News for the Week of January 7, 2009
Rick’s Writin’s
Last week, I said that Solomon Grundy was a long time Batman villain,
and many of you were VERY quick to point out that in fact Grundy is a
long time Green Lantern villain. True, Grundy first appeared in All -American
Comics #61 (1944) and that was Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott)'s
title. He also appeared in the later 40's in All-Star Comics, which featured
the Justice Society and Alan Scott's Green Lantern. Grundy has also appeared
in Batman books such as The Long Halloween and Shadow of the Bat, as well
as many Justice League of America stories that feature Batman and of course
Green Lantern. BUT, if truth be told, the titles that Grundy has most
appeared in are...Infinity Inc. (1980's) and Starman (90's-2000). Just
setting the record straight. A customer had a theory that Grundy and his
undead-zombie curse must be dealt with before the Green Lantern "Blackest
Night" event, because Grundy could foul up the works, given the Black
Lanterns are former dead folks, heroes and villains I believe. Perhaps
this is the reason for the up coming Solomon Grundy seven issue mini series.
If so it'll be like shipping Hulk of into outer space before the Marvel
Civil War story, or the current Final Crisis where Batman has been disabled
through the RIP story, and Superman is in the future, so neither are on
hand to deal with the Crisis situation. Seems to be a common comic event
story telling technique, getting rid of some of the big monkeys so the
little monkeys can play. This can work sometimes, as I feel it did with
Marvel's Civil War, because the story focused on the other bigger names
and therefore was accessible to the more casual reader, resulting in new
readers, which to me is the point of a big event story. Secret Invasion
didn't do that and neither has Final Crisis, particularly Crisis which
has used in my opinion too many B and C level characters to carry the
story ball. And Morisson's writing style hasn't helped either. I figure
that if a regular DC reader such as myself has trouble keeping the story
straight, and the who's who, how can a new reader follow. Another of our
customer's put it this way "Grant Morisson aspires to be an Alan
Moore or Neil Giaman type writer, complexity-wise, but isn't talented
enough to pull it off". I have to agree, and it saddens me to do
so. I always want DC to do well, but it's my belief that Final Crisis
could be a whole lot better than it is, and that DC made a mistake of
giving it to Morisson to write.
That's probably not the thing to say when you want to hype the in-coming books for the week and the main DC book is Final Crisis (#6 of 7). I am looking forward to this one though, as it is supposed to reveal what has happened to Batman, who as I mentioned above has been missing since the end of the RIP story (Also written by Grant Morisson). I'm kind of worried, but I still think that though Bruce/Batman may be out of circulation for a while, it won't be permanent. Just my guess anyhow. The other big book this week is Amazing Spider-Man (#583), which starts a new storyline, but also features a backup story with a very special guest star! This guest star has been featured on the news quite a bit lately, and he will also be on a variant cover of this issue. Even his appearance in this Spider-Man comic has been news (No, not Steven Colbert...he's already been in). Just be aware though, I've had many inquiries about this one particularly the variant. The demand is high, the supply is not. Basic business math applies here. Unfortunately, we won't be taking any pre-orders either. We'll have them Wednesday when we open. Sorry, one only per customer. It doesn't matter how many kids you have or if you need one for Uncle E. Bay, we're going to try to have them for as many folks as possible. There's some decent other items on the list this week (see below), but I'm going to cut this short and go watch some football. See you all soon..
Paula’s Picks
With all of the rain and flooding this last week, I hope everyone is staying
dry and keeping their collection above water level!
I want to thank everyone that has filled out our little Previews list so far. It will really help us order properly. If you still haven’t seen it, you have until January 21st to tell us what books are hot and which are not! I was also playing around with making a take-home copy for next months’ books. Let me know what you think of that idea. Would you prefer to take it home and think about it or do you think you might forget to bring it back?
This week’s list is lighter, but there’s some good comics coming out. First up is Fables #80 which is super secret. It’s so super secret that I’m going to talk about a different book that I really like. Castle Waiting is a great fairy tale type book that is kind of similar to Fables. It’s about a pregnant woman that goes to Castle Waiting (it’s a real castle) to hide from her husband. You learn a lot about all of the unusual people that live in this castle. If you like Fables, I recommend you give this one a try!
Another one of my favorites is coming out with a trade paperback this week: House of Mystery. This volume collects the first five issues of the House of Mystery series. Also, we’re getting a new printing of Showcase Presents: House of Mystery.
Also from DC, we’re getting in a whole bunch more of the Faces of Evil books: Green Lantern Corps #32, Action Comics #873, Nightwing #152, Booster Gold #16, Green Arrow Black Canary #16 and Faces of Evil Prometheus.