Blog Template Update for August
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, updating my favorite comics and TV for the previous month. The listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published.

August was in some ways a bit of a down month, with some fairly sparse weeks, but there were gems in almost every week, and I found myself again having a tough time cutting down to a top 20 from a top 32 or so. As you all probably know by now, August was also the last month Fourth Rail will be updated, and the first month (or at least, the last couple days) of Comic Pants, the new comic reviewing site I'm involved with. It was also the month in which Dragon's Lair, where I work, celebrated its 20th anniversary with comic guests and more, and that was pretty busy and fun.

This month, there weren't a lot of new series launched that I found all that interesting. Monkey vs. Lemur was a fun one-shot, as was Eberron: Eye of the Wolf, and Batman and the Mad Monk and Savage Brothers were both good intros for new limited series, but I don't think any new ongoings of note launched in August. Of course, that's speaking as someone without much interest in Justice League of America or Heroes for Hire, which were definitely the two biggest launches from Marvel and DC for the month.

Lots of folks are griping about summer TV, but they must not have cable. With Entourage and Deadwood both having excellent seasons, Weeds season two starting off strong, the camp-but-fun Who Wants To Be A Superhero, solid sci-fi in USA's 4400 and regular doses of Daily Show and Colbert Report, I'm having trouble keeping up with the Tivo. That's not even mentioning the four-part special Feasting on Asphalt with Alton Brown, how addicted I've become to Travel Channel's Professional Poker Tour or the love I found for the darker, meaner Seinfeld, F/X's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Weekly Comics to Come - September 7, 2006:
That's not a typo... comics are delayed by a day this week thanks to Labor Day. That means the Wednesday Number Ones feature on Comic Pants will be a Thursday Number Ones feature instead. But don't worry, there'll be plenty of reviews before that. Anyway, another small-ish week.

TOP FIVE:
Local #6 (Read a preview copy, and it's fantastic... best issue of the series so far)
Museum Of Terror Vol 2 (Not as great as Uzumaki or even Gyo, but still solid horror manga from Junji Ito)
Surrogates Vol 1 Tp (Fantastic, full-color sci-fi from Top Shelf)
Uncanny X-men #478 (The only one of my top five I haven't already read, but I'm digging on the Brubaker/Tan X-Men right now)
Y The Last Man #49 (Less than a year to go, and the story is ramping up)

THE REST:
Agents Of Atlas #2 (Great art, interesting story, I'm onboard for more)
American Splendor #1 (A little disappointing, but with some nice art)
Detective Comics #823 (Another done-in-one from Dini... I'm not wholly onboard, but I'm still reading)
GI Joe Scarlett Declassified (Interior art by Phil Noto + my soft spot for GI Joe = reading)
Lone Ranger #1 (I have a certain fondness for the Lone Ranger character as well)
Noble Causes #23 (A thoroughly underrated and always entertaining book)
Rush City #2 (First issue was solid action, I expect the second to be more of the same, but guest-starring Black Canary for bonus points)

Good Week:
Comic Pants launched to great success, and I'm feeling more energized about my writing than I have in quite some time as a result.

My little girl started preschool, and seems to be enjoying it and doing well.

I've finally started catching up on Rescue Me, and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I also have a ton of DVDs to watch, including Arrested Development Vol. 3 and The Tick Season One (cartoon).

The 20th anniversary went off great, and was a huge success.

Things are good at work, at home and in my virtual life on the Internet. For now, life is good.

Get Pantsed:
Well, it's all over the Internet at this point, so I'd be surprised if anyone read about it for the first time here, but...

Don and I are shutting down The Fourth Rail, and I've helped launch a new review site called Comic Pants. I'm very excited about the new place.

Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary:
This weekend, Dragon's Lair (the shop where I'm one of the managers) celebrated its 20th anniversary. I've only been working there six years, but that's still a fair bit of time, so I'm pretty invested in the store and was hoping for a good event. It went off great. There were a few hitches, like Josh Howard being unable to come or Matt Sturges (co-writer of Jack of Fables) having to bail on his Round Rock appearance to spend some family time, but overall, it was a great event.

I got to drive around Gail Simone and her husband, Scott, picking them up from the airport and taking them to and from the party on Friday night. Gail and Scott are both extremely nice people, and fun to talk to, and even though I probably got to talk to them over the course of about an hour throughout the weekend, I was still wishing for more time. Gail also had a huge turnout of fans, and she signed all their books and talked to them and everybody had a terrific time.

Gail was paired in the signings with Scott Kurtz, creator of PVP. Scott also had a pretty big crowd, and I know we turned a few people into fans that day as well. Scott was kind enough to do a sketch in my "Monkeys, Pirates, Ninjas and Robots" theme book, as well. Also signing with that pair was local writer Jeff Stevenson, who had with him copies of his new Image/Shadowline book Task Force One and his self-published book Steampunk Fairies.

We have three stores (one in Round Rock, one in Austin, one in San Antonio), so we had three drivers ferrying the creators to each shop. Our next signing in Round Rock was at 2:00, and featured two members of the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design, Cameron Stewart and Chip Zdarsky. They too were busy the whole time, sketching and signing. In fact, I never got to get my sketchbook to either one, as they were busy drawing for customers and for a couple of the other employees. But I already have two sketches from Cameron in my sketchbook, and I didn't want to be greedy. Poor Cameron and Chip were driving around in Texas in an un-air conditioned car, too... they got the real Texas experience.

Finally, from 6:00 to 8:00, we had Kristian, artist of the IDW book Supermarket and the upcoming DMZ #11. He had prints with him that sold fairly well, as well as a few issues of Supermarket, and he also was doing sketches the whole time. He was nice enough to do a sketch in my theme sketchbook as well. After the whole thing finished, most of the employees (save Dave Farabee, the other manager, who stayed to close up shop) went to dinner along with Kristian and one of our customers, David Figueroa, who had been taking pictures for us all day. In fact, I've put up all the pictures he took as a flickr set.

From there, it was off to the Live Art Show, being put on by my good friend Chris Nicholas at Club Deville. It was a great show, with several local artists alongside Chip, Cameron and Kristian. Everybody did beautiful work, and me and my group bought a ton of art. Dave Martindale bought one of Kristian's pieces, and I bought the other one. David Figueroa bought two of Cameron's pieces, and Nick Budd bought the other one. Even Kristian bought some art, picking up a nice piece from Miss Monster.

At around 2:00, the bar closed down, and I gave Kristian and our Dragon's Lair event organizer Jillian Gowen a ride back to his car so they could head out to a party. I was invited to come, but it was late, and I'm old, so I went home and got to sleep at about 2:30 instead. It was a great time, though, and although it was a long day (from about 8:00 am until 2:30 am) on Saturday, it was well worth it.

Pantheon High:
My buddy Paul Benjamin is interviewed over at Newsarama about his new Tokyopop series, Pantheon High. I've seen some of the pages from it, and it looks great. Go take a look!

Weekly Comics to Come - August 30, 2006:
Wow, tiny, tiny week for me. There's Lost Girls, of course, but I still haven't decided if I'm going to drop $75 on that bad boy, I'm going to let Dave play guinea pig and try to sneak a peek at his copy.

TOP FIVE:
All Star Superman #5 (More Silver Age style wackiness from Morrison and Quitely... it's late, but it's not All Star Batman and Robin late)
American Virgin #6 (Been a while since we saw an issue of this one, too... but it's always a good read)
Civil War Young Avengers & Runaways #2 (First issue was a solid pairing of the teams, and skimmed past most of my annoyance with the Civil War premise)
She-Hulk 2 #11 (Following up on the story from the Marvel Westerns: Two-Gun Kid special, I've been wanting to see that for a while now)
Usagi Yojimbo #96 (Looks like the new assassin is on Usagi's trail)

THE REST:
Previews Vol #26.9 (New Down the Line should be up sometime next week or week after)
Solo #12 (Sorry to see the book end, even sorrier that the last issue doesn't feature an artist that I have a pre-existing fondness for. I can't help but think of how many great artists never got their shot at this book)
Star Wars Rebellion #3 (Solid Star Wars classic era adventure)

It Occurs to Me:
When looking at Marc-Oliver Frisch's analysis of DC sales over at The Beat, that there's a very easy snapshot of the comics market to be had. The vast majority of the market, sadly, is only interested in superheroes and don't have much interest in branching out. Because the easiest, most accessible diversion from superheroes for adult readers is probably DC's Vertigo line, which features high quality, the same production values and even elements that make it similar enough to superheroes for an easy transition, but the numbers are just miles apart. Witness:

Justice League (the top-selling DC book for the month)? 160,000 readers
Fables (the top-selling Vertigo book for the month)? 27,000 readers

Now, it's not hard science or anything, but it's probably fair to say, looking at this, that the audience for superhero comics is over five times larger than the audience for non-superhero comics. At best.

That's a shame, and probably as good an indicator as any of what the small press is up against these days. They're competing for a pool that is, at its strongest, maybe 30,000 readers strong. You know, just slightly the level where DC and Marvel generally start thinking superhero books aren't doing well and need cancelling.

Of course, there's the bookstore market, which hopefully is a large, new pool of readers that are probably more interested in non-superhero stuff, but still... kind of depressing.

It also occurs to me I've mostly been bitching on this site for the last few posts, so the next one will definitely contain good news and good stuff. Certainly there's been plenty of that fairly recently as well.

When I Meet Him, I'm Gonna Kick His Ass:
I refer, of course, to the gremlin plaguing my life of late.

The good news is that after all my worrying about returning the HTIB and such to Best Buy, I went in and the customer service could not have been better. Everyone was very nice and helpful, one guy spent a fair amount of time in the home theatre section showing me the various DVD players, another helped me locate Rogue's Gallery, the new album of sea shanty covers (weird, I know, but it sounded interesting) and I walked out of there with a new, one-disc player from Sony that should have been easy to hook up and worked perfectly with Katy's controller.

Caught the should have, did you?

After the luck I've been having with electronics lately, I don't know why I was surprised. It took me all of five minutes to get the DVD player hooked up, and I was so happy... except that I noticed a loud buzzing sound whenever there wasn't other sound on the screen to cover it. When people were talking, or music was playing, etc., I could hear the occasional pop of static or an underlying buzz, but when it was supposed to be silent, there was a loud sound of interference. After doing some experimenting, I came to the conclusion that I had picked a defective player. The jacks worked with everything else (PS/2, TV, VCR), whether I used the switcher or not made no difference, it was obviously the DVD player. Somehow, I had magically picked the broken one.

Suzanne took pity on me and said she'd go exchange it tomorrow. Hopefully she'll have better luck.

Of course, she's been suffering today with a remarkably spotty Internet connection, and I ran into that when I got home as well. It would literally be up one minute and down the next, making Internet use extremely frustrating. It seems to be working better now, but I'm starting to feel like I really do have a gremlin messing with my stuff.

You Can't Fight Entropy:
After Suzanne came home and told me that she knew about the broken toilet and fixed it, I was starting to feel a little bit better about everything breaking. Maybe it was just a blessing in disguise, and I could get a good stereo system and the wireless headphones I'd been wanting, and this was just the right excuse.

Hah. Foolish mortal.

So I spent the better part of Sunday night researching HTIB (Home Theatre in a Box) systems online, after taking a quick glance around Best Buy that afternoon to get a general vibe. I had a few in mind, but generally decided I wanted the Panasonic SC-HT940, if the outputs would work. I could get it from Circuit City, with the wireless adapter, for about $500, and pick it up the next day, and pick up a good pair of wireless headphones for about $45 on Amazon. Not bad.

But I wanted to check the outputs, and make sure that was what I wanted, so I headed out to Best Buy on Monday. The guy there was very helpful, and after trying to steer me towards a more complicated receiver (which I didn't want, I wanted the convenience of HTIB, even if that wasn't the best possible sound), he helped me figure out that the Panasonic would work. Picked that up, with the adapter for wireless rear speakers and a wireless pair of headphones, plus a 4-year maintenance plan (hey, I just had a DVD player die on me after a year). Grand total about $900, a valuable lesson in shopping online, but the guy had done the legwork, so I wasn't about to turn around and buy it online at that point.

Got home, spent the better part of a frustrating day setting it up. The inputs didn't work entirely right and required a workaround, the wireless speakers didn't seem to be working... by the time Suzanne left to go to her mama's group, I was good and frustrated. However, I did finally get everything working, even if you had to pull the S-video cable every time you wanted to watch a VHS tape. The wireless headphones were nice, and even worked in my office. Great. Sound wasn't perfect, but new cables would probably fix that. It was a headache, but probably worth it.

Hah. Foolish mortal.

One of the primary reasons we couldn't just use my PS/2 or another pre-existing DVD player in the house is because Katy has this InteractTV thing she loves to play with, and it has to be programmed kind of like a universal remote. This morning, Suzanne discovered that the codes weren't working with the new DVD player. I called up Panasonic, and they informed me that their DVDs didn't work with most universal remotes. They even tried to present it as a *feature*, "Why would you want to use another remote? You can only access all the features on our remote!"

So, disappointing sound, high price, doesn't work with the Tivo remote or Katy's remote... guess what, it's going back. That meant I had to spend most of this morning undoing all my hard work from Monday, worrying about what kind of restocking fee I'll have to pay and if my 4-year plan will be just money wasted, or if I can get that back as well. Lesson learned? If all you need is a DVD player, and you've been fine with just the TV sound for several months, don't go out and get a home stereo unless you're willing to pay somebody else to install it and really go all out on the high end stuff. So on Wednesday, I'll try to return all this stuff (saying goodbye to the wireless headphones will be the hardest part, as I couldn't get them to work with just the TV) and buy a simple, $50+ Phillips DVD player that I saw on Sunday and should have bought in the first place.

To be continued...

Why Paul O'Brien Remains My Favorite Reviewer:
"Oh god, another Wolverine miniseries. I wish I was dead."

Funny, sarcastic, insightful... and that's after years of a reviewing focus on the X-Books, which would brain damage a lesser man.

Entropy:
The last two days, it seems that everything is breaking on me. OK, not everything, maybe, but a couple major things just randomly broke, within hours of each other, and now it's got me paranoid.

The first thing that "broke" was the airline system. When I booked our Florida trip through Travelocity, they wouldn't let me go ticketless on Delta. I had to have paper tickets. I don't want them, I *like* electronic ticketing, but it's only $20 more, and the flights are priced right, so I figure what the hell. Big mistake.

When we're flying from Orlando to Miami, in the midst of the heightened security (this was the day after the new "no liquids" rule) and with a sleeping 3-year-old between us, Suzanne and I must have exchanged boarding passes about four times. We had to show them to the security agent at the line, the security agent at the scanner and somewhere else as well. At some point, during all this juggling, the paper ticket became detached from Katy's ticket. We didn't realize it, I'm not used to flying with them, so I didn't really even know they were there.

When we get up to get on the plane, they won't let us on. Other people are boarding around us, the flight takes off in like 10 minutes and they're telling us that we can't take the flight. Or at least, Katy can't, which pretty much means we can't either. I started getting desperate and even offered to re-buy the ticket. They checked in on that, found out that the price would be $520 (about $300 more than I paid for it originally, since now it's the "on the day" price). I said no, of course, trying to work something else out. Then I find out that if we don't get on the plane, we're still going to have to buy a ticket tomorrow for Katy, plus pay a change fee for mine and Suzanne's tickets, *plus* get a hotel in Orlando for the night... I bit the bullet and paid the $520, on top of the $1200 I'd already paid for the flight. Expensive lesson in not flying with paper tickets ever again.

Last night, I came home, hoping to finally watch The Matador (which I rented from Netflix about a month ago) on my 5-disc Sony DVD player, which I bought about a year ago. Except I couldn't remember which tray it was in, so I tried to open the player. It said "tray locked." Weird. It would still play the discs, but it wouldn't open. Thinking maybe somehow a child lock feature had been engaged, I went to the web, found the PDF manual and found that there was indeed a child lock. Tried to disengage, it wouldn't work. Suzanne and I tried several times in different button combinations, sure that it was child locked somehow but we couldn't get it open. Then I found another indicator on the manual and realized it hadn't been mistakenly child locked, but had just decided to stop working. The advice was "Take it in to a Sony repair center."

I guess a year later, it's not expected that it would still be working, as the thing is out of warranty, and they want to charge me almost as much as I paid for it (or would pay for a new one) to get it repaired. And I still need to make sure I get the discs out, because I may like the Matador, I may not, but I don't want to buy one only to return it to Netflix in replacement for the disc stuck in my player. Nor do I want to replace Dumbo, A Bug's Life or Disc Two of Newsradio Season Four, also stuck. So, resigning myself to having to buy a new DVD player, Suzanne and I crack this one open and get the discs out. Everything looks fine, the mechanisms seem to work, so I can't help but think it's a weird software glitch. But I have *no* idea how to fix a DVD player. The upside, at least, is that I've been meaning to pick up a new Home Theatre speaker set for the living room "someday" and all of them came with a DVD player, which I already have. Now I guess I don't, so that'll expand my shopping options a bit.

This morning, around 9:30, Suzanne and Katy got up to go see a kid's show at a local coffeehouse. I was sleeping in. About one minute after they left, I heard a loud pop from the direction of the bathroom. I walk out and see that for some reason, the pump in the back of the toilet in Katy's bathroom has popped up, and water is now spraying (thankfully into the tank, not onto the floor yet). I turned the water off at the wall and tried to see if I could fix it, but the pump is a lost cause. Randomly. Just decided to pop up and off, without anyone having used it in the last 10 minutes or touched it at all. Glad I was home, or that bathroom probably would have been flooded.

The upside here is that Suzanne is planning on redoing the bathrooms, with new toilets, sinks, etc. and even has an estimate. Of course, if we wait on the new toilet/bathroom, that means we're back to having a 1-bathroom house for a month (at least) and probably longer, so I doubt we'll be doing that.

So tomorrow I've got to shop around for a new DVD player and call a plumber, all the while keeping in mind that I burned about $500 more on the Florida trip than I meant to and hoping that nothing else breaks. Cross your fingers for me, and if anyone has any gremlin repellant, please send it my way.

Free Sample Comics!:
Thanks to Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading, I discovered that DC has made the
First Issues of Preacher, Fables, 100 Bullets, Y The Last Man and Sandman available to those of you who want to sample the books before diving into the trade.

This is terrific, and if you've never read Fables (my favorite monthly book), you must go and look HERE. It's free, all it costs is a few minutes of your time, and I'd be very surprised if you didn't find a new, much beloved comic out of the time invested.

Oh, and the Y PDF has the interesting text piece on the social effects of the plague that was sadly missing from the collected editions.

Greg McElhatton's New Site:
Greg McElhatton is one of my favorite reviewers, has been for a long time, and if you haven't already heard, he's moved to a brand new site. I missed announcing it the first day because I was out of town, but what better time than by linking to his review of Read About Comics ? Beyond! #1-2, which I agree whole-heartedly with?

Greg's move to a new site is not the only one you'll be hearing about on this blog, by the way. But more about that in the last week of August, when it's time for announcements.

Weekly Comics to Come - August 23, 2006:
Looks like a really good week. A few anticipated second issues (Jack of Fables, Elephantmen, Wonder Woman), several first issues of interest (Batman and Mad Monk, Eberron, Heroes for Hire) and a good crop of trades and ongoing series. I had ten potential "top five picks" and it was tough whittling them down.

TOP FIVE PICKS
Batman And The Mad Monk #1 (I've read this one already, and it's great, following up nicely off Batman and The Monster Men and featuring terrific art by Wagner, intriguing villains and a "Year One" vibe that I love. If you liked Long Halloween, you'll love Wagner's Batman stuff)
Eberron Eye Of The Wolf #1 (I love the Eberron setting, probably my favorite D&D campaign I've ever run, and I'm excited by the possibility of comics)
Elephantmen #2 (First issue was fantastic, with beautiful art. No reason to expect the second will be any less impressive)
Jack Of Fables #2 (Again, great first issue, and with that cliffhanger, I can't wait to see where it's headed next. Quite possibly as good as the book that it spun off from, which would make it one of the top five books in the industry right out of the gate)
Thing Idol Of Millions TP (Dan Slott's highly underrated old school fun series, collected in its entirety. Everybody buy this so maybe Marvel will greenlight a miniseries or direct-to-trade follow-up or something)

THE REST
Batman #656 (Grant Morrison's first issue left me more with a "what the hell was that?" feeling, but I'm still reading along to see if he'll hook me. He always has in the past)
Batman And The Monster Men TP (One of the best Batman stories of the past few years, with fantastic art by Matt Wagner)
Birds Of Prey #97 (The Birds face off with Black Alice again. I like the character, although not so much the Secret Society elements of the story)
Children Of Grave TP (Military ghost story moves to IDW for its collection, with a gorgeous Dan Brereton cover)
Daredevil #88 (Now that I have a better idea where Brubaker's going with Foggy, I'm able to enjoy the rest of the book a whole lot more, and it's one of my most-anticipated reads)
DMZ #10 (Concluding the excellent "Body of a Journalist" arc)
Eternals #3 (Neil Gaiman does traditional Kirby superheroes with his usual flair. Romita Jr. provides beautiful art... a great book. And no Civil War in sight)
Exiles #85 (An Exiles team made up entirely of Wolverines... potentially really funny gag story here)
Fear Agent #7 (I'd kind of like to see a story arc conclude here at some point, but it seems Remender is going more old school long-form in his plotting... still a blast of fun sci-fi action every time it comes out)
GI Joe Declassified #2 (Good to see Hama back on G.I. Joe for a tale of the early days)
Heroes For Hire #1 (Liked Daughters of the Dragon, curious to see what Gray/Palmiotti do here, although the Civil War tie-in and Tucci art weaken my interest)
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #9 (Sigh... only 6 more issues of Miyazawa art on this book. I'll enjoy it while I can, and hope for a great follow-up artist... I'd love to see Eric Kim from Oni on this book, if he could still do Love As A Foreign Language too)
Supermarket #4 (Wood and Donaldson's futuristic crime/action saga concludes)
Walking Dead #30 (I'm dying to see how this arc plays out)
Wonder Woman #2 (Read this one as well, and it's good, although I'm not sure it's so good as to outweigh the months-long wait for it)

T-Shirt Poll:
My friend Paul Benjamin is embarking on what looks like a cool-as-hell webcomic called Sci-Fu, and if you click on this link and vote for your favorite T-Shirt, you get a coupon for $5 off! More to the point, if you click on the link and vote for *my* favorite T-Shirt, I might get the design I like. If you're curious, the one I like is a copper T-Shirt with the silver (the very first) Intergalactic Bounty Hunter design. At any rate, go, vote and take a look... it all looks very cool.

Holy Shit! I Found It!:
I've long said that I began my comics reading with G.I. Joe and Uncanny X-Men, and that is true... those were the first comics I bought for myself, or had my parents buy at convenience stores, etc.

But the first book I remember reading, back in my hazy younger days, was some Superman/Hawkman team-up featuring Dr. Polaris. I had no idea what issue it was, or what comic, and I only remember that my parents bought it for me on a car trip. And then... I tuned into Will Pfeifer's guest entry on Comics Should Be Good and, if I'm reading this right, it was also the first comic that Pfeifer bought for himself. So here it is, the first comic I can ever remember reading:



I have almost no recollection of the interiors, and I don't doubt Pfeifer's estimation of it (lame), but... it was cool to see it again.

Civil War Delayed:
I usually don't do a lot of the "comics industry events" commentary because really, plenty of people are talking about these things already, and who cares what I have to add...

But I'm so pissed at this new Civil War delay announcement and the reaction it's getting that I feel I have to vent. You've been warned.

First of all, as a reader, I couldn't really give a shit. This type of event isn't really my thing, and despite liking some of the action sequences in issue two, mostly I've found this to be not for me. I was skimming through issue three, and I doubt very much I'll be doing much more than skimming issue four whenever the fuck it actually comes out. Most of the debate has focused on the reader angle, with the defenders (including the "professionals" at Marvel who should know better) arguing that it's a triumph for art, and hooray for Marvel for delaying all their books for a month and a half so that they don't have to get somebody else to do the art.

Which is bullshit, because Civil War is more commerce than art anyway, but again, that's neither here nor there. For the purposes of my post, the effect on the readers is of no consequence.

No, what's being ignored, not just by the readers (from whom I'd expect it... really, why should they care) but from the folks at Marvel (who should really be more aware of it) is the impact this is going to have on the retailers. You can be a jackass and say that retailers should have learned not to put their faith in Marvel and this is what they get for investing so heavily in the crossover, but that's the ignorance of someone who doesn't know how retail works speaking. Trust me, as a retailer who has little interest in most of the popular Marvel/DC books, the bulk of the sales in my shop still come from those books. I can get readers to try out new books, but mostly, the same 3-6 books sell every week to 90% of the customers, and I can pick them out by looking at the shipping list. 52, Civil War, whatever Marvel and DC are pushing or Wizard is behind, etc. I don't get to set the tastes of my customers, I get to react to it and try to push the other books I would really like to sell in hopes of getting some open-minded customers to try them out and spread the word.

So basically, Marvel has fucked over the retailers with this thing. Millar talks big in his statement that "Marvel believe in the project and they feel me and Steve have formed a good team. Something they don’t want to fuck with for the sake of squeezing a few more bucks into the next financial quarter and so, after doing their sums, decided they’ll take a hit."

How noble. How wonderful. How nice of them to decide that they'll take the hit. Except, of course, they won't.

Marvel is a gigantic company that can survive a cashflow deficiency for a month which will be made up when the book sells a month or two months late when it comes out because their books aren't returnable and the fanbase has become conditioned to late books.

No, the people taking the real hit are the retailers. The sudden disappearance of several of their biggest selling books for a month means less cash flow then planned in August, and probably less sales of other books in September when the money that would have been allocated to other new books in that month is instead allocated to late Civil War books. Because the buying pattern of the average comics consumer is not that they have X number of dollars to spend on comics each month, and if the comics they like don't come in, they spend those dollars on other comics. No, in fact the buying pattern is that they have X comics they are planning to buy, and if those comics don't come in, the cash more often than not goes right back in the wallet or out to music, movies, videogames or other forms of entertainment.

And comic shops are not gigantic corporations who can easily absorb a financial hit. I'm not saying this is going to drive shops under (although it could well kill new ones that were promising, or older ones that are struggling to regain their footing), but it is a worrying sign, and it is certainly going to hurt all but the biggest of chain stores.

What's really telling about all this is Marvel's reaction to it. They put out the press release not when they knew the delay was coming (c'mon, they know how much art and story they've got in-house) but at the absolute last minute before the book was supposed to ship. Then, when they do send out the press release to inform the retailers, is there any kind of apology? Any kind of "Look, we know this is fucked up, here's how we're going to help you?"

No. Instead, there's "We're going to add more crossovers to give you more blind guessing to do with who's going to buy what crossovers and how many you should order!" There's "We're doing it because we want the book to be great, and you should really thank us for this!" There's "Art takes time!"

Which is an interesting contrast with Tom Breevort's public shaming of Dan Slott a few months back for being a week or two late on his assignments. Apparently if it's someone whose books are not tightly tied in to every schedule and frankly don't really matter if they miss a ship date by a week or two, it's an unprofessional catastrophe, but if it's the flagship book whose month of lateness takes down a huge chunk of the publishing schedule it's something we should thank them for doing.

Basically, editorial fucked up. They're either completely incompetent or cynically calculating, both of which should leave a bad taste in the fans' mouths. Either they had no idea that the artist who could complete a book in six weeks was going to run late on a monthly schedule, in which case they're idiots, or they knew this book was going to be late and they figured they could get away with it.

Let's face it, it's probably the latter. And truthfully, they're right. Marvel isn't going to hurt, and if a few of the retailers go out of business, it really doesn't affect them in the short-term. But the honorable thing to do would have been to be upfront with your retail partners, offer a realistic shipping schedule off the bat and let everyone plan for this new type of schedule, rather than lying in order to hype the book so that the fans were already invested and the retailers were already invested and were left with no recourse in planning their own cash-flow.

I don't have a good summation for you here. Essentially, as always, Marvel wins and gets to do whatever it wants, professionalism be damned, and the fans at large thank them for it. But I felt I at least needed to vent, and I do feel somewhat better as a result.

Weekly Comics to Come - August 16, 2006:
Since the First Look books are now more or less a thing of the past (sadly), I'm going to change up this weekly list from Already Read and Haven't Read Yet to "Top Five Picks" and "The Rest." Keep in mind that in almost all cases, this is based on speculation, not having read the actual books, and so my actual opinions could vary when all is said and done.

This was a tough week in which to start the new format, incidentally... because there are at least four more books that could have gone in the top five. If that continues, I might switch to a "Top Ten Picks." Or maybe "Top Eight" just to be different.

TOP FIVE PICKS:
Marvel Adventures Avengers #4 (The Masters of Evil vs. The Avengers, in Marvel Adventures style... can't wait)
Phonogram #1 (Got a look at this in San Diego, and it looks great... like High Fidelity meets Hellblazer, maybe?)
Psycho TP (Dan Brereton work is always to be treasured... work that I've never read before is an even rarer treat)
Runaways #19 (After the developments in last issue, I can't wait to see what happens next)
Wasteland #2 (Great opener to what I think could be an indy phenom ala Walking Dead)

THE REST:
Adventures In Oz TP (Now that I've seen the hardcover, I really wish I'd ordered that... but the softcover looks great as well)
Amazing Joy Buzzards Vol 2 #5 (Finally, more AJB! This is one of my favorite books)
Bone Vol 4 Dragonslayer Color Edition SC (Late in getting this one, for some reason... but I've been really enjoying these newly colored volumes)
Boys #1 (I'm skeptical about a mature readers superhero book, which seems like a waste of these guys' talent... but c'mon, it's Ennis and Robertson, I have to give it a look)
Casanova #3 (Bizarre, action-packed, funny and beautiful to look at... another favorite)
Conan #31 (Mike Mignola's story arc concludes, and it's been a fun read so far)
Dummys Guide To Danger #1 (Hardboiled detective fiction in which the protagonist has a ventriloquist's dummy... weird, but the early reviews are good)
Family Guy Vol 2 (First one was surprisingly funny and kept nicely with the tone of the show)
Fell #6 (Another Ellis book that has fallen into the "you'll get it when you get it" schedule, but usually good when it shows up... maybe not worth the extra wait, but usually good)
Grounded TP (Liked Paul Azaceta's artwork on this book quite a bit... the story of superhero schools is unfortunately making the rounds in comics and films these days, and so it lost me midway through)
Manhunter #25 (This was to be the last issue, but instead it's the last issue before a new story arc... nice. Hope the sales boost to keep it around)
Monkey Vs Lemur Crisis With Infinite Critters #1 (One of my friends has a story in this one, and even better, it's Monkey Vs. Lemur... the first one, now super hard to find, was very funny and had great art)
Naoki Urasawas Monster Vol 4 (The suspense manga really got going in the last volume, I'm dying to see what happens next)
Savage Brothers #1 (Post-apocalyptic comedy and violence from Boom!)
Shadowpact #4 (Still not entirely sure I'm following this book or not, but it's got a quirky charm to it)
True Story Swear To God #17 (I believe this is the last pre-Image issue)

On Mel Gibson:
From the BBC: Swayze defends 'good guy' Gibson

Jesus. I know Hollywood likes to take care of its own and all, but c'mon. Even forgiving Gibson's increasingly frequent visits to crazytown entirely, isn't everyone just conveniently ignoring that he was driving drunk?

All Mel's celebrity and fan defenders are going out of their way to say "He was drunk, so his anti-semitism and misogyny are forgivable." And even if you're willing to accept that (and I'm not), shouldn't the next question be, "Yeah, but if he's drunk enough to not be aware of what he's saying, doesn't it make it that much more reprehensible that he was driving a fucking car?"

Or is it OK as long as he doesn't have bad luck and kill somebody?

Fuck Mel Gibson. Whether he's an anti-semite or not, it's pretty clear the guy's a grade-A jackass.

A Good Time To Read Webcomics:
Webcomics have always been bigger than I've really been aware, but it seems of late that more and more are crossing my radar, and more and more of them are just... well, just fucking great, actually.

Everybody probably already knows about PVP, Diesel Sweeties, Penny Arcade and Perry Bible Fellowship... and when Activate went live, I really started digging that one, especially the work of Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld and Chip Zdarsky.

This week, thanks to Johanna Draper Carlson, I discovered Theater Hoppers. And today marks the launch of The Chemistry Set, which may be the best webcomics collective yet.

The list of talent includes a number of indy creators whose work I love. Check out this lineup:
*1 Way Ticket by Chris Arrant (Project: Rooftop) and Daniel Warner (SLG's Cocopiazo)
*Stuck by Vito Delsante and Tom Williams (No Dead Time, Looking At The Front Door)
*Vulture Gulch by Jim Dougan (Crazy Papers) and Eric Kim (Love As A Foreign Language)
*Scheherazade, with writing by relative newcomer Elizabeth Genco and terrific art from Australian artist Adam Boorman
*Todt Hill by Xeric-winner Neil Kleid and artist Kevin Colden (whose work reminds me of Street Angel's Jim Rugg)

It's a terrific line-up, and the first installments of all the strips look very promising. *And* they've got RSS feeds, which makes it a whole lot easier to keep up with. Great site, definitely go check it (and the other webcomics I listed) out.

New Webcomic:
While in San Diego, I happened upon the booth of Takeshi Miyazawa, one of my favorite artists who works on Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane currently. I also learned that Miyazawa, along with Arthur Dela Cruz (of Oni's Kissing Chaos) are working on webcomics at BFX Project.

Looks really good, go and check it out. I just wish it had an RSS feed, as I'm notoriously forgetful in checking out webcomics.

Weekly Comics to Come - August 9, 2006:
ALREADY READ:
Fables #52 (The Adversary reacts to Bigby's attack in #50... great as always... plus the start of four-page backup tales introducing new Fables!)
Marvel Zombies HC (One of the guilty pleasure books of the year... not quite on my buying list, but it's close)

HAVEN'T READ:
Annihilation #1 (Very mixed feelings on the Annihilation lead-ins, but there were definitely some high points... curious to see how the actual mini is)
Beyond #2 (Really dug the first issue of this "Secret Wars II with B- and C-listers" book)
Conan & The Songs Of The Dead #2 (Also had a great first issue, standard Lansdale/Truman excellence)
Escapists #2 (This is a week for follow-ups to great second issues... Escapists #1 is one of the best issues I've read all year)
Goosebumps Graphix Vol 1 Creepy Creatures TP (Saw a preview of this in San Diego... beautiful artwork by Scott Morse, Greg Ruth, etc.)
Legend Of Grimjack Vol 5 TP (Wow, I had thought we were in a permanent holding pattern on new Grimjack trades... guess we've got one more before that happens)
Recess Pieces HC (I'm a latecomer to Bob Fingerman's work, but I've found his weird sense of humor and stylized artwork to my taste. Grade school zombie horror/humor seems right up his alley)
Scarlet Traces The Great Game #2 (Beautiful artwork by D'Israeli, interesting sci-fi/political commentary tale)
Secret Six #3 (I've been a little lukewarm on Simone's follow-up to Villains United, but I still really like these characters, so I'll stick it out a while longer)
She-Hulk #10 (If you're willing to forgive the Starfox missteps, this is still a highly entertaining book)

I Have a Nephew:
My sister gave birth to her first child, Andrew Nicholas Pedersen (named after my grandfather Andrew, who passed earlier this year), at about 8 PM Florida time tonight.

Suzanne and I are heading down to Florida to see him and the proud parents and grandparents next week.

Blog Template Update for July
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, updating my favorite comics and TV for the previous month. The listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published.

July was a resurgence for my comics interest. The first week of July was easily the best week of comics in all of 2006, with the debut of Beyond, Occult Crimes Taskforce, Ed Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men, Lansdale/Truman Conan, the second volume of Death Jr. and two quarter books (a gorgeous pin-up celebration from Dark Horse and an intriguing lead-in to the next Hack/Slash), not to mention new volumes of BPRD, Fables, Essential Marvel Universe and Flight. The rest of the month was pretty solid as well, and I had a hard time, for the first time in several months, cutting down my favorites to 20 and 10. Seriously, both were pretty much filled by the second week of July.

This was of course good timing, as it sent me off to Comicon with love in my heart for the medium and less venom in my heart for the industry, just in time. It was not as good of a month for TV, as I filled most of my viewing time with poker games on various channels, and I had to cheat and include one-off Amazing Screw-On Head and Psych (which I've only seen one episode of thus far) to make it to 10. I would almost include Heroes, which I saw at Comicon, but I felt like that was really cheating, since it won't even air on iTunes until September 1st. But definitely check out this show, folks... the haters are already out in force at TV Squad and even Entertainment Weekly, forecasting doom for the show before they've even seen it, and I thought it was a strong pilot with potential to be a great series. Don't let somebody else make your mind up for you... and that includes me, if you hate it, that's cool, but give it a look before you decide.

Plenty of notable first issues this month: Beyond, Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways, Conan & The Songs of the Dead, Death Jr. Vol 2, Elephantmen, Escapists, Jack of Fables, Occult Crimes Taskforce and Wasteland.

I'm Going to Disneyworld!:
It's been an unusual year. I've quit reviewing comics, something I've been doing for about 10 years, I've sold my house and bought a new one, my last grandparent died and I attended his funeral, the business I've worked at for about six years is about to have its 20th anniversary, my sister is about to have her first baby, my little girl is about to enter preschool... and that's just all I can think of right now.

So it's been a busy year, and mostly, in a good way. Lots of things going on, one of those years where you look around and go "Holy shit! I'm a grown-up!" So what do you do when you're a grown-up?

You go to the San Diego Comicon and Disney World. Arrested development ain't just the name of my favorite sitcom, folks. Hell, if we could throw in a guys' trip to Vegas (and we might, before the year is out) in there, we'd have the trifecta.

But the truth is, Disney World isn't a calculated attempt to hold onto my youth or anything like that. Oh, I'm sure I'll enjoy it like a sugar-fueled 8-year-old - we're staying at one of the Disney motels and I can't wait to check out the newly updated Pirates ride, now that the buzz is "doesn't suck" - but I'm not the number one reason we're going.

Katy is. See, she loves Disney. Loves it. Watches all the movies (Pixar too), has several "princess dresses" and knows all the characters from Lion King all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And since we were going to Miami to see my sister's baby (which should be born about 48 hours after this is posted, and I'll finally know if I have a niece or nephew), and the connecting flights from Austin stopped in Orlando, well... I had to look. Had to check prices and times and convenience.

Turns out, it's not a lot more expensive to stop in Orlando, flight-wise. And once I knew that, it was a done deal. We were going to stay at a Howard Johnson or something, drive in to Disney and I decided that was kinda stupid. I mean, the hotel would be cheaper, but the cost of travel and the hassle therein would make up for it. So we looked at the Disney hotels, and chose one of the cheaper ones (the movie focused one), which still has all the swanky extras. Things like taking your luggage from the plane and into your hotel room without you having to go to the baggage carousel. Taking *you* from the plane to your hotel room, and shuttling you to whatever part of Disney you want. Some meals included for a fee that is probably cheaper than just paying for the meals in the park (although we'll be doing that too.) So we're doing the whole Disney thing. Staying at a Disney hotel, going to Magic Kingdom one day and one of the other parks (probably Animal Kingdom) on another before heading to Miami to see the baby.

It's also Katy's first flight, and she's excited about that too. She's going to sit at the window and watch the clouds, or at least so she says. My biggest fear is that she'll be terrified, and we'll have to deal with that, but that doesn't seem terribly in character for my little girl. I haven't really seen her scared of much. She claims to be scared of monsters at night sometimes, but I think that's mostly a ploy to get out of sleeping.

I can't wait. Can't wait for Katy to get on the plane, to stay at the pool, to play on the beach, to meet her new cousin, to see all her favorite characters at the park and ride the rides...

OK, I guess in some ways Disney is for me too. But it's for me because I'm going to have so much fun watching Katy enjoy it.

By the way, I learned in San Diego that a lot of comics people are reading this blog for its comics content. I hereby apologize for posts like this one, and hope you don't find them too boring. :)

Weekly Comics to Come - August 2, 2006

Well, after a strong July, it had to happen eventually, and it happens in the first week of August... a really slow week for comics. There's good here, but it's a pretty sparse week in comparison to the tons of comics goodness just about every week in July. If I remember from Previews, all of August is like this.

ALREADY READ:
Dave Johnson Full Color Sketchbook 2006 (I saw this in San Diego, and it makes his excellent black and white sketchbook from last year pale by comparison)
Ex Machina #22 (Another interesting, off-beat plot from comics' only political superhero story)
Y: The Last Man #48 (The origin of Colonel Alter)

HAVEN'T READ:
Agents Of Atlas #1 (Very much looking forward to these tales of '50s Marvel heroes, by the writer of Marvel Adventures: Avengers, artist Leonard Kirk and with terrific covers by Tomm Coker)
BPRD Universal Machine #5 (Continues to be a fantastic read, and Guy Davis is an art god)
Concrete Vol 6 Stranger Armor Tp (The final volume of Concrete, for now... and I'm almost caught up, meaning now I need some new stuff)
Detective Comics #822 (Second issue of Paul Dini's run)
Invincible #34 (Invincible stranded? OK, that's an interesting plot direction)
Noble Causes #22 (More on the war between the Blackthornes and the Nobles)
Uncanny X-Men #477 (Has been good so far, and after last week's Daredevil and that Criminal preview, Ed Brubaker is once again at the tops of my reading list)
Usagi Yojimbo #95 (Always good, not much more to say about it)

This is a bit late, since I was in San Diego until Monday, but here's the rundown of what I got this week. It's a pretty good week to follow up a really good Con, and July has easily been the best month for comics of 2006. It's gonna be really tough picking out a Top 20 issues and Top 10 graphic novels this month, and I know some really good comics are going to wind up not making the cut thanks to the competition.

ALREADY READ:
Astro City Samaritan Special (Great single issue story about Samaritan's interaction with his archenemy... hadn't realized how much I missed this book until I read this issue)
Batman #655 (I'm not entirely sure what I just read... Kubert's art is disappointing, and Morrison's first issue is a little weak... but the first issue of All-Star Superman was a little weak too, and that turned into one of my favorite books)
Birds Of Prey #96 (Another solid issue of Birds of Prey)
Black Plague One Shot (Really more of a setup for a miniseries than a self-contained story, but interesting... and nice art)
Captain America #20 (Terrific art, good action, really enjoying the guest-starring roles of Union Jack and Spitfire)
Captain America Red Menace Vol 1 Tp (Unless they do a hardcover collecting Brubaker's Cap, I definitely see trade purchases in my future)
Casanova #2 (Bizarre, hilarious and gorgeous to look at)
Civil War Young Avengers & Runaways #1 (Surprisingly good, with nice art by Caselli and a good superhero story by Zeb Wells. Cringed my way through the Civil War parts, but the actual writing on the characters is spot-on)
Daredevil #87 (Fantastic. This book now lands solidly amongst my favorite Marvel comics of the moment, thanks to a terrific issue)
Exiles #84 (Decent transition into the next Exiles story, Bedard continues to deliver solid old school superheroics)
Fear Agent #6 (Really wishing the book came out more quickly, but each issue has great art and terrific science-fiction action)
Godland #12 (The first story arc concludes with giant cosmic action sequences, and it's a blast)
Jack Of Fables #1 (Really good opener to the Fables spinoff, with nice art and the intriguing return of a familiar face)
Love As A Foreign Language Omnibus Vol 1 Tp (I've read and enjoyed all of J. Torres/Eric Kim's cross-cultural romance tale, and this all-in-one digest is a nice package)
Polly & Pirates Vol 1 Tp (Adventure, humor and spectacular art courtesy of Ted Naifeh... actually better than Courtney Crumrin, which wouldn't have seemed possible)
Previews #26.8 (Down the Line should hit sometime next week)
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #8 (Finally back to Takeshi Miyazawa art, and the Gwen Stacy storyline)
Toupydoops #3 (Continues the fine tradition of the first two issues, funny and imaginative)

HAVEN'T READ:
Castle Waiting Vol II #1 (A big, thick issue, but at this point, Castle Waiting is on "trades only" probation from me thanks to its constant disappearance from the shelves in mid-story)
Lucifer Vol 10 Morningstar Tp (More or less buying it to finish out a story I've invested a lot of time in, hope the ending brings me back around)

New on Fourth Rail:
I've got two new reviews up for Grease Monkey and De:Tales.

Technical Difficulties:
Well, as of sometime between 12:30 last night and 4:00 this afternoon, The Fourth Rail crashed. I called our tech support, and they said that the site is inexplicably pointing somewhere else. I don't know if this is a hack, or an administrative mistake, or what, but at any rate, I'm currently not receiving any of my email. I'm not sure if it's bouncing (I don't think so), but if you're trying to reach me, randy@thefourthrail.com won't work right now.

Which has led me to finally add a gmail account, something I should have done long ago. I'll still be using randy@thefourthrail.com (providing it comes back online, which it should... I'm supposed to call back tomorrow because it can't be fixed until customer service is in), but my new primary email will be my gmail one. It's in the email link on the sidebar of this site, and I'll be updating it elsewhere as well.

Update: The Fourth Rail, and email servers, are back up after a call to customer service earlier today. I'm reading mail sent to my Fourth Rail and Gmail accounts.

Poker Training and Pirates:
I picked up Phil Gordon's Little Green Poker Book on Sunday, just before going to see Pirates: Dead Man's Chest. I thought Pirates was a perfectly good continuation of the first movie, and I'm kind of boggled by the people who liked the first one and thought this was some kind of cinematic abortion. They have the same strengths and weaknesses, as far as I can see. Depp's fun, Keira's hot, the action sequences are imaginative, the feel is very pulp-y, and the whole thing feels like Bruckheimer Hollywood-ized style that runs about a half hour to 45 minutes too long. And I didn't see the end reveal coming, which was kind of neat.

Phil Gordon's book, on the other hand, is terrific, as good as everyone has said. In reading his tips, my game has improved quite a bit in playing the WSOP on PSP. In real life, well... I'll get to that in a minute. I've also started watching more poker on TV, from the Professional Poker Tour to World Poker Tour to the World Series of Poker. With Hellmuth Jr. taking over for Gordon, Celebrity Poker has lost some of its spark, and there's something much more fun about watching players who know how to play when they're playing the game.

This week was the first of what is meant to be a regular monthly game of Texas Hold'Em between friends. Actually, I suppose we had one last month, but it was last minute and the turn out was only three people total, which makes for a very specific and weird kind of poker. This time out, there were six people total. $5 buy-in, since it's basically just a friendly game.

As it turned out, all my poker training failed me, and I went out first, busting out on a pair of Aces against trip Sevens. I had made a big pot earlier and earned the chip lead, but I gave those chips and more back to the guy I won them from on that all-in hand.

It's still good practice, though, as it reminded me of an important lesson that I always seem to forget when I go up against people in a live game as opposed to an online one; don't start getting aggressive right away. Phil Gordon's aggressive play style, which mostly works for me, doesn't work for me right off the bat. You have to play tight early on, get a sense of the table and build up your chip stack slowly with really good hands, and then later you can loosen up and start bluffing. There's really no excuse for going all-in with a pair of Aces even if it's top pair when my opponent is raising and calling me regularly.

Katy Goes to the Movies:
On Monday, I took Katy to see her first movie in the movie theatre. Technically, Suzanne took her to about fifteen minutes of an Annie singalong, but since that was so short-lived, I'm not counting it. But Suzanne and I saw Cars last week, and pretty much everyone in the audience had a kid with them. So my worry that Katy talking and jumping around would be disruptive went out the window. And she loves Pixar, and I'd already seen the movie, so I figured if we had to leave at the 15 minute mark, it'd be OK.

As it turned out, she did great. We brought a bag of raisins for her to snack on, but when we sat down in the theatre a little girl and her mom sat down a few seats away with popcorn and a drink. Katy said "I want a snack. I want some popcorn." This was during the trailers, mind you. I asked if we could wait until later in the movie, and she (to my surprise) said OK. We watched the trailers (my third time seeing that awful Ant Bully trailer) and she did good through that, although she lost interest when the live action Mark Wahlberg trailer for Invincible came on.

Once the Pixar short started, she was pretty well glued. She talked to me through the movie a few times, and she started climbing around a little, but mostly she sat on my lap (she wasn't quite heavy enough to hold the seats down, so they snapped up and scared her) and watched and enjoyed. About midway through, she again said, "I want a snack" so we left and got some popcorn. We missed the scenes with 'Mater, Lightning and the tractors, which was a shame as I think Katy would have liked them, but we got her popcorn and she munched happily on that while we watched the rest of the movie, all the way to the end credits. I asked several times throughout if she wanted to go or stay and watch, and she always said stay and watch. Truthfully, I was kind of amazed. But she did really good, although I don't think she's quite at the level where going to the movies is anything special, because she's so used to watching everything on DVD. In fact, the last thing she said, while the credits were rolling, was "I wanna watch that one again."

Thankfully, she hasn't asked her mother to put the Cars movie in the DVD player, so Suzanne hasn't had to explain that one to her.

Weekly Comics to Come - July 19, 2006:

The week for San Diego, which means a lot of books get released. I was surprised to see a relatively small indy release week, and Marvel has a surprisingly good week.

ALREADY READ:
Annihilation Nova #4 (Pretty interesting finale, with some great moments... but for fuck's sake, will you people please stop killing characters for shock value?)
Daughters Of The Dragon #6 (Good finale. I'm mildly curious to check out Heroes for Hire at this point)
Elephantmen #1 (Great intro to the world of Hip Flask if you've never read it, and artist Moritat is a find. Great sci-fi, beautiful art)
Marvel Adventures Avengers #3 (Still my favorite Avengers title, and one of my favorite Marvel titles. Old school in all the right ways, fun, imaginative... the heir to Roger Stern's Avengers in my mind)
Marvel Westerns Western Legends (These have been pretty fun... I'm on the fence about an actual collection, but they're good reads)
She-Hulk 2 #9 (Another good read, even if I have to sort of cringe past the Civil War stuff)
Usagi Yojimbo Vol 20 Glimpses Of Death TP (New Usagi trade.. woohoo!)
Walking Dead Vol 1 Hc (Seems like I've been waiting forever for this, but I figured it'd hit the week before San Diego)

HAVEN'T READ:
24 Seven Gn (Image anthology with a ton of great creators... I bet they'll do terrific business with this at the Con)
Civil War #3 (OK, I don't think it fits the Marvel Universe and many of the characters are out of character... but if you read this as an alternate timeline book ala Days of Futures Past, it's a pretty good action/dark future superhero story)
Conan #30 (Mignola's first issue was a good one, looking forward to more of his story)
Done To Death #1 (Andrew Foley wrote a great graphic novel called Parting Ways, this is his follow-up, a darkly comic take on vampire novelists and vampires)
Eternals #2 (Very strong first issue, ten times better than Marvel 1602, curious to see what happens next)
Hunger Vol 1 Tp (Another speakeasy refugee, this one was an unusual zombie story with really nice art)
Justice League Of America #0 (I hated Identity Crisis, so I'm more than a little wary of this one. I suspect I'll not be a fan. But I've got to admit, as with Infinite Crisis and 52, I have some morbid curiosity)
Manhunter #24 (Glad to see this one get a reprieve, I'd be even happier to see it get more trades, as it reads much better that way)
Runaways #18 (Should be some big doings in this issue, what with the shocker ending of the last)
Rush City #1 (OK, yeah, product placement... you got me. I keep thinking of BMW's great Hire films, Dixon's general track record with action storytelling and those Jock covers... this could actually be good)
Shadowpact #3 (Second issue was a big letdown after a solid first... this will probably make or break my interest)
Star Wars Rebellion #4 (This one, on the other hand, is looking up... probably my favorite of the new Star Wars books)
Strange Eggs Presents Boxing Bucket (First issue of this anthology was weird. But good. Second should be much the same)
Uncanny X-Men #476 (Brubaker keeps the momentum going with a pretty solid second issue)
Zombies #2 (Interesting intro, it's not as good as Walking Dead at this point, but that's sort of the gold standard anyway)

New on Fourth Rail:
Here's my annual pre-Con report and panel rundown for San Diego.

Weekly Comics to Come - July 12, 2006:

Wow, massive Vertigo week this time out, as almost all of my favorite Vertigo titles ship. Last week was probably the best week of comics in the whole year, so this week can only look disappointing by comparison... but it's actually a decent, if smaller, week as well.

ALREADY READ:
American Virgin #5 (Second story arc, proving that the first was no fluke. One of the best new Vertigo titles on the stands, which means it's one of the best new titles on the stands period)
Avengers Assemble Vol 3 HC (I've actually got all these stories now that I bought the 40 Years of Avengers DVD, but I'd still rather have them in hardcover as well)
Escapists #1 (Fantastic first issue, now that it's finally out it means the wait for the second issue, which I haven't already read, is much less.)
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Vol 1 Tp (Continues to be fun, light teen romance from Sean McKeever and Takeshi Miyazawa)

HAVEN'T READ:
Annihilation Silver Surfer #4 (Glad to see these minis wrapping up...)
Annihilation Super Skrull #4 (...so we can get on with the Annihilation main event)
DMZ #9 (Another great new Vertigo book, and another part of the thus far excellent "Body of a Journalist" arc)
Fables #51 (My favorite book, hands down)
Hawaiian Dick The Last Resort #4 (Holy crap! It's actually coming out! Con season must be jumping into full swing next week or something...)
Scarlet Traces The Great Game #1 (Wow, this one's finally out too)
Sire #1 (The first Virgin Comic, Devi, was not bad... I'll check out their others)
Snakewoman #1 (Especially this one, which has the most intriguing premise and is written by Zeb Wells)
Star Wars Legacy #2 (First issue was surprisingly weak, but I have faith in this creative team)
Superman #654 (Wasn't wowed by the 8-part OYL story, but I'll give Busiek & company another chance with their new story)
Transformers Infiltration #6 (IDW's first Transformers mini wraps, and it's been a good read thus far)
Walking Dead #29 (Plenty of twists and turns going on in this book)
Wasteland #1 (Hooray! Oni's post-apocalyptic book starts, and after reading the preview, I'm looking forward to reading the rest)
X-Men #188 (Brubaker's Uncanny was really good, so I'm hoping Carey and Bachalo can bring the same level to their game)

Fuck The Emmys:
I now declare the Emmys to be invalid in my own personal universe. Like Spider-Man unmasking, The Atom's wife being a psychotic murderer and Batman being a dick, these things do not exist for me. Because I look at the Emmy nominations and here's what I see:

In Best Drama, we've got two medical dramas, a mob show on its last legs, an action show with fast-paced but pretty insipid writing and a cancelled political show that lost its heart three seasons in. Now, I'm a fan of 24, but no way do I think it's award-winning. Hell, I liked this season of The Sopranos, but it's way down on the list too.

You know what's missing? Lost, for one. Best writing, directing, acting, production, etc. on television. It's a genre show that's so good you forget it's a genre show, and it does business like no genre show in the history of television. Battlestar Galactica, for another, although if pushed, I'll admit that I think that it, like 24, is a good but maybe not "Best Drama" level good show. Oh, and where the *fuck* is the Shield? That is hands down, bar none the best show on TV, and I don't care if you tell me it's a little too over-the-top, it's pure fucking realism compared to 24, or the sexcapades of Grey's Anatomy, or the grumpy doctor mysteries of House. Hell, I'd even guess The Shield is a more accurate reflection of L.A. cop life than West Wing is of any White House in history. So it ain't that.

My Best Drama picks? Lost, The Shield, Veronica Mars, Rome (over The Sopranos) and either 24 or Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and if Deadwood were eligible this year, it'd be up there.

Best Comedy? Points for Arrested Development, but really, isn't that kind of a pointless slot at this point? The show is over, the cast and creators have all moved on, why not nod towards a show that still needs the Emmy buzz? How about Entourage, which had a fantastic season two? Of course, you don't even need to take AD out of the running for that, you could dump Two and a Half Men... how the hell did that get in there anyway? I'd agree with most of this slot, actually, as Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office are all damn funny, even if I'm not a huge fan of that last one myself. But no Entourage? Bullshit. And that's not even getting into Weeds being totally overlooked as well.

Lead actor in a drama is missing big names. Edward James Olmos deserves a nod. I'd argue for most of the male leads on Lost, although I guess that technically most of them would fall into Supporting Actor categories. Still, Josh Holloway and Terry O'Quinn most certainly belong on this list at least. How about Michael Chiklis, whose take on Vic Mackie has just gotten more interesting as things went on? This is a tough category, because everybody here earned their way in, but I can't help but feel that O'Quinn and Chiklis, at the very least, were better than all five nominees.

Lead actress is even worse, because too many of the actresses here, while great, weren't in the best years of their career by any means. Geena Davis and Allison Janney both suffered from weak writing and weak character arcs that underplayed their strengths, and much as I like Mariska Hargitay, was there really something harrowing and interesting on SVU this year that they haven't done before? Mary McDonnell absolutely deserves to be here for her conflicted yet strong-willed President Roslin on Battlestar Galactica. Kristen Bell certainly deserved a nod for sassy, smart yet vulnerable Veronica Mars.

How do you nominate Scrubs for best comedy and not give a nod to Zach Braff or Donald Faison for lead actor in a comedy? That's really the only *huge* omission in this category, but it is notable.

Lead actress will get big points from EW for giving Lisa Kudrow a nod for The Comeback, but I want to know where the hell Mary Louise Parker's nomination was for Weeds.

Supporting Actor in a comedy is close, but I'd say that either Jon Cryer or Sean Hayes should have fallen out for Kevin Dillon's hilarious portrayal of Johnny Drama on Entourage. Sure, Jeremy Piven's in there, and he deserves it, but Dillon is at least half the reason I love the show. Oh, and Scrubs has any number of great supporting actors as well, notably John McGinley and Neil Flynn. Credit the Emmy nominations for getting Will Arnett in there, but that also highlights the travesty that is missing David Cross for his work on Arrested Development.

I've got no real comment on supporting actress in a comedy. I'd argue for Debi Mazar on Entourage, but she's such a small character that it's hard to argue too strenuously, even if she's great with what she's given in the role.

Supporting actor and actress in a drama should be more or less filled with Lost castmembers. Yunjin Kim. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Jorge Garcia. Naveen Andrews. Harold Perrineau. Daniel Dae Kim. All of these folks deserve nominations.

Oh, and the Guest Actor nods? No Forest Whitaker, whose driven IAD agent in The Shield was as good as Emmy-nominated Glenn Close's police captain in the previous season? Ridiculous.

I'm also going to guess that Daily Show and Colbert Report could split the vote in Best Variety and lose, which would be a shame, as one of those two shows should really get the win.

Overall, after all the hype about the new selection process, the Emmy nominations are the same old disappointing selection we always get.

Randy's Life Update:
It's been a while since I've posted anything not comics related on this blog. And even then, it was pretty much a TV rundown. So this is my "State of Randy's life" post for those of you who care. If there are any of you.

We finally sold the old house, closed on the last day of June. I say finally, but really it was pretty quick... we put it on the market in May, it sold by the end of June. That's not bad, but as anyone who has sold a house will tell you, the waiting and working out of details is just murder on your nerves. I'm glad to have it behind me. And knowing the house was sold for sure allowed me to make plane/hotel reservations for San Diego relatively guilt-free. So now we are officially owners of only one house again, and that new house has shaped up nicely. New floors or carpet in pretty much every room, and while there are still a couple cluttered rooms, all in all it looks like a home again. Guess it's about time to think about a housewarming party!

I got out to see both X3 and Superman Returns in the past couple weeks. I thought X3 had some pretty significant problems in script, tone and acting (*cough* Halle Berry *cough*), but... I expected it to be godawful, and it wasn't. It was a poor closer for the initial two films, but the Beast was well done, and Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart were great as always. I doubt I'll buy the DVD, but it wasn't the colossal fuck-up I was expecting.

Superman Returns, on the other hand, I really enjoyed. James Marsden proves here that if anyone knew how to write him, he had the chops to play a good Cyclops, with essentially the same strong supporting role here. Kevin Spacey is fantastic as Lex Luthor, Brandon Routh is good as Superman, and Kate Bosworth is solid as Lois Lane (yes, I'll admit she looks about 10 years too young, and they could have cast better, but she held her own). Parker Posey was good in a thankless role, but that role added nothing to the film and should have been cut. And I can certainly see the complaints that others have with the movie, and even agree with them, but they didn't get to me in watching the movie because I was totally in it from the moment those retro credits and the Williams score came up. After watching it, I told my friends it was probably the best movie I'd seen all year. Of course, that's more a commentary on how many films I've seen in the theatre this year than anything else, but still... a good flick. Looking forward to the sequel, which, following the pattern of X-Men and X2, will probably be twice as good.

Life should be pretty busy for the next couple months. In just over two weeks I leave for the San Diego Comicon. Sometime in early August, my sister's baby will be born, and we'll be heading down to Miami (Katy's first airplane ride) for that. In the last week of August, we'll have the 20th anniversary celebration for Dragon's Lair. And I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there we're supposed to get out to Colorado to spend a few days with Suzanne's family at a vacation spot. But it's a good kind of busy, and a lot of my stress has been relieved now that the house stuff is taken care of.

New on Fourth Rail:
It occurs to me that I should put up links here when I add new content to the Fourth Rail, rare as that might be these days. So, for June:

Reviews of Toupydoops #1-2, Uncanny X-Men Omnibus and Wonder Woman #1

And for July:

Down the Line for September

Blog Template Update for June
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, updating my favorite comics and TV for the previous month. The listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published.

June started out as a bit of a rough month for me, comics- and TV-wise. There were a couple weeks there where I started to wonder if I was losing my enthusiasm for the comics medium entirely, and since most TV had gone to reruns, there were only a few shows I was watching. Of course, I still didn't have time to catch up on everything, so it's not like there was a dearth of entertainment in life... it's just that a lot of it was on DVD or Tivo. I did have to cheat a little bit to get to ten TV shows this month by including stuff I'm catching on DVD, like The 4400 and Newsradio.

There was also a nice boost for comics in the third week of June, when we had a really great week. Lots of good graphic novels and single issues, making up for a disappointing month in general. Looking at the patterns, there are nine publishers represented in my ten graphic novels, meaning there was a pretty good spread of quality amongst a variety of publishers. The indies are definitely suffering a bit on the single issue front, however, as only three books (one Oni, one IDW and one Maerkle) weren't from the "big four." Marvel did comparatively well with me this month, with 6 books, three of them pretty new. The DC Universe is almost completely dead to me, but Wonder Woman #1 was impressive, and All Star Superman continues to be one of my favorite books on the stands, period. Vertigo I continue to love, although Y The Last Man isn't on the list this month because it is coming out the first week of July. Still, Fables, American Virgin and DMZ are always on the top of my reading pile. Same goes for Dark Horse's entries Usagi Yojimbo and BPRD, and Star Wars Legacy had a strong showing with its quarter priced sourcebook style zero issue, although the first issue was a bit meh and didn't make the cut.

Notable first issues in June were Casanova, Eternals, Star Wars Legacy #0 and Wonder Woman. Entertaining one-shots were Love and Capes and Marvel Westerns Two Gun Kid.

I'm Going:
For a few months now, I've been going back and forth on San Diego. When I realized that we were going to sell the house and that meant actually having the money to attend San Diego without dipping into savings as usual, it was way past time to find a hotel room. When I asked around, most of my friends that I hang out with weren't going, so I didn't have anyone who I could hang around with for most of the weekend. This, plus my general disinterest in a lot of the mainstream comics right now, led me to decide that, much as I feared I might regret it, I thought I'd skip San Diego for the first time in eight years.

Little things have been chipping away at me ever since. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announcing on the Lost podcast that they were going to have a big Lost panel in San Diego. Finding out they're going to show the Heroes pilot in San Diego. Hearing about cool sketchbooks from guys like Steve Rude, or a new book release (and book release party) from Steve Lafler. And so I kept checking the hotel site for the Con, and kept coming up empty. Nobody had Wednesday - Saturday. I called a couple hotels about waiting lists, and the answers I got weren't optimistic. I had no idea what the trolley/bus routes were like, so I couldn't look too far afield for alternate hotels.

I had pretty much decided, as of a couple days ago, that I wasn't going. I'll save the money, I figured, for the massive flow of books coming out in July, feel less guilty spending that money for a while. And then. My pro registration packet came in the mail, reminding me that I was pretty much registered and good to go. Final straw, I checked one more time, and found that the Holiday Inn on the Bay (my hotel of choice) had Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday free. No Friday. So... I decided to gamble. I booked those nights, and booked my flight, and started making dinner and other friendly meet-up arrangements. I have nowhere to stay on Friday, but I'm hoping for one of three things:

1) Ideally, the Holiday Inn will have a room open up and I can just extend my stay there

2) Some kind soul will let me split a room with them on Friday night in exchange for me chipping on the room rate for the night

3) Worst case, I grab my bags and a taxi a little deeper into San Diego and get a room at a Motel 6 or something several miles away, then catch another cab back early Saturday morning. Sounds like a giant pain in the ass, but I've decided it's worth it.

So I guess I'll see some of you in San Diego. If you've got any party invites, bar drink-ups, feel like grabbing dinner or inviting me in to an already-established group dinners, please drop me a line. This is the first time I'm in San Diego without roommates at all, and I do have a slight fear that I'm going to wind up eating dinner alone most nights. Which I can handle, especially as it still means good seafood, but since the after-Con discussions and casual chats are a big part of San Diego for me, I'm hoping won't be the case.

Weekly Comics to Come - July 6, 2006:

ALREADY READ:
Beyond #1 (Interesting start, with a surprise cliffhanger raising more than a few questions. Hope folks give this one a chance)
BPRD The Black Flame TP (Glad to see more of the BPRD in trade... one of my favorite series)
Essential OHOTMU Deluxe Vol. 3 TP (This has also been a terrific use of the format)
Fables Vol 7 Arabian Nights And Days TP (One of the best Fables stories in a long line of them... looks like a good week for trades)
Invincible Vol 2 Ultimate Coll HC (Finally! I'm off and on with this book, but these deluxe hardcovers are super-swanky)
Marvel Westerns Kid Colt And Arizona Girl (Fun lead story with a Marvel-centric twist... maybe I'll wind up picking up the Marvel Westerns collection)
Occult Crimes Taskforce #1 (Secret NYPD unit protects and serves from magical threats. Surprisingly good, with nice photo-real art)
Uncanny X-Men #475 (Not bad. Tan's art is passable, although I'm not crazy about his '90s Image tendencies, and I don't really like all the recent continuity bits being referred to, but despite a number of minor complaints, I have to say it's a solid first issue)

HAVEN'T READ:
BPRD Universal Machine #4 (Continuing the quest to return Roger to the land of the living, among other things)
Conan & The Songs Of The Dead #1 (Lansdale and Truman, together again, and on Conan... sounds good)
Dark Horse Twenty Years (25 cents for an all-star lineup on Dark Horse characters)
Death Jr Vol 2 #1 (First series was great, expecting good things from the second one)
Detective Comics #821 (Paul Dini's run on the character begins)
Devi #1 (Curious to check out the Virgin comics line-up)
Flight Vol 3 TP (Loved the first two volumes of this color anthology)
Goon #18 (Always enjoyable)
Hack Slash Hard Slice (25 cents to sample a fun, original concept... worth a look)
Old Boy Vol 1 (Haven't seen the movie, but I've heard good things, I'll check this out at some point)
Rising Stars Of Manga Vol 6 (The Rising Stars of Manga I've read had some good stories in it)
Secret Six #2 (Running late, and the first issue was only so-so, but it's Simone, so I'll still be checking it out)
Talent #2 (This had a good opener, curious to see where they go from here)
Thing #8 (Final issue. *sniff* But it's a big 'ol Texas Hold 'Em game in the Marvel Universe by Dan Slott, three of my favorite things)
Transformers Evolutions Hearts Of Steel #1 (Transformers in the Old West by Chuck Dixon... should be entertaining)
Y The Last Man #47 (Always great)

John Byrne is an Asshole - Exhibit, oh let's call it 1,073:
If you want to see arrogance and pettiness at its worst, check out this thread at the Byrne board about Lost Girls. It starts off with my friend, Dave Farabee being called a total asshole by John Byrne for wanting to read a book.

It ends when Byrne can't handle even a debate completely overrun by his fanatical idiot fans (like Joe Zhang) and closes the thread, saying it made him feel like it wasted 30 years of his life.

It's funny, Dave and I have debated Lost Girls, and I've been more or less on the opposite side of the fence from him, uninterested and even wary about the book... but seeing who that lumps me in with, I now find myself wanting to read it, and even champion it to others.

Weekly Comics to Come - June 28, 2006:

ALREADY READ:
Daredevil #86 (Prison riots, a moral choice for Daredevil, Bullseye in action... another solid issue)
Exiles #83 (Interesting epilogue to World Tour, but atrocious-looking art)
Pvp #27 (Miranda and Max, Sensitivity training, gold farming... good issue)
Runaways #17 (The "death" is in here, but I'm still holding out hope it's a fakeout)
Sidekick #1 (Actually pretty funny, with nice art by Chris Moreno)
Solo #11 (Sergio Aragones!)
Invincible #33 (Well, *that's* an interesting plot twist. Congratulations, Kirkman, you've recaptured my interest in this book again)
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #7 (I missed Miyazawa's art, and the flashback was weaker than usual, but this is still a really good book)

HAVEN'T READ:
Batman #654 (The conclusion of Robinson's story arc, I'm curious to see where all the answers lie)
Kat & Mouse Vol 1 (Alex de Campi's all-ages manga)
Leading Man #1 (Spy action, and Oni's first full-color book in a long, long time)
Love The Way You Love #1 (Romance comics by Jamie S. Rich, who knows how to write the genre)
Mail Order Ninja Vol 1 (Dug the short that introduced this humorous concept, hope the full manga is as good)
Polly & The Pirates #6 (Polly's first adventure concludes! As good as Courtney Crumrin)
Previews Vol XVI #7 (Should have a Down the Line this month)
Southland Tales Bk 1 Two Roads Diverge (The movie supposedly is a stinker, but I'm still curious to check out the graphic novels)
Superman Returns Lois Lane (Why? What was wrong with her? Sorry, the titles still crack me up)
Usagi Yojimbo #94 (Always good, usually great)
Virgin Comics #0 (Curious to check these out)
Wet Moon Vol 2 Unseen Feet Gn (Really enjoyed the first issue of this gothy, creepy story with amazing art)
Young Avengers #12 (Finally! Now all I need is a good solid ending and an oversized hardcover collecting all 12 issues)

Weekly Comics to Come - June 21, 2006:

This looks like a spectacularly good week. Two trades I've been anxiously anticipating, several once-in-a-blue-moon series are releasing issues and a lot of my favorites in the mix, not to mention a number of first issues with great potential.

ALREADY READ:
Amazing Joy Buzzards Vol 2 Tp (Fun, great art, I've really missed seeing new issues. Hope this isn't the last we see of this book)
Annihilation Nova #3 (Still hoping Drax's annoying teen sidekick gets fried, but in every other way, this is now the best of the Annihilation books. Quasar and Nova both get to be badasses while still acting like superheroes, the action is on a big scale and the art is solid)
Captain America #19 (Good art, good storytelling, I can't help but enjoy this book. Though I'd actually *buy* it if it were SHIELD, instead of Captain America, who doesn't feel at home in this morally-compromised, more real espionage world Brubaker is writing)
Ex Machina #21 (This is my least favorite of Vaughan's books, which still makes it one of the best books published today)
Fear Agent Vol 1 Reignition Tp (Given the unfinished nature of the story, this seems a weird stopping point for a trade)
Marvel Adventures Avengers #2 (The Leader seems like a great Avengers foe... surprised it took this long to really see it. It says something about Marvel or me (probably both) that this is probably going to be my favorite Marvel book for the week. See, Bendis, *this* is how you make Wolverine in the Avengers work!)

HAVEN'T READ:
110 Per Cent Gn (Tony Consiglio's full graphic novel for Top Shelf)
All Star Superman #4 (Long wait between issues, but each one is a delight, worth the wait)
Birds Of Prey #95 (More of my favorite DC superhero book)
Casanova #1 (Been looking forward to this Fraction/Ba action/sci-fi comic for a while)
Conan #29 (The Mike Mignola-written issues begin)
Eternals #1 (Neil Gaiman/John Romita Jr... looks potentially interesting)
Fallen Angel #6 (Just barely still reading this book... I need a different artist)
Flash The Fastest Man Alive #1 (The success of Wonder Woman #1 has me more excited to read this one)
Giant Size Hulk #1 (Worth noting that this reprints Hulk: The End)
Love And Capes #1 (The buzz on this indy superhero/romance has been good)
Love As A Foreign Language #5 (Glad to see a new volume of this cross-cultural romance book)
Manhunter #23 (Stay of execution is great, more trades would be even better)
Marvel Westerns Outlaw Files (I'll probably pick this up, if only because it's such a weird project... Marvel Universe for cowboys!)
Naoki Urasawas Monster Vol 3 (Liking this, not loving it... needs to hook me fast for me to stay onboard for a long mega-volume series)
Noble Causes #21 (Wow, new issue right on top of the most recent one after a period of missing issues... is this the new Image version of lateness?)
Shadowpact #2 (First issue was solid and fun, looking forward to seeing more)
Star Wars Legacy #1 (Tons of great background info in the #0, glad to see this coming out so soon)
Star Wars Rebellion #3 (Pretty fun so far, a nice extension of Star Wars: Empire)
Superman Returns Lex Luthor (No new info in any of the one-shots yet, but solid stories in every one)
Ultimates 2 #11 (Like All-Star, a long wait... unlike All-Star, I don't particularly look forward to it... but I am reading it again)
X Isle #1 (Boom! has made a ton of TV/movie-worthy new comics of late)

Weekly Comics to Come - June 14, 2006:

ALREADY READ:
American Virgin #4 (Continues to be entertaining, full of surprises and great art)
Annihilation Super Skrull #3 (I'm sort of lukewarm on most of the Annihilation books at this point, but they're solid B- books)
Marvel Westerns Two Gun Kid (Very entertaining short story that ties into modern She-Hulk continuity, hope it's collected in the She-Hulk trades as a result)
She-Hulk Vol 3 Time Trials Tp (I wasn't entirely sure I was going to buy this, based on Civil War driving me from Marvel, but I think I'll pick it up, based on how much I liked this story and the Two-Gun Kid book this week... this may be the last She-Hulk trade I buy, however)

HAVEN'T READ:
Aliens Predator Panel To Panel Tp (The Star Wars Panel-to-Panel was a great look at why Dark Horse are the go-to guys for licensing, this one will probably be a visual treat for Aliens and Predator fans)
DMZ #8 (The latest story arc is probably the strongest the book has been)
Ex Machina Special #2 (The flashback tale of Mitchell's superhero days continues... or concludes, I can't remember which)
Exiles #82 (Still digging the World Tour story)
Fables #50 (Wow, great week... three Vertigo books, including my favorite current ongoing series)
Fear Agent #5 (Shame to lose Moore on art, but Opena seems a good replacement, and the book is still blue-collar sci-fi fun)
Superman Returns Ma Kent (I liked the first one-shot, and I'm interested in this one... but the title makes it sound like Superman stole Ma Kent)
Supermarket #3 (Fantastic sci-fi/dark comedy/crime/action series by Wood and artist Kristian)
The Drowners Tp (I've heard a lot about Nabiel Kanan, might be time to try his stuff out)
Ursa Minors #1 (Warriors in armored bear suits... now *that's* a high concept)

This May Have Been Posted Before...
But I don't remember reading them, and they're hilarious. Twisted Toyfare style takedowns of Avengers Disassembled, MK Spider-Man, House of M and more

Weekly Comics to Come - June 8, 2006:

ALREADY READ:
There was absolutely nothing in Marvel or DC First Look that interested me. And I haven't seen the Image First Looks yet.

HAVEN'T READ:
52 Week #5 (Still reading, but the low-key writing style of the whole thing is really boring)
Action Philosophers Vol 1 Giant Sized Thing Tp (I've liked what I read of this small press book, and $7 for a trade is a great price)
Bprd Universal Machine #3 (One of my favorite titles, glad to see it given my general disappointment in comics the last few weeks)
Detective Comics #820 (The last issue of Batman stumbled with an overlong focus on Two-Face, hopefully this penultimate chapter will regain the strength of the earlier ones)
Dmz Vol 1 On The Ground Tp (I've been up and down on this book, but more up than down, and I'll definitely pick up this $10 trade)
GI Joe Declassified #1 (Larry Hama writes the origin of G.I. Joe, which still pushes my nostalgia buttons)
Grease Monkey Gn (Entertaining science-fiction that I first sampled years ago, delighted and surprised to see the trade coming out)
Hector Plasm De Mortuis One Shot (This is late, but this story of ghostbusting adventurers sounded like fun)
Invincible #32 (Looks like Kirkman is ready to fire off another spate of his continually-late books. Now if only we could get the very, very late second hardcover out)
Noble Causes #20 (Been a little while since we saw this one, but I'm still enjoying the story)
Star Wars Legacy #0 (Very much looking forward to this, an original creation in the Star Wars universe by two creators who are, frankly, more talented than it deserves, John Ostrander and Jan Duursema)
Superman Returns Krypton To Earth (Curious about this one too. I'm very much looking forward to Superman Returns)
Walking Dead #28 (I've been waiting for more of this one too... this probably means the Walking Dead hardcover will be delayed as well. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be out in time for San Diego, at least)
Wonder Woman #1 (I'm curious about this, but mostly I'm annoyed that it's another factor in why Young Avengers has been delayed)

Blog Template Update for May
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, listing my Favorite Comics of the Month, which is my counterpart to Current Favorite TV series, as well as my ten favorite graphic novel reads of the month.

A couple things of note in how I organize these things, for those who care. These listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. And each month, I'm recommending twenty things that I read in the month instead of 10 ongoing series and 5 first issues. It's less useful as a gauge of my overall tastes, but more useful as a "must-read" for the month. Oh, and graphic novels won't be listed in Favorite Comics... that's strictly for issues.

May was a bit of a lean month for comics, at least for me. I had to cheat a little to get 10 graphic novels on there (I haven't done much more than flip the pages of Uncanny X-Men Omnibus yet, but I love what I see... thanks to Brett Warnock for talking about it on his blog, as that pushed me over the edge to picking it up, and I love it so far. Well worth the $100) and there weren't really any new books that blew me away. A couple solid new entries in Talent and Secret Six, but I wasn't wowed by either one, they were just solid reads in what was mostly a sea of mediocrity. There are good books out there, but you have to do some digging to find them. And most of them aren't selling that well, as books that I am uninterested in (the majority) or outright loathe (the minority) top the sales charts and peoples' interest. I was right to quit reviewing at this point, I think. And with Civil War taking over the few Marvel books I enjoy, and my distance from DC growing each month, I may be down to Top 15 or Top 10 comics in the next couple of months.

There also won't be a Down the Line for this month. The Previews pickings were kind of slim after a couple of months of really interesting stuff, and there just wasn't enough to be worth writing up a whole column. I might throw in a "Stuff from last month" bit in next month's write-up. I presume there will be a Down the Line next month, as I've already heard of a couple books in September that sound interesting, among them the new crime book by Brubaker and Phillips.

Finally, the updates are for the month of May... June just barely started. So all my favorites will be anywhere from a week to a full month old, but these are meant to be sort of "standing" preferences anyway.