The Weekly Shop Holiday Special #1

Let me start by sending out a big shout to the unnamed civil servant who invented Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. I have no idea who this person is, but they obviously understand that to fight an effective war on terror you need a cool acronym.

Of course with "blind in one eye" Gordon Brown now in charge of the organisation, I don't see why they didn't just go ahead and call it SHIELD. But any acronym is better than none and whilst COBRA would be a better name for the baddies, I still feel having a counter terrorist force named after a snake will strike fear into the dark hearts of al Qaeda, the IRA and HYDRA.

Al Qaeda could even rename themselves Mohammed Orders Nightmarish Goings On Overseas Sometimes Executions. I can see Osama sitting in his cave stroking his cat, watching videos like this before MONGOOSE strike.



No doubt I'll get to see more terror on the streets of foggy London Town when I return. For now my threat level remains at moderate as I continue to laze around at my mum's house in America's midwest getting fat and reading comics.It's not all sitting about though, oh no. Why only two days ago I managed to stop eating for an hour to make the trip to a real live comic shop.

The nearest one to me is Comic Carnival, a relatively unimpressive little place located in a grubby strip mall somewhere off a busy highway just outside Indianapolis. The lank haired staff were non-plussed by my requests for EC archives and Fantastic Four omnibuses, but they did take a couple of minutes out from their Heroclix themed chat to point me in the direction of a couple of cheap volumes of golden age Marvel reprints.

I picked those up along with the latest volume of Twisted Toyfare Theatre(Genius as always) and my usual stash of weekly books which excitingly enough included Criminal #8, an issue which appears to feature Michael Jackson on the cover (Smooth Criminal, geddit?)

Yah. Anyway. Top stuff. Highly recommended, but then you knew that already.

On the spandex front I picked up Green Lantern Sinestro Corps which is a thoroughly silly but entertaining romp. It's slightly spoiled by the fact that you need to be reading 20 other comics and have a solid grounding in Green Lantern history to fully understand what's going on, but if you can live with that you'll be rewarded with lots of pretty pictures of alien green lanterns fighting alien Sinestro Lanterns. For the majority of people over the age of 10 that won't be reason enough to enjoy this comic, for me it works. If the regular Green Lantern series is going to feature more of this kind of thing then I'll probably start buying it again.

I missed the X-Men First Class mini series, but heard good things about it so picked up issue #1 of the new ongoing run. It's a good read although I'm beginning to wonder if Jeff Parker ever gets the urge to write a sick, gore splattered fuckfest of a comic just by way of a break from the all ages friendly groove that he seems to have settled into.

I bought two of his comics this week, keeping the X-Men issue and handing my five year old step nephew the latest issue of Marvel Adventures: Avengers. He's familiar with most of the characters in the book and enjoyed it, although he was slightly upset by the scene where Wolverine kicks Bruce Banner in order to make him angry enough to turn into the Hulk and smash some bad guys. Obviously I didn't let the nipper loose on the latest issue of The Boys. He wouldn't have liked it anyway, not enough fighting in this issue. No doubt that will come next week.

I passed on the latest issue of Amazons Attack, but for some reason decided to pick up Death Dealer. Sadly the joke has now worn thin and I didn't even make it past page four. Rotten stuff which has gone past the "so bad it's funny stage" and is now just so bad it's boring. Shame, I'd like a good sword and sorcery funnybook to read.