akamuu

November 28, 2011 8:11 pm Pick of the weeks like this are the reason I started checking this site religiously. It's easy to say "Man, Fantastic Four #600 was great." or " Wolverine And The X-Men is my favorite comic!" or "(insert event comic here) blew my mind!" But these are books I would probably pick up any way. Without Josh's "obscure & off the wall stuff" predilection, I might not have picked up Scalped. Without Ron, I may never have given Moon Knight a chance. And without Conor, I wouldn't have read....Ar....chie? Thanks for recommending this, Josh. I gave it a once over in the store, and with no info on it, didn't pick it up. I'll go back now and check it out.

December 6, 2010 3:14 pm I hope they hire Paul Montgomery to write for the second season because this synopsis was better thought out and paced than any episode from season one.

October 2, 2010 3:41 pm Tom Welling in a wig.

September 30, 2010 6:41 am Paul Jenkins.  Fluent in grief.

September 24, 2010 10:44 pm

Rats, somehow the the final phrase was omitted.  That last sentence should read  I suspect his announcement was mostly tongue in cheek as one can not use the pronoun "one" to describe one's self so shortly after one attacks the personal pronoun "I" without a bit of a wink.

 

And the review, it should be noted is not to be taken seriously.  (My actual review, which is less hyperbolic, but not any more positive, is here.)

September 24, 2010 10:32 pm

"This morning I woke up to discover that my copy of The Absolute New Frontier had toppled my entire trade paperback shelf, and had to spend an hour and a half reinforcing the shelf, and then reorganizing the trades (apart from Absolute New Frontier which I threw out my bedroom window.  Unfortunately, my landlord had shown up to mow the back lawn, and was just about to turn the mower on when he was hit in the head with said Absolute.  An ambulance arrived on scene pretty quickly, but because I live on a narrow street with sharp turns they were forced to leave the sirens on which was no good for my stress headache or my landlord's concussion.

 

The whole thing made me ten minutes late for work, where an irate Mark Millar fan screamed at me about how long he'd been anticipating picking up his copy of Nemesis #3, and how my being ten minutes late to open the store had ruined his month.  This was exacerbated when I informed him that we were sold out of the issue.

 

I had nearly calmed him down when my Nazi landlord called to let me know he was serving me with a Notice To Evict.  It has not been a good day.  But I was looking forward to reading today's new comics.

 

The first title I picked up was DC's Weird War Tales #1.  The first story in the collection is by noted homophobe Darwyn Cooke, who, surprise surprise, writes a violent pro-Hitler story.  I don't know how this guy keeps getting work.  Sure his art is ok, but his hateful analogues to The Oscar Wilde laws are, at best, insulting, at worst Hate Speech.

 

Story: 1/5, Art 2/5"

 

I think the statements in that review are random-adverbally important.  We now have context for the negative review.  We can dismiss the reviewer as a solatic (a person affected with periodic insanity in accordance with the sun), or else identify with h(im)(er).  I mean, who amongst us hasn't had a day like that?

 

Personally, I prefer context-intense reviews of books, be they comics, fiction, or a collection of essays about Vegan Architects With Armpit Fetishes.  They help understand the joy or vitriol that goes into reviews which, otherwise, are often just dry plot summaries with the occasional dismissive hyperbole.

 

I would, for instance, love to hear the story of what blogs Bendis was reading, and what kind of day he was having when he made the "it seems the more one sees the word 'I' in a review... the less that review matters." I suspect his announcement was mostly tongue in cheek as one can not use the pronoun "one" to describe one's self so shortly after one attacks the personal pronoun "I".

September 15, 2010 3:21 am I generally like Ellison.  This story, however, is not his best.

September 14, 2010 6:25 pm

That Green Goblin costume, and the introduction of Swiss Miss, horrifies me.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if this somehow manages to bring Broadway show fans into comics.  But I'd be happier if Bono & The Edge stuck to their bloated rock shows, and left Broadway to playwrites who can come up with better lyrics than that trite "fly into the sun" bullshit.   If the world needed a silver-agey musical based on Spider-Man, they should have let Stan Lee script it.

September 13, 2010 6:47 pm

@wallythegreenmonster: I'm guessing (based on the name and icon) you live in the city I work in.  I may very well be the guy behind the counter at your LCS.

"One man's Deadpool is another's Superman. " is a great slogan.

The slogan I use for our store to encourage people is "Available because you demanded politely requested it."

September 13, 2010 4:43 pm

Great article, as always. 

"In an age where every business is a global franchise staffed with disaffected kids, the comic shop is one of the few places left in America where you can form a personal connection. Everybody’s there because they love what they sell. They have to; there’s not enough money in it to be there for any other reason."  Amen.  The porkpie hat guys totally infuriate me.  Right before I started working for one of their competitors, I walked into a shop in search of X-Men trades.  I walked into the store and had no idea where to look (their store was arranged by an angry harbor seal who couldn't read and hated pictures...I'm reasonably certain she was the owner), so I asked the guy behind the counter where they kept their X-Men trades, and he rolled his eyes and went into the back room.  And, because I'm an optimistic idiot, I waited about five minutes for him to come out, thinking he was getting them from the back.  Instead, he rolled his eyes again and said "Are you still here?  Dude, fuck the X-Men."

I never went back.  But now I make it a point to never ever belittle someone's opinion on comics.  I will argue with them if they present their opinions as facts, but if someone comes in and raves about how much they love what Liefeld did with Captain America, who am I to mock their love of his big breasted, footless masterpiece?  I own the full run of Chuck Austen's X-Men, and I don't hate it.