And the Cancelled Shall Rise

Awesome news, everyone; while Blackest Night takes a month off in January, eight cancelled comic series are coming back with a Blackest Night tie-in. They are:

The Power of Shazam #48 – Eric Wallace

Catwoman #83 – Fabian Nicieza

Suicide Squad #67 – Gail Simone & John Ostrander

The Question #37 – Greg Rucka

Phantom Stranger #42 – Peter Tomasi

Weird Western Tales #71 – Dan DiDio

Atom and Hawkman #46 – Geoff Johns

Starman #81 – James Robinson

My gut reaction? “Aw dang, yo! It must be my birfday!” I mean, just look at that line-up. James Robinson back on Starman? John Ostrander back on Suicide Squad, this time with Gail Simone co-writing? Greg Rucka writing a new issue to one of his favorite series (The Question), which was written by one of his mentors (Denny O’Neil), no less? Oh, and Geoff Johns writing one of his favorite pairings (Hawkman and Atom, duh) in comics? Sounds like we fans win, through and through. Well, except maybe in terms of money, as the Blackest Night tie-ins just went up by eight. Other than that, though? Bring on more Starman, Squad and Question, baby. That’s not the say the others don’t interest me, they most certainly do; personally, I’m wondering what Eric Wallace’s take on Power of Shazam! will be like. Will he try to recapture the feel Jerry Ordway gave that series? Only one way to find out…

Click on the link for much more info, which includes teases from the creators.

UPDATE: January’s Blackest Night tie-ins are now up, with even more info about the resurrected titles. Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz back on The Question? Epic. (ditto to Tony Harris back on Starman, even if it’s just the cover) And check out that cover to Green Lantern #50…

What to buy: October 14, 2009

Want some comic book recommendations two weeks in a row? You’re in luck, Groin reader(s). The GGG Renaissance continues with a look at what to buy, or consider buying, this Wednesday.

10/7/09 Reviews

Was there a comic you weren’t sure about buying? Want to know how some issue was, so you can reconsider buying it? Don’t want the hassle of thinking for yourself? Before you go back to the store Wednesday, take a look at the return of GGG’s weekly reviews.

I’m going to give some quick thoughts on what I bought last week and give each comic a rating on a 5-point scale, with half-points available. The following issues reviewed this week:

Batman Annual #27

Batman and Robin #5

Justice League: Cry for Justice #4

Marvel Spotlight: Deadpool

The Torch #2

If you checked out the weekly recommendations thread (DO IT), you know I also bought Peter and Max: A Fables Novel, which was my most anticipated release of the month. However, it’s a 400+ page novel, so it’ll take me some time to get to it. It’ll have its own separate review when that happens.

Comic book hilarity

Click the link for superheroes’ Facebook status updates. Great, great stuff:

What to buy: October 7, 2009

The return of a weekly (hopefully) rundown of what to buy!

Checking in on “Blackest Night”

Once “Final Crisis” and “Secret Invasion” both ended as disappointing and overall, fairly mediocre, I started looking forward to the next big crossover event in comicdom: Blackest Night. The event is now well under way, so I thought I would take brief look at how it’s going so far.

(No spoilers.)

The new-look Bat books

So I haven’t posted here in so long that even I barely remember me.  But I’m still reading comics, and I thought I would take a look at some interesting developments in the world of one of DC’s flagship characters, Batman. If anyone still checks this blog, please read and comment.

Some spoilers included from Final Crisis and Battle for the Cowl.

Star Trek: can a movie save Nerdville?

One of my first blog posts was about how Star Trek was my gateway drug into being a full on geek. Now that it has started and is looking like it’s going to be the next Iron Man, a light fun summer geek-flick that crosses over there’s a question that needs to be asked, are these types of movies good for comics or bad?

The natural answer is that they’re good for the comics industry, but I don’t know if it’s that obvious.  A lot of the mainstream reporting that I’ve done on the issue ends up demonstrating that there’s no real bump from a successful comic book movie, at least not for local comic book shops.  Last summer I got a job working part time at Elfsar Comics & Toys in Vancovuer, and despite the success of both Iron Man and The Dark Knight movies sales continued to decline throughout the year and despite being voted the best comic book store in Vancouver year in and year out, I was let go because business has just kept falling off.

Now trades in book stores such as Barnes & Noble in the United States, or Chapters up here in Canada, continue to sell well.  I’ve seen figures that suggest that Amazon ships a decent volume of comics, and everyone and their dog has been selling Watchmen books since the first trailers hit the internet, but what about issues?  What about the bread and butter of the local comic book shop, the monthly bagged and boarded issues?

When I started reading comics we got them at the local Red Rooster, which was kind of a western Canadian version of a 7-11.  They’d be on the spinner racks and I’d get any X-Men titles I could find, some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issues and even a Betty & Veronica if I had the money.  These days comics are hidden away in speciality shops that are increasingly having hard times.  Most comic shops in Kelowna where I grew up where comic & shops.  Meaning they’d be a store that sold comics, but also sold RC models or baseball cards or Warhammer shit.  Eventually I had to drive to Vernon for my weekly books because there was nothing good in town.

The fact that every week I was driving two hours to get comics means that there is definitly something lacking in the current distrubution model.  Let’s face it a lot of comic book shops feel like you need to know the secret handshake and origin of Krypto Superman’s dog, to fit in.  Free Comic Book Day, at least how I’ve ever seen it done, is too insular to really bring in new readers and ends up being just a way for the same old customers to get free shit.  Elfsar in Vancouver uses it to raise money and gather food for local charities, but is that helping grow a new market?  I guess if the homless have cans of soup, maybe they’ll buy comics but I think that’s a stretch.

I did not intend to get to the point where I declare all of us fucked, and say claim that comics is going to die.  However we are in a bad spot right now.  As the economy, raising prices of books and a generally shrinking audiance all combine to drive local comic book stores out of business then there’s less money for the companies.  Eventually Marvel and DC will notice that they make far more from the movies and toys than they ever did on the comics and we might find the medium shrinking more.

At the end of the day I doubt I’d go back to driving two hours a week to get my comics.  If the good comic book stores around Vancouver go out of business, or get pushed to the suburbs where rent is cheaper, I might not follow.  No matter how awesome Iron Man 2 is.

News and bits 5/16/09

Busy is as busy does. Or something like that. So here’s a few cool stuff to keep you entertained:

-Check out the covers to Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1. Great stuff from Pacheco and DelaFuente. Oh, and from the looks of it, FURY’S BACK

-Kevin Smith is writing Green Hornet and Batman: The Widening Gire. No, he’s not back to writing the script for the Hornet movie: he’s writing the Hornet COMIC. With fantastic designs by Alex Ross (check ‘em here), this is Smith’s way of putting his version of the Green Hornet (and Kato, as you’ll notice) out there before Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet movie comes out.

Batman: The Widening Gire, on the other hand, is Kevin Smith doing his ultimate take on the Dark Knight, like Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers (and for that matter, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams) did back in the day. It’s twelve issues with Walt Flanagan (Batman Cacophony) on art, and promises to introduce a new character who’ll later star in an ongoing written by Smith.  Read all about it here.

Both projects look pretty spifftacular (yes Spiff, that was for you): from the sounds of it, Smith’s got a pretty full plate, comics-wise. I didn’t like Smith’s characterization of Batman in his latest series, Batman Cacophony, very much, but he wrote a great Dark Knight when he cameoed in Green Arrow. Plus Smith can write some awesome comics when he’s on his game (again, Green Arrow).

-Captain America hits milestone after milestone: first is Captain America #50, a special issue focusing on Bucky’s many birthdays over the years. After that, Cap goes back to its original numbering to celebrate issue #600. The story details of that issue are hush-hush, but we know it’s about the one year anniversary of Cap’s death… and something major might be going down. Brubaker writes, of course, but there’ll also be stories by former Cap writers Roger Stern and Mark Waid. There’s also this mysterious image…

Yup. Pretty sure that’s the Heroes Reborn Bucky. Man, talk about wild. Anyway, then there’s Cap #601, which is special in itself because Gene “The Dean” Colan is drawing it! It’s the man’s first work in years and frankly, I can’t wait. I mean, yeah, I stopped buying Captain America a looong time ago, but there’s too much going on to NOT get intrigued.

-Who’s the Character Find of 2009 (as one person at the amazing DCU blog called him?) Dex-Starr, the Red Lantern cat! Read all about how he came to be here. Kudos to Geoff Johns and Shane Davis for not being afraid to insert of humor in all the epic “War of Light” stuff going on in Green Lantern.

-Alan Cumming (shaddup) is going to be the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man musical. Crazy.

Anyway, time for that announcement I mentioned earlier: there are going to be some changes around here. I can’t even guarantee we’ll have the same name when this is over. Stay tuned.

Weekly Recommendations for 4/22/09

Been a while since we told you what to buy, eh? Then let’s not waste any more time!