Comic Book Wednesdays 7/15/09- Issue #15 (Death and Despair, yeah!)

All general comic talk is welcome as is all weekly stuff. Just spoiler stuff until after it is released (not all of us read solicits).

Nawid A.'s Picks of the Week

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Of course, Wednesday Comics continues this week, so pick it up!
Incognito #5 (of 6)- This book is getting more twisted by the page.
Blackest Night #1 (of 8)- The DC event of the year (finally) begins. It should be fucked up.
Creepy Comics #1- A quarterly 48 page black and white (no ads) horror anthology for $5? That sounds pretty good to me. But I think that excellent cover by Powell really seals the deal.

Nawid A.'s Trade of the Week

Madame Xanadu Vol. 1 is a lot of bang for the buck even at MSRP (10 issues for $13). Check it out, especially if you’re a Sandman fan. I’m not even a Sandman fan, and I enjoy the series.

For the rest of the week’s comics (and a great way to manage your pulls for the week) go here and report back.

I will be buying

Wednesday Comics
Blackest Night #1
Blackest Night Tales of the Corps #1

Incognito? Yes Please!

Yeah, I was totally surprised to see it shipping this week. Makes sense though since Phillips is usually good with deadlines.

I don’t order single issues anymore but made my monthly TPB order today:

  • Invincible Ultimate Collection volume 1
  • The Walking Dead 9 - Here we remain
  • Criminal - Dead and the Dying

Wanted to order the Captain America Omnibus too but can’t find it here on europe ;_; I’ll wait for it to be available in stock again and also grab Sleeper Season 1 while at it.

Also been wanting to order Ex Machina for some B.K.V. stuff now that i’ve finished Y-The Last Man.

I haven’t read that specific TWD trade yet (I’m sure it’s great) but those other two…

Dead and the Dying is my first taste of Criminal and it’s fucking great. But when I read the previous trades it retroactively (or is it futureactively?) got better. Adds so much depth to the universe.

Invincible is great and you bought it in the right format because it gets you to some of the series best moments.

I loved Sleeper Season One (can’t wait for S2). It’s up there with Maus and Watchmen as my favorites of all time. When I hear Brubaker say it’s the worst selling book he’s ever wrote, I’m amazed at the stupidity of the comic buying public. Who in their right mind would pick up X-Men retreads instead of it? Most of the comic buying audience I suppose. Fucking bullshit.

I loved Sleeper too. Speaking of X-Men retreads, were there really people wanting more Claremont X-men that they launched the X-Men Forever line? For me, Claremont’s style just doesn’t work anymore. The one that stands out for me of his recent works (last few years) was a Justice League story he wrote where Wonder Woman lassoed the Earth and Superman pulled it back into orbit :(

Marvel’s riding a moderately depressing 90’s nostalgia wave. Note that they’ve also commissioned Tom DeFalco and Howard Mackie to produce a retelling of the goddamn Clone Saga and not too long ago had Rob Liefeld drawing a revisit of the Heroes Reborn crap.

And crazily enough, X-Men Forever is bi-weekly. This would never happen in a popular medium. Can you imagine Lynch starting Twin Peaks S3 right now?

Oh and lets not forget Marvel’s holofoilogramofuckthis covers for the new Ultimate line (which I’ll bet falls apart quicker than the old one).

The only Marvel comics I read in issues anymore are from their Icon line which in itself was really half-assed and I felt done to cripple indie publishers. This isn’t Marvel’s fault; they are a company trying to make money. So if the readers want shitty cyclical stories that have been retread and retread with weak spins to them, then they can eat it. Fuck them.

Sadly, the choice between the Big Two right now (with only a few exceptions) is either nostalgia for the 90s (you forgot to mention they’re revisiting 2099 as well) or writers with a total boner for the Silver Age.

This is why Invincible is totally awesome to read. If you’d told me in the 90s that I’d be touting Image as putting out some fine comics, I’d have laughed in your face (I was not a fan of the “art over story” trend they kicked off with).

Invincible is a great premise but I’ve never been able to warm to it as a superhero book. There’s a basic problem of aesthetic with its tendency to drift into hyper-gore for major battles and the plot has begun to meander tremendously.

Yay for Blackest Night!

I know a couple spoilers for issue 1. No, you don’t want to know them. Just trust me, it’s gonna be messed up.

Agreed! I just finished it… wow…

I picked up that and Beta Ray Bill #2. Yay!

The current plot, or the trade you’re currently on?
I love the aesthetic. It’s a huge draw for me. I think Ryan Ottley is amazing. On the surface, it often looks simple but he details the shit out of the cartoony style.

Alan Moore/Alan Davis Captain Britain Omnibus, yay!

I was a massive fan of Invincible until TPB 10: Let’s Change Everything Like Marvel Does.

I’m not there yet, but shit, the series had one of those pretty early on.

I agree, and that was shocking as hell when it happened, but he made it canon and continued to build on it. The book became better as a result. Book 10 just seemed to be full of random changes. My opinion, anyway.

I didn’t mean the art by “aesthetic”. (For what that worth, Ottley is very good and surely an under-appreciated artist, but he does not amaze me. Marcos Martin is the kind of guy who amazes me.)

What I meant was the writing aesthetic, the approach to storytelling. In Invincible I feel a very uncomfortable merger of retro superhero sensibility and the more blood-soaked modern approach. In particular, the latter approach to the plot would demand something much more compact and tightly written, but instead Invincible’s narrative has chosen to sprawl lazily out like a 60’s Stan Lee story.

It doesn’t work for me. I like Invincible’s basic set-up but it’s one that cries out for a real beginning, middle, and end-- not beginning followed by perpetual middle. If at some point Invincible did have a proper ending, though, I’d probably make another effort to sit down with the series.

Alas Kirkman believes Invincible and Walking Dead will be ongoings for quite possibly the rest of his life.