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Everything Must Go!

Well, not everything. But a lot of the really good stuff ABSOLUTELY MUST GO!!

Here's the situation: my current comic book collection, which I have been curating for lo, these last 30-odd years, is now 32 boxes strong and taking up too much space in my house. This is no longer bringing me joy. I have passed along to my kids what they've shown an interest in, and I have purchased as trades the arcs to which I want quick access.  I have cherry-picked some stuff that has emotional value to me, and now... well, it's time for someone else to enjoy the rest. Lying within the boxes, there's a raft of good stuff, some of which is listed below.

I am meticulous. Most everything is alpha-numeric, and it's all cataloged at this link. Everything is bagged and acid-free boarded, and has been taped shut and away from smoke virtually its whole life. There are many complete series and lots of unique stuff. Everything's in decent shape - most stuff is Near Mint.

The Big Two - Marvel & DC are heavily represented, but there's lots of random indie stuff in here, too, and while the late 80s to early 2000s is the focus, there's quite a bit of the older stuff here, too.

I need your help: Spread the word far and wide to those who will appreciate this. eBay's not for me; it's a bloodless community of people who want me to ship like Amazon: free and within 2 days. I'm not going to break it up and do that. Craigslist is super-local, and the inquiries I'm getting all sound like someone wants to kill me and take my essence. I don't want to turn my kitchen into a UPS center or invite a pack of inquisitive strangers to my house. I will, on the other hand, drive the whole collection to someone who wants the whole thing. I will load 32 longboxes into a van and bring them to someone who can get something out of them. We'll have a beer and talk comics. Please take a look, spread the word, find me a buyer. Contact me for prices not listed, or for a lump sum price.

Some of the rare stuff:

first appearance of X-23 (female Wolverine) - NYX #3 - $430 (NYX #4 is $55)
first appearance of Venom - Amazing Spider-Man #300 - $375 (#298 is $60)
first appearance of Deadpool - New Mutants #98 - $330
first appearance of Bullseye - Daredevil #131 - $220
Captain Marvel #34 (Nitro) - $100
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 #1 - $50
Marvel Spotlight #32 (first Spider-Woman) - $60
Truth: Red, White & Black: $15
Alias #1 (first Jessica Jones) - $80 (get whole series for $225)
Batman Vol. 2 #1 - $100
Batman: The Killing Joke (1st print) - $80
Flash #197 (Professor Zoom) - $80
Omega Men #3 (first Lobo) - $60
run of Uncanny X-Men (crucial stuff) from 123 to 140: $880 total!

Some of the Runs (in the 32 longboxes):

Watchmen complete 1-12
V for Vendetta complete 1-10
Lots of Midnight Sons-era Ghost Rider, Morbius, Blade
tons of Wolverine (many limiteds and signed stuff)
lots of DC/Vertigo stuff
Many things from CrossGen (defunct company)
Green Arrow from just after Kevin Smith
Daredevil reboot from 2000s
lots of Captain America & Fantastic Four: years long runs of each
plenty of Avengers (and lots of their limited series)
Marvel's Annihilation & Annihilation: Conquest events in TOTAL (Thanos, Guardians, Nova, Annihilus): w/o these, there's no GotG movies...
lots of Hellblazer, focused on Ennis, Ellis, and anybody else worth a damn
Spawn (1st 25 issues)
random issues of Preacher and Transmetropolitan
Sam & Twitch (all of it - Spawn spin-off)
Planetary - first 18 issues
The Authority - first 24 issues
lots of Spidey; Death of Jean DeWolff, all of Kraven's Last Hunt, Web of Spider-Man, etc.
lots of X-titles; Morrison's whole run, Whedon's run, all of the Claremont/Byrne, Jim Lee, etc.
Superman: All of the Death of Superman, the pretenders, Doomsday limited, Birthright limited, Red Son, Man of Steel
Sporadic Kyle Rayner Green Lantern (but a couple of complete limited series)
Terry Moore's Echo - the first 20 or so
DC's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time
DC's weekly series "52" - all of it

The Mall in Your Mind

"I'd like to be a mall."

"Really? And have people going in and out of you all day?"

This is the scintillating back and forth that can ensue when you're on your 6th day together, with very few breaks away, lots (for us) snow on the ground, no school, and minds wandering deprived across landscapes of disconnected weirdness. So, if you were a mall - what would you have in your Food Court?

I would have a Petro's. I can only say this now because I have spent a fucking half hour looking up various permutations of "Chili Cup Mall" and thinking that they were a defunct chain. They aren't, and I am happy. I was describing this to my kids, everything from the "you could carry this thing around the mall like a street taco" to the diagram you see at left, to the magical slurry of chili goodness and saturated corn chips that was left over at the bottom of the cup when you got close to done - man, that is a vivid childhood sense memory. I can only assume (based upon where they are located) that this was a field trip gastronomic adventure experience.

Next to Petro's, I would have an Orange Julius. Orange fucking Julius, man, with powdered egg whites, and they mixed that shit right in front of you, and there were little ice crystals on top of the drink that bumped up against the lid and crackled in the foam. And I hope that they put powdered egg whites in there, but I bet they don't, I bet it's EGG CHEATERS or something like that, just like they didn't used to advertise "GF" on the Petro's sign, and I don't think they used to have pasta/macaroni, either. Yankee tourists.

Near that would undoubtedly be a soft pretzel place, a Chinese restaurant with fucked up name owned by Chinese people, and a Noodles & Co., because we don't really have that where I live, either.

So, carbs. Carb up, motherfucker, and walk my goddamn mall. The mall in my mind plays the Commodores' on endless repeat in a dark hallway with a carpeted ceiling that runs between the Food Court and the fully-functional arcade, where nothing costs more than 50 cents to play, and there's Smash TV and Narc right out front, and lots of shooting and driving games and real pinball machines (mostly ones that have movie and rock band stuff on them) and an endless line (but really it's just a mirror with gold leaf in it) of Skee-Ball machines with plenty of shoulder room between each one. Also? Skill cranes and a couple of awesome driving games that didn't exist when I was a kid.

There's a kiosk where you can have your name inexpertly applied to anything, and an actual music store. Out front of the music store, there's a display with dinosaurs in a tarpit, and it says "EXTINCT TUNEAGE" and there's 8-tracks and minidiscs and cassingles and shit all in it. And a video display on repeat of the Parental Advisory logo going in flames on a loop. That's right - repeat AND on a loop. Shaddup. There's a bunch of technology stores, and the anchor stores? The big bastards that the mall is ostensibly for? They're just mock-ups. We occasionally drive our 4-wheelers through them and knock everything down. Then we go back out into the mall proper and play glow-in-the-dark mini golf and eat big cookies and buy Chucks from Journeys and books from everywhere and try not to get VD from Spenser's, where it feels like everything has VD on it. There are no nail places, no underwear emporiums, no blouseterias, and no FUCKING JEWELRY STORES, and you can extend a line of credit everywhere, because it's that kind of place.

There's a theatre, and they fucking spell it like that. It's called the Six-Shooter Theatre, and they have six screens and the kids who work it love film and talk like bartenders. Frozen coke comes with free refills, and there's always something playing that's decent and also always something you can walk out of if you don't want to make fun of it. A walk-out will have their money happily refunded if they can say why they walked out. In complete sentences. Don't fuck about - tell us what you didn't like.

It goes without saying that outside of the dark, carpeted, Commodores hallway, that the rest of mall plays 90s rock interspersed with 80s hip-hop and anything else I like, and that there's football and old movies broadcast on monitors around the interior, and roving bands of teenagers find themselves mute when they hit the SnarkMeter® limits. (SnarkMeters® are subcutaneously installed on every teen upon entering. Old people, too. Everybody.) Finally, there are game stores and comic stores fully functioning and raking in profit, an Irish pub at every junction, and cigar dispensaries throughout. The interior aisles are dotted with tables for sitting and smoking and drinking and talking and eating goddamn magical bowls of layered chili stuff that I thought had ceased to exist.

Wonder Woman Unbound: Review

A bad thing is always worse when your expectations are high.

I had been looking forward to Wonder Woman Unbound for a couple of weeks before I got my hands on it pretty much for the same reason any fanperson looks forward to anything with Wonder Woman in it; she can be a great character and she's often underutilized and we should be talking about her more. We should have reasons to talk about her more.

But not like this.

This review will apparently be a minority report: most of the rest of the web is taken with this book, and gives it four stars, giving it high marks for revealing information heretofore unrevealed and dealing with the subject matter in a frank and open way, often incorporating some humor. I do not understand why this is: I found this book to be repetitive, ponderous, pedantic, repetitive, easily distracted (something like 30% of the book is about other heroes and villains used in a kind of failed compare-and-contrast), and while it was filled with a raft of research findings and presentations (and charts and diagrams and goddamn graphs), on almost every occasion, the conclusion drawn from the research was wrong, bad, or too simplistic.

The first part of the book, dealing with WW's origins in the mind of William Moulton Marston goes into details about his life that are not, by any stretch, revelations to either comics readers or students of modern psychology. Everything in the book about Marston can be found in this Wikipedia entry, this Comic Book Resources article, and this background piece on the Personality Profile Solutions website. In short: Marston was one of those brilliant people who hover on the edges of quirky weirdness, so in addition to giving the world Wonder Woman, DISC theory, and the polygraph, he also lived in a successful polyamorous relationship with two women, liked to be tied up, and thought women were not equal with men - he thought they were superior. So he's a controversial guy. None of what can be found in this book is new information - this is all out there, and has been. The only "new" argument that Hanley makes (and possibly the last useful thing in the book) is that Wonder Woman cannot simply be viewed (in her early years) as a feminist icon without taking all the bondage (which is proliferate) into account - to Marston, bondage was about trust, and relinquishing control, and he was personally into it, so it's in a high percentage of stories. However, WW always breaks free, breaks her bonds, and saves the day, so - what was your argument again, Tim?

Tim seems not to grasp that fictional characters with any staying power - Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, Dracula, Wonder Woman, Batman, shit - even the fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - are fodder for re-appropriation and reinterpretation. Was Tinky Winky gay? That big puffy bastard didn't even have genitals, but that didn't stop the Pride movement from having some Tinky after Falwell opened his useless yap. Likewise, WW is (or can be) what her fans want her to be. If you read a Batman story you don't like, no one's forcing you to incorporate that story into your conception of Batman. I, for one, think that the Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum are prettier than they are good, and neither is a good representation of how I think of Batman. The same is true of any character - if you don't think Coppola makes a good Dracula, then skip that one. If Gloria Steinem wants to take Women's Lib as an opportunity to re-create and reinterpret Wonder Woman for a new generation, then as long as DC's in on the game, who the fuck is Tim to tell them they did it wrong? Everyone will have their own mind's-eye Wonder Woman, and most of her modern adult fans think of her as Lynda Carter, a strong woman with a lasso on TV fighting for good.

Lynda Carter is mentioned on exactly seven pages of this book. Seven. Seven in like, 220-something. I actually stopped and said, "That's it?!?" out loud. Luckily, I often read when no one's around.

Hanley spends far more time bitching and complaining about various people's lensed interpretations of Wonder Woman, saving an especially vicious fork for Robert Kanigher, who wrote the title for longer than - I think - anyone, and whose worst actual sins are probably that he didn't take writing comic books very seriously and that he had a terrible temper. While not particularly enlightened, these are not original fuck-ups in the world of comics - and Tim knows this. He's a "comics historian," whatever the hell that means now.

Probably the trolliest part of the book is when Hanley exhorts us to step back collectively and re-examine Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham, due to his book, Seduction of the Innocent, and his subsequent testimony before congress about the ills and dangers of comics, is vilified by most modern-day comics readers, as well he should be, because he went over the top. Hanley needles us, reminding us that Wertham also did some good stuff - testified as to the harms of segregation, argued against the solitary confinement of Ethel Rosenberg - and that he had done a lot of research, so he might have had a point or two in Seduction. It doesn't surprise me that Hanley is blind to research bias, and can't see how some points of view - homophobia - might chip away at a person's overall credibility, since he later in the book asserts that some women "chose to be lesbians" during the women's lib movement. Tim, Tim, Timmy, Timothy. No, no. Some women may have chosen to experiment with sex or relationships with other women, but they didn't choose to be lesbians because they woke up one tired of the patriarchy. They may have wished that they could do that, but - well, Tim, maybe you haven't been paying attention over the last 20 years or so. It's also possible that you missed this entirely.

So yeah - at the beginning of this pointless murder of trees, Hanley dedicates it to his parents - my advice would be to let them have it. You have better things to do with your life.

Comics sans Comics

Every now and then, media blows up with some sensationalist story out of comic books.

"They killed Robin!" "They killed Superman!" "Rawhide Kid is Gay!" "They killed Captain America!" "Wonder Woman and Superman are a couple!" "Batman's Dead!" "Human Torch Dies!" "Green Lantern is Gay!" "Green Lantern's a Muslim!" "Ms. Marvel's a Muslim!"

These things are all true, kind of. Putting aside how ridiculous it is that a comic book character's sexual orientation or faith (Magneto's Jewish! Did you know?!?) would be news, comic book characters die all the time. Many come back, some do not. All the ones listed above have made it back from beyond the grave. Comics are, by their nature, fantastical and sensationalist - that does not mean they don't do anything else, but these are a couple of their fundamental characteristics. Consequently, there are numerous problems with the way these reports hit the media.

The first real thing most fanpeople notice is the inherently touristy nature of these "reports." We want you to appreciate comics, but the occasional news story isn't going to help you do that, and when you only pretend to care once in a great long while, we curse at you from behind this month's issues. It's nice that you go to Avengers movies now and we actually really enjoy explaining stuff and answering questions (up to a point), but imagine this: There's a TV show that's been on for about 65 years. You've been watching it for the last 35, and have spent time watching all the DVDs of the old stuff, too. You absorb all the information about the show, its creators, characters and spin-offs and you get your kids to check all this stuff out, too. During one episode, the show kills off a major character during the culmination of a plot line that's been unfolding for a year, and the world reacts. How do you feel about the reactions of people who don't watch the show? Do their reactions seem to you to lack punch or credibility? The same analogy can be made using fair-weather sports fans who only support and wear the logo when the team is winning and the world is watching. Again, it's kind of cool to have people care about the stuff you care about, but it'd be even nicer if they could calm down. It's like society needs strategically placed fanfolk behind glass that you could break open when these things happen. That could be a career waiting to happen for some guys I know.

Then comes the half-assed analysis of the thing because, you know, Superman and Captain America belong to everyone, even though you fickle punks decided you outgrew them 20 years ago. So the examination begins: Will it be good for Muslims for a superhero to be Muslim? Yeah, probably. It'll probably be good for everyone to diversify any field - hybrid vigor, people. The thing is - what's the story surrounding it, and how is anyone supposed to properly analyze anything without it? When Marvel killed off Cap in 2007 and brought him back in 2009 - that was a pretty overt statement about American politics and the state of "the dream" as it were, but I think Earth 2 Post New 52 gay Green Lantern got more ink. Why is that? Because you're critiquing the act before it's finished and without the context of the surrounding story. You do that with paintings. You fill in a back story for the Mona Lisa, because it's one frame, one image. Pulling a character or an event out of a story for analysis does not compute. You ought to stop it.

Finally, when these stories hit the news, it's invariably only part of the story. By necessity, one could argue, since it takes years in real time usually for these things to play out. When the media gives you your superhero tourism, though, all you get is the one event: Does the general public know/care that Batman was dead, but now he's not? And that Robin is dead, but not the one they think? Do they know he goes through Robins like some people go through shoes? Ultimately, the biggest problem with this is a problem with news reporting in general: It is only ever part of the story, and usually the most sensational part, the part designed to get numbers / hits / listeners / viewers / ad revenue. And it's annoying.

You want to know what happens in comic books? Hit up your local comic book store. Those folks could use the money and support.

Rank Escapism II: Escape Ranker

School's almost out for the semester. I've written all the papers that needed to be written, and the three exams I still have coming are two open notes affairs and one two-minute speech. I'm not studying very hard, and have instead been working on feeding my brain the equivalent of happiness drugs in the moments I spend being able to read. This is what currently occupies my bedside table, accumulated over the space of about three weeks:

Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis' diseased exploration of what constitutes the new mainstream currently bookmarked with the scariest cigar company business card I've ever seen;

Preacher: Gone to Texas;

Cherie Priest's The Inexplicables, the fourth book in a steampunk zombie series and a recent gift from a dear friend;

a Super Hero Squad birthday card from Meredith & Sandy;

a folded program from Max's recent school band performance;

Power Man & Iron Fist #75, with the first visit (I think) to K'un-Lun in it;

Milk & Cheese's Other Number One;

Brian Wood's Channel Zero, a "gift" from Matt Olson;

Marvel Premiere #57 (1980), with the first American comic book appearance of Doctor Who;

The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect;

2 DC New 52 Volume Ones - Aquaman: The Trench & The Flash: Move Forward;

3 issues of Popular Science from September, October & November of this year;

Batman: Year One;

JLA: Earth 2;

Obnoxio the Clown vs. The X-Men;

The Big Book of Urban Legends (from Paradox Press) which I wouldn't own if I didn't know Eric;

2 other birthday cards; one from my wife and a handmade one from my kids;

Karlology and The World of Karl Pilkington, because 2 books from Karl stack higher than one;

Modern Manners & the Bachelor Home Companion, both by P.J. O'Rourke and both signed;

30 Days of Night (the 1st one, before they got stupid);

Batman: Under the Hood (volumes 1 & 2);

The Curse of Lono, by Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman, stolen from a prevous employer;

Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place - Kubert & Azzarello, and finally;

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick - various authors expanding on the stories implied by the Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and a last Christmas' gift from the Silvermen, Becky & Mitch.

DC Comics: Zero Sum Newsweek

DC giveth, and DC taketh away. Kind of.

Rob Liefeld, who cannot draw, is quitting DC. This is good news because he cannot draw. The first New 52 book I decided to drop was Liefeld's Hawk and Dove, because, as I mentioned, it was poorly drawn. This is because he lacks the ability to draw. He has no understanding of human anatomy, which would be forgivable if desktop figure models weren't so cheap. He deals with his numerous artistic deficits by ripping off superior artists, just like he was rumored to have financially ripped off his fellow creators at Image back in the 90s. His writing and plotting are worse, but his drawing is spectacularly bad - when I was a kid, I got a Cable action figure that was molded from Liefeld's drawings and the fucker couldn't stand up, because his biology was impossible, what with his giant torso and skinny little ankles. And tons of fucking teeth, always. I partially blame his art for the near-collapse of the comics industry in the 1990s. Him leaving DC and hopefully comics forever? Good news.

The bad news is that DC has decided to make Wonder Woman - a character who has had her origins and backgrounds relentlessly fucked with over the past year - second fiddle to Superman, getting them together for the same reason Frank Miller did it; it requires no real storytelling effort, and it's sparkly and saleable. I'm not down with this idea mainly because it doesn't improve WW, who has always been a third to Batman and Superman, and now she's somebody's girlfriend. I don't much care about the Lois angle - absent in the New 52 - but making her romance a focal point of her new story - and apparently, having her driven into Kryptonian arms by some kind of as yet undefined tragedy - seems like a cheap and easy trick designed to satisfy the lowest common denominator of fanboy. WW and Superman only work as a couple when they're on equal terms, like at the end of Kingdom Come. I don't like the idea, but we'll see...

Finally, I'm reading these now, and enjoying most of them. So not TOTALLY zero sum.

Joe Kubert, 1926-2012

Joe Kubert, the grand illustrator of not-quite-civilized men and founder of the Kubert School of Art has died, aged 85 years old.

Kubert was a veteran of the Korean War and a Polish Jew, things which influenced his work.  He was one of the early Marvel artists when it was still Atlas, and he has two sons, Adam and Andy, who have worked on everything from Neil Gaiman's Marvel:1602 to DC's pre-new 52 event Flashpoint to X-Men, Batman, and Marvel's Ultimate line. You can draft a straight line from Kubert Sr.'s work to that of his sons, so his influence lives through them. Joe Kubert was known mostly for his work on Hawkman, Tarzan, Tor, and my personal favorite of his oft-drawn characters, Sgt. Rock.

His style was rushed-looking and minimalist in many cases, but also dark and evocative and hard-edged when it needed to be. The school he founded has been going for more than 30 years and training comics artists and illustrators that whole time, so even if you're not expressly familiar with his work, you probably are in a less specific way.

Joe Kubert was one of the titanic men of comics, and he's got a lot of stuff out there you ought to pick up and read, but you probably won't. If you decide not to suck as a human being, though, there's the above featured title, Between Hell and a Hard Place (a Sgt. Rock story, natch, by 100 Bullets' Azzarello), Fax from Sarajevo (one of the first non-comic comics I ever read, and a brilliant piece of work) and Jew Gangster, which I read a while ago but you can probably still find around places, if you look.

Finally, here's Joe talking about himself from last year.

Whovian at Last

TARDIS

 

This is in direct contrast to my previous entry, because you know, contrast is good.  It's all about choices. Life. Whatever.

For decades, what with my collecting of comic books, reading of sci-fi (speculative fiction if you're nasty), enjoyment of hard science, weird history, conspiracies and especially British culture and television, I've had people make comments to me like, "So, of course, you've seen Doctor Who."

And I hadn't. Not ever.

37 years got right past me without me ever seeing the Doctor on television. I was aware of the guy in the scarf (who I now know is Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor) from the 80s, as he'd been in a Marvel comic, but that was about it, other than having other people (who all seemed mildly obsessed) say things to me about David Tennant, Rose, Amy Pond, TARDISes and sonic screwdrivers. Every now and again, a fez, banana, or pair of 3-D glasses would suddenly seem important to them, and then they'd simply move on and so would I. I didn't think that I would ever really watch the show and get in on the joke(s) - I figured, from what I'd heard, the show had been on since like, the late 60s, and I'm a continuity freak: how the hell does one jump on 40-plus years in? 

In late Spring of this year, however, a rare conflagration of people; a wonderful, relatively new friend with a new baby and lots of BBC DVDs, an ex-girlfriend (because not everyone from my past hates me), and a friend and former co-worker - came together (not literally, of course, or in any carnal sense) to recommend to me (pretty much all at the same time, though) that I simply start with the continuation of the series as it returned in 2005 after being off the air since 1989 or 1996, depending upon how you count. So I listened, as I think you must when different kinds of good people are all telling you the same thing, and I developed an obsession.

Now it is the end of the Summer, and I have watched all available since 2005 80+ episodes of the Doctor, through the 9th, 10th, and 11th, some of them twice and three times, and I look up stuff online and read it, and I have withdrawal waiting for the new season to begin late next month.  I had DVDs, Netflix and on demand to get me through, now I will have to depend upon normal broadcasts. I am thinking of building a full-scale TARDIS in my backyard, and have spent hours looking at plans. I whistle the theme song whilst I work on stuff. I care what happens to Craig. I figured out about River Song like six episodes before the truth broke. I get misty at the Christmas specials. I have a love/hate relationship with the Daleks. I have found lots of other people who I didn't know were fans, and talking to them about the show makes me all excited. The other day while getting his school supplies, Max and I worked out how a Green Lantern/The Doctor crossover might work out. I am currently reading this, a Doctor Who novel adapted by one of the current screenwriters from an original script by Douglas Adams, which is just so perfect it hurts a little bit.

I am become Whovian. I am obsessed, and it is a good thing. It makes me happy to watch the Doctor, and I have taken my wife along for the ride. My son is now asking to watch them. Thanks to everyone who recommended and insisted, and especially Kate, for letting me hang on to her DVDs all Summer.

Rank Escapism

I have collected and read comic books for 31 years now, and while I sometimes read for relaxation, fun, or to appreciate fantastic stories and great literature, sometimes I'm reading them for the simple escapist need that prevails when I'm coming to the end of something (this semester) things are up in the air and I can't focus properly for straight text, or there's some kind of overarcing problem in my life. This is when I'm simply staving off the unresolved.  Typically, I favor the TPB form of comics at these times because they're easier.  The stack that's bedside right now:

Punisher: Circle of Blood - The 1980s series that was the 1st reinvention of the Punisher and the one that launched him into top-tier status as a Marvel character.  Lots of gitty prison and espionage/betrayal stuff - the art's a little uneven, but a good solid story, like a 70s action movie.

Hellblazer: Dark Entries - A John Constantine story by my favorite Scots novelist, Ian Rankin.  Involves hell, ghosts, bad karma and reality television.  Good stuff.

Daredevil: Guardian Devil - The Kevin Smith / Joe Quesada run of DD that spawned the early 2000s round of interest in the character and inspired the movie, for better or for worse.  I don't know how well the story's holding up, but the dialogue's Kevin Smith and the art's fun to look at.  I think my favorite parts are the Black Widow and Dr. Strange cameos, so I don't know what that says about me.

X-Men/Phoenix: Endsong - This one's mostly for the art, but the idea of Phoenix as an ever-evolving force of nature being explored here is pretty good - draws from a lot of X-Men continiuity, so may not be particularly reader-friendly to non-nerds.

Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, Dangerous, Torn & Unstoppable - Whedon and Cassaday's revolutionary X-Men run, four volumes.  You will never read a superhero comic that is as consistently good and as much fan as this one manages to be for 25 regular issues, which is what this was.  Whedon's Buffy was based on Kitty, and his dialogue captures X-Men interaction perfectly, while Cassaday's finishes, buildings, faces, and details are spot-on.

Switchblade Honey - Warren Ellis reimagining Star Trek or Firefly with a crew pulled from his toxic fuck imagination.

Batman: Ego - Darwyn Cooke's old school-looking DC Universe and imagining of Batman's id in this one are what make it; the whole thing is basically an exploration in conversation as to why someone would ever want to / agree to be Batman.

Hitman: Ace Of Killers - One of DC's most underrated characters involved in what amounts to basically a six-issue gunbattle in a church.  Features Ennis' Section Eight (with Dogwelder), a Nazi demon called the Mawzir, Etrigan, Catwoman, and thousands of rounds of ammo.

Scud: Heavy 3PO - Rob Schrab's bright yellow pinky pointing disposable vending machine robotic assassin gets his start here.

Iron Man: The Iron Age - Last year's love letter to the Marvel Universe told in the form of a time travel story with Iron Man at the center.  Dazzler, Power Man & Iron Fist, Human Torch. Captain Britain, X-Men, Avengers, and Dr. Doom - for a series with a lot of different artists and writers, still works really well.

Superman for All Seasons -  There are lots of good Superman stories - Birthright, Red Son, Man of Steel, Whatever Happened to The Man of Tomorrow, For the Man Who has Everything & so on - this is possibly the best examination of the character, his relationship to his environment and his motivations that exists, and it looks like a fucking Norman Rockwell painting, so maybe you oughta take a look.

Aetheric Mechanics - To explain it would be to ruin it a little - it's very thin, so it doesn't show up in the picture, but it's beautiful and contains lots of fun.  More Warren Ellis, and a little Sherlock Holmes, kind of.

Spider-Man: New Avengers - Begins with changes that force Spidey to move to Avengers Tower, has Hydra and the best clone joke ever in it, and segues nicely into The Other.

Spider-Man: The Other - (ahem) Almost my personal favorite evolutionary Spidey event, second only to Kraven's Last Hunt.  The artwork jumps around a lot, but it's good, and has lots of Marvel Universe goodness contained within.

Orbiter - The last NASA space shuttle ever comes back after 10 years in space with skin on the outside and radical, physics-defying structural changes.  The bastard cousin of the previous Ellis space story listed here.

The Hulk & The Thing: The Big Change - Written to be funny, takes the most amusing parts of these two characters (and Thing dialogue is always funny) and puts them in a cosmic bounty hunter type situation.  Best part is when it is "Hulk's turn to reason with guys."

JLA: Terror Incognita - Return of the White Martians!  Best Batman/Martian Manhunter interactions ever!  Crappy backup stories, but you can't have everything.

JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice - ALL of the major characters in the DC Universe at the time, solid red herring in the story, nice analysis of DC Universe history, what it means to be good or evil.  Johnny Sorrow's kind of a lame character, but he's put to good use in this.

Drax the Destroyer: Earthfall - One of my favorite "little" stories in recent years, an excuse to return the character to his 1970s glory and has a Skrull in it.

Go get all of these and make your local comics guy happy!

Fourteen Hundred (plus)

Last night I had this dream where Wallis Simpson (pictured here) was giving me a hot towel shave with a straight razor.  She did not shave off my actual chin whiskers, so no Delilah imagery, unless someone more educated than I am on the subject would like to argue the point.  I was in an old school green metal and black leather barber's chair, and she sharpened her razor on the leather strap affixed on the right hand side.  She leaned in close to do the part of my left jaw where I broke it once (there's kind of a lump in the bone), and she smelled like vodka, fruit juice and expensive perfume.

The chair was in the middle of a giant oaken stage, right in front of a pipe organ.  In a huge balcony about thirty feet off of the stage surface, a full orchesta played "Seven Nation Army," PJ Harvey's "To Bring You My Love," and a couple of other things I recognized but could not place.  Thanks, brain.  Off to one side, presumably waiting for shaves from Mrs. Simpson, was a bench full of people including Eddie Izzard, Volstagg from Marvel Comics, Willie Nelson, Vini Demon, Chuck Norris and the man from this poem by Edward Lear.  You might be wondering how I recognized him, but then you are illiterate, which means you are also not offended by what I'm saying or indeed, reading this.

There was a spirited conversation going (folks had to speak up over the orchestra) about why some Christians build very modest meeting houses (not wasting money that could be better spent elsewise, modesty, works over appearances, the relationship between utilitarianism and Calvinism, etc.) and others build grandiose compounds and spires (glorifying God, making a place that the destitute will want to come to, not hiding one's light under a bushel, arrogance, egotism, etc.) that segued into a history of the Vatican and then into stockings and high heels, which I don't know much about.

When she finished, I tipped Mrs.Simpson a golden coin about the size of the palm of my hand (In truth, it looked a bit like the Nobel medals) and sat down on the bench to smoke a cigar and read an issue of Poor Richard's Almanack with all of the pages sealed individually in plastic.  The smoke and discussion and overblown music whirled around me, and I woke up.

Oh, and this makes 1402 entries in this thing.