A good variety of panels this week. Granted, it may not be the greatest thing that I’ve been reading Clone Saga out of pure nostalgia mixed with curiosity, but that’s still better than hermanos reading Jeph Loeb’s Hulk for whatever damn reason.
Amazing Spider-Man #613
Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta
Arkham Reborn #2
David Hine and Jeremy Huan
“When I speak, respond with the first word you think of. One.”
“Two.”
“Life.”
“Two.”
“Death.”
“Two.”
“Murder.”
“Happens.”
— Dr. Bruce Wayne and Two-Face from Elseworlds: The Batman of Arkham
For the past month, graphic novels have been doing quite well at the Barnes and Noble where I work. Sure, the Iron Man, Hulk and Hellboy stuff were doing fairly well over the course of the summer, but once Dark Knight arrived, everything flew off the shelves. I was put in charge of ordering in just about anything Batman-related that would sell. I mainly went with anything Joker and/or Two-Face themed. Surprisingly, Dark Knight Returns sold out early to the point that all of the warehouses were out of it. Great foresight there, guys.
Joker stuff sells like crazy, especially Killing Joke. Even the hastily scrapped-together biography we got on Heath Ledger has been taking off. Two-Face stuff, on the other hand, has been eating it. Nobody cares about Harvey, sad to say.
I did a lot of purchasing at the NYCC. Oh man, did I. Curious? Here’s the list of what I came home with that was new, not counting magazines (Wizard with Claire and Nikki from Heroes on the cover, UVC Magazine) and sketches.
40 oz Collection – Jim Mahfood
Ares: God of War – Mike Oeming/Travel Foreman
Batgirl: Destruction’s Daughter
Blokhedz
The Blvd Sketchbook volume 2.0 – John Paul Leon/Trevor Goring/Tommy Lee Edwards/Sean Chen/Bernard Chang
Diesel Sweeties: Pocket Sweeties Volume One – R Stevens
Diesel Sweeties: How I Blew My Thursday Night – R Stevens
DMZ v2: Body of a Journalist – Brian Wood/Riccardo Burchielli
Firestorm: The Nuclear Man: Reborn – Stuart Moore/Jamal Igle
The Five Fists of Science – Matt Fraction/Steven Sanders
Freddie E Williams II Sketchbook
Ghost Rider – Howard Mackie/Javier Saltares/Mark Texeira
Goats – Contains One Space Battle – Jonathan Rosenberg
Goats – A Tale of Two Comics – Jonathan Rosenberg
Grant Morrison: The Early Years – Timothy Callahan
JLA/Avengers – Kurt Busiek/George Perez
Justice League: A New Beginning – Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire
Kabuki Metamorphosis HC – David Mack
Khary Randolph Sketchbook
Modern Masters v3: Bruce Timm
Modern Masters v6: Arthur Adams
Modern Masters v8: Walter Simonson
Modern Masters v9: Mike Wieringo
Modern Masters v10: Kevin Maguire
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster v7
Nat Turner Encore Edition – Kyle Baker
One Page Filler Man – Jim Mahfood
Project Romantic – Various
Puttin’ the Backbone Back – Jim Mahfood
Runaways HC v2 – Brian K Vaughan/Adrian Alphona/Takeshi Miyazawa
Wigu: The Bravest Boy in the World – Jeffrey Rowland
Ouch, my wallet. Cons are bloody expensive.
I’ve already read Blokhedz, and a review on that is forthcoming. That Ghost Rider trade is the first seven or eight issues of the series that introduced Danny Ketch, and I bought it because I either have bad taste in comics or am a complete and utter masochist. Or maybe it’s good, I dunno. Kabuki: Metamorphosis rounds out my Kabuki collection, which is a good thing.
The Grant Morrison volume is a lit-crit look at Zenith, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and Arkham Asylum. Yes! It also includes an interview with The God of All Comics in the back about the book and his work.
I got a little more superheroic stuff than I really wanted to. I’m not only a superhero reader. At least two fifths, and sometimes even three fifths, of my top five are non-supers. (100 Bullets, Kabuki, Stray Bullets.) (I also like bullets, I guess). Still, seven out of thirty-one ain’t bad, though the Modern Masters volumes technically aren’t comics. I also haven’t read a lot of this stuff, or haven’t read it in years at the very least. It’s probably 85-90% new content to me.
Here’s the kicker: I’m planning on reviewing all these books. Yeah, that’s right. It may be a grouped review, it may be a single review, but I want to put my thoughts out there about all of them, excepting only the Modern Masters because those are awesome by default, and the sketchbooks, because they aren’t exactly reviewable, save for the one by The Blvd.
I’ve also got the PC demo of the Marvel Trading Card game to look at, as well as a free copy of the Marvel Comic Book Creator software. Should be an interesting few weeks!
“I am not what I was before,” the silence says. “I am anger, I am madness, I am the spider. And God help you if you get in my way.”
This is gonna be a long one. Get a sandwich, come back, get reading.
Even moreso than the X-Men and Fantastic Four, Spidey is Marvel’s flagship character. He’s their everyman. Reed Richards is a super genius who has enough game to woo Susan Storm and convince her, her brother, and Ben Grimm that stealing a spaceship to go into outer space is a good idea. The X-Men are a bunch of freaks and outcasts with perfect bodies, and nobody likes the Avengers.
Don’t even get me started on those freaking Avengers, all right?
Spidey is the guy that every relates to and loves. He’s probably the most human out of Marvel’s big characters. He’s had girl trouble, family drama, tragedy, and upswings. He’s led a real life and ended up marrying a wonderful girl. He’s easy to relate to. He’s the guy that we’re supposed to identify with when tough choices come up. His role in Civil War, at least outside of the main (crappy) miniseries, shows this. He is us. His set of experiences are pretty much universal, except for that whole crime-fighting thing. Let’s look at that. The crime-fighting, I mean.
Spidey is a jokester. He’s constantly cracking wise. It’s been pretty well-established that jokes are his way of both coping with the incredible danger he finds himself in every day and throwing villains off balance. I mean, seriously, I can barely stay calm when some jerk is telling me unfunny jokes, imagine if some guy were telling jokes and punching you. Disorienting for sure. The joking is coping because it allows him to maintain control of a sick situation. It takes his mind off the fact that Carnage is about to murder a schoolbus full of children. It lets him focus.
Spidey also believes in the innate goodness of man. I’m reminded of the scene in “Return of the Green Goblin” where he sits down and just has a heart-to-heart with Norman Osborn about his life, their relationship, and Gwen Stacy. He remarks that Norman can never win because Gwen will always be greater than he is. Her smile and her spirit will always overpower Norman’s hate and crazy. Norman killed her, but her memory defeats him. In his heart, Peter believes that almost everyone can be rehabilitated. Evil exists, but it has nothing at all on good. Good will win out in the end, because that is the way it is. That is the way it has to be. Right?
What happens, though, when you push him to the edge? Not in a battle, I mean. When battles get serious, Peter gets desperate. What happens when you make Peter Parker genuinely angry? What happens when he gets close to that breaking point, or possibly just past it?
What happens when the jokes stop?
Read the rest of this entry �
