love Bendis writing Spidey.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Digging this. Want to see Doom/Van Damme. Want someone to at least acknowledge Jean-Claude Van Damme. The slow burn of the characters' exploration of their powers and side-effects thereof (and the repeated mention of internal organs): Classic.

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 17 July 2004 00:10 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure "Rewarding Investment" is the right word, Tep. I can't think of any of the X-Fans I know or knew who really enjoy the comic(s) more than when they first started reading them. This was what lay behind the squabbles on ILC about the X-Axis: here is a guy who clearly enjoys (even a little) barely half of the comics he feels bounden to read each month - WHY DOES HE DO IT??

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Saturday, 17 July 2004 13:14 (twenty years ago)

Do you have to enjoy it more, though, necessarily? I didn't enjoy the last three years of Buffy more than the first three years, either -- but I certainly enjoyed the last three more than if I hadn't watched the first three, if you see what I mean. I think there's sort of a curve at the beginning -- a learning curve, I guess -- and then it (generally, sometimes, always?) plateaus.

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 17 July 2004 18:02 (twenty years ago)

Having been a Legion of Super-Heroes reader for many years, I understand what you mean. Of all the relaunches and reboots of that series, the only one I enjoyed was the "Five Years Later" which started out very Bladerunnery in that sort of small, personal story set in a dystopian future kind of way, but also had the universe destroyed and rebuilt several times over in the first five issues. It was pretty confusing, but the first 12 or 13 issues were brilliant.

― Huck, Monday, 19 July 2004 14:15 (twenty years ago)

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