Commentary Track for December 31st Buy Pile Reviews (UPDATED WITH VIDEO)

There's actually a lotta discussion and thought that goes into this week's review(s), so there's not much that needs to be said ... but the images are needed.

The management at CBR isn't sure this week's column will be posted as is and on schedule. If you see a link in this paragraph, all was well, and if you see a note with a link, all was wonky. If you see no link, well, the "director's cut" will eventually run here. (NOTE: The column didn't run. I'm gonna invoice 'em for it anyway. Screw that noise ...)

Anyhoo, with the exception of the last image shown here, photos are courtesy of Isaac S. Lew and Jason Thompson (where noted), who hopefully will send over videos that can be added shortly ... (NOTE: Videos came in after press time, but they're included here now, due to sheer awesomeness)

In any case, here's the photos ...

The Counselor, presenting his case

Photo by Isaac S. Lew

About a half dozen people gathered around to hear what he had to say.

The Counselor (known as "Da King" or "Your Majesty" to the newly named Quislet) presents his case

Video by Isaac S. Lew

Another view of "the courtroom"
Photo by Jason D. Thompson

Most were awed by the disturbing volume of his scholarship as well as the relentless clarity of his points. Some just cracked up laughing.

A serious presentation of the facts

Photo by Isaac S. Lew

Take any term paper every written, anywhere. This is more serious than that. It's like some Johnnie Cochrane stuff. The burden of proof was just a start of things, before the real smack down. It was some top rope, elbow-tapping, vengeful god stuff. Also known as "awesome."

The body of evidence

Photo by Isaac S. Lew

Roy Thomas to Matt Cherniss to Stan Lee, covering every era of comics from the Invaders to the Initiative. Wow.

He said he was scanning and blowing up images in preparation for this at home, and his wife got all Seth Meyers on him and was like, "Really?" It'd be worth it to get a photo of that expression.

Presiding over this madness, Hannibal drove rapidly through LA screaming "HERE COMES JUSTICE!"

Photo by Isaac S. Lew

My stepdaughter was warming up for her second Kwanzaa show performance this week, my wife was struggling with some pregnancy related issues (probably some stuff on the Soapbox about that sooner or later). It was hard to be parted from the family to rule on such a goofy matter, but The Counselor made it a show worth seeing.

The man formerly known as Adam K, sometimes known as little girl's names, but henceforth known as QUISLET, admitting his complete loss

Photo by Hannibal Tabu

Part of the final ruling was that Quislet here had to be known as "Quislet" as an ironic bit of comeuppance for his earlier "victory," and has to refer to The Counselor exclusively as "The King" or "Your Majesty" for no fewer than five years. Oh, would you like to see the final judgement? We can do that ... Sandy, can we roll that clip?

His Honor Hannibal Tabu stands ready to render judgement.

Video by Isaac S. Lew

Hopefully some sign of this great achievement will be recorded on the Comics Ink wall, but store owner Steve is more about finance than jurisprudence.

Less a battle and more of a felonious assault, The Counselor was like Thor and Quislet here was like Marvin's cape on the old Superfriends show. Not even close.

Can't get enough? Download the eight page PDF of the brief -- well worth your time.

Playing (Music): "Bedroom Lites" by Idle Warship

Commentary Track for December 24th Buy Pile Reviews

Before we get started, I wrote a blog last week about (among other things) my problem about "Blackest Night," and somebody might come looking for it. Lemme look at my noted here ... crap, can't read my own handwriting. Somebody with a ... "tod complex?" "bod complex?" Something like that. Anyway, that's here, so good luck with that.

At the time I'm writing this, I don't have a link, as the column won't post for a few hours (it's 3:58 AM). However, I had to write about something important (well, as comics go) ...

Clash of the Nutjobs

Shown here are "Sally" (the school teacher some know as Adam K. and the comics retail clerk I routinely call little girls names) and a lawyer who'd probably prefer to keep his name out of all of this craziness.

Anyway, the lawyer (let's call him Counselor, for argument's sake) believes that Namor needs to flap those ridiculous little wings on his ankles in order to fly. Most of the people at the shop (and likely the world) believe that's crazy -- Namor flies because he's a flying mutant. He thinks he can fly, therefore he does. Flapping the wings makes no difference.

This argument was allegedly settled early this year when Vince Moore (another retailer at the store and a writer/editor/columnist/man about town) pulled out some John Byrne-penned "proof" that Namor was a delusional nutbag and could fly irrespective of his ankle wings. However, The Counselor's further research found Vince's "proof" to be as factual as Obama's claims that he didn't campaign for a public option and the "verdict" was overturned.

Thanks to a ruling from store owner, Steve LeClaire, the Counselor has until the end of 2009 to present his case to a quorum of comics fans and "authorities" at Comics Ink or he shall forever be shunned and mocked.

Next Wednesday, Diamond Comics and UPS can't get their act together and no comics will ship. Only one new comic book will be on sale in US shops -- some "Blackest Night" book. However, at 5PM, on the corner of Overland and Braddock in Culver City, CA, The Counselor will present his case to either emerge covered in triumphant glory or derision and shame.

Unless a new baby appears sometime around then, I will be there, serving likely as a jurist.

So there's that. Now, commentary about this week's comics:

I was shocked to see Marvel dominate both the "super crappy" and "not so bad" sections simultaneously, which is quite a feat and normally needs event comics to accomplish. I like the work of so many of these writers -- Fear Agent from Remender, Jonathan Hickman's amazing work on The Nightly News, Pax Romana and Transhuman, just for example. But this stuff ... it's really scary how bad it is. That means any good writer can turn in crap. That's frightening. I've gotta work harder at my stuff ...

Also, "Necrosha/Blackest Night?" I need the Armageddon/Deep Impact stuff to not happen, 'kay?

Now, a quick bit on Unknown Soldier. Despite the fact that the writer's dead to me now, the graphic novel was freaking amazing, and really redefined the property. However, sending this property -- which had heavy US ties in its mythos -- to an African country with no clear goals nor direction ... well, that's always been a bit weird to me. The whole reason the graphic novel worked so well was that the Soldier knew who he was and why -- an instrument of policy, a tool to achieve goals. This guy seems to have more of Christopher Chance's malaise (as presented by Peter Milligan) and that's ... hard to catch up with. I'm always interested, because (even though there are zero Black creators on this book -- sigh) Black characters in comics are always going to at least get my eyebrow to raise with interest.

However, on charm, I can't say enough of how much I enjoy reading Amadeus Cho, who's a morally gray character who feels no real desire to choose sides. I can relate to that. Heroism or villainy depend on mood and what's happening that day. His pairing with the "scoundrel" styled charm of Hercules could only be topped by a Layla Miller or Valeria Richards. I really hope to see more of the character as the years go on, maybe even some mentoring from Jimmy Woo.

Now, as I have the day off and would like to actually do some writing for myself for a change (as well as Audio Hijacking all of my favorite songs from The Sing Off), I bid you adieu. I will report back from the Namor showdown next week, and as always keep an eye on The Operative Network for baby news.

Playing (Music): "Popular Demand" by Lupe Fiasco

Commentary Track for The Buy Pile, December 16, 2008 (or "The Great Sadness")

All righty, you know the deal. I do commentary tracks for the latest set of reviews. Some housekeeping before I get to all that ...

- Two weeks from now, only one comic book will be sold in the US, due to Diamond and UPS not being able to get their act together, so they're blowing off the whole week. Which means a lot of comics creators can't make any money that week. What can brown not do for you? *sigh* *facepalm*

- My wife is pregnant, and our baby's due date was last Friday. So I could disappear at any time, and that's why. I'll be back. Don't panic.

Let's get it on.

I'm noticing that I feel like I buy a lot more Marvel books than DC books. I'm going to get into a little of why that is in a bit, but it's one of the first things on my mind this week.

Now, I'm very happy to be enjoying Jonathan Maberry's Black Panther series, and I'm very excited at the big name cast -- old favorites for T'Challa, but rarely all together -- going on here. I do wish that, given Doom's involvement in Siege, that it looked like things will connect more effect across the platform (I doubt it at this point)but the story itself is enjoyable and I swear that if Marvel.com had a weekly column from the two Wakandan pundits, I would read it religiously and set the RSS feed for my aggregator.

It's hard for me with G.I. Joe comics, because so many times I want to buy and love a G.I. Joe comic based on my love for the property and so many of the characters, but the stories sometimes don't stand up. This one may have had some cliched elements, but it was very strong and very smart -- Chuck Dixon knows his stuff. The undercurrent of Cobra being a mystery and sneaky and largely unknown is pretty smart. I don't know how that plays out once there's open combat between the parties, but still it's pretty cool.

We also got (finally) a better look at what the Sentry can actually do and find out why, which is fantastic in that he can really be somebody. His lunacy's a great limiter for his overwhelming power, and now his power makes a kind of sense. I was really tired of the Sentry getting housed by everybody short of Squirrel Girl every other week, so this was a pleasant surprise.

I think I figured out Power Girl's problem, and Vartox almost solved it. Power Girl is somewhat ridiculous. Going with that is a good thing. Standing next to Magog and Jay Garrick, you can play her straight, but by herself she's an almost ludicrous character and that's not a bad thing. Watching her go back and forth with this spaceborne lothario was the most interested I've been with this character in years, but she wasn't exasperated enough and didn't go far enough in her responses to him. Until Ms. Marvel became the ruthless Karla Sofen, I felt kind of the same way. It's hard to make these kind of cookie cutter characters breathe, but I believe it's doable once you find their slant. Ms. Marvel, with a military background, has room to be hard core. Power Girl? She needs to give in to her inner ridiculousness.

Okay, now here's what I've been thinking about most of the week. I've been getting some ... well, frankly misinformed criticisms about me personally and my work in general that I found tiresome. Here's the facts: I have hated almost every bit of the "Blackest Night" crossover so far. My reasons are myriad: if the Green Lantern ring was to be the ultimate weapon in the universe, now saying that there are essentially six more corps of people with similar shticks (acknowledging that the Blue Lanterns have no tactical ability and that the Indigo whatever-they-ares are a tribe that's not that big nor accepting applications) robs that weapon of its specialness and its ability, really. Green Lanterns have pulled planets with their rings (albeit with help sometimes), so if Sinestro Corps members or Red Lanterns (which all seem as numerous as GLs) or Agent Orange can do all that, especially since most of the new corps lack the oversight/backup of their own Guardian equivalents ... that's just kind of lame in my mind. It just is. In one or two books, fine, but this is a line wide crossover, so the lameness has spilled on to books that could have been better (Doom Patrol for example, or even The Outsiders). I don't like that. Also, with the recent dramas of Guy Gardner, even the color "doesn't matter" so much. You're Green today, no, you're red, and he's Blue, no, wait, he's plaid ... ick. It'd even be better if the rings had different effects -- yellow rings induced fear or created frightening things, red ones were exclusively concussive, and so on.

However, some -- in the store, on Twitter, in general life -- believe that I "hate Green Lantern so much" and maybe I've never "given it a positive review." Well, that's the kind of misinformation that tires me out. How about these apples: Green Lantern Corps #6 on November 15, 2006; Green Lantern Corps #8 on January 10, 2007; Green Lantern Corps #9 on Valentine's Day 2007, Green Lantern Sinestro Corps Special #1 on June 27, 2007, Green Lantern #21 on July 11, 2007, Green Lantern #22 on August 8, 2007; Green Lantern Corps #16 and Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Cyborg Superman #1 on October 3, 2007; Green Lantern Corps #17 on October 24, 2007; Green Lantern Corps #18 on November 29, 2007; the extraordinarily mean (in a good way) Green Lantern Corps #27 from August 12, 2008; the extraordinarily creepy Green Lantern Corps #31 from December 10, 2008; Green Lantern Corps #34 on March 11, 2009; Green Lantern Corps #38 on July 1, 2009;Green Lantern #44 on July 22, 2009 (which was actually a "Blackest Night" crossover issue, one of the very few I've found some ability to enjoy); and Green Lantern #46 on October 1, 2009 (loved Sinestro's work here). Those are all fairly good "Honorable Mentions" reviews (I omitted ones that were less forgiving, as there were a couple that weren't as positive), and I just had to do a BBEdit search on my MacBook Pro for them.

Oh, and while we're at it, I bought and enjoyed Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files & Origins (I normally don't buy SF&O because they lack detail, but "what it lacks in statistical figures it makes up for in sheer volume of data." Another? On September 10, 2009 I also bought Green Lantern Corps #28, which Neil Tomasi did a great script for. That's two more issues than I've bought many, many other properties.

Here's the thing people don't understand: when I pick up a comic book, I want to like it. I have an honest desire to buy virtually every book I pull off the shelves. My most heartfelt wish is that I'll open whatever's in my hand and it will pull me inside, it will thrill and fascinate and challenge and intrigue and entice me until I can't deny it, go ahead and buy it, take it home and read with glee (yes, I did a Nate Dogg riff there, it was largely accidental ... and no, not Glee on TV because I watch that on Hulu the day after, when it's on). Dude, I freaking love comics and I want them to be good.

Moreover, I love the basic idea of Green Lantern. A wishing ring (as noted by Daniel the Sandman), fueled by will power, that can do virtually anything? Standing as part of a pan-galactic force of peacekeepers with a solemn oath and a legacy spanning millennia? That's freaking awesome! I have at least two Green Lantern shirts, I can still recite the oath from memory from learning it at age 10 (I'll be 37 next month) ... the idea that I hate Green Lantern is insane.

What I hate is the storytelling. I have the same problem with Superman, the same problem with The Sentry, the same problem with The Authority, the same problem with Invincible. Love the property, find the storytelling doesn't cut it, and in the case of Green Lanterns, the story has gotten so big and so fannish and so annoying that it's inspired an all new level of hatred.

One fueled by sadness.

One very personal attack asked if the writer of the comic had stolen my girlfriend. The answer is no. I don't have a personal beef against any single comics writer. I have a lot of beefs with the writing of comics writers, but the people themselves are different. I don't know these people. I've met one or two, but by and large they stay out of South Central Los Angeles and I stay out of wherever the hell they are and we're all apparently fine with that. None of them got picked over me with a comics pitch, none of them kept me from getting work, and short of one Detective Comics backup story I sent to Bob Shreck, I have never sent in a comic book pitch to one of the Big Two. It can't be personal if people don't know each other. Perfect example: many years I was very, very vocal about the work of one writer. He got very upset about it (or so I was told, as I've never spoken live with the man). His friends, other pros got upset, and some even talked to me about it. I never relented. He kept working, and improved his craft. I've since bought his (improved) comics and had good things to say about examples of his work in public and private. He's befriended me on Facebook and I follow him on Twitter. No beef. It's not about the people, it's about the comics, and the juvenile personal insults I've received -- often from people who don't know me, don't know the makers of these works, don't own or receive any financial benefit from these works -- are ... well, kind of sad, too.

So I read Green Lantern and Superman and weird indies I've never heard of before and Transformers and even Captain America because I want to, and I want it to thrill me, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they won't. I don't think that's so much to ask, especially because sometimes I'm surprised and it's one of the best feelings in the world.

So there's that.

Too much to do, off I go.

Watching (Hulu): The Sing Off

Commentary Track for the Buy Pile from 12/04/09

One more time like Daft Punk was playing ...

I think these need to be quicker. I do like the discipline -- a blog a week -- and it doesn't feel like too much extra work after the column.

What's extra weird? Stayed up late into Thursday morning to get this week's reviews done, only to find out CBR doesn't publish the last Thursday of November due to some archaic tradition. Weird.

Enough meta blather, on with the business!

I can't even talk about how excited I am about Dingo as a comic book. I did notice that it only has four issues to jam in all of the brilliance that's there, but issue #1 hit a lot of points and the actual novelist is writing the adaptation, so I'm completely on board. If it lets me down, well, that'll be a tragedy, but let's consider it a good start and move on.

I've been talking with a casual comics fan about how excited he is about the rise of Norman Osborn. This is a mostly DC-related guy who for a variety of personal reasons doesn't go to a comics shop every week. However, just from what he's seen in the brilliant Invincible Iron Man (brought to you from the mind of Matt Fraction) and the very scant Dark Avengers books I've grabbed, he's hooked. Sure, all the way back to Jemas, I've said some negative things about the Mouse House of Ideas, but as crossovers go, ones that inspire great storytelling and can win people over, "Norman Osborn as America's top cop" is doing the job in a major way.

Honestly? I really want Supergod to stand up and blow my socks off. Seriously. It feels like it could be big, but it just keeps yammering on and on and doesn't make the events mean anything to anybody. The academic-sounding narrator doesn't have a lick of character, and therefore there's no way to connect to the story. Super disappointing.

I've been friends with David Gallaher for a number of years now, and I did my best to like his "big two" debut. Sadly, the comic didn't give him enough room to shine, even with the great stuff he jammed in there. However, how the heck did the Red Guardian go from being "an engineer" to now being one of "the world's foremost experts in engineering."

The Sentry. Seriously? He makes me sad.

I guess I don't have much more to add, but those are the high points. Super sleepy because the oncoming baby is preceded by sleeplessness and lethargy. Excelsior, all.

Playing (Music): "In-A-Gadda-Da-Blue-Monday" mash-up with Orgy vs. Iron Butterfly (by DJ Schmolli)

The Next Generation

You can sit around and say I've gone soft and domestic all you want, but new faces and young minds in comic book shops is all the industry has between itself and slow, painful obsolescence. Respect due.

Shown here, "Sally" (I call school teacher and part time comics retailer Adam K. exclusively by little girls' names) is taking some time with some brand new customers interested in the legends of yore -- The Bat, The Spider, and so on. Pass the torch, y'all.

Playing (Music): "Sincerity" by Mary J. Blige feat. DMX and Nas