My top three picks for June 8th 2011

This is the first post in what I plan to be a weekly segment type deal where I talk bout and give praise to my top three books that hit the shelves this week!  I'm gonna try my best not to give away anything else than you might get from reading a solicit. I want you to read these books, I don't want to try and retell them for you. They're so damn good at their job I would never want to impede on them.

On a kind of side note, I'm not very good about checking comments and that kind of stuff. They get pooped into my business's email and I constantly have crap in there about ordering new product and other garbage so to wade through the mess and filter out the goodies can be daunting. And because of that, I've gotten kind of shitty about checking it, but I try to do it at least once a week. I checked this morning and shit my pants when I saw that Jason Aaron left a comment on my "The comic book love of my life." post which is about his series Scalped. I don't know if this is really Jason Aaron or just like a webmaster that does his beared bidding, but I don't care. I just feel crazy honored to have maybe earned his attention to check out my shitty little blog. I'm crazy ecstatic. And this should of course come to no surprise that my number one book this week is:

Austin's number 1 book of the week: Scalped # 49  

God damn this book is so good. Scalped #49 brings the current arc "You gotta sin to get saved" to a close, and it does it with a swift kick to the junk. My stomach was reeling and my mouth agape as I scrambled to turn each page. One of the most impressive things about Scalped to me, is how the book just hit the ground running. It got started like a bullet screaming down a barrel and 48 issues it still hasn't stopped. The absolute lack of bullshit filler that comics are often plagued with says so much about this title. This is really one of those game changing arcs, much in the same way that "The Gnawing" was. The reason why this book stays as my first book to read each week it comes out is because I never know what to expect. It imitates life and all its eccentric discrepancies with such merciless tenacity. I never know what I'm gonna get and I absolutely love the surprise. Nothing is random, it's not crazy and out of character. I don't stop and say, "That's not what Bad Horse would do", because these people have built to be so believably damaged. Anything is possible and it's so easy to see the self disillusionment these characters plague themselves with, or the self delusion they convince themselves of. I love the title, straight and simple. Comic arcs often have such throw away titles, where its just a cheesey cliche tag line more than something that is suppose to embody the story as a whole. But that is never the case with Scalped. And after reading the conclusion to "You gotta sin to get saved", I'm still not quite sure who its talking about in particular. That's probably the point. I CANNOT wait for issue #50. And that is a comic's job, serialized story telling should be all about convincing the reader to check out the next installment, to reward them with gradual characterization and plot. And Scalped never misses that mark, I always cannot wait.

Austin's number 2 book of the week: New Avengers # 13

I'm a big Marvel guy, when it comes to the big two, I'm always gonna pick Marvel. It's what I grew up reading as a kid and its always been so much more appealing to me than their competition. So I recognize that I got a big old Marvel bias. Not to say you won't see DC books pop up in these, because I do got a big old thing for Grant Morrison. But just as much I got a big old thing for Brian Bendis. I just got nerd crushes all over the comic industry.

New Avengers from its original first issue to this current volume has just been plain old super hero comics fun. It's been loud and flashy and had plenty of that super hero soap drama I love with all smooching. And I suppose the biggest reason I enjoy reading it each month has to do with what I was saying earlier during my bit about Scalped. Bendis, and New Avengers especially, exceeds and making me want to read more. He has the serialized bit down great and this issue especially exemplifies that. This issue also brings a story arc to a close but in the traditional super hero way in which nothing is totally resolved it just gives way to more options, more possibilities. And I love that! It might seem like a weird way to end a story, but I think it works with this never ending medium. When I read Secret Invasion #8 I wasn't sucked in by the conclusion as a logical ending to skull shenanigans, I was sucked into the conclusion as a means to start up a whole bunch of new stories. I was excited for what was going to come next. And that's exactly what New Avengers #13 brings to mind as well. Sure we got a little big of answers about H.A.M.M.E.R. and the infinity formula, but for the most part it just leads to more story telling options, and I dig that. And this bit with Mockingbird? I'm very very intrigued. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Austin's number 3 book of the week: Black Panther # 519

I have to say when I first opened the book and saw that it wasn't Francesco Francavilla drawing the pages I was disappointed. For the first six issues of this randomly well executed book, he was drawing the shit out of it. I was pretty disappointed with Shadowland as a whole. I'm a colossal fan of Daredevil, I'd say he's probably my favorite Marvel character, and I wasn't pleased with how things ended. It seemed forced, weak, and out of character. I'm also a pretty big fan of T'challa. I absolutely love Christopher Priests run on the character and it really made me dig everything about him. So after reading the butchering of Black Panther for the last couple of years I didn't have high hopes for his sudden weird placement as the guardian of Hell's Kitchen. And when I started reading it was I was pleasantly surprised. David Liss crafted a decent intro story that as it continued only seemed to get stronger. And I was continually impressed with Francavilla's art, its dark shadowy look just oozed noir and I'm sucker for that noir, ya know? One of the things I love about super hero comics, and Marvel especially, is shared universe. I like continuity! I like the idea of this big connected sandbox where all these people interact together in crazy ways. And for the first six issues it was missing a little bit of that connectivity. I wanted some Storm in there! However forced and weird their marriage was, I wanted to at least see some acknowledgement of the fact that he is married! And with #519 we get that! And we get a little bit of fun stuff dealing with Kraven after Amazing Spider-Man's run in the gaunlet and grim hunt, so that doesn';t hurt too. Jefte Palo taking over isn't too big of a problem, cause since his work on Punisher, to Taskmaster, to this he's been impressing me. When Kraven and T'Challa tussle throughout the kitchen their is a real solid sense of fluidity where I really see the agile nature of these two. It works great and love rough straight linework. I'm certainly not on the fence anymore and I'll continue to read, especially if I keep seeing how this is suppose to work as part of a bigger piece of the Marvel universe. 

Austin

X-Men: First Class Impressions

Now I know and acknowledge that I have absolutely no real knowledge of film or cinema. And this post isn't gonna be a critique of the film so much as it's going to be my impression of the film and what it was like to watch it as a comics fan. I'm going to keep it spoiler free, just cause I don't want to ruin anyones day and get put on someone's death list.

As a whole, I have to say I did enjoy the film. It had a really neat aesthetic to it that I really dug. It captured and evoked a solid understanding that this is the 1960's. The inter splicing of historical events into the plot only further facilitated this and I definitely thought it worked. It had that same kind of feeling that AMC's Mad Men has that makes me dig on that too. Along with all that I have to say I was mostly impressed with the cast of actors, highlights being Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon. I did have minor problems with James McAvoy as Charles Xavier. Not with his acting per say, because I did believe him to give a solid portrayal of that youthful hopeful enthusiasm that embodies Professor X. But more with just his mannerism and looks. I honestly couldn't get over the bald thing. He lost all his hair before he was out of high school! Shave that sucker! And when he wasn't speaking, when he was communicating telepathically or deep in thought, he had this kind of puffy pouting looking face that kind of looked like he was constipated. I know its childish and minor! But its all I could think about every time he made that face! Enough of the basic shite, just move unto the comic adaption part.

Now for as much as I enjoyed the film, how did it do as an adaptation? Fucking awful! For every excellent and original idea I could get behind there were two more wholly terrible representations of characters I love. I suppose the first and most foremost example of this is the film's Moria MacTaggert. This is pretty much a brand new character created the film that they just slapped the name Moria MacTaggert on. It bares literally zero resemblance to the comics version of Moria MacTaggert other than the fact that in both versions she is a woman. That's about it. Not a scientist, not Scottish, didn't meet Xavier at graduate school. Nothing! It made my brain hurt. Now I understood her role as a character, and I enjoyed her for the most part but why stick that name on her, and label her as Moria when she has nothing to do with her! When I hear Moria I have certain expectations of who she is, from years of reading and all those expectations are disappointed. Its not a nice little head nod to the fans, its more of a slap in the face. And as a retailer, when people come in asking about X-Men stuff and that's their only perception of Moria, it makes it 100 times harder to explain that no she isn't anything like that and this is what she's really like it. It's just weird to me!

The same is true of using the name The Hellfire Club when it barely had anything to do with the real club other than Shaw was still in charge. It was a minor aspect of the film so its not a huge deal, but it is still annoying. This is just more nitpicking but it Charles Xavier was born in New York. And from my understanding he doesn't have an accent, its those minor things that make you stop and go, "Huh, wait a second"! Same is true of the idea that Hank McCoy created Cerebro and built the Blackbird. I don't think so buddy, Dr. Hank McCoy is a world leader on biochemistry and genetics not building crazy fake machines. It also boggles my mind to have Alex Summers in the film with absolutely no mention to Scott Summers. This really is a team composed completely at random. It's easy to understand that in the larger scheme of things that their target audience isn't really me. It's not the die hard fans, cause they know they will get me anyways. They need to attract the people who are familiar with the book and the characters but don't regularly go out of their way to check out comic stuff. I don't know, I'm not a marketing genius, but at least to me it seems like they went for characters that were different than those that were used in the first couple films, but were still somewhat recognizable, and had powers that were easy to understand.

It's an overall solid film and I think it's easily worth your money, but in this summer filled with comic movies it is most likely looking like the weakest of all the films.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I feel like a big old asshat cause it's been at least a month of so without a post. I really wanted to try and write this consistently but with everything else going on in the shop in May, I got crazy swamped.

May 7th was an important landmark for my store because it was the first time I was able to hold a pre-release tournament for Magic the Gathering stuff. A new set came out on May 13th and because I've been doing organized tournaments for so long now I was able to hold a special tournament a week or so before the new stuff actually came out. This special tournament let participants get the new cards a week ahead of time.

48 people showed up to play. It was a shitstorm.

I had never had that many people in the store before and we were cramped to all get out. 48 stinky nerds crammed together getting their nerd on was a proud sight to see. My dad brought me a disposable camera to take pictures so I could put them up here but none of them turned out. The flash got all messed up or something so that sucked a lot. It was a pretty damn ridiculous night and trying to manage that many people in organized play made my face want to explode.

Thor came out in May as well which has brought in a comfortable influx of people who saw the film and now want to check out the book. Marvel's post Avengers Disassembled Thor reboot written by J.M. Straczynski has been selling super sweet. So that's always great. Got to love the movies bringing in people to read the books.

Speaking of comic movies I saw X-Men: First Class last night and I'm gonna write up my personal review of it tonight and post that up tomorrow. Also coming this week, I'm gonna start doing a top 3 books of the week every Wednesday when new books hit the shelf. Just whatever stuff I think deserves your recognition. Sorry again about the delay, if I start slacking I give you permission to shoot me with laser guns.


Austin