"This is Worser Than Washin' An Elephink!" COMICS! Sometimes It's Like I'm Shouting This At You While I Run Past!

Borag Thung, Earthlets! I have been quiet of late but I rested easy in the knowledge that the delightful Messrs Khosla, McMillan, Lester and Hibbs had been satisfying all your comicy needs to the highest of standards as ever. Not that I was resting you understand. So, practically writing this one as I move towards the door...Anyway, this... David Lapham from The Strain in DARK HORSE PRESENTS  #28

POPEYE:CLASSICS #14 Written and drawn by Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe Books, $3.99 (2013) Popeye created by E.C. Segar

Some issues of POPEYE: CLASSICS are available from the Savage Critics Store (which you have all quite patently forgotten about. Sniff!) HERE.

Month in month out the nautically attired freak faced grammar mangler continues to pleasantly baffle me with the weirdly logical escalation of the ludicrous incidents which comprise his preposterous adventures. Since Popeye, for all his charms, is in fact a fictional construct I’m going to place the credit for this consistently entertaining package at the door of Bud Sagendorf, a real life man (now deceased) who went done drew and writed it all. Fans of the magic old men do can marvel at Sagendorf’s use of long shot silhouettes to prevent a total nervous breakdown from having to repeatedly draw a train in what are quite small panels indeed. As a special bonus Sagendorf serves up some right nice visual gaggery, the best of which are the parts where sound FX have a physical effect on the drawn environment they inhabit. Basically they hit people on the chin is what I’m saying there.

Bud Sagendorf from POPEYE CLASSICS #14

In this issue the main tale involves Popeye buying a railroad, Olive Oyl’s demanding customer, an attempted hijack and a visual stereotype of a re..native American (altho’ in the world of Popeye this might actually be a vacationing accountant in racially insensitive fancy dress). Then there’s a story where Popeye buys the world’s cheapest and laziest race horse, another story where Popeye and Olive simultaneously seek to teach Sweetpea a lesson and demonstrate their poor parenting skills by scaring the shit out of the wee tyke in an abandoned mine, and a short with Wimpy being out foxed by a cow (“a lady of the meadow”), there’s a text story as well but I skipped that. Bud Sagendorf wasn’t writing for the &*^%ing omnibus is what I’m getting at here. Popeye is printed on weirdly bloated pages, haphazardly coloured and always, always a welcome arrival in my field of vision so I’m going to say it’s VERY GOOD!

THE SHADOW ANNUAL 2013 Art by Bilquis Evely Written by Andre Parks Coloured by Daniela Miwa The Shadow created by Walter B. Gibson Dynamite, $4.99 (2013)

Man, I’m not exactly Sammy Stable at the best of times (“No shit, John!”) but the temporal shenanigans in this thing almost gave me a panic attack. It’s five minutes ago! Now it’s three hours later! No, hang on, it’s five years earlier. No, it’s been seven hours and fifteen days. And nothing compares. Nothing compares. To yaaaooooooooowwwww. Clearly the comparison being begged here is that this comic is like Brief Encounter but starring two psychopaths and set in Vegas before Elvis conquered it.

Bilquis Evely from THE SHADOW ANNUAL 2013

Even more clearly it’s not like that at all but instead is very much like having to find your train in a busy station where all the clocks show the wrong time, people keep getting stabbed and shot and you’ve found yourself in the company of some boring jabberjaw who won’t shut up about his first love. Shadow, dude, move on. This is unseemly in a man of your standing. Fucking chin up, old son. As for the art, well, it’s okay, it’s alright, but there’s a tendency for noses to look like the owner has a heavy cold. That’s Sean Murphy’s influence (influenza!) in action there. So, a nice idea, not terribly well executed at a price point I want to hit with a stick makes this EH!

DARK HORSE PRESENTS #28 Art by David Lapham, Neal Adams, Richard Corben, Steve Lieber, Patrick Alexander, Ron Randall, Menton3, Michael T. Gilbert, Aaron Conley and Geoff Darrow Written/plotted by David Lapham, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Corben, Neal Adams, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Ron Randall, Steve Niles, Michael T. Gilbert, Janet Gilbert and Damon Gentry Coloured by Lee Loughridge, Moose Baumann, Rachelle Rosenberg, Jeremy Colwell, Michael T. Gilbert, Sloane Leong Lettered by Clem Robbins, Nate Piekos of Blambot, Ken Bruzenak, Steve Lieber and Damon Gentry

Dark Horse Presents is an anthology so, you know, it’s a bit all over the shop. Mostly though it keeps its footing on the shiny tiles and rarely sends the display of stacked tins (Pork and beans! For the poor!) spinning madly about. First up, David Lapham reminds me how good he is at comics with his The Strain chapter. Even though I have no particular interest in this property and there's a bit of cultural shorthand verging on the cliched Lapham quietly did the business on every page to ensure that the final panel came as a punch to the guts and I actually wanted to read what happened next. Later in the ish Lapham resurfaces with the conclusion to his introductory Juice Squeezers tale which, with its teen focused Cronenbergyness, proves to be the kind of nuts that comics would benefit from more of and yet truculently resists embracing.

Michael T. Gilbert, Janet Gilbert and Ken Bruzenak from Mr. Monster Geoff Darrow’s spot illustrations continue to amaze with the visual conviction with which they deliver scenes at once grotesque, impossible and droll. In a similar fashion to the comics Darrow produces elsewhere, comics which chafe some SavCrits so (but, strangley, not this eminently chafeable one), Sabretooth Swordsman with its surprising Savage Pencil influences is an optically delirious but narratively slight piece.

Aaron Conley, Damon Gentry and Sloane Leong from Sabertooth Swordsman

Richard Corben chucks out another Poe adaptation which is notable primarily for the truly scintillating colour work executed therein. I am absolutely horrible at appreciating the colour in comics but even here, even I, had to stop and marvel at more than one point. Ken “The Chameleon” Bruzenak is here in several different stories and in each case serves up lettering apposite to the pieces in question; in the very traditional Trekker his work is attractive but modest while in Mr. Monster he provides an ostentatious display of madcap fonts.

Richard Corben and Nate Piekos from Edgar Allan Poe's The Assignation

As a whole Mr Monster, additionally armed as it is with Michael T Gilbert’s invigoratingly loose art, continues to cock a scruffy snook at seriousness; which I like. Mrs. Plopsworht's Kitchen by Patrick Alexander succeeds in making physical and emotional abuse funny which is an interesting type of victory. Oh, and there’s some other stuff here; Steve Niles producing his trademark pound shop horror; Alabaster continuing to not be anything I want while not actually being terrible and Blood by Neal Adams continuing to be Blood by Neal Adams. Overall though I had a good time so DHP was GOOD!

JUDGE DREDD CLASSICS#3 Art by Carlos Ezquerra Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant (as T.B. Grover) Coloured by Tom Mullin Lettered by Steve Potter Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra IDW, $3.99 (2013)

Look, before I start acting like a pissy arse let’s get this one thing straight: these are great comics. I know this because it isn’t the first time I’ve bought them and it certainly isn’t the last time I’ll read them. When I first read them they blew my school socks off (not a kink; I was at school). The Apocalypse War was where Carlos Ezquerra returned to the character he (co) created after an absence occasioned by unfortunate editorial decisions. Carlos Ezquerra was back and Carlos Ezquerra meant it. Carlos Ezquerra drew the cremola out of The Apocalypse War even as The Apocalypse War blew the world of Dredd to grud and back. Because The Apocalypse War was where Wagner & Grant (AKA T.B. Grover) took all the pages of world building that had gone before them and applied a match. After The Apocalypse War the world of Dredd would never be the same again. Really. In The Apocalypse War Dredd made a decision no man should ever have to make, a decision only a man who was not a man could make, and the following decades of the strip have shown the consequences and ramifications of that decision fashion Judge Joseph Dredd into a man at last. With The Apocalypse War Wagner & Grant’s breathlessly hi-octane narrative pace in tandem with Ezquerra’s consistently brutal style created an epic that looked like the end of everything but was instead the birth of the strip’s future. These are great comics.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

Alas, when I talk about greatness I’m talking purely about the pages of comics in here. The actual physical pamphlet comic is a bit lacking. You know, these are great comics. Do I repeat myself? I repeat myself. Great comics, so how’s about a bit of care and attention; a bit of respect. That’ll have to remain purely theoretical because, oh, he’s off now…The cover’s a bit lacking for starters; look, I’m all about negative space and clear, crisp design but that looks a bit, well, I don’t think it achieved its aim. Imagine if they’d rejigged an original 2000AD cover featuring The Apocalypse War. Trust me when I say the new cover would be a poor second. Then, oh dear, the inside front cover seems to think this story is called Block Mania but it isn’t; Block Mania finished last issue. This story in this issue, (which is all reprints and cost $3.99) is called The Apocalypse War which is why I’ve called it that through all the preceding verbiage. Then between each chapter there’s a perfunctory full page graphic. Grud on a Greenie! I realise the space has to be filled due to the page counts of each episode but could you not have had a bit of fun, IDW? Got a bit creative? Maybe stuck the original covers on there instead, or blown up a portion of a panel pop art style like on those DC Kirby/Ditko/etc Omnibooks? You’ll notice, IDW, that I’m not even daring to suggest you commission some, choke, original content. I mean I realise reprinting decades old comics and charging $3.99 a pop might not allow for such largesse. Sarcasm there.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

Then there’s that weird waste of space at the bottom of the page. Again, I appreciate you don’t want to mess with the size ratios but, drokk it all, that’s some token stuff there, IDW. And there's a page out of sequence. A page out of sequence in a comic of reprints selling for $3.99! However, I am okay with the colouring. Obviously, I’d rather they hadn’t bothered because the art was drawn for B&W (except for the opening spreads) but I understand Americans are fond of their colours. There they are America: enjoy your Colonial colours! Moan, moan, moan except this is all basic stuff. I'm hardly asking for Cher to sing live in my living room here just some vague pass at professionalism, if you please.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

So, a confounding miscalculation on the part of IDW here; this material is readily available in a number of other formats and has been for decades so making a new iteration stand out from the crowd would, I’d think, be imperative. Making your books expensive and ill-designed is certainly a novel approach. Luckily, these are great comics so even though the crime is Fail the sentence is GOOD!

Anyway, I'm off now. With any luck I'll bump into some COMICS!!!!

Oh Good, Another Year. COMICS! 2012 The Year I Really Didn't Pay Attention!

I do so hope all across the globe had a happy holiday and got stuff and ate stuff and watched stuff and generally did stuff where stuff was involved. I did, which is why I've been AWOL so sorries and all that but here’s my wrap up for 2012. A year I paid little attention to while it was going on, made no notes and am now left floundering for stuff to write! Appetising, non? Anyway it’s Saturday night and I've places to be, people to see, y’know how it is. Yes, I am lying. This is all I have. Anyway, let’s see how this goes. My money’s on - badly.

Well, don’t look at me. I only read what I bought and I only bought what I could afford and, worse, I only bought what could afford from my LCS in England. So, no, Chris Ware isn’t here, nor is Michel Fiffe, nor LOVE & ROCKETS: NEW STORIES. And if none of them are here then this is a piss poor reflection of the worth of the year indeed. So, rather than do a list of comics I've sort of done a list of people because, amongst other things, 2012 was the year it finally sank in that people are quite important too. Oh, don’t worry they still aren't all that important or anything. Not important enough to be dealt with equitably or decently or any such pinko nonsense. But they are important because if it wasn't for people I wouldn’t get my comics! Also, some people who don’t even make comics were quite important in my enjoyment of the year and while there are no doubt umpty billion lists praising SAGA there probably are only two lists with Graeme McMilllan on (this one and The Pulitzer Council) Which seems a bit off balance. So here’s my 2012 via some people I managed to think about some words for. Just be thankful I didn't call it a sideways look at 2012. That’s always a golden invitation to run screaming in the opposite direction; a sideways look at…! Christ.

Of the comical periodical stuff I did read I’d have to say it was Richard Corben who ruled the roost for most of the year. It’s unfortunate that Richard Corben is 72 years old since there’s naturally assumed to be some degree of special pleading involved; “Y’know it may look like a pretzel in a pool of sick but, bless, he tried and, really, what can you expect at that age? It’s just sweet he’s still breathing unaided.”<pats Ricard Corben on head in patronizing fashion> But NO! I say thee nay! This year via his RAGEMOOR series, shorts in CREEPY and EERIE, his DARK HORSE PRESENTS Poe pieces and, at year’s end, his issue long masterpiece of luridly coloured puppets and profanity THE CONQUEROR WORM Richard Corben took comics by the scruff of the neck and shook it until its celluloid collar popped open and its top hat lay askew. The stronger stories may have benefited from the presence of Jan Strnad and John Arcudi lending form and shape but even when Corben scripted unaided there was no doubting the colossal talent gracing the page, talent the continuing development of which was a sight to recoil from in stunned disbelief. In 2012 Richard Corben was subsumed entirely into The Eisner Hall of Fame. It wasn't enough but it’ll have to do.

I didn’t see a lot spoken about Corben’s work this year and part of me suspects it was because he confounded expectations by keeping the hefty teats of yore largely under wraps. It was as though without the usual easy ingress to an automatically superior vantage most critics were held at bay. As a theory this was utter tosh of course and belittling to the fine critical minds which scrutinize comics on a daily basis ("All-New X-Men gave sight to the blind! And made the lame to walk!"). But yet it was utter tosh I could easily apply to the almost deafening silence which greeted Gilbert Hernandez’ FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS. This was a delightfully rough and ready thing which seemed like something scribbled in a notepad during the course of a particularly somnolent double period of Chemistry by a randy and imaginative teenager. Its excess of imagination coupled to a compulsively crude execution was one of the most refreshing things I read in 2012. It was a throwback to the days when comics weren't respectable and didn't give a shit. It was a throwback to The Golden Age and not just because if Gilbert Hernandez is producing comics then it is a Golden Age anyway.

Thankfully, female secondary sexual characteristics are not a staple of the work of Roger Langridge. This is extraordinarily fortunate as there was a bit of a creepy trend developing there wasn't there? It was all getting a bit unsettling, but you can all breathe easier as now we’re on about Roger Langridge, who is decency incarnate. Langridge was a busy little bee this year but his busyness had little impact on the quality of his work. First on my radar was his JOHN CARTER work for Marvel which was a fine (if editorially meddled with) slice of pulp pie indeed. Then he wrote and drew the SNARKED series which was a continuation/expansion of the work of Lewis Carroll with a few surprises chucked in ( A Derek and Clive cameo anyone?)  As beautifully illustrated in Langridge’s signature clear lined big foot style as ever the real surprise in SNARKED was in the writing. A funny, eventful romp brimming with incident and intelligence it may have been but at the end, at the last, it punched you right in the sternum with an ending which was at once heart rending and uplifting. A great ending for a great book because SNARKED was a great book but Langridge didn't stop there. Oh, no, no, no. No. Next up we had THE MUPPETS: FOUR SEASONS which was from Marvel so, rather classily, it didn't have Langridge’s name on the cover. This was a neat little comic and was certainly better than The Muppets movie. Admittedly I saw this movie slumped on the couch in someone else’s house on Christmas Day with sugar fuelled children interrupting my viewing at intervals that could almost have been scientifically calculated to result in maximum irritation. The highlights of The Muppets were Chris Cooper and the fact that Mickey Rooney is still alive! Holy shit! Let’s put on the show right here, Mickey Rooney! The film was okay but Langridge’s comic was better. Which is probably about right for POPEYE too. I've never seen the Altman film but Langridge’s POPEYE was a pitch-perfect resurrection of Segar’s classic creation being both loony and lovable at one and the same time. Some great art too by a bunch of fellas including Langridge himself.

It wasn't just comics though! There were also books about comics and chief amongst these was Sean Howe's MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY. I'm such a shitty critic that, unlike the rest of comicdom I haven’t got around to that yet. It looks fine enough but it isn’t the book I want about Marvel. I know that without cracking it open because its publication wasn't accompanied by news footage of the Marvel building webbed with yellow Crime Scene tape, long shots of people in Hazmat suits on rain misted moors next to excavated piles of dirt,  thirty-something men in sloganed T-Shirts and cargo pants with black bars over their eyes weepingly describing whizzing into milk cartons and coiling into pizza cartons while grainy phone footage of a single nightmarish toilet floated in the top right of the screen, the RSPCA triumphantly releasing the mangy chimp Brian Bendis had held captive for over a decade, Gary Friedrich eating a warm meal under a roof he owned free and clear, herky-jerky footage of a judge with screaming eyes banging a gavel in a room full of people rising as one in a blizzard of paper and the face of Jack Kirby sharing the screen only with the word  “VINDICATED!!!”. No, there wasn't any of that but there were good reviews so I’ll probably give it a go at some point.

I did read CONVERSATIONS WITH HOWARD CHAYKIN, which actually came out last year but I’m counting it because I  read it this year and, y’know, my house my rules, kids! Also, pick your clothes up or you’ll get the back of my hand! CWHC was pretty great being as it was a collection of interviews with the self proclaimed Jew from The Future spanning so many decades I didn't so much feel sad with age but glad I’d made it this far.  I’m glad HVC has as well since he is always such an enjoyable natterer. Brannon Costello does a nice job picking interviews that chronologically flow nicely through HVC’s career showing his changes in attitude (well, refinements) to his work, comics and his position therein. Unavoidably there’s some repetition but it’s the kind that just cements how fundamental some things are to the HVC world view. Since this is an entirely legitimate and productive use of repetition kudos to the author are dutifully tendered. Although I imagine the time spent with the great man himself in order to provide the career-overview-thus-far interview which rounds out the book was a reward worth more than riches. More than rubies. Costello is entirely fair to his subject who comes across as an 'umble man who tries to produce the best work he can despite the restrictions of the marketplace. Oh, and he likes ladies.

There are a couple of omissions here (or, rather, not here); the first being my personal conversation with HVC:

JK:  Your seminal work of the ‘80s, and here I’m thinking specifically of AMERICAN FLAGG! and THE SHADOW, seems to contain a strong John Severin influence amongst the customary Toth and Gil Kane elements. In particular the faces have a crispness to the definition they previously lacked. Would it be true to say that it was at this point that you began to fold Severin into your style? HVC: Bojemoi! What are you doing in my bedroom? It’s three in the goddamn morning! Who are you? Who sent you? I have a gun! Jesus, what’s wrong with your teeth?

Back in the real world, this volume does not include any of The Comics Journal interviews with HVC. Hopefully this is because TCJ are going to publish a big ass lavishly illustrated landscape format volume of them like they did with the Jack Kirby (KOIBY!!!) interviews. Even more hopefully the HVC volume has only not come out yet because they are working on a Gil Kane volume. It would be nice if TCJ did this, particularly as it would count as some small measure of recompense for their poaching of the younger Savage Critics like some journalistic pied piper of fucking Hamlin. A second reason is that TCJ interviews are always good readin’. Particularly those with Gary Groth. Younger readers (i.e. under 40) may not be familiar with the particular and recurrent joys of a mainstream creator getting Grothed. Things would usually start out all chummy with the interview containing a slow but insistent buttering up along the twin lines of “you’re much better than this genre” and “you must have lead an interesting life”. This apparently innocuous praise would lead to the creator foolishly stepping right into Groth’s Horns of The Buffalo whereupon they would snap closed behind them and the hapless chump would be battered by a tirade of variously worded interrogatives, the common gist of which would be that they were letting down themselves, their family, the medium, the children of the world, generations yet unborn, art itself, human civilisation and Bea Arthur from Golden Girls by choosing to draw Spider-Man rather than document their family’s hard scrabble immigrant struggle to survive. Good times, I miss them still. Ah, got a bot off track there. Focus, John!

There were many reasons to thank Jeff Lester this year. The nauseated awe engendered by his latest meticulously reported dietary fad (in 2013 - it's dandruff and vole tears!), the unending hilarity of hearing him justify his consumer choices to people who don't really care beyond the initial act of poking him with a stick, his grace and manners when I E-Mail him to ask a stupid question and, of course, thanks to Jeff Lester I saw a movie I enjoyed. I know Jeff Lester enjoyed this movie because he kept banging on about it like my Uncle kept banging on about God after that piano fell on his head. It was called THE RAID: REDEMPTION and it was very violent which is why I took to calling him Gentle Jeff Lester. I never said it was clever! Or funny! Anyway this was certainly the best movie I've ever seen in which a bunch of Indonesian police get out of a van, cross an Indonesian street and enter an Indonesian apartment building filled with Indonesian criminals whereupon -everyone tries to kill each other for the next 90 minutes – Indonesian style! It’s an Indonesian film, as you no doubt gathered, so we went for the dubbed version. I know, I know, purists are balking here as subtitles are the way to go with the old foreign flicks. Hey, we did try the subtitled version but, being a bit out of practice, I soon grew tired of looking down to read “Look out!” only to look up to find three characters were now dead. As you can tell there isn’t much plot but that’s okay, there’s enough plot to hang all the fighting on and this is some fighting alrighty. The main character has a pregnant wife and his brother’s involved and his Dad looks at him meaningfully so there’s no doubt at least one 20,000 word piece on Culture of Carnage: Tradition & Responsibility in The Raid: Redemption floating about on The Internet. One thing did puzzle me about the film i.e. how outlandish was it? I’m not terribly informed about Indonesia but is it in fact the case that every man Jack of them has a BA Hons in Hurtin’? I like to think so. I like to think that at any moment an Indonesian altercation could escalate from harsh words into a whirlwind of expertly choreographed brutally inventive violence. I bet chucking out time at the pubs is interesting in Indonesia.

This year it was difficult not to believe I had personally wronged Graeme McMillan and that as a consequence my mind was crumbling under the weight of my unassaugable guilt; so often did I glimpse his name in the periphery of my vision like some vengeful phantom in a wordy nerve shredder from the turn of the last Century. But, no, the man who gave up his heathy homeland for the Love of his lady was merely trying to earn a crust. I hope the crust was large and tasty because 2012 was the Year Graeme McMillan would not, could not and did not stop. Graeme McMillan worked so hard this year that I think he broke a fundamental Law of Nature. How else to explain that although no one on all the planet had the time to read everything he wrote Graeme McMillan, just one frail man, somehow had the time to write it? And like the hero of his own story he was, at last, in Time. Graeme McMillan, although with your persistent pace of production you shame all we shirkers I offer you this small reward, I offer you an answer to your question of “What if Brian Bendis wrote Star Wars comics?” Answer: Shit. But in space. No, thank you, Graeme McMillan.

Kim Thompson worked hard this year. Kim Thompson worked so hard Kim Thompson deserves recognition. Particularly so as his hard work had no concrete result. Kim Thompson was the man who tried to corral Dave Sim. After offering a sugar lump of hope to the “controversial “ creator his efforts at open negotiations were met only with finger nips and shoulder bumps as the recalcitrant creator purposefully avoided the proffered treat before, finally, dumping a big load on Kim Thompson’s metaphorical brogues and hee-hawing off with another’s saddle on his back. A fancy gold saddle he had cruelly hidden from Kim Thompson’s view all the while. Not only that but Kim Thompson had to put up with everyone chiming in (mea culpa! Mea bloody culpa!) which while entertaining for the rest of us must have tested Kim Thompson’s  patience somewhat.  Although it is to be hope that Kim Thompson found some respite in the humour afforded by the rather, er, special fan of Sim’s who dominated proceedings and that writer fellow unsubtly jockeying for work doing introductions. Well, they made me laugh and that’s what’s important. Me.

Baby-faced Brian Hibbs was of course important to me this year because, well, he’s Ballistic Brian Hibbs! Whaddya want, I should draw you a diagram?!?!

No doubt Bashful Brian Hibbs would like me to point out that

SNARKED can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS is also aces and can be purchased from HERE.

What will 2013 hold then? Haven't the foggiest, mate. But it's sure to contain COMICS!!!

The very best to all of you and all of yours from me and all of mine!

All Steve Ditko art from THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE (DC Comics) Joe Kubert art from JEW GANGSTER (ibooks)

Wait, What? Ep. 110: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

One of the two delightful pieces of art made for us by the impressively talented Garrett Berner (a.k.a. The Mighty Gar)

It's our last podcast of the year!  Yes, after this two hour and ten minute Whatstravaganza, you get a nice two week vacation from our wee voices nattering on and on, answering your questions, picking apart your comics.  Finally!  Some peace and quiet for your holidays!  Doesn't that sound pleasant?

Anyway...after the jump!  More art!  Lots of links! A hastily assembled and incomplete "Best of" list! And also: Show Notes!

Another great piece by Gar. We owe that man an "Eternals" debt of gratitude! (Ha,ha! See, because Kirby did The Eternals and...?)

All right, so as you may recall, last episode we answered four questions and had something like forty-seven questions remaining.  Did we get through them all in one two hour podcast, you may be asking...?

Well, no.  but we did manage to do the following:

0:00-8:03:  We open with a delightful reading from Graeme of a well-loved holiday sketch.  Then we go on to discuss Graeme's emerging status as a Canadian broadcasting superstar, internet deadlines, just about everything but comics.  Because (as you know by now), that's the way we roll.

And you know, as long as I'm posting multimedia links, I wanted to draw your attention to a few things, in case you missed them:  a short but sweet interview from Al Kennedy of the famed House to Astonish podcast over at The Beat!; an all-superhero sketchcast from The Irrelevant Show with most of the sketches written by the brilliant Ian Boothby (his Superman vs. The Parasite sketch struck a special silver-age nerd sweet spot for me); and the two Cheat Sheets Abhay has done to date, featuring voice work from the brilliant Tucker Stone and yours truly, the first on the 1960s

and the second on Rap Music.

Oh, *and* speaking of Tucker Stone, I know I've clued some of you guys in to the great Comic Books Are Burning in Hell podcast, but I should also mention that if you like Wait, What? and you like movie nerdery, you should check out Travis Bickle on the Riviera, a fantastic movie podcast by Tucker and Sean Witzke that is always entertaining and funny and smart.  I really should've hyped it sooner but I am Lay-Zee  (Kryptonian scientist and wastrel).

Whew!  So between this episode and all of the above, you should have enough to keep you busy during our two week absence, right?

8:03-10:35: But here's some comics talk--about Action Comics #15 by Morrison, Morales, and crew.

10:35-12:53: (Graeme also really liked Doctor Who #3 by Brandon Seifert & Philip Bond.)

12:53-17:10: Because it was a free comic on Comixology, we also discuss the first issue of the Star Trek/Dr. Who Assimilation2 comic by Tony Lee and J.K. Woodward.

17:10-44:32:  Question! from Matthew Ishii (and Dave Clarke):  “'Re: Leinil Yu overselling emotion in scenes. I was at a talk by Colleen Doran (comic writer and artist on a bunch of things) who criticized the comics industry as a whole trending towards this, because of the impact of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. You guys are all about Kirby, do you think this is a fair comparison.' I'd be interested to hear you guys talk about that, as a guy who loved manga and hated superheroes his entire childhood." We also talk about the current situation with Gail Simone and DC.  We also bleep ourselves.  (Maybe for the first time ever?) We also talk more about what the hell DC is thinking?  Also, Graeme gives a New52 pitch for Scooter that is, frankly, stellar.  And since he's been rereading the Fourth World Omnibus, we also discuss Kirby (because how can we not?) and his amazing run on Jimmy Olsen.  And also Geoff Johns.  (Oh, god.  I really should've broken all these out into individual time-stamp entries.  Sorry!)

44:32-53:27: Question! from Matthew Ishii:  "Q: What comics are famous and considered classics, when the writing was mediocre but the art elevated it?  Likewise, name some comics where the art was pulled from good to great by the coloring or the inking."

53:27-54:19:  Non-Question! from David Oakes:

"'Waiters' Are Fans, Forgo Long Explanation"

54:19-57:35:  Question! from Dan Billings:  "Why is it so hard to drop books? I am heading into the shop today and realize I am reading 16 books – money-wise, that’s crazy and quality-wise, there are not 16 good books coming out this week. Or is this something I should address with my therapist instead?"

57:35-1:02:56:  Question! from Ian Brill:  "This has nothing to do with comics but I want to ask Graeme something I’m surprised it took me this long to figure out to ask. When you’re writing career started was it difficult to switch to the American spelling of words? Do you sometimes find your original education colouring your spelling choices, leading you to have to apologise to your editors?"

1:02:56-1:03:18: INTERMISSION ONE (of one!)

1:03:18-1:14:43:  And we're back and right into… Question! from moose n squirrel:  "What’s the deal with Alan Moore and rape? […] Somewhat related to this, a second question: if all the horrible sexist shit in comics and comics culture were swapped out with horrible racist shit, do you think comics readers would take the same ho-hum attitude towards it all? Like, if Alan Moore put scenes of, I don’t know, Black people being lynched in all of his comics, would people just shrug and say, “oh well, that’s Alan Moore, when you read an Alan Moore comic you’re bound to get some gratuitous lynching” the way they seem to do with his gratuitous rape, or would they see some line being crossed? Is it the case that comics culture is grossly sexist and racist to boot? Or is there a reason why it’s sexist but not (as) racist?"

1:14:43-1:17:35: Question! from T:  "Also, do you think such a think as “house styles” still exist at the Big 2, either for whole companies (e.g. a “Marvel Style”) or for lines within companies (e.g. the “Vertigo style,” the 90s X-Men Harras house style, the Weisinger Superman house style, the Schwartz Bronze Age Superman House style, the Schwartz Silver Age House style), etc. If there are current house styles at the Big 2, what are they? Are they art-based house styles, like when people used to say there was a “cartoony art” house style in the Berganza Superman books? Is it a writing-based house style, like people claim Ultimates had in the beginning. Is it a comprehensive art/writing house style like the 90s X-books had? If there are no more things as unique house styles at the big 2 anymore, what do you consider to be the last example of a true, unique “house style” in the Big 2?"

1:17:35-1:19:38:  Question! from T:  "Oh, last question: Does the abysmal state of Jeph Loeb’s writing for the past year show that he’s gotten somehow much worse than he used to be, or is it proof that his earlier, praised work was overrated and is now due for critical reappraisal?"

1:19:38-1:25:31:  Question! from T:  "Okay, Marvel or DC promises you they will hand over the reins of your all-time favorite character or concept to a certain writer for a guaranteed 100-issue run, and this run will not only be the only place to read about your favorite character or concept, but no one else will be allowed to write said character or concept during this duration, this 100-issue run will have zero editorial edicts and the writers will have total free rein over the concept and can do whatever they want. Also, if you don’t accept this deal, there will be no comics, adaptations, guest appearances, or anything with your favorite character or concept for a 10 year period. Yes, a 10 year moratorium, even if we’re talking Batman, Justice League, Avengers, or Wolverine. (Okay, so this is a far-fetched, impossible concept I know, but just go with it). Your choices are:

1) Jeph Loeb 2) Brad Meltzer 3) Chuck Austen 4) Mark Millar 5) Brian Bendis

Which one do you trust the most with your favorite character/concept?"

1:25:31-1:32:09: Question! from Ben Lipman:  "What’s the deal with people acting like Alan Moore is the only writer with rape in his works? Isn’t he just working within the tropes/archetypes of the genres he works in? Isn’t it weird to ignore all the acts of violence in his works, to only focus on the sexual violence? Moore has a rep for writing about rape, despite that sex fills his works and is mostly shown shown as a positive life-affirming experience – I would say positive sexual encounters far outweigh the negative one’s in his works. Is it perhaps the fans/commentators who are in fact fixated on rape? Did JG Ballard have to put up with this shit?  What would it take for Jeff to end his financial boycott of Marvel? What steps do they need to take to get him back?"

1:32:09-1:32:56: Question! from Adam Lipkin:  "It seems that the inevitable “Wait, What?” Drinking Game has to have a rule requiring listeners to take a drink every time Jeff talks about editing something out and then never actually doing so.  But after the last episode, there needs to be a rule for times when he talks about editing something out and then actually does so (but still tells us something was cut). Is that a sip, a chug, or some other amount?"

1:32:56-1:37:04:  Question! from gary:  "Graeme, if you had to replace Jeff with another host from world of comics (writers, artists, editors, etc), who would you replace him with and why? Jeff, if you had to replace Graeme with another host from the world of comics (writers, artists, editors, etc), who would you replace him with and why?  And together, if you had to take on a third person on this podcast, who do you think would fit into the rhythms of your podcast?"

1:37:04-1:40:52: Question! from gary:  "If you were given free reign of What If, what would be the titles of your first 3 “What Ifs”? Also, if you were given free reign of Elseworlds, what would be your first 3 genre mash-em ups?"

1:40:52-1:42:32:  Question! from Tim Rifenburg:  "I was curious if you guys specifically use a pull list for certain books or do most of your buying “off the rack”. Would you be buying less books if you did not have a pull list?"

1:42:32-1:45:12:  Question! from Matthew Murray:  "In light of recent news what are some lost gems of Vertigo? What uncollected series should we be searching back issue bins for?"

1:45:12-1:50:08:  Question! from Brock Landers:  "Also, coming from the generation who entered comics when the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans and Claremont/Byrne X-men were the two biggest books, I had this notion.  Have DC horribly mishandled the Teen Titans franchise since Wolfman/Perez or was it just a product of it’s time and it doesn’t have the same conceptual vitality and depth as the X-men?"

1:50:08-1:52:50:  Question! from gary:  "What comic book by Matt Fraction is most like a Waffle Cone? What Matt Fraction comic book is least like a Waffle Cone? Please elaborate on both."

1:52:50-1:54:13:  Question! from Kag:  "Where should we, as comic readers, be hoping Karen Berger lands? At an existing mid-major (IDW/Dark Horse)? At an existing “art house” (Top Shelf/Koyama)? At a major publishing house (Random House/Penguin)? Or do we want her launching a startup?

1:54:13-2:11:43:  Then, instead of going on to the next question(!), we decide we should turn to Jeff's cobbled together "Best of/Last Minute Comic Book Gift List," cobbled together in part from my introductions.  As mentioned herein, this list is far from exhaustive and there are so many tremendous works out this year I didn't read that I almost didn't put together a list.

Anyway, because I want you to have access to something like a list from me,  here it is:

• Empowered Vol. 7 by Adam Warren:  Didn't get enough love this year I thought.  The fight scenes in this book are master classes in comic book pacing and storytelling.  Blew my mind.
• Action Comics #9 by Grant Morrison, Gene Ha & others:  An amazing single-issue comic, a jaw-dropping act of bravado in a work-for-hire context, and a surprisingly persuasive defense of work-for-hire.
• Double Barrel by Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon:  If you have any kind of access to a digital comics reader, you should check out this great serialization/anthology/comic book clubhouse.
• Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly (issue #3):  Not cheap, but a beautifully illustrated story about a real and recognizable world that is all the more enchanting for it.
• Saga  & Multiple Warheads:  Two strangely similar-but-different casual sci-fi epics, one from Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples, the other from Brandon Graham (whose other title Prophet just missed making this list).
• Marvel: The Untold Story by Sean Howe:  Not a comic but an amazing (and amazingly ambitious) history of Marvel Comics.
• New Deadwardians by Dan Abnett and I.N.J. Culbard: A spiffy little read and will make a great trade.
• The Voyeurs by Gabrielle Bell:  Turns out this left Graeme cold, but I really loved this collection of quasi-dreamlike autobio comics.
• Bandette by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover:  Digital-only, and the three issues to date are gorgeous, funny, and fun.
• Popeye #3 by Roger Langridge and Tom Neely:  A fantastic single issue where all of the love and craft by Langridge and Neely manages to transcend any of my reservations about work-for-hire being done in the style of the original creator.
• The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell:  Only $4.99 if you buy it digitally (which is how I read it) and the way Campbell uses various digital tools made the book feel like one of the first real "digital" comics I'd ever read.  Disquieting and fascinating.
• Gisele issues of Archie (esp. Archie #636 by Gisele):  I love Gisele, and apparently I love gender-flipped Archie and gender-flipped Jughead.  Yikes.
• American Barbarian and Final Frontier by Tom Scioli:  Read one in print, the other online [link:  ] and I adored them both.  Of course, I'm probably the perfect audience for Scioli's strongly Kirby-influenced style but I really admire how he tries to find a balance with pastiche work that is neither post-ironic nor knowingly arch.   It's super-sophisticated in its primitivism, I think.
• The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman:  An addictively dark mini-comic that uses its format for maximum effect. Forsman's a guy I can't wait to see more of.
• King City by  Brandon Graham:  Realized the trade of this only got collected this year, so some people may not have discovered it until this year…maybe you haven't discovered it yet?  If so, you should: it's a canny and addictive blend of slice-of-life and sci-fi adventure comics.

Other stuff Jeff dug:  The Valiant reboot; Shonen Jump Alpha; 2000 AD Digital; the digital reprints of Crying Freeman over at Dark Horse Digital; the second and final volume of the Kamandi Omnibus by Jack Kirby; and the amazing graphic novel adaptation of Donald Goines' Daddy Cool by Donald Glut and Alfredo Alcala.

Graeme agrees with some but adds three I didn't mention:

• Dustin Harbin's Boxes;
• The Crackle of the Frost by Lorenzo Mattotti and Jorge Zentner; and
• The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon

2:10:45-End:  Closing Comments!  Best wishes for the holidays and the New Year!  Join us in 2013 for more fun, yeah?

Oh, and right--the podcast itself!  That would be helpful to include, right?  I mean, it's on iTunes and everything, but that's not everything, is it?  No, not by half, it's not!  Feel free to warm your Christmas ears below:

Wait, What? Ep. 110: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

And as always, we hope you enjoy...and thanks for listening!

"Why Is That Puppet's Bosom EXPOSED?" COMICS! Sometimes Corben Endures!

Good morrow! It is I, the man who skipped a week without notice! I'm sure your rancour and anger have abated somewhat. If indeed they ever existed. Perhaps it was a feeling more akin to relief. As when the drowning man releases that last bubble of air and watches it rise unhurriedly to the surface through clouded but resigned and unpanicked eyes. No, my American friends, I have no idea what I'm talking about as - Christmas? Getting in the way of your free content it appears.  Anyway, this...

I'm going to do some me stuff now. I don’t know if that’s because Christmas makes sentimental fools of us all or it's just the need to pad this crap out because Brian "Penelope Smallbone" Hibbs pays by the word (cannily he won't say which word hence - so many of the little bastards).Anyway, we (The MiracleKane Family) attended the local Victorian Fayre because, yes, I live in a country which fetishises the time we rounded up the poor into camps and the name of the game was institutionalised sadistic hypocrisy.   After perusing several stalls of overpriced tat, the consumption of heated offal and a couple of goes on Hook-A-Duck the evening ended ended with all souls present being entertained by a firework display set up in the football stadium over the road. And by stadium I mean a field with lines chalked on it surrounded by a wall.  I don’t exactly live in a cosmopolis, is what I’m saying there. Nonetheless the display was pretty impressive. It’s impressiveness was undoubtedly enhanced by the decision to play James Bond themes over the barking tannoy. Sure,  if you played James Bond themes over the sight of a man picking his nose while standing in a field of stale turds it would magically become entertaining beyond all reason. James Bond themes are like that. Well the John Barry ones anyway and that’s what these were. Brian “Holly Goodhead” Hibbs would have approved. Grudgingly as is his wont but still approval would occur within his beefy frame, I'm sure.

I just really like this picture.

But, y’know, fair’s fair the fireworks were pretty spectacular. MiracleKid even exclaimed "Awesome!" and he's at the age when he means "awesome" when he says it and it's not just the result of a combination of affected ennui and an impoverished vocabulary. Yet, and yet, when the almost insanely enthusiastic voice riding the tannoy suggested everyone render a round of applause in appreciation...well now I know what the sound of one Dad clapping is. Christ, people are ungrateful buggers. And on that festive note...

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 By Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe, $3.99 (2012) Popeye created by E.C. Segar

The adventures of everyone’s favourite arse-chinned violent maritime moron continue! But enough about Aquaman! Arf! Arf!! Yes, it’s more crumbly comics from the time when the only people who were tattooed were sailors, whores and convicts. It is truly a Golden Age of reprints when the work of Bud Sagendorf can be disinterred, dusted down and presented to an audience that never even knew it existed (well, I didn't). Because Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye comics are more golden than a dead Shirley Eaton! I don’t think I've read anything about these comics on-line which is weird given how great they are. Sagendorf’s cartooning is timeless in it’s bigfootededly bizarre brilliance as are his strangely sensical nonsensical plots which the reader is propelled through via the simple ,yet incredibly effective, method of ending each page with a “turn” (or whatever Brian “Vesper Lynd” Hibbs calls it).

Bud Sagendorf was not as other men.

In the first (and longest) story here everyone just accepts the idea that when you die in Popeye’s world you turn into a ghost and go live on Ghost Island. This equating of death with geographical relocation is not entirely dissimilar to the premise of Will Self’s How The Dead Live except Popeye is funnier and shorter. But How The Dead Live is unarguably a lot more Jewish. Hey, these are VERY GOOD! comics; each page is beautifully crafted and built to last. But then, personally speaking, the comedy of a man looking in a window while declaiming “I is looking in this window, so I is! Arf! Arf!” is inexhaustible. I don’t know why that is and I don’t want to know. It’s enough I find things funny I don’t need to know why all the time. Sometimes it is what it is and that’s all that it is! ARF! ARF!

Help Brian “Plenty O’Toole” Hibbs blush like a rose in bloom by purchasing POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 from HERE!

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S THE CONQUEROR WORM Adapted by Richard Corben Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot Dark Horse Comics, $3.99 (2012)

Again! Again Richard Corben paws and kneads at the raw material of Poe’s poetry shaping and reworking it to his requirements. These being the provision of a showcase for his art. To belittle this because the narrative seems somewhat undernourished would, I feel, be to miss the point. It would be to judge the artwork by the frame in which it is set. Because anyone coming to this expecting all the parts to have equal weight is going to be sorely displeased. This is Corben lifting weights in his garage, but he's left the door open so you can all crowd round and peer in. Or something.

After Richard Corben's first attempt offers for panto soon dried up.

Fortuitously when you’re as great as Corben even your workouts are better than most other actual performances. Artwise, this is the real stuff. There are some brief and yet informative notes secreted in the back of the book which serve to unsettle the assuredness of my readerly assumptions. After all while I was reading this I would have said it was set in a Hammer Horror/Mad Max future limbo but in the brief but informative notes in the back I learn that Corben set it "very definitely in the 19th Century”.  (Much like the imagination of the British people! Not really worth all that set-up was it. Sigh.) This does serve to make the anachronistic dialogue ("Yeah, okay. I'll go for it.") funnier. Anyway this one's all about the art with Corbens's swollen and boiled looking figures capering around a world coloured mustardy rust and chalky grey through which sudden bursts of scarlet punch in horrid revelation. Also, he draws the titular worms to resemble nothing but independently mobile and toothy cocks. That's not something you see every day but neither is Richard Corben who, thrillingly, remains VERY GOOD!

THOR GOD OF THUNDER #1 Artist Esad Ribic Writer Jason Aaron Colour Artist Dean White Letterer VC's Joe Sabino Marvel, $3.99 (2012) Thor created by Jack Kirby, Larry Lieber and Stan Lee (and the people of Norway)

It's not a bad idea to relocate Thor as a serial killer thriller narrative. It's certainly better than the previous writer's decision to give priority to trying on trendy hats and alphabetising his coloured vinyl 7" single collection while letting his artists to do all the work. It's fine, no problems really. Aaron even seeds possible future stories with the introduction of a new pantheon of Gods here represented by The God Butcher.

"Mrs. Leeds changing. Do you see? Mrs Jacobi reborn. Do you see? Mrs. Leeds reborn. Do you see?"

Consequently later stories will no doubt focus on such dastardly deities as The God Baker and The God Candlestick Maker. The whole thing is a kind of watered down Heavy Metal strip the success is which is due mostly to Ribic and White's work which lends the whole derivative but enjoyable thing a grandeur and scale it probably doesn't really merit. At $3.99 it's GOOD! but not good enough for me to continue with. And there's the whole Jack Kirby thing of course; you can thank my LCS for sending me this unbidden.

So, apologies but Christmas will affect productivity but in the meantime you'll always have COMICS!!!

"Bleedhounds Kin Find Anythin'!" COMICS! Sometimes They Are Assorted!

So, you know how it should go: 1) Read comics 2) Think about comics  3) Write about comics 4) Post writing 5) Fret about having upset someone. Rinse and repeat.Well I did 1) and forgot to do 2) so that shivved 3), 4) and 5) right in the kidneys didn't it? So all you get is what I read last night. I'll try and do better next time.

Also: Don't forget the 100TH PODCAST BY GRAEME MCMILLAN and JEFF LESTER is due THIS WEEK! It will be MONUMENTAL! It will be ASTOUNDING! It will be the BEST THING EVER!

No pressure, guys!

SPACEMAN #9 (of 9) By Risso, Azzarello, Mulvihill, Robins, Johnson, Doyle and Dennis VERTIGO/DC Comics, $2.99 (2012) SPACEMAN created by Risso and Azzarello

In which all things come to the usually inconclusive and possibly clever but certainly unsatisfying end most of Azzarello’s work casually bellyflops into. Recasting a standard crime tale in sci-fi (S-F!) trappings turned out not to be enough. Possibly it turned out to more hobbling than helpful. Azzarello seems to actively avoid clarity in his storytelling at times, possibly confusing complication with complexity. Fair enough but then factor in his Footcha-Speek and the reader ends up trying to figure out the simplest of things while momentum and interest dissipate softly but noticeably out and away, like the sly fart of a dog under the Sunday dinner table.

The Futcha-Spik wasn’t all that good either, I’m not expecting Orwell’s Newspeak but I am at least expecting an effort on a par with Jack (Under-Rated) Womack and I’m certainly expecting it to be more than an excuse to force in more terrible puns (Real-Tee!). Also, I have a strong suspicion all this stuff just served as a distraction from the fact the end made no sense. No one went, “Actually, he didn't do it.” No one? How convenient. Luckily Risso and Mulvihill’s work remains visually sumptuous, engaging and altogether too good for the material at hand, thus raising it up to GOOD!

AMERICAN VAMPIRE: LORD OF NIGHTMARES #4 of 5 Drawn by Dustin Nguyen Written by Scott Snyder Colours by John Kalisz Letters by Steve Wands VERTIGO/DC Comics, $2.99 (2012) AMERICAN VAMPIRE created by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque

They held off quite a while didn't they? You do have to give them that, but in the end all Vampire roads lead to Vlad. Here they've plumped for the spooky baldy Murnau version; respectful but a mistake I feel. This comic could really have done with Gary Oldman’s Jack-cool-AH! livening up its sadly lifeless pages. Sometimes this thing just makes less sense than an extraordinarily senseless thing, like a clam in a coma. After doing a load of hair pulling and garment rending about how super awful a threat Dracula is the strip then seems to suggest a train crash would finish off Dracula like he was some luckless commuter on a particularly ill-fated 6.45 to Basingstoke. It also thinks having our cast trapped on a plane bickering is of interest, yet since much of the cast is made up of spooky humanoids this just ends up being like reading about the argumentative occupants of a flying supernatural pet shop.

What happened to Dustin Nguyen? Has he had an accident? His art is usually lovely but here it looks like he did it during a bumpy bus ride and the bus was one of those with crates of livestock on it, some of which kept getting loose and flapped right up in his face while he was engaged in his act of creation. Look, this is a series in which the Big Threat is revealed to be a chair, so yeah, it was EH!

FATALE #7 Drawn by Sean Phillips Written by Ed Brubaker Colours by Dave Stewart IMAGE, $3.50 (2012) FATALE created by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

I know they don’t need any encouragement here but this would make a great TV series. Every week a special guest star could stumble over Josephine’s wall with an item of wider relevance to whichever decade the series was currently set in. So you could have Jim Belushi as Richard Nixon fall into Josephine’s bougainvilleas sweatily clutching a Watergate tape to his chest. He would find her attractive. She would wonder why she, an attractive woman, had such power over him, a clearly foolish man. It would be a real mystery. Only a supernatural solution would suffice. The gardener would get all shirty. She would help him out and find another clue to the central mystery of the story which is so ill defined I can’t even remember what it is. Richard Nixon would die and be sad. Josephine would be sad he had died. Then she would look out of her window to find Charlie Sheen as Elvis falling into her poison Ivy clutching the proof that Colonel Tom Parker was an illegal immigrant. And on and on and on. Robert DeNiro in Angel Heart has already shown up, although he’s now wearing those eggs he kept peeling as eyes.

As far as horror goes the most horrific thing about the book is when Sean Phillips draws people in the middle distance. They start to bloat and their proportions subtly shift from those of a human to something more akin to a Robert Aickman phantasm. Unfortunately he’s just drawing normal people but his skill with scenery and faces ensure the art is still the second best thing here. Dave Stewart’s colours being the first, check out the lovely felt-tippy green on that Green Door, Shakin' Stevens! I have no idea why the critical reception of this book is so orgasmic but then I didn't think CRIMINAL having flashbacks drawn like ARCHIE comics was exactly warming my face with the Promethean fire. I’m probably just a demanding prick so take my verdict of EH! With a pinch of salt.

Show me I'm just a big old partypooper by buying FATALE #7 from HERE. Remember - the more copies you buy the more you'll be showing me how wrong I am! Knock yourself out!

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #2 By Bud Sagendorf YOE Comics/IDW $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

These are POPEYE comics from the ‘50s by Bud Sagendorf and if you have been paying attention to me then you know how I feel about that! If you have not been paying attention to me, why NOT? Jesus Christ, you know I only do this for the attention! Yes, only for the heat of your Love I feel through the screen do I do this thing! And the money. Anyway, these comics are mental and there are about twice as many pages as in a normal comic so that offsets the fact you’re paying 3.99, I feel. In case that was a concern. I really like the way they retain the original colouring because there’s something to be said for those halcyon days when upon reaching the age of 60 every citizen was forcibly taken to a warehouse where they were chained by the ankle to an enormous table and here, amongst ranks of equally liver spotted and doddering companions, they threw carcinogenic inks in the rough direction of where their cataract occluded eyes guessed the pictures were.

Nowadays it’s all done by computers and I think we've lost something there, something real, something human, something magical. As great as the contents are (and, yes, they are great) the cover is awesome as, if we take the Freudian view of firearms, it portrays Popeye punching a man so hard in the cock he ends up wearing his foreskin like a sleeve. Fuck you, Johnny Ryan, Bud Sagendorf rocks! It’s POPEYE by Bud Sagendorf and is, clearly, VERY GOOD!

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS can be bought from HERE!. It's just like buying it from Bouncy Brian Hibbs! Except you don't get to go to San Francisco ("The World's Favourite City!"). But you do get a good comic instantly in your PC! Swings and roundabouts, people!

I hope you had a good weekend, y'all! I also hope you enjoyed some COMICS!!!

"I Got A Heart Like Nobody's Bizness!" COMICS! Sometimes They Are Timeless Magic!

Now I don't know about you but I needed a bit of a larf recently. And the most larfs I had lately were courtesy of these comics. So I thought I'd tell you about them and then you could go and buy them and have a larf too. It's called The Cycle of Larf! Arf! Arf! No, wait, these are good books, honest! Oh, be like that then.

POPEYE #1 Art and letters by Bruce Ozella Written by Roger Langridge Coloured by Luke McDonnell IDW, $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

A while back I commented that the presence of this comic was awesome for anyone who missed Thimble Theatre. Forgetting I was on The Internet I think my words were misconstrued as a dig at the fact that such an old property was being dug up and dusted off once again; despite the fact that the original audience had long ago ceased to care about comics if not before, then certainly shortly after, they had ceased breathing, which they all had some time ago. That's not actually what I meant. What I actually meant was that the presence of this comic is awesome for anyone who missed Thimble Theatre. Like me. Basically I meant "missed" as in "failed to experience" rather than "felt the loss or lack of". Words are tricky, hear me now!

I was well up for this because the only time Roger Langridge has ever disappointed me was that time when he failed to bring peace to the world entire. To be fair though that expectation may only have been in my head and comics are really more his thing. After all comics are a thing Roger Langridge does rather well. Here he just dives in with a feature length tale of Popeye and all his familiar companions, together with several unfamiliar to me anyway, creations having madcap adventures of a bizarre and confounding nature while in serach of a mate for The Jeep.  Apparently this strange creature gave the WW2 US Army vehicle its name. I previously thought it was named after the onomatopoeic effect of the initials for General Purpose (G.P.) but, no, apparently it was a Popeye character. According to the Bud Sagendorf book anyway, more on that anon. Langridge and Ozella's tale is a pell mell charge into entertainment which is dense in event with something engagingly off-kilter occurring on every page. Ozella's art has a loose and scrappy quality that retains the "punkier" quality of Segar's work as opposed to the cleaner Sagendorf stuff. By basically taking the property of Popeye and changing very little (his pipe is just for show now), the book retains the central appeal of the character which is the main reason to buy the thing.  That's not cluelessness it's common sense.

People want Popeye not "street level" Popeye or "Tom Clancy-lite" Popeye. If the book doesn't sell then people just don't want Popeye. The yellow lettering on the cover of my copy indicates it is a "2nd Printing", so I guess people want Popeye alright. This is something DC could bear in mind with characters like Captain "Shazam!" Marvel. If you change it too much it isn't that character anymore and if it isn't that character anymore why should anyone care? After all making Captain Marvel a dick in a hood contributes little except a clear indication that he isn't Jewish. Anyway, this comic is about Popeye not Shazam! (Boo!) and it reads like a Popeye comic and thanks to the talents of all involved it is VERY GOOD!

Please help send Brian Hibbs to Summer Camp by purchasing this comic from HERE. Issues 2,3 and 4 are also now available, just saying. Summer Camp can be pricey these days.

POPEYE (Classic Comics) #1 By Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe Comics, $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

Now, when I read the 2012 comic I had very little idea about Popeye but once I'd finished it I found my curiosity had been piqued. Luckily this comic appeared. So I bought it. Causality in action there. This is apparently the first issue in a complete reprinting of the POPEYE comics which spun up and out from the newspaper strip. There are over a hundred of these. Judging by the contents of this issue the next ten years are going to be called the Happy Popeye Fan Decade. Because although I'd never heard of Bud Sagendorf before buying this it turns out that Bud Sagendorf is all kinds of awesome. He is particularly awesome at Popeye.

His style is cleaner and more polished than that of Segar but it loses none of its anatomical daftness and retains enough of the creepiness that always underlies Popeye's comedy. Although these strips are from 1948 they are just as mentally, er, different and rich in incident as the 2012 comic. The strips seem to have been copied straight from the old comics with warts and all remaining which gives them a lovely old timey feeling, like when you maul your grandad's face. The pages are thick and the package has a heft and solidity pleasing to the purchaser. I believe Brian Hibbs calls this quality "finger". POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS has good finger. The comics within it are, truth to tell, also VERY GOOD!

Now, I don't want to come across as though I'm rattling a tin in front of your face but this comic can also be purchased from HERE.

POPEYE The Great Comic Book Tales By Bud Sagendorf By Bud Sagendorf (Natch! Arf! Arf!) IDW/Yoe Books, $29.99 (2011) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

So I read those books and then I went looking for more. Because I am a greedy man indeed. And that's how I ended up buying this. It's a sturdy volume and like all Yoe books the design and research speak so loudly of  enthusiasm that any cavils about proofreading are soon drowned out. The contents are a selection of Sagendorf's strips across a roughly 10 year period. The reproduction, and in fact the very first strip, are exactly the same as the comic above. So if you enjoyed that you're sure to enjoy this. Heck if you enjoy Popeye or just good comics you're certain to enjoy this.

There are probably historically verifiable reasons for each of the stunningly unsettling character designs on display here. One thing I do know is the timeless quality engendered by their wonderful weirdness enables each new generation to imprint their own meaning upon them. The Sea Hag, for example, looks like nothing so much as a stroppy Grant Morrison in a hooded cloak. That’s pretty disturbing on its own but when she asks the squint-eyed one for his malformed hand in marriage whole new vistas of repellent perversity play out in the unwilling reader’s mind. Conversely when old arse-chin smacks The Sea Hag one upside her weirdly hirsute chin you do kind of want to shout, “That’s for Siegel and Shuster, you pound shop Anarchist!” Basically though why these strangely swollen and wobbly looking folks look the way they do I haven't a clue. Maybe E.C. Segar had a squint, talked like his tongue was as big as a cat and had a chin like a bum with a pipe stuck in it. I don’t know. I know he had tattoos so that’s one mystery solved right there. I could have looked it all up but frankly I want to keep the focus on these comics and when I do finally get those E.C. Segar volumes from Fantagraphics I’ll be wanting to present their well researched facts as my own won’t I now?

This volume has its own well researched facts in the form of preface by Craig Yoe which is illustrated with Sagendorf rarities and one picture of the artist with snowy white hair. I am a big fan of pictures of comic book artists with snowy white hair. To me they are like pictures of kittens are to normal people. This introduction is highly enlightening in regard to Sagendorf’s craft as it includes two pages from a correspondence course he chipped in on (above) and has the man himself explaining, via quotes, some of the process involved in the creation of the strips. He and Segar would basically fish from Segar’s boat for five days hashing ideas out before belting the strips out. The introduction isn't very long but as I say it’s informative After reading it you understand why Sagendorf was able to replicate The Master’s style after his death i.e. simpatico interests (science -fiction, which explains a lot about the strip in itself) and seemingly being a creative equal for much of their association. And yet it points at the huge mystery of why it took Kings Feature Syndicate 2o years to pass the job on to Sagendorf without offering an answer. In the end though Sagendorf got the gig and made it his own. The extent to which he succeeded can now be viewed by generations previously unaware of his very existence. I think he would have liked that and I think you will like this book as it is VERY GOOD!

Before I bought POPEYE #1 by Langridge and Ozella I knew very little about Popeye, shortly thereafter I had bought POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #1 and POPEYE THE GREAT COMIC BOOK TALES. I don't know much about publishing or retailing but I think I might count that as a success right there for all involved and the persistent magic of the the profoundly stupid or perhaps even the stupidly profound, world of POPEYE!

Have a good weekend, y'all, and read some COMICS!!! (Maybe even buy 'em from HERE!)

Wait, What? Ep. 93: Thrill Power Overboard

Above: The Chocolate Waffle, which is a liege waffle covered in dark chocolate, from The Waffle Window, Portland, OR

Yup, Episode 93.  I would say more but I'm slightly overwhelmed with the amount of shite multitasking I'm currently doing (kinda dashing back and forth between two computers at opposite ends of the room at the moment, which neither makes me feel like a mad scientist or a keyboardist in Journey but just someone who is old, Internet, so terribly old).

On the other hand (and behind the jump):  show notes!

0:00-7:51: Greetings; getting schooled by Graeme on Tharg and the mascots of 2000AD and other British comics, with a half-hearted attempt by Jeff to pitch Mascot Wars [working title] 7:51-11:37:  By contrast, Jeff guiltily admits he's been reading the first volume of the Vampirella Archives 11:37-13:37:  Somehow this leads to a discussion of the fascinating copyright information found in Dynamite Books 13:37-15:51: Bless him, Jeff is not giving up so easily on his Mascot Wars idea 15:51-18:55: Jeff gripes about getting back into the routine after his Portland trip, Graeme gripes a bit about getting back into his routine after the 4th of July holiday 18:55-20:52:And so, finally, we start talking comic news--the announcement of Marvel NOW! and the launch of Monkeybrain comics. 20:52-24:35:  Graeme has a thing about the Uncanny Avengers cover and I really cannot blame him; 24:35-25:57: And since we are on the subject, Graeme has a few things to say about that Marvel NOW! image by Joe Quesada, too. 25:57-38:25: And so we talk about Monkeybrain instead, including Amelia Cole by friend of the podcast Adam Knave, Bandette by Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin, the other launch titles, and what we would like to see from the line in the future; 38:25-41:54:  Speaking of fantastic digital comics, the second issue of Double Barrel is out!  And neither of us have read it. But it is out!  And you should consider getting it.  Because it is also Top Shelf and also coming out in digital, we talk James Kochalka's American Elf. 41:54-49:57: Jeff talks about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 2009. Here there be spoilers! 49:57-1:06:42:Graeme's interesting rebuttal concerns whether bad art can be forgiven if it is suitably ambitious. We have a tussle of sorts and then move on to discuss when does the creator develop that "not so fresh" feeling.  (Bonus: Graeme does a pretty great job of justifying our existence, pretty much). 1:06:42-1:15:37: Incentivizing the singles? Does it work?  Brian Wood's The Massive, Ed Brubaker's Fatale, and more discussion of the Monkeybrain publishing plan and a discussion of what works in the direct market. 1:15:37-1:29:48:  Who is stronger, Watchmen or Walking Dead?  Fight! 1:29:48-1:38:32:The possible Thief of Thieves TV show and the need to keep creating new IP for Hollywood; and when or if the Big Two will come around on that. 1:38:32-1:42:37: Uncanny Avengers.  We are a little fixated. Also, Graeme sings the ballad of Cafe Gratitude (except he doesn't sing and it's not a ballad).  And then some clever Brass Eye jokes that Graeme has to explain to Jeff.  Again. 1:42:37-1:47:36: On the other hand, Jeff did get to the comic store that week so he has that going on for him.  His quickie reviews while Graeme listens on helplessly:  Batman, Inc. #2, Fatale #6, The New Deadwardians #3 and 4; Mind MGMT #2; Prophet #26; Popeye #3 (which is awesome and must-have-ish); Tom Neely's Doppelganger; Flash #10; and Action Comics #11. 1:47:36-2:04:08: San Diego Comic Con! Graeme has two questions about it.  Crazy predictions are made and anxiety dream stories are exchanged. [brrt! brrt! David Brothers alert! brrt! brrt!]  Also, Jeff once again tries to coin the term "Nerd Vietnam" to describe SDCC. 2:04:082:09:20-: Closing comments, and a few reviews of waffles from the Waffle Window.  And then....sign off!

If you are of an iTunesian inclination, you may have already chanced upon us.  But if not, we offer you the chance to give a listen right here and now:

Wait, What?, Episode 93: Thrill Power Overboard

And as always, we hope you enjoy--and thanks for listening!

Words With Friends: Jeff Talks About A Few Comics

I promised myself if I ever got caught up, I'd do one of these.  The last couple of podcasts, we've wrapped up with a one or two books that I'd read still left unmentioned.  Hmm, I thought to myself.  If only there was a way I could actually share my thoughts on these books without ceaselessly cutting off Graeme just as he was saying something sensible and well-reasoned.  Via some kind of...written medium, maybe... After the jump: the miracle of the written word!

MIND MGMT #1:  Did you pick this up?  It's an odd, paradoxical package: a $3.99 book without any real "hand" to it that is actually a full, satisfying read; a "by-the-numbers" plot that feels unique and idiosyncratic; art that straddles the line between off-putting and charming; a comic that all but screams "self-published labor of love" that comes with the Dark Horse stamp on it.

None of it should work.  Almost all of it works. And it works because the creator Matt Kindt is the kind of guy who has ambition to burn and mad formalist chops.  The best I can do to make my point is to point you to page 24 of the book, where the bottom six panels of the nine page grid are actually a single image just as the narrator explains the secret behind a psychic able to see the future by reading the minds of every living creature around him.  You literally see "the big picture" at the same time as the revelation, which lets you experience how the psychic's power works.

While I didn't put down the book with any especially strong desire to see what happens next in the story, I can't wait to see the next issue, to see what Kindt tries to pull off next, and to see if he can use those formalist skills to make me care about what's happening.  This is quite a GOOD book and worth your time.

MUD MAN #4:  Mud Man is one of those books I soooo dearly want to love.  Paul Grist is really working the Lee/Ditko vibe of Amazing Spider-Man, trying his damnedest to re-create that odd, off-kilter feeling of a teen superhero trying to get by without a rulebook to follow.  Rather than follow the beats laid down by Lee and Ditko (and copied by generations of comic book creators since), Grist is using his own rhythms and ideas and the limitations he's put on the title character.  There's a charming little essay on the inside cover about where the title should go in comic books, the last line of which is "Why Don't People Do Comics The Way I Want?" and it's pretty easy to see Mud Man as Grist doing the superhero comic he wants to read the way he wants.  I feel like he should be lifted on the shoulders of the comics industry for it.

And yet, once you strip away some of the smart and dynamic page layouts, the masterful use of white space, and the charmingly low-stakes action (this is our first supervillain, and he's a shirtless old guy),  the book doesn't really have that much different from it from what you'd see in, say, the Rogers/Giffen run of Blue Beetle: it's very much the "young hero gets a cool, enigmatic  mentor" turn with an additional four page action sequence that turns out to be a daydream.

I know, I know: that's a lot of amazing stuff to put away to one side, like I decided to complain about a cake with the opening argument of "putting aside the amazing frosting and the amazingly rich texture of the cake itself..."  But I think maybe there's some validity to not being satisfied with a chocolate cake without any chocolate in it.  In Mud Man, our hero makes a heroic choice to save the guy who bullies him in his secret identity, but he does it without any use of his superpowers.  (And the best, most exciting example of his power ends up utilized in the four page daydream sequence.)

Lee and Ditko did an amazing job of making Peter Parker an object of pathos, in both his secret and public identity.  But we also got to see Peter kick some ass in exactly the right proportion to all the superhero-deflating hijinks.  I know it makes me a bad reviewer to judge this book on what I want rather than what Grist intends, but just a dash more superheroing in this superhero book would make it so much more than the OKAY read it is to me.

PLANETOID #1:  Okay fine I admit it I am a stinking bourgeois pig who went out and got an iPhone 4S a few months ago when I came to the perfect intersection of necessity (we needed to change carriers) and culpability (as I recall, Apple had just opened Foxconn and their partner manufacturing plants to outside review) but you know what: don't tell me you couldn't give a shit about Siri because YOU ARE LYING.

I submit this sci-fi book by Ken Garing as Exhibit A, because no sooner than the protagonist crashes on a strange planet than he activates RICTER, his interactive analytical assistant.  Yeah, that's right, bitches:  our indy comic protag only makes it four pages before he decides he needs a faceless servile voice to catalog his inventory.

So don't tell me you don't dig the idea of holding up your phone and giving it some numbers to calculate a percentage of, or what time sunset is set for, or to send a message to your wife telling her you've managed to lock your keys inside the car for the third time this month and could she please come downtown with the spare set.  Because I've got HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Paul Bettany in all those Iron Man movies, and mother-fucking Ricter from mother-fucking Planetoid #1 to call you out on your shit.

As for the book itself, it's a very generous 32 pages for $2.99, and although it's about as by-the-numbers as you can get, it's lovely to look at and is scratching that new, weird sci-fi comic itch recently brought about by Prophet, Saga,  the first two years of Uncanny X-Force, and being able to buy issues of Matt Howarth's Those Annoying Post Bros. and Savage Henry for ninety-nine cents a pop over on Comixology.  It's an OK book, the kind of thing that could be entirely disregarded if just one of the factors (price point, talent, individual interest, use in dumb pop-culture arguments) wasn't met.  But they were so, yes, OKAY, indeed.

POPEYE #2:  Comes sooooo very close to being the absolute slice of licensed genius I want it to be: in fact, that Sappo story in the back by Langridge and Tom Neely is in fact something breathtakingly close to perfection.  In the way it takes an goofy premise and logically makes it goofier and goofier while keeping it grounded by its characters (or character types, really), it reminds me of a lot of what I loved most about Segar's work.

The Popeye story, however, doesn't work quite as well despite having a classic premise--Popeye has to compete against the dastardly movie star Willy Wormwood for Olive's affections.  All of the pieces are in place and each character is recognizable and in character--Olive is fickle, Popeye is a sensitive roughneck, Wimpy is a smooth conniver--but for some reason nothing really quite lands.  I don't know if the licensor had problems with the script, or Langridge didn't have time to finesse things  or what, but when you've got a potentially genius set-up as Wimpy playing Cyrano and feeding lines for Popeye to say to Olive and you get rid of that idea in a quarter of a page, something has gone screwy.

I know Langridge and Co. don't have the freedom to  play a comic bit out for as long as they want the way Segar did with his strip, but, unlike with the Sappo piece, the main story felt overly full and oddly static at the same time.

Thanks to the Sappo story, I'm giving this issue an overall GOOD rating, but I' d love to see it get even better next issue.  It's got more than enough potential to do so.

And, lo, there shall come a sell-out! Hibbsing 4/25

I have reviews, yes, under the jump.

ARCHIE #632: In the "just because I can sell you one digitally" category, let's start off with this one. This is the third in the "Archie Gets Married" comics -- this time it's to... Valerie of Josie & The Pussycats? Uhm, OK? I must be horrible backwards on my Archie-ana lore, but I didn't even have the slightest idea that they'd ever even dated before? Did they? Oh, huh, wikipedia says that they first dated in ARCHIE #608 (2010) ("making her Archie's first black girlfriend; previously, Archie Comics has been very hesitant to depict interracial romantic relationships.") which sounds about par for the course for the modern Archie.

The thing of it is, in 2012 (or even 2010), the idea of a mixed race couple isn't much of a big deal... well, at least here it isn't; I'd say at least 20% of the families at Ben's school are mixed in one fashion or another... and if you opened that up to religions as well, it might be as much as half -- so it is really hard to find a dramatic hook in this; though that's clearly why Archie tried this as another "stunt" book.

What I found somewhat interesting here is that Archie's path in all of these "memory lane" stories is largely dictated by Archie's choices before he proposes -- for example in the "....marries Veronica" story, he's working for Mr. Lodge, while here he's a full-time musician with "The Archies" band. Implying that his choice of romance is dictated by his job.

I also find it a little weird that there's a little subplot about the paparazzi are very interested in this marriage, but most of it focuses on the Pussycats side. Why is that weird? Well, I don't know, it's kind of because Valerie is the "...& the Pussycats" portion, and the real world would seem to suggest that only the "front man" is considered famous -- what portion of the world could name a single member of "....& the New Bohemians" or "...& the Blackhearts"? Unless, in earth-Archie, the Pussycats are on par with the E. Street Band?  Yet, conversely, Mr. Andrews band is *called* "The Archies" (which is actually weird, when you think about it, it's almost like, say, The Talking Heads being called "The Davids"), but it really doesn't read in the comic that he's the "star" of the band. Weird.

There's also this really weird 3 panel interlude where some chick with a white streak in her hair schemes to take Val's place in the Pussycats, but I have absolutely no clue whatsoever who she is supposed to be, since she's not named, and I don't have a degree in Pussycat-ology.

So, yah, cute, if house-style art, sloppy writing (both by Dan Parent), and low-stakes drama... yeah, it's an Archie comic, and it's certainly no worse than many I've read, and better than a few (like the Kiss crossover) -- it's perfectly competent and OK.

AVX VS #1: I'll say that the "this has no plot!" introduction page removed much of the weight that might follow here, and, yup, just punching. I pretty much disagree with the results of BOTH of the fights, as shown, especially since they were both X-Men losers, AND they were "worthy antagonists for an entire team of characters" characters, but it was still fun enough for the brainlessness of the work (I also liked the running "fun fact"s), but CHRIST ON A BIKE, $4? Are you nuts? Damn, that's just crazy brutal, takes it down at least two grades, relative to the depth of the content, and means all I can say is EH.

Also? I think it's kind of insane that the Parent book, titled "Avengers Vs. X-Men" looks like it's called "AvX" on the rack, while this one, which IS called "AvX" looks like it's actual title is "Avengers Vs X-Men" -- I don't think we can quite call that "bait and switch", but it's some dumb planning, if you ask me.

BATTLE SCARS #6: Seriously?

I mean, it's stupid enough that they're trying to align Marvel comics continuity with movie continuity (seriously, anytime the answer to "wait, who is that?" has to be answered with a paragraph long description, you've just fucked up your continuity), but to have a nearly last page reveal that "Marcus Johnson's" name WAS ALWAYS "Nick Fury", so that's what everyone is calling him now, is just kind of insanely dumb. There's also nothing in the text of the comic that would suggest that this kid is even vaguely competent enough to be made head of S.H.I.E.L.D., and, in fact, since his pal "Cheese"... er, I mean "Agent Coulson" (Gr!) bugged him in order to have the Avengers rescue his ass, I'd say the text suggest quite the contrary. At the least, the OLD Nick shoulda died... but he's still bouncing around in the background, so it's probably just a year or three before this gets reversed.

This might not suck if people actually cared, or bought it, but I've sold ZERO rack copies of #4 & 5 of this series, and #6 survived Wednesday without anyone showing any interest whatsoever. What if you threw an origin and nobody came?

Really the only positive thing I can say is that, as a $2.99 book, which Marvel has made self-cover, and removed 4 pages of ads, there's a significantly better reading experience by not having those ads. On the negative side, with the reduced cover stock and the one less signature, these $2.99 books have AWFUL "hand" -- they feel flimsy and cheap and terrible. I'd strongly recommend they pump the cover stock back up to compensate.

This was a badly told comic, for an unreasonable and unwanted goal, and that really makes it AWFUL.

MOON KNIGHT #12: I didn't write them up, but I really liked the twists of the last two issues, and of how Moonie's mental illness was being expressed, and I thought the book was finally actually going somewhere, but this issue just has the Avengers come in all Ex Machin-y, and makes the whole thing kind of pointless. Can Marvel now admit that Moon Knight can't carry a solo book? Even with Bendis and Maleev? Sadly, this last issue was very EH.

POPEYE #1: Another we'll-sell-it-to-you digitally book, and this one at least, I can thoroughly and unreservedly recommend. No, it isn't E.C. Segar, but it's done with so much respect for that original work, that it wouldn't feel out of place with Thimble Theatre. Roger Landgridge's script has the voices Just So, and the art by Bruce Ozella is astonishing -- absolutely in line with Segar, but it doesn't feel "old fashioned" or slavish for that. You couldn't really ask for a better first issue, though I was surprised to not see a single can of spinach on display. I thought it was VERY GOOD.

RICH JOHNSTONS CAPTAIN AMERICAN IDOL #1 RICH JOHNSTONS SCIENTHORLOGY #1: I think I can review this as a pair?  Honestly, if Rich's name wasn't on these, I wouldn't have ordered a single copy; and even with is name on it, it's really only down to the audience that reads Bleeding Cool. These kind of look hacked out to my eye, or cashed-in, your choice, and while each has an amusing moment or two in them (Thor punching someone in a Guy Fawkes mask, saying "thou art Anonymous!" is the height of the wit here), the best thing they have going for them is David Hasslehoff cast as Curtis Joh... er, I mean, Nick Fury. If you're looking for CRACKED-level parody, without the Severin art, as you build up to Avengers, then this might be the comics for you! Me, I thought they were both EH (with Thor being marginally better, mostly due to Michael Netzer's art)

Yeah, so that's me; as always, what did YOU think?

-B