Shipping This Week! - 04.11.24

I doubt I'll be able to get to the store -- relatives arrive tonight, a few days ahead of schedule -- but if I do, it's Jingle Belle, Thunderbolts, Daredevil, Marvel Team-Up, and Powers for me. Wow, is that a Marvel-heavy week.

Flash, Daredevil and probably last week's books like BoP and JLA, if I get around to it.

That Marvel Rant doesn't even make sense! I don't mind though, 9th Art is generally very good.

Luckily, it's a really light week for me since I probably won't make it and haven't been able to make it for the past two weeks. Powers, Powerless, & Elektrathehand.

What, no SUPREME POWER, you FOUR-COLORED GIRLY MAN!?!?

Elektra: The Hand of Supreme Powerlesses

Oh shit, Rebirth #2 is out today! Holy crap, now I have to go to the comic shop! Like NOW baby!

Even though they won't get their shipment for another 2-3 hours.

Stuff I Really, Really Want (Or Feel Obligated to Purchase):

AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #2 (Of 12)
GREEN LANTERN REBIRTH #2 (Of 6)
LOSERS #18
SUPERMAN #211
SLEEPER SEASON TWO #6 (Of 12)
BURGLAR BILL #1 (Of 6)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #514
BLACK WIDOW #3 (Of 6)
DAREDEVIL #67
MYSTIQUE #21 (RIP)
POWERS #6
SUPREME POWER #13
ULTIMATE ELEKTRA #4 (Of 5)
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #13

I'll probably buy The Flash, too, if only to see how all this Top nonsense gets sorted out. And Adam Strange. And the 1st Marvel Team-Up was fun. And that Superman statue's only $195...

Oh shit, Daredevil as well? Cripes. Last week, I was all like, I have conquered my sniveling need to show up every Wed. But now, I'm like, oh crap, what if I miss out!?!

Flash (the final fate of Linda??? ruh roh) and Green Lantern for me. I always go to the comic shop on thursday (if there is something out I want to read) as it is on the way home from work anyway...

Shit, I forgot about Rebirth! I am actually calling my girlfriend now to ask her to stop by and pick it up if she's in the neighborhood (she is showing The Family downtown today).

Alpha Flight has a character named MAJOR MAPLELEAF?

When did AF become the Great Lakes Avengers of the X-books, anyway?

Here I go! Off to the comic store!
To rub shoulders with all the other comic nerds!
Who don't trust each other!

About 12 months prior to getting shitcanned this coming February. Which, of course, doesn't stop Marvel from TPBing the damn thing.

Lordy. It's .... everything She-Hulk dodged. Granted, I'm only going by one issue, and it's not terrible, but it seems like one big misfire -- halfway through I was expecting some kind of indication that this was like a one-issue weirdity, like Assistant Editors Month or the Dimension of Bamfs issue of X-Men, but no.

No Rebirth for me! Oh woe, alack and alas! Fucking nerds with their cars.

Exiles: I really like this series. Why do I always end up picking up one issue, saying "I really like this series," and not reading it again for a year?

FF: !!! D's right, Waid is really good at this. There were four or five moments just in this issue where I thought, damn, this is classic FF like I haven't read since Byrne was writing it.

Emma Frost: I keep wanting to like this, but something doesn't click.

Avengers: The more often Dr Strange is brought in as a deus ex machina, the more remote the chances of a successful Dr Strange solo series become.

ASM: I think I like hearing about this more than I like reading it. All event, not a lot of story.

Black Widow: Just not clicking at all, which is a shame.

Dr Spectrum: More of the same, which is to say not bad, but not grabbing me -- much like the Supreme Power of which it's a spinoff, but moreso.

Identity Disc: ... ugh.

Flash: Okay, after the collossal let down w/r/t Barry Allen's not-so-shocking secret last issue, the Top seems like a real dangerous dude. Howard Porter's art, though, brilliant.

Daredevil: Why does Robert Duvall hate Matt Murdock so much? Maybe I'll never understand the Marvel Universe.

Did you read the interview with Geoff Johns at Newsarama, Huck? (I don't have the link handy, but it's still on the front page.) He got a little snippy, but talked about the Flash and Identity Crisis and how the two storylines were planned out together, it's interesting.

Yeah, I did. He's a difficult guy to pin down. He'll do everything to make you think he's a Wardian Silver Age Old Guarder, but then he'll do something unabashedly forward thinking. I think that's one of the reasons I like him like I do.
Have you been reading the Titans of Tomorrow storyline in Teen Titans? It's pretty good, even though I think teen heroes are lame. There's what seems to be some pretty pointed criticism of Identity Crisis, yet there he is in Flash and JSA, taking full part in the craziness.

I haven't been, but I've been thinking of checking it out -- maybe I'll go on a DC spree soon.

The Flash was pretty good and the SHOCK REVELATIONS make the upcoming Rogue Wars malarkey a lot more interesting. I did keep expecting Count Vertigo to ring up the Top and ask for his schtick back though. Good to see that Linda is OK - I was expecting some Identity Crisis tie-in nastiness to befall her. Next month: Captain Boomerang 2: Electric Boogaloo!!!

Oh yeah, next month in Flash is gonna be awesome. I love super-funerals, and feel cheated that I missed out on so many during the 90s. Though from what I've read in reprints, none of them come close to the awesome funeral for Mr. Miracle in Justice League (even though it was clear ahead of time to readers that it was only a replacement robot who died, MM still got the full Justice League funeral). Okay, Metamorpho's funeral in an early Morrison JLA was pretty rad (even though Porter wasn't a very good artist yet).

I just got an email from my local comic shop owner.

"Hey, I heard you didn't get a Green Lantern. I think it's time you started a file here."

I, Nerdicus.

Oh my gosh. Ohmygosh. omgsh.
On my way home from work (i stopped at the mall to buy the Spongebob soundtrack, too) i stopped by the comic store that's downtown that I don't particulary like AND THEY HAD ONE ISSUE OF GL:R LEFT!!! I bought it and I haven't read it. But I'm going to. Oh yes. Yes, I will.

GLR: Not gonna say anything cause I don't know if Huck's read it. I liked it.

Thunderbolts: The plot continues to thicken. Given that FabNic's first run on the book was the most convoluted -- in a not-a-bad-thing way -- run I can think of on a non-X-Men Marvel book, with subplots running for over a year before their relevance became clear, I expect this will be similar. These days, it may benefit some from being rapidly TPBed. I'm not sure I like #1's Last Page Reveal, mostly because I'm not sold on its necessity, and it felt like it's only in the mix so they could have a Last Page Reveal like vol. 1 did.

Marvel Team-Up: Spidey/Wolverine done funny, without being like Spidey/Wolverine in the Ultimate Spidey story from a couple months ago. I'm starting to like this Kirkman guy, and he's prolific as fuck. Next month -- FF/Dr Strange, with Moon Knight!

Ultimate Spidey: Nice to see how the Spidey/Torch friendship is developing in Ultimateland. With Spidey the well-known hero before the FF make their public debut, instead of the other way around like in the regular MU, it makes for an interesting mix; I like that Bendis wrote this two-parter in a way that can lay the groundwork for stuff going on in Ultimateland ten years from now, instead of just rushing to the "heroes team up!" moment.

She-Hulk: My favorite Marvel book now. Nice Howard the Duck cameo.

Jingle Belle: I love this every year, and this time is no exception.

Such courtesy!
Yeah, I've read it now. More impressed with EVS's art than before, check out Kilowog's eyes!
I love tension-cranking issues (see Flash #214) like this.

Yeah, this hit just the right balance, somehow, between "oh hey I think I have an inkling of what's going on" and "holy crap what the hell is going on?" -- which is something I like about Identity Crisis, come to think of it, but things seem more focused here. Kilowog, holy crap!

I haven't read GL since Judd Winick's first few issues (not because I didn't like his run but because I stopped reading a lot of comics at the time, for money reasons) -- is there anything huge I'm missing? I mean, I know the Corps is back, although I don't know the specifics of how or why, or why there are Guardians other than Ganthet again (that may be a pre-Winick thing I just don't remember) -- but I don't know if I need to know those things.

Comic shop owner is worried that GLR will make for a good story but that they'll quickly run out of good Hal Jordan stories to tell again, or that yet another Hal vs Tattooed Man matchup a year from now will be a letdown after a big dramatic return.

Not related to GLR but to STW threads in general: I nearly always end up picking up comics on Saturdays, which means it's nearly always the same guy in the store at the time, and we have largely the same tastes and are reading the same things (he reads more titles than I do, but I tend to get around to reading them before he does). So whenever I go in, we end up talking for 5-10 minutes about whatever -- whether Thor is a viable solo character, the fucked-upness that is Sugar Man, the greatness that is Priest.

My girlfriend's always around for these discussions, but even though she's been reading comics for I guess ten years or so, that's still fifteen years less than me, and she's missed a lot of developments in the Marvel and DC Universes (she's following Identity Crisis vicariously, but the most interesting part for her is my explaining the backstory). So every other week or so now, I end up spending about half an hour explaining whatever bits of Marvel/DC/Image history came up, which is fun.

I'm really glad that I've started a pull file at my comic sho, because now I can go there at my leisure and really enjoy the experience instead of trying to squeeze it in on Wed. between a glut of meetings and my radio show and whatever else invariably comes up during the week. A casual Saturday or even Sunday perusal just seems right.

Kilowog, over the years, has been gradually anthropomorphosized to the point where he might as well have had 4 fingers. I'm glad to see him get bug-eyed and weirder. That was always part of the fun of GLC stories, seeing what kooky beings the artists could come up with. All the plants, the Wolfman, the sentient energy, Mogo, Driq. When Kilowog first showed up he was supposed to be kind of freaky and scary.

Yeah, Johns is going to have his work cut out for him with GL's enemies, so far though, he's rehabbed two of the goofiest (Hector Hammond and Black Hand--who traditionally speaks mainly in cliche), but Tattooed Man and Goldface might be best left to the inevitable G'nort fill-in issues.