Hello and Welcome my dear friends to the 03/18/2015 edition of The Comic Shop!
I say this a lot, but thank you all for your continued support.
This blog came about because "Superman: The Movie" and weekly trips to the comic store inspired my young mind. Comics captured my imagination and gave it license to go places. It made me appreciate the art of storytelling and the skilled craftsmanship of the actual art. After many failed attempts at doing comic art I decided that the words on the page might be the only avenue into the medium that I loved. I have practiced many different writing styles and this blog serves the dual purpose of keeping my mind going and allowing me to vent in my own forum about comics and comic related issues.
From the continued publishing of TCS I have developed ideas for several different comics the first of which I introduced as "Vendetta". There are a couple of others that I'm still kicking around, but my goal as of now is to get "Vendetta" off the ground and go from there. This is the last I will speak of my project until I have something concrete, but it goes without saying that TCS would not exist without the continued support of all of you wonderful people.
IN THE NEWS
First........ DC's June solicitations have created a bit of a stir with regards to the post-Convergence status quo. A bunny-eared, mech-suit, gun-carrying Batman would be a good jumping off point for this discussion as the solicitation promises an "ALL-New Batman". In Snyder we trust, but what in the actual f*ck is this?! I hope upon hope that it will be good and very short term, but it looks like the folks at DC are really excited about this. Superman looks to be doubling down on denim with his new look, and as much as I'd like to complain about it the look kind of fits with the aw shucks farm boy that he is supposed to be. Wonder Woman's new look seems to be in direct response to a little girl that wrote DC to ask why WW always had to fight in her underwear, and good for DC for putting some pants on Diana. Flash looks to be more in line with the ultra-popular television show. I have to say I am most excited about everything "Green Arrow" coming up. They finally ditched the goggles again!!! They also have brought in novelist Ben Percy (who wrote the "Terminus" arc in "Detective Comics") and artist Patrick Zircher (Iron Man, Nightwing, Thunderbolts, and others) as the new creative team. In a reddit discussion Percy promised "no tv show characters and he would be following more of what Lemire did".
Not to be outdone Marvel's solicitations essentially confirmed the cancellation of over 30 ongoing titles (http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/18/33-marvel-comics-will-be-cancelled-for-secret-wars). I would hope this does not mean a slew of new #1 issues in the wake of their upcoming "Secret Wars" event, but given the trend by the big two right now it would not surprise me in the least. As a fan of the animated series I am very interested in the upcoming "X-men '92" title as it will pick up where the show left off. It'll be interesting to see if they can pull of Jim Lee quality art without the services of Jim Lee.
Second......... In the television world the upcoming "Arrow/Flash" spinoff show added "Prison Break" actor Dominic Purcell as Heat Wave thereby reuniting him once again with Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold. The show has been described by producers as a "love letter to team-up movies like Ocean's 11" so however that translates to television I'm interested to see.
Third........... Indiana Comic Con was an absolute blast for your humble blogger! Lots of credit to the people that organized the event as it was better than last year's show by leaps and bounds. Not having to wait in gigantic lines or pay ridiculous fees are always a check in the plus column. The longest line that I waited in was to meet Mike Grell, but it was worth it. Denny O'Neil and Mark Waid were both incredibly friendly and humble. I complimented Waid on "Daredevil" and he immediately said "well Chris Samnee is such an incredible artist". That is the definition of professional in my book and a fun little anecdote about the creative process.
REVIEW TIME:
Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters: With a couple of light weeks on the pull list and a little bit of extra money in my pocket meant that I could finally pick up a trade that I had been wanting to read. This is a fantastic run albeit only three issues long. The story chronicles Oliver's journey from Star City to Seattle, and along the way he sheds some of the more campy parts of his character. Gone are the boxing glove arrows from his quiver, and they are quickly replaced with something much more dangerous. One of my favorite parts of this book is the japanese archer Shado. I think she is an amazingly interesting and diverse character. I would love to see DC utilize Shado in an Elektra-type role in her own solo series. While her New 52 characterization is, in my opinion, the lone low spot in Lemiere's run it is something that could be easily tweaked with a dreaded retcon. All credit to Mike Grell for having the vision to make such a fantastic character and such an interesting comic run for GA.
All-New Hawkeye: One of the movements that I missed out on during the Marvel Now! reboot was Matt Fraction's highly praised run on "Hawkeye". It's something that I fully intend to go back and read as it made a ton of "best of" lists during it's run. That said when I read that Jeff Lemire was taking a swing at Marvel's archer I knew I had to give it a look. My first impression was that I was blown away by Ramon Perez's stunning art, which in and of itself was a selling point. The story is also quite compelling as Lemire balances two separate stories. One of which is about a young Clint Barton escaping a foster home with his older brother, and the other focuses on Clint and his archer apprentice Kate Bishop infiltrating a HYDRA base. I did not realize that Clint is now a deaf character, but it adds some difficulty to his banter with the young Bishop. "All-New Hawkeye" is a really fun book, and it is totally worthy of some money love.
Amazing Spider-man #16: On the heels of something as epic as Spidervere one can imagine that going back to regular Spidey stories was quite difficult for writer Dan Slott. This first entry in the post Spiderverse run came off as a bit of a disappointment to me. There is nothing wrong with the art or storytelling per se; however, I am not a fan of this constantly making Peter Parker weaker physically. The introduction of Silk saw PP openly acknowledge that he was weaker and then as part of the ramifications of Spiderverse he openly states that he is now weaker because he had some "life force sucked out of him". I like for my heroes to have vulnerability, but having to read along as PP struggles to go toe-to-toe with The Iguana is painful. Maybe this is an honest attempt to deconstruct the character to build him back up again, but it is troubling to say the least. On the whole I like Slott and I have faith he will do a good job, but it's hard to see the long game with this storyline.
Green Arrow #40: The final issue of Andrew Kreisberg's run with the emerald archer came to a conclusion. I re-read the entire run and I still did not enjoy it. The forced introduction of Felicity and Mia Dearden was atrocious. The dialogue was horrendous. John Diggle's in particular was degraded to "black guy movie dialogue" like "YEAH" "Let's go kick some A$$" and other idiotic drivel. The art was bad as some characters were not drawn the same from panel-to-panel, and sometimes even the visual storytelling seemed unintentionally non-linear. It's like they got it to the printer and realized they forgot some $hit and just said "f*ck it print it anyway". I try really hard not to be negative in this forum, but I was just so disappointed by this run of comics that I felt it was my duty to share my feelings on the subject.
That's all for today! Sorry that #50 wasn't more special, but I just wanted to keep things as normal as possible. Thank you for reading! See you next time at The Comic Shop!
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