Hulk-What a Tangled Web Loeb and McGuiness are Weaving! April 24, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , 1 comment so far
Oh Lucy…you got some ” splaining to do ” …
I Love Lucy a side, there is definitely a tale to be read here being woven by the ever talented Jeph Loeb, with fantastic accompanying drawings by one of my favorite artists, Ed McGuiness, whose pencil talents I first came to appreciate during his run on DC’s Batman/Superman ” Worlds Finest “.
And I have to tell ya I’m just a bit confused here with the beginning of this little series, I had heard the rumours of this new “Red Hulk “, and I was like Huh???
I mean, I’ve seen Grey, and I’ve seen Green…I’ve seen Rampaging, and I’ve seen Bestial, I’ve also caught the Intelligent Hulk (probably my Favorite interpretation ever ), and of course who could forget the Las Vegas ” Mr. Fixit ” Hulk…so I’d thought I’d seen it all okay…and then they throw this at me…I mean, what do they want from me!
What ever it is, I’m gonna give it to them, as long as the story continues to twist and turn and intrigue…
But what characters have we seen so far….
In issue #1 we get to see Doctor Leonard Samson ( that’s Doc Samson to you! ) along with Jenifer Walters, the She Hulk, and one Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Director of Shield ( at least for the moment, anyway ) on a mission in Russia ( of all places ) investigating the murder of Emile Blonsky, that’s the Abomination, just in case you forgot, by one Red ” Hulk-ish Creature “. Of course this trio, along with one General Thunderbolt Ross ( why isn’t he dead by now ! ) and Shield Commander Hill, run into some resistance to their investigation by the ” Winter Guard “, and of course the obligatory brouhaha…and did I mention a small appearance by one Rick Jones, in of all places, the frozen wastes of Alaska!
Okay, I’ve read issues 1&2 now and I’m moving onto issue #3 right after I finish this post, so while this isn’t supposed to be a review, I will say that if you’ve read other issues and stories with the Hulk, don’t stay away from this series run, I think your dollars will be well spent and you’ll be well rewarded!
NY Comic Con-Saturday April 19th April 23, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , 1 comment so farHey there!
A day late and a dollar short.
I apologize to everyone for this being late, but due to some recurring health issues ( chronic COPD and Asthma ) I have been really under the weather lately.
Well, this was my first ( and possibly Last ) comic con…I’ll give you my impressions of it all..
First, I should state here that at the ripe old age of 50, I really don’t like crowds ( I know, if I really don’t like crowds, what was I doing going to an event like this in the first place? ) well, I actually went to this just for the express purpose of meeting my distributor, AAA Anime in the flesh, and talk a bit of business…of which I did. I finally met my rep from AAA and it was nice to put a face to the voice, and while we did talk a bit about the Anime Figure business, there really were not any real gems of knowledge to be taken away from this impromptu meeting…needless to say I was a bit disappointed…and I was also hoping to walk away with a gift of two and did not…they would be giving away some leftover items to attendees on Sunday, and of course I would not be getting any loot that way!
So, aside from being prodded thru a line like cattle ( my friends and I joked about waiting for someone to get out a cattle prod to move us along ) I will admit there was a lot of neat stuff to see, and I was like a kid in a candy store…from looking at different figure displays from companies like Kotobukiya to Diamond Select, and of course all the comic companies, but truth tom tell, the highlight for me was when we were standing on line waiting to get into the facility, who gets escorted in but Stan ” The Man ” Lee…. I shook his hand and said hi…and I’ll always remember that moment…because for me it made the show for me.
Comic Book Wednesday…My stack of stuff April 3, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , add a commentAnother Comic Book Wednesday has come and gone, and I decided to pick up all the stuff that I had on hold at Main Street Comics and add a comic or two to the stack so….what did I pick up…?
From this week only..
Secret Invasion#1
Ultimate Human#3 ( Mind you, so far I’ve only read issue #1 )
Captain America #35
plus the last two Death Note Manga’s
and from last week..( some of these comics were on hold for several weeks )
Countdown To Mystery #6
X Force #2 ( probably the last issue I will pick up )
Iron Man- Enter The Mandarin #6
New Avengers #39 Secret Invasion tie in
Locke & Key #2
FoolKiller #4 ( and I haven’t even read issue#1 yet! )
A pretty hefty stack this week to be sure, and I will probably only read Secret Invasion #1, and relegate the rest to my ever increasing pile of comics waiting to be perused.
Thor’s Quest Continues March 25, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , add a comment
Issues 6 & 7 of Thor ( and I just realized that the title isn’t called The Mighty Thor anymore ) have been just great reading, and if you’ve been reading my comic reviews over the past few days, you know for me, that’s saying alot.
To make this short and to the point, in issue 6, Thor resurrects all the citizens of Asgard, and Asgard stands proud once more, and Thor again has claimed his heritage as the Thunder God…and while Thor has restored the Gods of Asgard…there is one God who’s presence is still missing …and in issue 7, writer J. Michael Straczynski and a new artist ( at least new to me ) Marko Djurdjevic bring us the origin of Odin, and delves further into the mystery of why Thor has seen fit not to resurrect Odin…I can’t wait for issue 8 to hit the stands!
Add Your Comment..
Marvel’s Secret… March 13, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , add a commentThe Skrulls.
One of Marvel Comics, oldest villain empires.
Skrulls have the ability to shape shift.
To take on the appearance of another person.
And the Marvel Universe hasn’t heard much from this villainous empire for some time now…but that’s about to change in a hurry!
A skrull somehow infiltrated the group the Hand, in the guise of Elecktra. This revelation was discovered in the pages of the New Avengers series, and now the effects of this discovery is rippling throughout the marvel universe at large, and the question on everyone’s mind is ” who do you trust ” when your best friend, confidant, teammate, or even your wife could be a skrull in disguise?
This new series is being written by fan favorite Brian Michael Bendis, and the pencils being handled by Leinil Yu ( not one of my favorite pencilers, but he will have to do I guess ) and will have a lot of the action spread throughout most of the Marvel universe titles, and like past mega events World War Hulk and Civil War, Secret Invasion will also have it’s own title book, so that you can follow the basic storyline and pick up whichever tie in titles you want to.
Marvel’s Secret Invasion starts to heat up in April with Secret Invasion issue #1.
Comic Book Wednesday- What I Picked Up Today
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , 1 comment so farGood Evening Everyone!
Okay everyone knows it’s ” Comic Book Wednesday ” and I picked up these goodies…
First, I have a whole set of the ” Death Note ” manga series on hold and I have been slowly picking up these books every week, and today I picked up books #6 & 7.
Marvel Comics & Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, ” The Long Road Home ” issue #1, which actually hit the comic shelves last week
IDW’s new series Locke & Key- I have no idea what this is about yet…But I will!
Ultimate Human Issue #2 from Marvel…I found issue #1 a good read, and I’m hoping that this series doesn’t disappoint.
Image Comic’s ” The Ride- Die Valkyrie “-this is the one book I was thrilled ( and just so you know, thrilled for me was just seeing the cover of this book on the comic shelves ) this week.
And while I’m here just talking…coming up next..my Review/Guide to the anime series ” Ergo Proxy “, I will also talk about the manga series Doll, that I am just finishing up, from publisher Tokyopop. I have found some similarities between this manga and the anime series Ergo Proxy…more on that later.
And a special review in memory for my mom, Jeannette Scozzari, an anime series that I got her started watching with me, but we never had the chance to finish watching together…more on this special project in a future post…this one’s for you mom.
Your loving son
Lewis.
East & West- The difference between American and Japanese Comics February 23, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , 4 commentsThis morning I came across this post from a blog called ” He’s Just So Stackable ” and the title to the post was Comic Books Are Good.
What caught my eye actually was the title of the post, so of course I had to take a gander at what was being written, and of course I had to leave my two cents worth of opinion which was this…
The beginning of the post started with this….
“
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading.
Of course, there are many people who wouldn’t call what I was reading real reading, because I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately. People who say comics aren’t real reading can go read the latest Danielle Steele novel or something equally productive.
Anyways, I started with the mini-series leading up to DC’s big Infinite Crisis from a couple of years back. I had read many of the spoilers for that big thing, but I found it enjoyable regardless. To be honest, I also enjoyed Zero Hour way back when, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count for much.
Generally, I find myself pretty non-critical (for the most part) when I’m reading a superhero comic. Still, I found the whole thing too serious. That’s probably why I enjoyed the Day of Vengeance lead-up so enjoyable, because Bill Willingham knows how to make a comic fun and still have high stakes (go read his Vertigo series Fables. I haven’t read it for a few years, but it was great up to issue 20, and continues that way, by all accounts). ”
And to which I had left the following comment…
” Nice title for the post.
I’ve always found ( on a general reading level ) that comics are good. I learned to read because of comics, and I also took a major interest in everything to do with art and animation ( initially ) due to reading comics. The problem ( here in the US ) has always been that we trivialize the comic, unless a major event happens and becomes newsworthy…two examples would be pertaining to ” Death ” in comics..The Death of Superman, as far as I can remember was the first time that the news media actually ran any type of reports on comics in general that was not aimed as a major witch hunt to dig out some sort of ” subversive ” issue in the comics page. And very recently the ” Death of Captain America ” was a featured article in the news, along with a post on USA Today.com ( I believe ) just the other day about the ” New Red ” Hulk, and Marvel’s trying to get some cheap publicity for the new Hulk movie due this summer movie season.
I could write a bit more here, but I might just save it for my blog and a nice comparison between East and West attitudes towards the Comic…”
Lew
So I thought that a comparison of the American Comic and the Japanese Comic ( Manga, for those of you who might not have been sure..) was in order…
The American Comic
The early format of the comic book was introduced in the 1930’s with a book called Famous Funnies, which was a compilation of Sunday comics, this was basically a collection of the Sunday funnies without the whole newspaper.
This collection of comics was to be followed up later with the release of the first actual format printed comic book, and the introduction of the first super hero, a character named Superman, introduced by two kids named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Siegel was an American writer, and Shuster was a Canadian born Artist, who were living in Cleavland Ohio at the time of their collaboration of superman.
The introduction of Superman heralded in what would be termed the Golden Age of comics, to be followed later by the Silver, Bronze and the Modern Age of comics.
Okay, so there was your little bit of comics lineage…the real thing that I want to talk about as far as the American comic is this one name…
Frederick Wertham.
Wertham wrote a book…
Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, a book published in 1954, warned that the comic book was a bad form of popular literature, and was a major cause of juvenile delinquency. The book would be at best a minor bestseller….at it’s worst, it was what galvanized parents and would later be the main cause for a US Congressional committee to be launched, and this committee would take a cold and hard look at the comics industry, and thus was the Comics Code Authority launched, voluntarily by the the comic book publishers to self censor their own titles.
I refer to this incident because of how we as Americans still look at the comic today, but before I continue I want to take a look at the Japanese comic…
The Japanese comic is called Manga.
Now I have seen at least two different meanings for the term Manga, this explanation was taken from the book I am currently reading, Manga - Sixty Years of Japanese Comics…
” From the Oxford English Dictionary…they are Japanese comic books and cartoon films with a science fiction and fantasy theme “…this is wrong on two counts…”
Manga are not Japanese films, and they deal with a wide range of subject matter..the other explanation reads like this…
Taken from Wikepedia… “ Manga, literally translated, means “whimsical pictures”. The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Sant? Ky?den’s picturebook “Shiji no yukikai” (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa’s “Manga hyakujo” (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai manga containing assorted drawings from the sketchbook of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. “
From what I have read so far, the manga comic in Japan is a widespread phenomenon, and is an accepted part of their culture.
In Japan, Manga are not just for children…Men, Women, and Children ( and or teenagers, male & female ) all read Manga.
It is common place in japan for the business man to be on a train, either on the way to or from work reading a Manga magazine or book.
As a matter of fact, the Japanese have built up the manga to the point where it, the Manga Comic, is able to stand up to the dominance of film and television.
This is how rooted into their culture, the Japanese comic, the Manga is in Japan…
There are no congressional hearings into the comic in Japan…but rather in Japan, the comic is a strong, accepted, and apparently wide spread, accepted reading medium, that is accepted by all…with out the stigma or ridicule…
While here in the US, we still frown upon the comic… we still keep the comic book hidden from view…we still make fun of the adult who reads it…we still only get excited about it when it can be newsworthy…
And just maybe, because of our own cultural differences with our Japanese counterparts, those who read the Comic, or if you will the Manga, and just maybe, our own short sightedness, the American comic will always be relegated to being nothing more than a minor note in our American culture.
My Top Five List of Alternative Comics To Read Post#5 ? February 19, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comics , add a comment
Well, this is the last of my five posts of Alternative Comics To Read, and to be fair I started this list due to my dissatisfaction with some of the comics that I had read this past year…so this last choice is definitely a few steps outside of the norm for me…and I’ll just say one word here…Manga
Yes, I said it…Manga
The appeal of a self contained series that comes out on time ( possibly every month or so? ) is pretty appealing to me, along with the novelty of the Black & White format, starting to read said Manga starting from the back of the book vs the traditional front of a comic, and reading every page of that manga book starting from right to left, vs the traditional left to right format that we are all generally used to.
The series that I have started to read is called Doll, by Mitsukazu Mihara.
Doll, focuses on the ideas of how humans and machines interact with each other, sometimes on very personal levels…and this series so far seems to try to blur the line between what it is to be human and what is not to be human…but want to be.
I have to say that I can kinda see a parallel between this book and the anime series Ergo Proxy that I just finished seeing yesterday. A definite parallel between machines that become infected with human awareness, and dolls that maybe want to be human ( or at least possibly their human keepers ) want them to be human.
Doll has six books ( at least at this point ) in it’s series and so far I have three of the six with the other three on the way to me, so I will be talking more about this series in the near future
My Top Five List of Alternative Comics To Read Post#4 ” Planet Hulk & World War Hulk “ February 18, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comic Reviews, Comics , 1 comment so farOkay, it’s Sunday night, I’m cooking my dinner…I’m hungry and I smell the good stuff in the oven, so lets dispense with rewriting the above title here and just get right into it shall we….
Planet Hulk and World War Hulk were both series that ran thru Marvel’s summer schedule and were also their Summer’s Mega Event, although if my 50 year old memory serves me, Planet Hulk actually finished before the beginning of the Summer but I feel that since they both ran one after the next they deserve to be treated as one entity.
So the question is ” what do you do when you have the most powerful human the world has ever known, and you don’t know what to do with him anymore?”
First, if your his friends, you hold a secret meeting that very few are privy to, and than, as his friends, you set him up…using his ” puny, human, side ” send him on what he thinks is a life saving mission ( to save the earth of course ) to fix a ” Shield ” space unit ( again this is a small detail in this, bigger picture ) this unit being the trap…
An actual, functioning ship that takes you to another planet, in another solar system, where you can’t hurt yourself or anyone else anymore…this planet should be devoid of life, and you can finally have what you always wanted…
” To be left alone “….only one problem with this…you crash land on a planet that is Savage, and is inhabited by savage life forms, and you find yourself a slave on this planet…this would be a devastating turn of events if you were an ordinary, troublesome human….if you were human…but your not are you…you just happen to be..Robert…Bruce..Banner..in other words, you happen to be..
The Incredible Hulk!
Needless to say, the Hulk does not stay a slave for any real length of time…in short order the Hulk becomes a conqueror, a hero, eventually a King….
He takes a bride, who is his equal, she becomes pregnant and will bear his child…until something goes terribly wrong…and what happens from this event leads into the ” World War Hulk ” storyline, where the Hulk returns to the planet and the people who tricked him in the first place…and he doesn’t come alone…he brings his band of warriors along with him, his War-Bound, and the man monster called the Hulk gets his revenge upon those who tricked him, forcing them to live thru the horrors that he had endured, and in the end, having a final confrontation with the only living being ( remember that at this point, the Mighty Thor has not returned from the nether plains of death yet ) the Sentry, who gives back to the Hulk as good as he receives.
In the end, it seems that at the end of this tale, the Hulk is finally destroyed…at the end of his own title…and yet something emerges from the cavernous pit that was left where the Hulk and the Sentry had clashed…and then Marvel decides to rename The Incredible Hulk title The Incredible Hercules…and than there is another new title simple put…
The Hulk…
This was a great read for me, if only just top see the Hulk, finally get the much deserved justice that has always seemed to elude him, unfortuneately, as is always the case there is no retribution with out a sacrifice involved
My Top Five List of Alternative Comics To Read Post#3 ” Civil War “ February 15, 2008
Posted by 54071 in : Comic Reviews, Comics , 1 comment so farMarvel Comics had two big events last year, the first being the one I really appreciated…
Marvel’s Civil War, was their main event that was a stand alone story, but also ran through most ( if not all ) of their main stay titles. I liked the fact that Marvel did this just so I did not have to pick up every single book that might have had a tie into this tale.
The series written by Mark Miller, and pencils provided by Steve McNiven was a seven issue series that I felt was strong enough for me to write a post called ” Comics, Raising Our Social Conscience “, and you can read that post here.
I won’t say too much more here other than the fact that the events in Civil War led up to the Marvel Comics wide ” The Initiative “, the breakup of the Avengers, and the reformation of two different Avengers teams, and of course the Ed Brubaker ” Death of Captain America ” storyline which was felt all over the Marvel Universe, and was also felt in the real world, as Cap’s death garnered newspaper headlines, and could be favorably compared to the hoopla behind the ” Death of Superman ” several years back.