Abhay Will Never Write a Decent Title for this Blog, Ever; Come On!

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on July 31, 2007

Categories: Reviews

So then, one last time: we have three comic books under review, that I wanted to try to look at long enough, close enough, tuff-e-nuff. Three comic books. What do they mean? Why do you want to hear stories about any of this stuff? What does which one we like say about what they mean to us, or what our time means to us, or what Chinese words mean, or what we mean to each other? Why are they useful? Like: what is the fundamental utility of this crap from a hunter-gatherer perspective? No matter how much society tries to counter-program our survival impulse, we’re biologically programmed to strive to compete and succeed. So, from an evolutionary perspective: how do…  Read More…

POS Follies Part 9

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

OK, system in and up, doors opened a bit, and we’ve done our first 2 sales. OF COURSE the first sale (w/ 4 items) scanned successfully on zero of them, but he was cool enough to let me go enter the scans back into the system (though I can easialy check someone out w/o it), so the NEXT time I sell those books it should go smooth. We’ll see! Second transaction was good for 3 of the 4, and the last was my last copy of something that I won’t restock anyway, so I let it go. Anyway, back to it, more later (maybe) -B

Housecleaning Notes.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Site News

So, if you want to read Brian’s POS pains in the entirity, you can go here and get the entire POS Follies series of posts (Gimme awhile, and I’ll actually label all of his retailing info posts, so those persons who come here wanting to read that kind of thing only can do so without fear of running into opinions); it seemed like something that should be easier to get to than it used to be, somehow. Question for the audience: Should we add tags (sorry, Blogger, I mean “labels”) for each poster, so you could search for Jog’s, Johanna’s, Abhay’s, etc.’s, posts more easily, or is that just getting ridiculous? EDIT: Okay, individual posters have labels for their posts…  Read More…

Back! Rushing! Speed speed!: Graeme catches up on 7/25′s books.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Reviews

Dear Teacher, please forgive Graeme for not posting for four days. I mean, sure there was that San Diego thing at the weekend (And thanks to all Kate and I met and hung around with there, by the way; it was fun), but there was also work and all manner of craziness happening at the same time that meant that my attempt to write lots of reviews ahead of time went somewhat awry. That said, San Diego was weird, in that it may be the first convention in my life that I’ve ever left feeling more excited about comics than I was when I got there. I think that’s due to the fact that the few things I picked up…  Read More…

POS Follies Part 8

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

OK, double Ow. Left the house at 6:30 this morning, arrived back home at midnight. Whee. That whole “let’s try to open” thing? Turned out to be not so great of an idea, weirdly enough — still just enough training to do/things to go over/ fussy things to finish (or get into shouting distance of finished at least) So we didn’t bother to try. Oddly enough, we still pretty much did a “normal” Monday’s sales, as we let in subbers who were just there to pick up thier orders, and anyone who knew JUST what they wanted…. but still, that means we’d have had a GREAT Monday if we’d let browsers in. We will definitely be open on time tomorrow,…  Read More…

POS Follies Part 7

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on July 30, 2007

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Ow. So Mark Richman of MOBY arrived on Saturday night to complete our install of the MOBY point-of-sales system, and to begin our training on it. Saturday night, Rob Bennett and I did the hard physical inventory of the store, as Mark wrestled the hardware into working order, clearing up all the issues I couldn’t figure out, like how to get all three of the different printers (receipt, bar code, and regular 8.5×11) working in harmony. Rob and I started around 7:30 PM. “How long can it take?” I mused out loud, “I bet we can get it done in 3 hours max”. Admittedly, I thought we were going to have one more body with us. We were done SEVEN…  Read More…

The Posts Never Stop: Jog might as well make it a 7/25 hat-trick.

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on July 29, 2007

Categories: Reviews

Plenty of comics fuel left in my reviewing tank, gang. It was a big week. Warren Ellis’ Crécy: Oh, it’s a new Apparat book. I suspect most of you recall Ellis’ and Avatar’s 2004 effort at simulating the offerings of a comics industry that developed along different lines than the present. Basically, it meant Ellis playing with a group of different long-lived genres for a while. This new book is a self-contained thing of 48 pages, b&w at $6.99. I believe that will be the official Apparat format now. So what type of comic is this? Educational! Yep, it’s the sort of comic where a character addresses the reader directly, walking them through a specific historical period or event, happily…  Read More…

Comics People Have Dirty Minds: Jog returns to 7/25 after a long day’s absence.

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on July 28, 2007

Categories: Reviews

Come on, everyone! Up to my internet patio. It is a warm summer’s day, and we have gentle comics to flip through. Let’s laugh and yawn until butterflies land in our mouths, and we’ll just let them stay there. Because we are peace. Tank Girl: The Gifting #2 (of 4): You know Tank Girl, right? Nasty young woman, drives a tank, kangaroo guy for a boyfriend? Now drawn by Ashley Wood? That last part leads to grand sights like this issue’s inside-front cover, depicting the kangaroo guy’s head (and nothing else) peering out dead-eyed from between Our Heroine’s legs, as she glances at the reader and declares “I wuv him.” It’s the weird alchemy of Wood’s distinctive art and Alan…  Read More…

SUPERHEROES ARE FOR BLOOD AND HITTING: Jog presses some 7/25 superbooks to his bosom.

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on July 27, 2007

Categories: Reviews

My mother used to ask me “why is it always hitting?” when she’d look at my superhero comics. This week is dedicated to mom. Black Summer #1 (of 7): Featuring chapter 2 of our serial! Chapter 1 was in issue #0, of course. Makes for laughs when digging through the bins years later. I get a fuzzy feeling over how perfect Juan Jose Ryp is for this book. All tangled hair and silent movie expressions and gore and debris – perfect for such garish superheroics, like a shuddering mix of Geof Darrow and Tim Vigil. I like how Mark Sweeney’s colors make even the dark pages look bright and poppy, and how crackles of electricity wind up having the same…  Read More…

Mississippi Goddamn: Graeme goes to Gotham, 7/25.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on July 26, 2007

Categories: Reviews

In a mad rush! In a mad rush! Flying to San Diego tomorrow to embarrass Douglas Wolk on his panel on Saturday, and that can mean only one thing: Lots and lots of stuff to deal with at work in order for me not to have a nervous breakdown over the weekend. Well, two things: It also means short reviews, so… ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #6: The following lines of dialogue appear in this issue: “I’ve got a whole different problem with the goddamn Batman.” “What really bugs me about the goddamn Batman is what he’s turned into.” “The goddamn Batman has become a goddamn urban legend.” “Oh, sweet Jesus! It’s the goddamn Batman!” FRANK. I GET…  Read More…

Smell like I sound, I’m lost in a crowd: Diana calls animal control on 7/25

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Posted by: admin on July 25, 2007

Categories: Reviews

Graeme McMillan has shamed me. All this time he’s been here, endangering his will to live by reading crappy comics so we don’t have to, and how do I repay him? By sticking to stuff I’m likely to enjoy anyway. Well, Graeme, this one’s for you! Let’s talk about WOLVERINE #55 and the many, many ways Jeph Loeb makes the baby Xenu cry. In a sense, Loeb is the writer most aligned with the public perception of comics: he’s loud, cliched, somewhat incoherent, pretty much the printed equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer popcorn flick. An okay way to spend six minutes, but there’s nothing more to see here, folks. To be fair, this sort of bombastic, all-style-no-substance approach has its…  Read More…

The Devil, You Say: Graeme starts off 7/25 on a hellish note.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Reviews

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL #1 is the kind of comic that sticks with you after you read it. Not because it’s a work of genius, mind you; no, this sticks with you because you’re trying to work out why it’s not so much better than it actually is. It definitely has the ingredients; Gilbert Hernandez doing a melodrama about suburbia and fetishism and sexuality? It should be great, right? And there are parts of it that are great – the core idea, for example, is clever enough to seem worth reading further, and the art is Hernandez’s usual iconic fetishism all of his own (“What if Dan Clowes and Robert Crumb were genetically-melded and drew Archie?”) – but there’s something…  Read More…

My Life is Choked with Comics #2 – Wish You Were Here #1-2 (plus The New Invaders #1-9, with special bonus Jim Shooter/Lars von Trier team-up)

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on

Categories: Reviews

Hello. I am here to whisk us all away, if only to sleep. I got to do one of my favorite comics-related things the other day – digging for nonsense in the bargain bins. You see, I’d just finished reading last week’s The Programme #1 from Wildstorm (VERY GOOD stuff, by the way), and someone had mentioned to me that I ought to check out artist C.P. Smith’s prior work on Marvel’s The New Invaders series from 2004-05, a would-be ongoing that got shot down at issue #9. The timing was right for a look in the bins — there’s a window that opens after two to three years where long runs of low-selling series tend to show up, stores…  Read More…

Mopping up 7/18: Douglas on World War Hulk #2

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on

Categories: Reviews

As Brian noted, it turns out the problem wasn’t “event fatigue”; it’s just fatigue with dull events. I hadn’t been following the Hulk for, I’m guessing, 15 years or more, and I’m now thoroughly drawn in by World War Hulk. The funny thing is that it’s exactly the kind of story I thought I was sick of–long-underwear types beating each other up for five issues straight, plus lots of tie-ins, while they speechify about how the enemy has never been so powerful and this calls for the greatest struggle ever and so on. But so far it’s actually fun and exciting and Very Good, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next. Here’s why I’m enjoying it so…  Read More…

Arriving 7/25

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on July 24, 2007

Categories: Retailing/Industry , Shipping Lists , Site News

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: what kind of asshole relaunches his blog, then doesn’t actually post any reviews to it in the first week? That asshole would be me! My excuse is thus: Point-of-Sale goes live in six days (Monday 7/30), and I’m drowning in work to get everything ready for it. The database is “mostly” done (I still need to go and add distributors for the non-brokered stuff — though I sorta am afraid if I put “COLD CUT” in that field, and there’s not great news coming out after San Diego, that I am going to really strongly regret it), but I have to “get ahead” on other normal-business stuff. For example, the new order form is…  Read More…

ABHAY HAS THE BEST ONION RINGS IN THE STATE; OH, I’LL SHOW YOU "DISJOINTED!"; HOW DO YOU TITLE A BLOG?

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on

Categories: Reviews

We now continue our review of New Avengers #32, Supergirl & Legion of Superheros #31, and Cold Heat #1, already in “progress”: This week is about plot; but before we bother… Some memories never go away, right? And you don’t get to pick which ones those are…? You’re always one neurochemical abra-cadabra away from some awful moment from your life, yes? You’re just one synaptic misfire away from that time you vomited into a baby carriage and had to run away from angry parents and their puke-drenched horror-baby, yes? And which moment you get to relive– that’s out of your hands. The teensy tiny tip of the iceberg that makes up the conscious you is not steering the ship; you’re…  Read More…

Guess who’s the schmuck who’s credited with editing it?: Graeme finishes off his stack of 7/18 books.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Reviews

Two random thoughts (and one of them concerns Harry Potter, so look away, Charlie): Firstly, that epilogue in Harry Potter – what? I mean, seriously, am I the only one who thought that it was kind of a crappy ending to the whole thing? (I know that Kate didn’t; she loved it to pieces.) And secondly, after listening to Danger Doom on the way to work this morning, I realized: Stephen Colbert is Space Ghost, and The Colbert Report is Coast To Coast. Now it all makes sense. Okay, with both of those out of my system, shall we look at some comics? ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST: QUASAR #1: As much as I didn’t care for this Okay issue – a lot…  Read More…

Drifting and Traveling: Jeff Looks at Vol. 6 of Drifting Classroom

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on

Categories: Reviews

I’m a fan of Cormac McCarthy–I have this nerd dream of somehow getting Garth Ennis to read Blood Meridian, after which he considers me a fellow of impeccable taste rather than a sweaty tool who can’t handle his liquor–but when I finally got the chance to sit down down and read The Road recently, I was surprised by how nonplussed I was.  I mean, yeah, The Road is a good book, and McCarthy is better than any author I’ve ever read at conveying what it’s like to subsist on the bottom rung of the ladder where one slip means oblivion, but his book about a father and son struggling to survive in a horrific post-apocalyptic future just didn’t instill in…  Read More…

Things get dirty when they look so clean: Graeme gets with the Programme, 7/18.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on July 23, 2007

Categories: Reviews

THE PROGRAMME #1: There was a time where Peter Milligan was arguably the best writer working on a monthly book anywhere in the American comic book world. Admittedly, that was more than a decade ago, and he was doing Shade The Changing Man and Enigma for Vertigo just after it launched, but he was so good back then; smart, funny, and able to mix both those traits into incredibly readable, unique stories that spoke to the big issues in everyone’s lives. He hasn’t been that writer for awhile – for various reasons – but I have to admit that this is the closest he’s come in a long time (I didn’t rate his X-Force/X-Statix as highly as everyone else did,…  Read More…

The Sparkling Trout Beneath the Bank: Douglas on Laura Park

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on

Categories: Reviews

The MoCCA festival was a few weeks ago, but the thing I kept pointing people toward there is the same thing I’ve been showing off to friends back home: a self-published, 28-page minicomic by Laura Park called Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream. This is apparently her first print comic, although she posts a lot of her drawings and comics on Flickr. (I’ve been looking at her Flickr page every so often since I got the mini–there’s a lot of stuff to go through there.) Do Not Disturb is really just a collection of miscellany–a bunch of one- and two- and four-panel strips and sketches, with one story-like thing in the middle of it: six pages of a little fable…  Read More…

Try Try Try: Graeme reconsiders 7/18.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on July 22, 2007

Categories: Reviews

And this, my friends, is a story about second chances. You see, I was distinctly unimpressed with the first few issues of Dan Way’s Wolverine: Origins book back when it first appeared, and I was also distinctly unimpressed – and maybe slightly more than that – with Kaare Andrews’ Spider-Man: Reign when it came out. But I saw the Andrews-illustrated and Way-written WOLVERINE: ORIGINS ANNUAL #1 on the shelves this week, and thought the following: “Hmm. Well, it’s an annual, so at least it’ll be done in one. And maybe having to write something that tightly will make Way rein in his excesses. And Kaare’s art was the one redeeming factor of Reign. Why not?” So let’s cut to the…  Read More…