Kind of a light week for what piques my interest, but here we go anyways:
JUL110206 BATMAN #1 $2.99
SPAWN/CREECH/HAUNT artist Greg Capüllo on BATMAN? I’m not crazy about the Dark Knight Detective, but, okay. I’ll at least glance at this one.
JUL110217 RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1 $2.99
I really dug the art in Kenneth Rocafort’s VELOCITY miniseries for Top Cow, earlier this year. So I’ll check to see what he does with Jason Todd and Starfire.
JUL110271 TINY TITANS #44 $2.99
Aw yeah, Titans! Aw yeah, Doom Patrol!
JUL118163 TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ONGOING #2 $3.99
Issue #1 was an interesting new origin for the Turtles. What else does IDW have in store for the Heroes on the Half-Shell? Also, Kevin Eastman is one of the coolest comics pros I’ve ever met, and he’s doing the page layouts. Supporting him is always a plus.
Week two of my overview of comics from this week that interest me the most!
JUL110018 BTVS SEASON 9 FREEFALL #1 CHEN VAR CVR $2.99
JUL110017 BTVS SEASON 9 FREEFALL #1 MORRIS CVR $2.99
Buffy the Vampire Slayer returns for Season 9, fresh off the heels of Joss Whedon saying that he may have gone a bit overboard with Season 8. With the new status quo having been set up in ANGEL & FAITH #1 a couple of weeks back, how will Buffy and the Scooby Gang deal with whatever’s to come?
JUL110213 BATWOMAN #1 $2.99
J.H. Williams may be the most talented artist in modern comics, if his run on DETECTIVE COMICS from 2009-2010 is any indication. Even with the change in writers, BATWOMAN will probably be the prettiest book that comes out this week.
JUL110218 GREEN LANTERN #1 $2.99
The New 52 continues, and the current Green Lantern is… Sinestro? WTF?!
JUL110232 GRIFTER #1 $2.99
Mostly of note because Grifter was part of the Wildstorm Universe, which has apparently been absorbed into the DCU proper, thanks to the events of Flashpoint. Could a full-on WildC.A.T.S relaunch be far behind? Yeah, probably very far behind.
MAY110532 SUPER DINOSAUR #4 $2.99
Super Dinosaur is awesome.
JUL110570 FEAR ITSELF #6 (OF 7) FEAR $3.99
The penultimate chapter of Marvel’s Miniseries-turned-Summer-Event, FEAR ITSELF, which has mostly been received with a resounding “meh.” Also available today are the 4th printings of FI #2 and 3rd printing of FI #3.
JUL110745 INFINITY GAUNTLET TP NEW PTG $24.99
One of my favorite 90s Marvel stories is available once again! But, if you get the chance, find one of the older printings, which all have MUCH cooler covers.
JUL110744 THANOS IMPERATIVE TP $19.99
And while you’re picking up Thanos’ biggest story in INFINITY GAUNTLET, why not pick up his LATEST story, in THANOS IMPERATIVE?
JUL110605 ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1 $3.99
Miles Morales is the NEW Ultimate Spider-Man! After months of buildup, this finally comes out. Will people still care?
MAY111190 CLINT #10 (MR) $6.99
You may not be the biggest fan of Mark Millar, but anthology titles really need a bigger audience. Soon enough, there’s going to be something awesome in CLINT (other than what’s already there), and everybody’s gonna feel like a jerk for missing it.
In case you missed it, yesterday was kind of a funny day for the Man of Steel.
In the new ACTION COMICS #1, Superman gets a tank thrown at him, and a dialogue bubble pointing to Supes’ face says, “GD.” Well, a comic store owner in the Bible Belt (whose name and store I will not be mentioning, because he’s received enough attention as it is) took this as a blasphemous comment against God.
As many of you may know, “G.D.” is a typical shorthanded way to say “God Damn,” without using The Lord’s Name in Vain, to be polite to people whom that makes a difference to. Well, that’s how this comic store took it, and he was SO OFFENDED that Superman would even come close to cursing like that, he called for a complete boycott of ACTION COMICS as long as it’s being written by Grant Morrison, as well as all current Grant Morrison-penned titles.
Alright, it’s his comic store. That’s fair enough. I owned a comic store, and I know that it’s up to each owner to decide what they are and are not comfortable carrying. But, in the initial outburst this fella had, he admitted that he carries comics like THE BOYS – Which is misogynistic and reprehensible – and CROSSED, a comic about rape zombies who once beat a guy to death with a horse wiener. But Superman swearing? THAT is unacceptable, and was Grant Morrison “forcing his agenda” on us, through his comics. Because, you know, NOT selling a comic when you find something in it offensive isn’t forcing your own agenda on anybody at all.
Apparently less-offensive than Superman spouting two letters.
So after hearing about this, Grant Morrison came out last night, and said that the “GD” wasn’t a blasphemous comment at all, but a grunt like the “HGNNH” and “UNGH” seen throughout the rest of the comic, and this was all just an unfortunate coincidence. And so the comic store guy apologized for the misunderstanding, and lifted the boycott on Grant Morrison books. As the saying goes, “Keep your words soft and sweet, because you may have to eat them, later.”
Now that everything has been explained, comics stores will be carrying Action Comics AND horse dick, because neither is offensive! Wait...
Let this be a lesson to us all, true believers: It’s very important to ask questions first and shoot second, not the other way around. Things PROBABLY aren’t actually as offensive as you think they are.
(Except, maybe, for clicking “Insert Into Post” in reference to an image called “Weiner.jpg.” I kind of offended myself with that one.)
Hopefully, I’ll remember to start doing this every week, where I take a look at what’s shipping to comic stores this week, and pick out what interests me. Given all the new #1s happening in comics these days, this seems like a better time than ever before.
JUL110201 ACTION COMICS #1 $3.99
Witness the beginnings of the Man of Steel in the DC New 52! www.Newsarama.com has some preview pages up, and this looks fantastic. – Available digitally, too.
JUL110212 BATGIRL #1 $2.99
How did Barbara Gordon’s paralysis go away? I’m not sure if it’ll be answered in #1, but that’s generally a good place to start! – Available digitally, too.
JUL110241 HAWK AND DOVE #1 $2.99
Rob Liefeld returns to the title that made him a star. That’s the only thing noteworthy about this one, really. – Available digitally, too.
JUL110240 STATIC SHOCK #1 $2.99
Static gets his first proper ongoing title since MILESTONE COMICS closed in the late 1990s, but he now resides in the DC Universe proper. – Available digitally, too.
JUL110346 TRANSFORMERS ONGOING #25 $3.99
I’ve been a fan of the Transformers since I was 2, and even though I have to get caught up on the last few issues, IDW’s most recent ongoing TFs series has been fantastic. Definitely worth looking into. If you haven’t read it, head over to comixology.com, and pick up issues 1-22 for $1.99 a piece!
JUN118139 KICK-ASS 2 #1 5TH PTG JRJR VAR (MR) (PP #982) $2.99
JUN118140 KICK-ASS 2 #2 2ND PTG JRJR VAR (MR) (PP #982) $2.99
If you missed the first couple issues of KICK-ASS 2: BALLS TO THE WALL, here’s your chance to get all caught up!
JUN110848 MEGA MAN #5 HORN CVR $2.99
JUN110849 MEGA MAN #5 SPAZ VILLAIN VAR CVR $2.99
ARCHIE COMICS’ MEGA MAN comic feels exactly like what I would imagine a MEGA MAN comic should feel like, and the artwork is almost as good as if Mega Man/Rockman creator Keiji Inafune drew it, himself!
So while you’re headed out to your local comic store today, keep an eye out for these comics.
It’s been a while, huh? Hey, sorry about that. I’ve been working on getting HawkAndCroc.com up and running along with my incomparable partner in slime, Brandon A. Mayo, coordinating everything, co-writing a bunch of stuff, and doing a ton of art for the site. But I shilled the hell out of H&C yesterday, so that’s enough of that.
I was randomly thinking about numbers just now (‘randomly’ being the operative word), and it reminded me of something I overheard a girl say in high school:
“If ‘thousand’ starts with a ‘T,’ why is it abbreviated with a ‘K’? That’s stupid.”
The answer, of course, is because the Latin term for “thousand” is “kilo,” and it’s a good, universal way to abbreviate the number, especially when you consider that in, for example, French and Spanish, “thousand” is translated into “mille” and “mil.” And, come to think of it, this girl probably wasn’t very smart, anyways…but she was so good at being pretty that none of us 14-year-old boys noticed.
Parents, if you have a young daughter, do whatever you can to push her into being good at math and science as early as possible, and stop perpetuating the stereotypes that girls are just there to be dumb, pretty, little sex objects for boys.
So, I just saw THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN trailer, for next Summer’s Spider-Man reboot.
Everything I see about this movie makes me care about it less and less. I’ve read or seen at least ten different iterations of Spider-Man’s origin since I was first introduced to the character on SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS in the early 80s. I am so totally over his origin story, and want to see the “with great power comes great responsibility” theme used in other tales, involving other characters.
But, this is not a movie made for me. I am not the target market for this movie. And, if you’re reading this, YOU probably aren’t, either.
This movie is made for kids, so that Sony and Disney and Marvel and Hasbro can sell a bunch of toys and backpacks and pajamas and skateboards and stuff. And kids will gobble up this movie’s merchandise, and the movie will be very successful, because, shit, dude. It’s fuckin’ Spidey.
But, let’s look at this movie for what it is: a political move by Sony.
From my understanding of the contracts Marvel signed (they’re not public domain, and I have not read them, so everything I have heard is all second-, third-, or eighteenth-hand), they state that as long as the studios who licensed the characters maintain something in production, the contract will not expire. Upon expiration, the rights to the character revert back to Marvel.
When Marvel worked up these contracts, they did not have a film studio, and were just barely coming out of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Plus, consider the previous Marvel movies: the made-for-TV DR. STRANGE, the two 80s CAPTAIN AMERICA movies where he has the motorcycle helmet, the Dolph Lundgren PUNISHER, the 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA film that never got released in theaters, the made-for-TV GENERATION X and NICK FURY movies, and the 1993 FANTASTIC FOUR abortion. It’s not like Marvel expected Sony (or, in the case of the X-MEN, DAREDEVIL, ELEKTRA, GHOST RIDER, and FANTASTIC FOUR, Marvel never expected 20th Century Fox) to make movies that would be successful enough to warrant sequels. There were 20 years of god-awful Superhero movies.
And let’s look at what other comic-based movies had been released around that time. Sure, the 1989 BATMAN was great, but BATMAN RETURNS, BATMAN FOREVER, and BATMAN & ROBIN are all garbage (though, admittedly, RETURNS looks REALLY cool, and FOREVER isn’t as bad as & ROBIN). The 1978 SUPERMAN with Christopher Reeve was fantastic, and SUPERMAN II was even pretty good, despite being edited into a comedy, rather than a serious action movie. But SUPERMAN III and SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE were both crap. THE CROW was fantastic, but THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS was not. And pretty much any other comic-based movie (THE MASK, MEN IN BLACK, DICK TRACY, THE ROCKETEER, THE PHANTOM, etc.) were so far removed from the source material (or comics so obscure that only the most die-hard of comic fans knew they were even based on comics at all), that they barely even qualify.
So, of course Marvel was willing to sign a ridiculous contract that essentially gave Sony the license to Spider-Man films in perpetuity. Almost no comic movie that had come out by the time SPIDER-MAN was in development had been particularly good, or good enough to warrant a string of sequels.
And when Disney bought Marvel a couple of years ago, they maintained that all of Marvel’s license contracts would remain in effect until expiration. Which basically meant that as long as Sony had a SPIDER-MAN project in the works, the Spidey license would not revert back to Marvel Studios. And considering that all three SPIDER-MAN movies have amongst the biggest weekend opening box offices in history, making a SPIDER-MAN movie is like an excuse to print money.
From a business perspective? Sony is making an excellent move that I do not disagree with. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN may not break box office records, but it will do pretty damn well. And all the licensees for merchandising will basically have the same experience.
It’s just unfortunate for those of us who liked the previous SPIDER-MAN trilogy that we are no longer the target market, and it’s now the kids who are ten years younger than us.
Of course, it could be possible that this is just an absolutely terrible trailer, and the movie itself will be the best film ever made.
My apologies for the overall lack of updates, lately. I’ve been busy working on the Hawk & Croc Relaunch for this September ( www.HawkandCroc.com coming soon! ), as well as concentrating on some freelance design and illustration gigs. There’ll be more inanity from me soon enough, I’m sure of it.
