Increasing Comics Sales Two Dudes at a Time
As I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard, there’s a bit of a kerfluffle at the moment about the Big Two’s plans involving gay superheroes in the near future. Dan DiDio made a big announcement at Kapow. They apparently talked about Astonishing X-Men on the View. Major news outlets have mentioned one or both of these situations. One Million Moms has attempted to organize a boycott, surprising no one, I’m sure. In general, parts of the Internet broke as people rushed to their computers to share their thoughts, for or against these decisions. Even people who haven’t read a comic in decades, if ever, and still think they’re “just for kids” decided that they knew enough about the subject to jump into the discussion, which sometimes resulted in mature dialogue in which someone walked away understanding a little more about the modern comic book audience and industry, but a vast majority of the time it turned into, well, a stereotypical Internet discussion (i.e. a troll-filled flame-war).
While diversity in comics is a great thing, as I’ve weighed in on before, and non-comic readers talking about comics is good for the medium, at least in the short term, I can’t help but feel there’s something a little more crass–and crass doesn’t feel like quite the right word, but it’s the closest I’m going to get–going on here.
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Quickie Reviews — Releases from 5/16 and 5/23
Thanks to a week-long vacation last week, and the limited hours of my comic shop, I picked up two weeks’ worth of comics yesterday. As such, I’ve got a lot to get through, so it’s all quickie reviews this week. It probably would have made more sense to organize them by release week, but I have them stacked alphabetically (and I didn’t feel like looking them up by date), so that’s how you’re getting them. Hurray for laziness! Now let’s get to the reviews. Read the rest of this entry
Final Thoughts (for Now) on Before Watchmen and Creators’ Rights
The onslaught of miniseries that comprise Before Watchmen is drawing ever nearer to comic store shelves. Next month the controversial comics event (for lack of a better term) kicks off, leaving some elated, some disgusted, and many conflicted. Now, I’ve talked about BW before here when it was first announced, and I have gone on record as saying that I will take the shocking step of withholding judgment until I’ve actually seen what they have to offer, unlike many people who are quick to write the offerings off as subpar before even seeing a single issue. Obviously, this hinges on the idea that I’m not boycotting the series due to the whole Alan Moore situation, which many people, often quite vocal people, feel is the only just course of action. Obviously, there are other, often equally vocal people who feel that DC isn’t doing anything illegal or in breach of contract, so it’s therefore okay. As evidenced by my previous post, I’m one of the people who doesn’t feel the issue is quite so black and white. The more I think about it, the more layers I see.
Gimme! Gimme! Gimmie!: The Swag of Free Comic Book Day 2012
Well, another Free Comic Book Day is in the books, and now because you demanded it–or maybe I demanded it; someone demanded it–here’s a post in which I praise the winners and complain about stuff that didn’t meet my standards despite having cost me nothing.
Movie Review: “The Avengers” Is Pretty Much The Best Thing Ever
This shot alone got thunderous applause from the midnight audience.
You want a review of The Avengers?
Really?
OK, here is your review of The Avengers. It is everything you could have hoped for and then some and you need to go see it right now. I’ll wait. Let me know when you get back.
World’s Finest #1 Review
Of the “Second Wave” titles from DC, World’s Finest was the one I was simultaneously most excited for and most worried about. I really like the Huntress as a character, but I don’t care for Power Girl. Paul Levitz writes it, and, in addition to creating the Huntress all those years ago, he wrote the recent Huntress mini-series that I liked, but the ending was very disappointing. George Perez does the art (well, most of it), and though he’s a fan-favorite from back in the day, his more recent output has left me unimpressed. Clearly, this series has a lot of ups and downs from a conceptual level, but so did Dial H, which shocked me with how good it was. Does World’s Finest repeat the same feat?
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Earth 2 #1 Review
I have a confession to make at the outset of this review: I only bought this issue because Nicola Scott did the art. Don’t get me wrong, I was really looking forward to it coming out–because Nicola Scott did the art. I’m so apathetic about the JSA characters that I wouldn’t even say I’m apathetic, as that would show too much interest. Then there’s James Robinson. He’s written some good stuff (Starman, some JSA stuff, and apparently the current Shade), but I’ve never gotten around to reading any of it. My lone Robinson experience was Justice League: Cry for Justice, and cry I did. It was awful. So, I think it’s fair to say that I was expecting a book with great art and not much else for me. But, much to my surprise, Earth 2 was, in fact, pretty good. Read the rest of this entry
Dial H #1 Review
Before I walked into my comic shop today, I had absolutely zero intention of going home with this comic. It didn’t even register as something I was remotely interested in. Of the “New 52 — Second Wave” titles, I planned to pick up World’s Finest and Earth 2, and that was it. Somehow, after much vacillation, I ended up with all four of this week’s newly debuting titles (I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up with G.I. Combat. Okay. Dinosaurs. That’s why, but that’s a story for another time.). Despite my complete ambivalence to this title from its original announcement through the solicitations and even through the pre-release interviews, I found myself captivated by the cover as I perused the racks. The art that had seemed not at all appealing in the thumbnails I’d seen online or even the larger-but-cropped version in Previews (and which I think I’d even made fun of somewhere on this very blog around the time of the original announcement) suddenly seemed enticing. It seemed moody and atmospheric, edgy and dark (but not oppressively so). The cover was by Brian Bolland, a known quantity, but I was utterly unfamiliar with either of the members of the creative team itself. I took a gamble anyway, and picked it up. Was it worth it? Well that certainly has an easy answer. Read the rest of this entry
Avengers vs X-Men #2 Review
So . . . AvX #2 is here and, well, it’s a thing. It exists. When trying to decide what comics to review, this didn’t really rank that high. Sure it’s a big event comic, but it seemed so obviously bad that I figured a review that discussed it as such would be redundant and a lot of white noise. Imagine my shock when I discovered that it’s getting some good reviews. Some are even giving it great reviews. So, how bad was it? Why? Let’s get down to it, shall we?
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