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Want to know what I've been reading the past 5 years?

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I order a lot of comic books through DCBS, an online mail order comic shop.  My first order was placed with them in July, 2005 and I've used the fairly steadily since then.  I still split my buying between my LCS (Graham Crackers Comic Shop in Naperville) and DCBS.   One of the neat things about DCBS, once you dive into their website a bit, is that they keep track of all of your orders and you can even download them into Excel to take a look at things.  So, because I've spent the day pouring over Excel for other things, I figured I'd take a quick look at what I've been buying all this time.

I'm not going to incriminate myself in anyway by saying how many items I've ordered from DCBS but, compared to other orders I've seen people place, I'm probably a moderate user of their site.  So, for almost no one's edification but my own, here's a rundown of what I've been buying for the last 5 years.

Publisher % 
DC COMICS  29.31%
MARVEL COMICS  17.40%
DARK HORSE COMICS  9.31%
IMAGE COMICS  7.79%
VIZ MEDIA LLC  5.95%
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS  4.12%
IDW PUBLISHING  2.90%
ONI PRESS INC.  2.29%
AVATAR PRESS INC  1.83%
VERTICAL INC  1.53%
AIT/PLANETLAR  1.22%
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS  1.22%
TWOMORROWS PUBLISHIN  1.07%
DRAWN & QUARTERLY  0.92%
ADHOUSE BOOKS  0.76%
TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING  0.76%
APE ENTERTAINMENT  0.61%
BOOM! STUDIOS  0.61%
COMIC MAGAZINE  0.61%
:01 FIRST SECOND  0.46%
ARCHAIA STUDIOS PRES  0.46%
COMIC FOUNDRY MAGAZINE  0.46%
D. E.  0.46%
DITKO  0.46%
GEMSTONE PUBLISHING  0.46%
STEVE DITKO  0.46%
TOP SHELF PRODUCTION  0.46%
YEN PRESS  0.46%
A. D. VISION  0.31%
DISNEY PRESS  0.31%
GRAPHITTI DESIGNS  0.31%
Mike Norton  0.31%
PANTHEON BOOKS  0.31%
RED 5 COMICS  0.31%
SHADOWLINE  0.31%
THE HERO INITIATIVE  0.31%
W.W. NORTON  0.31%
AARDVARK-VANAHEIM/WI  0.15%
ABRAMS IMAGE  0.15%
AIRSHIP ENTERTAINMEN  0.15%
AMAZE INK (SLAVE LAB  0.15%
Andy Jewett  0.15%
ARCHAIA STUDIOS PRESS  0.15%
BALLANTINE BOOKS  0.15%
CARTOON BOOKS  0.15%
GRAPHIX  0.15%
HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS  0.15%
HUMANOIDS INC  0.15%
MARVEL COMICS (BUY - SELL)  0.15%
METROPOLITAN BOOKS  0.15%
MOONSTONE  0.15%
PictureBox  0.15%
RUDE DUDE PRODUCTIONS  0.15%
TOKYOPOP  0.15%
VILLARD BOOKS  0.15%
VIRGIN COMICS LLC  0.15%

So, 46.72% of the books I've ordered have been Marvel and DC and 66.72% have been from the Diamond Premier publishers.  DC is that high because I've ordered some of the longer miniseries from them (Wednesday's Comics, Brave and the Bold and 17 issues of Countdown before I finally bailed on that travesty.)  So, with those numbers, I feel like I'm well ahead of the curve when it comes to how Marvel and DC usually dominate the Diamond top sellers.  They're still dominating my list but not quite as much as they do on the "official" sales charts.

I like every now and then looking at my DCBS information this way because it's a good way of taking stock of what I've bought and what's really stuck and made an impact on me.  17 issues of Countdown?  Not one of my prouder moments.  And something called "Biff Bam Pow?"  I honestly don't remember what that is.  Looking over this list, I honestly don't think I've been anywhere near as selective on some stuff as I should be.  There's way too much Marvel and DC that has been read and then thrown into a pile or a box (in my case, probably safer to go with the pile,) never to be seen again.  Since this is 5 years of information, I also know that my tastes and buying habits have changed quite a bit in that time.  Strangely, my monthly dollar amount has remained steady during this time but I can see where there's plenty of stuff that I've bought in the past that I wouldn't buy today. 
 
Then there's the opposite-- looking at what I've ordered from certain publishers that have been great:  Almost everything that I've gotten over the years from Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly have been winners, great books that I'm thinking I need to dig out and reread. 

Seriously, what was I thinking sticking with DC's Countdown for 17 issues?

Weekly Comic Shopping List 5/5/10

So lately, I'm thinking about what I buy and read.  A couple of different internet discussions have kind of had me rethinking what I'm enjoying and what I want out of comics.  Combine that with a FCBD which only had a couple of truly great offerings (that Superman comic makes me want to stab my eyes out; I can't believe I found copious copies of that book in GR but never saw a copy of The Sixth Gun all day,) I think I've gone from the guy thinking he was willing to try anything to being a really niche reader and passing up on almost everything.   At least that's what it's starting to feel like; "get off of my lawn with your Hickman and Remender.  I'm waiting for my Allred and Starlin to get here."

That's probably a bit of an exaggeration but this week's shopping list is all about the old stuff I think.

  • Brightest Day #1-- Yes, I ordered this because it had a White Lantern ring with it.  Don't judge me.
  • Sweet Tooth #9-- This title has settled into a nice, if heartbreaking, groove.
  • Alex Raymonds Rip Kirby First Modern Detective Vol 2 1948-1951 HC-- I don't think I've read much Alex Raymond so this is going to be an education for me.
  • Elephantmen Vol 3 Dangerous Liaisons HC-- This book should be a bit of a hodge podge of storytelling.  It was during these issues that I kind of lost the hook of Richard Starking's story but I hope that getting them all bundled will bring all of his threads back together for me.
  • Madman Atomic Comics Vol 3 Electric Allegories TP-- I stopped reading the monthly issues right around here so I have no idea of what to expect.  This recent incarnation of Allred's Madman series was a free-form storytelling experimentation it seemed, with Allred more interested in the ways and means of storytelling than with actually telling a clear story.  I've been waiting for this collection to go back and re-read all of Atomic Comics.
  • Dreadstar The Beginning HC--  Ah, the Metamorphosis Odyssey, in all of its full color glory.  It's been a while since I've seen the original Epic Magazine chapters of this story so I don't remember if it was originally presented in color or black & white.  All I've got now is the lousy photo-copier quality version that Slave Labor put out years ago, a lousy presentation of Starlin's last great space opera story.  

Weekend Reading-- Amazing Spider-Man Gauntlet Book 2

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So last week, with a Border's 30% coupon, I ordered Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet Book 2 from them online and wanted it to ship to the store because it was free shipping, I'm cheap like that, and I pass the store every day.  Oh, and Borders' website said that the book wouldn't be carried instore (or at least wasn't carried instore at the time I bought it.)

So today, there's a 40% coupon.  I checked the shipping notice for the book and, as of this morning, Fed Ex was claiming that the book was at the local post office and it would be another 2-3 days before the book was going to be received at the store.

So at lunch, I went over to Borders, thinking that the book wasn't going to be there and just to see if there was anything else to use a coupon on.  Well, guess what?  Spider-Man Gauntlet V2 was on the shelf.  But I wasn't going to buy it because my book is at the local post office and would be here next week.  At least that was what Fed-Ex was telling me around 11:30am.

No sooner do I get back to work than my phone rings.  "This is your Borders store.  The book you ordered is now in and can be picked up anytime."

Screw you, Fed Ex. 

The Manx Cat had gone wandering again-- A review of Grimjack: The Manx Cat (tpb)

If you read any of John Ostrander and Tim Truman's Grimjack back during the 80s, there was one little statue that showed up now and again; the Manx Cat.  Think of it as the Maltese Falcon but only as a cat.  Ostrander wrote some great stories that started with "The Manx Cat had gone wandering again," usually meaning that someone had stolen it and it was up to John Gaunt, Grimjack, to find it for a price; nothing comes cheap in sweet, cynical Cynosure. 

I've always been a fan of Ostrander and Truman's Grimjack, discovering the book shortly after Truman left it to work on his own comic series Scout.  To a teenaged me, Ostrander's stories were so much more real than anything out of Marvel or DC.  While they were filled with more than their share of supernatural elements, Ostrander always knew what his stories were about; the characters.  In everything from his runs on Suicide Squad and The Spectre and through to his current work on Star Wars: Legacy, his writing is all firmly rooted in strong characterization.  The center of any Ostrander story are the people who inhabit his story.  At its heart, Grimjack: The Manx Cat is a heist story set in a sword & sorcery world; it's Elmore James meets Michael Moorcock.  It's a fantastic high concept but it only works because Ostrander makes the characters work.  He makes the characters real.

Following up 2005's Grimjack: Killer Instinct (think "Grimjack: Year One,") The Manx Cat is a great story about a man who thinks there's no one else in the world he can count on.  As is pointed out to him, "Mister Gaunt hates everybody.  The ones he loves tend to die."  As a coping mechanism for all of the death around him, Grimjack has come to count on only one person- himself.  As he has to learn what the Manx Cat actually is and his own ties to its origin, Ostrander makes the larger by having Grimjack realize what sacrifices he's maybe unnecessarily made in his life that have cost him.  While Ostrander doesn't dig deeply into Grimjack's past in this book, we see Grimjack dealing with people in this book with more than just a sword or a gun or just as clients or enemies. 

Even with great artists like Tom Mandrake, Flint Henry and Tom Sutton working with Ostrander in the past on Grimjack, there's only one artist who is Grimjack's true artist; co-creator Tim Truman.  Over the years since Grimjack first appeared, Truman has only gotten better, a master storyteller who is also a fantastic craftsman.  He perfectly brings Ostrander's story to life, creating a visual world where anything can, and often does, happen.  The Manx Cat is a blend of many kinds of genre stories but Truman mixes them all together to create a wonderfully grim and gritty world, a world where you feel the sweat, heat and grime from a knock-down fight or can smell the beer that's seeped into an old bar's walls.  Truman gives The Manx Cat the physicality that the story needs.  After working together for so long, Ostrander and Truman's works blend seamlessly together in The Manx Cat to create a fantastic Grimjack story.

It's been over 25 years since Ostrander and Truman originally worked together on Grimjack and a lot about comics and storytelling have changed since then.  Their first stories with the character were short, little 8 page backups in the back of Mike Grell's Starslayer.  Throughout the run on Grimjack, Ostrander pushed his comics by telling 4-5 issue stories but never lost sight of the individual issues.  Grimjack: The Manx Cat has been an online comic, a six issue miniseries and is now collected together in one book.  In this final form, The Manx Cat works perfectly as a comic book novel.  Ostrander and Truman have told a Grimjack story perfectly for modern storytelling, creating a graphic novel without needing to pad the story at any point.  Comic storytelling has changed and they've adapted perfectly to it.


Grimjack: The Manx Cat
Written by: John Ostrander
Drawn by: Timothy Truman
Colored by: Lovern Kindzierski
Lettered by: John Workman


Grimjack: The Manx Cat is available on Amazon.com.

Ditkirbanko! A cry for a forgotten generation. A review of Captain America: Who Won't Wield the Shield?

Forget Superman and Spider-Man or the X-Men vs. The Teen Titans, the new Marvel/DC crossover event I want to see is Superboy vs. The Forbush Man, the ultimate DC and Marvel fanboys. 

Comics have gotten dark, damn dark, over the past 20 years.  Considering it wasn't too long ago that we had a comic featuring Superboy punching the head off of a Teen Titan, something had to change.  Just think about that for a moment; Superboy punched the head off of another hero.  Do you think that the outside world really cares that it was the "Earth Prime" Superboy who did that?  They couldn't tell the difference between Superboy Prime and Tom Welling if asked.  Both kind of whine a lot.  So Geoff Johns did something kind of subversive; he made Superboy the ultimate fanboy.  Suddenly Superboy was simultaneously the voice of the fanboy in DC comics and Johns mocking that same fanboy.  He was the character you loved to hate because he was the dark mirror of your own soul.

And we all know that anything DC can do, Marvel can do better.

It's taken Marvel a few years but I think Marvel has found their Superboy and his name is The Forbush Man.  That's right, the guy who wore red longjohns and a pot on his head.  It worked for the original DC Red Tornado and it worked for...  No, I'm sorry but a pot on a head as a costume actually never worked.

Captain America: Who Won't Wield the Shield is a book that dares you to try and take it seriously even as it is probably the most purposely outlandish thing Marvel has published this year.   The Forbush Man killing Jason Aaron, who wrote the Forbush Man story: how messed up is that; Aaron performed some kind of sequential art suicide?  Who's going to write Scalped now?  Oh, crap, I just spoiled Who Won't Wield the Shield, didn't I?  Well, at least Brubaker survived and according to this book, he'll be writing a dozen more Marvel books.  I guess you take the good and you take the bad. 

The darkening of Forbush Man is a framing story build around two "undiscovered" classics from the Marvel vaults: Doctor America by Matt Fraction (Forbush Man accurately wonders "What the hell kind of name is that for a man?") and Brendan McCarthy and the Golden Age Deadpool by Stuart Moore and Joe Quinones.  Fraction is doing his best impersonation of 80s Peter Milligan, who with McCarthy created the wonderfully surreal Rogan Gosh.  Doctor America, a mashup of Captain America, Doctor Strange and a wonderfully freaked out 60's/70's culture, is a mad, mad comic, complete with classic Marvel characters chanting "Ditkirbanko" over and over again, trying to channel the spirit of Marvel's golden age to defeat Richard Milhous Manson.  Teamed with Fraction, McCarthy is probably one of the only artists around who can out-Fraction Fraction.  There's probably nothing to crazy, wild or unexpected that McCarthy couldn't make even crazier.  A goat boy sidekick for Doctor America?  You almost get the feeling that that's just all in a day's work for McCarthy.

Ditkirbanko indeed.

In the golden age Deadpool story, Moore and Quinones mash together the golden age Sandaman, Looney Tunes, Nazi spies and French cartoonist Jacque Tardi.  After suffering nerve damage in WWI, Deadpool has to wear a gas mask and ends up totally isolated from the rest of the world, eventually seeing the world as a giant cartoon make up of "crude, bizarre images" like those seen in early Disney cartoons.  That makes him a perfect dupe for fifth columnist spies.  Really, I don't know what this story is anymore than I know what the Fraction/McCarthy story is.  And that's the point, I guess, to show the newly dark Forbush Man the power of the House of Ideas.

No good character ever dies, no matter how many bullets Ed Brubaker may put in his back.  In Jason Aaron's framing sequence, the one where he killed himself without actually killing himself in real life (it all gets so confusing) is the dark mirror of fandom or, at the very least, the Marvel dark mirror of DC's Superboy.  In the Twitter age of fandom, we get the stories and characters we deserve.  I guess Marvel thought we deserved Forbush Man.

And where's Captain America in this book.  I call "foul" on Marvel for is obvious ploy to try and get the money of hard-working and patriotic Captain America fans in a book where Matt Fraction's deliciously subversive Doctor America is the closest thing we get to our World War II legend.  Just disgusting.

Captain America: Who Won't Wield the Shield?
"Marvel Comics Proudly Presents: Forbush Man: Forbush Kills"
Written by: Jason Aaron
Art by: Mirco Pierfederici
Lettered by: Todd Klien

"Doctor America: Occult Operative of Liberty"
Written by: Matt Fraction
Art by: Brendan McCarthy & Howard Hallis
Lettered by: Todd Klein
Edited by: the love of Freedom!

"The Golden Age Deadpool"
Written by: Stuart Moore
Drawn by: "Jaundiced" Joe Quinones
Colored by: Javier Rodriquez
Lettered by: Todd Klein

Weekly Comic Shopping List 4/28/10

Weekly Comic Shopping List 4/28/10
Message from scott.cederlund@gmail.com:

  • BPRD Vol 12 War On Frogs TP--  Has the Gabriel Ba/Fabio Moon miniseries ever been collected?  Mignola, Arcudi and Davis are doing some of the most sure-handed storytelling in BPRD

  • Guild #2 -- I enjoyed the first issue but I'm hoping that this second issue can capture a greater part of the fun of the web series as it brings in more of the characters of the Guild.  Jim Rugg is one of those artists who can easily adapt to different kinds of storytelling; he can do the wild trip through comics history of Aphrodisiac or the fairly simple, straightforward work of The Guild. 

  • Star Wars Invasion Vol 1 Refugees TP-- While this looks to have some ties into John Ostrander's Legacy storyline, I want to pick this up for Colin Wilson's presumably fantastic artwork.  I love his Walt Simonson-by-way-of-Moebius style.  There's so much energy in his lines.  He gets the energy in his brush-stroke that I think the Image artists of the 90s wanted but often failed to achieve. 

  • Flash Rebirth HC-- Here's where I show what a glutton for punishment I am, still buying Geoff Johns written projects.  I need to just accept the fact that I kind of enjoy Johns' writing even if there's no real character-driven payoff in any of it.  It's unabashed modern superheros, constantly caught up in the spectacle but without any of the nuance of the truly good superhero writers.  But still I enjoy it which probably says way more about me than it does about the Flash or about Johns.  And besides, his best writing has been his previous Flash run and the Rogue's Revenge miniseries so I'm waiting for his Barry Allen stories to really kick in.

  • Stumptown #3-- Finally? 
  • Wasteland (Oni Press) #28-- Finally, part 2?  Two Oni series that have been delayed are seeing the light of day this week.  Both are really good books but I'm starting to wonder if I need to read the regular issues or just make the jump to the trades.  If I'm getting to the point of tradewaiting on comics like these, there may just be some kind of problem here.  With the wait between issues, it's not that far out to just say I'll wait until it's collected.  There's just not that much time between the first issue, the last issue and the collection so why go for the loss leader?

  • Super Spy Lost Dossiers GN-- I just discovered Matt Kindt last year thanks to Super Spy and Three Story so I'm really looking forward to The Lost Dossier, a return to the Super Spy stories. 


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Weekend Reading-- The Walking Dead Compendium

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I've tried The Walking Dead once or twice but never really got into it.  I think I've only gotten as far as the second collection and just never really felt motivated by the story to go any further.  Actually, if anything has motivated me, it's been the legions of comic fans praising this book every month it comes out.  I've wanted to go back and try the book again but never really wanted to only have the first book to get stalled on again.

Also, I know that everyone loves that first Tony Moore- drawn book but I've always really liked Charlie Adlard's work.  He's one of those guys who has such a great sense of line and cartooning but is hardly ever praised.  And since he's been committed to The Walking Dead, there's been no where else to see Adlard's artwork.  So I guess if I'm going to get find some art I like, I'll have to get into The Walking Dead sooner or later.

Luckily at last weekend's C2E2, I found a book that had this Compendium for only $30, half of its cover price, so I had no excuse to finally revisit Robert Kirkman's story again.  Now that I have it, I'm looking forward to checking this story out again and seeing if it lives up to the love it gets from its fans. 

It's odd but there are a couple of books from roughly the same period as The Walking Dead #1 that I had this same reaction with:  Fables and Y The Last Man.  I finally got into Y and thought it was good.  Fables is still a difficult book for me.  I've read many issues of it here and there but it's never grabbed me the same way it seems to have grabbed anyone else.  I love Buckingham's artwork in it but Willingham's story just doesn't do anything for me.  I'm hoping that Walking Dead will be a lot like Y, where I can easily get into the story after I check it out again.

Forms and shapes- a review of Area 10

By page 13 of Area 10, you get the idea that this book is not going to be the straight-up, cop procedural it is disguised as.  Detective Adam Kamen's hunt for a serial killer they call Henry the Eighth, because he cuts off his victims head, becomes something strange and surreal after Kamen's seemingly random encounter with a violent man in a doctor's office.  In a surreal and subtle sequence, Christos Gage and Chris Samnee create the key, memorable visual of the book.  It's early in the story but it is a key turning point, transforming a recognizable and basic police story into something else.

Gage's story is a quick, dirty tale.  Area 10 allows the Law and Order: SVU and Numb3rs writer to take a story about a cop and a serial killer and twist it, allowing him to include the supernatural into his story.  As Kamen chases the killer Henry the Eighth, he begins to see time differently after a serious head injury.  He begins to see things and know things about people that he couldn't possibly know; his doctor was a cheerleader in school, the old guy who has sold him his daily newspaper for years suddenly looks like a young kid, one of Henry's victim's mother momentarily becomes an old crone.  Is he just hallucinating or is he seeing things he shouldn't be seeing?  And, if he is hallucinating, is this the cop that you want on the trail of a deadly serial killer?

Area 10 is modern pulp, a quick page turner but ultimately the story is quite thin.  Gage just doesn't have the room he needs to for his story.  I can't help but think that if this were a long series like 100 Bullets or Hellblazer that Gage would have had the room to really build up this story and to make his characters real.  Unfortunately, this book moves too quickly, getting the characters to the points where they need to be without ever really establishing who they are. Kamen is interesting only as far as his injuries and pursuit of Henry takes him but Gage tries to build him up more than that.  A failed marriage and an out-of-left-field affair with his doctor never feel fully formed, particularly the doctor's relationship.  Those plot points are there in Gage's story but they never become the key points that they should.  They advance the plot but never become a firm part of the plot.

Like those relationships, the serial killer story just never feels as important to the reader as it does to Kamen.  The first third of the book has so much it needs to establish to make the latter parts of the book work that it rushes through everything.  Henry the Eighth should be a new Hannibal Lecter or John Doe (from Se7en) but instead of being a big, scary boogie man for Kamen to chase, Henry remains a faceless, featureless void for too long.  That lack of features even becomes a visual cue for the character that never quite works.  Gage is full of ideas for his characters and his plot but there's just not enough room in this book to give them all the space they need or deserve.

Chris Samnee is a fascinating artist to watch on this book.  He shows you just enough of what Gage's story needs you to see, no more and no less.  Samnee draws darkness and light, defining his world by the shadows.  It's a lovely, naturalistic way to draw, creating a world of shape and forms rather than by lines and boundaries.  His style here, much like in 2005's Capote in Kansas, invites the reader into the book, allowing the reader to complete the images and become more involved in the story.

Much in the same way, Samnee doesn't show us everything in the story, instead picking angles and images that suggest what's happening rather than making it obvious.  That early sequence I mentioned earlier, the one that much of the rest of the story hinges on, could have been shown any number of more literal and graphic ways but instead, most of the action is only hinted at as Samnee shows more of the results rather than what actually happened.  That style of storytelling makes the large moments so much larger and more important.  The way that Gage and Samnee structure what the reader sees creates the suspense of Area 10.

Area 10 is a book of shadows, of what we see and what remains unseen.  In both Gage's story and Samnee's artwork, the story remains in shadows, asking the reader to fill in gaps and questions.  While that works for the artwork, giving the reader a level of  investment into the book, the story asks the reader to accept too many things too quickly as it races to get to the end.

Area 10
Written by: Christos N. Gage
Drawn by: Chris Samnee
Lettered by: Clem Robins

Area 10 is available on Amazon.com.

5 page spreads on the iPad?

If you've been following my twitter feed at all lately, you may have noticed that I've been debating whether to buy a new laptop or an iPad.  As much as an iPad would be a new toy, I'm really wondering if I need a full laptop who's functions just mimic the Mac Mini that's becoming my home computing hub.  An iPad would be a peripheral to my home computing system, not a replacement for it.

Of course, one of the big things for comic fans is digital distribution and how comics look on the iPad.  I've got a couple of confirmations that comics look real nice.  Well, Marvel Comics and anyone selling through Comixology looks real nice.  The one holdout so far in the digital realm has been DC Comics.  Yesterday, the Geeks of Doom had a panel recap from Wondercon with Jim Lee talking about digital comics.  There's one thing that he as to say in that recap that sounds really hollow:

“I’ll use Blackest Night as an example. You open that up and — I don’t want to spoil anything — but there’s a spread inside that’s just amazing. You cannot replicate it on a device with a smaller screen.”

O.k.  If Jim Lee won't spoil it, I will.

I assume he's talking about the 4 page spread showing all of the resurrected characters.  It's four pages that fold out.  It's a trick that's been done before; when you need that big, Big, BIG moment, you make the page extra big.  When two pages aren't enough, go for four.

Only it's not needed.

It's exaggeration and overkill.

It's a trick that is pulled out to make you think you're reading something that's bigger than it is.  The last time I really remember it being used was in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's The Ultimates II, where they showed some kind of gigantic battle that I only remember because of the self-indulgence and excess it demonstrated rather in any actual storytelling.

And that spread that Jim Lee is referring to in the above quote is no better.  It's a fanboy moment that doesn't do anything for the story.  What do these large spreads really accomplish that couldn't be done within the normal confines of the page.

Imagine if suddenly you had to put a 2nd TV next to your regular set because Lost was going to show how "big" a moment something was by doubling the size of the image?

Imagine if one page of a novel was 2 times the size of every other page because it was a "big" moment.

Now I'm all for playing with format but, in storytelling, you establish certain rules and story-telling conventions.  To break those by manipulating the page size for only part of it is a cheat. 

Of course, Jim Lee has done this same thing with a fold-out spread in All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, showing the Batcave.

But that one is o.k. because it was kewl.