and yeah, ain’t nobody as true as us
-Comic books? Did you know that they let people other than Grant Morrison write Damian Wayne? Whose bright idea was that?

-What have we learned?

-Kanye’s record leaked a week ahead of schedule. As expected, it’s good. I’m not sure how good just yet–I’ve only listened a few times–but good enough that I listened to it a few times in a row.

-It opens with Nicki Minaj, which is whatever, but the production and rhymes are solid.

-He does a lot of really interesting stuff musically this time around. He’s much more willing to let tracks breathe, or go on long past their running time, which is something I enjoy. There’s a breakdown on “Devil In A New Dress” before Rick Ross’s verse that’s tremendous, the 9 minute version of “Runaway” is heat, and there’s one track in particular that feels kind of like 808s & Heartbreak in miniature. I can’t wait for the official release, as long as I can get the cover art with the dude with the sword in his head and not that ugly painting.

-It’s been a good year for music, hasn’t it?

you ain’t gotta like me
created: I’ve got something big cooking that will hopefully land with both feet right in the small of someone’s back, but in the meantime, I put some words on comic book covers (protip: they’re there for a reason) and Thor comics (protip: don’t read all of them, or even most of them). Soon, though, I think I’ll have something you’ll love/hate.

consumed: I watched George Clooney in The American the other night. It was pretty good. It was kind of the anti-Bourne, and not really how the trailers made it out to be. It was a very quiet movie, though it opens on an effective bit of violence, which had the effect of making almost every scene very tense. You’re waiting for the explosion. It’s like Unforgiven, but instead of fighting against type like Eastwood did then, Clooney is stuck in a movie you expect to go one way but insists on going another. It indulges in cliché a few times, but it doesn’t really hurt the movie. I liked it, I’ll probably watch it again.

I’m in the middle of a reread of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman & Robin. I picked up Batman Reborn and Batman vs. Robin the other day in prep for an upcoming post. It’s wildly uneven, with Philip Tan not even doing the bare minimum in terms of storytelling or quality being the nadir and Cameron Stewart’s arc being the height. I’m massively frustrated by Morrison lately, and by the fact that what should have been a good story has been marred by crap art. I’m gonna try to work that out on the page, though, so stay tuned.

i like me enough for the two of us
David: Amazing Spider-Man 648
Esther: Batgirl 15, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne 6, Birds of Prey 6, Knight & Squire 2, maybe Red Robin 17
Gavin: Batman Return Of Bruce Wayne 6, Booster Gold 38, Justice League Generation Lost 13, Knight & Squire 2, Welcome To Tranquility One Foot Grave 5, Avengers Prime 4, Chaos War Thor 1, Incredible Hulks 616, New Avengers 6, Ultimate Comics Thor 2

touch me
-How do I feel about comics right now?

-It’ll pass. I just need to read something that’ll knock my socks off.

-Music, though. Yezzir. Specifically Kanye Tudda.

-Kanye West has given away the equivalent of a really solid album for free. Eleven joints, all of them heat rocks, for free. The weakest of them is probably Power (Remix), and considering how hard that beat goes, that’s saying a lot.

-Kanye’s cut “Monster” from the list for some reason. That’s the song with that super hot Nicki Minaj verse. She’ll never go in like that again.

-“Pull up in the monster automobile, gangster/ With a bad bitch that came from Sri Lanka/ Yeah, I’m in that Tonka color of Willy Wonka/ You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer/ Okay, first things first I’ll eat your brains/ Then I’ma start rocking gold teeth and fangs/ Cause that’s what a motherfucking monster do/ Hairdresser from Milan, that’s a monster ‘do/ Monster Giuseppe heel, that’s the monster shoe/ Young Money is the roster and the monster crew.”

-Shame Eminem rhymed circles around her doing backflips and cartwheels on “Roman’s Revenge.”

-My favorite is probably “Christian Dior Denim Flow,” with “So Appalled” second and “Monster” third.

-Pusha is by far the stand out. He dances on every single beat, but CyHi the Prince is tight, too. I’m always impressed by that dude, and his Royal Flush mixtape is pretty straight.

-GOOD Music’s lineup is just absurd, is what I’m saying. A lot of creativity sitting in one place.

-I like Kanye a whole lot. He has made some questionable choices (808s needed no autotune and more John Legend, but it was also intensely personal and very Kanye), but his talent is undeniable. He can make bangers, he knows good when he sees it, and he’s done a lot of growing up in public. I respect dude, and I think his album is going to be nuts.

-Even more than that, though, Kanye is confident. Just like a lot of black dudes you’ll meet, he’s got that post-Ali confidence. “My presence is a present, kiss my ass” is one of those lines that’s slick, but most of all, true. If you don’t believe it for yourself… well, if you don’t love yourself, ain’t nobody gonna love you, man.

riders on the storm
Created: Not much.

Consumed: Even less. Seven Samurai looks fantastic, though. Kid CuDi’s Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager leaked as expected and it’s… good. I like it. I don’t like it as much as I like Man On The Moon: The End Of Day yet, but it took me a couple months to really feel that record. I figure two weeks from now and I’ll really really be into it. You know how that goes. If you want a taste, cop the single, Erase Me or watch this Youtube:

(This is what us colored people look and sound like when we play Rock Band. I’ve got a fake British accent, too, mate. HMMM!)

It grew on me. I really like songs that not only make the beat drop (a classic rap move) but also drop out the vocals. There was a joint on a Roots album that did that, and it was positively haunting. “You know you on your own, right?” Anyway, that CuDi is definitely a day one purchase. Hope Amazon gets a version with the bonus tracks, too.

love her madly
David: Amazing Spider-Man 647, Bullseye: Perfect Game 1, Iron Man/Thor 1, Superboy 1, Unknown Soldier 25
Esther: Secret Six 27, Batman and Robin 16. Maybe Batman Confidential 50 and Superboy 1.
Gavin: Batman and Robin 16, Secret Six 27, Invincible 75, Avengers Academy 6, Chaos War 3, Hawkeye & Mockingbird 6, Namor First Mutant 3, Ozma Of Oz 1, Punisher In Blood 1, Taskmaster 3, Young Allies 6, Irredeemable 19

the new NERD album sucks
-I am positively drowning in existential crises. Pardon my dust. Fourcast! is on a brief break.

–Corben on Hellboy is always worth a glance. More on Corben.

–Bulletproof Coffin is a great book, and this bit of analysis by David Allison is great in part because it’s something I never would’ve done. About half his thoughts/connections never even crossed my mind, and that’s a wonderful thing. This is what comics internet is good for: learning stuff.

-Related: Someone please put the most recent issues of Bulletproof Coffin up so I can buy them digital. Thanks in advance. I love you.

-What’s comics internet isn’t good for: decent interviews with crap headlines. I like Kaare Andrews, and I thought this interview was pretty swift, but that headline has got to go. The biggest thing in there was Andrews “Slutting Up Emma?” Nothing about what makes a good film vs comic? Nothing about the experience of creating a movie vs a comic? He says a lot of interesting things, and that is the least of them.

-More good: Mike Hawthrone and Nathan Fairbain collab on an Elektra Lives Again piece. The colors on this are fantastic, dead-on.

-More good: Tim O’Neil points out some screwed up priorities in Batman comics. Hey, doesn’t this make Vicki Vale an accomplice? Send old girl to jail. Make it a Crisis. “Child Slavers Crisis!” It’ll move units. (No Larry Flynt.)

-Matt Seneca is a cool dude, and I always enjoy his Monday Panels. I’m not sure how old he is, other than “probably 20s,” but I like seeing how our tastes crisscross (or don’t). I don’t know from half of what he talks about, beyond it being stuff I should’ve read before now, and I’m impressed with his depth of knowledge of that stuff. I’m just good at putting together puzzle pieces. Matt’s good people.

-I really like this bit from Peter Milligan and Giuseppe Camuncoli’s Hellblazer: India. It’s probably completely opaque, but something about it, maybe the trade of barbs or just the voices I’m hearing when I read it, clicks. Perfect Constantine to me.

what happened, son?
-Create: Some Halloween ish, some previews for Beasts of Burden/Hellboy (review soon, tl;dr is “good!”), T-bolts, and Deadpool MAX, some solicit previews, and a review of Panty & Stocking.

-Consume: I re-read Yasuhiro Nightow’s Trigun 1-2, and Trigun Maximum 1-3, but boy are those crap. Art’s okay in TM, but the translation is soft (Who says -san and oi! in the old west?) and plotting so-so. John Constantine, Hellblazer: India was good. Other than those, nothing really sticks out. What have I been doing over the past week? Oh, right, I got Def Jam Rapstar, one of the three games a year made for black people. I like it a lot, but the DLC schedule is absurd. The only song we get this MIMS’s “This Is Why I’m Hot”? And why isn’t “Grindin'” on the PS3 store? The devs released a statement about it, but man. I’ll probably get Rock Band 3 eventually so I can play the Bob Marley joints. The song line up is pretty thoro.

Nina Simone’s The Lady Has The Blues is five bucks, by the bay.

In Search Of… was great, though
David: Amazing Spider-Man 646, Thunderbolts 149
Esther: Action Comics 894
Gavin: Justice League Generation Lost 12, Time Masters Vanishing Point 4, Avengers 6, Avengers & Infinity Gauntlet 3, Captain America 611, Deadpool Team-Up 888, Incredible Hulks 615, Secret Avengers 6, Secret Warriors 21, Thunderbolts 149, Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 3

leave with lifeless lungs or come in peace
-Remember when I said “You should be reading it” in relation to the Fraction/Ferry Thor? I take it back. I was okay with the first issue being empty, what with it being essentially the first chapter in what is meant to be a book, but the second is just as empty. All of the goodwill I had for it was instantly sapped by the pace and plot. Check out Tim O’Neil’s pretty good review of the issue. I agree with everything he said, I think. Pretty art, I dig the letters, but you’re cashews if you think I’m gonna pay four dollars a month for that.

-I’m slowly working my way through the books I bought at NYCC… and the books I bought after NYCC, and the books I’m probably gonna buy tonight. Time to scale back the insanity some, maybe? Who knows.

-I went to APE. It was okay. I liked the Writers Old Fashioned panel on Sunday. I bought a couple pages of art from Steve Oliff, the incredible colorist who did Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira.

One of the best comics ever, seriously. I’m happy to own two bits of it. These are also the first two pages I’ve bought that don’t feature colored folks.

-Disc-less Netflix on PS3 > Netflix on 360. The interface is smooth as silk.

-I deleted like ten gigs of mp3s last night. Goodbye, Canibus and Cassidy. You overstayed your welcomes. Drake, you’re next.

-If all goes well, I’ll have both a new Pretty Girls for Friday and a good post for tomorrow.

-You ever feel like there’s something you’re forgetting, even though it’s consumed your thoughts for days? I’m having that feeling right now. It was definitely something to do with comical books.

i would rather have you fear me than have you respect me
wrote: Ehh, light week. Just a preview. You should watch the footage of our panel from NYCC, though, and leave comments about my looks.

read: One Piece, Vol. 55, Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition Volume 4, and Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, Vol. 11. OP was great, as expected. GSC flagged a little toward the end there by introducing a major character and then ignoring him for the rest of the book. It stumbled, but other than all the pedo stuff, it was pretty great. (Ugh.) 20thCB11 introduced a staple of adventure comics (crippling self-doubt!) and resolved it over the course of a chapter (I am invincible.), so that was nice. I like it more now, but it’s still threatening to spin off into absurdity (more than it already has, I mean). I hope the guessing games are mostly done. The stuff about Kanna was really strong this time around. More of that, please!

watched: I ordered The Night of the Hunter and received Seven Samurai. Why? Because Robert Mitchum and Akira Kurosawa, that’s why.

listened: It is positively absurd how much I’m feeling Rick Ross’s Teflon Don. Who knew? I’ve mostly been listening to Kanye and old joints, though.

laws and rules don’t apply to me
david: Hellblazer 272, New Mutants 18
esther: Possibly, but not likely: Batman the Road Home: Catwoman, Commissioner Gordon. Possibly: Batman and Robin 15, DCU Halloween Special, Tiny Titans 33. Probably: Superman/Batman 77
gavin: Azrael 13, Batman And Robin 15, Green Lantern Corps 53, Carnage 1, Chaos War 2, Deadpool 28, Hulk 26, Shadowland Power Man 3, Steve Rogers Super-Soldier 4, Darkwing Duck 5

There were two things I did not like, and one thing I did, but shouldn’t.  Have a look below the cut.

Read the rest of this entry �

Hey Wally Sage, star of Flex Mentallo and lifelong comics fan, how do you feel about Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’s Neonomicon 02, published by Avatar Press?

Yeah, me too, buddy. That book was vile and put me off Alan Moore entirely. Jog’s review explains exactly how foul it is, and has a few of the reasons why I hated it.

Just last week, Rick Remender’s infamous Franken-Castle story arc had come to a close. Never have I seen a more divisive reaction to the character’s developments in all his history. At least with his whole Punishment Spectre-lite run, just about everyone hated it. I thought the whole Frankenstein concept was interesting and fun and I’ve seen many agree with me, but I’ve seen just as many hate it with the fury of a million Nick Furys. My local comic shop for months had a bulletin board with nothing up it other than Punisher #11 with a sign over it saying, “DISGRACE!” I kept forgetting to lovingly lick the covers of whatever Punisher issue I was buying while at the register.

Since Matt Fraction took up the character in Punisher: War Journal, Frank Castle has become more and more involved in the greater Marvel Universe. Outside of Jigsaw being killed off (and then being replaced with another guy taking up the mantle several issues later), not much carried over into Rick Remender’s Punisher run other than his latest injection into the superhero scene. The problem was that the Dark Reign banner put Frank’s writing in a corner. With Osborn and Hood in charge of things, he obviously had to be itching to take care of them, but even as the protagonist, he can’t. There’s far too much plot armor to work through. So how does one write a story about Frank Castle being completely impotent as an unstoppable vigilante?

The first ten issues of Punisher and the one Annual take their time to get to something super-strong. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun bunch of issues, but the first five-issue arc is so closely melted into the second five-issue arc that there doesn’t appear to be much more than wheels spinning in place. There is one piece of interest in all this in the introduction of supporting character Henry Russo. Henry is a young hacker who tracks down Frank and makes himself the third man to take the role of Punisher’s tech-savvy sidekick. I really like Henry and want to see more from him. Thankfully, he’s gotten play in other stories like Deapdool: Suicide Kings and Anti-Venom: New Ways to Live.

Yes, yes. I’ll get to the next We Care a Lot soon. I promise.

Read the rest of this entry �

they believed in machine guns.
–New York Comic Con is this weekend. Gavin and I will be there. Short cipher, then.

-Charlie Huston has a new novel coming out in 2012 from Mulholland Books. Skinner is going to be about poverty, seems like. Here’s a pretty good introduction to the headspace he’s working in.

Speaking of putting a bullet in the head of irony, 1 in 5 U.S. resident children are currently living below that line.

You can’t, as the comedians are wont to say, make this shit up.

Facts, in these situation, kick the shit out of fiction every fucking time.

The present moment is born of the past. The future moment is born also of the past, and the now.

1 in 5 children born from the past into present poverty. How the fuck did that happen?

If you want to get into his work, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel is a pretty good starting point. Brutally funny, brutal pacing (in The Shotgun Rule especially), brutal violence… this guy is the one novelist whose books I buy on release and tear through in two or three sittings, max.

-Continuing the trend of the extended FBB4l! family being the best people to read when it comes to writing about comics, Tucker Stone has a positively fantastic interview with Darwyn Cooke up at Comics Alliance. Parker: The Outfit drops today, and it’s basically already book of the week.

-More Richard Stark: The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit are on Kindle now.

David Grofield: Unknown Soldier 24, Parker: The Outfit
Esther Parker:
Handy Gavin: Incorruptible 10, Metalocalypse Dethklok 1, Secret Six 26, Avengers Academy 5, Chaos War 1, Deadpool Pulp 2, DeadpoolMAX 1, Hawkeye & Mockingbird 5, S.H.I.E.L.D. 4, Taskmaster 2, Ultimate Comics Thor 1, Young Allies 5

I was gonna buy Ultimate Thor off ComiXology, but if you think I’m paying four bucks for a regular old comic book, you’re insane.

said the shotgun to the head
-Maybe this is unfair (it isn’t), but if you only ever talk about what’s wrong with race in comics, and never what’s good, I don’t care about anything you have to say. It’s like–congrats, man, you can recognize something so obvious that children can see it. I’m not gonna congratulate you for doing something you should be doing anyway. I’m tired of reading or being linked to know-nothing junior varsity scrubs armed with an at best theoretical understanding of racial politics that they got from some college or the rest of the internet. Real talk beats jargon any day. Do better.

-Brian Michael Bendis was talking greasy about comics journalism last week. I felt some kind of way about it and responded on Twitter more than I should have, when what I really should have said was this:

-Did you guys see that X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Saga came out on ComiXology’s digital comics service this week? For two bucks? That comic was free in stores. C’mon, son. That’s just clown shoes.

-Greg Burgas reviewed Top Cow’s First Look over at Comics Should Be Good!. I liked the Genius story in there and honestly have yet to read the rest. That’s beside the point, though. Burgas makes a reference to Top Cow’s checkered past (specifically: “Mysterious Ways is the third story in the collection, and it’s really what you think of when you think of a stereotypical “Top Cow” comic.”) and manages to piss off both Ron Marz and Atom!, who is Top Cow’s new “Direct Market Liason” guy.

They pop up to explain that, hey, that isn’t Top Cow, you’re working from old data, and things just devolve from there. I figured I’d do us all the favor of pulling some covers from the recent past, including Artifacts, one of the books that Marz and Atom! are telling us we shouldn’t be judging.

I’m not even being disingenuous and cherrypicking here–these are the covers to some fairly high profile series starring Boobs Goesfast, Razor Cleavage, Nightgown Lass, Thinly Disguised Alien Guy, and… I don’t have any dismissive and/or clever supranyms ((c) Adam Warren) for Aphrodite IX and the angel chick with the massive wings (Sexy Seraphim?) but they look like the same old Top Cow crap we used to eat up back before the internet existed.

Look–Top Cow is better than it was ten years ago. That’s obvious. Witchblade wears more clothes, for one thing, and what I’ve read of Phil Hester’s The Darkness was pretty swift. But- Witchblade Takeru still exists and this sort of thing still happens:

It’s cool you changed or whatever, but if you’re the guy who gets blackout drunk and turns into a douchebag every time he goes out, and you’re that guy for years, don’t be surprised if people go “Whoa whoa whoa, did that guy just behave himself?” when you go out, behave yourself, cover the tip, and bid a nice lady a chaste goodnight. That’s your bad. You earned that rep.

If Top Cow spent the past decade and a half pumping out critically acclaimed books, and then suddenly started producing crap, the response would be equally as confused. If Donna Troy suddenly magically lost her ability to put me right to sleep, I’d react with surprise, just like Burgas did.

-In the interest of semi-fairness, this cover for the aborted Joe Casey/Chriscross Velocity is super dope.

the inevitable rise and liberation of niggy tardust
-Comics Alliance stuff: video game censorship, why Wildstorm/Zuda/CMX bit it, a Hetalia image gallery, and an interview with all-star colorist Dave Stewart.

-Amazon stuff: Saving money as I come into the orbit of NYCC, so all I got was Shanna, the She-Devil: Survival of the Fittest (for Khari Evans), Love and Rockets: New Stories because everyone says it’s the best, and Die Hard Collection because if you don’t like Bruce Willis, you’re no friend of mine.

-I read Bulletproof Coffin #1 and caught up on Chew on ComiXology. Both are really solid works, especially BC.

the dead emcee scrolls
Fear Not Of David: Amazing Spider-Man 644, Atlas 05
Esther Says: Definite: Action Comics 893 Maybe: The Brave and the Bold 21, Detective Comics 869, First Wave 4
Know Gavin: Time Masters: Vanishing Point 03, Atlas 05, Captain America 610, Franken-Castle 21, Namor, Secret Warriors 20

Not a joke! Not a snarky dismissal! I’m buying the Matt Fraction/Pasqual Ferry Thor because John Workman is lettering it.

That’s the pithy summary, anyway, but it’s no less true. Fraction is an okay writer who has done a few things I like (Casanova, Immortal Iron Fist) and a few things I don’t (Invincible Iron Man, Punisher War Journal) and Pasqual Ferry is a tremendous artist as far as I’m concerned, with great work done on everything from Superboy to Adam Strange to Ultimate Fantastic Four. Together, though, they aren’t quite enough to get me to read about Thor. I was going to give it a miss until I heard that Workman was lettering the book.

As far as I can tell, the only Thor you really have to read is Walt Simonson’s run on The Mighty Thor from the ’80s. The Kirby stuff never really clicked with me beyond the art, and the ’90s-era Thor was a tangled, knotted mess of a bunch of things I couldn’t have possibly cared about, no matter how hard I tried. Dan Jurgens and John Romita, Jr gave it a worthy try and told some good stories, but it never felt essential. J Michael Straczynski’s run on Thor had pretty pictures from Olivier Coipel and the same brand of overwrought moralizing that has infected JMS’s amazingly awful DC Comics work. Michael Avon Oeming and Andrea DiVito came closest to making great Thor comics with Avengers Disassembled: Thor, which wore its Simonson influence on both of its sleeves and down the seam of its pants.

No, if you want Thor, you gotta go to Walter Simonson. With the aid of letterer Workman and colorists Christie Scheele (who I think also colored the Miller/Romita Man Without Fear, maybe?) and George Roussos, Simonson crafted a genuinely epic story. He took Thor high and low, introduced new members of the cast, took the traditional cast in new directions, and turned Thor into his book the way Miller did with Daredevil.

I only had a few random issues of his run as a kid, being focused mainly on Spider and X-related titles. I liked what I had, though, and I remembered my uncle being a big fan of his work, so I sought out the trades once I grew up. One thing I learned from them is that lettering matters. It is undeniably an integral part of the art. If you’ve ever read a comic where word balloons overlap and crowd out the art, you know exactly what I mean. Placement, type, and yes, even spelling, matter. Marvel’s flirted with lettering experimentation lately, probably most notably in Incredible Herc, but the majority of their books are more or less lettered identically. You never look at an issue of Avengers and go, “Whoa, that lettering looks great!”, you know?

Workman is the guy who gives your book personality. His style is distinct and instantly recognizable. Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon’s Winter Men benefitted greatly from his work. He lettered Paul Pope’s Batman Year 100 (in concert with Pope and Jared K Fletcher) and 100%. His balloons have tons of white space, more than they probably need, and long, crooked tails. His sound effects fill entire panels, and are as much a part of the art as Simonson’s pencils or Scheele/Roussos’s colors. The style of Simonson’s Thor is inextricably linked to Workman’s letters.

I mean, seriously. The foreshadowing of Surtur wouldn’t have been half as awesome without Workman’s letters, and the bit where Surtur cuts a “DOOM!” in half with Twilight? Fantastic. Pencils, inks, colors, and letters all working in concert to tell one story. That’s how comics should be.

Everyone who comes onto Thor is sitting in Simonson’s shadow. He’s the guy to beat. Most people who end up working with Thor are honest about it in interviews (JMS, Fraction, Ferry, Simone Bianchi, for example) or it reflects in the work (Oeming). Fraction and Ferry have been very open about loving Simonson’s run, which is cool, but plenty of people have said that and then produced crap. How many people have talked about Grant Morrison when taking over one of his characters, ideas, or former series and then delivered nothing worth reading? Talk is cheap.

The presence of Workman on the book, though, is the difference. I hadn’t realized it, but Workman’s letters are how Thor is supposed to talk. The sound effects, the balloons, the letters, all of that is undeniably Thor to me. Similar to how Spawn needs Tom Orzechowski or seeing a realistically rendered Patsy “Hellcat” Walker looks wrong, Thor without Workman just isn’t Thor. Going off and getting Workman speaks to the kind of story that they’re trying to tell. It’s an effort that I can respect, and moved me enough to grab the first issue of the Fraction/Ferry run.

Verdict? Four dollars for a 22-page comic is entirely too high, but Ferry’s art is off the meter, Hollingsworth’s colors are real good, and Fraction’s got a great handle on everyone involved. The plot is looking good, just that sublime mix of sci-fi and magic that makes Marvel’s Thor what he is, and the enemies are appropriately fearsome. Workman absolutely kills on the lettering, particularly on the last balloon in the book, “I think I tasted blood,” the creepy black balloons, and Heimdall’s scream. The fact that there are ten double page spreads, all dedicated to non-Earth locales, is interesting. I think it’s too soon to call, but my best guess is that Fraction and Ferry are doing that to show the larger than life nature of the gods and the other of the nine worlds. There are three pages set in Asgard that aren’t spreads, and all the Earth pages are singles. I’m definitely going to be watching to see how that develops.

You should be reading it.