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
The big news over at Marvel this month is a two fisted-knockout. Part one is the return of Captain America Steve Rogers to the Marvel Universe in a big way. First, the regular monthly Captain America comic starts up again, as issue #602 features the first chapter of Two Americas by Ed Brubaker and Luke Ross. Then, Steve returns to the Avengers in the pages of New Avengers #61 by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen – which is one of the tie-in books for Siege, the second part of the big news from Marvel. Written by Brian Bendis and pencilled by Olivier Coipel, Siege is a four-part series described as the culmination of events beginning with Avengers Disassembled and leading through House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, and the long-awaited (at least by me!) wrap-up of Norman Osborn’s Dark Reign over the Marvel U. Key to the promotion of Siege is the image of Marvel’s core Avengers – Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America – all reunited again, and all the real deal!
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by Josh Crawley
For some reason growing up, I was a Captain America fan, even before reading his comic book. (It took me probably a good eighteen years to figure it out, but I assume he showed up in some of the Electric Company magazine Spider-Man strips). I started buying Captain America with #372, by Mark Gruenwald and Ron Lim, with Mark Bagley on the U.S. Agent back-up. It was the first part of the Streets of Poison story, and the title had just gone into the summer twice-monthly release schedule (back when it seemed like things like schedules were kept to, though I know now they weren’t so great then, either). I bought it off of a spinner rack from a neighborhood grocery store; yeah, those really existed into the 90s. It was called Super Valu. Apparently the value was so great they didn’t want to spend the money to spell it correctly, or it was some trademark issue.
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by Brook Anthony
Taking a rare and well-deserved day off from my full-time gig at Westfield Comics to take my son to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I witnessed an event that most Americans probably missed: Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo won, in grand fashion, the coveted top spot in the MotoGP race. What does this have to do with comics?
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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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All of us at Westfield hope you have a wonderful safe and happy Fourth of July with your friends and family.
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Sean McKeever is the popular writer of such books as The Waiting Place (offered as a collection from IDW this month), Marvel’s Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and DC’s Teen Titans. This month he returns to Marvel with Nomad: Girl Without A World. Westfield’s Roger Ash recently spoke with McKeever about this new book.
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We just received this from Marvel with no explanation. What do you think it means?
CAPTAIN AMERICA #600
Written by ED BRUBAKER with MARK WAID, ROGER STERN & STAN LEE
Pencils by BUTCH GUICE, LUKE ROSS, DALE EAGLESHAM, AL AVISION, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVID AJA, RAFAEL ALBUQUERQUE & KALMAN ANDRASOFSZKY
Covers by STEVE EPTING & ALEX ROSS
2-Cover set
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It’s time to do yet another one of these year-end lists with me yammering on and on about which comics I liked this year. But: Best? I’m not sure that I’m really qualified to say, since I read such a small percentage of everything published in any given year and I have this annoying tendency (at least in certain circles) to avoid anything even remotely “artsy”. Not that I don’t like art, but I don’t always know what I like, if you know what I mean.
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