Reviews of books, comics, movies, and other random stuff.
"In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes." In this era of 24-hour news channels and Reality TV, Andy Warhol's prophetic quote has practically come true. Why should superheroes be any different?That's the angle Bob Elinskas comes from with 15 Minutes, an appealing combination of Troy Hickman's Eisner-nominated Common Grounds and Marvel's Great Lakes Avengers played straight, featuring poignant snapshots of D-list superheroes and villains, as told through the eyes of the everyday civilians whose lives they affect. While the basic premise isn't terribly original, the execution is near-perfect as Elinskas packs more emotional subtext into each…
While much of the ever-expanding Comics Blogiverse is made up of wannabe writers - Grant Morrison sycophants praising his every bowel movement, and frustrated hacks full of shallow anti-Marvel/DC snark being the two largest demographics - there's another, much more interesting subculture to be found: aspiring comics retailers.As much as I'd love to one day see my name credited as writer on a Moon Knight mini-series, I don't actually have any aspirations or intent to pursue that particular fantasy. I do, however, entertain the thought of opening my own store one day. Quite often, really.Recently, I've come across a couple…
[So many comics, so few good ones, only three make the cut each week. Quickie-style reviews, for better, or worse: 1 Minute=bad, 10 Minutes=good. Connections, if any at all, may be forced purely for the experience.]It figures. A week after I change things up and decide to no longer require representatives of the Big Two for this column, they each throw me a Paul Jenkins curveball and buy themselves another week in the mix. Nevertheless, the pull list purge began as the once highly anticipated OMAC Project #1 got an in-store skim (solid, if uninspired story, picking up directly from…
A month or so ago, Top Shelf Productions was running a great sale on some of their backlist, with an assortment of graphic novels and comix for $1 and $3. [EDIT: The sale is apparently still on, here.] A mixed bag of titles, the vast majority of which I'd never heard of, I decided to randomly pick several that caught my eye and see whether or not any of them could match the subtle brilliance of Craig Thompson's Blankets, a highly acclaimed Top Shelf publication, which I finally read earlier this year. A rather lofty standard-bearer, for sure, but when…
[One Marvel, one DC, both published the previous Wednesday, plus a random indie from whenever I feel like it, each reviewed quickie-style: 1 Minute=bad, 10 Minutes=good. Connections, if any at all, may be forced purely for the experience.]As several current story arcs come to their drawn-out conclusions over the next couple of months, I'll be drastically paring down the Big Two portion of my pull list in anticipation of buying a house sometime this summer. As such, my weekly "ménage à trois" will either be scrapped or altered to reflect my scaled-back, indie-heavy list. It's like I've [again] outgrown the…
[One Marvel, one DC, both published the previous Wednesday, plus a random indie from whenever I feel like it, each reviewed quickie-style: 1 Minute=bad, 10 Minutes=good. Connections, if any at all, may be forced purely for the experience.]At this point, distracted by the passage of time, the filing of a pile of back issues and the arrival of some interesting Moonstone product, I've pretty much forgotten about most of the new comics I bought last week! Fortunately, I'd already set aside my threesome for the week and now offer them up, even quicker than usual.Power Pack #1 is an "All…
Comics...you can't give the damn things away!Seriously, though, entries for one of the two FREE copies of Elk's Run #1 (sold out, BTW, for all you collector-types) have been less than overwhelming. And it's not for lack of traffic because the original announcement itself has been viewed more than 100 times, not to mention the couple of hundred views when it was still on the main page.The fu--?It's a FREE COMIC BOOK, PEOPLE! And a GOOD one, at that!! Come on, dammit!!!So, with only five days left in the contest, I've decided to sweeten the pot a little bit. In…
