John Buys Comics - New Years Resolution Complete!

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Welcome back to John Buys Comics in the year 2010, the most futuristic-sounding actual year yet. I must say, I’m somewhat relieved to be reviewing single issues again after the whole “Best of” marathon. So much easier than summarizing entire series.

Red Robin No. 8

I’ve been waffling back and forth on this title for its entire lifespan, but I’ve also bought all eight issues and looking at them together I reckon that I quite like it. Check it: Tim Drake now has a costume all his own and consequently a chance to develop a Batman-separate identity. Of course the costume is fourth hand by way of Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, and the “finding your own vigilante path” thing is very Nightwing, but that’s a part of the fun, as Tim is being presented as a synthesis of all of the bad-asses that have had a part in training him over the years. Plus, who can hate a group of spider-themed super-villains, even if one of them is named “Sac”?

Doom Patrol No 6

Dang, man.

So, the Doom Patrol is one of my Silver Age loves, of the kind that many nerds hold deep in their hearts; a second- or third-tier character or team that appeals to them on some primal level and has - of course - been redefined and mistreated and torn down and built up over the years. For me, it’s the Metal Men, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Metamorpho and the Doom Patrol.

And man, has the Doom Patrol had a lot of ups and downs: blown up in the Sixties, revived and Eighties-fied to dismal effect, Morrisoned (some of his best stuff, I swear), disbanded, slick and shiny Nineties-fied, Byrned (some of his worst stuff, I swear) and now Giffened. That is a lot of very divergent history that was pretty much explicitly stated to all be in-continuity back in Infinite Crisis (thanks, Superboy-Prime!). So what’s a nerd to believe? Does Negative Man being dead and then being a Russian Woman and then a hermaphrodite made out of two people and then a leather man all fit together?

Turns out that it does! And in such a way that none of the older stories are explicitly thrown out the window! Good job, Giffen!

Orc Stain No 1

NEAT.

First: this is a nice looking comic, the kind that’s full of insane amounts of detail without, you know, looking like ass. And in colour! What’s more, colour that looks very good on the non-glossy paper that it’s printed on. James Stokoe, who looks to be the sole creative force behind this thing, has done good.

As for the story, well, that’s great too. A lot of folks since Tolkein have taken his vision of elves and ran with it, and a lot of those people have written some very poor stories. Orcs, however, food-, sex- and violence-obsessed, chaotic, rude, unkempt orcs… well, maybe I’ve just been lucky but I’ve never read anything from the orc’s point of view that hasn’t been a good time. Orc Stain looks to be following in that tradition, featuring a nameless orc thief who’s shortly going to be embroiled in the militaristic ambitions of the up-and-coming orcish emperor, the Orctzar. All this and a crazy-style fantasy setting? I am very into this.

Stumptown No. 2 - As with so many other genres, mystery stories in comic books are usually either fantastic or absolutely terrible. I’m so glad that this series is the former.

Blackest Night No. 6 (of 8) - I know, it came out last week. I swear I woulda picked it up if I hadn’t been so a) full b) poor and c) lazy. Anyway, exactly one thing happened in this issue, which was each member of the All-Lantern Corps deputizing a super-hero or super-villain to help out, so now there are gonna be 14 people vs. seven billion Black Lanterns, instead of only 7. The odds are falling, folks!

B.P.R.D.: King of Fear No 1 - *sniiiiiifffffff* Ahhhhhh. Just smell that beautiful first BPRD of 2010. And such a Johnathan-pleasing story, too, with Lobster Johnson, those little troglodyte guys from Hollow Earth and Austrian-style romance for Kate! Delicious.

Batman Confidential No. 40 - Man, I was pretty much done with this series after that terrible last story. But then I was like, “Ooo, pretty Sam Keith art!” and I bought it. But jeeze… when did Sam Keith get so damned melodramatic? Batman’s ears had better be four feet high on the cover of issue 41.

World of New Krypton No. 12 - So yeah, I’ve been buying and enjoying this all along. It’s fun to read about Superman operating outside of his normal environment, after all. Like a lot of series that I enjoy, it’s consistent enough that I really don’t have something new to say every time. This time, though, well, just look at that cover:

 

Firstly, ‘Rumble in Kandor!’ is a great title. Secondly, Superman and Adam Strange are shooting each other <<adorable>> “We’re about to have a team up!” faces. Huzzah!

Sweet Tooth No. 5 - Oh hell. This book is going to get a lot more depressing, isn’t it. Well, you can't get rid of me that easily, Lemire - bring on all the crazy medical experimentation and such that you want, I'll just keep coming back for more!

Okay, see you later.

Battle for the Cowl in 30 Seconds

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The time has come once again for Chris Sims to take a week off, and so once again he has initiated his annual contest!

Accordingly, this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that's that.

Whoops, some of the images got a bit squished - click the wide ones for full size.

Oh. what the hell - might as well ride Chris' coattails a bit and mention my own super-cool micro-contest. Only 25 days left!

The Best of 2009: A Last-Minute Addendum

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 Way back in late summer 2009, I was thinking ahead to the inevitable Year’s Best list we at LBW would be working on (it was convention season, and at the time, we were being inundated with major releases). I knew that, when the time came to write them up, I would have a difficult time remembering stuff that came out earlier in the year--this is, after all, why the movie studios save their award hopefuls until December—and that I should start compiling an ongoing list of things to write about when the time came. I only got around to one entry (so much for ongoing), and most everything I jotted down (Batman & Robin, Tales Designed To Thrizzle, Parker, Asterios Polyp, Wednesday Comics) got at least a mention from my fellow bloggers or myself in last week’s “Best Of 2009” entries. However, despite all my smug boasting about how useful this list would prove to be, I never actually consulted the danged thing, relying instead on my memory. And this reliance on my increasingly faulty brain, dear readers, is how I ended up ignoring a pretty obvious contender for any “Best Of” list…League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. III: Century Book One. 

 

I favorably reviewed LOEG: Century when it was first released, added it to my preliminary “Best Of” list when the time came, then…promptly forgot it when I was assembling my final list. An argument could be made that, since I didn’t remember it in December, then it wasn’t all that memorable to begin with. While I may not have enjoyed it as much as previous installments—a lot of the characters and references were lost on me this time around—I still dug it a lot more than most of the superhero books from the Big Two in 2009, and more than a lot of indie titles besides. I love the rejiggered format being tried out by new publisher Top Shelf (three self-contained 80-page albums, roughly a year apart, comprising one big, century-spanning adventures), I love the continuation of Captain Nemo’s career through his mysterious daughter, I love Kevin O’Neill’s fastidiously detailed and grotesquely populated artwork, and I love how Alan Moore, as he’s done so well in V For Vendetta and Top Ten, perfectly incorporates musical numbers into his narrative (not too many writers in this particular field have mastered this one—I’m actually hard pressed to think of any, but I feel like there’s a really obvious one that came out this year that I just can’t recall right now).

 So, I messed up. I blame all the holiday turkey and holiday booze, ‘cause, man, there was a lot of both going around as I was assembling my list. I also would like to say in my defense that, for me to forget about an Alan Moore comic at year’s end means that 2009 was a particularly great year in the funnybook field. Great job, everybody!

Archie Sunday: Wherein Archie Fails To Hold It Together.

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I think we can all agree by this point that the currently-running Archie Gets Married storyline has been a bit of a let-down. Certainly not from a sales point of view--unlike Marvel and DC, Archie Comics wisely printed up a gajillion copies of each issue, and they continue to sell no matter how many we times re-order it--but, let's face it, the whole thing has been a bit of a rip-off. Firstly, he doesn't actually marry Veronica (a possibility that seemed to get more people riled up than the whole health care debate south of the border), but is treated to an imaginary future scenario where he does for three issues. Furthermore, he is next treated to another possible outcome where he marries Betty instead. Once again, an imaginary one, for three more issues. Not that I ever expected the kind folks at Archie Comics to ever play it anything but safe, but it's enough to make one wistful for the days when possible futures always featured killer robots and postnuclear wastelands.

All of this is academic to me--I don't actually read Archie, and I never really have. However, flipping through Archie #604, I was inspired to do my very first Archie Sunday post when I saw how Archie reacted to Betty's big news (delivered a modest sum of time after their nuptials--this is Archie, after all): 

Wow, I can see why Betty and Veronica fought over this guy for so many decades. Was Jerry Lewis unavailable? I can't tell if he's supposed to be spitting out his shake, spilling it all over himself, or having an epileptic fit. Possibly all three at once? It did get me thinking, though. What else might Betty have said that would actually warrant a reaction of this sort--one that would make even an Ace Ventura-era Jim Carrey go, "Wow, tone it down a bit, buddy"? Let's see:

That's more like it. Save your big reactions for something meaningful, Archie. Don't give that stuff away for free.

 

Micro-Contest!

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Why, hello. Happy New Year, LBWteers, and welcome to the start of an all-new era of super nerdy excellence. Oh, what a time to be alive!

But enough of that sort of thing. You fine folks were promised a contest and a contest ye shall have. A tiny little contest!

See, I've been using the Internet for a long, long time. I remember watching a .jpg of Captain Picard resolve onscreen one line of pixels per minute, all the while wondering just what facial expression he was using - his eyebrows look neutral, but by damn he could be smiling under there and I'll find out if I have to stay up all night!

As a result of all of this healthy staying inside and typing, I have developed a slight... seething hatred for, well, these guys:

Well, various iterations of these guys over the years. These are the Firefox versions of my hated foes, loading-image (page with INEXPLICABLE SHAPES on it) and broken-image (sad little torn piece of paper) and I do not dispute their status as fine little examples of faviconery but my god I have stared at them for so many hours of my life and I now want to set them on fire. Only recently did it occur to me that I have the power to change this.

And so:

Bruce Banner loading-image now gazes serenely out at me and is all like, "Oh, hello. I see you're loading an image. How splendid, I can't wait to see how it turns out."

But as soon as something goes wrong, I know that tiny favicon Hulk will have my back. "RAR! HULK SMASH PUNY HUMANS NOT MAINTAIN WEBSITE PROPERLY! OR MAYBE SMASH MODEM, IT NOT TOO GOOD AND HULK THINK MAYBE IMAGE TIME OUT! YOU RELOAD IMAGE, HULK CAN WAIT!"

So what's the contest, you ask? Well, I reckon that some day I'll get tired of those to jokers - delightful as they are - and want to replace them. So I'm asking YOU to submit ideas for new duos to accurately represent the micro-drama that plays out in our browsers daily (or hourly). Something like, I don't know, Johnny Blaze to Ghost Rider, you get the idea. I'll arbitrarily pick an arbitrary number of winners and painstakingly pixel-craft their submissions to life, to be posted here.

RULES:

1. Contest ends in one month (2 Feb 2009)

2. Entries should be something that can reasonably depicted in a 16 x 16 pixel image, i.e., nothing like "loading-image Cybertron becomes broken-image Unicron devouring Cybertron while fighting all of the Autobots."

3. Okay, that was kind of cool. Submit whatever you want.

4. Enter as often as you like, either through the comments section or via email (found in my bio).

And that's that. Feel free to help yourself to the Banner/Hulk images - just replace the standard images in Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/res for Firefox. I have no idea what you folks with other browsers need to do, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

2010!