Marvel Comics

What the Market Will Bear: A Big Two Skip Week Leaves the Indies to Rule the Racks

July 7, 2020 // 5 Comments

So this may be a short column. For one thing, I’ve procrastinated and gotten pressed for time. But also… I don’t have many funnybooks to talk about. Neither Marvel nor DC released anything last week, which didn’t impact me all that much since I don’t read a lot from either of them. But not much that I DO read came out, either. It was just two books, in fact, but they were both doozies: the second issue of The Boys: Dear Becky, and the long-awaited (by me, anyway) [...]

2020 State of the Industry, Part One: The Big Two

January 21, 2020 // 3 Comments

So here we are at the dawn of a new decade. And that’s got me thinking about where the funnybook business is. Well… okay. What really got me thinking about it was poring over the latest issue of Previews. If you’re not familiar, Previews is the monthly ordering catalog for Diamond Distribution, the company that supplies every comic book specialty shop in America (with a monopolistic hold over the industry that, in a saner world, would run afoul of anti-trust laws). If [...]

Funnybook Heart of Darkness: What Would It Take to Make You Stop Reading Comics?

January 30, 2018 // 13 Comments

So a reader asked me, recently, what it would take to get me to stop reading comics. It’s an interesting question, and one that I hadn’t really thought about much. I mean, that’s like asking what it would take to get me to stop watching movies. Or reading novels. Or breathing. Why would I do that? It doesn’t make sense to me. But I gave it some thought, and the first thing I came up with was “Poverty.” Because funnybooks are kind of expensive as entertainment mediums [...]

Mutant History X: Ed Piskor Makes Sense of It All in X-Men: Grand Design

January 23, 2018 // 3 Comments

So our attention has been turned to the past around here lately, and I thought it was high time we returned to the present this week. It’s kind of ironic, then, that the book that’s impressed me the most recently is also one that looks to the past… X-Men: Grand Design #1 & 2 by Ed Piskor The premise of this book is simple: it’s a history of the X-Men, told as if every X-Men story ever told, every ret-con and change and weird bolted-on insertion into their [...]

What’s Past is Prologue: Alan Moore’s Twilight of the Superheroes, Part One

December 12, 2017 // 5 Comments

So I recently stumbled upon a file I’d downloaded years ago, and tucked away on my hard drive for posterity: Twilight of the Superheroes, a proposal for a 12-issue mini-series, by Alan Moore. The great DC Comics crossover that never was! Written in 1987, before the Watchmen deal went sour, this is the work of a younger and perhaps even slightly naive Moore, drunk with the newfound freedom to insert adult themes into super hero stories, and still of the belief that he could work with DC to [...]

Retro Review: Jim Starlin’s Darklon the Mystic

December 5, 2017 // 2 Comments

So I think we established a long time ago that we love Jim Starlin’s 1970s work here on the nerd farm. All the Thanos-related stuff, from his earliest work on Captain Marvel through to Starlin’s early masterpiece Adam Warlock, blew my mind when I encountered it as a kid. They’re psychedelic and brooding, and reading them was like swallowing a whole acid tab with Michael Moorcock’s face on it. Drawn by Jack Kirby. With Ditko inks. (And, good lord, I wish I had an [...]

Getting Back to Bendis…

November 14, 2017 // 3 Comments

So while I was off talking about Books With Words In Them, big news hit the funnybook world: Brian Michael Bendis has announced that he’s leaving Marvel Comics for DC. Now, this is not the sort of thing we talk much about here on the nerd farm, but it’s big enough news that I can’t help but speculate on it a little. So let’s start with the one Bendis book I’m still reading, and use that as a guideline to talk about where he might be going next… Jessica Jones [...]

Here We Go Again: Fanboys, Politics, and Secret Empires

May 9, 2017 // 6 Comments

Secret Empire 1 / Free Comic Book Day Special by Nick Spencer, Steve McNiven, and Andrea Sorrentino So I said I wasn’t going to pick up the second issue of this book (which, confusingly, is numbered as the first issue – don’t get me started on the whole “zero issue” thing). But it was a slow week for new comics, so I gave it a flip-through in the shop, and I saw this kind of hysterical conversation between Captain America and a monster… …and a dude puking up a [...]

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth! Dr. Strange Hits the Big Screen!

November 7, 2016 // 0 Comments

So I went to see the Doctor Strange movie. No, no… Not THAT Doctor Strange movie. I already saw that one, almost 40 years ago. I meant the new one, with Sherlock Holmes in it, and the white lady playing the Asian wise man. Yeah, THAT’S the one! So I went to see that. It was a little weird for me, seeing a Marvel movie. I’ve outlined my reasons for not watching their films before (long story short: I don’t like how they treated Jack Kirby). But now they’ve finally [...]

Joy, Confusion, and Paranoia

October 6, 2016 // 1 Comment

So I found myself, this week, buying nothing but new number one issues, all of wildly different tones and evoking wildly different reactions from me as a reader. But all also offering something that’s going to bring me back for more. Sometimes, the column just writes itself… Jessica Jones 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos I must admit that I was wary in approaching this book. I was a big fan of Alias back in its day, and even though this book is a sequel to that one, by [...]