UNCENSORED COMMENTARY for Comics Shipping Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

It’s posted in the forum of the Von’s Comics myspace group page at: http://groups.myspace.com/vonscomics

UNCENSORED COMMENTARY

It’s posted in the forum of the Von’s Comics myspace group page at: http://groups.myspace.com/vonscomics

Secret Invasion and Thought Balloons

Hey everybody, the Secret Invasion Prologue story is up for FREE at Marvel.com. Go check it out now! From what I can tell this story won’t be included with issue #1 on Wednesday.

Secondly, the whole thought balloon thing is getting way out of control, I think. Everyone is ranting about how it takes the quality of Mighty Avengers down a notch or two and I can see their point but here’s what I think.

I think Brian Michael Bendis is using these thought balloons as a device to give readers something to go back and re-read once Secret Invasion hits. Let’s face it the Mighty Avengers team probably has more than one skrull on it. It is likely that once the reveals happen we’ll be able to go back and read those in a completely different way. We’ll be able to see what the skrulls were thinking or take them as hints that the characters were skrulls.

Ex: Ares’ thought of “I shall have you fair creature” is that a love crazed greek god or is that a skrull lusting after his human prey?

-Paul

Things We Want…

We here at Von’s have very specific and somewhat eccentric tastes. If we ran the world we would already have these things but instead we are left wanting…

A Garth Ennis Punisher Omnibus-Starting with his Marvel Knights stuff and ending with his final arc of MAX stuff. Two or three volumes if need be.

A New Printing of the Planetary Vol. 1 Absolute Edition –Ellis and Cassaday at their finest in giant, oversized trappings.

A Direct Market Ultimate Spider-Man Collection – and a second volume of it.

All of the Amazing Adventures of the Escapist in TPB – or maybe an omnibus of all of them together to go next to Kavalier and Clay on the bookshelf.

More Battle Pope Cartoons – These things are hilarious. They’re on Spike TV’s website.

Affordable versions of the first trades of Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, and The Lightning Saga– I mean, COME ON DC!

John Byrne and Chris Claremont to knock it off – Seriously!

Arthur Adams to do interiors on a book for a good long run – I’m dying for it.

A Miracle Man TPB – Hurry up and make a deal jerks!

The Watchmen Movie NOT to suck

Cheap Chinese Food

Radio Stations to play good music

For it to rain chocolate covered pretzels at midnight every Saturday.

The Twelve vs. SuperPowers: A First Impression

By John “Back From the Dead” Kennedy

As many of you have noticed there are two comics out right now that are practically the same sort of story.  J. Michael Straczynski’s The Twelve and Alex Ross’ Project Superpowers are both are stories of World War II-era crime fighters brought from the 1940’s into the modern era. They both have characters with such names as Dynamic Man or The Fighting Yank, names that represent the new frontier that superhero comics had back in the Golden age but not seem kind of ridiculous. And finally, both seem to hint at something terrible on the edge of the horizon that only these heroes can stop.

Buffy Season 8 Theories SPOILER ALERT!!!

So if you read this week’s issue, you might agree.

Joss Whedon seems to be somewhat pointing to Riley as the masked Big Bad for the 25 issue series. The amount of evidence that points towards this seems a little heavy handed so I’m betting it’s probably a fake out but here’s the facts.

In case you missed it…

With all the (well deserved) hype and hoopla over the new Captain America and the Y the Last Man finale – not to mention new issues of both New and Mighty Avengers, Avengers Initiative, Daredevil and Action Comics – some of you might have missed a few books this week that are worthy of your attention. Here are three books that you should pick up if you already haven’t:

Project Superpowers #0 – Alex Ross and writing partner Jim Krueger’s new project is worthy of your attention if only because this issue (and it is an actual issue, not some lame preview book) is only a dollar. You get a full story and some bonus materials for less than half the cost of a regular book. The story revolves around a group of WWII era heroes, such as the Green Lama and the Fighting Yank, fighting (what else) evil in the world when one of their own causes all the heroes to disappear. The idea is similar to the recently released The Twelve from Marvel (also worth your time and money) but steeped in much more mysticism and magic.

Spider-man: With Great Power #1 – You may not care about another look into Peter Parker’s beginnings as Spider-man, because, yes, it has been done to death, but this book is worthy of your time and money if only because Tony Harris’ art is so nice to look at. Sure, I like writer David Lapham – his Stray Bullets is one of the great all-time indie comics – but it’s Harris that really shines in this book. Plus it’s got wrasslin’!

Wormwood: Calamari Rising #1 – Ben Templesmith, artist extraordinaire behind such books as Fell and 30 Days of Night, finally returns to his own horror-humor-gross out project. Meet Wormwood: a lively little worm that rides around in a corpse, patrolling the netherworld, saving the day, and crackin’ wise. It’s all good fun in this issue until some unknown force starts knocking a hole in the universe. You heard me.

Time to get USED!

Von’s Comics has a small used graphic novel selection which will excite and delight with some of our hidden treasures.

Avengers Dissassembled
This trade is a great place to start to see some of the early groundwork that was laid for Secret Invasion. Pick it up for $10.

Banner
Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben’s startling look at Bruce Banner and the Hulk is priced at $6.

Nightwing: Love and Bullets
Chuck Dixon is probably one of the better writer’s Nightwing has gotten over the years. Check out this trade featuring Nite-Wing and the Huntress. Priced at $9.

Red Razors
Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell, the guy who drew the Invisibles; what’s not to love at $6.

Superman the Greatest Stories Ever Told
Superman comics are probably one of my guilty pleasures. This trade features the “What’s so funny about truth just and the American Way?” issue by Mark Waid. Check it out for $10.

Awesome stuff in our store that you buy or I KICK YOUR FACE!!!

Black Hole
We have this awesome black and white horror masterpiece by Charles Burns in stock just waiting for all of you indy gurus to come pick up!

52 Vol. 1-4
DC did a lot of things right with their first weekly comic and that is a real accomplishment considering about an 1/8 of the way through they decided to throw out all of their pre-planning. Now you can pick it all up in four conveniently packaged and priced trades!

Inhumans (Marvel Knights)
Jae Lee’s art never ceases to creep me out(even when he draws the teens of Ultimate Fantastic Four vol. 4 tpb). He really shines in this mini series written by Paul Jenkins and collected nicely in a trade paperback we have in stock that I believe is out of print.

Essex County vol. 1 + 2
We’ve sold multiple copies of this indy awesomeness. Hopefully, you’ll be the next one to purchase some or…well, read the title of this post.

The Walking Dead
Now we already sell a lot of this book in trade and issues but we just got the awesome Hardcovers back in stock these things are a great way for new readers to get into and catch up on this spectacular book!

Nextwave vol. 1 + 2
Ah, the book which inspired the title for this post. If you don’t partake of the awesomeness which is Nextwave the terrorists win. Vol. 1 features a dragon with pants, Robots exiting odd orifices of said dragon, giant robot thingies, and broccoli assassin men. While Vol. 2 features Captain America taking a super soldier bathroom break, Modoks, Forbush Man, and 8 shades of crazy that are indescribable to the human mind. All of this awesometivity is drawn by Ultimate Spider-Man artist Stuart Immonen too!

We all really need to buy the trades for this to show Marvel we want more of it. So come in and buy it. If we’re out, put a special order in for it. If for some reason you don’t have hands(or your arms are tiny and T. Rex-like) to fill out our special order card, our cashiers will be happy to fill it out for you (and order sixty copies for your cousins, twice removed if need be).

You have been bashed in the side of the head with promotional writings for NEXTWAVE!

Von’s Comics Recommends: Madman

Admittedly, I’m a little late jumping on the Madman bandwagon. A staple of the 1990s indie-comic scene, Madman has always been on my radar, but I’ve never had a good point to jump on. The single issues and collections alike were always hard to find for me. That is, until now. Madman creator Mike Allred has teamed up with Image comics to produce some of the best TPBs of any comic I’ve seen in a while. Not only is almost every Madman story, including The Atomics, collected in four volumes (with more to come I’m assuming), they are done so in a stylish, colorful, and affordable way. All together, some 50-odd issues are collected for less than a hundred dollars. (Note: as of this writing the fourth volume has yet to hit the shelves.)

If you’re not familiar with Madman, or Mike Allred’s work in general, hit up these two wikipedia pages, or Allred’s personal site. I will, however, tell you this: Allred’s art is a perfect mix of pop genius and Silver Age sensibility. He brings everything you love about the early days of modern comics and, along with wife/colorist Laura Allred, mixes in a style that is utterly his own. As for the writing in Madman, think early Spider-man or Fantastic Four meets Grant Morrison’s Invisibiles or Animal Man.

I highly recommend Madman for fans of fun, but intellectually stimulating work. Reading Madman reminds me of reading comics like Tom Strong or Morrison’s Doom Patrol – the type of comics that keep me coming back to this bastard medium we call comics.

Ginchy!

(Top image: cover of Madman Gargantua Hardcover – collecting everything but the Atomics stuff. Right image: cover to The Atomics #1. From AAAPop Comics!)