"Don't Retcon me, Bro!" -- Hibbs on 5/29

What I think of things, below the cut...

ANGEL & FAITH #10 : Oooh, ooh, nice Chris Samnee artwork inside. Yes, very pretty, and Christos Gage continues to nail the voices and characters of this Buffy spin-off. I continue to feel that this is a far stronger book than "Season 9", and this stand-alone issue is a great example of same. VERY GOOD.

ANIMAL MAN ANNUAL #1: I remember, once upon a time, when DC Annuals would be indispensable objects -- wrapping up "The Judas Quest" or important Swamp Thing plotlines, or even changing the status quo of a series entirely, like with the Firestorm one. Ah, those were the days! Despite being billed as a tie in the the Animal Man / Swamp Thing shared plot thingy, this doesn't feel consequential even a little bit. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this will be, in hindsight, a key chapter, but it sure didn't seem like one as I was reading it on Wednesday. I also don't especially like the changes to Moore's elemental cosmology, or the retroactive "red elemental" changes that this story balances upon. I thought it was nice looking, but ultimately very EH.

BATMAN ANNUAL #1: And this one I just hated. Hated hated hated. Mr. Freeze's Batman-Animated origin was a perfect blend of tragedy and misunderstanding, and villains who don't especially think they're villains (and CONVINCE THE AUDIENCE OF SAME) are, for me at least, the strongest kind of antagonist. So, to remove that tragic underpinning, and to make Freeze just another looney reduces the character dramatically. Now, I will stipulate that the Nora plotline could only go so far, and that, in many ways, it rendered Freeze with a strong "Sell by" date: either he cures her disease, or he doesn't, but you've got, what, maybe 10-12 stories, MAX, to do that with? BUt I still wouldn't have wiped the issue out in this manner, where you're effectively saying "we've been lying to the audience", rather than adding some new detail or knowledge. This is the first Bat-failure for me, from Snyder, and it tastes oily in my mouth. AWFUL.

GRIM LEAPER #1: Expectations are a weird thing. I thought the plot description of this book sounded intriguing, so I picked it up with a "I'm going to very much like this", and then I really didn't like it, and about at the 3/4 point I thought "I really DISlike this", and then we got to the love story and suddenly I started liking it, partly because I told myself I didn't. So yeah, Deadman meets Quantum Leap, maybe? But that's the uninterestingly executed portion, and it doesn't become interesting until you meet the second leaper The two halves washed out for an OK, for me.

STAR TREK TNG DOCTOR WHO ASSIMILATION #1: IDW needs editors who can help shape the pace of a story a whole lot better -- much like the Trek/LSH comic the story doesn't really start in this issue (or, at least, until the last page) -- there's a lot of blah blah about a federation colony... but who care about them except as a plot device? Why are 8 pages being wasted on them. then we effectively watch the end of a Doctor Who episode (and it looks like a fun one), before we get to a meeting that is just bound to be the first entire half of the next issue of "wacky misunderstanding", and by the time everyone is on the same page, and the antagonism actually starts, as it relates to the protagonists, the series is going to be halfway over. *sigh* I generally like JK Woodward's art, but it seems far too insubstantial for this story. Shame, I really wanted to see this one work. OK

SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES #1: That's just crazy cute, and any sub 9-year old should love this comic to utter pieces. I know Ben did. I say GOOD and Ben says "EXCELLENT!!!" (yes, with those exclamation points)

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #11 AVX: I really really like Nick Bradshaw's art. So much so that I almost don't even care that this isn't so much a story as "what happened between panels x & y in AVX #n". Hell, I'm even wiling to overlook Hope mimicking Logan's powers and popping out METAL CLAWS. Urf. Hm, maybe not that last one, since that doesn't make no sense. Anyway, doesn't matter -- pretty pretty pretty stuff, and the art lover in me says that makes this GOOD.

That's it from me, what did YOU think?

-B

(Oh, and new digital on the store this week:

AMERICAS GOT POWERS #2 (OF 6) BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #225 BLOODSTRIKE #28 BOMB QUEEN VII #4 GHOSTBUSTERS ONGOING #9 GI JOE SNAKE EYES ONGOING #13 GRIM LEAPER #1 (OF 4) HAWKEN #4 (OF 6) LIL DEPRESSED BOY #11 MONOCYTE #4 (OF 4) NEXT MEN AFTERMATH #43 PETER PANZERFAUST #4 ROGER LANGRIDGES SNARKED #8 STAR TREK ONGOING #9 STAR TREK TNG DOCTOR WHO ASSIMILATION #1 STEPHEN KING JOE HILL ROAD RAGE #4 (OF 4) TRANSFORMERS ROBOTS IN DISGUISE #5 WALKING DEAD #98 ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS ANNUAL 2012

Wait, What? Ep. 80: Bats and Birds

Apologies to those of you already pestered with this image on Twitter:  I thought it was worth a re-use, in no small part because I must once again plead mentis mortis (I have no doubt I'm handling this dead language so poorly, a charge of necrophilia could well be leveled), thanks to how late it is that I'm composing this and where I'm at for a variety of reasons that will probably become clear once you hear Wait, What? 81 next week.  (Hint: it's a terrifying topic Graeme and I have tackled before.)

But enough of that for now, there's a podcast to be had!  Wait, What? Ep. 80, in fact, a done-in-one of approximately two hours and twenty-five minutes in length.  Yes, you all know I can be pretty wishy-washy (I prefer the verb "to waffle," for obvious reasons) and Graeme and I both thought there were a lot of great and compelling arguments made for keeping this in one.  I do appreciate the minority views, however, and wish I could figure out a way to appease both parties (or offer some consolation for the two part crowd) .  Hopefully, I'll figure something out.

Yes, so--a done-in-one, with the first forty minutes or so being the mighty Graeme McMillan and I talking the reception to the John Carter movie, the lack of interesting Wondercon news, shelling pistachios, costume design, and conspiracy theories about bad movies.

Then, once it becomes obvious, we should maybe start in on the comics and not worry about waiting for a break, we really hit the gas, and start in on recently read comics, including The Wasteland Omnibus, reading The Flash and writing for the trades, Justice League #7 and the Shazam! back-up, Secret Avengers: The Children's Crusade, Avengers X-Sanction #4, Wolverine #303, Dominique LeVeau Voodoo Queen, Wonder Woman #7, Astonishing X-Men and Wolverine and The X-Men, and a heckuva lot more.

You interested?  Oh, come on!  All the cool kids are doing it!  Look on iTunes: iTunes is doing it!  Look right here at this entry, just below!  This entry is doing it!  Don't you want to try it?  Aw, come on!  It'll be cool:

Wait, What? Ep. 80: Bats and Birds

(See, I warned you--admittedly in debased Latin--about how braindead I was!  Nonetheless, I promise to do better next time.  And, as always, thank you for listening!)

Hibbs says "Heeellllo 3/14's comics!"

Two weeks in a row, yeah, baybee. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE #1: Yeowch, that was rather poor. Part of it is just how inconsequential the story felt (and part of that is having the stupid "Zodiac" characters as the antagonists... ugh, have they EVER been interesting?), part of it was the need for "Marvel Continuity" to now reflect "movie continuity" (despite the fact that this kind of material DOESN'T BRING IN A MEASURABLE NUMBER OF NEW READERS from the films to comics), so we've got "Dumb Hulk" running around here (And I think Bendis totally doesn't "get" his voice, sorry), despite that not being the Status Quo in the Marvel universe, or in any currently published "Hulk" comic, oops. I guess this entire comic is a spoiler? Weightless, flabby, and, of course, $4 for the privilege. Ew, this is absolutely EH work.

CROSSED BADLANDS #1: Gahd, what a horrible title. Well, at least Garth's back on the book he created, but I seriously think that this comic isn't sustainable 24 times a year, and that by June we'll be selling under half of what we might sell of this first issue. Anyway, it's Crossed, and it's Ennis, and so it's filled with all kind of depraved stuff you can just hear that naughty little boy giggling over, and while I like it, I don't really love it, and it's effectively an anthology series now, so we'll see what happens going forward, but for now: I like it, but don't love it. OK

FANTASTIC FOUR #604: I strongly liked this issue, even with it's fairly heavy Deux Ex Machina (even if that's an established plot point) -- I like it's message of Hope and family, even if I'm not exactly sure why the plan worked, or even how it got came up with or anything like that. Still: GOOD.

LUTHER: Hey, not at all a print comic, but Mark Waid's free "proof of concept" for his vision of Digital comics, where you advance through it with the arrow keys.  I liked the story quite a bit, but there's something that's not quite "comics" to me about the whole process.

Sometimes it is overt, like the panel where the shovel suddenly appears in frame, where I think "well, that's just animation, just only two frames, isn't it?"; sometimes it's more covert like all of the times where Waid is actually controlling the reading experience by forcing when balloons or panels actually appear.

I think that comics are, in some ways, as much about time and space as anything else, but all of those elements really should remain in the hand of the reader -- it's my choice if I want to read all of the captions on the page first, or which elements of the illustration I choose to believe are the most significant and deserve my focus.

One last consideration is that this story is all of 33 panels long. Just over 3 pages, if it was a Watchmen-style 3x3 grid. (This is, of course, a stupid thing to say -- if this same story was told on a print page, even if it was 3x3, the rhythm of it would be ENTIRELY different; this same story would, of necessity, be a different size and shape) And while it was a well told and reasonably engaging story, I can't really see spending (let's say) 99 cents for 33 panels of comics.

Having said that, I did very much like the story, and judging it entirely on the basis of the content, I'd call it GOOD. Sadly, it also has the tech issues, and those distracted me, rather than drawing me in, and that reduces my grade, ultimately, to an OK. Still, can't beat the price, go give it a read.

SAGA #1: Now this, on the other hand, I loved.  So much so that we've put a copy is (almost) every subscribers box and are offering it 100% money-back guarantee. "Star Wars meets Game of Thrones" is the easy log-line, but the more important thing is the characters are rich, the world intriguing, the dialogue crisp, and the art really swell. There's kind of this weird "MOONSHADOW" vibe going on with the narration, but, thankfully, without the hippies. Either way, this is a wholly wonderful start to a series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and I thoroughly recommend this book as one to read. EXCELLENT.

SAUCER COUNTRY #1: Hrm. On the one hand, I find a lot compelling in here (especially the ghosts [?] of Pioneer 10), on the other hand I'm not sure that the lead thrust of the book is adequately established. It's weird when the supporting characters make more of an impression than the protagonist. I'll most certainly give this another issue (or two) to grab me, but this first one didn't GRAB me all by itself. I want to give it a low GOOD, but I'm having a really hard time actually doing so... it's more like an extremely high OK.

SECRET HISTORY OF DB COOPER #1: Here's the thing: the charm of the title rally depends on you know WHO "DB Cooper" is, and based on a bunch of informal polling virtually none of my customers do (Or, perhaps, some do once you explicitly say it to them -- "oh, yeah, I've heard of him"), which means that a huge chunk of the high concept is immediately swept away. The second problem is that this issue kind of just stops, and I could not, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to jump out of an airplane with $200k, tell you whatsoever what the premise of this book ACTUALLY is, other than the vague notion from the title. There just isn't anything here to get me to come back for issue #2, I'm sorry, which is the only real goal of a first issue. So: I liked what I read, and I liked the surreal concepts I saw, but I don't know why I would spend $4 for it exactly, or why I would want to come back for #2, unlike SAUCER COUNTRY which intrigued me JUST enough to say "Sure, give me another dose". So, yeah, this is merely OK, despite my enjoying the ride as I sat on it. I'd just never stand in line for a second go, y'know?

SHADE #6: I hate this comic because the art from Javier Pulido is SO good, and yet I don't give a single wet fart about any of the not-Shade characters, or what the superhero situation in Barcelona is, at all. It's "The Atlantis Problem" for me (I care about Aquaman and Namor; I DON'T care about "Atlantis". I care about Black Bolt and Medusa; I don't give a fuck about "The Inhumans". I very much love Wonder Woman; I'd rather like the street clean than read about Amazonian culture or what the Greco-Roman gods are doing in modern America. And so on). Y'know, I think that STARMAN worked because Jack was a fine "everyman" of a protagonist; and Shade was a TREMENDOUS foil/friend for him... but I think I only care about Shade in the context of Jack's world, because every issue I sit down, eager to read, and I walk away feeling "Man, that was just OK"

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #7: Have I said this already? If every Marvel comic was at least as good and dense and humorous as this, then maybe people would be happy to pay $4 for it. But because so many Marvel books just aren't worth the four bones, nowhere enough people are buying this book in my store, and there's this (wrong, so far, in this case) feeling like you can't just read "one" X-book. Well, you can, and it should very much be this one -- it's action packed, it's hilarious, it's incredibly energetic. Jason Aaron is one of the very few writers in comics that I can think of that seems to be able to equally handle "dense, gritty narrative" and "light-hearted romp". I love Nick Bradshaw's art, too -- it's got this nice Art Adams-y thing going on without being derivative. This is probably my favorite superhero comic being published today, and I thought this issue was VERY GOOD.

That's me, this week -- what did YOU think?

-B

Wait, What? Ep. 71: Funk, Soul, Brother

Yep, a bit of a delay but here we are, more or less as promised: Wait, What? Ep. 71, featuring our new theme song courtesy of the hyper-talented Graeme McMillan. This done-in-one episode is not quite two hours and forty-five minutes and covers, um, lots of stuff.

Stuff like OMAC and the other cancelled new52 titles; the current state of George Perez's career and what Marvel's marketing team could do with it; Mark Millar's Trouble and Spider-Man; comments by Charles Vess and Ariel Olivetti about Marvel; Mark Waid's Amazing Spider-Man/Daredevil crossover, Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men as well as Wolverine #300.

Plus, a lot of babbling from Jeff about PunisherMAX #21; a debate how many "good" issues a creator might have in them; Secret Avengers, Astonishing X-Men, Warren Ellis, and in-canon behavior; James Robinson and Shade; the preview issue of Shonen Jump Alpha; and Marvel Two-in-One vol. 4.

See? Worth the wait. (Probably.)

We would like to think it is on iTunes, but we are all but certain you can listen to it here, thanks to the handy link below:

Wait, What? Ep. 71: Funk, Soul, Brother

As always, we thank you for listening and hope you enjoy!

Wait, What? Ep. 61.2: Fat Kid Loves Cake

And here we are with part 2, just as promised: McMillan! Lester! Cassard! Acero! Questions! Answers! More after the jump!

I know what you're thinking: "Really, Jeff? Again with the exclamation points?" But some of you are thinking: "Cassard and Acero? What are they doing in this brief-yet-already-overheated blogpost?"

And the answer to the latter is, "why, they are the winners to our second Wait, What? contest!"

That contest, announced right before we went on vacation, was to pick a Hitchcock movie to be adapted into an ongoing comic series, tell us who would work on it, and the most widely lauded part of the ongoing run.  We got a lot of really great responses for this and chose both Dylan Cassard and RJ Acero as our winners for coming up with some exceptionally thoughtful books we would both kill to read.  Graeme is mailing them each a copy of Marzena Sowa's memoir Marzi, illustrated by Sylvain Savoia and published by Vertigo, and you can check out their award-winning entries below the podcast embed.

As for that embed, here is the second part of episode 61, concluding our discussion about Marvel, and moving on to some other topics including why Ed Brubaker's Fatale might have ended up over at Image; the secret of Mark Millar's success, and questions from Twitter and our recent Savage Critic thread, with answers covering topics such as Wolverine And The X-Men #1, Shonen Jump Alpha, the revival of Rob Liefeld's Awesome Studios (such as, for example, Brandon Graham and Simon Roy's Prophet, which is where this post's image comes from), X-Factor, and much more.

Wait, What? Ep. 61.2: Fat Kid Loves Cake

We didn't quite have time to get to all the questions so if you don't hear yours, don't worry.  We'll have it asked and answered in Ep. 62, we (mostly) promise!

And now for those winning entries!  Here's Dylan's, which he presented as a recent article he'd just read (and which had me fooled up to a certain point):

North by Northwest

"Getting There From Here"

In 1959, Martin Goodman managed to secure the rights to an adaptation of "North by Northwest” for Atlas in hopes of publishing something that didn't have a funny animal or Jerry Lewis. Stan at the time, was in desperate need of an artist. Joe Maneely would have been his original choice for a project like this, but now Stan was at a loss. He hesitantly passed it to Jack Kirby who turned in a character sketch of Cary Grant, which Stan deemed "too ugly for human consumption." On a lark, Jack passed the project off to Don Heck. Stan was so impressed with the way Don drew Cary Grant he later said in the letters column of issue #7, "Don Heck must be having lunch with Cary Grant on a regular basis, but I don't know how he could with all the comics he's drawing." The reception to the book was lukewarm at best, and Stan Lee's adjustments to the ending never sat right with Hitchcock. And it was canceled after issue 10. The adaptation rights lay dormant in the Marvel offices for over 20 years.

But all that changed one unseasonably warm day in the winter of 1974, Steve Engleheart marched into Stan's office and demanded to write the continued adventures of Roger Thornhill. Stan was skeptical at the time and was still pretty ticked about the Dr. Strange/Sis-Eneg debacle, but as Stan put it, "Englehart had a way of pitching an idea as though I'd already thought of it."

Engleheart's following series (penciled by Frank Brunner) chronicled the journeys of Roger Thornhill through the Marvel universe as he was consistently mistaken for Kang the Conqueror, M.O.D.O.K., The Mindless Ones and even (at one point) Spider-Man by Peter Parker himself! The public loved it, and issue #9 (the Doctor Bong issue) was the top selling issue on the stands setting the all-time comics sales record of 2.5 million copies. Which was not overtaken until Spider-Man #1 in 1990.

After 11 issues, it seemed like the creative team had started to lose interest with the initial concept. After a prolonged and contrived battle with the entire Kree race landed Roger Thornhill in the Pacific Northwest, Roger smoked peyote with a Native American shaman and realized he had lost touch with America and "needed to find out WHERE it truly was." (a lofty if vague goal to be sure) Englehart took Roger across the U.S. visiting every landmark and tourist trap that Steve had read about in a travel brochure he had picked up at a used bookstore one weekend. (Brunner has said that issue after issue he kept remarking, "I can't believe they are paying me to do this!")

Most die-hard NxNW fans site these 3 issues as when the series achieved transcendence and became something wholly different from anything the medium had offered before. And most likely would never return to again. Shortly after, Englehart left Marvel and the series was continued by Roy Thomas who wanted a "back to basics approach" with Roger being mistaken for different Marvel characters while trying to live his everyday life. A slew of fill-in writers plagued the book as Roy was busy with his EIC duties, and it was eventually canceled after issue 26.

Since then, there have been many attempts at revivals. Alan Moore penned a story in Daredevils that many Moore enthusiasts site as his best prose piece, and Todd McFarlane attempted to buy the rights from the Hitchcock estate in the late 90s but it amounted to little more than a toy of Roger Thornhill covered in thorns. Fan letters still drop in the Marvel office mailbox from time to time, and not a Comic-Con goes by that Joe Quesada doesn’t drop hints that there may be more new adventures from Roger Thornhill, but it is truly doubtful that any will recapture the magic of Brunner’s lovingly rendered sunsets casting a warm glow over Englehart’s conversations between Roger Thornhill and the waffle slinger at Louie’s Chicken Shack.

And here's the entry from RJ Acero who, since we didn't specify whether to use living or dead creators, stuck to the living:

Rebecca - written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Frazer Irving. I have to admit, the idea of Irving illustrating Manderley burning to the ground has me pining for this to happen. As an ongoing, I see this series as the travels of Mrs. Danvers (whom in our story, survives the fire) as she joins various households as a maid, leaving broken marriages in her wake. Think of her as a dour, older, feminine version of Tom Ripley. I think Ms. Wilson would be perfectly suited for writing the painful, surreal doubt that wives would face at the hands of Mrs. Danvers.

Rear Window - written by Greg Rucka, art by J.H. Williams III. The continuing adventures of Mr. & (now) Mrs. Jeffries. They travel the globe as Jeff is on assignment. Holing up in hotels in exotic locales. Jeff constantly in a different cast, and Lisa in the "latest" fashions. I would love to see the formalist flourishes that Williams could come up with for the inevitable "spying on the neighbors" scenes. Rucka seems capable of providing detailed assessments of Jeff's assignments and certainly has the chops to interject some interesting plot twists. And most importantly, he would write a strong Lisa Jeffries.

The Wrong Man - written & illustrated by Steve Ditko. Henry Fonda as Job by way of Ditko. Practically writes itself. As an aside, this may be the saddest sad sack film ever. Don't get me wrong, there's great craft on display (obviously), but the plot just gets darker and darker. The epilogue could not pull this one out of a nosedive.

Vertigo - drawn by Sam Kieth, written by Dave Sim. Two comic titans with diametrically (?) opposed views on women, working on an adaptation of a film that has some severe issues with how it portrays women. This would either be complete genius or a murder/suicide.

North by Northwest - written by Grant Morrison, art by Frank Quitely. I'm not quite sure why, but this makes sense to me. Think of All-Star Superman #3, where Lois is gifted Superman's powers. There is something about the dynamics of Clark & Lois' relationship that resonates with how I see Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall. And I want to see Quitely draw people on top of different monuments every month.

The Birds - written by Warren Ellis, art by Jill Thompson. This would basically be an ongoing series where every arc tells of a different town (different time period?) that comes under siege by birds. I think Ellis could really drive a series where the only constant is an unspeaking antagonist, and the central mystery goes unexplained. After reading Beasts of Burden, there is no question in my mind that Thompson is a perfect fit here.

Psycho - written & drawn by Ba & Moon. This ongoing would be a travelogue where at the conclusion of every story our protagonist(s) find themselves at the Bates Motel, and their demise.

Pretty great, right? Congratulations to RJ and Dylan, and our thanks to all our entrants!