Hibbs continues on 5/25

Best laid plans, and all that -- forgot about CEO, forgot the POS computer was arriving, forgot that the order form better get done, forgot that... well, lots of stuff this week, darn it. About a half hour here before Tzipora gets home with my Fast Pass, and I can go in (early!) to the store (Jeff's Last Day!) (FOO!), so bang some out quickly here:

SATAN'S SODOMY BABY: I don't really get it -- this is selling for $20 on eBay already? Apparently part of it is that the east coast got it before the west (Didn't retailers make it clear to Diamond this is Bad Juju? RE: CIVIL WAR #6); part of it is there apparently aren't any reorders available (oh, you wacky Dark Horse, who wouldn't know how to set a print run if it came with an instruction manual!); part of it seems to be that Diamond has decided to not distribute it into Canada, due to content.

But.... it's basically just an issue of THE GOON. Maybe I'm a jaded West Coast Liberal (you THINK?), but the content didn't seem THAT much rougher to me than THE GOON can get.

(even more curious was Diamond's [really?] decision to prebag all of the West Coast's copies before distributing. They don't even do that with the actual Adults-Only comics that have, y'know, penetration in them)

Reasonably funny, very well drawn, just a little over the top -- it's a solid, or perhaps high, OK all around. Just don't pay $20 for it!

CRIMINAL #6: If I have a "problem" with this one, it's that there's not a sympathetic character in sight, yet, in this arc. And yet such is the skill of Brube and Phillips that, actually, I don't care -- I'm enjoying the ride very much, thanks. VERY GOOD, and let's cheat in case I don't get all the way through, very clearly the PICK OF THE WEEK.

MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #1: Honestly, I don't care much for Iron Man in any universe, because, traditionally, Tony's tech has been kind of like Dr. Strange's magic -- it can and is redefined on the fly as needed by the dictates of the plot. The suit makes him such a complete badass, that you're generally reduced to either getting him OUT of it, or making the man have really bad problems (bad heart, alcoholism, creeping fascism, whatever)

I've largely given up on the "real" Iron Man (excepting say, HYPERVELOCITY, below), but there's still a small potential of interest for me in these kinds of "kid friendly" versions.

I don't think, if I was a kid, that I'd have liked this much, but at least they give a noble stab at making Iron Man's origin timelessly work by not having it tied to the Commies, or Desert Storm (Sheesh), but to AIM. Not that I think it *does* work -- largely because of the whole Tech = Magic thing, and you'd think that AIM (if they were to live up to their concept) would have "better magic", but it's a good try, and one I couldn't rate lower than EH.

ANT-MAN #8: Now that we're past the origin stuff, and the special guest stars, this here is the first issue that I think shows what this book will be, on its own -- and its actually pretty entertaining once you get past the absolutely loathsome protagonist. Not much of a surprise, but this is the most "Image-like" (Current Image, not Historical Image) book that Marvel is publishing, and for that, at least, this is a good experiment. The problem? It's also *selling* like an Image comic for us -- to people who still really want nothing other than capes and powers, but have "grown past" just Marvel and DC stuff. You'd think (perhaps) that there actually a lot of people in this boat, but nah, not really -- those people who don't develop a taste past the capes tend to stop reading comics rather than find this type of material. This is probably the first issue of this I have genuinely liked, but I don't see how it has the slightest chance of even making it to issue #16. Still: I thought it was a low GOOD.

SHADOWPACT #13: What a strange strange issue. First off, Scott Hampton draws it (buh?), second off, it basically has none of the book's cast in it, and third, it's mostly setting up month's worth of more stories. Why is that last one weird? Because this, too, sells pretty much like an Image book, and I can't imagine they'd get a third year from this (and I'm surprised they got a second, to be honest). Now, having said all that, I really liked it -- especially with the nice Hampton (!) art, and I'd probably recommend it if it didn't just come to an abrupt stop like: "whoops, out of pages, see you next month!" abrupt, which, as a $2.99 entertainment experience, knocks it right down to EH all by itself.

Right, OK, that should be enough today, eh? Time for work, and getting Jeff drunk enough that he crashes into a tree on the ride home tonight, thereby killing both of us, and avoiding me running the store without him! (Yes, I'm going to miss him, damn it!)

What did YOU think?

-B