This week I’m joined by only Space Jawa, who still loves him some Flashpoint tie-ins. For a while, I was just kind of okay with the two big Marvel/DC events. They weren’t hurting the regular books (well, I guess Flashpoint will in a few months) and they haven’t been offending me in any way. With their latest issues this week, I’m finally won over on both of them. Especially the Fear Itself scene my panel is from.
In non-comics news, I’m still at work for the upcoming Summerslam Countdown series, which will start up early August. Right now I only have 12 shows left to sit through. The good news is that I’ve endured Undertaker vs. Giant Gonzales already. The bad news is that I still have to endure Good Undertaker vs. Evil Undertaker.
Batman and Robin #25
Judd Winick, Greg Tocchini and Andy Smith
There’s this thing people do when they get bad news or see something horrible. It’s happened to you, and it’s definitely happened to me. Your unconscious mind registers it, but your conscious mind recognizes the danger inherent in what your unconscious mind is processing, so your brain switches gears. It tamps down that thought and pushes your brain in another direction. “Don’t pay too much attention to this. It will break you. Look away.”
This bit from Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder rings particularly true because of that fact. When you get those late night phone calls that make you sit straight up in bed and your mind takes a hard left away from the trauma–that’s what Dick Grayson is feeling right there. “No. Don’t go there. Not now.” He’s cognizant of the murder of his parents, he knows it happened, but he can’t let himself feel it.
Those thoughts, though, are hard to avoid for long. They creep around the outside of your mind, looking for a way in. It’s like the old adage about opportunity knocking, or the Bible verse that goes, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Ideas want in, memes must be acknowledged, and this type of idea doesn’t just knock. It wants to pick the lock and demand your attention. It’s slippery, hard to hold at bay, and at some point, it slips inside you and takes control, whether you want it to or not. It’s the ultimate thought, the only thought, and you can’t escape it.
And so it goes with Robin. He starts questioning everything that’s happening, the murder of his parents pushes its way to the forefront of his mind, and he tries to push it back again. But, no–the dam breaks. The tears begin to flood and every single thought in Dick Grayson’s brain turns to one: “Their brains splashed all over my feet!” His life is upside down, nothing makes sense, and he’s breaking.
Batman’s slap, and his actions up to this point, make sense in context. He’s trying to recruit Dick Grayson for his war, and if Grayson makes it all the way through the five stages of grief, he’ll forgive his enemies, rather than having the obsessive mind state that’s required to be a Batman. Forgiveness leads to peace, and the Batfamily can never, ever know peace. That’s not how they’re wired.
The fast-paced, high-impact chase is Batman’s way of fast-forwarding Grayson’s recovery from his parents’ murder. He needs Grayson distracted until the pain fades away, leaving just the anger. Batman is sure of his choice, though he recognizes the pain he’s causing. But, he believes that the mission–whether that mission is protecting Gotham or avenging his parents or defending the innocent is still unclear–takes priority over any single individual’s pain. Gotham needs Batman, and Batman needs Grayson because Batman needs an army to get the job done. So: distract, distract, distract until the little boy is in the shape you need him to be in, no matter how much of a monster it makes you.
Later, Batman will realize he went about this in the wrongest possible way. This is how Bruce Wayne became Batman, but it doesn’t have to be how everyone joins his army. For now, though, it works. He explains the deal to Grayson in a rare moment of softness, and that does the trick.
Grayson’s thoughts return to his parents. He needs guidance and he needs his parents, but that’s all gone now. His safety net is gone, he’s been thrust into a world that should be restricted to adults, and his only guide is a man who is so sure of his convictions that he’d kidnap a child. Despite the situation, Grayson needs to know one thing: who killed his parents?
He collapses again, just for a moment, and then makes a choice. “Yes, sir. I’ll be brave.” He’s going to see this through.
The choice is the difference between Batman and Robin. Batman was thrust into this world, for whatever reason. Robin could have had a normal life. Batman was meant to be.
That choice is the birth of Robin. He chooses justice over grief. It’s the birth, but not the maturation. That comes later, when Batman’s hard heart goes soft and he realizes what he’s done to a twelve-year old child. All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder is explicitly about the humanization of Bruce Wayne due to the influence of Dick Grayson.
Grant Morrison and Andy Clarke must have liked this idea of a choice being central to Robin. In Batman & Robin, Talia rejects her son. He chooses justice over terrorism, his father over his mother–and make no mistake, the idea of “Batman” is inextricably and exclusively tied to Bruce Wayne, no matter who wears the cowl–and he too pauses, thinks, and accepts his fate. This is the moment Damian becomes Robin, more so than anywhere else in that series.
It’s so weird to see this article come full circle. As I said long ago in the prologue, We Care a Lot gained its genesis in a series of posts in a forum that no longer exists. David Brothers was new to blogging and asked me to join him many years ago, citing that I’d be able to repost my Venom essays, finish them and write junk like it. I may have done that latter part, but I never could get back into writing about Venom. At the time, the character I once loved and saw things in that few else ever did had become a dummy used in various stories that for the most part weren’t very good. Unlike the “weren’t very good” stories from the 90’s, these stories actually went and destroyed my interest in him.
Look how far everything’s come since then. As Venom, Mac Gargan became a major star in the Marvel Universe for quite a while, got his own miniseries and was a wheel in one of Marvel’s top selling books at the time. Now Venom is worn by Flash Thompson and stars in his own comic that has definite staying power (I was going to say that it has legs, but, well…). Eddie Brock has been reborn in a new form with appearances in Spider-Man’s main comic here and there, as well as an upcoming Venom crossover. Carnage has come back from the afterlife with a couple miniseries that make the character kind of sort of worth reading. Not only did his return give us yet another symbiote hero character who will fall off the face of the Earth, but a preview of Carnage USA suggested that there’d be some kind of task force made of obscure symbiote characters only remembered by me, the people who’ve read these articles and maybe six other people. I can only hope.
The whole Venom Family is thriving and comics have evolved in the way that modern writers have a better grasp on what to do with these guys. I’ve seen a lot of criticism on Dan Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man, but I can’t fault him on his use of Anti-Venom. The dude just plain gets it. Or he at least gets what I get.
I suppose with Venom, my enjoyment of the character has been almost defining for me. I know some people online might consider me “the Venom guy”, for better or worse. I never set out to make readers fully agree with my delight with the character/concept, but I at least wanted to make them understand where I was coming from. I hope that I’ve at least succeeded in that.
He’s a Silver Age concept painted with a 90’s extreme paintbrush. Look at the whole symbiote idea. Tell me that that isn’t a Silver Age idea that nobody got around to using until they were decades too late. It’s a plot device that writers continue to pull new tricks out of their asses for (might I remind you that symbiotes can kill people through the internet?). Yet in the end, it’s Eddie Brock who anchors it all. I’m not one of those fanboys who wants him to be Venom again because, “That’s the only way it can be.” No. I’d rather he be Anti-Venom forever.
When done right, Eddie is someone that writers have yet to scratch the surface of. He isn’t like the Punisher. He may kill and justify it, but he isn’t dead inside. In fact, he’s more optimistic about what he does than most superheroes in their saner exploits. He thinks he’s right and sometimes he is, but he’s occasionally capable of understanding that he’s wrong and can indeed agree with logic every once and a while.
Over the years, Venom has been treated like the redheaded stepchild of Marvel. Tossed around from writer to writer and making appearances that treat him as more of a money-making accessory than an actual character. He’s been in some good stories, he’s been in a lot of bad stories and he’s been in a few incredibly terrible stories. I recognize that. I’m not blind.
The Damon Albarn Appreciation Society is an ongoing series of observations, conversations, and thoughts about music. Here’s the eighth, which I thought would be about the different ways people make songs about places, but instead changes tracks partway through. C’est la vie.
I took a trip back home in May, and a near-lethal dose of melancholy and shattered nostalgia left me thinking about how we relate to places, whether literally or figuratively. Where’s home? Where’s far? Is it a state of mind or familiar wallpaper? The usual rigmarole.
There’s a couple different ways to make songs about places, near as I can tell. You can do the literal thing, where you explain what the place is all about, who lives there, or why people should care. The other option is to make a song about what it’s like to be from somewhere. You’ve got to put your soul on wax for that one, I think.
Though now that I write that out, those two things are the same thing, aren’t they? I’ve been mulling this piece over for a few days now, and was going to make that division the heart of the post. But nah, talking about a place has to involve what it’s like to be from that place, consciously or otherwise. Body language, word choice, even what you choose to describe and leave out all build a certain mental image, and it isn’t an unbiased one. I’d describe Georgia in terms I wouldn’t use for San Francisco, due to how I feel about the city and how I feel about back home.
This was going to be about music, not me. Switching gears.
The sound people choose to use when making songs about places is always interesting. “Amarillo,” off Gorillaz’ The Fall, is this slow, melancholy tune, with a rushing wind and hollow sound. It’s the music that plays when you’re driving alone down a highway in the dark, and the lyrics are about being alone and broken. It’s sad, and a very specific type of sad. I’ve never been to Amarillo, TX, but maybe that’s what life is like down there. I imagine that’s how Albarn felt, or maybe how it struck him, at least.
Gil Scott-Heron’s “New York Is Killing Me”–I wrote something on this for Tucker a while back, here’s a quote:
“New York is Killing Me” is everything and nothing all at once. The beat is sparse, with a deep drum coming in over some rapid fire snaps and a brief acoustic guitar, but it’s incredible. Gil Scott-Heron is from an older tradition than rap, but tell me that this beat doesn’t sound like a descendent of The Neptunes’ sublime “Grindin.” Throw Gil Scott’s gravelly, aged voice on top of it and you’ve got something that sits in the blues range. And when the backing vocals come in for “Lord have mercy on me,” and you’re looking at gospel. The positively mournful “I need to be back home” toward the end? That’s soul. Add in the entire point of the song, which is that the city is an unfriendly, cruel place and sometimes you’ve gotta return to the country, and you’ve got a song that’s black history spread over the course of four minutes and thirty seconds.
This is a funked out blues song, like the story you tell about a break-up to your friends with a smile on your face. It’s been long enough to be a story you can tell at a party without it being a whole thing, but not quite long enough. It wavers, the smile does. That moan at the bottom of certain lines, the “I need to be back home,” all of that is regret. You’ve got to leave where you’re from because it’s the healthy thing to do.
I like the differences between Atmosphere’s “Los Angeles” and Tupac’s “To Live and Die In LA.” Slug’s vision of LA is a brief burst of sights and sounds. His “I love it” at the end is true, but it sounds a little hollow, like when people say they love a restaurant with a sandwich they like or something. He likes it, but he’s not afraid to mock it. Tupac’s feels different. He has the advantage of a smooth track on par with “Summertime in the LBC” (another good song about a city, and perfect for cookouts) backing him, and he takes you on a tour of LA and everything he loves and hates about the city. I sorta feel like there’s two LAs. I know a gang of people who hate LA, but the ones that live there seem to like it well enough. It’s one of my favorite places, and I try to visit at least once a year to see friends. Atmosphere’s “Los Angeles” seems like it’s about the LA that’s known for scandal and artifice, while Pac’s is more personal, like an insider dropping knowledge on someone new.
Black Star’s “Respiration” is theoretically about New York (BROOKLYN!) and Chicago, but it’s universal. It’s what I think of when I think of what cities are like. They’re claustrophobic and alive, and there’s no place better on Earth.
Big Boi’s “West Savannah” and Scarface’s “On My Block” fill the same niche in my head. Both of them hit you with rapid-fire details. “West Savannah” may be more biography than travelogue, but the picture it paints is vivid enough to create a picture of a young Antwan Andre Patton chilling on street corners as a kid. He breaks down the music, the spectacle, the gold teeth, even how folks drive their cars. Face’s “On My Block” hammers you with details over his three verses, and I like that he’s using the first person plural. It’s a song about a group of people, the people Scarface came up with and live in his city, instead of one person’s point of view. (Big Boi’s line “You might call us country, but we’s only Southern” is killer. There’s so much personality in that, both Big’s and the city’s, and really, Georgia’s.)
Anthony Hamilton’s “Comin’ From Where I’m From” isn’t about a specific place, exactly, but it is about this nebulous idea of home. It’s a sad song about starting in last place, basically, and never managing to catch up. Like, the “where I’m from” that Hamilton is talking about has gravity, and that gravity is inescapable. His father bounced early, but haunts his life, get it? Home isn’t just four walls and a bed. It’s a period of time, or a foundation for the future.
Maybe I’m just talking out loud since what I thought was a good point deflated itself as soon as I crystalized it into words, but there’s something about songs about places and, more specifically, home that I can’t get out of my head.
Bobsy: So obviously you can’t walk down the high street without seeing someone in a Batman t-shirt or a Superman t-shirt , but why are there no domino masks? Why no capes? Why no trunks on the outside? What is it that’s topping the fashion world from being hungry enough to go that extra mile?
Grant: I don’t know, because I thought super-fashion would look more like Zenith: Fashion clothes but with a little mask on. But that hasn’t happened. It’s just really hard to say where all this is going. The Internet offers up the idea that everyone is a superhero, every life story is a saga, everyone has a style, every love story is a magnificent adventure. We’ve all got our pages of our likes and dislikes. There’s osmething about the symbol of the superhero and what it represents… Clearly something is happening. People are trying to unite the imaginary and the real in a way using the Internet, so we might yet see the masks.
I just like the idea of this, how the internet is infecting real life with the idea that everyone is a superhero and important. Superhero as seductive meme, right?
I also like how it contrasts with this from Morrison’s DisInfo speech from around 2000:
“Beyond that, I find that we’re deluding ourselves in the worst way of all by believing in the individual. Stay with me on this. Kafka, Orwell, Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, everyone told us the individual is the most important thing you can be. Everyone is fucking quirky these days. Every shit in the window of MTV is quirky. Everyone’s cool, everyone’s smart… it’s not true.”
SW: When you talk about the idea of comics that haven’t been done – that’s kind of hard to actually achieve. Branching out of the moves you know work , and the idea that everything has been done – is it possible to actually make something new in comics? Not just in the “webcomics are the future” way, but just in paper comics – from page layouts to subject matter – is it possible to keep finding new ground?
BG: I can’t say with certainty what has and hasn’t been done since there’s so much unseen out there but there’s a hell of a lot that I’ve never seen tried in comics.
Emily Carrol just put out a set of zines with each one showing one page moments from a different member of a family’s life leading up to a big fire. and you get different sides and different clues deepening on which zine you read. Or there’s that Pat McEwan short in the back of Weasle #1 where each panel is a room and you don’t read left to right — you follow individual characters. I think that idea could be pushed even farther. — you could combine both those ideas and have choose your own adventures that read what direction the reader chooses to look and have it jump books or have pages fold out like posters in it.
I had this idea for a book that starts as a Scott McCloud how to draw comics or how to do perspective or draw manga book– hosted by a guy and his beautiful assistant. 3 chapters in to a standard how book to the assistant is found dead and then the learning comics part gets dropped and it switches to a murder mystery.
Or like, I’ve never seen a serious comic showing the life cycle of a fungus
Even if stories come from the old roots I think doing them in new ways creates something bigger than just the root idea. plus as a reader or an artist I feel like you have to have hope for undiscovered country. You can’t be an explorer that already expects every mountain to have a flag planted on it– there are still mountains on mars.
Longer quote than I wanted to post, but I wanted to get Sean’s question in there, too. There’s plenty more to read, including a great bonus round.
“There are still mountains are mars” is so good, because it then makes you wonder why so many comics are content with climbing Everest over and over again at best. Other than Morrison’s Batman & Robin (specifically the Irving/Stewart/Quitely trinity), which has definitely had its share of crap art, are there any visually challenging major books at Marvel or DC? Brian Bendis got Chris Bachalo for an Avengers comic and wasted him on a bunch of talking heads. Sure, Bachalo draws great heads, but is that really what you want him to do? I mean… that’s like getting Brendan McCarthy to draw your crime noir story, or Jack Kirby to do an adaptation of High & Low. I mean, sure, it’d look nice, but seriously: who cares? Who wants that? Work to these people’s strengths and show us something new instead of throwing all these square pegs into round holes. Figure out a new way to do talking heads or Batman standing on a gargoyle or Daredevil crying about his crappy life like a big fat baby on a rooftop in the rain.
Michael’s entire supporting cast will be new. One of the most important figures in his life is ALEEKA OKAFUR. Black and brilliant, Aleeka keeps Michael on the straight and narrow while running a billion dollar corporation, Holt Industries. When Michael makes mistakes and everyone else is afraid to speak up, she’ll be the one who tells it like it is. She’s the “heart” to Michael’s “head” when it comes to business affairs, and together they make quite a team. Another new character I’m excited about is JAMAAL, a sixteen-year-old intern at Holt Industries, who also just happens to have an I.Q. of 192. Needless to say, Michael sees a lot of himself when he was a boy in Jamaal, which makes Jamaal’s life really tough, really fast. Yes, he might be a genius, but Jamaal still has a lot of growing up to do. The problem is that Michael often forgets this fact.
I like the sound of Mr. Terrific the more I hear about it, and Eric Wallace acquits himself well in this interview, some bizarre phrasing featuring the word “diverse” aside. I mean, you’ve got a cape comic with a high tech angle, a supersmart protagonist who’s going to be going on dates, and what sounds like an actual supporting cast, a rare creature in modern cape comics. A black lady, too! How rare is THAT, I ask you?
The setup, what little info we’ve been given thus far, puts me in mind of McDuffie and Cowan’s Hardware, which in turn made me realize that Hardware and Terrific are basically perfect rivals. Brilliant and idealistic vs Brilliant and gruff? Easy conflict right there. Wallace teases a surprise cameo in issue one, and it’s probably Steel, but Hardware would be fun, too.
Not to mention their approaches to technology. Holt always struck me as a soft, sensitive dude–he can speak to electronics and finesse his way to innovation. He’s got a subtle touch, like a three pointer with half a second left, nothing but net. Hardware is rougher, with armor that looks cobbled together and is clearly a weapon. You turn the corner and run into Hardware and you aren’t even scared. You’re in awe, and then you’re scared when you realize exactly how many different ways he has to kill you. Hardware is that slam dunk that ends the game and posterizes somebody for eternity.
Like, basically, after you and your crew go up against Hardware, your grandkids would come at you like “I saw that picture of the time you got away from Hardware, granddad, and that’s what you call winning?”
“I’d hate to see what you call losing.”
Mr Terrific looks good, though. DC just needs to tighten up its PR game.
Gavok note: For the past year or so in my This Week in Panels series, panels for Ultimate Spider-Man have been supplied every month by regular reader Michael Stangeland, otherwise known asSpace Jawa. With Ultimate Peter Parker’s corpse still a bit fresh, Jawa wanted to touch on his perspective of the mini-event. Since we’re always open to reader guest articles, I was more than happy to oblige.
I’ll admit right off the bat that when I first heard about Bendis’ The Death of Spider-Man story arc, I was concerned. Initially, it was worry about the titular character actually biting it, in spite of how he’s been around since the launch of Marvel’s Ultimate line-up. So it’s entirely possible that my reaction to how the story actually went there and did what’s previously only been done in a few dozen different issues of What-If?.
However, I’d also like to be able to think that I’m not that close-minded. After all, I was willing to see the entirety of the story arc through before passing final judgment, and I recognize that sometimes, character death is for the best, and a lot of great things can come out of it. After all, look at what Brubaker did with killing off Steve Rogers (before he brought him back, of course).
And for a world to truly move forwards, sometimes the characters we know and love have to move on so the next generation of great characters can take their turn in the spotlight and provide new story opportunities. When I first read Lord of the Rings back when I was in grade school, my gut reaction was to be disappointed that Bilbo wouldn’t be the main character again. Fortunately, I moved past that quickly enough and was able to get through the entirety of JRR Tolkien’s masterpiece.
So I’m hoping that I’m being honest with myself that the real reason for my distaste for the whole Death of Spider-Man arc is truly in reaction to how it was carried out rather than the end result. If it looks otherwise after I’ve said my piece, I encourage you to call me out on it.
I wish I could say that the use of “proudly” wasn’t meant to be serious.
The first major problem with Death of Spider-Man shows up in the very first three pages of the story. The major driving force behind Ultimate Pete’s death is that Norman Osborn is back from the dead. Of course, characters coming back from the dead isn’t anything that comics are unfamiliar with.
Problem is, this is Marvel’s Ultimate Comics universe. And if I’m not mistaken, one of the major points that has been made about the UC is that when characters die, they stay dead. Something that brings it even closer to being set in the “real world” than the classic 616 universe.
-In a weird funk, like I can’t produce like I usually do. It’s been there before the Akira posts, and is still here now. Working my way through it. Might spend some time talking about things other than comics this week, too.
–
-Does the blink tag still work? That should be blinking.
-Two posts? Cripes. The nice thing about these posts is that it lets me see exactly how much I’m writing elsewhere, compare that to what I’m doing here, and then attempt to adjust.
-Enough talking about writing, read this:
something i like
I bought the first issue of James Stokoe’s Orc Stain way back in December. I finally read it earlier today. Pathetic, right? I have plenty of excuses, if you’d like to hear them.
All my friends like Orc Stain. I like Orc Stain, at least what I’ve seen around online. Stokoe has drawn some stuff that blew my mind, most particularly the Spider-‘Nam thing here (brief sidebar: the tone is perfect for both that type of story and Spider-Man, who remains my favorite superhero, even if I haven’t actually liked a Spider-Man comic in ages. I would personally put tens of dollars in Stokoe’s pocket if it meant he’d do an entire story, but I’m also content just seeing him noodle around with the idea. briefer sidebar: it’s also a creepy, unsettling Spidey, just like Ditko’s best.). I just never sat down and read it for whatever reason, even after having bought it.
I like a lot of different things in it. The world-building is pretty smooth, the characters are interesting, I wanted to read more by the end of the first issue, blah blah blah. It’s a good comic, right? Y’all know what goes into good comics. I don’t need to tell you that. I will say that I’m buying 2-6 once I finish this post, so, y’know, there’s that.
Okay, colors in comics. Specifically, colors in mainstream books, which Orc Stain isn’t, really. The colors tend toward realism, rather than expressionism. Colors are meant to represent what the characters or whatever would actually look like in real life, rather than a mood or tone. There are a few exceptions–I like Bettie Breitweiser’s colors on Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman’s Hulk, Frazer Irving is the king of “this isn’t real life, so stop pretending” coloring right now–but by and large, if you flip open an adventure comic right now? You’re looking at colors that are meant to evoke real life.
This isn’t a bad thing, exactly. It’s just a thing that I noticed. Noticing it (probably after reading some Frazer Irving book or getting mad at how Frank D’Armata colors murder the work of artists or noticing how John Rauch’s work on New Mutants and Pete Pantazis’s colors on Justice League were washed out and bright, like a police spotlight focusing on your friends) made me start paying attention to palettes in comics and how they can be used for good, rather than realism.
Orc Stain‘s palette is interesting. If I had to put a word, or words, on it, I’d say that the palette is… sickly and visceral, like a half-healed wound. It’s evocative of guts and organs–no, not organs. It’s evocative of guts and hearts. The purples, reds, and blues on this spread remind me of a beating heart, and the dominance of the purple and blue puts me in mind of a heart that’s straining to beat.
(Also? It reminds me of tentacle porn.)
And it fits. It’s a war scene, the orcs are a blight on the land… when you look at the world of Orc Stain, you’re looking at a gaping wound. When you look at the Orc Tzar, with his bright red lips and shock of green atop his head, you’re looking at poison.
Scene two.
Blue fading into… what is that, orangish brown? in the sky. Blue and tan on the rocks. Translucent white clouds. The striation and layers on the rock faces, continuing the queasy organic horror point, looks like the same stuff on your finger nails, doesn’t it? The orcs are bluish/purplish, brighter than the rocks, with green highlights. Love nymphs are bright blue, like the sky.
What gets me most is that grass. It’s this bright green, the sort of green that comes from either Photoshop, artificial grass, or a fleet of yard workers pulling a week of overtime. Growing up, I never saw grass like that. The sun baked the grass in Georgia to a darker green. Brighter than pine needles, darker than flowers. This color is snot green–well, cartoon snot green. It’s bright and shocking. For us, anyway–it’s natural there.
I like looking at Orc Stain, and the palette is a big part of that. It’s not trying to show me a vision of real life like Dave Stewart did a great job of doing over on Conan with Cary Nord. That palette was rugged and raw, like Conan himself, but was still some measure of realistic. There’s no reason for Orc Stain‘s world to look like the Earth, is there? Orc Stain is a monster comic, and it looks like someone took the 1931 Frankenstein and put it through a Technicolor blender.
-Do y’all read regular books, too?
-I mean the kind without any pictures?
-Yeah, us too.
-So this time, we’re talking about regular books.
-What we liked as kids.
-What we like as adults.
-And, hopefully, why we like what we like.
-Tell you what: I learned a whole lot about books meant for young girls during this show.
-I didn’t even know that Anne of Green Gables was the first of a series.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-Here comes a new challenger!
-See you, space cowboy!
Welcome to yet another week of panels. As we race towards Week 100 (no idea what I should do, if anything, for that week), I’m joined by the usual crew of David Brothers, Was Taters and Space Jawa.
The important thing is that we just had a week where we got a Venom comic, an Anti-Venom comic, Batman Inc and a prequel to the badass Marvel Universe vs. the Punisher. It made me go from this:
To THIS:
Sorry about that. I’ve been watching an excessive amount of Summerslams from throughout the years in preparation for next month’s Summerslam Countdown article, so I have grappling on the mind.
Amazing Spider-Man #664
Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Max Fiumara
Batman Incorporated #7
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham
