Shipping This Week! -- 05.02.23

BPRD THE DEAD #4 (OF 5)

BATMAN #637
FLASH #219
LOSERS #21 (MR)
SEVEN SOLDIERS #0
SKIZZ TP
SLEEPER SEASON TWO #9 (OF 12) (MR)
SOLO #3
WONDER WOMAN #213

BURGLAR BILL #2 (OF 6)

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #517
AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #8 (OF 8)
BLACK WIDOW #6 (OF 6)
FANTASTIC FOUR #523
MYSTIQUE #24
POWERS #9 (MR)
SPIDER MAN HUMAN TORCH #2 (OF 5)
ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE #5 (Of 5)
X-MEN #167
X-MEN PHOENIX ENDSONG #3 (OF 5)

Maybe I can afford that $50 Promethea after all.

Except my reason's the opposite! I don't keep track of where I put issues. We live in a college town, so the apartments have no storage space -- my closet is filled, sitcom-style, with three layers of boxes, floor to ceiling. There's nowhere to put organized longboxes.

I treat the per-issue price as analogous to the cost of seeing a movie in the theater, or paying for Encore, vs buying something on DVD if it's something I want to rewatch.

Oh, crap, looks like I didn't have my hands on homerow.

You bet.

Oldish dog-owning dood was there. We were schmoozing. Noticed that my pulls for the week were missing a few things (including Seven Soldiers!, which I would've forgotten about were it not for the big SCREAMING GRANT MORRISON poster next to the register). Mention this to the dood. Dood mentions that he saw my "STOP PULLS" note - which is still a note, BTW, just a small scrap of paper hovering around the PC that'll probably get misplaced - and thought that, since I was gonzo, he'd stop pulling newerish things for me to "help me out". This, of course, comes a few weeks after I was told by another guy that there was 2 months' worth of stuff coming that was earmarked for me, and I promised to continue coming back until the stuff "ordered" for me was in and gone.

Now THIS guy's saying, "Oh, they (the owner & the other guy) are just saying that; if you don't show up, they'll just sell your books to someone else; don't worry about it." And, to prove this point, I ask if there are any copies of SS #0 lying around - dood goes into someone else's pull box (IN THE BACK) and fishes out a copy. "Oh, don't worry about it", dood says, sort of kiddingly, when I wonder about the propriety of this (though, speaking as both beneficiary and victim, this store's notorious for pulling bait-and-switches w/ people's pulls based on who's asking). "I don't like him that much anyway." Well boy howdy!

So, yeah, the bait is now officially cut, and I am free (in my mind) to give my business to a Question-faced NYC-based retail comic emporium that might lack in the chat dept., but will HOPEFULLY not lack in the "please to send me what I checked off here and what I'm pre-paying for" dept. (And, really, after the exchange I had w/ the dood re: the new Zatanna and her fishnets, I could probably do w/ some non-chatting. And some hot hot hot baths.)

Yeah, this post is long. And it probably doesn't belong in this thread. But, hey, SEVEN SOLDIERS! Stupid book-related hoohah to follow.

SEVEN SOLDIERS #0: I don't necessarily agree w/ Dan's SS = X-Statix hypothesis - X-Statix was brought together in a super-sexy-crass attempt to garner fame & money and all the good stuff that comes along w/ such stuff. The team in SS is looking for fame & glory, sure, but in an almost idealistic, naive way? As in, "we are HEROES, we must be HEROIC"! Regardless, this was great, semi-confounding stuff, from the "origin" of "I, Spider" to the simultaneous abuse and redemption of superteam cliches ("I hate you" / "I will sex you") to the nice & tidy epilogue tying in to the minis that will follow. And it was nice to have the plain-jane JH Williams in effect & abundance here - the sporadic and brief appearances of Technicolor-Kool-Aid JH Williams were made more spectacular as a result. I loved looking @ Promethea - & even reading it, occasionally - but a lot of times the glory and splendor of the art overwhelmed me. (I never read Blueberry, but the illustrations of the cowboy guy made me think of Moebius - was that just me?)

In case you folks haven't checked it out yet - the last page shows the release schedule of the SS books. One every 2 weeks, alternating between concurrently running minis, starting in 2 weeks (SHINING KNIGHT #1!!!) and running through April of 2006.

Huk, I WISH my store did that - when I was a wee lad, my hometown store (at which the owner of the store I am not liking so much worked at!) looked out for me. Granted, I was funneling all of my paper route moolah into their register, so maybe that was why, but still. Any related pulls I got were always based on the characters in the books I bought, and they always seemed to be the CRAP ones - "No, I will not save you any good Spidey or X minis like Spidey / Human Torch or Phoenix: Endsong, but, yes, you WILL love Wolverine: The End".

Whenever I'd talk comix w/ the owner, he seemed woefully out of touch (and not just because he couldn't pronounce Ex Machina) - maybe it's just me, but if I'm keying the store owner into news & stuff that I'd imagine he should be aware of for the sake of his business, I get worried. Not that I expect him to know everything (like me), but, sheesh, know about the new Captain America & Iron Man news, would ya? Also - READ ONE BOOK that's not the Kelly / Mahnke JLA.

The only problem I've had at my store isn't a real problem: I usually go in on Saturdays, and the guy who works weekends doesn't get his comics until his shift, so if I ask him about a new comic, he hasn't read it yet. Big whoop.

Problem #1 - it's a "collectible's store", meaning that 90% of the floor space is taken up w/ sports & card-game memorabilia, which would be fine except for...

Problem #2 - the comics section is a cross between the porn section of the local video store and the disorganized back room of your local retail outlet. Rickety display shelves w/ dog-eared copies of every damn thing shoved against the back wall of the store. The comics could barely stand on their own - if I got a kick in the butt for every time I upset a stack of precariously-perched books trying to see if they had an issue of Spider-Man from 2 months ago hiding in the back, my asscheeks would be dimpled like a golf ball.

Problem #3 - despite this charmingly ramshackle display, they have the gaul to flash collector scum tendencies, like having a copy of a JMS Spidey book from last month bagged & boarded in the same stack as the well-thumbed new Spidey books priced at $8.00. Which leads to ...

Problem #4 - The King Scum Collector / Shop Owner Dood. First time I was in there, perusing the stacks, dood was on the phone w/ an employee bitching him out about selling some stuff at the wrong price, and then talked about pricing some other collectible doo-dads higher because, y'know, it'll sell because kids love that Pokemon crap. And I understand that business comes first and all that, but there seemed to be such fucking evil glee when he talked about this stuff, like he was waxing his moustache and wringing his hands over the already-railroaded damsel.

And it wasn't even the "shop talk" that got me - it was the fact that he got off the phone (after having vented his spleen at a non-quiet volume) and then turned on the crass "can I help you with anything? / oh, that's a REALLY good book, you should try X and Y" charm when he noticed me skulking in the shadows. Like, dood, c'mon.

And THEN, once I brought my schwag up to the register, he tried to pitch me on their subscription service. Like, dood, COME ON.

Yeahhhh, I've been to a lot like that, with similar problem #2s. Half the comic stores in the San Antonio area seem to be card or action figure stores that carry comics as an afterthought, and they're all named Dragon's This or Ninja That or Some Sort Of Realm.

I think I've mentioned before that the other comic store here in town -- which perplexingly does brisk business -- is a computer repair shop the size of a gas station men's room. For some reason they also carry comics, oddly organized on shelves facing in random directions, with back issues sometimes mixed in with the new issues (like a Priest-era Deadpool, unbagged and incognito, on the shelves last year in with the current month's stuff).

"I, the author, am going to introduce you to this interesting group of characters and then kill them all off in a horrifying manner."

The narrative device was used for different purposes and the details and tone are obviously different but that doesn't change the fact that both Milligan and Morrison did this (Milligan, in fact, did it multiple times over the course of X-Force).

FLASH - was not bad, despite being a crossover with a fill in artist. Zoom and Cheetah go on a rampage and Zoom uses his evil counselling abilities to get Cheetah to get in touch with her inner psycho. He is drawn in a really cool distorted way too. Also bits about Rogue Wars which kicks off next week FINALLY. This had better be as good as Crossfire after all the build up.

LSH 3 was out too! I was not so keen on this issue as there was some unsuccessful comedy and I think Triplicate Lass' new origin is wack. However it was fun when she was making out with Ultra Boy and he asks her to triplicate so he can have a 4-way, but it turns out that she has already trplicated and the other two bring Element Lad and Sun Boy in for a big orgy or something. People have been choking about triplicatelass' sexy possibilities for ages so it is funny that thye finally acknowledged it. anyway.. there is cool stuff building up about a leadership struggle with Brainy and Cosmic Boy. I wish they would introduce some of the other legionnaires though - we keep getting the same ones every week

BATMAN #637: This is already part 3? Dang. Sci-fi closet fans! Batman and Nightwhinge (in non-whinge mode) take on AMAZO! Judd Winick is doing pretty solid work on this title so far, and having Mr. Mahnke along sure is nice, too. (Winick always starts off strong, though, and then seems to peter out, from my experience - here's hoping he can pace hisself.) Cliffhanger involves a box of kryptonite!

OUTSIDERS #20: FITE! Well, not really - just Nightwhinge spitting a lot while Batman glowers and "hrm"s. Yes, it's connected to Zatanna lowering the boom (or gnirewol eht moob) on Bats during Identity Crisis. Yes, it's VERY connected to Identity Crisis. Yes, it's actually not bad - probably the best issue of Outsiders since Tom Raney made his Marvelous egress.

WONDER WOMAN #213: FITE! Wonder Woman's still blind, and is now (after the results of the FITE!) getting targeted by the male portion of the Pantheon. Not cool.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #517: Sure, whatever. Snoooore. Revamped Molten Man now targets Parker's loved ones after he offed football jock what mocked him in high school. (NOTE TO EDITOR: if the flashback portion of the script makes mentions of a dood's Captain America undies, and said undies are being displayed, you think maybe telling the flashback artist to actually make the undies LOOK LIKE Captain America undies would be prudent?) (ACCURACY!) Mike Deodato's art is fantastic. JMS's attempts to levy the pseudo-seriousness with goofy asides isn't cutting my mustard.

ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE #5 (Of 5): Fudge, I missed #4! Anyhoo, here's what seems to have happened in these 5 issues (which, of course, could've been condensed into 4 or less) (and call me on it if I'm wrong):

World-wide broadcast goes out about grave GALACTIC danger that will soon befall earth. Ultimates & X-folk go to remote snow-capped locale to check out some thing related to this broadcast - Ultimates go for reasons of national & global security; X-folk go because Cerebro told them do. Both find this bunker chock full of failed Russian superhero experiments (patterned after the Soviet Super Soldiers, or whatever they were called). Ultimates & X-folk fight Russian mutated freaks, and each other. Then they find the source of the broadcast (in #5), which is (in an actual SURPRISE) The Vision, whom I guess is meant to be an interstellar robot / herald warning folks of THE COMING OF ... well, you can figure that bit out.

Nice art. Decent story. Kind of weak to stretch this part out over 5 issues, and then stretch the whole affair through 3 mini series. Also, having a finite series delayed by art / script tardiness = whatEVer. Hopefully, the 2nd mini in this cycle (Ultimate Secret Santa)will be a bit more timely (& slightly less puffy) than this one.

PHOENIX: ENDSONG #3: Collector scum digression - I'm irked that the only copies available of #2 are the LIMITED VARIANT covers. Boo hiss. Anyway, this is more of the same, to an extent, & kinda puffed out, but still v. good. Even with (or because of) two pages of Wolverine killing Phoenix. Again. And again. And again.

SPIDER MAN / HUMAN TORCH #2: More of the same from this thing, too - nice & compact one-issue story where the Torch & the Webhead switch jobs. Spidey goes on the intergalactic fact-finding mission, while Johnny goes on the cover-ops drug-bust thing. "It's called Thursday." Nice use of Capt. Stacy (whom I've never actually seen in action). This is a total fanboy love-in, but some of you that can't tell Capt. Stacy from Flash Thompson are enjoying this, too, right, Huk?

X-MEN #167: So, um, stuff happens. Inter-team cattiness seems to be result of outside forces (oooooh). Not really sold on this just yet, and one of the title's supposed strengths (the art) isn't really doing it for me, but things are moving along. Also, anyone in the Wolverine Guest Appearance Pool who had Page 3 gets a copy of Marville #1 (Greg Horn cover). And speaking of Canadian Horn...

WOLVERINE #25: Evil Logan needs to get in touch w/ himself before he busts a nut in his spandex - way too many captions along the lines of "oooh, I'd like to poke Storm's cloud". Also, since SOMEONE HAS TO DIE in order for the story to resonate w/ the reader and mean something (never mind giving Wolvie a super-simple angst fulcrum once he goes to exact his revenge), Logan goes stabby on Northstar. Which, of course, is ridiculously pointless, does nothing for the story besides Announce That Millar Really Means It Man, is a dramatic copout worthy of all sorts of derision, and also oh by the way opens up a shitstorm for The House Of Latent Homophobia since Northstar was, to my knowledge, the only openly gay character in Marvel's entire roster. Wheeeeeee. Only 6 more issues left! I think I'm (finally) done w/ this.

Y THE LAST MAN #32 (or whatever issue it is): A transitional stopgap - just cleaning house & sending everyone on their way chasing whatever it is they're chasing.

50 BULLETS #60 (or whatever issue it is): HOLY CRAP I think something really happened in this one! The last two arcs have just gone fffft right by me w/out me noticing any damn thing except for Eduardo Risso's artwork. But the last 2 issues have been actually building up to what happens in this issue. Of course, given my spotty grasp on books containing characters that don't dress up in pec-flattering finery, I can't tell you who or what's going on (w/out severely spoiling things) (and or confusing The Buxom Tattooed Girl w/ the Gruff Buff Prison Guy).