I wrote about Brandon Graham’s King City for Comics Alliance.

It’s dumb, but I’ve been trying to write about King City for ages. The last time I tried was around issue 4. I think the final text on CA is a mixture of ideas and sentences from three different drafts from several months worth of starts and stops. I finally got focused and put some elbow grease into it, using issue four as the lynchpin, and I think it turned out pretty okay.

The thing is, King City may well be my favorite ongoing comic right now. It’s a book I save to read until several days after new comics day, in part because I know it is going to be fantastic and in part because it makes everyone else making comics look lazy. It’s that serious. Graham is filling each page with amazing ideas and the briefest of thoughts and it all works. It hangs together. Reading King City is like playing Jenga with ideas and concepts, but it never tips over. It stays upright. The oversized floppy format, the black and white art, the page count, the backups, the back cover, the whole book works. It’s cluttered and messy and it all works.

(I haven’t been able to get “Sometimes her cigarette smoke smells like flowers” out of my head since I read it.)

I didn’t want to screw it up when I wrote about it. This is the book that everyone should be reading. It’s your stepping stone to a world of great comics. And like, writing it up and doing a halfway job on it? That’d just be sloppy. I wouldn’t do it justice. I think the CA piece comes as close as I can right now. I may write about it more later on, as the series lumbers toward its conclusion.

One more thing.

I love this comic, man. Y’all should be reading it.

Yesterday’s action really escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast! It jumped up a notch. There were dragons, a man on fire and Black Panther killed a guy!

T’challa, if you’re reading this, you should find yourself a safehouse or a relative close by. Lay low for a while, because you’re probably wanted for murder.

Plus Hawkeye walked in on Tony and Carol post-coitus.

Thanks to ManiacClown for agreeing with me that, yeah, that does sort of look like Mila Kunis. Vindication is fun.

Amora and Valkyrie will continue their girl talk tomorrow. See you then.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Last time in our adventures, Captain America kicked a lady in the lady business and it made her mad enough to jump out a window. We’ve all been there. The Enchantress showed up and introduced herself to Zarda, whose inclusion on the team still makes people scratch their scalps.

Now this happens.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who believes Hawkeye doesn’t use the men’s room because he’s “too pretty to pee standing up”.

Next time, Enchantress keeps doing her thing.

Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

In Red Robin #12, Tim is a nice guy, surrounded by friends, who makes logical decisions, and narrates his actions using personal pronouns.  He’s considerate, grateful, and relaxed about relying on others.

The difference between this and the Tim we saw a year ago is so staggering that is almost produces vertigo.  What it does produce is an actual desire to read the book.  Hey look!  A hero who is dedicated, sincere and considers others!  And also flies around having adventures and fighting villains.  It is what I want to read in a comic book.  Who’da thunk?

I do wonder what it is that happened that makes everyone suddenly want to get into Tim Drake’s pants.  Did he have a birthday sometime during the run, because having a teaser for a storyline entirely devoted to getting the hero to impregnate Ras Al Ghul’s daughter doesn’t seem like something DC would do pre-eighteen.

I have to admit, I hope that they follow that storyline up, though.  And I hope they play it for laughs.

Oh, Ras, and you thought Bruce Wayne was a – well, yes, a tough nut to crack.  Just wait until you try enticing Tim Drake.  This is a guy whose last voluntary kiss was in a dank cave, surrounded by the corpses of clones of his murdered best friend.  You will have an easier time getting pandas to mate.

(Anyone know why Ras has given up on having a son himself?  He’s a good-looking, no-shirt-wearing millionaire.  It can’t be hard for him to find a woman.  And he has a lot of time.  If he spent as much time on dating sites as he did on trying to get Bruce to have sex with his daughter, he’d have an army of sons by now.)

As of yesterday, Captain America had a heated conversation with Valkyrie. A conversation SO heated that Valkyrie’s been balling up her fist. Time for something actiony to happen.

Tomorrow, ManiacClown and I will be back for dragons, orcs, jungle folk, tigers, and post-coitus. See you then.

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Time for another go at TWiP, including a rare couple panels from Esther. Also, reader Space Jawa tossed in a panel from Thor and the Warriors Four. If you really dig a comic that you see we aren’t reading and want to toss us a scan, by all means. Email’s on the top right.

Tossed in the few Free Comic Book Day issues I’ve had time to read.

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine #1
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener and others

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Welcome back for another round of edits. For those who don’t remember what happened in the first issue because they were distracted by Ultimate Red Skull suddenly crying about his daddy issues in Millar’s Ultimates comic, the Defenders have returned from obscurity with special powers and enhancements. It’s like that episode of Gargoyles with the Pack, but without that kickass Australian Dingo guy around. Dingo ruled. They stole Mjolnir from Valkyrie, Loki and an army of monsters invaded and Tony Stark introduced Carol Danvers to at least three STDs.

And now, we move forward.

Thanks to ManiacClown for warning me that having the pointing Captain America say, “Only you can prevent forest terrorism!” is a little too much of a stretch. We’ll be back tomorrow with more from Cap and Valkyrie.

But my point remains: Dingo ruled.

Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Iron Man 2 has been released and I checked it out last night. Personally, I enjoyed it, but doubly after having read the Alexander Irvine novelization. Much like with going from the graphic novel of Kick-Ass to the movie Kick-Ass, the transition from a weak telling of a story to a strong telling of a story can make such a difference based purely on the comparison.

I always love doing this little experiment of checking out the novelization of comic book movies, then seeing how the final product compares. I’ve been doing it for the past few years and they’ve always seemed to be based on the full version of the story. The novelization is what the movie is like before the editor cuts off chunks. Sometimes this works out for the better (Incredible Hulk). Sometimes this works out for the worse (Spider-Man 3). There’s even the first Iron Man, where the second act had to be refilmed and edited around just to make the Air Force happy.

Iron Man 2 is a different beast, since it doesn’t appear to be based on the full version of the screenplay, but of an earlier, incomplete version. There are plotholes and loose ends riddling the story that the movie is nice enough to fix. Even better, some of the climactic moments are so ridiculously underwhelming that the final cinematic output is a godsend.

Let’s take a look at what was changed.

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Hey, remember when I said this was going to be a 5-parter? Make that 6. I should really learn to count better.

In the first installment, we took a look at Marvel’s A-Team from the mid-80’s. The show faded away, but Mr. T remained Mr. T. While he did have some projects here and there, such as the ever-memorable Be Somebody or Be Somebody’s Fool, Mr. T didn’t really enter the 90’s with any steady piece of media. If he was going to appear in a comic book, he wasn’t going to be B.A. Baracus or any fictional character. T would have to be T.

In the mid-90’s, the company NOW Comics was filled with a myriad of interesting choices for licensed comics. Green Hornet and Terminator? Not bad. Speed Racer and Ghostbusters? Unorthodox, but still fully acceptable. Three Ninjas and Married… with Children? Then you have to vocally wonder what the Christ. Not only that, but the Married… with Children comics included a miniseries where the Bundy family gets powers from cosmic radiation and become the Quantum Quartet. I get the douche chills just thinking about it.

Mr. T would also get some play from NOW with Mr. T and the T-Force. The series lasts a whopping ten issues, longer than any other Mr. T series to date. Well, ten issues that I know of. Wikipedia suggests that there were eleven issues and there were certainly more announced within the comics, but I haven’t seen any evidence of issue #11. Though there also appears to be an annual that came out during the series’ existence. I’ve found absolutely nothing on it online outside of a Scans_Daily post showing Mr. T fighting a dude who looks like a cross between Spoiler and Phantasm.

The series ultimately works like Marvel’s Nextwave in that each arc is done in two issues. Unlike Nextwave, each arc is done by a different creative team. That means there really isn’t any true arc to the comic. Just a series of subplots and callbacks to supporting characters.

The main problem with the series is how Mr. T himself just doesn’t seem to have anything going on. While he’s shown to be a landlord, he has no actual personal life. He just goes around stumbling across people who need his help. B.A. Baracus helped people all the time too, but he still had his own personal problems to deal with. The army was after him, he had to deal with Murdock’s nonsense and his fear of flying. In Mr. T and the T-Force, Mr. T’s life seems just a little too perfect to the point that they rarely even show him in any real peril. So much that whenever anyone pulls a gun on him, he disarms them at the snap of a finger every time. I’m going to keep a tally on that.

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True story: Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is one of my favorite comics. It’s a great story, with fantastic art, and I’ve loved it ever since I first read it (which was as an adult). I like it so much that Boom! Studios’ rerelease of the series in a couple hardcovers has been tempting me, even though I own an older Gemstone edition.

It’s the story of how Scrooge McDuck went from pauper to super rich fat cat. There are tons of real-life guest stars, all done up ducks-style, and it’s just a rocking good story. Boom! posted a few pages of the book on their press site and said that we can post them around. So, y’know, enjoy. I have fantastic taste, and believe me when I say that this is a classic book.