Supplemental Best of 2010: Lots of Text!

As I said, I had an enormous list of potential "Best of" candidates that were ruthlessly whittled down to the top ten that has by now been enshrined in the hearts of nerdlingers everywhere. But why should all of my hard work go to waste, huh? Thus: the runners-up post.

First up, a list of books that I unfairly disqualified due to the fact that they have continued to be good rather than attaining greatness this year. Sustained quality should be praised but is kind of wearying to write about. Still, many of these brought me just as much delight as anything else this year.

Action Comics - The Superman books have been all over the place this year, but through it all, Action has been a safe haven. And now it features Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen, the two greatest Metropolitans of all!

Atomic Robo - Brian Clevinger has already attained a place in my "Top Comics of All Time" with this series, and every time he brings something like Dr. Dinosaur or the electric ghost of Thomas Edison into the mix he just nudges himself a bit higher up the charts.

BATMANS - Probably would have made the big list, only I felt kind of squirrelly typing in "Detective Comics, every other issue of Batman, the Return of Bruce Wayne, Batgirl, Batwoman, Batman Inc, Batman and Robin, Red Robin, Knight and Squire, that one 80-Page Giant and about half of Joker's Asylum II" as one comic. But seriously, this has been a great year for Batman.

Casanova - I completely missed the boat on this comic the first time around, so these reprints are a godsend to me.

Chew - I would love Chew if it were just a list of amazing new food-related superpowers in a spiral-bound notebook. The fact that it is an amazing comic is just gravy.

Doom Patrol - I love all incarnations of the Doom Patrol, even John Byrne's (but not as much as the others), so having Keith Giffen writing a fun, funny series that does a pretty danged amazing job of synthesizing their ultra-damaged continuity into something that works is like getting a birthday present every month.

Hellboy - Unless Mike Mignola goes crazy some day, and it is a very specific kind of crazy that causes him to make boring comics, this will always be on my list. Not only were the regular series filled with amazing revelations to delight the senses but there were two whole one-shot issues - a rare and amazing occurrence!

King City - More amusement per page than any other comic out there, plus lotsa great cat characters. If you like that kind of thing.

Power Girl - Of course no Power Girl comic will ever equal the Amanda Conner era and there have been a few rough patches, but I am still enjoying this, and as that was way more than I expected I shall tip my hat accordingly.

REBELS - It is an inarguable fact that the more Brainiacs you have in a comic, the better it is. Well, this book currently averages 3-5 per issue. It's a no-brainer!

Secret Six - Super-villains! Gail Simone writes super-villains like nobody's business - watching Bane become a likeable and interesting character was like watching an intricate magic trick. I saw it, I don't quite know how it was done and I am filled with delight.

Sweet Tooth - Jeff Lemire just keeps on filling me with that delicious despair. Odds of there being a happy ending: LOW.

Unwritten - Continues to shine. I just tried to think of an especially incredible issue to highlight here and ended up thinking of every issue in the series, sequentially. 

Usagi Yojimbo - Stan Sakai just hits this comic out of the park every issue. I kick myself that I didn't buy it for so long.

I have a bunch more, actually, but I'll leave them until tomorrow, lest you tire of me. 

John Buys Comics: December Edition

That's right, it's December, that magical month in which I don't seem to actually be doing a whole lot more with my time but somehow there still never actually seems to be enough time to do things. 

So much was bought but little was read, so sad, so sad. No matter! Here are some bullet points for you all.

- King City No. 12: Either this was the end of the series and I will be sad or issue 13 will be a fantastic jumping-on point for newbies. In either case this was a terrific comic. Seldom have I felt such satisfaction as several plotlines wrapped up at once, a task at which comics are frequently terrible. 

- Doom Patrol No. 17: I don't even care if this story continues next issue. That was one of the most brilliantly groan-worthy last-page gags I have ever seen. 

- Action Comics Annual No. 13: I'm still processing this one. The inclusion of what amounts to mentoring from some of the greatest super-menaces in the DCU to Lex Luthor's origins is an interesting one and it certainly could work with the character that I hold so dear. It's still a pretty radical addition to the Lex Luthor: Self-Made Man characterization that is so central to his interactions with the world. I'll wait and see how they handle this - frankly, the most unnerving thing about the issue was Luthor's eerie resemblance to Jimmy Olsen.

- Marineman No. 1: I liked this, and it has potential, but I have no ability to gauge a series' worth from its first issue. Check back in January.

And of course:

- Achewood: A Home For Scared People: One of the greatest comics on the Internet gets another beautiful hardcover from Dark Horse. Features not only Roast Beef's trip to the Moon but a series of intensely enjoyable text pieces on the nature of Ray and Beef's relationship. Smiles for miles!

And now I am off to once again fret over season obligations and stresses. Ta ta!

John Buys Comics, All Continues as Normal

This may be it, folks. We may have hit my point of karmic balance for those two astonishingly good weeks of new comics: a week of decent comics that are components of pretty good series. And that's okay, I guess. Kind of leaves me high and dry for reviews though. Let's see what I can do with talking about series rather than issues:

Legion of Super-Heroes - By Gar I'm happy to have a Legion series coming out, especially one that features lots of focus on Legionnaire interpersonal drama and sweeping future society hijinks. And heck, even if Matter-Eater Lad left for parts unknown off-panel last issue, the fact that Quislet and Tellus are hanging around balances my humours sufficiently to be joyful. Best of all, I kind of think that this series could be jumped onto with minimal research. Sure it's filled with callbacks to olde schoole Legion history, but none of it is actually necessary to understand what's going on. Pick up the trade of Geoff Johns' Legion storyline in Action a few years back and you should be good, plus you'll have a really fun comic to read.

Power Girl - Sure it's not as amazingly great as the first twelve issues were, but honestly I don't know if there's another creative team on the planet who could have continued the Connor/Palmiotti/Gray magic. Anyone who could have produced something equally as marvellous would have also done something completely different with the series, which would have paradoxically made it less good. So hooray for decent continuations, yes? Winick and Basrai have taken the reins with a minimum of fuss and have produced some genuinely enjoyable stories - I can be happy with that.

Supergirl - I read this comic, along with maybe four others, at lunch today and for some reason this was the one that the office wags mined their material from. "Supergirl!", they'd exclaim, a one-word challenge to my masculinity. "Why not Superman?", they would continue, but that was dangerous territory, and my boss for example got a pocket explanation of the House of El and its doings on Earth that he wasn't quite prepared for, mwaha. Besides, how can I stop reading what has been the most consistently entertaining of the Super-books for, like a year and a half and counting?

Justice League: Generation Lost - Wait, so the white lantern wants to prevent the events of Kingdom Come from happening? Isn't that, like Earth K-12 now anyway? How much do I have to pay for a multiverse that doesn't double up on themes? At least it kind of looks like Brightest Day might end with someone bumping off Magog.

Cowboy Ninja Viking - This is one of those series, one with a basic idea - folks with multiple personalities being trained as assassins - that could turn into a bunch of stupid and repetitious jokes by issue three but instead we have an engaging if somewhat silly character-driven tale of extremely violent international espionage. How did this happen? The main character is just a collection of memes, and yet I was genuinely heartbroken over a plot development in this issue. Bravo, I say, from my nest of perplexedness.

Hit Monkey - Okay, I guess that this one is over. But it was good, and that is important. See, you may have noticed that I don't read a lot of Marvel comics. At first, this was because I came back to reading the comical booklets just as Civil War was kicking off and DC was in its astonishing couple of years of excellence post-Infinite Crisis. Nowadays, it's mostly inertia that's keeping me away from the Marvel books, that and the event banner that most of them are sporting across the top of the cover. Books like this, that tie in to the Marvel Universe but don't really require outside knowledge, are really helping me ease my way in. Plus, you know: monkey assassin.

Sleep tight, folks. I am out of here.

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 Bought Comics, Honest

I've had a terrible tendency lately to let the slightest bit of business on a Thursday evening derail me from writing those reviews that I do, but I will battle against those procrastination impulses with the only weapon that I have: brevity! Yes, by telling myself that it will take less time than usual, I have broken free from the shackles of immobility! Huzzah!

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES COMICS: Well, the Superman/Batman No. 75 super-sized special was a bit of a bust. I have never seen Batman do less in the course of a comic. I realize that it is heavily implied that he schooled Brainiac 5 with his mad detective skills, but honestly, as much as I love the Legion, Batman should always explicitly show them up. Being from the future does not give you any sort of advantage over the MF Batman, kids. I did like the Kryptonite Luthor as a villain and the various back-up pieces were fun, but my heavens was this a dull read.

By Contrast, I couldn't be more happy with the Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing, currently at number 4. Huge cast having space adventures? Check. Plots that build off of the series' past rather than merely rehashing it? Check. Quislet? Check. Let the good times roll.

BATMAN COMICS: What a week! Detective Comics No. 868 was just solidly entertaining - Joker imitators and Batman imitators having a war in the streets is nothing but entertainment - but Batman No. 702 was a revelation, quite literally. To whit: about half the time when I finish a Grant Morrison yarn I have the feeling that I'm missing important details, and as much as I liked Batman RIP/Final Crisis/The Return of Bruce Wayne I definitely had that feeling about a million times. This comic made that feeling go away. Mostly. For the Batman parts. It's a joyous feeling.

SUPERMAN COMICS: As I said last time, Lex Luthor in Action Comics is a fantastic time. It will keep me reading at least one Superman book even if variable-speed Walking Superman (well, I assume. He's already about a fifth of the way across the US, right? If it took him a month to get that far, then this should be over by Christmas! But probably not. He'll probably slow down soon) breaks my spirit. Not only does it look great, but Paul Cornell is writing Luthor as the evil mastermind that he deserves to be, something that not everyone can do. 

Meanwhile, Superman: Secret Origin No. 6. Well, as I said way back when this started, I agree that Superman's origin was probably due for a tweaking and the first four issues of this series did a pretty good job of that. And then the last two tied Superman's past in to the present that was the storyline that ended almost three months ago. So not only does this issue tie Superman's origin into a plot that is now over but it helps establish the antagonism of a character who is now dead, whoo hoo. On the plus side, it reminded me that no matter how much I loathed the General Sam Lane subplot in last years Superman comics, in retrospect it was much better than the current bumblepiggery.

ROBERT KIRKMAN COMICS: Invincible and Science Dog and Guarding the Globe in one week? and they're all really fun? This cat is on fire! I'm going to use the word trifecta! It's a total trifecta! Yeah!

Seriously, though: I really enjoy these comics. 

CODEBREAKERS TP: I could never find the second issue of this series, so this is a complete godsend. If you missed this in single issues then I must encourage you to check it out: it's essentially an action movie starring crypto nerds. Bonus: the main dude has grey-sides-and-back Reed Richards hair and it is amazing. If I weren't going to end up with an amazingly receded hairline I would aspire to hair like his.

And... done! Apologies for the horrible sentence structure but you can't argue with laziness. And laziness is my super-power. I'm the god-damn zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

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!