Yeah, I know you could find this stuff yourself. But maybe I'll save you a bit of trouble.
Virgin Comics
2000 A.D.
Top Shelf
Devil's Due
(Apologies for a post like this. Seems like a bit of a cop out, but my new job is sucking away all of my time that I could spend on important things. Like lyrical waxing about comics!)
May 6, 2008
Apr 21, 2008
Why I Love Grant Morrison
A short video clip and transcript of Grant Morrison's Q&A at the New York Comicon. The video's good, but his last answer about the last issue of The Invisibles is just wonderful.
"Superman, Batman, they're much more real than we are — created long before any of us were alive. Superman is still vital and young and communicating to people. When we're dead and gone and dust, there will probably still be a Superman. And the world that they inhabit is a two-dimensional world. You can pick up different comics from his whole span of existence, but it's all still there. I began to imagine: what if there were things above us, on a hyper-cube level, if there were people who could look down on us like we look down on Superman, and see the entirety of our lives?"
Full interview at io9.com.
"Superman, Batman, they're much more real than we are — created long before any of us were alive. Superman is still vital and young and communicating to people. When we're dead and gone and dust, there will probably still be a Superman. And the world that they inhabit is a two-dimensional world. You can pick up different comics from his whole span of existence, but it's all still there. I began to imagine: what if there were things above us, on a hyper-cube level, if there were people who could look down on us like we look down on Superman, and see the entirety of our lives?"
Full interview at io9.com.
Apr 17, 2008
Comic Book Sites I'm Grooving On #2
Don McGregor's Cyberpad
Mr. McGregor wrote, along with P. Craig Russell, the brilliant post-apocalyptic Marvel comic "Killraven". Find it, read it, love it. He also wrote "Sabre", which is widely considered the first true graphic novel.
The Grand Comic Book Database
Another database site, but this one has great scans of comic covers. Rarely lets me down when I'm looking for a graphic.
Herocopia
Wiki site dedicated to Kurt Busiek's "Astro City". If you love super-hero comics, and you're not reading "Astro City", get out there now and buy the first trade. I guarantee you won't regret it.
And from my collection of check lists, because I'm ridiculously anal retentive....
Generation X Checklist
Gen X was an excellent comic. Should you be a fan, this is a pretty complete list of all their appearances.
Mr. McGregor wrote, along with P. Craig Russell, the brilliant post-apocalyptic Marvel comic "Killraven". Find it, read it, love it. He also wrote "Sabre", which is widely considered the first true graphic novel.
The Grand Comic Book Database
Another database site, but this one has great scans of comic covers. Rarely lets me down when I'm looking for a graphic.
Herocopia
Wiki site dedicated to Kurt Busiek's "Astro City". If you love super-hero comics, and you're not reading "Astro City", get out there now and buy the first trade. I guarantee you won't regret it.
And from my collection of check lists, because I'm ridiculously anal retentive....
Generation X Checklist
Gen X was an excellent comic. Should you be a fan, this is a pretty complete list of all their appearances.
Apr 6, 2008
Crossovers, Mega-Crossovers, and the Fools Who Love Them part 1
I admit it freely and easily: I'm a sucker for the company-wide crossover event. Yeah, it's nice when you have Superman guest-starring in a Batman comic, or Reed Richards showing up in the pages of Spider-Man, but when you get a comic that has all of 50 or 60 heroes interacting, giving a wider shot of your preferred fictional universe, I'm there. It's sad, and expensive, but there you have it. Some are really good, some are really bad, and there's always going to be someone who says that "Age of Apocalypse" was by far superior to "House of M", but these opinions aside, the crossover is a phenomenon that bears some scrutiny.
I suppose it all started with "Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars". According to Jim Shooter Mattel toys "were interested in Marvel's characters, but only if we staged a publishing event that would get a lot of attention" .
(link) I have to admit, I didn't know this at the time, though I did get all those wicked-cool toys. But the further ramification is that it set a precedent for successful crossovers, and while "Contest of Champions" preceded it by a couple of years, "Secret Wars" was a year-long saga that actually effected profound changes in the Marvel Universe.
Jump ahead a year, and DC unveils "Crisis on Infinite Earths", possibly the most revered, and perhaps reviled, of all the crossovers. And the one that set up the way that crossovers have been handled for over 20 years now. I'm sure there were various reasons for the advent of "Crisis", some financial, some legal (notice that the original versions of characters were pretty much killed off in the series, leaving room for "reinterpretations" that the original creators would have trouble claiming ownership of), but the ostensible reason of cleaning up the shared universe is really the only one we need to consider. I came to the DC universe through this series. I had never read a DC comic. I knew, of
course, who Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman were. Maybe an inkling of Green Lantern and The Flash. But Earth 2? The Marvel Family? The Crime Syndicate? Nothing. So, in 1985, at age 11, I picked up "Crisis on Infinite Earths" #1, and jumped in. And do you know what happened? I read the entire series, got to know the characters, their worlds, their enemies, and the ramifications of what happened in the story, closed the cover on issue #12, and had read a complete and coherent story. I didn't need to go out an buy the tie-in issues, of which I discovered years later, there were many. In fact, nowadays if I see one, I'll pick it up if the price is right, to get a better idea of how the various creators involved interpreted this cataclysmic event in the particular corner of the universe they were responsible for. The point, however, is this: I didn't need to. I still don't. I could read "Crisis" again, without any tie-ins, and it's still a good story. I still understand what's happening. The brilliance of Marv Wolfman and George Perez' story is that they give you all the background you need without ridiculous amounts of exposition that stifle the flow of the story. I understood where all the different Earths came from, who the Guardians of the Galaxy were, why there were different Batmen and Supermen, and even enough of the histories of those Earths to get some emotional investment in the characters. And not once was there a little asterisk directing me to read another comic in order to understand events in "Crisis". Again, setting aside the other reasons this crossover may have been produced, it seemed that the people involved were interested in telling a story, complete and in it's own right, and not in selling issues of other comics.
If only things had stayed that way.
Around the same time "Crisis" was on shelves, Marvel spawned a sequel to "Secret Wars". "Secret Wars 2" was a direct continuation of the first story, the Beyonder travelling to Earth to learn what individuality meant. An interesting idea, to be sure. How does something that has no concept of "individual" react to a world (and, of course, a country like the U.S.), that is so fiercely individual? Like a good little comic collector, I bought it on first sight, gulping down the beginning of what I hoped would be yet another grand story, starring all of my favourite heroes, and a few I'd never heard of. But then.....we come to the final page, perhaps even the back cover, and are invited to follow the Beyonder's adventures, and the ramifications of his actions, into a multitude of tie-ins. Of course, having the limited resources of my pre-work self (*sighs, a little misty-eyed*), I ignored the ads, waiting patiently for the next issue....
Which featured a Beyonder who'd had experiences that influenced my story that I had no idea of. The main focus of the story had stepped out of the pages I was following, into ones that I didn't, and come back changed. And yes, I could still enjoy the story, put the pieces together, but there was always the feeling that something was missing. At this point, after reading the whole thing, and not being quite satisfied with it, my taste for crossovers changed. Unfortunately this model of the crossover had proven itself. It has stayed, with no end in sight.
Through the late eighties and early nineties, I started to give up on comic books, in favour of
music, sex, and all those other things that prey on the minds of teenagers. I was there for the various Marvel mutant book crossovers, and while something like "Inferno" did indeed tie in to other titles, and you sort of did have to read the three major X-books (Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants) to get the whole story, there was coherence to the story that didn't rely on knowing anything outside those three main titles. After that, though, I sort of slipped away. I think DC's "Invasion" was probably the last of my forays before giving up comics completely. I missed "Acts of Vengeance", "X-tinction Agenda", and the myriad others that popped up when the comics industry started selling more books than anyone really knew what to do with. When smaller companies like Valiant and Image can produce multi-part, hugely successful crossovers, then someone somewhere realizes that this is a marketing tool that really, really works.
Jump ahead to 1996, and I'm re-introduced to comics through the lens of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" books. Literary comics. The stuff reserved for the top shelf of the store when I was last there, the books that I didn't pick up because the warnings on the outside said I wasn't old enough. Of course, they were well-written, and well-presented enough to drag me straight back in. And in that time, the crossover event had become a yearly occurrence. Witness "The Age of Apocalypse". Then "Onslaught". To really, really, get these stories, you had to buy entire shelves of comics. Over the years I've tried to get all the various parts to these two, and it's a work in progress, but at last count there are 47 comics that are direct, advertised on the cover, parts of "Age of Apocalypse". About four times the number that comprised "Crisis on Infinite Earths".
"Onslaught", which I don't think I'm anywhere near having them all, currently numbers 36 issues in my collection. And "Onslaught" was an insidious one. Where in the past, crossovers seemed to center around a mini-series, and would tie-in to various titles, "Onslaught" had no focal series. It was just issue after issue of every major title that Marvel published. On a smaller scale such things had flown at DC, Valiant and Image, but not on such an epic level, and not with the rumoured, or promised, outcome. Death, carnage, destruction, and 4 new series and their #1 issues. All of which was of course a one year project that culminated in yet another 4 new series and their corresponding #1 issues. And the machine rolled on.
Next time, we'll have a look at my soft spot for "DC One Million", the far-less-comic-selling trend of annual crossovers, DC's "Seven Soldiers", and the horrible mess (in my opinion, I suppose) that was "Infinite Crisis". All this on the cusp of Marvel's "Secret Invasion" and DC's "Final Crisis". My wallet balks at the very thought.
I suppose it all started with "Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars". According to Jim Shooter Mattel toys "were interested in Marvel's characters, but only if we staged a publishing event that would get a lot of attention" .(link) I have to admit, I didn't know this at the time, though I did get all those wicked-cool toys. But the further ramification is that it set a precedent for successful crossovers, and while "Contest of Champions" preceded it by a couple of years, "Secret Wars" was a year-long saga that actually effected profound changes in the Marvel Universe.
Jump ahead a year, and DC unveils "Crisis on Infinite Earths", possibly the most revered, and perhaps reviled, of all the crossovers. And the one that set up the way that crossovers have been handled for over 20 years now. I'm sure there were various reasons for the advent of "Crisis", some financial, some legal (notice that the original versions of characters were pretty much killed off in the series, leaving room for "reinterpretations" that the original creators would have trouble claiming ownership of), but the ostensible reason of cleaning up the shared universe is really the only one we need to consider. I came to the DC universe through this series. I had never read a DC comic. I knew, of
course, who Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman were. Maybe an inkling of Green Lantern and The Flash. But Earth 2? The Marvel Family? The Crime Syndicate? Nothing. So, in 1985, at age 11, I picked up "Crisis on Infinite Earths" #1, and jumped in. And do you know what happened? I read the entire series, got to know the characters, their worlds, their enemies, and the ramifications of what happened in the story, closed the cover on issue #12, and had read a complete and coherent story. I didn't need to go out an buy the tie-in issues, of which I discovered years later, there were many. In fact, nowadays if I see one, I'll pick it up if the price is right, to get a better idea of how the various creators involved interpreted this cataclysmic event in the particular corner of the universe they were responsible for. The point, however, is this: I didn't need to. I still don't. I could read "Crisis" again, without any tie-ins, and it's still a good story. I still understand what's happening. The brilliance of Marv Wolfman and George Perez' story is that they give you all the background you need without ridiculous amounts of exposition that stifle the flow of the story. I understood where all the different Earths came from, who the Guardians of the Galaxy were, why there were different Batmen and Supermen, and even enough of the histories of those Earths to get some emotional investment in the characters. And not once was there a little asterisk directing me to read another comic in order to understand events in "Crisis". Again, setting aside the other reasons this crossover may have been produced, it seemed that the people involved were interested in telling a story, complete and in it's own right, and not in selling issues of other comics.If only things had stayed that way.
Around the same time "Crisis" was on shelves, Marvel spawned a sequel to "Secret Wars". "Secret Wars 2" was a direct continuation of the first story, the Beyonder travelling to Earth to learn what individuality meant. An interesting idea, to be sure. How does something that has no concept of "individual" react to a world (and, of course, a country like the U.S.), that is so fiercely individual? Like a good little comic collector, I bought it on first sight, gulping down the beginning of what I hoped would be yet another grand story, starring all of my favourite heroes, and a few I'd never heard of. But then.....we come to the final page, perhaps even the back cover, and are invited to follow the Beyonder's adventures, and the ramifications of his actions, into a multitude of tie-ins. Of course, having the limited resources of my pre-work self (*sighs, a little misty-eyed*), I ignored the ads, waiting patiently for the next issue....Which featured a Beyonder who'd had experiences that influenced my story that I had no idea of. The main focus of the story had stepped out of the pages I was following, into ones that I didn't, and come back changed. And yes, I could still enjoy the story, put the pieces together, but there was always the feeling that something was missing. At this point, after reading the whole thing, and not being quite satisfied with it, my taste for crossovers changed. Unfortunately this model of the crossover had proven itself. It has stayed, with no end in sight.
Through the late eighties and early nineties, I started to give up on comic books, in favour of
music, sex, and all those other things that prey on the minds of teenagers. I was there for the various Marvel mutant book crossovers, and while something like "Inferno" did indeed tie in to other titles, and you sort of did have to read the three major X-books (Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants) to get the whole story, there was coherence to the story that didn't rely on knowing anything outside those three main titles. After that, though, I sort of slipped away. I think DC's "Invasion" was probably the last of my forays before giving up comics completely. I missed "Acts of Vengeance", "X-tinction Agenda", and the myriad others that popped up when the comics industry started selling more books than anyone really knew what to do with. When smaller companies like Valiant and Image can produce multi-part, hugely successful crossovers, then someone somewhere realizes that this is a marketing tool that really, really works.Jump ahead to 1996, and I'm re-introduced to comics through the lens of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" books. Literary comics. The stuff reserved for the top shelf of the store when I was last there, the books that I didn't pick up because the warnings on the outside said I wasn't old enough. Of course, they were well-written, and well-presented enough to drag me straight back in. And in that time, the crossover event had become a yearly occurrence. Witness "The Age of Apocalypse". Then "Onslaught". To really, really, get these stories, you had to buy entire shelves of comics. Over the years I've tried to get all the various parts to these two, and it's a work in progress, but at last count there are 47 comics that are direct, advertised on the cover, parts of "Age of Apocalypse". About four times the number that comprised "Crisis on Infinite Earths".
"Onslaught", which I don't think I'm anywhere near having them all, currently numbers 36 issues in my collection. And "Onslaught" was an insidious one. Where in the past, crossovers seemed to center around a mini-series, and would tie-in to various titles, "Onslaught" had no focal series. It was just issue after issue of every major title that Marvel published. On a smaller scale such things had flown at DC, Valiant and Image, but not on such an epic level, and not with the rumoured, or promised, outcome. Death, carnage, destruction, and 4 new series and their #1 issues. All of which was of course a one year project that culminated in yet another 4 new series and their corresponding #1 issues. And the machine rolled on.Next time, we'll have a look at my soft spot for "DC One Million", the far-less-comic-selling trend of annual crossovers, DC's "Seven Soldiers", and the horrible mess (in my opinion, I suppose) that was "Infinite Crisis". All this on the cusp of Marvel's "Secret Invasion" and DC's "Final Crisis". My wallet balks at the very thought.
Mar 31, 2008
Best Comic I've Read This Week (Mar.30 - Apr.5, 2008)
I was going to wait until Frank Quitely's 12 issues of this title were done before I wrote about it. I also wanted to get my thoughts on "Flex Mentallo" down first, since this title is so much the spiritual successor to that series, but I just had to talk about this one.
All-Star Superman #10
I defy anyone to explain to me why they're not reading a Superman comic written by Grant Morrison that is completely outside the bounds of any continuity whatsoever. This is a stunning piece of work. They are stories that I think will be looked upon as a defining work, much like Byrne's "Man of Steel" in the mid-Eighties, or "The Death of Superman" in the Nineties. With Morrison's "Final Crisis" fast approaching in May, I'm really hoping that he brings the same sense of grandeur to the epic crossover that he has to Superman.
Issue 10 has a cover date of May 2008, meaning it's on store shelves as I type. The first six issues of "All-Star Superman" have been released in hardcover, from DC Comics.
I defy anyone to explain to me why they're not reading a Superman comic written by Grant Morrison that is completely outside the bounds of any continuity whatsoever. This is a stunning piece of work. They are stories that I think will be looked upon as a defining work, much like Byrne's "Man of Steel" in the mid-Eighties, or "The Death of Superman" in the Nineties. With Morrison's "Final Crisis" fast approaching in May, I'm really hoping that he brings the same sense of grandeur to the epic crossover that he has to Superman.
Issue 10 has a cover date of May 2008, meaning it's on store shelves as I type. The first six issues of "All-Star Superman" have been released in hardcover, from DC Comics.
Mar 24, 2008
Best Comic I've Read This Week (Mar.16 - 22)
Sorry. Couple of days late.
I've recently started trying to fill in Joe Casey's run on "Adventures of Superman" from about 6 years ago. He writes an excellent Superman. In doing so, however, I grabbed a couple of issues of the various other titles being published about that time, specifically the "Return to Krypton 2" storyline that ran in four parts through the titles. The first part is this week's best comic.
The story is well done, though you really need the other four parts to enjoy it fully. This particular issue stood out to me, though, because of two panels. I'm not giving anything away to say that Jor-El, Superman's Dad, winds up on Earth. He's exposed to our yellow Sun, and begins to experience what it's like to be Superman. In amazement, he asks "Is this what it's like, son? To live without fear? Without pain?" Superman responds with a small smile that speaks volumes, a testament to artists Pascual Ferry and Cam Smith. That page (page 6) was one of the most pure Superman moments I've read. All that remains is to say that the issue was written by Geoff Johns, and published by DC Comics in September of 2002. Worth hunting for.
I've recently started trying to fill in Joe Casey's run on "Adventures of Superman" from about 6 years ago. He writes an excellent Superman. In doing so, however, I grabbed a couple of issues of the various other titles being published about that time, specifically the "Return to Krypton 2" storyline that ran in four parts through the titles. The first part is this week's best comic.
The story is well done, though you really need the other four parts to enjoy it fully. This particular issue stood out to me, though, because of two panels. I'm not giving anything away to say that Jor-El, Superman's Dad, winds up on Earth. He's exposed to our yellow Sun, and begins to experience what it's like to be Superman. In amazement, he asks "Is this what it's like, son? To live without fear? Without pain?" Superman responds with a small smile that speaks volumes, a testament to artists Pascual Ferry and Cam Smith. That page (page 6) was one of the most pure Superman moments I've read. All that remains is to say that the issue was written by Geoff Johns, and published by DC Comics in September of 2002. Worth hunting for.
Mar 15, 2008
File Under: Things I Didn't Know About Alan Moore Comics
So, in making myself a list of the comics that comprise the America's Best Comics line, in order to have a more complete collection of them, of course, I found out something interesting about the Tom Strong series. In the 11th issue, we are introduced to "Terra Obscura", and it's science hero Tom Strange, an alternate version, we suppose, of the title character.
But the truth is a little stranger.
Tom "Doc" Strange, is actually a super-hero from a now-defunct Golden Age publisher called Nedor Comics. They operated from 1936 to 1956, and were apparently a rather prolific publisher. It's a reflection on my comparatively poor knowledge of comic book history that I had no idea who they were. So it turns out that all the characters on Terra Obscura were actually characters from Nedor Comics who had become public domain characters after their copyright ran out and no one renewed it.
Interestingly, the characters were revived by the publisher Americomics in the 1980s, a publisher that also published the Charlton characters before they were sold to DC. The Charlton characters were, of course, the inspiration for the heroes in Moore's Watchmen. The two revivals, written by the same man, though decades apart, couldn't be more (if you've forgive the pun) different. Where Watchmen is grim, and, let's face it, utterly brilliant, the Tom Strong and Terra Obscura stories are light-hearted, celebratory of the kind of heroes that were popular in the Golden Age. I suppose that the mark of a really great writer, that he can present two diametrically opposed views of the history of super-heroes, and still make them both completely compelling.
But enough. I could praise Alan Moore all day, and it would get us nowhere. Both Tom Strong and Terra Obscura are available in collected editions from DC Comics. And a far more insightful and complete look at these old heroes is presented at Nolan's Niche, at the CGC website.
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