fashion worth SHIPPING for: June 11, 2008

pour moi:

SALVATION RUN #7--just because the plots of various comics I like seem to hinge on it
TRINITY #2--with trinitrepidation
WILL EISNER'S SPIRIT ARCHIVES VOL. 24--like the Sun City Girls sang, "I wanna go to the MOOOOOON!!!"
COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE VOL. 1 HC--I've always wanted to read this

And hey, READING COMICS is out in paperback in Diamond stores this week!

nice.

nothing for me, but i want to get last week's stuff and that most recent Love & Rockets book.

BPRD, and Trinity maybe.

Good thing for me it's a light week.

Just Action Comics for me, which, as with the rest of us Geoff Johns turncoats on ILC, I am moderately excited about. Braniac!

Um.

Trinity was dorky enough that I think I'm gonna give it a miss -- that backup strip was just awful -- but keep me posted if things improve.

BTW, anyone catch Iron Man last week? Big improvement on the first ish, I thought, and the first Matt Fraction comic I can really get behind. Reminded me a bit of Casanova, minus the wankery. (I know people like Casanova for the wankery, but it gives me a headache.)

nothing. tried to get the latest TCJ last week but the bookshop was shut when I got there, maybe I will fruitlesly try again only to be told that they sold the three copies they ordered within an hour of shelving them, as usual.

ACTION COMICS #866
TRINITY #2
WONDER WOMAN #21
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #562: That Paper Doll arc was really good.
SECRET INVASION WHO DO YOU TRUST
SKAAR SON OF HULK #1: Pak, Pt. 3!
TWELVE #6

Captain Britain
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four
Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust? </secretinvasionsucker>
mmmmaybe the X-Force special </xsucker>

Gah. Nothing that I'm even a little bit excited about. Except for the Little Orphan Annie book, which I had no idea about but which I really shouldn't be buying on my budget. But it's completely okay to blow $20 on comics I could give two shits about. My priorities are totally in order.

nothing but hot moms #11 for me

huh. I hadn't noticed Cpt Britian. That's on the list for me (since, except for New Exiles, I'm still reading every x-related-title). Is anyone else taking a look at the new Eternals thingie?

Booster Gold #1: so am I the only one here who's stuck around this long?
Trinity #2: initially had a longer leash than Countdown, but man, that back-up story was awful...
Amazing Spider-Man #562: I agree with you, Mordy
Last Defenders #4: this has actually been really fun thus far

and wait a sec, what the holy hell is X-Force Ain't No Dog?

ACTION COMICS #866
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #18
GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #9 (OF 9) - This mini-series has been OK. It kind of tied up some of the bad loose ends left from the gang war story lines pre-ONE YEAR LATER. The thing I liked the most about this story has led me to the conclusion that there needs to be a Batbook based around the villains telling stories form their point of view.
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #25 - I couldn't get into the couple of Alpha Lantern issues, but I kind of like this current one about Mongul. Still this book would probably read better at about six issues in a sitting.
TRINITY #2 - I've liked what I have read by Kurt Busiek in the past, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt for a few issues.

Curiosity list...
SKAAR SON OF HULK #1 - The regular Hulk book pretty much has dropped off the Earth and left a hole where the whole Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines went. Considering this is actually going to be by Greg Pak and is back on the war planet, I will probably check it out. I really liked Planet Hulk.

ETERNALS #1 - The artwork looked pretty sharp in the previews, but to be honest, I don't remember much about those characters at all. I probably have them all mixed up with the Inhumans in my mind.

Just Action and Angel for me.

Young Liars, Madman and Spider-Man: With Great Power..., along with whatever two comics from last week (American Splendor, and, um???)
See what I meant about how I hate big weeks, because they make every other week feel like a letdown!

Just read SM #562 and it wasn't bad at all. Is it possible that the last 2 months were just throat-clearing and stuff is gonna be better now?

Hey, is that Aztek TPB that came out last month worth picking up?

Aztek is good, but really frustrating in the end. The cancellation destroyed the pacing, as they slowly introduce the backstory in the first several issues before rushing to an inconclusive finish. Morrison kinda wraps it up in JLA, but overall Aztek is pretty unfulfilling.

Looks like I will be buying no new comics tomorrow... so maybe I will pick up the shop's cheap copy of Hernandez Satyricon.

Add Action to my list, thanks to the good reviews here and my Pavlovian willingness to buy to anything crossing over with the two big summer events.

I flipped through Trinity. If anything, it looked worse than the first issue. PASS, PLEASE.

Oh: the Kirby Eternals collection was in the shop. Did it ship today? I thought for sure that I'd read that it was supposed to be a hardcover, but alas. The only reason I didn't buy it was because I'd rather have it in hardcover if it is or will be available as such. And if it's not or won't be, I might have to knock some Marvel marketing heads together. I don't think those chuckleheads know what the fuck they're doing anymore.

I actually dug Trinity this week. The first half was a bit underdone, and I'm not feeling the main story. But the second half was a lot of fun. I'm sure some people will find Graak's dialogue shticky, but I was amused, and I liked the relationship quickly sketched out between him and Konvict.

Marvel put out an Eternals Omnibus a couple of years ago, all hard-covered and oversized and everything. If it's like the other Omnibi, it probably went out of print in a couple of months or so.

later.

a couple of months or so later.

grr

apparently I did make sense on that first attempt...

Ha ha. I gotcha. I'm so out of the loop, I thought the thing was still on the way. Sooooo I suppose I should snap that thing up if I see it, huh?

I'm still grumbling about the fact that, after buying the first two, I never got around to buying the third and last New X-Men hardcover when it was still in print. Now it's going for $100+ on the used market. Bullshit, Marvel! I cry bullshit!

PPl on Amazon marketplace seem to want silly $$$ for the Eternals H/C now. The paperback Eternals volume I saw in the window of Forbidden Planet today looks as if it only reprints the first half of the series (same as the Black Panther paperbacks)

I am v. broke at the moment but there are lots of great bks out now - that Little Orphan Annie set, the new Captain Marvel Essentials bk (Gil Kane at his dynamic best, miles better than all his weaksauce DC stuff), the on-going Leonard Starr/On Stage strip reprints (up to volume four w/ an Eddie Campbell introduction/cover), even McSweeneys looks pretty tempting...

There was a wicked looking "Batman Interactive Murder at Wayne Manor Mystery" (or something) on the new release shelf with art by David Lapham. I resisted, but just barely.

Woah.

http://dixonverse.net/board/read.php?2,6361,6384#msg-6384

I liked the Agent Brand story in Who To Trust. The rest (esp. Cpt Marvel and Marvel Boy), did nothing for me.

I really liked Aztek, and liked it better once it sped up so insanely. It's a pretty generous size, too. More Morrison than Millar (to me) if you're interested, kinda reads like Grant came up with most of the concepts and Mark came in for tweaking/dialogue.

New Robin writer = Chuck Tatum! That way they don't have to correct all the covers they advanced printed. They can say they were half-right.

More Morrison than Millar (to me) if you're interested, kinda reads like Grant came up with most of the concepts and Mark came in for tweaking/dialogue.

Their usual collabo process was to co-plot and then trade off the main writing on alternate chapters.

last week's Detective was pretty awesome, except for the tacked on Catwoman scene and the ending. The art, ooooooooh baby.

Madman continues to be 100% delicious, despite Kevin Smith references.
Am Splend is what it is (and hey, who'd a thought we'd get two Darwyn Cooke pin-ups in two wildly different comics in the same week?), and I enjoy it. I wish my blog was in comics form!

Spidey: Great Power is a little too earnest, but what, I'm going to quit at ish 4 of 5???

So I bought an issue of 100 Bullets and (god help me) a Star Wars comic.

Am Splend is what it is (and hey, who'd a thought we'd get two Darwyn Cooke pin-ups in two wildly different comics in the same week?)

My only comment with respect to American Splendor is that the Darwyn Cooke cover is probably the weirdest and least representative illustration I've seen of Harvey Pekar, hands down. A coyly-smiling moon? What?

I liked the cover, as a cover/pin-up. It's a story about Cousin Walter, the astronomer, do you see??? It's prolly the weakest story in the issue, aside from the art. And my grandma had a fridge magnet with the same gag as Cooke's Madman back cover (though hers had Kierkegaard and Descartes instead of Socrates and Plato).
Darwyn Cooke: YOU'RE ON NOTICE.

I didn't buy anything current, but I did (c/o my bookstore job) nab the complete hardcover Lee-Ditko Spider-Man backbreaker... for $30!

Haven't read any of them, but presume I'm in for something good. Right?

OH MAN!! Yes, you are. For a second, I was thinking "well, it takes a little while to get good..." And then I realized it doesn't. From the "professional wallflower" thing on pg. 1, it rules. I suspect what I meant to think was "it just keeps getting better."

Now I want to blow off the rest of the work I have to do tonight and go re-read the Sinister Six story.

WTF with Herb Trimpe's pencils in that BPRD thing?

1 - I thought he retired

2 - I thought no one would hire him anymore because of his insistence on framing his characters ass-out all the goddamn time. Which, with Roger the Homonculus as his main character, is an even more unfortunate habit than usual.

Trimpe seems to have become a revered classic creator, perhaps because he is now one of the few survivors of the 60s Marvel era - but he hasn't drawn a decent comic in close to thirty years, and would probably need John Severin again to make his pencils look halfway OK

I think Jonathan Hickman is really a genius and a brilliant new comic talent but... Red Mass for Mars was really disappointing. :(

It's kind of sad that, even when I was a little kid, I associated Herb Trimpe with bad drawing. His renderings of the Hulk used to amuse me to no end.

Well, my one true love Guy Davis inked Trimpe in this thing, and except for all the buttshots, it hardly looked like Trimpe at all, just Davis. I'm thinking the pencils were hardly more than layouts.

Okay, the new Action is pretty awesome, despite my distate for the fawning over Donner's Superman movies (I mean what, his biggest contribution to the mythos is that Lois Lane likes her orange juice freshly squeezed? COME ON.) and despite the fact that of all the staff/story meetings I sat in on during my five years at a minor metropolitan daily, none of 'em looked like that (recommended viewing for anyone who wants to write about Clark Kent's workaday life: Ron Howard's The Paper).