The Spookiest John Buys Comics Ever

... at least, as far as I know. Give me a shout if I've been creepin' you out on a regular basis with my eerie insights.

In a nice bit of conicidencing, most of the comics that I bought yesterday and have gotten around to reading (*cough*) have some spooky overtones. Or undertones. Or whichever tone it is when the book is all about being spooky, and I guess that a fair numbe rof my regular purchases are all about that. Zatanna No. 6, for example, continues the tale of her rumble with the demon Mammon, and what's spookier than a straight-up demon from Hell? And have I mentioned The Bulletproof Coffin lately? Issue 5 (of 6!) of that just came out, and it remains full of the kind of surreal, vaguely disturbing stuff that would have had the Young Johnathan raptly freaking out and makes Old Johnathan just plain happy. Seriously, this is a fantastic comic. And of course Creepy No. 4 came out this week, if you want a comic that's going to be overt about it.

Big news! Action Comics No. 864 features the return of Neil Gaimen's version of Death to the DCU proper! Unless that happened recently already and I missed it! Really, it's the fact that this might herald the return of such fun types as John Constantine and the ever-lovin' Swamp Thing to the super-hero-style comics that they were birthed from that makes me happy - it's the contrast between the grim Vertigo types and their four-colour counterparts that makes for some really terrific stories.

Even better, though, is the fact that this is a comic about Lex Luthor coming to terms with having died (spoiler: Lex Luthor will not be dead in the next issue), and hot damn does Paul Cornell not continue to nail the characterization of one of my very favourite super-villains. I can't really go into the whats and hows of the tale without ruining it, but that won't stop me from declaring that it is pretty much perfectly delightful.

And speaking of perfectly delightful, how about Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice, which not only features a Jill Thompson-endered Hellboy, but has that Hellboy team up with the titular Beasts in an in-continuity adventure that clears up, like three or four of the mysteries left hanging from the last BoB miniseries. As witnessed a couple of weeks ago with the Masks and Monsters collection, I love me some Hellboy crossover, but I don't know that I ever expected to see one as satisfying as this. Plus this is a big issue for Puggs, my very favourite of the Beasts. If you don't mist up a bit over his last couple of panels then you are a monster. A monster, I say.

And the final spooky book in my pile, issue 2 of Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities: the Ghastly Beast of London. If you're any kind of fan of The Goon or the original Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities series then you're probably already reading this or at least calmly waiting for the trade. If not, well... unless you have an absolute aversion to anything of a bizarre nature in your comic books you should at least give this one a flip through in the store. Kyle Hotz has done an amazing job with the art on this series - it's detailed without becoming illegible and horrific without, you know, looking horrible. And of course there is the continuing delight to be found in the absolutely irredeemable character of Billy the Kid. Such an ass.

And that is that. WoOoOoOoOOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoo....

John Buys Comics, the Thrilling Return

Back to the comic-buying grind again, oh what fresh stale hell is this. I kid, of course - if I got paid for this it would be the best job ever.

First, some Last Week's News, cold off the presses. Did you know that The Outfit came out last week? You probably knew that. But just in case you were, like me, out of touch for a time I will repeat myself: The Outfit came out last week! And on the off chance that you have no idea what I'm talking about: way back in the Sixties novelist Donald Westlake came up with a character named Parker and started writing novels about him under the pen name Richard Stark. Parker is basically a sonovabitch, a freelance thief who pulls two or three big jobs a year and spend the rest of the time living the high life in hotels and resorts around the world. Parker is basically an ultracompetent sociopath and is one of the most enjoyable characters in literature. The books typically feature Parker and a rotating series of other thieves pulling off one or more big scores, usually while Parker is simultaneously trying to solve some small complication in his life, like being blackmailed or having the mob put a price on his head. It's all pretty wonderful.

 

And now Darwyn Cooke is adapting the series into comic books, first with last year's The Hunter (also adapted into the Mel Gibson movie Payback, trivia fans) and now with The Outfit. And let me tell you, the right guy is on the job. Bothe Cooke and Westlake-as-Stark operate in a glorious Fifties-shading-into-Sixties aesthetic so very well, and as a result the books both look and read like they were written just for my nostalgia-riddled soul. And of course the violence (of which there is much) is marvellously choreographed. Really, the only bad thing about the whole thing is having to wait for the next instalment. Where's my instant gratification, dang it?

Even farther back, a whole two weeks ago, Fantagraphics Books came out with the amazing Four Color Fear, a book that would have made my month all by itself. More on this one in a later post - tis the season, after all. 

THIS WEEK!

Batmans - Unless I missed an something in the confusion, the Scheduling Fairy has gotten drunk on her way to DC yet again. I mean, it's very possible that I did miss something, but shouldn't Bruce Wayne be returned to the DC Universe proper some time after the Return of Bruce Wayne series actually finishes? I guess it is awfully close, but having the penultimate issue of that particular series in the same pile of comics as the opening salvo of the Bruce Wayne: the Road Home event felt a little weird.

I can't get too worked up about the whole thing though, since The Road Home is following my very favourite event format and taking place in its own one-shots and minis instead of horning in on the associated ongoings that I enjoy so well unmolested. Way to diffuse my nerd-rage, DC.

Oh, the comics themselves? Not bad. The one-shots that I picked up were entertaining enough to justify their existence, which is always nice. I'd say pick 'em up if you're reading the associated series but don't feel left out if you don't. Meanwhile, The Return of Bruce Wayne didn't deliver awesome in quite the concentration that I'd gotten used to but that's to be expected with a next-to-last issue. Next issue: total awesomeness.

Wait, does Knight and Squire fit here? Sure it does. Here is the easy calculation to determine whether you should buy this issue: take the delight that you felt when you read the preview for this a couple of weeks ago - and both zero delight and negative delight count - and multiply it by five, because the whole issue is just exactly as wonderful. Then, simply follow your heart. Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton are doing a terrific job of expanding the British corner of the DCU its own distinct place, one that has more than just a handful of characters with accents. Instead, they are developing both a rich retroactive history and a distinctive cultural flavour for the British superfolk scene. Plus, you know, Knight and Squire, two of the most criminally underutilized characters in comics, get their day in the sun. Hooray!

And in further Batman news, Masks and Monsters, the latest Hellboy collection came out this week and it's great. It contains the Hellboy/Starman/Batman crossover which among other things features Mike Mignola drawing super-heroes, which is one of thie things that brings me the most joy in this life. If I were ever to get acquisitive enough to collect anything obsessively it would definitely be Mignola-style super-hero drawings. So delightfully barrel-chested!

I think that I'll leave it at that, or perhaps at bat. Old things and bat things. Let's call it a theme week.

John Buys Comics, huzzah.

Lots of indie books fulla monster-fighting this week, which is just how I like it.

First up, Mystery Society hit the magic number and so it's time for the long-absent THIRD ISSUE RECAP to make its triumphant return. Here's the poop: young wealthies Nick Hammond and his wife Anastasia Collins have started the Mystery Society in order to investigate/bring to light the occult, aliens, government conspiracies and so forth. All of the usual stuff. The story starts [[in media res with Nick in prison, then flashes back to the formation of the Society, which involved a) advertising for members and b) breaking into Area 51 to liberate a pair of pshychic twins who had been cryogenically frozen since the 50s. The break-in has had repurcussions (specifically, trumped-up murder charges) and now the whole society is on the run from government forces.

There is nothing inherently and explosively original about this setup, but I am very much enjoying the execution. Rather than defaulting to the standard "paranormal investigation" cliches (bigfoot, the Greys, yadda yadda), Niles and Staples are making up interesting new weird things for the heroes to encounter - in this issue, for instance a remote-controlled alien blob monster that occupies a brutish humanoid battlesuit. Heck, the two members of the Society that joined up via the advertisement are themselves pretty neat: the first is Secret Skull, a twentysomething girl who died and then kept on moving around and now wears a skull headpiece and a costume reminiscent of a 1940s movie villain. The other is a Victorian robot with the brain of Jules Verne. Together, they are my favourite new motorcycle-riding comic-book duo.

Next up, King! from Blacklist Studios, the folks behind John-favourite R13. Here is King! in a nutshell: take Bruce Campbell's rendition of Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep and make him a young man, then drop him into the Evil Dead series. As someone who enjoys a good comic about monster-punching, I have to shine the full light of my approval on Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford for this one.

Oh, hey! There's a zombie Elvis in Zatanna! How many other cultural icons can claim to have simultaniously occupied both sides of the undead/monster-puncher duality? Not too damn many.

I didn't weigh in on Morning Glories last month and now here it is at number two. This is one of those comics that I am happy to have impulse-bought: it's the tale of a group of problem and/or gifted high school students who are offered admission into a prestigious new private school, which is very exciting, I know. But then they figure out that they all have the same birthday, and then their parents start claiming not to know who they are, and then things start getting sinister. Writer Nick Spencer has done a terrific job of hinting at a lot of deep dark secrets and now he just has to dole them out at a measured pace and I'll keep on getting this. Well, as long as it doesn't turn out to be one of those books that is totally dumb once you knwo what's actually going on. I'm going to be optimistic.

 

Grant Morrison, you have fooled me once again. Joe the Barbarian almost seemed like it was going to end this issue and now I am in a heightened state of suspense which, coupled with my sadness over the fact that this most excellent of series is almost over, will surely wear me down to an emotionless nubover the next month. I will refer my loved ones to you, sir, when they accuse me of neglectful, robotic behaviour.

It kind of looks like I was wrong about Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors being a police procedural in space, but I suppose that I can deal with the crushed dreams. At least it's a good time, even if it is full of the sort of fluid-spewing grievous bodily harm that the various GL books have become known for in recent years. I can definitely have a good time with a comic about Guy Gardner, Arisa and Kilowog meeting and greeting with a selection of colourful Lanterns while en route]] to a confrontation with a snake-barfing evil mastermind. And I think that it might not engender a massive crossover, even!

John Buys, How You Say, the Comics

Another great week! Once again I feel a vague sense of dread – does half a month of terrific comics forebode some stinkers in my future or should I be more concerned. Perhaps my long-overdue Gelatinous Cube attack is finally imminent. Please try to recover my bones from its improbable depths.

First up, Daytripper ended at issue number ten and it was excellent. If you’ve missed the three or four other times that I’ve waxed enthusiastic about this book then here are the basics: 1) it’s by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (with colouring by John-favourite Dave Stewart) and consequently looks fantastic. 2) It’s the story of the life of a man named Brás, told in non-chronological order and one-day increments. Brás dies a lot. 3) This is an excellent storytelling device that I wish I had something really profound to say about but organizing my thoughts on the matter is going to take a lot of hunting up of individual issues from my disorganized comics-boxes or (much more likely) the purchase of a shiny new trade in a few months time. In essence, every time Brás dies you end up looking at his life up to that point as a completed story and contrasting that story with those generated by his deaths as older and younger men creates a much more intimate view of the character than a straightforward telling of his life story might have. Having seen what his life might have become, I had such an incredible investment in what his life did become that this was one of the most satisfying final issues of any comic series for me.

And then we have Billy the Kid’s Old-Timey Oddities and the Ghastly Fiend of London, which might not be quite as thoughtful as Daytripper but certainly has a longer title. The original BtKOTO was a particular favourite of mine, and I don’t anticipate that this series will change that. I was going to maybe get snarky about the fact that Billy the Kid hasn’t actually changed much as a character despite the events of the earlier series but someone did that in the letters page and I get the impression that “unrepentant asshole” is Powell’s vision for the guy. And that’s okay, really, they do exist. Hell, I could probably hit a couple with a rock from where I’m sitting (Oh wait, I'm at home now. I should probably take that back before I get in trouble with the dog).

Meanwhile: a Weird War Tales one-shot! I will hazard a guess that this was put out in order to maintain the trademark or copyright (delete as appropriate) on one of the best titles that DC has. This was a very odd comic for me, in that I enjoyed all of the stories but was unimpressed by the book as a whole. It was just too damn short, especially for four bones. Damn fine cover by Darwyn Cooke, though.

Did you know that  this week’s Batgirl was a joy? I am very much a fan of superhero friendships, and Batgirl/Supergirl is a team that should always exist as a counterpoint to the often rocky and troubled Batman/Superman relationship. Of course, friendships can’t just spring from the void fully-formed, which is why you need something like this issue every once in a while. I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve made while hunting fake Draculas through the streets of a great metropolis. And speaking of streets, here’s a panel that made my commute this morning 100 times better:

Segway Dracula is one of the hardest Draculas to defeat. He’s so damn mobile!

If you’ve been doing some sort of week-by week analysis of my likes and dislikes, possibly with a line and/or bar graph for visual [oomph], then you might have been able to predict that I found this months Batman and Robin and BPRD: Hell on Earth to be fantastic. But was your science able to tell you that I would be absolutely blown away by The Sixth Gun No. 4 and its increasingly epic story? Huh? Well, it probably was. Hell, the book itself is probably registering on scientific instruments tuned to pick up extreme levels of incredible, or perhaps blowmyfriggingmindium radiations.

And finally, we have a collection of the Dr. Horrible one-shots and digital comics, notable for these reasons:

- No attempt was made to make it a musical comic book. This is very good, as those usually don’t work.
- Aside from (and probably because of) that, these comics are a terrific adaptation of the web series’ feel. Everything in this book works in the context of the show.
- There is a new Evil League of Evil story that is pretty darned fantastic. Fake Thomas Jefferson!
- This one is only really of interest to me but I have this forum and I will use it, dammit. I saw a live version of Dr. Horrible at the Halifax Fringe last week (still on for at least a couple of days! Tickets only ten dollars!) and it was great and there was a new Moist song and I was trying my damnedest to describe his origin story to my friends after the show, AND THEN THE TRADE CAME OUT THREE DAYS LATER. I feel that I may have warped reality a bit, and all so that I could lend this book to my pal Tubby. Kind of a waste of a power, when you think about it.

JOHNATHAN IS OUT OF HERE

John Buys Many Comics But Only Has Eyes For One

This was a very good week for me, comics-wise. New Tick, new King City, new Astro City… Stumptown, Secret Six and I, Zombie, Strange Science Fantasy and Gorilla-Man. Any one of these is enough to make me happy and a week that includes all of them makes me feel like I might have done an especially excellent good deed while I wasn’t looking and this is my reward. I’d better find an old lady to conspicuously help across the street, just in case.

Despite this bounty of riches, though, the thing that [really] got me going yesterday was the fact that The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects was there, just waiting for me to shell out some dough and take it home.

If you’ve never read Mike Mignola because you weren’t that into horror comics, or because you’re daunted by the volume of material in the Hellboy library, or for no good reason at all, you should check this out. First of all, while it’s not exactly light and fluffy, it’s lighter and fluffier than Mignola’s other books, and it’s damn funny as well. It's his atmospheric, portentious horror done as an absurdist farce (and I guess that's the reason to read it if you do already read Hellboy), complete with zombie Prussians, Victorian pseudoscience and TNT-powered rocket transports.

Secondly, this is it. There are no other Screw-On Head stories, and tragic as that may be it makes it very easy to catch up. And fourthly, the “other curiosities” of the title are similarly absurd and irreverent and include both a new tale featuring Emperor Zombie's unfortunate companion Dr Snap and "The Magician and the Snake", a comic co-written by Mignola's then-7-year old daughter Katie. 

I’ve been carting my floppy version of the Screw-On Head comic around for years. It’s been from one end of this country to the other with me. It may be the first thing that Dave ever convinced me to buy. And the reason that I have never left it behind or shoved it up in my parents' attic or failed to retrieve it from a friend's grubby mitts is because it is delightful. I own a lot of comics and I love a lot of those comics but for sheer every-damn-time joy it's basically The Amazing Screw-On Head and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen No. 72. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and read it again.

John Buys Comics, Has Snacks

Ides of Blood No. 1

I knew it! I knew that Wildstorm would fulfill its obligation to have at least one series that I want to buy in print at all times. As soon as Sparta, USA ended then this saga of vampire-infested Rome stepped to the fore.

You may have already seen the preview for this, as it’s been floating around for the last couple of weeks. If so, you know the basics: when Rome conquered the Balkan state of Dacia it found vampires running around, and so it enslaved them all and hauled them home, where they became the new underclass. So: a conceptual mashup, but an interesting one. What you DON’T know if you’ve only seen that preview is that this is also basically a police procedural, as Praetorian/vampire/former slave Valens attempts to solve a series of murders before the his enemy Brutus can do so. And that is awesome. There is seriously a scene where Valens does the equivalent of a ballistics test on some bite marks so that he can trace the vampire who did the biting. If he fires a werewolf into a barrel of water next issue then my reading experience will be complete.

I guess a part of me does cry out about historical inaccuracies and such, but then another part of me reminds the first part that it’s reading a comic about vampires in Ancient Rome and maybe it should shut up and let the rest of the brain enjoy itself if it knows what’s good for it.

Seedless Vol. 1

Man, I almost didn’t flip through this, which means that I wouldn’t have bought it, which means that my life would have had just a bit less joy in it.

I have no idea how to describe the plot of this book to you without making you cock an eyebrow and question my judgement, because it’s very weird. Check it: a trio of alien grapes (Dash, Funky and Pulse), having driven an evil grape mastermind (Crazy) off of their grape planet, pursue him to Earth, where they befriend a girl named Harmony and together try to stop Crazy (and his minion Fajita) from rebuilding his army using Terran grapes.

This book is like nothing so much as a late 80s/ early 90s Saturday morning cartoon: new characters and new powers are constantly being introduced, at a rate of about one per battle. What could get tiresome very quickly in a TV series, though, is here a source of pure joy, because Corey S. Lewis isn’t trying to sell you an ever-increasing stable of toys and accessories, he's just trying to draw an action-packed thrill ride. 

Usagi Yojimbo No. 1 – Will this be the thing that finally gets me to start buying the Usagi Yojimbo collections? Probably. These Dark Horse reprints are a great idea on that front, though it looks like they’ve already done a pretty good job on me, as this is the first one that I didn’t already have in some form. My bookshelf runneth over.

A Skeleton Story No. 1 - I seem to have frittered my evening away on chores and errands, so it's terse from here on out. I will be watching this series carefully, because my new catch phrase, as of now, is "Skeletons are the thinking man's zombies." I can only hope that it will make me wildly popular.

Streets of Gotham No. 15 – Good lord is Two-Face a great character when written well. Rounds of applause for this comic!

Oops, I ran out of time and there is a guacamole-based snack being offered to me! Away!