So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Rollo Tomassi]

When I say read, I mean skimmed. But the way he does panel and page layouts, skimming IS reading. When I did come across the rare word balloon, it said "Arabs are fucking asshole terrorists who should DIE!!!!!!!!!1". Or something. I paraphrased, but that was the gist of each word balloon. Frank Miller is a real dickrag.

[Diabolical]

Amazing Spider-Man #577 - Only because of the DD crossover.

Batgirl #5 - Babs fights a new villain, Gretel, a chic who appears have the ability to control people's minds...and my get off/high on it.

Batman & Robin #5 - Robin goes to the darkside and leaves Batman for Ducard.

Punisher Max #21 - The issue Aaron has been building up to, the big fight between Frank and Fisk. It doesn't end well for almost everyone.

[anarky]

Okay, I finished Habibi this evening and have to backtrack quite a bit. It definitely doesn't work in parts, and, if you read only part of it in one sitting (which is damned near impossible to not do, since it's almost 700 pages), you don't realize it's working. (Make sense?) Once it's done, you're pretty floored by the effort that obviously went into it, and everything gels into a whole that's quite impressive. And the main characters' somewhat nonlinear backstories come together finally, and they both become a lot more sympathetic.

It might be Eisner-lite, but the influence is undeniable, and it does remind me quite a bit of Eisner's later non-Spirit graphic novels. Not quite as good graphically, but definitely going in the same direction, where most artists don't have the balls to even glance, so I'm going to have to give him props for it.

I'd recommend it. But be aware that you shouldn't give up before it's 2/3 or so done, because it takes a while to really get into it (and "get" why many narrative choices early on that seemed arbitrary and strange were the way they were). Still, at $35, I dunno that I can recommend buying it, and a paperback is probably out of the question since it's a monster of a book.

I guess when Barnes & Noble goes out of business later this year or early next year, you can probably find it for $5.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I bought a shitload of books this week. I spent almost $70 on 22 books. That's like 3x as much as I normally blow. Here's what I got.

Amazing Spidey 677. Black Cat gets framed for something and Spidey goes to DD for legal advice.

New Avengers 20. The Avengers continue to fight Osborn's ersatz Datk Avengers 2.0

Battle Scars 3. Deadpool shows up to kill Marcus Johnson (who is totally Nick Fury's son even though they haven't said so yet. I can read between lines.

Captain America 7. Eh. Cap is losing his powers. Or something. This book has been weaksauce since the renumbering.

Carnage USA 2. Spidey is rescued by locals. And the Army sends in a team of it own Symbiotes to fight Carnage. Which make the number of Symbiotes Characters at Marvel around 20 now.

Formic Wars: Silent Strike 2. The Bugger invasion continues.

GIJoe ARAH 174. The tank battle in Trucial Abyssmia continues. snake Eyes and Stormshadow look for Billy's killers. CC buries his son.

Snake Eyes 9. SE, Helix, and a small team of Joes infiltrate Cobra's new Country.

Cobra Annual 2012. To keep certain readers satisfied, I'll remain spoiler free about this issue, except to say its about the new Cobra Commander. And it was $7.99

Hulk 4. Hulk vs Banner. Still. Except Silvestri is done and we're getting Portacio art instead. Yawn.

Magneto: Not a Hero 3. Erik continues his fight with his clone, Joseph.

Punisher MAX 21. Frank gets shot like 30 times and then puts a bullet in Kingpin's noggin.

Scalped 55. Waiting to read all of these at once.

Scarlet Spider 1. Kaine sets up hero shop in Houston. I love that he yelled at a little old lady after he saved her from getting run over. It's the f
Dick Spider-Man! That gets me to the next issue at least.

The Stand: Night Has Come 6. FINAL ISSUE. The adaptation concludes after six minis and 31 issues.

Journey Into Mystery 633. Loki gets started on his next hi jinks. His last hi jinks got his brother killed (for a week). This book is phenomenally written.

Transformers:MTMTE 1. Henceforth this shall be just Transformers and the other book shall be RID because MTMTE is too long to type out every time. Also, IDW, quit making 5 covers to your books. Most shops only order 1 or 2 copies and we get stuck with covers we don't want because the selection is smaller than the availability of covers. That being said, this issue had something which I haven't seen in a TF book in awhile: Humor. I was giggling every few pages. In jokes about Rubsigns and the Underbase, complaining about having to walk because of Rewind's alt mode. It's a change of pace after Chaos, but I'm in.

Wolverine 300. Haven't read it yet, but it's a Legacy Renumbering Super sized issue, donuts probably pretty epic.

X-Factor 230. Havok and Polaris rejoin the team.

X-Men Legacy 260.1. Chris Gage takes over as writer in this Point One issue that has Rogue and her team slipping into their roles as teachers at Logan's Killbox..er..new school.

Wax-Men 4. More quirky school shenanigans! Deathlok is a teacher! Apocalypse is a student! Kitty Pryde is preggers!

[jjreason]

Looks like it's going to be a big week for me too, just scanning my stores site shows 11 books in stock for me. ><

[jjreason]

I only wound up getting 4 - Cap, ASM & 2 Avengers books. A bunch of things were sold out as I went on Friday instead of Wed. /sigh. Apparently the GI Joe books will be back in stock soon.

Nothing kills the excitement of starting a new series faster than missing issues you know you're not going to get any time soon.

[Rollo Tomassi]

12 books this week.

Amazing Spidey 678. Thanks to a wacky invention at Horizon Labs, Pete steps 24 hours into the future, and causes the apocalypse! So now he's got just 24 hours to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Avenging Spidey 3. Spidey stops the invasion of Earth by the subterreaneans literally by 'pantsing' their leader. Yup.

Avengers 21. *sigh* Norman Osborn. yadda yadda. Again. Same as every other Avengers book for the last three months.

Daredevil 8. Matt and the Black Cat shag. There's also some Spidey Team Up crossover thing happening, but that's secondary to the shagging. Of Felicia Hardy. By Matt "Marvel U Manwhore" Murdock.

Ghost Rider 8. Uhhh...Final Issue...I think? Alejandra ends up saving Douchebro Hawkeye and Johnny Blaze from some crazy cyber motorcycle chick villains. After Hawkeye shoots her in the chest with mystical arrow.

Cobra 9. What a wonderful Snake Eyes cover. Cobra Command continues. Cobra isn't taking over the country. They're wiping it off the map! Forever!

Iron Man 512. Mandarin continues the character assassination of Tony Stark. And also declares war on China!

New Mutants 36. The team saves the planet from the multi dimensional being accidentally trying to destroy Earth. And Blink joins team Wolvie at the Killbox--er, I mean the school in Westchester.

Marvel Index 6. More historical hijinks from Ghost Rider, Punisher and Wolverine. GR is getting down to issues of Champions to try and keep up with Frank and Logan.

Thunderbolts 169. The team heads even further back in time. This time to merry olde England to fight Authur, Merlin, and the Black Knight.

Uncanny X-Force 19.1. Needed an extra book to round up to 12. A Point One issue that actually sets up the upcoming Age of Apocalypse ongoing more than UFX. In this issue, Weapon X (aka Wolvie from AoA) has become the new big bad and kills all X-Men left from AoA like Rogue and Magneto. Leaving only humans to fight the evil mutant hordes.

Uncanny X-Men 549 5. The X-Men deal with the fallout of some shit that happened in X-Force that I don't read(apart from that issue I bought above). But the freaky thing is the "Bad Guy" at the end of the issue...is a character I made up when I was 13 years old. My guy was called the Marauder. And this guy is called Immortal Man. And obviously, my thirteen year old drawing isn't as good as a professional artist. But it seriously creeped my shit out to see one of my first super heroes in a fucking Marvel Comic 25 years after I invented him.

[anarky]

Is Uncanny written by Morrison?

[Rollo Tomassi]

It's written by Kieron Gillen. Who is actually one of the better new writers at Marvel. His Journey into Mystery starring a teenage Loki is probably in the top three Marvel books right now. Put it on your TPB list.

[vynsane]

the first three comics i've bought in at least six months were all issues of atomic robo that i missed. two last week, one this week.

i have a new subscription to Amazing Spider-man and Ultimate Comics Spider-man that should show up any day now...

[anarky]

I checked out Blankets when I returned Habibi. Excellent book. Plot-wise, it's nothing earth-shattering, but the use of symbolism is amazing. I think there are more (and better-used) symbols than in the comics work of Neil Gaiman.

[Diabolical]

Batman #5 - This whole Court of Owls thing is actually starting to get really good. After being captured by the Court of Owls, Batman has been missing from Gotham for over a week. Trapped in a massive maze and under constant mental torture, Batman begins to go crazy, which is highlighted is a really cool way that I initially thought was a massive printing error.

Catwoman #5 - Selina beats the shit out of some new super chick then discovers the duffel bag full of money isn't just a few thousand dollars, but nearly half a million, and its all dirty cop money. Then those dirty cops chase and surround her.

Daredevil #68 - DD does not nail Black Cat. He almost does, but gets cock blocked by Foggy's phone call.

Morning Glories #15 - No idea why I haven't dropped this yet. I have no clue what the fuck is going on anymore. This is way too much like a sci-fi-esque teenage mystery drama on ABC Family Channel.

[jjreason]

DD, some Avengers book with Storm on it, ASM & Avenging Spidey.

All Marvel = All Ho-Hum for me over the past 2 months. GI Joe and Game of Thrones are BY FAR atop my reading list.

[Diabolical]

A Game of Thrones is losing its appeal. I think it has to do with the art since I still have a hard time telling characters apart.

[jjreason]

I like it because I haven't touched the novel in ages & it's providing me with a good recap of key plot points - which I'm going to use to seque me back into the novel once the comic catches up. If I wasn't concerned about forgetting what had happened in the first half of the book, I likely wouldn't care about the comic either.