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Really, whatever happened to Gene Simmons?

I'm declaring today Bloom County day.  Actually, this whole weekend may be Bloom County weekend.  While the IDW collection has been out for a couple of weeks, I'm finally getting my copy tonight.  While doing a quick Google Image Search to find a Bloom County image to use as my avatar on Twitter, I found another image which is great, an add for a Banana Jr. 6000 computer.  I dubbed my first Apple computer "Banana Jr." and every time I get a new computer, I think about reviving that name. 

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Weekly Comic Shopping List 10/14/09

Adventure Comics Vol 2 #3-- I've liked this book a bit more than I've wanted to but I credit that more to Francis Manupul than to Geoff Johns.  The last issue was just a nice story about two young lovers trying to figure out where they go from here.  We'll see if the magic continues this issue.  If nothing else, I think I'm tapped into anything Legion.
Green Lantern Corps Vol 2 #41-- Zombies Green Lanterns.  If Blackest Night truly resurrects anyone, it better by C'hip.
JSA vs Kobra #5--  I've been enjoying this series but I hope something happens soon. It's more of a Mister Terrific book guest-starring the rest of the JSA which isn't bad but I'd like to see the action spread around a bit more.  Johns' best JSA stories were where he was able to give everyone their moment in the spotlight. 
Act-I-Vate Primer HC--  More webcomics on dead trees which is actually my favorite way of reading these comics. 
Hammer Of The Gods Vol 1 Mortal Enemy TP--  I've got some of Oeming's original Hammer of the Gods stuff but I can't figure out if this is a reprint of that stuff or something else.  I really liked Oeming's take on Norse mythology and his artwork is always really great.  He's got such a versatile style that he can go from a gritty book like Powers to a cosmic book liked Hammer of the Gods. 
Liberty Comics A CBLDF Benefit Book #2-- If nothing else, pick this up just to support a good cause.
Daredevil Return Of King TP--  I need to sit down one of these weekends and dig out all of Brubaker and Lark's run on Daredevil.  There were plenty of highs and lows about their run and, if there's one knock I need to make against it, I'm not too sure yet what their stamp on the character was.  They picked up from the Bendis/Maleev run and continued the story but how did the character or his situations grow at all?  Brubaker was recently on a Word Balloonpodcast and said how he wanted to try to do some more swashbuckling Daredevil but the fans didn't like that.  Well, that was actually my favorite part of his run and everything after felt like an odd step backwards to me.
You Are There HC-- More Jacques Tardi.  I still have to read West Coast Blues, which is sitting on a pile of books on my desk.

@ Pop Syndicate-- Planetary #27

"Planetary was always about the ripples; about how they interacted and magnified each other.  It was about stories and how one story rippled and echoed into another.  The story about giant monsters on a Japanese island was reflected in a later issue about giant Australian spirits around Ayers Rock.  A Hong Kong police ghost story played into the events that took down the 4, a secret cabal hording technology for their own benefit.  Even the 4 rippled into another Warren Ellis-penned book, Ultimate Fantastic Four, for a little bit.  Sporadically over the last 10 years, Warren Ellis and John Cassaday have reminded us how stories interact with each other in our imaginations and how they mesh together to create a large narrative tapestry."

Click here to read the full review.

Planetary has been one of the two series I think I've returned to the most over the past 10 years, with the other book being Grant Morrison's Invisibles.  Both series were full of such grandiose ideas and mad schemes but it's the characters in both books that keep pulling me back.  Even with how much I've read both series, Elijah Snow and King Mob remain mysteries to me.  My favorite King Mob line has to be "my karma's a bloody minefield."  Both characters are forced to live lives that they don't want.  There's a joy in life and a joy in both books that has to be put on the back burner until each mission is accomplished; until those that need saving are saved.

Both Planetary and Invisibles were perhaps justifiably criticized at times as being primarily vehicles for their writers mad ideas and concepts.  There's certainly plenty of just unbelievable physics and metaphysics in both books but to concentrate purely on that really misses the purpose of these characters who these stories are about.  Sure, Planetary could get bogged down in it's own concepts but look at the sadness in Jakita's eyes when she doesn't know what she's going to do now that the enemy is defeated or the surprising determination in Drummer's face when he knows that his friend can be saved.  There were mad ideas but there was also an incredibly human and hopeful story told in Planetary.

It's a strange world.  Let's keep it that way.

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@ Pop Syndicate-- Fantstic Four #571

"Hickman nicely balances out this cosmically minded story with a simple flashback to a 10 year old Reed and his father.  Maybe it’s to emphasize the naive boy that still exists within Reed Richards or maybe it just helps illustrate the questions that buzz around in Reed’s head about his own place in the world but this simple scene grounds Reed Richards in a way he hasn’t been in a long time; he may have been the smartest boy in his class, but he was still just a boy.  Now that he’s grown up, he may be the smartest man around, but he’s still just a man, with the same doubts and insecurities that all men and women have."

Click here to read the full review.

@ Pop Syndicate-- The Umbrella Academy: Dallas tpb

"It would probably help their mission to succeed if any of the members of the Umbrella Academy actually liked each other.  Raised together, they’re only true connection is that they were all born at the same moment and then abandoned or put up for adoption.  They are family with no one left but one another but they can’t be together.  Past wrongs and betrayals still plague them to this day.  At one point, their leader Space Boy (who has the body of a giant ape) goes off on his own to hide in the Vietnamese jungle for two years rather than spend that time with two of his “brothers.”  While superhero morose can be found in almost any comic, Way and Ba have created fully formed characters here rather than cardboard cut-outs.  The Umbrella Academy: Dallas is a family story, hidden beneath the veneer of a super hero adventure."

You can read the full review of The Umbrella Academy: Dallas here.

Weekly Comic Shopping List 10/7/09

In some ways, with the release of Planetary #27, it feels like the end of the decade now.  The first issue came out in May, 1999 and here it is, just over 10 years later and we finally get the 27th issue.  I'm honestly excited to get this issue and have closure on this series. 

  • Grandville HC-- I still haven't made it all the way through Alice In Sunderland yet and here's Bryan Talbot with another graphic novel. 
  • Sweet Tooth #2-- I liked Jeff Lemire's first issue but I'm not quite yet sold on this series.  I want to see where he goes with his tale. 
  • Planetary #27--  It's about time that they rescued Ambrose. 
  • Bloom County Complete Library Vol 1 1980-1982 HC--  There are people who sight Calvin and Hobbes as their favorite 80s/90s era comic strip but for me, it was always about Bloom County.
  • Grimjack Manx Cat #3-- John Ostrander and Tim Truman's early Grimjack story has been a lot of fun so far.  It's always good to see John Gaunt back in action
  • Starstruck #2 -- I have no idea what was actually happening in the first issue and I loved it.  Elaine Lee's story and Michael Kaluta's artwork were strange, esoteric but all in a good way.  I think I do have some of these original issues buried somewhere and I may dig them out.
  • King City #2-- This is another one of those books where I have the original published version of but I'm really liking these new, larger editions.
  • Criminal The Sinners #1-- Incognito was nice and all but I'm excited to have Criminal back. 
  • Strange Tales #2-- The first issue of Strange Tales was one of the best Marvel books I've read in quite a while so I'm excited to see this one.  I think this issue has the Matt Kindt Black Widow story which, after reading Super Spy, should be really, really good.
  • Slam Dunk Vol 6 -- I haven't read beyond the 3rd volume of this which isn't that bad since I believe volumes 4, 5 & 6 are all about one basketball game.  I'll have to catch up on this series soon but every time I try, I end up getting sucked into Inoue's Real instead. 

@ Pop Syndicate-- Haunt #1

"While filled with cliches (“solve his brother’s murder and save the world”- you can almost hear the heavily dramatic music playing underneath that,) this almost sounds like a halfway interesting book.  The solicit doesn’t even get into the fact that Daniel is a dissatisfied priest, going through the motions of his churchly duties between his Thursday quickies with an unnamed blonde woman.  Todd McFarlane and Robert Kirkman’s Haunt #1 could maybe have been a huge book 20 years ago, before we ever saw McFarlane’s Spawn, Kirkman’s Walking Dead or even Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher."

You can read the full review over at Pop Syndicate.

Go read... High Moon V1 by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis

To be completely honest, I haven't read this collection although I have read a a chunk of this comic on Zuda (www.zuda.com/highmoon).  David Gallaher's story that mashes together werewolf stories with spaghetti westerns was a fun ride.  I remember liking Steve Ellis' artwork but last night, flipping through the trade collection, I was blown away by the energy that's thrown down on the pages.  A more thorough review will be coming this weekend but the art alone makes this a nice little collection to get.  And it certainly doesn't hurt that it's a pretty good story as well.

High Moon is up on Amazon right now.

Highmoon

Never Enough... #13 (self awareness in covers)

There's never enough... of Howard Chaykin's humor.

In case you missed the 90s, Howard Chaykin did a little Malibu miniseries called Power & Glory, where America tried to create their own superman in an experiment that just went wrong in so many different ways.  Dynamite Entertainment is releasing a new collection of the mini that includes a one-shot followup that Chaykin did as well.  I just recently tried to reread my original Malibu-published collection and, to be honest, this is minor Chaykin at best.  The themes and ideas he explores are mostly rehashes of American Flagg!, just disguised as a "superhero" book.  After the originality of American Flagg!, Time2, Blackhawk and The Shadow, Power & Glory just feels kind of old and ran down.  It lacks the punch that American Flagg! still has 20 years later.

But as I was paging through the collection, I had to laugh at the original cover pictured here, featuring one of the main characters kicking in television sets.  You see, at the time this was coming out, Chaykin was making a living as a television writer, working on shows like The Flash and Mutant X.  He was creating heroes for television, just like his plot in Power & Glory was trying to do.  Only the hero of P&G is a vain, unheroic doofus, just the kind we usually send up the flagpole and salute.  Chaykin's main character (who's name I can't remember right now,) is the typical Chaykin stand in, cut from the Reuben Flagg cloth.  He's probably the hero that Chaykin wants to be.  And he's kicking in TVs, which is probably where Chaykin made most of his money from.

Oh, that wonderful Chaykin irony at least lived on through his covers if not through his actual story.

This isn't an awful book but it does suffer from being run-of-the-mill.  I'm looking forward to revisiting his Midnight Men when Dynamite gets around to collecting it and I've been wanting to reread his Thrillkiller stuff at DC lately.

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