Comics

Comic Sales Fall In July

Why are comic prices dropping? It’s because there are too many comic books coming out. It feels a bit like Christmas season with so many choices.  Hopefully consumers will buy more after the September relaunch of DC. Marvel and DC are competing for market shares. What disappoints me the most is when sales start to drop, indie comic choices are reduced. Indie comics are the life blood of the industry. Some of your favortie creators started their success by writing indie genres. The real message here is get out and buy some damn comics! There are several 1st issues available like Punisher by Greg Rucka, Daredevil by Mark Waid and a whole slew of other DC choices.

Moriarty: The Dark Chamber #4 – Review

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud that his creations from Sherlock Holmes were
used to create this series.  This final issue cements this series as a
classic despite the fact that it has had quite a number of flaws during
its short run. But these flaws are far outweighed by the positives.  The
previously unseen villain appears in this issue and is written, along
with the rest of the story, masterfully, with the only downfall of the
issue being the artwork. 
In the final chapter of Moriarty, writer Daniel Corey finally has Moriarty – great mastermind and Sherlock Holmes’ greatest arch-nemesis –
come face to face with our villain, Tartarus, and we’ll finally see his
plan to conquer the world using the dark chamber to manifest peoples’
fears come to fruition – unless Moriarty can stop him.

 

iZombie #16 – Review

iZombie by
Chris Roberson and Mike Allred has always been one of those comics I looked
at, picked up, paged through, and put it down. I adopted the “I’ll get around
to that one later” mentality. I’m slowly starting to realize how much of a
mistake I’ve been making.

The series follows Gwen Dylan, a grave digger who
must eat a human brain in order for her to not lose her memories. This, in turn, gives her the memories and feelings of the human whose brain she last ingested.
Gwen proceeds to fulfill the deceased brains’ last requests, accompanied by her
best friend Eleanor, a sassy ghost from the sixties. Along the way she meets
vampires with paintball guns, hot mummies, and were-dogs with crushes on
certain protagonists.

Bring It or Keep It? – Shingeki no Kyojin

Welcome,
once again, to “Bring It or Keep It?” where we take a look at a foreign
comic and decide whether it should be brought to our shores or kept to
its home nation. This time I’ll be discussing the relatively recent Shingeki no Kyojin,
a Japanese manga by Hajime Isayama. I am told the title roughly
translates to “The Giant’s Charge” and it is an apt title, to be
certain. So, is this winner of the 2011 Kodansha Manga Award ready to
win some awards in the West?

The Infinite #1 – Review

Time
travel is one of the few tropes I doubt I’ll ever feel is overused.
With any story that needs that extra something, whether it’s new or
running its course, if you throw some time travel in there then suddenly
there’s something entirely new. Remember how if Marty McFly interacted
with his older self, a paradox would rip a hole in the universe? Well,
luckily that isn’t the case with The Infinite, where a sour
protagonist teams up with his younger self in order to fight the good
fight. This is something I have really never seen before. Way too often
are time travel storylines chained under the tyrannical rule of time
paradoxes.

Is Marvel’s Ultimate Universe Too Diverse?

The classic comic book characters were created by straight
white men decades ago.  These writers and artists made stories about white,
straight, mostly male characters because it reflected their own identities and
culture.  However, there has been a
trend in the comic book industry where classic characters are re-invented so
that their ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation is changed to make the
cast more “diverse.”  Maybe comic
books sell better this way, or perhaps the people who work in the industry are
more diverse now, but I’ve noticed one thing about the diversity trend: In
general, only the good guys are diverse.

You Missed That Issue! – Pete the P.O.’d Postal Worker #1

In
another segment of “You Missed That Issue,” we take a look at a classic
comic that doesn’t come from a big name publisher like Marvel or DC and
was overlooked despite its ‘charm.’ Beware of spoilers! This comic is
from Sharkbait Press and is cartoonish violence at its best with a
mixture of insanity making you scared to get your mail in the morning. 

Who
doesn’t hate their job? After numerous dog attacks, uncooperative mail
recipients, and terrible co-workers, Pete the postal worker finally goes
insane. With a permanent grin on his face that would make the Joker
cringe, Pete sets out to deliver the mail with an array of weapons and
unbreakable perseverance to get the mail delivered no matter what.