by KC Carlson
Well, Christmas is over! Hope you had a great holiday season!
Of course, in the real world, the holidays are still several months away! But in the wacky world of comic book advance ordering, pretty much all of the industry’s major wares have already been offered up. Since the last three months have been SO packed with goodness, this month’s offerings pale a bit in comparison. Still, there’s plenty of great stuff if you dig around a bit, so here are my picks, along with a bit of commentary here and there since I haven’t had much chance to talk about current comics lately. On to it…
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by KC Carlson
As mentioned briefly last month, we are now at that point in the calendar year where publishers begin showing off their special books for the coming holiday season. So, keep in mind that many of the items we’re talking about here may not actually ship until October or November. Also, with the high cover price of some of the items listed here, this might actually be more of a “Dear Santa…” idea list than anything else.
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by Beau Smith
Let’s talk about Marvel and DC characters a little. Depending on your age and when you started reading comics, you no doubt have that time period wired into your brain and it makes a difference as to how you see the characters. Example: If you started reading Batman in the early 1960’s, then a part of you will always think of him with the Batcave, the giant penny, fighting bad guys like Gorilla Boss, and never having a story go more than one issue. A far cry from the Batman of the 1980’s when the “grim and gritty” trend began for him.
Neither is right or wrong, it’s just a matter of when you came to the party.
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by KC Carlson
Though we may be inundated by it in current superhero comic books, long-form serialized storytelling is nothing new.
The idea of telling a long-form storyline as a series of chapters originally dates back to somewhere between the mid-8th and the mid-13th century. The work in question? One Thousand and One Nights, more colloquially known in English as the Arabian Nights. They are actually a series of independent stories gathered together with a framing device, but as originally told, each story was shared over a period of nights, including some kind of “cliffhanger” ending, which would be resolved the following night. Some of the more famous of the stories include “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”, all of which are probably much better known to several generations of American children as the basis for three very memorable (and historically important) Popeye the Sailor cartoons.
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by KC Carlson
Trinity Anniversary
DC somehow finagled their publishing schedule so that their Big 3 characters all have Anniversary Issues the same month – so look for Superman #700, Batman #700, and Wonder Woman #600. All of these are 56-page comics with several creators pitching in, and all three promise major changes in creative direction as well. Both Superman and Wonder Woman feature the first work on the characters by recently new-to-DC superstar writer J. Michael Straczynski.
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by Josh Crawley
Sean Phillips incorporating aspects of Jae Lee’s style, colored by Richard Isanove? You’ve got to be kidding me if you don’t think that’s amazing! Conveniently, Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born is coming out in soft cover soon.
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by KC Carlson
This month, the Big Two launch their newest big initiatives to attempt to collect all our money, Marvel’s The Heroic Age and DC’s Brightest Day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – it’s just that both companies also have several other things brewing this month, and you might miss them in all the hubbub, bub. But, like it or not, that’s what you have me for – I’m the guy who always says “Hey! What’s going on over there - behind that curtain!” More on that in a minute. Lemme get Brightest Heroic Age Day out of the way first.
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by Robert Greenberger
It had been quite a while since there was a major Avengers arc that had people talking. It was probably the Steve Englehart-written Mantis Saga from the early 1970s so the World’s Mightiest Super-Heroes certainly were due for something big. The Korvac Saga, which ran in The Avengers #167 – 177 (Jan. – Nov 1978), fit the bill. As a result, the storyline has been collected from time to time and is receiving a brand new edition this fall, available for order this month.
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by KC Carlson
We’ll return to our discussion of Big Comic Book Events, and specifically, Marvel Comics’ current Big Events, after this slight digression – which I promise will make sense later. Thank you.
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Chris Eliopoulos is probably best known for his Franklin Richards books from Marvel, but he’s also the creator of Desperate Times and his online strip, Misery Loves Sherman. Now, he’s writing Marvel’s Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers. Westfield’s Roger Ash spoke with Eliopoulos about this fun new book.
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