There's been

a certain amount of consternation in comics circles over this news, whereby it's been revealed that there won't be a new delivery of comics from Diamond (the one and only comics distributor) in the week between Christmas and New Year because of the way the holidays fall in the US and UPS deliveries and some other boring shit. Tom Spurgeon points out that there might be lost sales and resultant cashflow issues for comic shops, and something of a glut of new comics the week after.

My immediate reaction, considering my current slight disillusion with comics, was, great! A week off from the comic shop! In fact, I'm thinking of campaigning for more 'skip weeks'. The way comics publishers' schedules work, there's always at least one week a month where there are less comics coming out, and those that are coming out are either utterly run of the mill or out-and-out pigeon shit. So let's skip those weeks too! Not just in terms of customers not visiting comic shops, but Diamond not shipping any comics, and indeed publishers (and let's face it, we're talking Marvel and DC here) not publishing any comics! Just think: the mean average of comics' artistic worth – the good to shit ratio – would improve dramatically. We'd have fewer rubbish comics. Result!

Well it's a nice idea.

Those Christmas in-between weeks are always a bit odd. You don't tend to get any 'big' comics coming out that week. I seem to recall DC throwing the odd short 'event' into that week; some sci-fi take on their characters around the millennium? Does that ring any bells for anyone? (Is there anybody out there...?) And comic shops tend to be pretty quiet; a lot of customers will obviously be away. It's a strange, half-dead week of mundane comics. And now it's completely dead. So it goes.

This week's comics

Here's wot I got:

Daredevil #500 (Geof Darrow Variant Cover)
Dark Reign Hood #4 (of 5)
Ex Machina #44
Stand American Nightmares #5
Unthinkable #4
X-Men Legacy #227

An admirably short list, I'm sure you'll agree. It's a brave new world of restraint. The age of comics austerity, if you will. Of those, Daredevil #500 is Ed Brubaker's final issue, and thus my final issue too. None of incoming writer Andy Diggle's stuff's ever much grabbed me, and I need to cut back, so so long Matt Murdock. I'll also be bidding farewell to The Stand. Despite my problems with its past tense captions, I've liked the last few issues, but we're now moving past my favourite part of the King book, and it's still a top-of-the-pile comic, so sayonara Stu, Frannie et al.

Astonishingly, my local comic shop had the latest issue of Unthinkable (a great idea for a comic, but shoddily executed and, in my experience anyway, badly distributed), just a single solitary issue, so I had to grab it, if only to ruin some other customer's day. Bastard.

I passed on the following:

Big Questions #12
Blackest Night Superman #1
Invincible #65
Superman Annual #14

Big Questions I may pick up at some point down the line. I like Anders Nilsen a lot, but periodically is probably not the best way to appreciate this story, and I missed the first five or so issues anyway. A collection I would definitely acquire. Blackest Night Superman... I'm not digging the whole Blackest Night event as much as I hoped, so these spin-off miniseries are becoming less attractive. Superman Annual I flicked through, but it ended with a superhero crying a single tear. Fuck that shit. I've seen enough sobbing superheroes from DC to last me a fucking lifetime. Enough with the fucking blubbing. Man up, bitches. As for Invincible, I started picking it up again with the done-in-one crossover issue #60, stuck with it a few more to see what developed, was rewarded with some impressive gore, but it looks like business as usual now. End of.

And yes, I did get a variant of Daredevil #500. But it was only a quid more. And it's Geof Darrow. It's allowed. Look:













Sweet.

One thing I am going to do,

or at least try to do, is buy fewer comics. This is another 'phase' that comics fans go through periodically, traditionally referred to as "cutting back". It's usually sparked by disenchantment, or lack of funds, or both, as in my case. Comics right now are pretty bloody expensive. With the way the exchange rate is, and with more and more comics being priced at $3.99, you're talking an average of nearly three quid a comic. Doesn't sound a lot in isolation, but if you're buying five, maybe ten comics a week... it adds up. And that's without the occasional graphic novel thrown in.

So yes. Fewer comics. But speaking of graphic novels, I finally caved and bought a copy of Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter adaptation (a.k.a. Point Blank). I've been wanting to read the original anyway, and Cooke is a great artist/writer, and I was up in London, and Gosh had some signed bookplate editions left, and I got a discount, and... and I guess I'm just going to have to deal with the past tense captions thing (see previous posts). It may well make more sense, be less jarring in The Hunter than in The Stand. I can see how that might be the case. I'll find out.

Nice looking book though.

Anyone

following this blog regularly – if there is anyone following this blog, regularly or otherwise – might notice it hasn't been updated in a while. Couple of reasons for this:

1) I've been on holiday. Oh, lovely, thanks for asking.

2) I've gone off comics.

Now, point one I'd imagine will be taken as read. Everyone needs a holiday now and again. Point two, however, is slightly trickier. Kind of negates the whole raison d'etre of the blog, n'est-ce pas? Well, yes and no. Note the "mostly" in the sub-header, but also understand that all comics "enthusiasts" go through periods where comics just aren't doing it for them, for whatever reason. At the moment, for example, I'm bang into novels, first editions and the like. And comics usually suffer when compared to a really good novel (the likes of Asterios Polyp aside). I'll still buy comics, probably on a weekly basis, but I won't enjoy them as much as I have previously.

But don't worry. I'm sure it'll pass. It usually does.

Unless, of course, it doesn't.

Reviews: New Avengers #55, Fantastic Four #569

There's a brilliant synthesis that happens sometimes in superhero comics, where you get the right writer and the right artist working together and it just clicks. The comic feels seamless, natural – dialogue and artwork are a whole, as if they've been made by one creator rather than two (or three or four or five – if the lettering and colouring are working too, all the better). This brilliant synthesis actually happens less often than you'd hope; there are plenty of comics where there's a good writer and a good artist working together, but for some reason – something to do with complementary creativity – they're not the right writer or the right artist.

There's a neat illustration of this in two comics that came out this week. Both New Avengers #55 and Fantastic Four #569 feature Stuart Immonen artwork. Immonen's a talented artist with a flowing line and natural storytelling abilities. And yet the two comics couldn't feel more different. Fantastic Four was scripted by the British TV writer Joe Ahearne from a plot by Mark Millar, and despite lots of gorgeous panels of stuff exploding and heroes clashing, it doesn't gel. There's a disconnect between the spectacle and the script and an awkwardness to the story progression, all of which only distances the reader. It's pretty, but uninvolving.

New Avengers, on the other hand, despite consisiting of long stretches where it's essentially large groups of costumed characters talking to each other, is almost magical. Writer Brian Michael Bendis' character work is beautifully augmented by Immonen's storytelling. For instance, Spider-Man's full face mask generally makes it really hard to have him express any kind of emotion, but in a sequence where the Avengers are discussing killing Norman Osborn, Bendis' dialogue and Immonen's staging lend Spidey a surprising level of emotional intensity. One panel in particular – Spider-Man saying he'll quit the team with a dismissive hand gesture – is simple and yet incredibly effective.

New Avengers #55 may not be an important or historically noteworthy comic like, say, Watchmen or Batman: Year One, but the creative partnership here is as strong as that of Moore and Gibbons, or Miller and Mazzucchelli. It's the right writer, the right artist. It's an alchemy that's unique to the comics medium, but yet also quite rare within that medium, and so something to be celebrated.

Mind you, the cover's a bit crap.

Ill-Gotten Gain

Well, not particularly ill-gotten; I did pay for the things. But anyway, here's the list of comics wot I got this week:

Dark Reign Hood #3 (of 5)
Detective Comics #855
Fantastic Four #569
Ignition City #4
New Avengers #55
Secret Warriors #6
Superman #690
Terror Inc Apocalypse Soon #4 (of 5)
Ultimatum #5 (of 5)

It strikes me that my posting of this information every week will be of little or no interest to anyone, even if anyone is reading this blog, but I guess it'll be something I can read back over and see what I was buying on a given week. Then again, it also strikes me even I might not be interested in doing that.

Aw fuck it. I'll carry on doing it. What the hell else am I gonna write about?

Not sure what I'm looking forward to most out of these. New Avengers maybe? Ultimatum I'm only buying 'cos I wanna see how it ends; it's been pretty appalling all the way through. Fantastic Four I'm quitting after this issue. Just wanna see how Mark Millar's run finishes (although he's only co-writing at this point). And on the danger list (as in, in danger of being dropped) we have Secret Warriors and Superman. I want to see socks being pulled up pretty sharpish with those two, or else they're gone. So there.