Month: April 2008

The Never-Ending Ending

What is the fascination with endings in comic books? It seems we just can’t get enough of them, and big comics companies just can’t stop giving them to us. Whether it’s the Ultimate X-Men or Y: The Last Man or the Final Crisis, it seems that endings are popping up around every corner, only, once…



Breaking down The Big Tease: Part 1

Remember early last year, when DC released this image? Countdown is now over, so let’s take a look at what all these teaser images were referring to, moving clockwise from the left side, and compare them with Dan DiDio’s comments from last January. 1. Big Barda and Scott Free are dead. They got killed in…



This week in Secret Invasion:
Mighty Avengers #12

Mighty Avengers #12 starts out with the closing to Secret War, in which Nick Fury sent a group of heroes to overthrow the government of Latveria and then erased the event from their minds. He bid them farewell with a little bit of an apology, but an overall defense of his actions before promising to…



Countdown to Final Crisis: One

How utterly fitting. In a series where absolutely nothing of importance happened over the course of fifty tedious issues, it is only fitting that the finale is similarly devoid of any points of interest. Still, the series accomplished what it set out to accomplish, I suppose. They killed all of the New Gods, and they…



The Numbers: Week 47

Every time I try to make sense of a rise in Countdown’s sales, it ends up being something artificial — a reporting glitch, a change in return policy, or something like that. So this month, I’m not even going to try to justify it. Countdown’s numbers rose slightly. Make of it what you will. The…



Book of Doom: Superman #675

It’s been three weeks since the Book of Doom returned with a vengeance, with a 4-day review-thon spotlighting as many books. Since then, we here at doomkopf.com haven’t been able to decide on a book that we had enough interest in to sit down and write a review. This week Superman #675, the final Kurt…



Countdown to Final Crisis: Two

Sweet, merciful crap, it’s almost over. Let me ask you an old question: If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody’s around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Now let me twist that question just a tad: If a direct Countdown tie-in features a major plot point months in advance to…



A skid mark by any other name …

Take a good look at this. You’re staring into the face of the new comic trend. Because of an incestuous circle of mild talent that propogated itself around the time of the forming of Image Comics, we’ve been subjected to the artist as celebrity trumping the much better “book coming out on time every month”…



NYT piece on Joe Simon, co-creator of Captain America

Mr. Simon earned the “legend” title with his partner Jack Kirby by creating Captain America, the superhero who arrived in December 1940, just in time to play a patriotic foil to the Axis powers. The cover of the first issue even has the good captain socking Hitler in the jaw. For Mr. Simon and Mr….



Countdown to Final Crisis: Three

There are three things I’ve learned in the past twenty-four hours. First, you can get across the border from Panama to Costa Rica with no outbound ticket documentation by giving the border guard a five dollar bill. Second, when a boat driver tells you he’s going to pick you up at a certain time, that’s…