The Best of the Week in Comments and Reviews – 03/29/10

All of you wonderful and beautiful people come here to iFanboy.com every day to comment on the comic books issues and news and events of the day. Sometimes you're brilliant and funny. Sometimes you're smart and insightful. And sometimes you are wildly incoherent and wrong. Every week we are going to pick out the best comment from the previous seven days and honor it as the iFanboy Comment of the Week!

 

This week's iFanboy Comment of the Week goes to daccampo. In his column this week, Mike Romo ruminated on what it means to be a comic book collector as you get older and your life gets busier. How do your reading habits effect how you absorb and remember the stories found in the pages of these books that pile up in big stacks, week after week? And how much does the "Community of Wednesday" come into play in one's enjoyment of their books? It was really a great piece that everyone should check out.

daccampo's comment:

Excellent piece, as always, Mike. I think about this a lot too, y'know? i mean, I think back to how I read comics as a kid… savoring each issue, studying the art, trying to draw the art. The dialogue I remember is almost always the dialogue I read as a youth — which is why a large number of "claremont-isms" still find their way into my head upon occasion.

I had a box full of comics. Many of them had their covers torn off. It wasn't about amassing a pristine collection. It was about stacks of enjoyment, the wild abandon of newsprint fantasy.

Later, it became about the collection. Bags and boards. Alphabetization. Even, at one point, a database.

Now, I don't bother with the collection. I just read for pleasure. But… I consume much more than ever, and I don't re-rad things. I don't flip idly through books that I read a month prior. I've traded one tradition for another, and this one is more expensive and involves consuming a lot more new information. And I wonder if some stories are losing impact.

Kitty Pryde returned this week. A lot of folks loved it. That gave me pause because I had zipped through the book at lunch, and thought it was all right but nothing special. But maybe it was how I was reading it.

I totally agree with you on the points about graphic novels. The "novel" read does sit with me in a different way. It forces me to spend a lot of time with the characters, with the art. It's not the same as re-reading the same pages over and over, but it does force a deeper relationship with the story.

Huh. Now I am wondering if I need to change my habits. I *do* still get a certain joy from that Wednesday ritual, though. Watching the lists. Grabbing the books. Checking Twitter and iFanboy to see what others are saying about what I've read. Taken holistically, that's a ritual that I've come to value quite a bit, but… maybe I'm not savoring the stories as much because of it?

Yeesh. I didn't expect to write all of that. Thanks, Mike, for making me think. 😉

Congratulations, daccampo, for winning the iFanboy Comment of the Week! Make good comments, people, and you might be next!

 

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One of our favorite things at iFanboy is to watch people rush here to write User Reviews after reading their comics. We love seeing people excited about spreading the comic book love (or, in rare cases, the hate). Every week we are going to pick the best User Review from the previous week's worth of comics and honor it as the iFanboy User Review of the Week!

 

powerdad's review:

Angel Special: Lorne

Many years ago I was explaining, well, trying to explain to a non-comic book friend of mine how comic book characters like Batman always live in the current time period, never grow old, and never die. I was eager to lay-out the paradoxes this sort of story telling results in, but my friend really wasn't interested in where I was going; he wanted to examine the initial starting point. "Why can't they die? Why can't the stories for these characters come to an end?" I tried to explain why the companies would never let a cash cow like Batman, or Superman, or Spider-Man ever truly die. They might try to fool us with phony deaths, but in the end they would simply never die.  

"Again, why?" he asked.

"Because they just won't," I answered.

We were approaching this from very different standpoints. He looked at these characters and stories as a purely creative endeavor – and thus why shouldn't you complete the stories, and then move onto other characters in different situations. I, on the other hand, was viewing this from years of understanding "the rules" of comic books, and basically a marketing/sales reality of milking as much profit you can from your product, and any story creativity had to fit within these rules.

Of course, in real life people do die, and they will not return, no matter how much Sales wants them to. It's a hard, hard rule of this life, and these are the rules we have to be creative within.

On March 29, 2009, the actor Andy Hallett, who played the beloved character Lorne on the television show Angel, died from heart failure due in short to an infection and later various medical complications. Even though the show Angel had been off the air for many years, Andy's death was a hard blow to any who hoped to see him play the role of Lorne at least one more time (however that might have come about).

The one shot comic Angel Special: Lorne, subtitled Music of the Spheres, is both a tribute to Andy Hallett and Lorne, the character he helped breathe life into. The issue is broken up into three pieces: an original Angel story featuring prominently the character of Lorne written and illustrated by John Byrne, a short "illustrated limerick" (I don't know what else to call this) written by Brian Lynch and illustrated by John Byrne, and a remembrance of Andy written by his close friend and fellow actor, Mark Lutz, with many color and B&W photos of Andy and friends.

Both stories feature conclusions to the character of Lorne which I found touching. The first involves a threat which he is singularly capable of dealing with (and I mean SING-ualry capable), and the second involving a happy-go-lucky place anyone could call home.

But I don't really want to say these stories feature the true end to the Lorne character (no spoilers, please, plus these still are comics), but they do feel like the retirement of a sport player's number. The jersey is raise into the rafters, the number not to be used again, except when presented with a very special occasion. (I'm not a big sports fan, but I understand numbers can come out of retirement, usually with the permission of the original owner.)

In short, I enjoyed the issue immensely. Art, story, photos, and in memoriam were wonderful, sad, funny, fun, tear jerking, and deserving high honors. Knowledge of the Angel universe is not required, so you truly have no excuse, pick up a copy of this comic as soon as possible.

It should also be noted that John Byrne has stated on his web site "…I plan on donating my royalties to heart research, in Andy's honor…" (see http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=34672&PN=1&totPosts=20).

So your purchase will in part help fund heart research, besides just getting yourself a great comic.

Story: 5 – Excellent / Art: 5 – Excellent

 

Congratulations, powerdad, for winning the first iFanboy User Review of the Week! Make 'em good, people, and you might be next!