Douglas’s note on the domino effect

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 3, 2010

Categories: Retailing/Industry

[This is a reconstructed post from Google Cache; originally posted by Douglas] I love the tightly knit week-to-week continuity of the Big Two’s superhero serials, but its potential downside is that a single stumble can do strange things to the direct market. According to Diamond’s new shipping updates, the final issue of Siege has been bumped three weeks, from April 21 to May 12. (Siege: Embedded #4 has moved also moved to May 12, but from April 7.) Which means that the final issues of Dark Avengers and Avengers: The Initiative, which were supposed to come out that week, have also been bumped to 5/12. And New Avengers Finale, which was meant to follow Siege #4 by a week on…  Read More…

In search of the Marvel completist

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on January 10, 2010

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 looks forward to 2010

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on December 31, 2009

Categories: Uncategorized

I’m putting together a list of interesting-looking comics-related books that are coming out in 2010–what I’ve got so far is under the cut. Note that this is only book-format projects (so e.g. no “Joe the Barbarian,” which reminds me: whatever happened to “Warcop” anyway?), and only things whose release dates have been announced either by the publishers or Amazon. Everything, as usual, is subject to change. I welcome additional suggestions for this list from anyone who doesn’t work for the creators or publishers of the things you’re suggesting. January: Eddie Campbell: Alec: The Years Have Pants (Top Shelf) Jan. 12: Dash Shaw: The Unclothed Man In the 35th Century A.D. (Fantagraphics) Jan. 29: George Herriman: Krazy & Ignatz in “Tiger…  Read More…

Douglas vs. Write About Comics All Day Day 2009, Pt. 2 of Several

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on October 3, 2009

Categories: Reviews

Two I didn’t like so much, under the cut: “Logicomix” and “Dark Entries.” LOGICOMIX: AN EPIC SEARCH FOR TRUTH: This is a comics biography of Bertrand Russell (preview here) that’s been getting a lot of exceptionally enthusiastic praise lately: Bryan Appleyard of the Sunday Times called it “probably the best and certainly the most extraordinary graphic novel I have ever come across,” which makes me suspect that he has not come across very many of any kind. It’s by a relatively large cast, which is fine: Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou are credited with “concept & story,” Doxiadis with the script, Alecos Papadatos with “character design & drawings,” Annie Di Donna with color. All four of them actually appear…  Read More…

Douglas vs. Write About Comics All Day Day 2009, Pt. 1 of At Least 1

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on

Categories: Reviews

It’s 24 Hour Comics Day, and it’s also Read Comics All Day Day, and I figured I might join the festivities myself. I’m not going to be reviewing comics here all day–I have some things I need to write for other places–but figured I could mention a few worth-seeking-out things I picked up at SPX, as well as some other stuff. Below the cut: three of my favorite things I’ve read lately, “Woman King,” “Driven by Lemons” and “Ganges” #3. WOMAN KING: This is a small, self-published book by Colleen Frakes that knocked me for a loop–an understated but sharp-fanged fable about a human girl who becomes king of the bears during a war between bears and humans. (There’s a…  Read More…

It really was a kitten, after all: Douglas vs. 9/23

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on September 26, 2009

Categories: Reviews

DETECTIVE COMICS #857: The Batwoman serial is my favorite thing happening in superhero comics at the moment, and it keeps getting more luxuriously inventive with each installment. I actually went back and reread all four parts after reading this one, and there are a handful of earlier scenes that open up in the light of later ones. One of those later cues is Alice’s final line of dialogue this issue–I believe it may be the only thing she’s said in four issues that isn’t a quotation from Lewis Carroll’s Alice–which sure makes Kate’s hallucination in #855 a lot more interesting. The Question backups still aren’t clicking at all: I suspect an eight-page story needs to be much more densely packed…  Read More…

The mortgage on the cow: Douglas looks at some things from last week and earlier

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on July 29, 2009

Categories: Reviews

FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF 3 WORLDS #5: I get the feeling that this OKAY conclusion changed direction somewhere between its conception and its execution–there are a bunch of subplots set up in the earlier installments that either go nowhere at all or get resolved very quickly and for no particular reason (hey, Sun Boy feels good again! There we go). Various new statuses quo are hammered into place (the White Witch has turned into Morpheus or something, the one remaining Triplicate Girl has turned into Madrox or something), Blok gets to say “But at what cost?” twice (there’s also a “But for how long?”), Kid Flash and Superboy strike some heroic poses, and you’d think given half a year of…  Read More…

Weeping Congorilla on JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE #1

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on July 1, 2009

Categories: Reviews

Croonin’ into the beer of a drunk man: Douglas vs. 6/3

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on June 5, 2009

Categories: Reviews

BATMAN AND ROBIN #1: I love just looking at Frank Quitely’s art for this comic. The little details are the most immediate pleasure: the evenly spaced blobby teeth in Toad’s mouth, the cutaway diagram of Wayne Tower, and most of all the utterly indignant, entitled expressions on every single iteration of Damian’s face. And the in-art sound effects are a particularly nice touch, a subtle riff on the ’60s Batman TV show that Morrison and Quitely are rehabilitating here. Going back to re-read it, I’m noticing more of Quitely’s layout tricks, especially the preponderance of extreme closeups and long-shots; almost every page is composed as a cascade of pagewide panels, with the prominent exception of a couple of sequences that…  Read More…

The old hat routine: Douglas on a couple of 3/25 comics

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 29, 2009

Categories: Reviews

THE MUPPET SHOW COMIC BOOK #1: I had some conflicting expectations for this one. I would not have expected a comic book based on a TV variety show inspired by stage vaudeville (and notable for excellent puppetry and famous guest stars) to be up to much good. On the other hand, Roger Langridge, who’s writing and drawing it, has never to my knowledge made a comic book that’s less than worthwhile–I even kind of liked GROSS POINT. It turns out to be VERY GOOD, I’m happy to say, because it reads less like a solid cartoonist servicing somebody else’s trademark than like somebody had the bright idea to let Langridge have some fun with the Muppet characters. It’s a Roger…  Read More…

Vaporware: Douglas exhumes the absent past

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 6, 2009

Categories: Retailing/Industry

I picked up a bunch of old Amazing Heroes Preview Specials a few months back. They were published twice a year in the mid-to-late ’80s–fat saddle-stitched things, with more or less extensive writeups of nearly every comic book series that was supposed to be published over the next few seasons. Jog’s mention a little while ago of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s perpetually in-the-works City Lights reminded me of my perverse fascination with comics projects that are officially announced and maybe even produced but never actually published at all. (I also recently ran across a French site with fairly extensive lists of aborted Marvel and DC projects–mostly pitched or planned, rather than formally announced, although I would still love to…  Read More…

Then we didn’t come to the end: Douglas on GaimanBats, pt. 1

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on February 15, 2009

Categories: Reviews

Goddamn: this site just got even more fun to write for. Welcome, Wave Three! I’d be very surprised if the title of “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?”–the story that begins in BATMAN #686–had been created any way other than editorial fiat, as a companion to “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” (Whoever came up with this one apparently failed to notice that there was a joke in Alan Moore’s title.) So I agree with Brian and David: points to Neil Gaiman for coming up with a different way to spin it. (More beneath the cut.) As David pointed out, Gaiman’s got a habit, these days, of making sure that we know he’s Telling Stories, For He Is a…  Read More…

A preview of 2009

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on January 11, 2009

Categories: Retailing/Industry

I’ve put together a list of some interesting-looking comics-related books that are scheduled to come out this year, and figured other people might find it useful too. DISCLAIMER: This list is mostly ganked from Amazon listings, which is why it’s heavy on a few publishers–notably Fantagraphics, DC and Top Shelf, which list things way, way in advance. It is not anywhere close to comprehensive. It is not anywhere close to reliable. The entire publishing industry could crumble in the next week, in which case none of this stuff might come out at all. JANUARY: Lewis Trondheim: Little Nothings: The Prisoner Syndrome (NBM) William Messner-Loebs: Journey vol. 2 (IDM) FEBRUARY: Boulet/Joann Sfar/Lewis Trondheim: Dungeon Zenith vol. 3: Back in Style (NBM)…  Read More…

Douglas looks at some latter-day Dredd

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on January 9, 2009

Categories: Reviews

JUDGE DREDD: ORIGINS: I picked up this 2007 paperback from a half-off bin a little while back, noting that the front cover misspells artist Carlos Ezquerra’s name. One of my minor New Year’s resolutions is to read more of John Wagner’s future-cop Judge Dredd stories; I’ve actually been batting around the idea of working my way through the twelve “Complete Case Files” volumes that are sitting on my shelf and reviewing them all here. (If Laura and Leigh can do it with Cerebus, I can do it with Dredd, right?) I like the fact that Dredd is an American character whose stories are almost always by British writers, for a British audience–he’s a European nightmare of what an American hero…  Read More…

Let the monkey row: Douglas dips into some 12/17 Marvels

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on December 24, 2008

Categories: Reviews

THOR GOD-SIZE SPECIAL #1 is a very pretty-looking comic, and I don’t mind paying the $4 Marvel toll, even for a series I don’t normally read, to get a 38-page Matt Fraction story plus a Walt Simonson reprint. (A 22-page story, on the other hand… well, I suspect I won’t be buying certain titles much longer.) It’s a Fraction riff on a particularly charged scene from 1985′s THOR #362, which is the backup reprint, and it’s got fancy high-gloss artwork from Dan Brereton, Doug Braithwaite and the previously-unknown-to-me Miguelángel Sepulveda, as well as Mike and Laura Allred doing their Allred thing. But only the Allreds’ section looks anywhere near as interesting as the splintery power and scenery-chewing grandeur of the…  Read More…

And the chorus goes bang: Douglas briefly surfaces to gasp for air

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on November 26, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Yes, I’ve been gone for a bit–working on some stuff that’s top secret, yet boring! FIGHT OR RUN: SHADOW OF THE CHOPPER: This might be my favorite comics pamphlet of the year so far; it’s on this week’s Diamond list, and if your local store doesn’t carry it it’s available from Buenaventura Press. It’s a trifle of a thing, but so perfectly executed that I keep coming back to it with renewed pleasure. A bunch of “Fight or Run” shorts have appeared in Kevin Huizenga’s other comics over the last few years, although I don’t think this duplicates any of those. The premise couldn’t be simpler (Huizenga describes it as “an open source comics game”): two characters (from a stable…  Read More…

Spoken like a spoke: Douglas catches up on periodicals, quick-hit style

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on September 9, 2008

Categories: Reviews

I got to read two weeks’ worth of individual issues at once. Behind the times! Oh no! Under the cut: AMBUSH BUG, ROGUES’ REVENGE, JONAH HEX, AVENGERS both MIGHTY and NEW, SECRET SIX and some spoilers. AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE #2: The premise of this mini, as I understand it, is that each issue is Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming riffing on some project in recent DC history; the first one was a reasonably pointed take on Identity Crisis. This one seems to be about the run-up to Infinite Crisis, but there’s not much to say about that–a death-of-Ted-Kord scene, a couple of near-miss OMAC gags–so Giffen and Fleming spend most of the issue riffing without a theme, and…  Read More…

Swiss time running out: Douglas quick-hits some pamphlets of 5/29

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on June 2, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Once again, the SavCrit hive-mind has failed to cohere. I tried to avoid spoilers this time, so no cut… FINAL CRISIS #1: No, it’s not a slam-bang opener like the first World War Hulk or Infinite Crisis or Secret Invasion; nobody punches anybody through a building. The tone is more of a slow slide into hell, the tipping point where the whole system becomes too badly screwed up to salvage. Morrison’s described FINAL CRISIS as a take on the eschatology of this cultural moment, which seems about right. It’s also true that the character who gets killed doesn’t get a heroic exit, or much dramatic context for it: this is about a world where all it takes is some stupid…  Read More…

Wait, didn’t some other comics come out this week too?: Douglas reads some more 4/30/08 stuff

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on May 6, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Weekly comics, therefore spoilers, therefore under the cut. Specifically Action Comics and New Avengers. And glamourpuss, which is sort of impossible to spoil. Plus Whatever, which is not a weekly comic but a collection of weekly comic strips. GLAMOURPUSS #1: I see that Dave Sim, God bless him, is now requiring anybody who wants to talk to him to indicate in writing that they don’t believe he’s a misogynist. Well, that’ll cut down on the amount of time he’ll have to spend doing interviews, I suppose. I posted here about how excited I was that Dave would be doing a regular series again when he announced glamourpuss, and it’s good to see him doing a kind of drawing he obviously…  Read More…

All Systems Intact, the Red and the Black: Douglas Looks at DC Universe Zero

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on May 1, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Yeah, this one’s spoilery. Not that everything hasn’t been spoiled elsewhere, but I’m still putting this under the cut. Not a review, really, but annotations; if you want a rating, I thought it was Excellent as a teaser and value-for-money–I want to read what happens next–and n/a as a story. Pg. 1: It’s somehow fitting that, on the first page of a multi-title arc that will apparently draw on Jack Kirby’s multi-title arc very heavily (and by the way, Jeff, that’s a fantastic post right there), we get a tribute to one of his signature artistic techniques, the extreme long shot. This page seems to have been a last-second rewrite: in the version included in the New York Comic-Con program,…  Read More…

Week 103: One More Year Later

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on April 29, 2008

Categories: Reviews

It’s almost a year after 52 ended–as of this Wednesday and DCU Zero, the next cycle of DCU stuff is about to begin, and I’m a lot more curious about that than I was about virtually anything in the Countdown era. (The line in this week’s DC Nation column about how Countdown‘s goals “met with various levels of success” is a delicate way of putting it.) But before that starts, I thought I’d take one more look at the afterlife of the series I spent a year writing about. 52 opened up a bunch of possibilities, opportunities and resources for the DCU setting, and the last year has not been kind to many of them. Here’s what’s happened with each…  Read More…