SHIPherd's Pie 12-10-2008

http://www.diamondcomics.com/shipping/newreleases.txt

bprd, fc, fc:r

oh hey, detective comics

Final Crisis x 2, Secret Six, Action Comics

ACTION COMICS #872
DETECTIVE COMICS #851
DMZ #37
FINAL CRISIS #5
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #4
I KILL GIANTS #6
SECRET INVASION DARK REIGN
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE SEASON 2 #5
TERRY MOORES ECHO #8

DETECTIVE COMICS #851--curious to see what Dennis O'Neil's writing is like now
FINAL CRISIS #5--YEEEAAAAASSSS!!!
FINAL CRISIS: REVELATIONS #4--MAAAAYBEEEE!
SECRET INVASION: DARK REIGN--only if it's all Bendis/Maleev
WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ #1--written by Eric Shanower!

ACTION COMICS #872- This storyline really needs to be heading into the back half any time now doesn't it? Hopefully the setup is done and things start getting down to business.
DETECTIVE COMICS #851- Part I of the Denny O'Neil story
FINAL CRISIS #5 (OF 7)- It has been a good while since #4, I guess we left off with Turpin becoming Darkseid.
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #4 (OF 5)- This one has probably been done, but being held off until #5 was out. I might have to read up on where we left off, it has been awhile
SECRET SIX #4- This has been a fun book and the new villain "Junior" is a bit different.

maybe
PUNISHER WAR ZONE #1 (OF 6)- This one is the Ennis/Dillon mini-series that is a follow up to their run on the Marvel Knights Punisher title featuring the return of Ma Gnucci. It is going to come out weekly, but I still might wait for the trade, but I'd like to read this one.

Booster Gold - the Remender issues were still fun, surprisingly, and I'll give Jurgens at least a couple of months
Final Crisis
Final Crisis Revelations
Amazing Spider-Man

Glad people mentioned Detective was the first Denny issue. Will try it.

am amazed ppl are so psyched abt a denny o'neil comic, i thought the last gd thing he wrote was in abt 1973!!

I always thought Denny O'Neil was pretty good. Like any of those guys, he wrote a few hundred comics, so there are plenty of duffers, but he did lots of stuff that was fine. It seems that the early 70s DC stuff is what usually gets referenced, but he did other things that were really good like The Question.

> other things that were really good like The Question

A dear lost love of mine.

Not so lost anymore, I guess. Yay, trades.

Final Crisis, Action Comics, Green Lantern Corps, and Dark Reign because I'm a sucker for Maleev. Then I'm done with Bendis for maybe forever.

the question?? admittedly i didn't read past the first couple of issues (mainly cos of the horrible horrible art), but reinventing the character as a kind of quasi-samurai-rorshach-rip vigilante(yawn) seemed like a a calculated insult to one of ditko's v finest creations - a petty act of revenge on o'neil's part after he and ditko fell out over hawk & dove

last night i looked up "no hope in crime alley" by o'neil and giordano in 'the greatest batman stories ever told' trade, and found that it dated from 1976, so i'll give o'neil that - its a pretty good strip

No love for Phonogram?

Well shit, I loved the art, too! I guess I just like what sucks.

Phonogram - love it so much that I have a comic shop 4,000 miles away putting it on order for me ;).

Final Crisis #5: 17.

There's a new Phonogram out?

What?? I loved that comic

Have you read the Ditko Question stories? I ask as there are like 1 issue and a couple of backups in Blue Beetle. There really isn't that much of it out there. I had at one point the single issue and the first appearance as a back up in Blue Beetle and really there was not that much philosophical subtext to those comics. Mr. A had some pretty weird stuff and some of the philosophies that Ditko may have followed way up front, but from what I can recall, it wasn't in those Charlton comics, which were pretty tame. I just don't buy that it was Denny O'Neil flipping the finger at Steve Ditko, more trying to put the character in with some of the DC stuff he did in the 70s with Richard Dragon.

I don't know, I thought that first issue of the O'Neil/Cowans series of The Question is pretty killer. There is not many first issues of a comic where the main character gets his ass completely kicked, then shot and the body thrown in the river to drown. I think it is also possible to interpret that what happens to Vic Sage/The Question in the opening issues of the comic is why the guy changes his philosophy and ends up with Richard Dragon to train. I read those comics when they were coming out month to month and it was always one of my favorites and I thought it held up pretty well 20 years later. Denys Cowan did pretty much all of the art on that series and I always thought he was pretty good. He has a loose and dirty style, maybe a bit like Klaus Janson when he pencils and inks, but I thought it worked pretty good on an urban crime series.

Denny O'Neil's run on Daredevil in between Frank Miller's two stays was also pretty good. I'm working up to re-reading those pretty soon.

The Question appearances in Charlton DID have a lot of philosophical background. Lots and lots of text boxes detailing what is it that GOOD, STRAIGHT, INDIVIDUALISTIC men do, compared to the moral ambiguity and WEAKNESS of the lesser ones.

For example:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/3099332113_d44c913fc6.jpg?v=0

They also have some great art by Ditko, up to the usual standards.
Anyway, I think O'Neill's reinterpretation works just fine, it's practically a different character, but every character Ditko created after Spider-Man became a different character when he left, and it's no wonder, since many of them were mouthpieces for his view of the world. And, besides, O'Neill's conversion is handled with respect and knowledge of what came before, only that it shows that he obviously doesn't agree with Ditko.

Anyway, in other matters, I thought Final Crisis 5 was FRICKIN WONDERFUL. Probably my favourite issue to date, so much stuff happening, so many delicious little touches, like Frankenstein quoting Paradise Lost while shooting Justifiers in the head or the final three pages (Darkseid's speech is ALL METAL) that I think we're heading for one of the best endings in Morrison's career.

Also read Dark Reing and found it just AWFUL. Emma Frost does nothing (so much for "the most fascinating character") and is drawn like a stupid high school student with her mouth open half of the time, Namor looks like a pervert elf and Osborn isn't even close to something recognizable. I don't know what happened to Maleev here, but his best work this is not.
And not to mention anything of the script, which only offers the same thing that's been repeated in interviews without any kind of real development, and which shows that Bendis can't write any character with an unique voice, always resorting to his stupid bag of "neo-realist" tricks. Namor and Doom sound like idiots! Where are the bluster and extravagance??. It's like the storytelling posibilities of Dark Reign are being pissed away before it even starts and I don't know what is it about Bendis that he can't write a decent superhero climax or ending and he can't communicate the real sense of dread this was (I guess) supposed to elicit.

Haven't read Final Crisis yet, but Revelations really is a load of old nonsense, isn't it?

Also: Huntress vag double-pager. Can't people be fired for this sort of thing?

Huntress vag double-pager.

waht

got FC5, Ambush Bug 5 and some CBLDF fundraiser I'd never heard of (but this is the second printing) with Darwyn Cooke and Evanier/Aragones and The Boys stories in. Claims to have new Bratpack but it's just a new "cover". Great week!

The art in the Oz book is really, really, really wonderful.

ACTION COMICS #872- It wasn't bad, but Geoff Johns is all about everything and the kitchen sink as if enough wasn't going on all the sudden you also have the The Creature Commandos.
DETECTIVE COMICS #851- The story was pretty much setup of a new character which might eventually fit in with the idea in the RIP storyline that the city was almost made to create a Batman. I thought the artwork was pretty sharp, a real interesting mix of some manga styles with all of the speed lines in the action and some of Neal Adams or Doug Wildey (Jonny Quest) in the figure artwork. I thought it was OK, probably won't resolve to some great thing more than introducing this new character and how Gotham is more wacked out than usual when Batman is gone.
FINAL CRISIS #5 (OF 7)- The double page spread with Frankenstein and the other heroes on motorcycles (some which are the Metal Men) for the assault in Bludhaven is one of the cooler panels of the series. The sequence with Darkseid towards the end declaring his dominance was pretty wicked. You have to also like Morrison supercharging these everyday items like the Rubik's cube as Motherboxx, it is a bit like the tricked out junky looking transistor radio in RIP.
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #4 (OF 5)- I can get with Vandal carrying the mark of Cain. I might need to re-read FC #3 & 4 as I cannot recall if all of this is going down before or after The Question gets to the Castle with Mr. Terrific.
SECRET SIX #4- Super-villains taking a stolen ice cream truck to drive into Vegas is not something I had seen in a comic before.

There was also the first allusions to FC in some of the current DC issues. There was a mention of something weird going down in Gotham in Action by the new Nightwing & Flamebird and in Secret Six, Parademon seems to being channeled by a bystander in the issue. I think it is possible that O'Neil might be referencing that Gotham is again be trashed in the Detective issue.

DC will screw it up by either giving the wrong people the gig or not following up on it, but I think Frankenstein and the Agents of SHADE could be a fun comic. If they did it right it could be something in the same vein as having Hellboy and the BPRD in the DC Universe.

Revelations 2-4 all have to happen between Final Crisis 3 & 4--the action with Montoya is continuous. She mentions in FC:R #3 that she's seen the Anti-Life chaos from the Checkmate castle, but there's no room in the Revelations plot for that to have happened. Even with the convenient time distortions.

I made sure to head to the shop Saturday before the snowstorm hit, just so I could pick up Phonogram. It's pretty much my favorite comic going at this point. I'm kind of curious how the converging storyline structure is going to work exactly, but I'll trust they know what they're doing. I thought both the B-sides were highly enjoyable, particularly the spirit complaining about indie music's (or, more specifically, Sufjan Stevens, Mountain Goats, and Death Cab for Cutie's) fondness for writing songs featuring dying women.

Good fucking grief that SI:Dark Reign comic was quite appalling. Another Bendis everyone-sits-around-a-table comic. Why?

Phonogram's glossary entry for The Mountain Goats was also great: "well worth getting into. Or, just sit around listening to 'No Children' 40 times a day"

Also yes Dark Reign is bobbins.