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A visit to a London comic market

I'm afraid the real world has interfered with the spandex one and I've neglected my comic blogging responsibilities this weekend. I can only apologise to my loyal band of readers: Ben W, Dave F and the mysterious four men/women in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the Arizona desert. One day you will team-up and reveal yourselves to me as the mightiest beings on the planet. Failing that you could always leave a comment on the blog.

I took some time out from things to hit London's monthly comic mart today. In the video below you can see me on my way to the home of this event (the Royal National Hotel) putting my geek spotting powers to work.

I made a bet with myself that the man who got off the bus at the same time as me was a comic nerd. He ticked most of the boxes: fat, smelly, dirty, shirt hanging out of his trousers. Had to be a fanboy. Sure enough I followed him all the way to the comic mart.

Enjoy my slightly creepy stalking below. Also appreciate the sheer nerdiness of the two fellas who leave the mart just before the man I'm following enters the building. Ahhh, truly these are my people.



Anyway, in true idiot style I forgot to bring both of my lists of comics to get (don't ask me why I have two, I just do) and so was unable to tell which of the huge selection of ROM back issues on offer I needed. This and the fact that I could not find the three issues of Nightforce I need to complete my run depressed me immensely, but thankfully my day was brightened by the following purchases...
Captain America volume the first for £6 + the bloke on the stall threw in The New Teen Titans Annual #2 for free. That annual went nicely with issues #38-#41 which I picked up for 50p each. I'm slowly creeping towards a full set of the original Wolfman/Perez run.

Next stop the 10p comics stall where I was oppressed by a heaving mass of sweaty cheapskates fighting to snap up any bargains. I soon tired of being jostled by them and left with just one purchase: Punisher #48, an item I bought solely for this cover...

verily, the image of the Punisher strapped to the barrel of an Iraqi supergun was too good to miss.

Sadly the comic itself is shit, although to be fair it is almost saved by this moment...




Diamond manicure? WTF? Worth 10p though I'm sure you'll agree.

Paid a bit more for issues #1, #2, #4 and #5 of the 1980's 2000AD/Fighting Fantasy hybrid, Diceman. £7 all told, although the bloke on the stall did throw in 2000AD Extreme #14 as part of the deal. So I was happy.

Been keen to get my hands on Diceman for a while. Too knackered to plough through it tonight. Suffice to say it's full of superb art from the likes of Kevin O'Neill, Bryan Talbot etc. Great stuff.

Finished the day by buying a few Heroclix. I might never play the bloody game, but Red Skull, Sinestro and the Green Goblin look nice on my shelf. Bless.

Sinestro Corps - Enter Sodam Yat

From chapter three of The Sinestro Corps, Green Lanterns Corps #14...

Yes something makes him fucking special! This...

Oh man another glorious fanboy moment at L L C Towers!

No doubt Alan Moore was having a bit of a laugh when he slipped a character called Sodam into Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2.

"Sodam in a mainstream 80's DC comic book? Nah you'll never get away with that Al?"

But he did, and now Sodam's back and Mr Moore's prophecy outlined here is taking shape nicely.

Apparently it's been mentioned before. I've only recently returned to Green Lantern though, so I missed issue #11 of the current run which recreated the original prophecy page. Compare and contrast...

Oh and now we've got Sodam Yat, can we please have the rabid polar bear too? K thx bai.

L L C Presents...

SUPERGIRL AND THE TREE STUMP OF DOOM!

All panels from Action Comics #287 reprinted in the mind-blowingly good compilation DC Showcase Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes vol#1

Stuff and nonsense

So I had planned to review World War Hulk #2, but since my old pal Dave F is a MUCH bigger (in every sense of the word) Hulk fan than me I thought I'd just cut and paste his e-mail to me on the subject.

"World War Hulk.... Verily the comic series I have waited for all my life.

X-Men: World War Hulk... I actually whooped and clapped reading this comic! Its how Hulk always should have been. Breaking Colossus' arms... Smashing Wolverine's face in...repeatedly (I gotta admit I actually drooled at these panels... then laughed... then looked at them some more... then drooled again).

McFarlane and Davis What bitter draught you made me swallow in the '80s when Hulk - IN HIS OWN FUCKIN COMIC! - was bested by a fuckin diminutive, hirsute, Canadian. Sure, Wolverine was popular, but only with other wankers. How I hung my head in shame as they mocked Hulk (and me) counting the blows and counter blows in every panel of every page of the comic at morning tutorial. Then that awful splash of Hulk gettin impaled... GBRRRH! It still makes me shiver.. As if I myself had been impaled by an ethereal dagger crafted by Stan Lee himself. (Hallowed be thy name)

Now Hulk's back and he's smashing fuck out of everyone... Amen!"

And I suppose that sums it up really. This is revenge for Hulk AND his fans.

I hate all the space gladiator shit (purple trousers baby, PURPLE TROUSERS!), but I have to agree with Dave, there is a certain comic geek joy to be had from watching Hulk smashing everyone into the ground.

SAWEEEET!

And you know the double page splash (I won't scan it in for fear of spoiling things) at the end of issue #2 was a total nerdgasm moment and absolutely guarantees that I'll be back for issue #3.

*************************************************************************************

What If Denis Nielsen was drawing for comics...



Black Gas Two #3 comes to a nasty end.

That man Warren Ellis. What can you say?

*************************************************************************************

Terrible how comics turn people into obsessive compulsives. I sat down to read my stack this week and was horrified to find that I'd forgotten to pick up Checkmate #16.

Now I know that the comic will still be sitting on the shelf when I return to the comic shop this Thursday, but it's taken heroic amounts of willpower to resist the urge to make the journey into the West End just to pick up it up.

It's not that I particularly need to read it, it's just...you know...it came out last week so I should have it in last week's pile! ARGGGHHH! 'tis but a short step from here to checking the gas is off every five minutes and lining up all the sauce bottles with labels to the front.

Bad Dog!

Don't you fucking look at me!


Krypto, Super-tossed to death.

Awesome.

Prison break the Merry Marvel Way

You go girl!

Torn from the pages of Super-Villain Team-Up #17

"Thriller" as performed by inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, The Philippines

Complete with ladyboy...

BONUS FEATURE!

Wedding Thriller



Lego Thriller



The Real thing


And of course no Thriller round-up would be complete without...

GOLIMAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG IT'S MODOK!

Attention Dave French! You may routinely ignore my pleas to play with your brother's Heroclix, but as the UK's number 1 MODOK fan you cannot ignore MODOK'S 11!!!...

Seriously, as someone who has the word MODOK in their e-mail address you need to buy this. For a first issue it's practically flawless. There's a brief retelling of MODOK's origin and then its straight into the mind of old big head with this complex series of calculations...

an equation which in its purest essence boils down to this...

Perfect. You see MODOK needs to get a gang together to steal the cosmic cube...

Impenetrable fortress? Fearsome Weapon? Tough job. You'll need the likes of Magneto and Doom to crack this one right?

Wrong.

For reasons known only to MODOK he chooses to recruit a roster of Marvel Z list villains for the task. Z listers including Armadillo, a villain who looks like a cross between Sasquatch and Ram Man, and who is so lame that he has been forced to give up crime and seek a living as a Mexican wrestler...

+

=

Along with him we get the likes of Puma!

I can has cheezburger?

Deadly Nightshade!

Didn't you used to do backing vocals for Prince?

The Living Laser!

Pink super-villain = lame super-villain

And, errrr, Bob!

Not

It might take a little time to win their respect...

But I have no doubt that MODOK will mould this bunch of nobodies into an unstoppable unit...

I bought a shitload of comics this week and this is the best hands down. It even comes with a potted one page history of the great one. A history which contains this little known panel from MODOK's past (click the image for an important message)...

I am already slobbering in anticipation of Issue #2.

Catching up

Greetings. I haven't seen a mouse in almost 24 hours and, as a result, I feel relaxed enough to bring you not one, but two week's worth of comic reviews. You lucky people.

Let's start with the worst stuff first: Thor #1. I was looking forward to this a lot. Sadly it was a let down. That's not to say that it was a terrible comic, just that it was OK, and when you're dealing with something as big as the relaunch of Thor, OK isn't good enough.

A comic about a Norse God turned superhero should be big on WOW! and low on pathos. I accept that the scene needs to be set for the new run, but it would've been nice to have a bit more action and a lot less of Donald Blake chatting to the landlady of a desert motel about nothing. I'll probably pick up issue two, but I'll need to see a major increase in hammer wielding shenanigans to stay on board for the long haul.

If you are going to do a superhero comic with a low violence quota, you better make sure it's heavy on ideas. Thor doesn't do that, but All Star Superman does.

Grant Morrison is an ideas man of course, and that makes him the perfect writer for a book which owes a lot to the whacked out world of silver age Supes. His vision is only part of the story though. The book wouldn't succeed half as well as it does were it not for the art.

I'm not just talking about Frank Quitely's drawing either. It's Jamie Grant's colours that really make the book sing. From the blood red skies of Bizarro world to the greeny grey skins of the Bizarros themselves, every panel of this book has been coloured to perfection. It looks like a multi-million dollar cartoon and is truly different to anything else in mainstream comics. Take it from me, this comic is a real pleasure.

As is Green Lantern #21, a book which I mentioned earlier this week because of the fact that it referenced a 1980's Alan Moore story. Stuff like that is automatically going to get me onside, but the truth is I would have enjoyed this even without the 80's fan boy moment.

I'm as tired of event driven crossover comics as the next nerd, but this Sinestro Corps storyline seems to be a big excuse for lots of cool looking aliens to fight each other to the death in space, and if you can't enjoy that then superhero comics really aren't for you.

This issue wasn't as good as the King size Sinestro Corps special which kicked the whole thing off (not enough of Sinestro himself and I miss the Ethan Van Sciver art that made the special look so errr SPECIAL), but there were still enough big moments to get me exited about the next chapter.

I also enjoyed Detective Comics #834, (although not quite as much as the first part of this two-parter which featured a nice little surprise ending), and Outsiders #49 which wraps up the recent crossover with Checkmate.

Checkout (see what they did there?) was an exciting story which I hope will see a few Outsiders readers coming on board Checkmate fulltime.

Best thing about the crossover? The sadistic Doctor Chang, a cyber Humpty Dumpty who feels a bit like a DC version of MODOK.

Look forward to seeing him again. We need more malevolent eggs in comics...

Mwahahahahahaha!

Other than the DC stuff, I've been enjoying Robert Kirkman's work for Image comics this week. The good folk at Amazon were kind enough to ship me out the latest Invincible trade: My Favourite Martian, and I was delighted to see that issue #2 of The Astounding Wolf-Man had also hit the shops.

Invincible is as slick and well paced as the previous seven volumes in the series. Still poking gentle fun at the superhero genre and all it's cliches while revelling in the things that make American comics such fun to read when they're done well.

I'm pleased to say that Astounding Wolf-Man looks like it will be similarly enjoyable. There's a nice little twist at the end of the latest issue and a natty little cameo from one of the minor characters from Invincible which was a nice touch.

Given that another of Kirkman's creations Brit also pops up in the Invincible trade, it's becoming clear that he's building his own Universe over at Image. That's just as well, because (with the exception of The Irredeemable Ant-Man) he's more comfortable when he's working outside the confines of the Marvel U.

While Marvel aren't going to let him invent a raft of new characters, I can't help feeling that Kirkman is wasted trotting out Ultimate X-Men and Marvel Team-Up stories which don't allow him the freedom which is so evident in his creator owned Image books. He clearly isn't going to be leaving Marvel anytime soon, but long term I think we'll continue to see his best work in his own comics.

Elsewhere this week I enjoyed Midnighter #9, the last of an impressive series of fill-in issues penned and pencilled by some of the industries top creators before Keith Giffen and Chris Sprouse take over permanently next month.

I thought that maybe Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti didn't quite capture The Midnighter's voice as well as some of their predecessors on the title, but they still managed to produce a decent short story.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #3 was excellent, Omega Flight #4 is average and The Transformations of Jimmy Olsen trade which I mentioned yesterday is AWESOME. I'm still reading it and I'm sure I'll post something else about it soon.

Mice

My home seems to be under attack from a plague of mice. I've seen four in the last four days and two tonight. The little fuckers are really freaking me out. Honestly it's terrible, my ability to do anything other than imagine I have rodents crawling up my leg has been seriously undermined.

I had planned to write some comic reviews, but I feel too freaked. I think I'll just go and sit on a high chair and read The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen, a spiffing new compendium of silver age tales that features an ace Brian Bolland cover...


and a panel which made me forget my mouse worries for a minute or two...

Man of the future: No hair, teeth or trousers

Since it's Sunday

All lies (apart from the bit about Barbie).

Spandex men

Does this turn you on?


How about this?

Maybe you're more of a Marvel guy...



Whatever, all your needs are catered for at Spandexman.com, the one stop shop for gay superhero fetishists.

EXCELSIOR!!!!