by KC Carlson
“There’s a place where I can go…”
These are the opening lyrics to the Beach Boys’ In My Room. Gary Usher wrote those words and Brian Wilson wrote the music in 1963, and it quickly became an anthem for the sensitive and introspective. Brian always claims it was just about the bedroom that he and his brothers shared — and where the Beach Boys’ harmony “sound” was first forged. But raise your hands if you think the song is actually about more than that.
Oddly, a few months before, John Lennon wrote a song called “There’s a Place”, which appeared on the first U.K. Beatles album Please Please Me. On the surface, it appears to be a Motown-influenced song about romance (The Beatles’ stock-in-trade at this point), but as with most things Lennon, if you peel the onion back, you discover that the place the singer (Lennon) wants to go when he feels low and blue is actually in his own mind.
Read More...
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.
Read More...
by Josh Crawley
For some reason the past few years, the winter season puts me in the mood to read Legion of Super-Heroes. While i don’t have a great number of Legion comics, my collection of them grows slowly every year. The past two years have been especially great for reprint collections, whether it’s the many Showcase Presents collections, An Eye for an Eye followed up by The More Things Change by Paul Levitz & Co., or the book I’m itching to get to soon, The Life & Death of Ferro Lad (as part of the DC Comics Classics Library hardcover line). If you’re interested in reading some L.o.S.H. yourself, 1,050 Years of the Future has a great sampling from many eras. (Normally I’d be torn about recommending Great Darkness Saga, due to the lack of a great introduction/set-up), but it’s out of print for some reason. My guess would be DC is waiting to make it an entry in the previously mentioned DC Comics Classics Library line, but at this point I wouldn’t hold my breath. After all, this is the company that has let Born to Run and Terminal Velocity (two AMAZING Wally West Flash stories by Mark Waid & Co.) go out of print.
Read More...
by KC Carlson
This originally was going to be a much different column. Then all hell broke lose in the comics world in the last week or two.
First off, The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Comics. Then, in reaction, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced the reorganization of DC Comics, making it part of the newly christened DC Entertainment.
Read More...
by KC Carlson
Collecting Batman Annuals #1-3 (1961-1962). DC Senior VP and Creative Director Richard Bruning calls the early DC Annuals, in his informative Afterword, “the first DC collected editions.” So this is actually a collection of collected editions. Dude, you just totally blew my mind!
Read More...
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.
Read More...