Reviews of books, comics, movies, and other random stuff.

INDUSTRY BUZZ #2: Hype Will Eat Itself

Industry Buzz is my monthly roundtable column at Buzzscope, featuring some of the most outspoken creators, retailers, pundits and advocates in comics commenting on the issues affecting the comics industry. This month, we took a look at hype, and what, if any, affect it has on sales.Does marketing/hype help sell more copies of a comic book? Would, say, the first volume of Runaways have sold better if Marvel had promoted it half as much as House of M? What about reviews? Do they have any measurable effect on sales, especially of independent comics that lack the marketing resources of the…

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Try Something Different: 8/31/05

Support GOOD Comics!A look at select comic books being released today, 8/31/05. Full shipping list available at ComicList. (Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it. If not, find another one, or try Khepri.com or MidtownComics.com)AIT/PLANETLAR Smoke & Guns GN, $12.95The preview in Black Diamond On-Ramp did nothing for me, and Tim O'Neil confirms that feeling.DARK HORSE COMICS Revelations #1 (Of 6), $2.99Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos are one of my favorite creative duos from their run on Spectacular Spider-Man, so this mini-series…

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CBC Quickees: 8/24/05

Quick reviews of comics I read last week, rated 0 to 5 stars.Black Panther #7 (Marvel; $2.99)Um...damn, Hudlin is really making it hard to keep up my defense of his work here. On the heels of the his first arc's hasty and inconclusive wrapup - he never really did get to the heart of "Who is the Black Panther?" - comes an awkward House of M tie-in which, despite the pagelong intro, will likely leave any brand new readers he brought in sitting in the dark. About the only good thing I can say is that it comes the closest…

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Buzzscope Reviews: 8/24/05

Here's what I covered for Buzzscope this week. Tomorrow, I'll have quickee reviews of everything else I read.Ant, Vol. 2 #1Ant is a sufficiently entertaining superhero comic book, admirably featuring a heroine of color without going out its way to hype that fact, and Mario Gully seems to have wisely discarded some of his first volume’s ill-conceived pretensions in favor of simply telling a fun story.Batman #644What exactly do you say about a comic book like this? One so aggressively bad, and so obviously constructed according to an editorially mandated outline, that it defies critique.Monkey in a Wagon vs. Lemur…

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INFO: CBC Update

The jury's still out on CBC v2.0, but some recent developments have added a couple of unexpected twists to the plot, so this is sort of an update/brain-dump for future reference when real life isn't quite so hectic.Development #1: Out of the blue, about a month ago, Erech Overaker asked me to contribute a script to a comic anthology he's putting together, and after some initial hesitation, I figured what the hell. "Those who can, do..." sort of thing that I decided to approach as a challenge; a preemptive strike on thin-skinned creators who respond to negative reviews with variations…

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Buzzscope Reviews: 8/17/05

A light week, partly due to not much new of interest on the shelves, plus the fact that I was busy working on my script! Have I officially crossed the line from objective pundit to subjective peer? The latter, of course, in the loosest sense imaginable.Runners: Bad Goods TPBSomeone needs to sign Sean Wang and let him devote 70 hours/week to telling this story, because Dark Horse's Star Wars comics shouldn't be the best-selling sci-fi on the shelves.Superhero HCFrom the mouths of babes: "It's not a comic book. It's a book!" A worthy addition to any child's bookshelf, sitting alongside…

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