All of these are taken from the first five (seven, in one case, but I forget which) pages of Scott Snyder’s most high profile work: American Vampire (with Rafael Albuquerque, Daniel Zezelj, and Dave McCaig, Detective Comics (with Jock, Francesco Francavilla, and David Baron), and Swamp Thing (with Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn). Snyder’s had fifty or so comics published thus far, but all of these hit in the last 18 (or so) months. American Vampire is 18 issues deep, his run on ‘Tec was 11 issues, and Swamp Thing just started.

Do you see what all of these have in common? “[Aged male mentor figure] used to say [anecdote relevant to the plot].” He switches it up in American Vampire 12 with “Someone once told me”, and he pulls out families and tv shows for another. The real twisty one is ‘Tec 875, where Harvey Bullock, the aged male mentor figure, talks about how kids these days just don’t get it and AM radios are a thing that exists and here’s how to survive in Gotham. Never a mother, interestingly. Always either dudes or groups that are traditionally led by dudes.

All of these are basically the same thing. Anecdotes to kick the story off and show what sort of things the issue’ll be dealing with. It isn’t a bad technique, exactly, but it’s in half of ‘Tec, a quarter of American Vampire, and the first issue of Swamp Thing. It’s substantial, and it’s noticeable, when what it really should be is invisible.

It’s like Garth Ennis and Ireland or (expletive)(facial feature), Brian K Vaughan and stupid trivia, Chris Claremont and BDSM, Brian Bendis and his style of dialogue, Greg Rucka and characters like Sasha Bordeaux/Rene Montoya/Tara Chace/Dex Parios/what’s her name, the lady cop from Adventures of Superman/Elektra/maybe the newlywed widow from Punisher I dunno/the marshal from Wolverine/etc, Mark Millar and really specific numbers and/or really out of place diminutives, Frank Miller and hardboiled/Dirty Harry-style heroes, Warren Ellis and his hard-drinking British dude or lady who takes no guff off anyone and comes up with clever insults while moblogging all the way up and down the Web 2.0, Alan Moore and rape, Nick Spencer and writing terrible comics, Grant Morrison and dead cats, Frank Cho and impeccably drawn but super out of place boobs/butts, Ed Brubaker and women being arm candy for troubled dudes, Peter Milligan and identity issues/questions, and Bruce Jones using “______ THIS!” as a response entirely too often. It’s a tic, and once you notice it, you can’t not notice it, and it yanks you out of the story. It’s the FedEx arrow.

I don’t know how I noticed it, or how whoever told me noticed it (it was my man Luis, as a matter of fact), and his editors didn’t, but man. I opened Swamp Thing 1 and immediately rolled my eyes.

It sucks, because Snyder is a pretty good comics writer (American Vampire is definitely ill), but this is just so… lazy. Like “How to setup history and foreshadow a resolution to a cliffhanger for dummies” lazy. If this was some wack writer who kept trotting this out, I wouldn’t care, because I wouldn’t be buying his comics.

edit: from Amy K, here’s an example from Severed, Snyder’s creator-owned book, where a kid doesn’t have a father to tell him stuff like “Don’t take wooden nickels” and horrible things presumably happen to him as a result of taking a gang of wooden nickels off some demon-possessed hobo or something:

Static’s back. Have you heard?

Static is one of those series that’s near and dear to my heart. It’s the hands down best updating of Peter Parker thus far, and since Spider-Man is the best expression of a superhero (it’s not Batman, chuckles, Spider-Man is a genuine everyman fantasy character), that’s saying a lot.

Anyway, I was most interested in Static Shock #1 out of DC’s New 52 books that are launching this week. (DCnU looks and tastes like poop when you type it, so chill with that.) It was equal parts interest and trepidation. I mean, DC has managed to screw up everything else relating to Milestone except the trades of previously printed material, you know? What’s next? Ed Benes on Icon?

As it turns out, my fears were pretty much unfounded. Here’s page two of the issue, the moment I decided I would enjoy reading it:

And man, Static is such a goofball and this is exactly what I was hoping to see. Well, not exactly–that’s definitely hyperbole, but as far as the platonic ideal of a comic featuring Virgil Hawkins goes, I’ve got to tip my hat to John Rozum, Scott McDaniel, Jonathan Glapion, and Guy Major. This was a pretty good stab, and enough to make me commit to buying the issues at $3. It’s well worth your time. You can cop it here.

I wrote about Akira Toriyama drawing fight scenes in Dragon Ball, more specifically DBZ for ComicsAlliance. Dude is super talented and I finally figured out a way to say so without just saying “I like how Vegeta effortlessly murks this guy right here.”

I like how Vegeta effortlessly murks this guy right here.

He’s such a thug. ~swoon~

Buy Dragon Ball Z, or just v22 if you want to see this scene.

I wrote a post about how I don’t really dig on steampunk and you know what happened? I went and read a steampunk comic book that I really dug. What’re the odds, man? Here’s a page from it, though, and I think you’ll see why I dug it:

Art team: pencils by David López, inks by Álvaro López, Nathan Fairbairn on colors, and Jared Fletcher on letters. Words team: G Willow Wilson, who I’ve praised before.

This book really clicked for me. It’s a little Cinderella-y, with a twist I saw coming halfway through the book but was still well-executed. I might want to talk about it in-depth later, I dunno, but I liked this page and the book enough to share it. The Lopezes have come a long way since Catwoman, and I remember liking their stuff back then, too. Fairbairn does wonders for their art. It’s like magic.

I’ve been reading/rereading Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto. Five bucks a volume, man. I didn’t expect to be so weak. I’m ten volumes in now. I got to my favorite bit from the cartoon–the Rock Lee vs Gaara fight? It’s either this or this on Hulu, I dunno. (Hulu is down for me right now.)

I loved the Rock Lee vs Gaara fight because it got so bananas in a way I really, really dug. Fast punches, clever gimmicks–it starts with a punch from the front that almost hits the back of Gaara’s head. It’s awesome fight staging. They blew their animation budget on this episode, because everything after looks like crap crapped out of a crap-filled crap butt.

It looks way better in the comic. Here’s three pages that I liked:

From Volume 10, my dudes.

I love page 3, panels four and five. The dust in the air over Gaara’s head in 3, and then Gaara being almost entirely constructed out of speedlines–including his fist, eyebrows, eyes, and mouth–is fantastic. Good looking comic.

I’m writing these while watching Breaking Bad. I download it, so missing it when it airs isn’t really a huge deal, but it’s marathoning this show is crazy. It’s SO tense, but also very, very funny. Walt is so passive-aggressive. Every once and a while he decides to show everyone who wears the pants and whoops look at that, look who’s pants have pee on them. It’s you, Walt. They’re your pants, and you peed in them, because you suck, son.

Jessie Pinkman is incredible this season. Everything he does, man. A+, give that dude some awards.

I liked this bit from Chew 20, now on sale digitally:

Tony’s sister doesn’t curse, you see. Simple, ain’t it?

But quite clever.

I love this image.

Read Good Comics.

I’m reading 99 Days by Matteo Casali and Kristian Donaldson and it’s sort of driving me crazy. It’s not bad, exactly. The cover’s great, and the art is pretty good. There are just a few minor things that are crawling under my skin and making me put off finishing up the book.

I’m 40 or so pages in, and the word/phrase “knowwhuti’msayin'” keeps popping up and it’s always italicized. Setting aside my feelings on seeing that phrase in print aside–psyche, all of my opinions must be expressed lest they be lost to the ages. “Nahmean” and “namsaying” scan a lot better in written dialogue (and speech, arguably) and they mean/represent just about the exact same thing in terms of cultural/location/demographics. Close enough for gov’t work, at any rate, right?

The italics and compressed nature of the compound word makes it annoying to see in text. It’s like a full stop when reading. It kills the momentum of the dialogue dead, and it’s so generic and… graceless, I guess. The gold standard for natural black dialogue (dialogue in general, really) in comics is easily Garth Ennis, with Azzarello taking the crown for lyrical dialogue. There’s a flow and rhythm to their dialogue that pushes you deeper into the story. You dance from character to character. In 99 Days… you don’t. As soon as you hit this cat saying “Estelle was mah bitch, so what? I loved her, nigga. She was cool with me and I was cool with her, knowwhutI’msayin’?” or whatever, you just stop dead.

It’s boring, it’s graceless, it’s dunn language for dummies. You’re overdoing it, when the post path to take is to give us a little and let us fill in the rest. “Estelle was my bitch, nigga!” still doesn’t scan quite right, it doesn’t feel right, but it feels better than what we got. I dunno, maybe I expect too much, but I don’t think so. If you overdo the vernacular, you make it more likely that it’ll feel less real, and that’s murder on a comic.

So’s this, from a character a bit earlier in the book: “¿Cómo puedes estar parado a este individuo, ese? Qué tonto–”

And I get it, she’s talking about how another hispanic cat can ride around with as stereotyped of a white racist cop as you’ll see (he rants about quotas or affirmative action, butt kissing, blah blah talking points). But the Spanish is wrong, isn’t it? It’s been a few years, and I don’t really speak Mexican Spanish (¡Vamos, Madrileños!), but I’m like 99% sure parado doesn’t work like that. Parado/parar has to do with stopping or being stopped. Google Translate tells me that it comes out as “How can you stand this guy?”–which makes me think that “estar parado” should’ve been rendered as some form of soportar–support/endure. Unless “estar parado” is something specific to Los Angeles Spanish, but I sorta doubt it.

Bam: yanked right out of the story.

More verisimilitude killers: Casali overdos the specificity of the dialogue, rendering each inflection and non-traditional syllable, but underdos it when it comes to talking about the Crips and Bloods. There are several references to “the Crips leader” and “the rival Blood gang” for example, and my thought was… which Crips? Which Bloods? It’s not one giant organization. There’s not just one giant Crips gang with one cat sending down instructions like a CEO. There’s a ton, sorted by neighborhood or group or history or whatever whatever.

Here is where specificity, or going real specific with a fake gang, would’ve been a boon. “Word on the street is that the Eight Deuce Inglewood Crowns are out for blood because some fool from the blah blah blah set did blah blah blah.” Instead, we’ve got… I can’t even think of a good comparison here. “Talk to the European leader before all these Europeans kill all these Africans!” I guess. (This racism is killing me inside.) Anyway: Make up a gang! It worked for The Shield and Grand Theft Auto (and probably a lot of rappers).

99 Days isn’t a bad book, judging by the little I’ve read, but apparently this stuff was bugging me enough to a) put it down for a while and b) write about it on my lunch break.

Art’s real nice, though. Check out the first four rows on Donaldson’s site to see some pretty black and white images. I pulled the one at the top of this post from that page because I liked the faces.

Sometimes I get identified on this site as being a Marvel guy as compared to Esther being all about DC and while I’d like to argue against it, my latest buying habits in the past year don’t back me up. I seem to skew more on the Marvel side with only a handful of DC stuff on my plate. It wasn’t always that way. I seem to remember that in the mid-00’s, I was either pretty even with it or maybe even more on DC’s side. Thinking back, things were actually pretty exciting during the lead-up and follow-up of Infinite Crisis. It was really Countdown to Final Crisis where the company started to slope downwards in my regard.

As of a month ago, the comics I was reading under the DC banner were as follows: Batman and Robin, Batman Inc., Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Booster Gold and Secret Six. And you know what? I didn’t even like Secret Six that much by the time it ended. I liked the promise more than what happened. There’d be a good one-shot story in there every once and a while, then it would go into six issues I didn’t care about. At least it gave us the happy-go-lucky characterization of King Shark. At the same time, I feel guilty reading that when I should have gotten off my ass and started reading some of the series that I kept hearing were good like the latest run of Detective Comics, Batgirl, Action Comics and Doom Patrol.

When I first heard about DC’s reboot/relauch I raised an eyebrow and initially had the same, “Can they do that?! HOW CAN THEY DO THAT?!” reaction as everyone else. I just used my inside voice. Then I looked back and decided that maybe this is for the best. Oh, sure, it can and may be a failure in the long run. That’s their problem and the problem of whichever readers got screwed over by the big change. Me? I was only reading six comics by them. 52 new comics are being thrown against the wall and if even seven are still there when gravity kicks in, who am I to hate? Yes, this could definitely work out for the best.

I think back to when we got One Year Later and how enjoyable it was, despite how a lot of it returned back to the status quo. While it did turn me onto a couple good comics I wouldn’t have otherwise read, it did also allow me to join in and laugh at some of the stupider moments with the masses, like everything in that first Nightwing comic. Hey, remember when Nightwing is fighting this guy and he kicks him and practically shits himself while going, “Y-you’re a *gasp* m-metahuman…” as if he had only heard of such a thing before and never met one? Ah, man, that was the dumbest thing. I think the balls-out drive behind this new initiative can lead to an interesting six months at the very least.

So since I’m genuinely interested in this editorial stunt and I owe my comic guy for always having me at his place for wrestling PPVs and never having me pay for the show or food, I decided that I’d go headfirst into the new 52. I’m reading every single one of those fuckers. Yes, even the Liefeld one. Every week, I’m going to give my thoughts on them and decide whether I’m going to stick or drop it. Since these are all supposed to last six issues at the least, I’m going to try and keep going throughout that time so we can see what I’m still reading by the end of February. Who knows, by then I might just be doing an update about what I thought about that week’s issue of Blue Beetle because it’s the only thing left I care about. Though in the beginning, I’m giving every #1 a fair shake. You have my attention, DC. Wow me.

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I hate everything tonight for some reason. Maybe it’s because I made the mistake of seeing how many posts I’ve done on this site (1100+) right at the moment that the site was threatening to implode for four hours last night, I dunno. (“I’ve spent HOW much time doing WHAT now?”) Probably. But seriously, right now?

Rather than salt your day with my thoughts on all your favorite comics, though, here are some things that I do like right at this moment:

-I bought Tupac’s All Eyez On Me on vinyl this weekend. I like Makaveli a whole, whole lot, but All Eyez is still no joke. It’s so commercial, but still so personal. It’s a perfect storm on wax.

-And “I Ain’t Mad Atcha” might be his best song:

-I’ve been thinking a lot about Mobb Deep’s “Quiet Storm” after it popped up on a mixtape I downloaded. It’s such a good song, and the intro is one of my all-time favorites for a song:

-And that remix featuring Kimberly Jones before she burned out:

-Mobb Deep at their best… it’s that nihilism, that bleak outlook on life, that makes Prodigy so compelling. Getting that feeling across to the listener, that’s his strength. From The Infamous… to now, his voice has always sounded a little strained to me, like he’s tired. Not tired like “Just ran up and down some stairs like Young Jeezy does before he raps” (ha haaaaa), but tired like he’s tired of life. It’s been too long and too painful. He’s got that Gil Scott-Heron creak to his voice.

-Quiet Storm: “You try to stop mines from growin’, I’ll make your blood stop flowin'”.

-Sudden flash connection: Mos Def on “Astronomy (8th Light)”:

Black like assassin crosshairs
Blacker than my granddaddy armchair
He never really got no time to chill there
Cause this life is warfare, warfare

-And “Life is warfare, warfare” bounces me right to “Shook Ones Pt II”:

I got you stuck off the realness, we be the Infamous
you heard of us
official Queensbridge murderers
the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware
of my crime family who got ‘nough shots to share
for all of those who wanna profile and pose
rock you in your face, stab your brain wit’ your nose bone

-I dunno, maybe this is how kontinuity kop komics kollectors feel when they spot Kang or something in comics.

–My friend Steve wrote the shortest of short stories on his tumblr. I like it a whole lot, and it’ll take you fifteen seconds to read.

-John Rozum wants to do an Annotated Xombi post. Please support his efforts!

-I wrote a thing about steampunk and hardboiled fiction, and why I prefer one over the other:

Steampunk provides writers and artists with a way to take hold of the past and fix it, molding it into a much more interesting, and perhaps even healthier, shape than it possessed before. It lets you wash away the unpleasantness of yesterday and replace it with something majestic. It’s nostalgia for a time that never was.

-I dunno. It’s probably an okay read. Esther edited it into a readable shape, which was verrah nice of her.

-I love Decapitate Animals. That link gets nsfw at a few points.

-I love at least six photos in each new post, minimum, and I like way more than that. It’s one of my favorite things on the internet.

-It’s a photoblog and there’s always a few themes running through each image. What’s fun is figuring out the themes and how they connect or fade into one another as you scroll down the page. It’s one of those things like–I love the three pictures of people laughing here. And the pictures come after weed, sunken ships, horrible wartime death, and terror. It’s a release. Of course, it’s followed by an image from Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead (speaking of things i don’t have kind words for) where something horrible has happened, so maybe it’s a brief respite, a nervous laugh.

-Maybe it’s intentional, maybe not, but the author’s intent doesn’t really matter here.

-I feel like I’m explaining the joke, and I don’t want to do that. Poke around their site. There’s a lot of beauty there. There’s a lot of terror/comedy/smiles/melancholy/beauty there.

-Anyone who tells you colors don’t matter in comics is an idiot. Look at that transition.

-I actually bought a lot of vinyl this past weekend, but I had a coupon.

–Dogg Comix are the best comics.

-Comic books… give me a couple days.

-No, that isn’t true. I’ve been reading a lot of Kishimoto’s Naruto lately. Seven volumes? Might could be eight.

(Note: update is a little late due to the website having a fit last night. Need to remember to send David a fruit basket for his troubles)

Kind of an update and a half this time around. Since last week’s show was a failsafe in case I lost power from the hurricane, which ended up happening, I didn’t get to include the panels from David Brothers and Space Jawa. So here they are from last week, mixed in with this week’s batch. I also have Was Taters on the drums.

My pick of the week is the Goon and if the creative team and panel don’t convince you to check it out, I just don’t know what to say.

Deadpool MAX #11
David Lapham and Kyle Baker

Fear Itself: The Deep #3
Cullen Bunn and Lee Garbett

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Well, I needed a bit of a writing break to recharge my batteries and that pesky hurricane gave me little choice in the matter. Anyway, I’m back and I’m ready to finish what I’ve started. In other wrestling news, Rifftrax has released a new video on demand where they tackle the Jesse Ventura early 90’s movie Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe. It’s like a cross between Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, only completely and utterly boring. And with Jim Belushi as a principal only because the lead woman was his wife at the time!

Highly recommended.

Now back to the list.

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The Damon Albarn Appreciation Society is an ongoing series of observations, conversations, and thoughts about music. This is the tenth, a milestone number that I am going to completely fail to celebrate. I’ve been experimenting with punk music lately, and I think I might have something interesting to say about The Clash and the Sex Pistols, or, more specifically, their albums London Calling and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. I don’t know anything about punk, so both albums were eye-opening.

Minutes from previous meetings of the Society: The Beatles – “Eleanor Rigby”, Tupac – Makaveli, Blur – 13 (with Graeme McMillan), Blur – Think Tank (with Graeme McMillan), Black Thought x Rakim: “Hip-Hop, you the love of my life”, Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), On why I buy vinyl sometimes, on songs about places, Mellowhype’s Blackendwhite

Another giveaway! Tell me something I need to know about punk in the comments (meaning: tell me something you like that I probably don’t know and will probably like), and you’ll get a free copy of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here (mp3s, obviously). It’s old man music, the sort of album you listen to while chilling on a recliner or on a porch somewhere. The upbeat stuff is when your grandkids come around for playtime and you stand up, stretch your back, and then you show them youngins how to do some pushups. It’s good, yo.

I don’t even really know what punk music is, man. Not properly. Most of my punk knowledge comes from the periphery of punk culture. I know of cyberpunk and steampunk, though I couldn’t tell you if they’re called that because of the music or because somebody came up with “cyberpunk” and now “-punk” is the new hotness. I owned a Sex Pistols shirt before I ever listened to a Sex Pistols album because I liked how it looked. I’m pretty sure what I thought was punk rock before I actually sat down and asked a friend where I should start with punk was in fact, black metal. Something really aggressive, dark clothes, piercings, and a dude with weird hair growling into the microphone. I thought it was this, from Brian Azzarello and Guy Davis’s Hellblazer:

Yeah. I mean, real talk, full disclosure, confession time: I figured punk was basically just NWA for white people. For headbangers, not head nodders, basically. Who knew?

Anyway, enough faux guilt over having ignored an entire genre of music that people apparently like a whole lot. January 28, 2011: the day I purchased London Calling. I was heavy into the Beatles and it seemed like a good idea because… I don’t remember, I think I asked Ron Richards of iFanboy because he knows this stuff. I bought it, downloaded, and listened and was caught completely flat-footed.

London Calling didn’t sound at all like I expected. I was expecting something with some sharp snares, or something about anarchists and antichrists. Something growly and mean, the sort of music I could scare my neighbors with or disappoint my parents (in this scenario, it is also 197something). Instead, it just sorta sounds like a regular rock album. More than that–it sounds like a radio-friendly rock album. This feels like music people ride drive around to and sing with, you know?

Not to say that I don’t like it–I actually like London Calling quite a bit. I was just surprised by the diversity of the music on the album. “Brand New Cadillac” is Elvis-y, “Jimmy Jazz” is jazzy, there’s some really reggae songs on here, and then there’s stuff like “London Calling” or “The Guns of Brixton”, which I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe yet. “The Guns of Brixton” sounds a little like talking to a distant drunk, with the strange over-enunciation and the sproings around 1:15 in.

I think my favorite track on the album is actually “London Calling,” though the reasons why are still a bit unclear. I like the phrase “London Calling,” particularly how it punctuates (or maybe just punctures) the song. It’s ever-present, and sorta menacing with the backing vocals layered in on it. (I had to look up the “I live by the river” bit to see if it was about being homeless). I like how this feels post/mid-apocalyptic, like the world’s gone all wrong and it’s too late to stop. It’s the last concert before the end of the world. Am I reading too deep into the song? I don’t think so, it’s sorta right there.

I like “Lover’s Rock” a whole lot, too. That first fifteen seconds leading into the vocals is pretty great, and the vocals just elevate how good this song makes me feel (setting aside the lyrics). It feels and sounds like summertime music. This album doesn’t feel like the ’70s to me. Its style isn’t modern, of course, but it doesn’t feel that dated. It feels sorta timeless.

Amazon tells me that I bought Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols on July 18th. Makes sense–I think I played it a lot while I was in San Diego. (I also got Public Image Ltd’s album on the same day.) The Sex Pistols are closer to what I thought punk was. It’s as raw as an open wound, with a lot of speedy guitar riffs (licks?). It’s great music to work out to because it’s all so high energy.

I really, really like how Johnny Rotten isn’t much of a singer at all on this album. He croaks his way through “God Save The Queen” like somebody at karaoke, yeah? But his swagger is so strong that the rough vocals don’t matter at all. This stuff is catchy. It feels like rebel music, even if that rebellion was a billion years ago. It’s pleasingly political in a way that really isn’t that political at all. It’s not a call to action. It’s just telling us something we already know. Political comfort food. I love the “No future!” chant toward the end, especially the way its drawn out “Noooooooooo fewcha” plays against the fast music. There’s also this hitch in there around 2:46, like the vocals don’t come all the way in. It feels like a slippery, slamming song.

I like the popular songs from this one, I guess. “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the UK” are tops. “Anarchy in the UK” is even rawer. Is it just me or is Rotten’s voice mixed super high on this song? While he sorta fades into “God Save the Queen” and blends with the music, on “Anarchy in the UK” he practically rides on top of the song. It’s all about the wobble in his voice and that whine he uses to cap off “know how to get it.” It doesn’t sound good, but it sounds great.

Does that make sense? I just love how much energy and style Rotten has on this album. All of the music sounds really great and well put together, with interesting solos and solid beats, and then Rotten comes in and freaks out all over the record. I don’t know that I can verbalize why this is so entertaining to me, but it’s sort of like how I’ll listen to a really great rap song and then hear that moment when the artist breathes in because he just finished a Jenga tower of a verse and his breath control ran out. It’s like the seams are showing beneath the music, and being able to see or hazard a guess as to how it’s put together is a good feeling.

This feels a little like history class, or maybe some type of innocent voyeurism. I’m observing this from somewhere else, far from who it was for and what it represents. I’m pretty much entirely divorced from the punk era and its ethos. Actually, that’s not entirely true–I don’t know enough to know whether or not its ethos still applies. Is that even a conversation I need to be having? Would that make me like the music more than I do? I just like how these albums sound, and not being a part of the culture doesn’t harm that enjoyment, I don’t think. I came away pretty impressed with both of these albums (they’re particularly good to write to, I’ve found, and easy to mindlessly sing along with, especially the end of “Problems”), and they definitely sparked further interest in the genre and the people involved.

The two albums either up-ended or confirmed the stereotypes I had about punk, and I think that’s what I like most about them. Punk is and isn’t exactly what I thought it is, right?

I know somebody out there is well-versed in punk. I’m taking suggestions, preferably full albums rather than singles, but if someone’s a one-hit wonder with a hot song, c’est la guerre. I’ll take it. The best suggestion gets a free copy of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here.

This is the week that DC throws everything at the same wall simultaneously and prays that at least 75% of it sticks. This means there are 52 new(ish) books hitting store shelves in September. You can check the list here. I went through and pulled out what I’m willing to pay cash money for and which I’m open to the idea of maybe someday reading.

Figure this might as well be an open thread for the New 52 in the comments too, huh? Discuss amongst yourselves. Do people still say that? Talk about your hopes and gripes or whatever for this New 52, unless they have to do with Wonder Woman’s pants (or lack thereof), in which case, please don’t.

GRIFTER #1
Written by NATHAN EDMONDSON
Art by CAFU
Cover by CAFU and BIT
On sale SEPTEMBER 14 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The DCU’s most wanted man stars in his own series!
Cole Cash is a charming grifter few can resist. And yet he’s about to be branded a serial killer when he begins hunting and exterminating inhuman creatures hidden in human form – creatures only he can see!

Can the biggest sweet talker of all time talk his way out of this one when even his brother thinks he’s gone over the edge?

I like Grifter, and Nathan Edmonson’s the writer behind Who Is Jake Ellis? with Tonci Zonjic. That book gives him a lot of leeway (Zonjic is a problem and the script is pretty good, too). CAFU I’m not as keen on. His art can be a bit pedestrian and stiff, which isn’t really what I’m looking for in… well in anything ever, really. See that Thunder Agents book? Hopefully this isn’t that.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
1:25 Variant cover by DAVID FINCH
RETROSOLICITED • On sale AUGUST 31 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US RATED T • Combo pack edition: $4.99 US
Comics superstars Geoff Johns and Jim Lee make history! In a universe where super heroes are strange and new, Batman has discovered a dark evil that requires him to unite the World Greatest Heroes!

This spectacular debut issue is also offered as a special combo pack edition, polybagged with a redemption code for a digital download of the issue.

It’s Jim Lee, stupid. Lee’s great, still one of my favorite guys. Seeing him on some new familiar faces will be interesting. And Johns’s only competitor for big action writing is Mark Millar, and Johns has twice the heart that guy does. I think this’ll be a pretty good read.

STATIC SHOCK #1
Written by SCOTT McDANIEL and JOHN ROZUM
Art and cover by SCOTT McDANIEL and
JONATHAN GLAPION
On sale SEPTEMBER 7 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The brilliant, slightly awkward high school student Virgil Hawkins transforms into the cocky electromagnetic hero Static!

A mysterious tragedy forces the Hawkins family to relocate from Dakota to New York City! Virgil embarks upon new adventures in a new high school and a new internship at S.T.A.R. Labs!

As Static, he dons a new uniform and establishes a new secret headquarters! But is he ready to take on the new villains who lurk in New York City’s underworld?

John Rozum and Frazer Irving’s Xombi? Yeah, best DC comic of the past year. Maybe the past two or three years, frankly. It beats the pants off the Rucka/JHW3 Batwoman, Morrison’s Batman… pick your favorite comic and I’ll call it crap to drum up interest for this book I really want to do well. I trust Rozum, but I go back and forth on McDaniel. The past few years have seen me sour on him, but his art for this book looks to be in something of a new style, or at least a twist on his old style. I’m open to seeing where this one goes, and believe in it enough to put a few bucks on it.

WONDER WOMAN #1
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
Art and cover by CLIFF CHIANG
On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The Gods walk among us. To them, our lives are playthings. Only one woman would dare to protect humanity from the wrath of such strange and powerful forces. But is she one of us – or one of them?

Wonder Woman is boring, but Azzarello is the truth, and Cliff Chiang is, too. Probably gonna be the best book of the relaunch.

But yo, those booty shorts they’re making her wear? She looks stupid without pants, and being in her underoos don’t make her more of a Wonder Woman than any other take on the character. Fans are terrible, and that was a stupid thing to bend on. Ugh.

ALL-STAR WESTERN #1
Written by JUSTIN GRAY and JIMMY PALMIOTTI
Art and cover by MORITAT
On sale SEPTEMBER 28 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T+
Even when Gotham City was just a one-horse town, crime was rampant – and things only get worse when bounty hunter Jonah Hex comes to town. Can Amadeus Arkham, a pioneer in criminal psychology, enlist Hex’s special brand of justice to help the Gotham Police Department track down a vicious serial killer? Find out in this new series from HEX writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, with lush artwork by Moritat (THE SPIRIT)!

All of these guys go a long way with me. Moritat just recently knocked The Spirit out of the park. Gray and Palmiotti did real well on Jonah Hex for a bunch of years. This sounds like more than that, swapping Jordi Bernet with Moritat. Good deal.

Problem: the price tag. Four bucks? Ehhh. Prices of DC books drop after a month, so I may pick this one up then.

AQUAMAN #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO
On sale SEPTEMBER 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The superstar creators from BLACKEST NIGHT and BRIGHTEST DAY reunite to take AQUAMAN to amazing new depths!

Aquaman has renounced the throne of Atlantis – but the sea will not release Arthur Curry so easily. Now, from a forgotten corner of the ocean emerges… The Trench! A broken race of creatures that should not exist, an unspeakable need driving them, The Trench will be the most talked-about new characters in the DC Universe!

I want to like Aquaman.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art by MIKEL JANIN
Cover by RYAN SOOK
On sale SEPTEMBER 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The witch known as The Enchantress has gone mad, unleashing forces that not even the combined powers of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg can stop. And if those heroes can’t handle the job, who will stand against this mystical madness?

Shade the Changing Man, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Zatanna and John Constantine may be our only hope – but how can we put our trust in beings whose very presence makes ordinary people break out in a cold sweat?

Is this going to be the Mixtape Milligan, or are we gonna have to sit through another Carter IV? I’m a little iffy on Mikel Janin’s art, too. It looks too CG. It’s not terrible really, but it definitely looks like 3D models posed and placed on a background. Drives me crazy.

The thought of the Mixtape Milligan writing John Constantine in the DC Universe is pretty funny, though.

GREEN LANTERN #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art by DOUG MAHNKE and CHRISTIAN ALAMY
Cover by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO
Variant cover by GREG CAPULLO
On sale SEPTEMBER 14 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.

The red-hot GREEN LANTERN team of writer Geoff Johns and artist Doug Mahnke introduce an unexpected new Lantern.

Sinestro might be just the shot in the arm this series needs. Mahnke drawing aliens and mayhem is always fun, too.

BATMAN #1
Written by SCOTT SNYDER
Art by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
Cover by GREG CAPULLO
Variant cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER
On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Be here for the start of a new era for The Dark Knight from writer Scott Snyder (AMERICAN VAMPIRE, BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM) and artist Greg Capullo (Spawn)! A series of brutal killings hints at an ancient conspiracy, and Batman learns that Gotham City is deadlier than he knew.

Snyder’s run on Detective Comics was incredibly unsatisfying (imagine biting into a really nice piece of cake and slowly appreciating every bite, only then Dan Didio rushes into the room and tells you that you gotta wrap it up so we can relaunch the cake, so you rewrite your icing so that the is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-serial-killer-creep mystery turns into “oh he just chopped off all of someone’s limbs and is giving crappy speeches out of B movies about the nature of evil” showcase, aren’t you glad that two good artists were wasted on this comic book?), but had a solid start. Capullo’s cartoony style looks pretty cool, too. Hopefully this is a good Batman story?

BIRDS OF PREY #1
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Art and cover by JESUS SAIZ
On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
One is wanted for a murder she didn’t commit. The other is on the run because she knows too much. They are Dinah Laurel Lance and Ev Crawford – a.k.a. Black Canary and Starling – and together, as Gotham City’s covert ops team, they’re taking down the villains other heroes can’t touch. But now they’ve attracted the attention of a grizzled newspaper reporter who wants to expose them, as well as a creepy, chameleon-like strike team that’s out to kill them.

Don’t miss the start of this hard-hitting new series from mystery novelist/comics writer Duane Swierczynski (Expiration Date, Cable).

I dunno, I like Swierczynski’s novels and his comics are sometimes pretty okay. He definitely did well on Iron Fist. Maybe this’ll be good? Despite my prejudice against the very idea of pro-active covert ops superheroes, I mean.

MISTER TERRIFIC #1
Written by ERIC WALLACE
Art by ROGER ROBINSON
Cover by J.G. JONES
On sale SEPTEMBER 14 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The world’s third-smartest man – and one of its most eligible bachelors – uses his brains and fists against science gone mad in this new series from Eric Wallace (TITANS) and Roger Robinson!

Michael Holt is the head of a successful high-tech corporation and an institute that recruits and encourages the finest minds of the next generation to excel. As Mister Terrific he inhabits a world of amazement few others know exists, let alone can comprehend.

I talked myself into really wanting this, and then DC went and replaced the artist on the next few issues (which is crap, the series just started) and everyone I know who has read Eric Wallace comics reminded me that he’s writing one of DC’s dumbest books (perhaps #2–Outsiders is pretty atrocious) and that maybe Final Crisis: Ink wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

I hope this book is good.

O.M.A.C. #1
Written by DAN DIDIO and KEITH GIFFEN
Art and cover by KEITH GIFFEN and SCOTT KOBLISH
On sale SEPTEMBER 7 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The all-seeing Brother Eye satellite has unleashed a new beast upon the DC Universe in this smashing new series! Kevin Kho has become an unwilling participant in a war between Checkmate and Brother Eye as he is transformed into the One Machine Army Corp known only as O.M.A.C.!

Yeah, crap, I–so Didio is trash as a writer, right? We’re talking bad, not incomprehensible bad but “writes comics that aren’t worth reading” bad. Bad enough that I completely wrote off his pet series. But the thought of Keith Giffen drawing Kirby, which is sure to be great–yeah, you know what? Never mind. As much as I want to see Giffen’s Kirby, this is probably going to be awful. Sorry for making you read these sentences. Maybe they’ll publish it unlettered.

RED LANTERNS #1
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art and cover by ED BENES and ROB HUNTER
On sale SEPTEMBER 14 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
Atrocitus and his Red Lantern Corps return in their own series, battling against injustice in the most bloody ways imaginable!

Ed Benes is comics poison. I like Milligan, but this comic will be unreadable. I just wanted to remind you not to buy Ed Benes comics, no matter how tempted you may be.

There are others I might be open to trying. Maybe Levitz’s Legion will convince me to finally like that series (probably not, even Waid and Kitson couldn’t make me stick around). Flash will be pretty, I’m sure. Oh yeah, I like Mahmud Asrar, the artist on Supergirl, and that writing team is pretty solid. Simon Bisley is going to be drawing a bit of Deathstroke, so I’ll probably roll through for those issues. Nobody beats the Biz, right?

Right. I don’t even really know what people mean whey they say something is metal, but I bet that’s it.

I just don’t feel a driving need to check out anything past the ones I already want to buy, and that’s… that’s not good, is it? The rest of my list is basically “Would buy it if I got bored and heard good things about it from friends and if the price were cheaper” and “Would buy it if I got bored and somehow ran out of the other comics I read,” then.

But before this, I was buying exactly one DC Comics (Xombi) and now I’m buying four. That’s in addition to Hellblazer and American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest. So four definite and eight possibles on top of that? Probably a pretty good run for someone like me.

Anybody else want to talk out their New 52 interests?

If you’re reading this post, then it appears that I have no electricity due to the damage caused by Gregory Helms Irene. So I made this draft on Friday and hopefully it gets posted Sunday night like normal and maybe David Brothers edits it with stuff. Either way, I have panels from Was Taters and luis.

If I’ve lost power as feared, then please tell Eddie Brock I loved him.

American Vampire #18
Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque

Batman: Gates of Gotham #5
Scott Snyder, Kyle Higgins, Ryan Parrott, Graham Nolan and Trevor McCarthy

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