Hibbs assays 1/20

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 26, 2010

Categories: Reviews

I really REALLY should be working on the new TILTING (I finally got the BookScan numbers, and it’s like a 20+ hour job to write that column each year), but promises are promises…. BRAVE AND THE BOLD #31: Comics like this really make me say “Double-you-tee-eff” out loud, and get my six year old asking me “What does that mean, daddy?”. I decline to state for Ben, but for you? Look, the problem with this comic is it literally could have been any character in the Atom role. Oh, sure, he’s the only one who naturally shrinks, but there wasn’t anything besides his power that he added to the story. Couple that with a Joker origin that doesn’t match any…  Read More…

Arriving 1/27/2010

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 25, 2010

Categories: Shipping Lists

Finally, a normal sized week… right at the end of the month *sigh* 2000 AD PACK DEC 2009 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #619 GNTLTARCHIE #605ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK FOUR #1 (OF 4)ATOM AND HAWKMAN #46 (BLACKEST NIGHT)AVENGERS INITIATIVE #32 SIEGEBATMAN AND ROBIN #7BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #201BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #12BLACK TERROR #7BLACKEST NIGHT JSA #2 (OF 3)BUCK ROGERS #8CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN #6 (OF 6)CHEW #8 COMPLETE ALICE IN WONDERLAND #2 (OF 4)DAREDEVIL #504DARK REIGN HAWKEYE #5 (OF 5) DKRDETECTIVE COMICS #861DIE HARD YEAR ONE #5DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP #8 (OF 24)DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #350 FALL OF HULKS RED HULK #1 (OF 4) FOHFANTASTIC FOUR #575FRANK FRAZETTAS DARK KINGDOM #4 (OF 4) FRAZETTA CVR…  Read More…

Hibbs talks a little about 1/13

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 19, 2010

Categories: Reviews

The one problem about promising to do this weekly for the quarter (well, or perhaps more properly promising to TRY) is sometimes I feel stupid and tired and without anything meaningful to say. So this one will be short! ADVENTURE COMICS #6: I sort of wonder if Geoff Johns had really intended to be on this book for more than the 6 issues or not, but it all ends this issue. The “what would Superman/Luthor done?” thing gets buried here, too — and none too fast to my tastes. That whole thread really didn’t work, given the possible end-games, and it is hammered in all of the wrong directions here as Luthor does something stupidly evil here. Mostly stupid. I’ve…  Read More…

Startups and follow-ups, five reviews for 1/13 (sorta).

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on

Categories: Reviews

Orc Stain #1: This is a VERY GOOD Image comic about orcs and stealing and penises and conquest. It didn’t come out this week, but I didn’t get hold of a copy until Saturday, which is okay by me; this is a perfect comic to find, to turn around in your hands and marvel at how 32-page all-story comics still exist at $2.99, in color, out of the front of Previews, embodying in their small confines a pure worldview, like the underground genre comics of 40 years ago, and their ‘alternative’ children going all the way forward. These days $2.99 feels like underground pricing too. Tradition is highly pertinent to the case of creator James Stokoe, still in his mid-20s,…  Read More…

Arriving 1/20/2010

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 18, 2010

Categories: Shipping Lists

Comics are still on Wednesday this week, despite the Monday holiday. AIR #17 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #618 GNTLTANNA MERCURY 2 #3 (OF 5) AUTHORITY THE LOST YEAR #5 (OF 12)AVENGERS VS AGENTS OF ATLAS #1AZRAEL #4BARACK THE BARBARIAN FALL OF RED SARAH ONESHOTBATMAN STREETS OF GOTHAM #8BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #13BEYOND THE WALL #3BLACK WIDOW AND MARVEL GIRLS #3 (OF 4)BLACKEST NIGHT THE FLASH #2 (OF 3)BRAVE AND THE BOLD #31CAPTAIN AMERICA #602COWBOY NINJA VIKING #3 (OF 4) DARK AVENGERS #13 SIEGEDARK WOLVERINE #82 SIEGEDARKNESS SHADOWS & FLAME (ONE SHOT)DEADPOOL MERC WITH A MOUTH #7DEATHLOK #3 (OF 7)DOCTOR VOODOO AVENGER OF SUPERNATURAL #4FABLES #92 FARSCAPE ONGOING #3GARTH ENNIS BATTLEFIELDS HAPPY VALLEY #2 (OF 9)GEARS OF WAR #11 GFT PINOCCHIO…  Read More…

Does Abhay Rambling Incoherently about Webcomics Sound Fun? Oh. Oh well. Whoops.

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on January 16, 2010

Categories: Reviews

It’s 2010. I wanted to start the decade by talking about the future. But, heck, I don’t know anything about the future. This one is just about webcomics. WARNING: this one is also particularly image intense. If that’s a concern for your computer, you might want to skip this one. If you google “overstimulated“– the seventh link google finds, at the time of this essay, is for a webcomic. The Webcomic List lists 15,075 comics at the time of this essay. That isn’t the total number of webcomics in existence; that’s just the number of webcomics that signed up for that particular website. So: more than 15,075. Maybe a little more, maybe significantly more– either way, more. Scott McCloud on…  Read More…

Tilting v3 #21 up at CBR!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Oh, I forgot to link this earlier — here’s the latest Tilting at Windmills on CBR. Their message boards seem to be down, so feel free to comment upon it here! -B

A Very Public Thank you to Marvel Comics

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 14, 2010

Categories: Retailing/Industry

I, as I think you’ve noticed, am a fairly frequent and vocal critic of Marvel Comics (though I sort of find it interesting that the tenor on the HaloScan threads here seems to be leaning with me being more “against” DC. C’est la guerre!), largely because I think that a company that is that big and powerful has certain responsabilities that go with those powers. This, of course, is something Marvel itself taught me! So since I’m always ragging on them I should, I think, also take the time and space to thank them when they do something nice. As you saw from my last post, my “Marvel” section got wiped out. (This is not, in fact, EVERY Marvel comic…  Read More…

Put an asterisk next to it, JJ!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 13, 2010

Categories: Retailing/Industry

It is the time of the year for Looking Back at total sales and all of that, and John Jackson Miller does some excellent heavy lifting on that score. But there’s something that I don’t see any commenter making a point of, and I think it is a REALLY significant impact that people-who-aren’t-retailers seem to be forgetting: In February, Diamond began a major warehouse move. More or less the entire month of February there “weren’t” reorders on any product shipping from Diamond. Even once they “fixed” that issue (which memory tells me stretched into early April on many titles), there were HORRIBLE cockups in fill rates, accuracy, damages, etc all through the summer and fall. It wasn’t really until 4th…  Read More…

I no longer carry Marvel Comics!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Well, not intentionally, or anything. But I came in this morning to a “drip drip drip” sound. Hm, that’s not good, I thought, and, hey, why are there puddles on the floor? Some moron staying at the hotel above apparently decided that if the toilet doesn’t flush, they should simply flush it again and again and again until it finally flushed (which it never did). Gravity is a bitch, and it has nowhere to go but down, and down it did go, into my store. The entire Marvel periodicals rack, completely wiped out. Half a month’s rent in product damage, not counting rack damage or my labor. YAY!!!! I’m just glad my landlord (the hotel) has good insurance, and is…  Read More…

Hibbs says "Hi!" to the New Year’s First Batch

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 11, 2010

Categories: Reviews

I’m going to try REALLY HARD to do an old-school review each and every week throughout all of the first quarter. Not sure if I’ll make it, but I’m going to TRY. Probably on Monday mornings. AUTHORITY #18: Well, at least it has a nice looking cover, but, honestly, this latest semi-reboot of the WS properties doesn’t work any better than the last five; and it is stuffed and packed with so many characters that I really don’t care about any of them. Sad Panda says AWFUL. BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #40: Sam Kieth is such an interesting creator — I don’t know that I much LIKE most of what he does, but I’m always fascinated by it. Sam gets back to…  Read More…

Arriving 1/13/2009

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Y’know what might be awesome? If publishers would grok that the amount of money we make in the first quarter is a direct correlation to what they actually ship. But, no, here’s the second mini-week of comics in a row, sigh. ABSOLUTION #6 (OF 6) ACTION COMICS #885ADVENTURE COMICS #6AGE OF REPTILES JOURNEY #2 (OF 4)ALAN MOORE NEONOMICON HORNBOOK AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #617 GNTLTANCHOR #4ANGEL #29ANITA BLAKE LC EXECUTIONER #3 (OF 5) ARCHIE & FRIENDS #139ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #205ARMY OF TWO #1AVP THREE WORLD WAR #1 (OF 6)BARACK THE BARBARIAN #4 (OF 4) (NOTE PRICE)BATGIRL #6BATMAN #695BATMAN WIDENING GYRE #4 (OF 6)BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #177BLACK PANTHER 2 #12BLACK WIDOW DEADLY ORIGIN #3 (OF 4)BOOSTER GOLD #28BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER…  Read More…

An Open Letter to DC Comics: Creators Matter

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Posted by: David Uzumeri on January 10, 2010

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Okay, this is going to be fairly short and a bit soapboxy and business-related. I know this is usually Brian’s wheelhouse, but I’m just so annoyed that this keeps happening. I find that most weekends, scanned covers (with trade dress) of the upcoming week’s books show up on eBay. I was flipping through them this week, and saw that YET AGAIN DC completely changed the creative team from soup to nuts on a comic without making even a token effort to inform the audience. I don’t know if retailers were informed, since the DC Direct Channel mailer never seems to show up online anymore, but a Google search shows nothing and DC’s website still has the old creative team (Fabian…  Read More…

In search of the Marvel completist

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

There’s a lively discussion going on in the comments to my last post here, but I wanted to carry one thing that’s been brought up there over to a new post: How many “Marvel completists” are there right now? According to the estimates over at The Beat, November’s issue of “Marvel Adventures Super Heroes” sold 3,308 copies in the direct market (one of them was to me). The final issue of “Omega the Unknown” sold 7,591 copies in the direct market. “Dominic Fortune” #4, a mature-readers title, sold 5,657. “Amazing Spider-Man Family,” which was actually in continuity (at least in part), hit bottom at 7,289 copies with #4. If you assumed that everyone who bought a copy of each of…  Read More…

Douglas vs. Siege #1

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Posted by: admin on January 8, 2010

Categories: Reviews

SIEGE #1: I’ve enjoyed “Dark Reign,” and particularly Brian Michael Bendis’s fuming, coffee-nerved Dark Avengers, and I wanted to see how it all ended. I’ve got no quarrel with superhero event comics, obviously. But this is just a distressingly shabby piece of work, and it fails to deliver the goods in nearly every way it might have. [Explanation under the cut...] Here’s a bit from a scene where Ares is addressing the super-types under his command: What a scene like this calls for is spectacle–something like a cast-of-thousands George Pérez freakout, or that bit in Final Crisis where every possible Superman shows up. The way Olivier Coipel has drawn this page, though, is just about as unspectacular as this sort…  Read More…

Pairings #2 (of ??): Jeff on Sugarshock and BTVS: Willow

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on

Categories: Reviews

Hello there, fine readers of this blog. I’m running very late today and I’ve decided during this current fickle flirtation I’m having with ‘content,’ that it’s better to be speedy than right. Must I choose? On a day like today, where it’s almost noon and the pajama pants are still on and I promised myself I would absolutely, positively get out of the house by 1:30, the sad answer is yes. And so, after the jump, Pairings #2: my thoughts of Sugarshock and Buffy The Vampire Slayer Willow, two one-shots by Joss Whedon and colleagues. SUGARSHOCK: I read the first part of this online–maybe two parts, I can’t quite remember–and it did…very, very little for me. It seemed little more…  Read More…

Savage Critics on the Reporter!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on January 5, 2010

Categories: Site News

It is a Savage Critic Four-fer (is that a word?) as Tom Spurgeon interviews Jog on Death Note, Douglas on Invincible Iron Man, Tucker on Ganges, and Sean on Blankets! All of them (as well as all of the non-Savage Critic interviews as well!) are definitely must-read pieces! Spurge initially asked me to do an interview, as well, but then he suddenly decided to do this one-critic-one-book series, and he asked if we could do our general survey of the business of comics later in 2010. I’m certainly looking forward to the chances of doing that sometime in the next month or two, I hope! -B

Pairings #1 (of ??): Jeff Looks at Blackest Night, Fantastic Four

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on

Categories: Reviews

As I mentioned the other day, I got to Comix Experience yesterday for the first time in a month–well, over a month, obviously, because so many of the books I follow had two issues waiting for me. So while I’m gonna try and pass this off on you as a study of “trends” or “pairings” or some similar “horseshit,” don’t be fooled: it’s just because I read two issues of something at once and can’t quite disentangle my impression of one from the other. Behind the jump: Blackest Night issues #5 and #6, Fantastic Four #573 and #574. BLACKEST NIGHT #5 and #6: It’d be great if 2010 ended up being the Year I Learned To Quit Worrying and Love…  Read More…

David’s 2009: This Has Nothing To Do With The Zeitgeist

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Posted by: David Uzumeri on January 4, 2010

Categories: Reviews

This current trending topic, about how 2009 was a lame year for comics (especially superhero/mainstream/adventure comics), just doesn’t resonate with me at all. I enjoyed a huge amount of comics this year, many of which were from creators I really didn’t expect to become such an ardent fan of, and while most of my non-superheroes comic reading was either manga or stuff released previous to 2009, it all still coalesced into a year of reading really fantastic comics. First off, Achewood reached a relative high again this year, with the Williams-Sonoma/Return of Cartilage Head mega-arc just exploding with avant-garde symbolism and hilarious vagina jokes. Onstad’s work continues to single-handedly justify the existence of the Internet, so while it’s admittedly an…  Read More…

Arriving 1/6/2010

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

I wonder how many weeks it will take me to get used to typing “2010″? We start the new year off with a pretty reasonably solid batch of stuff…! 2000 AD PROG 2010 28 DAYS LATER #5AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS JACKPOT #1 (OF 3)ANGEL HOLE IN THE WORLD #2AUTHORITY #18BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #40BIG QUESTIONS #13 BLACKEST NIGHT WONDER WOMAN #2 (OF 3)BOYS #38 BPRD KING OF FEAR #1 (OF 5)BUCK ROGERS #7CABLE #22CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #45CAVEWOMAN MERIEMS GALLERY #5CINDERELLA FROM FABLETOWN WITH LOVE #3 (OF 6) CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #17DAFFODIL #1 (OF 3) DARKNESS #82 DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #897DINGO #2DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #349 DOOM PATROL #6FEMALE FORCE #10 J K ROWLINGFORGETLESS #2 (OF 5) FVZA #2 (OF 3) A CVR LANGLEY…  Read More…

Enter, Stage Left, on Coattails: Jeff Ponders Our Great Decade

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on January 3, 2010

Categories: Uncategorized

One of the things I do that I don’t like very much, is I get inspired by something someone’s written here and jump on with my own comments, thus potentially obscuring the original point made. I did this with Abhay once and it kinda bugged me, so here I am doing it again–with Abhay, again–and therefore I think I should start this whole thing off with an apology to him. I do this only, I think, because his writing inspires me into dialogue. (Or to try and ride his coattails, if you want to be less charitable about it.) At the end of his really superb essay, Abhay writes: I wasn’t very happy in 2009 anyways.  Apparently, I’m not completely…  Read More…