The ORIGINAL Comic Book Coffee House!
I am very happy to announce Presidential Candidate Chris Dodd will be here at Cup o’ Kryptonite Monday, December 3rd between 5:00 and 6:00pm. Come and meet the Connecticut Senator, ask questions and talk with one of America’s fore most political leaders and possibly the next President of the United States.
For more information on the Senator, check out his website, www.chrisdodd.com
Next, I’m so in the spirit of the holiday’s I wanted to help everyone with their Christmas shopping. (That last statement was not truthful, Matt has not ever had even an ounce of holiday spirit, ever. He actually avoided shopping on Friday – except for beer – just to make a point.) There are a bunch of good trades and hardcovers in right now, including something for the really picky person on your list.
Another week and another innovation
that will “save” the industry… or drag it into a new era… or kill it completely.
Marvel announced they would be putting up hundreds of issues of each of its series on its website as digital comics. As you might guess this old curmudgeon isn’t down with digital comics. I’m sure you are not shocked, but I really don’t think any real comic fans would be down with this. I talked with a good friend of mine about this and we both agreed that comics need to be held in your hand. They are a physical medium. He has several of the “complete CD ROM sets” and I have one, but they are nothing but reference for either of us. They are hard to read since the full comic doesn’t fit on the page (at least in a readable form.) This is but the tip of the iceberg for this innovation. Brian Hibbs, hero to all retailers and writer of Tilting at Windmills an online column on Newsarama, lists several other reasons they probably won’t go over to well with most comic fans. You can read his article here: www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting46.html. He also brings up some really scary points about what it could do to business to the direct market, if, digital comics every reach the point they are released at the same time regular comics are. It’s worth a read. None the less, I’m not fretting Digital Comics right now, I have to much hate invested in a certain crappy coffee chain, but like that chain, you the consumers make the decision on something like this.
In other news, if you didn’t catch the Simpson’s last night, it sounds like you should have. Another hipper comic shop comes to Springfield. Employee Donnie found me a clip of a buff Allan Moore beating up comic shop guy. Pretty funny stuff, who would have guessed they still made funny episodes of the Simpsons. Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeVOAOIYt6Y.
That is it for “news.”
Fine. Enough with the learning. On to the comics.
Hah, fooled you. First, I want to give you one last opportunity to order cheap tickets to the November 16th, Iowa Stars game.
Cost is only $9.50 per ticket and that gets you a seat at the game, hot dog, chips and a soda. No minimum on numbers of tickets, but I need to know by this weekend. Come out and enjoy the best sport and do it on the cheap too.
Now to take a few minutes to review a couple books I’ve enjoyed of late.
Fantastic Four #551 hits stands this week and I got a chance to read it a week early. The stories that have been told since Dwayne McDuffie came on as writer harkened back to times past. I have a soft spot for the FF, as they are some of the earliest comics I ever read. The stories have been cosmic or as the issue that hits stands this week, time travel related, and those are the best stories in the FF’s long run. They deal with some big bombastic cosmic threat that, only they seem to be able to stop. These are stories that when you try to tell someone about, usually end making you sound dumb, but that’s why we like and read them and we would have them no other way. This is what makes the FF good and why it’s lasted so long. Writer McDuffie and Artist Paul Pelletier, a great often overlooked penciler, get it and it’s making for a return to greatness of The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine. Now, if we could just get Turner to stop “drawing” the covers.
I enjoyed The Messiah Complex one shot starting off the multi-part crossover event in the x-books. The story was decent and with art by Mark Silvestri, you can’t go wrong there. However, I’m just getting tiered of multi part stories and crossovers. Can’t we just tell good stories and not have them all intertwine into every existing book?
But hey, no matter what they do on this x-over, at least it isn’t as bad as the gob-zillion related Countdown books that are related to a weekly book at DC, BAH! Shame on you DC. You continue to make this retailer angry at your self destruction, but when you announced The Arena…
oh, wait, sorry… Countdown: The Arena, you topped it all. Here is your premise, Monarch (Hank Hall from the future, maybe) is battling the monitors (I don’t understand why either, just go with it) and he is assembling an army made up of the greatest heroes from across the multi-verse (it started in Countdown, and I can’t read that book either). Three “heroes” enter the arena and one survives to join the army. For example, Gotham by Gas Light Batman versus Red Rain Batman versus another Batman. Did someone watch Beyond Thunderdome to many times? This is stupid and I just got done reviewing the FF and praising it for being goofy. I’ve heard from several big DC fans and they are on the fence until Final Crisis ends. If it doesn’t wow their socks off they are done with DC. I told them that’s fair, I’ve all ready bailed on the books myself.
