Category Archives: comics

signs of the end times

Now I know we are living in the end times. I can tell that the days of the rapture are nigh due to the following signs that could only point to the end of days.

Umm, an anime series about a guy with a girl for a hand. Via Worlds Within Worlds.

Golgo 13 manga expresses Japanese fears about currency trading. Then Golgo 13 kills Bill “Family Circus” Keane.

Tokyopop Star Trek: The Next Generation Manga

Worst of all, and a true indication of the apocalypse Wolverine Marries Witchblade, via Fanboy Rampage

Holy Tintinnabulation!
 (via Neilalien)

changing faces and alternate universes

Books in the mail! I love getting books in the mail! Now I can start on The Towers of Trebizond and Baudolino. I also picked up Junko Mizuno’s Princess Mermaid. The art is in color (first manga I’ve read with color art) and looks totally trippy.

I finished reading a couple graphic novels over the weekend. I read the first Human Target collection. The main character of the comic is a man named Christopher Chance who impersonates people who are going to be assassinated.
There are so many characters disguised as other characters it gets a little confusing at time. It was not the best comic for me to be reading over the shoulder of a friend while I was riding the subway because it was easy to lose track of what was going on. However, when I sat down and read Human Target with more concentration, I was able to appreciate the twisting storyline. It is a great suspense comic.

I also picked up the Planetary collection
Crossing Worlds, which collects the Planetary crossovers with The Authority, JLA, and Batman. I missed a couple of the crossovers when they first came out, so I was happy to find the collected edition. Jakita Wagner’s encounter with Batman was lovely 🙂

Don’t dismiss manga or women!

The new issue of Sequential Tart is out, and as usual it is full of good stuff. One article I found interesting was “How Do I Dismiss Thee?
Ways That Dismissal of Manga Dismisses Female Readers from Comic Book Discours” by Barb Lien-Cooper. The article was written in response to Stephen “graphic novels in libraries” Weiner’s The Rise of the Graphic Novel. Lien-Cooper isn’t happy with Weiner’s treatment of manga in his book, finding fault with the characterization of manga as “genre fiction.” She also takes issue with the implication that girls haven’t been reading comics before the “recent” manga invasion. These are good points, although I can’t say for sure, not having read the Weiner book. I think that describing manga as “genre fiction” is a little misguided, because it would be more accurately described as having multiple genres (which the American comics industry is sometimes lacking). I don’t know of many American publishers putting out high school romance, tennis, cooking, street racing, twentysomething romance, cross-dressing in revolutionary war era France, star-crossed penguin love, dance, or high school teaching comic books. Which might explain why manga has such broad appeal.

Comix Blogdigger

After seeing Steve’s Blogdigger group for library blogs, I wanted to check it out for myself, so I made a Blogdigger group for comics blogs. It was really easy to set-up! I’m going to experiment with it some more, I’ve often wanted a Lisfeeds for comics blogs, and this might serve that purpose for me very nicely. If you have some other comics blogs with feeds to add, let me know about them, or set up your own Blogdigger group!

Ultimate Fantastic Four

Well, I bought the first issue and it seemed good enough, in that Marvel retelling origin stories sort of way. I think if I already get Ultimate Spiderman AND Ultimate X-men, I don’t need to get any more Ultimate. Seems ultimate enough to me. However, if Warren Ellis is going to write Ultimate Fantastic Four, I will buy it like the fangirl I am. I’d still rather see more Planetary. But since John Cassaday is busy doing the art for Joss Whedon’s X-Men (featuring Wolverine in yellow spandex yet again?!) I’m guessing that Planetary issues will continue to be few and far between. (Newsarama links via Fanboy Rampage!)

when you are strange

Neilalien, source of all Dr. Strange news, points to a comics 101 overview of the Sorcerer Supreme.

I’d be tempted to focus on a particular comic book character and blog news items about him/her but I’d probably pick one that would have no news to relate. Like, if I was going to blog often about Amythest Princess of Gemworld, what could I say?

Day 1: Amythest is still dead
Day 2: No one is trying to produce a far-fetched movie adaptation set in the Gemworld.
Day 3: Where is Dan Mishkin?
Day 4: I start reading Legion of Superheroes again in case the White Witch shows up she is the only character with a remote Gemworld connection. Is she still even in the Legion? I have no idea!
Day 5: Still dead.
Day 6: Consult the demons within the mysterious orb to see if there will ever be any new Amythest comics. The reply? “Very doubtful”

poetry in comic reviewing

Lovely poetic review of the Uncanny X-Men #439 up at X-Axis. I am a sad, sad fangirl because I do buy some X-Men titles every month. I have some sort of sick nostalgic connection to the X-Men, they were one of the first comics I really enjoyed. But the plots are usually so soap operaesque, you could base a drinking game off all the issues where someone says “Oh Scott!” “Oh Jean!” “Oh Scott!” “Oh Jean!” just as you can in Fushigi Yugi (“Miaka!” “Tamahome!” “Miaka!” “Tamahome!”) although manga has an advantage because even though a series can stretch out for multiple volumes, two seasons of a tv show, OAVs, and novelizations, eventually it ends and they stop producing the book. Not so with X-men or Spiderman, where now you could buy 5-6 titles of each series a month if you were so inclined.

I tend to buy X-Men titles mostly for the authors. So I’m buying the Grant Morrison run because any storyline that features a dystopic future where all the X-Men are dead except for Wolverine and the Beast and the Beast breeds weird Nightcrawler clones and hatches the phoenix out of an egg is a little different than the typical X-men story I have come to expect.
And X-Statix, because I like the Allred and Milligan combo, despite the “She’s Princess Di! Wait, no she isn’t!” storyline they had to redo recently. And I think there is something in fluoride that makes me buy most of what Brian Bendis writes, so I read Ultimate X-men too. I really have no excuse.

I think there is also something in fluoride that makes me interested in Joss Whedon’s upcoming version of X-men too. Really I have no control. Damn you fluoride!