Monthly archives: December, 2011

The Tale of a New 52 Success

from Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea! (best blog name ever, btw):

But comics started to feel too expensive for too little payoff. I was beginning to lose track each month of what the storyline from the previous month was. Perhaps I was reading too many! Whatever actually happened, I always felt that I would stop reading comics when Cerebus ended.

Which is what I did. Except I didn’t completely stop. I would still pick up trade paperbacks from time to time. I kept up with Bill Willingham’s Fables and Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. I also intended (still do, so intend?) to eventually finish up, through trade paperbacks, Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, and Warren Ellis’s Planetary. I’m sure there are more.

But I stopped collecting monthly comics. Until this year. While in Phoenix, my cousin Jay and I went all over town searching for RPG game shops. We also found a few comic shops which we killed some time in. And I found 52.

Now, I’d already read the 4 trade paperbacks of 52. But I didn’t realize DC was going to do what they did. Release 52 #1 issues and begin 52 regular comics titles. And I may have just let it go past me except one of the issues they began again was Suicide Squad. And it looked cool.

I picked up the four issues of Suicide Squad when I got back to Portland and enjoyed them. And I got to thinking. Maybe I’d enjoy more titles! So I made a short list from the list of 52 titles inside Suicide Squad #1. But as I walked to my old comic book store the next day to pick these up, I started to think about how I always wanted to read the entire line of comics that a company puts out. I could keep track of all of their super heroes and their exploits! And 52 was telling me right there how many that was! And they all came out each month with the next exact same number! How easy would this be to do? Read them all, Jeff! Read them all!

And so, that’s what I’m going to do. As an adult who owns his own business and can afford it, I’m going to do it. Read all 52 titles. Of course, I have to buy them first. And most of them are already on issue 4!

So time once again to get back in comic hunting mode. I forgot how much I liked the routine.

Read the rest.



I’ll Be Damned

I just saw the trailer for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Take a look:

Now I DESPISE Nicolas Cage, so there’s no chance I’ll be watching this movie, but hot damn, that kind of looks good. The action scenes with GR in full-on flaming skull mode look really cool. Seeing Ghost Rider out during the day is an interesting visual I never associate with the character.

Of course, the dialogue was terrible. “He’s the only good thing I’ve ever done” is so cliched it hurts. And when the woman said “I’m not afraid of you,” I said the line “You should be” along with Nic. The addition of Idris Elba in the cast is a nice surprise, but whenever he’s on-screen I just wish it was Stringer Bell (even when he was on The Office).