These Are The Years That We Have Spent: Diana misses Yorick already, 1/31

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Posted by: admin on January 31, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Very few moments in comics have had the distinction of making me cry. There was SANDMAN #72, when Nada throws flowers into the river as Dream’s funeral boat passes by; Valerie’s letter from V FROM VENDETTA; Noah finding the scooter in DEADENDERS #16. And now we have the conclusion of Y: THE LAST MAN – even as I write this, I’ve got tears in my eyes. Well… maybe not quite that tearful. Better. Anyway, Y. I’d actually been holding out on reading the last arc until yesterday, when I had all six final issues in my hands. I’m glad I did – while Brian Vaughan packed as much dramatic weight as possible into each individual issue, the sheer impact of…  Read More…

Let’s all relax with the smooth flavor of drugs: Jog and a 1/30

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on

Categories: Reviews

Narcopolis #1 (of 4): Courtesy of Avatar comes creator/writer Jamie Delano’s return to comics after half a decade’s absence, and it’s a detailed, distanced, fitfully amusing one, its limited success solely the result of enthusiastic flourish. Delano really decorates the hell out of this one’s language, positing the friendly ol’ future megacity concept as a glowing drug paradise, where the people speak in a sloganized drawl like fleshy adbots – they wish one another SafeDay, spend their SpareCred on SpenDay at LazyLifeLotto, love the corporate-state bosom of MamaDream, oppose the unseen forces of BadEvil and suppress the ContraNarcopolitan urge. Workplace slobs are referred to as “employee heroes,” and typical citizen names include Azure Love and Angel Gabble, while other doubleplusgood…  Read More…

I need Damage Control to clear out my in-tray: Graeme finishes off last week.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on January 29, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Making it to the finish line just in time…! ASTONISHING X-MEN #24: This series has become some strange theoretical exercise – when something this slow takes this long to get done, at what point does everyone stop caring at all? In both lateness and terms of decompressed story, this really does seem like a throwback to the Marvel of a few years ago, and the execution of the whole thing makes it seem as if the creators’ enthusiasm didn’t make it through to 2008. Dull and Eh. COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #14: See, I like Evil Dick Superboy (Yeah, yeah, Superman Prime, whatever) pretty much as a character when Geoff Johns is writing him as Fanboy Extreme, but even the…  Read More…

Goodbye, Farewell, Au Revoir

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Site News

I regret the need to do this, but I’m leaving the Savage Critics. I find that my good intentions of contributing are far outweighed by not having the time available to do the job I should be doing here, which makes me feel guilty. I thank everyone involved, especially the great Brian Hibbs, for including me in the first place. I still feel incredibly honored to be asked, and I’ll remain a reader, of course!

Shipping 1/30/2008

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 28, 2008

Categories: Shipping Lists

Something for everyone this week, I think…. A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #74 (A) ACTION COMICS #861ARCHIE DIGEST #241AVENGERS INITIATIVE #9BADGER SAVES THE WORLD #2 (OF 5)BATMAN #673BETTY & VERONICA #233BLACK ADAM THE DARK AGE #6 (OF 6)BLACK SUMMER #5 (OF 7) CAPTAIN AMERICA #34CAPTAIN AMERICA CHOSEN #6 (OF 6)CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #41CONAN #48 COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #6 (OF 8)COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 13CROSSING MIDNIGHT #15 DAREDEVIL #104DARK 48 #1DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #5 (OF 8)DEVI #17FANTASTIC FOUR #553FUTURAMA COMICS #35GENE SIMMONS ZIPPER #3GREEN LANTERN #27HOUSE OF M AVENGERS #4 (OF 5)INDIA AUTHENTIC #9 KARTIKKEYAJACK OF FABLES #19 JSA CLASSIFIED #34JUGHEAD #187KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #135MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #6MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #32MARVEL SPOTLIGHT ULTIMATES 3MIGHTY AVENGERS…  Read More…

Please no gimmicks, she telliing me to chill: Graeme gets Wonder from 1/23.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Reviews

While I’m talking about things that wowed me in the second issue after an initial disappointment, I’m sure that I should mention Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman – I wasn’t too down with the first issue, which seemed to be trying too hard for my tastes, but the second was exactly what I’d been looking for: An almost effortless tying together of the mythical with the superheroics, and a story that seemed true to the character and that it could only be told with this character. A shame, in that case, that WONDER WOMAN #16 is (like ASM #548) a third part that isn’t quite as good. A lot of that, sadly, comes from the fill-in art in the middle of…  Read More…

808 Prebuild: Douglas does Damage Control and Wizzywig, and has a question

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on January 27, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Just time for a couple of quick reviews, but I wanted to note that WWH AFTERSMASH: DAMAGE CONTROL #1 is awfully Good–the most welcome mainstream-comics surprise of the week. I managed to miss Dwayne McDuffie’s first three Damage Control miniseries, circa 1990, but now I’m tempted to go dig them all up. The premise is cute (Damage Control is the company whose job is to clean up and repair stuff after superhero fights), and McDuffie uses it as a vehicle to play with the current state of the Marvel universe (the upshot of Civil War, as far as civilians are concerned, is basically just additional bureaucratic hassle) and riff a little on real-world politics. I cracked up at the editor’s-note…  Read More…

It’s Just Another: Very Quick Commentary from Jeff about (sigh…) One More Day.

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on January 26, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Not really a review or anything, just a bit of (very late) Monday morning quarterbacking: in finishing up the first three issues of “Brand New Day” and finally reading the last issue of “One More Day,” it struck me J. Michael Straczynski is either a far more gracious man–or a far more thick-skinned professional–than I could ever hope to be. Despite the last issue of “One More Day” being dedicated at the very end to JMS, and a back page filled with hosannas by fellow professionals, the two-page recap of Spidey’s status at the end of the first part of “Brand New Day” suggests a company eager to sweep eight years of the man’s stories under the rug. I mean,…  Read More…

Brand New(ish) Day: Graeme still reads, kind of enjoys, Amazing Spider-Man.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on January 24, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Maybe I’ve been dosed with the Kool-Aid, but I can’t help but admit that the 70s retro Spider-Man revamp has grown on me. Part of it really is the frequency of the thing helping offset the lightness of each issue (by which I mean “almost rushed, throwaway nature,” not lightness of tone) – Something that 52 excelled at, and maybe one of the lessons that Steve Wacker brought to this project: Keep up the momentum and it almost doesn’t matter if the issues are good or not on an individual basis – but there’s also just something nostalgically agreeable about not only this particular version of the character, but also seeing the character treated in a light-hearted manner and given…  Read More…

How Returnability Works; Or: Why the DM is often a better system

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

I knew I said I was done with the debate, but since this has come up many many many times in the last week, and I answered this for one of the comments threads below, I figured maybe I should put this up where everyone can see it. A lot of armchair pundits who are not involved in the production or sales of comics have been saying a lot of fairly nutty things about how the real problem is the non-returnable system that the direct market operates within. Poppycock! I wouldn’t trade 5-10 points of discount on EVERYTHING to absorb publisher misbehavior on one occasional thing. Think of it this way: I buy 10 copies of of Publisher X’s new…  Read More…

Countdown to Killing Joke Headlines: Graeme is done with 1/16

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on January 23, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Man, Heath Ledger, huh? That really depresses me, for reasons I’m not entirely sure about. If nothing else, he was so young. CNN are, apparently, already hinting that playing the Joker contributed to the whole thing on air, which is both tasteless and the kind of thing that Warner Brothers marketing are both cringing and excited about simultaneously. Shall we think about comics, instead? AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #547: The cheap joke would be to leave it at “Well, at least Spider-Man shows up this issue,” but that aside (And it really does feel like a cheat, the way the whole “I’ve quit being Spider-Man, even though I keep wearing the costume under my clothes! Hey, now I’m Spider-Man again!” thing is…  Read More…

Diana Goes Digital #3: Why Don’t People Understand My Intentions

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Posted by: admin on January 22, 2008

Categories: Reviews

The Mad Scientist is a common staple of the superhero genre: you’ve got Victor von Doom, Tivo spokesperson Arnim Zola, pre-Crisis Lex Luthor and many more. More often than not, these characters skew towards a very specific personality archetype: the megalomaniacal whackjob with Simon Cowell’s ego and Tyra Banks’ love of monologuing. Of course, since most mad scientists serve as foils to the heroes, these are good qualities to have, because they ensure that we’ll want to see the crazy person get taken down. Conversely, this is also the reason there are many stories with mad scientists and few stories about mad scientists, because would you really want to read a six-issue story arc where Doom goes on and on…  Read More…

Retail weekend Fun III

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Well, its Monday, but it’s a long holiday weekend! (for the banks at least?) First off, if you haven’t followed along, here’s a few updates: Heidi MacDonald at The Beat discusses the general topic, and there’s also Tom Spurgeon’s response to my last post. With any luck (ha!) this will be my last word on the topic… First, Tom. Ultimately, I don’t think I disagree tremendously with any of his six summarized observations. So, hooray for that. I’ve even willing to admit that, in hindsight, maybe the paper isn’t quite meaty enough. There’s been a lot of internal discussion this weekend in ComicsPRO about how to solve this the next time out, so we’ll see what happens. There were a…  Read More…

Arriving 1/23/08

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

2000 AD #1568 AFTER THE CAPE II #3 (OF 3)AFTERBURN #1AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #548 BNDAMELIA RULES #19ANT UNLEASHED #2 ARMY @ LOVE #11 ASTONISHING X-MEN #24AUTHORITY PRIME #4 (OF 6)BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #181BLUE BEETLE #23CASTLE WAITING VOL II #10COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #4 (OF 6)COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 14COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #5 (OF 8)CRIME BIBLE THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #4 (OF 5)DAN DARE #3 (OF 7)DANGERS DOZEN #2DOCK WALLOPER #2 (OF 5) FAKER #6 (OF 6) FRANK FRAZETTAS DEATH DEALER #6 (OF 6) GON VOL 03 GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #4 (OF 9)GRIMM FAIRY TALES #20 HACK SLASH SERIES #8 SEELEY CVR A HELLBLAZER #240 IRON & THE MAIDEN BRUTES BIMS & THE CITY #1IRON MAN #25JACK STAFF SPECIAL…  Read More…

Whatever happened to joy?: Graeme wonders why Booster is sad.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on

Categories: Reviews

BOOSTER GOLD #6 is a surprisingly depressing book, considering that the good guys end up winning. It’s so heavy with foreshadowing that there’s no way to actually enjoy the fact that it achieves what was set out as a goal way back in the first issue of the series, and so oddly paced that it doesn’t really feel as if it has achieved anything at all. Okay, that last part first; what’s with the end of this book? It just kind of… stops. There’s no real sense of climax, and the last scene isn’t even a cliffhanger (Why someone didn’t suggest that they push the two-page interlude with Daniel and Rip to the end of the book to at least…  Read More…

I remember the 1970s!: Graeme’s Blues Explode over ’76.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on January 20, 2008

Categories: Reviews

I’m oddly upset that ’76 #1 didn’t work so well for me; I like the basic idea, and there’s nothing really wrong in the execution. It’s just that… it doesn’t gel for me, for maybe the stupidest reasons possible. The writing is clearly influenced heavily by Quentin Tarantino’s movies – especially Cool (Jackie Karma is Tarantino by way of Power Man and Iron Fist, which is a fun enough idea, but there’s not enough in this first issue to get you completely involved in the story – The split book idea again seeming nice and retro, from Marvel’s playbook in ’76, but it works against both stories here, I think) – but the visuals don’t have the stylization or slickness…  Read More…

Retail Weekend Fun II: Electric Boogaloo!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Right, now for a response to Tom. Again, his original commentary is here, and my response and his as well is here. Normally, I wouldn’t turn something into a BLOGWAR! but Tom doesn’t have messaging on The Comics Reporter, and I find his “letter column” kinda problematic (I actually hadn’t even noticed the post and response until early today, to be honest), so I thought putting it somewhere when there’s relatively open comments might be a good idea. (Sorry if you feel end-runned, Tom?) I’m going to try to do as little of quoting and counter-quoting that I can, just because it is messy and too internetty for me, but I might have to resort to it at some point….  Read More…

Retail Weekend Fun

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Lots of retailer-driven conversation this weekend, and we’ll get to the main show in a second, but I realized I forgot to post a link to the newest TILTING AT WINDMILLS on Newsarama. This month I dissect a Dan DiDio quote about branding and COUNTDOWN, as well as talk about the move to an “annual” format for LOVE & ROCKETS. If you have anything you want to chat about that piece, but don’t want to dive into the morass that is Newsarama’s Board feel free to use the commenting section below! On Friday, ComicsPRO released the newest Position Paper on Pre-sales at Conventions. Oddly, you wouldn’t know from the actual news sites, I’ve yet to see anything turn up on…  Read More…

It kinda flies right into my face and out the other side: Graeme finishes off 1/9.

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Posted by: Graeme McMillan on January 15, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Wow, so that wasn’t exactly a banner week for comics, was it…? Or maybe I’m just more bitter and twisted than usual… COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #16: I’m really tempted to make some kind of snarky “And it only took eight months for something to happen!” comment, but even with something happening, I’m not that involved in the book. Am I really supposed to be invested in a big war between two cosmic entities that I still don’t really understand the motivations of or care that much about? Still, at least Pete Woods is getting work. Okay, but I’m pretty much ready to skip to the end and get Grant Morrison involved already. GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY #4: After…  Read More…

Arriving 1/16/2008

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 14, 2008

Categories: Shipping Lists

Not that great of a week, but far better than the last two (at least in terms of # of titles) 100 BULLETS #87 2000 AD #1567 76 #1 (OF 8)AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #16AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #547 BNDAMERICAN VIRGIN #22 AMORY WARS #5 (OF 5)ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #3ATOMIC ROBO #4 (OF 6)AVENGERS CLASSIC #8BETTY #171BIRDS OF PREY #114BONEYARD #27BOOSTER GOLD #6CABLE DEADPOOL #49CATWOMAN #75CEMETERY BLUES #1CHECKMATE #22COUNTDOWN SPECIAL THE NEW GODSCOUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 15DMZ #27 DOMINION #4 (OF 5) (RES)FALLEN ANGEL IDW #23 FEAR AGENT #18 HATCHET JOB (PT 2 OF 5)FELL #9FLASH #236GRAVESLINGER #3 (OF 4)GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #3 (OF 8)GROO HELL ON EARTH #3 (OF 4)HAWAIIAN DICK #2IMMORTAL IRON FIST #12INCREDIBLE HERCULES #113INSOMNIA #3IRON MAN POWER PACK…  Read More…

My Dinner With Brill, Episode #1: Outrage is the New Fun?

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Posted by: admin on January 13, 2008

Categories: Interviews

I always enjoy talking with Ian Brill–he inevitably brings a new angle on topics I’m considering–so when he asked if I’d be interested in doing a chat on fans and fun, I was more than game. I’d love to do more of these with him (although, don’t worry, first I’ll try to figure out how to run the “hide post behind jump” trick that commenters have pointed us toward recently), so let us know if that suits your fancy. IAN BRILL: Mark Waid has said in a CBR interview that “‘fun’ is a death word in comics these days.” I’m beginning to understand what he means by that. Seeing the reaction to One More Day, which I don’t want to…  Read More…