Spoilers after the break.

I’m in a particularly snarky mood tonight. The first two comics didn’t help.

1) DC – Superboy #9

So why was this book at the top of my pile? Only because I tend to read Legion books first, and since Legion Lost was part 3 of “The Culling” and Superboy was part 2, I had to read Superboy first.

I have not been a fan of this book since the reboot. It’s retreading a lot of ground that I wasn’t that fond of in the first place in the story of Kon-El. This issue didn’t help raise my opinion of the series at all.

Both Lobdell and Defalco have done far better work in the past. This storyline feels completely generic at best. The art in this issue is just plain awful. Wait, that’s unfair. The cover image of Dawnstar is rather nice, but the rest of the cover, and the rest of the interior as well, feels very amateurish. The coloring is ghastly, but then so are the new costumes. The mask on Tyroc is horrendous.

2) DC – Legion Lost #9

At least the art in this book is much better than that on Superboy. The writing is also marginally better. I am getting tired of the constant “I know why you’re really here” line from Harvest. I get it. Somehow this third rate villain has manipulated the Legion into sending this particular team into the past for some reason that only he knows. Get on with it already. We all know that this book is going to be canceled in the near future anyway. It would be nice if it at least wrapped up this pathetic excuse for a storyline before then.

3) Marvel – Free Comic Book Day Avengers Age of Ultron #0.1

A reprint of Avengers #12.1. An interesting issue. Hopefully it will lead to a good Ultron story in the near future.

4) Marvel – New Avengers #26

An interesting story of an earlier version of Iron Fist. My biggest problem with it? This is not an Avengers story. It may be back story for the current AvX story, but in and of itself it is not an Avengers story. This is one of the many reasons I would like to see Bendis off of these books. I’m tired of the main Avengers books being treated as filler, or backstory, just because there is an ‘event’ in progress.

5) Marvel – Avenging Spider-Man #7

A fun issue. Nothing overly important here, just a fun story that was complete in one issue. It reminded me a lot of the old Marvel Team-Up book.

6) Valiant – Free Comic Book Day Valiant 2012

A bit of a disappointment in that this was just preview pages for the new X-O Manowar and Harbinger books. I’ve already read X-O, and I have Harbinger on order, so this wasn’t too useful or entertaining. The book also has some creator interviews, but again, nothing too exciting. I’ll wait and judge the new Valiant by the books it puts out, not the hype.

7) DC – Batman #9

Good issue. A continuation of the Night of the Owls.

8 ) DC – Batman and Robin #9

More Night of the Owls. A good issue, but I’m not too pleased with Robin killing again.

9) Image – Walking Dead #97

An okay issue. I keep wishing Kirkman would increase the pace a bit. Honestly, I’m getting bored with the series ever since it jumped the shark with Carl’s injury. Yeah, that’s still a sore point. There’s no way in hell he should have survived that. I think that if it had happened right in front of the best emergency room, staffed with the best doctors, in a non-zombie filled world, he still would have had only a 50/50 chance of survival. In the world of this comic? He should be dead.

That’s it for tonight. I’m taking next week off, so I’ll see you all in two weeks.

My comics came early this week. Cool.

1. DC – Action Comics #9
2. Marvel – The Amazing Spider-Man #685
3. Marvel – Avengers Vs X-Men #3
4. Marvel – Avengers Academy #29
5. Marvel – Daredevil #12
6. DC – Earth 2 #1
7. DC – Worlds’ Finest #1

Spoilers after the break.

1) DC – Action Comics #9

Still can’t get used to that numbering.

This was a good issue, but I feel like it’s filler. I’d like to see some solid, single issue stories about Superman. The current Superman. I still don’t really know who he is in this New 52.

2) Marvel – The Amazing Spider-Man #685

If you’ve read my blog, you know that I made a big stink about One More Day. So why is Spider-Man once again on my reading list? The truth of the matter is, after nearly two years of not reading the book, I missed him. Do I now accept what happened in One More Day? No. It was, and is, a terrible storyline that should be fixed. But… the current Spider-Man books are pretty good.

Unfortunately I can’t really say that about the current issue. My problem with this storyline is that it’s just too big to be a comfortable fit for Spidey. He works best as a street level character and this story has him tackling a world wide menace. It’s not awful, it’s just not where I think the character should be.

3) Marvel – Avengers Vs X-Men #3

The story is interesting, but I do wish we’d get a bigger chunk of it each issue. It feels padded. I also wish the art was better. Although I like JR Sr. much more than JR Jr., I’ve grown to appreciate Jr.’s artwork. Here it feels rushed. The recap page looks like it was colored from a sketch and not a finished piece of art, and throughout the issue, Captain America just looks… wrong somehow.

4) Marvel – Avengers Academy #29

I almost dropped this book a while back. I’m glad I hung on as it got past its growing pains. It is now consistently one of the best books Marvel puts out and that goes directly to the writing of Christos Gage. In this issue I LOVED the opening sequence with Hercules explaining the history of the Olympics — while nude.

5) Marvel – Daredevil #12

Like Action Comics this week, this issue felt a bit like filler material. I would have liked to have had this issue tell more about the “Omega Drive”. I can accept this issue more than Action because I already know who this Daredevil is and it gave a bit of history to why Matt and Foggy are friends. It also gave us Matt on a date. For filler, it was pretty good.

6) DC – Earth 2 #1

I’ve been waiting for this book for some time, but with hope and fear. The original Earth 2 is one of my favorite concepts, and the characters were the original heroes of comics. I loved them from the first time I met them. Since this title was announced, each and every press release has made me LESS interested in it, so it was with a sense of dread that I read this issue.

I wish I could say that my sense of dread was misplaced, but it wasn’t. In this issue we are shown a world that is ravaged by war with Apokolips. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all die. It seems that there are only two other heroes that exist in this world, Robin and Supergirl aka Huntress and Power Girl, but they exit the book almost as soon as we see them. This is a very dark world indeed.

There is a small ray of hope, and that is what’s keeping me buying the book for now. It looks like Jay Garrick is about to come into his powers, and several other characters, with names that are very familiar to me, appear in small roles.

I understand the need for a writer to build his characters, and if you’re going to end up with characters as big as super-heroes it’s a lot easier if they come from a very low point, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like everything about it. This is a new world with its own history. Anything can happen here. So why the need to first insert very familiar characters only to tear them down a moment later?

My hope is that future issues will be about building the new world, and not just reshuffling the deck of worn trading cards.

7) Worlds’ Finest #1

Like Earth 2, I picked this book up with a little trepidation. For all the reasons above, plus the fact that it is Paul Levitz writing. Now don’t get me wrong, back in the day Levitz was great on the Legion, but his current work has been a little… flat. Fortunately he seems to be bringing his A game to the table here.

I liked this book much more than Earth 2. The characters felt very familiar to this pre-crisis reader, while still being different enough. The art was also good, if a little inconsistent. Perez (sorry, I don’t know how to make that little accent mark) is one of the best in the business, and the opening splash demonstrates that. A couple of the pages felt a little off though, particularly the flashback pages. They weren’t bad, but they felt like they were drawn by a different artist. It was almost like he was trying to match the style of Nicola Scott in Earth 2. If that was the case, I’d rather see him be just Perez.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back again next week.

1. Marvel – Battlescars # 6
2. Marvel – AVX Vs #1
3. Marvel – New Avengers #25
4. Marvel – Secret Avengers #26
5. Marvel – Uncanny X-Men #11
6. DC – Superman #8
7. IDW – Popeye #1
8. DC – Aquaman #8
9. Marvel – Daredevil #11
10. Marvel – FF #17
11. DC – Flash #8

Spoilers after the break.

The entire purpose of this series was to introduce a black Nick Fury so that the mainline Marvel Universe would line up with the movie universe. Battle Scars did just that… in the most ham-fisted way possible… and it didn’t need to be done at all.

I like Sam Jackson in the movies, but there was just no reason to recreate him in the books, and many reasons not to do so.

People can handle the idea that the movies aren’t the same as the comics. Marvel and DC are always saying that the movies don’t drive audiences to pick up the books, so why change the books to match up with the movies when the only people who are going to see it are the readers who probably won’t like the idea at all?

This also creates another problem for the readers. Now, every time this new Fury is used, the writer will need to explain who he is and what his relationship to the real Nick is.

Of course I know that this won’t last. In a couple of years, after the movies wind down, someone at Marvel will make a new series with the original Nick and the status quo will be reset.

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Moving on to numbers 2 thru 5 on my list, the only comment I have is that while they were all entertaining, it would be nice to actually get more than just a piece of a single story when I buy four books.

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Superman was pretty good this month. It’s too bad that this creative team isn’t going to be here for long.

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Popeye was a lot of fun. I’m new to the writing of Roger Langridge, having discovered him with his Snarked series, but I like him a lot. I plan on following his work for some time to come.

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Aquaman was a lot better this month than some of his earlier issues. At least Johns has finally stopped with the irritating jokes about how lame he is.

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Mark Waid is kind of hit and miss with me, but his run on Daredevil has definitely been a HIT. This is one of the best books on the market right now. The only thing that marred the issue was Steve Wacker’s reply in the letter column where he tries to justify double shipping as something the fans want.

Steve, cut the crap. Double shipping is Marvel’s response to the fans not buying a bunch of crappy mini-series that don’t really matter. Yes, it may be fun to have a few extra issues of a book I really like, but double shipping almost the entire line has the potential to really hurt the industry. Since you don’t seem to get it, let me explain it to you.

Most people are on a tight budget when it comes to comics. Most people can only buy a few a week. When they suddenly find that the books they’re following are all coming out twice a month, they’re going to cut something. I could be wrong, but I believe that it is far more likely that they’ll drop an entire line of books than just a few titles.  After all, why try to follow a character or team when you can only get every other issue? I know that this is what I’ve done in the past when things got tight.

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FF was actually pretty good as well this issue, but this story should have been told in Amazing Spider-Man.

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The Flash was kind of meh, as this series has been from the beginning. While I like Manapul’s art, he has a long way to go as a writer.

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That’s it for tonight. Feel free to leave a comment if you have something to say.

This week, in the order I read them…

1. Legion Lost #8
2. New Avengers #24
3. Avengers Assemble #2
4. Carnage U.S.A. # 5
5. Avenging Spider-Man #6
6. Batgirl #8
7. Batman and Robin #8
8. Saucer Country #2
9. Fantastic Four #605

My favorite book out of this pile was a toss up between Batman and Robin and Avenging Spider-Man.

What did you read?

The facts as we know them:

On August 31 they will ship two titles: Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1.

In September 51 additional books will ship with a #1 issue.

Jim Lee has redesigned a lot of costumes.

What those books are, who’s on them, and what the shape of the DC Universe will be is anyone’s guess. *I* sure don’t know, and I don’t really care to speculate.

26 years ago DC revamped their universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths. At that time I was still in college and was ordering my books through a mail order company (Westfield Comics). I was home on vacation when the first issue came out, and I couldn’t wait until my box came in the mail. I bought the first issue off the newstand and read it twice in one sitting. The tag line was, “Worlds will live, and worlds will die.” And I bought into it hook, line and sinker.

I loved, LOVED, L O V E D that book! In order to understand it you had to have a very thorough understanding of the history of the DC Universe. And I did. I’d been reading comics for around 15 years and DC was my favorite line of books. I knew who every character was and why they were important. I completely understood the multiverse, and loved every single bit of it. And that series featured all of it! I was in nerd heaven.

Now all of that isn’t to say that I liked all of the consequences of Crisis. I wasn’t as plugged into fandom back then as I am now, and information was harder to find in those pre-internet days. As I was reading the series I wasn’t expecting the lasting ramifications of it. I didn’t really know until later that the series was supposed to lead to a complete line wide revamp. Even if I had known, I don’t think it would have bothered me.

The revamp did occur, although not as originally planned. Over the next couple of years everything was slowly rebooted. A new Superman origin. A new Wonder Woman. Etc… Some of it was good, some of it wasn’t as good, but I enjoyed more than I disliked.

Flash forward to today’s announcement. I’m once again buying my comics through the mail (DCBS), but I’m a long way from being a student.

I really don’t know what to think, but I’m left with a bit of a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

If they renumber Action Comics, Detective Comics, Superman, and/or Batman, I’m going to feel quite sad. Action Comics in particular is only 100 issues away from its 1000th issue. That’s never really been done before and it would be a shame to lose that for a short term sales boost. (Yes I’m aware that Four Color Comics reached that milestone, and so have a couple of foreign books. Four Color was just an umbrella title for a wide variety of series, and the foreign books are just that… foreign. Neither really count in my mind.)

If they reboot the Legion of Super-Heroes – again -, after FINALLY going back to the REAL team, I’m not going to be happy at all.

On the other hand the current Justice League book is just plain awful, as is Titans. I won’t miss either.

Mostly I feel slightly used and disappointed. I’m currently buying around 150 comics a month and spending way too much on them. 15 Bat-titles a month are not what I need. Big events are not what I crave anymore. Digital downloads don’t entice me.

What I want is simply.

Good stories. A known history. Heroes that act heroic.

Maybe that’s exactly what I’ll get out of the Post-Flashpoint universe.

I hope so.

But if I don’t… well the back-issue bins do seem to be getting cheaper, and the 30 to 50,000 books I’ve already got need rereading.

After 10 years of mostly mediocre writing,

special effects done on a shoestring budget,

and a few promising moments,

all I really wanted from the final episode was to see Tom Welling in costume for at least a moment.

We did see him in the shirt at the end, but all other shots were either extreme close-ups, or CG. There was not one, single, clear, shot of him in uniform.

Was that really too much to ask?

I removed some old posts and deleted all of the users I didn’t know. I think they were all spammers, but if you are a real person, feel free to rejoin.

A lot’s happened since 2008.

bottleRocket Entertainment is no more. *sniff* I now work for Trion Worlds, where we are making an MMO in association with the SyFy Channel. The northern branch of the company is about to release Rift. Go ahead and click the link.

I came out. No more closet for me.

I found out I have diabetes. Bummer. Its not bad, I don’t need shots, just a pill, but it wasn’t exactly good news either. Not being someone that ignores a problem, I changed my diet, started exercising, and lost 30lbs. My blood pressure and cholesterol are lower as a result. I still have more weight to lose, but my blood sugar numbers are much better now and I may just get off of the medication in the near future.

My local comics shop closed. Comic Gallery in San Diego is no more. I went to them for over 10 years. Damn economy. I now buy my comics through an on-line retailer, Discount Comic Book Service. Check them out if you want to save 40% (and more) off of your monthly books.

So that should bring anyone who cares up to date, more or less. No promises, but I’ll try to post a little more often. Feel free to use the link at the top of the page an drop me a note if you’d like.

I’m probably not your typical comic convention goer. I rarely go to the panels and I don’t have much to say to the big name professionals. I figure that I can find more news online than I’ll ever get at a panel, and as for talking to the pros, well I really don’t have much to say. That is I don’t have much that I can say in 30 seconds and not sound like a jerk. I do like to talk to some of the independent creators as they are generally more able to take the time to have a conversation.

So if I don’t like panels and I don’t talk to the pros, what do I go to a con for? That’s easy. The dealers room.

I love looking at, or even better, buying old comics. There is nothing like the feeling of being surrounded by tens of thousands of pages of newsprint all covered in super hero goodness. That’s getting to be a bit of a problem though as I’ve been collecting comics for around 30 years. The simple fact is that I have most of the books that have come out since the early 1970s that I’m interested in – at least the ones from DC or Marvel. That leaves either pre-1970s books or independents.

As most comic collectors know, as soon as you get to books that came out before 1970 prices start to go up quickly. There are a few series for which I’m willing to pay those prices, but not too many. Currently those include the Legion’s run in Adventure Comics and the original Teen Titans. For other books from this era I can only afford reading copies. I refer to these as my A list and B list, in that order.

When I’ve spent as much as I’ve allocated, or run out of things to buy from those lists, I move down to my C and D lists. My C list generally consists of books from the last 10 years or so that I somehow missed or had to skip for financial reasons. My D list is stuff that I don’t even know that I want.

The San Diego Comic Con is my main convention every year. This is true mostly because I happen to live near San Diego. It’s big. It’s generally convenient, and up until the last couple of years, it’s had what I wanted. I say up until the last couple of years because somewhere in that time span it changed. Now, instead of being a comic book convention it’s transformed into a media convention.

I’m not really interested in a media convention. While the dealer’s room has grown ever bigger, the amount of space given to actual comics has decreased every year, and nearly every year I’ve over-heard at least one or two dealers saying that they won’t be back. This is why I’ve started to branch out to other cons.

Last summer I went up to the Alternate Press Expo (A.P.E) in San Francisco. Having never been there I was hoping to find a lot of the smaller publishers. I did, but they were smaller than I’d hoped. Fortunately S.F. is a fun city all by itself so the trip wasn’t completely wasted.

So we finally get back to what started this rather long post. Wizard World L.A. Maybe I was expecting too much. I was hoping for a good sized dealer’s room devoted to mostly comics, instead I found maybe 20 dealers, and that’s probably being generous. Frankly I saw more dealers at local weekend conventions in the 1990s. I was disappointed to say the least.

Still, I had spent and hour and a half on the road to get there, so I tried to make the best of it. A quick once through showed me I’d have to dig to find anything, so dig I did.

From my A list I found one book. Teen Titans #26 in VF+ to NM- condition. Oh well, I moved to my B list where I had a bit more luck. An early Captain America, a couple of Jimmy Olsens, a Lois Lane, and three World’s Finests. Not bad, not what I’d hoped for, but not terrible either. It was time to hit the dollar tables and lists C and D.

A Justice League Adventures, a Batman Strikes, The Phantom #1 from Moonstone, 17 issues of the Savage Dragon, 4 issues of Invincible, 7 Manhunters, a Wonder Woman and two issues of the current Captain America series. Now this was more like it. Somewhere in there I also hit the treasure trove, 27 issues of the Justice Machine, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

I did run into the writer of Bizarre New World, Skipper Martin, and gave him a little crap. Regular readers of this column will remember that I rather liked his first mini-series and gave it a good review. As a reward for that he sent me a preview copy of his new one-shot. I gave that a good review as well. Really, it’s good, you should buy it. So why did I give him crap? He linked to my review and spelled my name wrong, not once, but TWICE! He was suitable embarrassed when I introduced myself. Nice guy. Buy his book!

I also ran into one of the creators of Necessary Evil, another under-appreciated book from Desperado, and the colorist known as Moose! who was selling prints of Gary Frank Green Lantern art. I picked up one that had Hal, John, Kyle, and Guy charging up. Nice stuff.

So back to the treasure trove. Justice Machine. I’ll try and post more about this later as it deserves a full review, but for now I’ll just say that this was a great little series, at least what I’ve read so far, and it was almost enough by itself to have made going to this con worthwhile.

So all in all while Wizard World L.A. didn’t live up to expectations, it wasn’t the world’s worst con either. I managed to pick up some good books and met a couple of cool people. I’ll keep an eye on it and maybe try it again in a few years.

Keith

Well the writer/creator, Skipper Martin, apparently liked what I had to say because last week he sent me a preview copy of his new one shot, Bizarre New World: Population Explosion. My one word review?

Wow!

Now please understand that while I’m quite happy that someone thought enough of my scribblings to send me something of theirs to review, those freebies won’t influence my opinion. If I thought the book was crap I wouldn’t review it. If it was just okay, I’d say so and try to give some constructive criticism. This book wasn’t crap. This book wasn’t just okay. This book was great! In all honesty this was one of the most fun and best written books I’ve read in quite awhile.

At the start of the first mini-series Paul was the only person who could fly, by the time it ended, the whole world was taking to the sky. This story picks up from there. I don’t want to give too much away, because you really should read it for yourself, so I’ll just say that:

- The characters are all very believable.

- The art is well done.

- Paul gets a costume, but it’s not what you think.

- Although he would probably deny that he is one, Paul acts very much like a hero is supposed to.

If you like super-hero comics, if you like fun comics, heck, if you just like good stories, go to your local comic book store now and tell them to get you a copy of this book. It was in the February issue of Previews so it should be on the stands in April.

Order it now.

You won’t be sorry.