Bye bye Virgin comics

So apparently Virgin Comics are dead in the water. Hardly a surprise when you consider that the people in charge had no idea what they were doing. Let's have a look at a few of their bright ideas...

1. Trying to sell books about Indian Gods to American spandex fans. X
2. Paying Dave Stewart and Guy Ritchie to put their names on comics into which they themselves had minimal input. Presumably this was done in the drug addled belief that a large proportion of comic book fans are also crazed followers of the Eurhytmics and Mockney cinema. X
3. Believing that you can sell Dan Dare to the Yanks. Hey it worked with Judge Dredd right? Oh wait. X
4. Putting Jenna Jameson's name on a comic WITHOUT any porn in it XXX

I thought the Gamekeeper started off well enough before fizzling. Ditto Dan Dare. I never bothered with any of the Indian God twaddle, neither did anyone else apparently.

Not much of a legacy then, but least Virgin did give us the coolest comic book ad EVER

The Weekly Shop #10

On the list this week, or last week as I suppose it is now...

Thunderbolts #114, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #2, Tales of the Unexpected #8, Guy Ritchie's Gamekeeper #2, Marvel Zombies Dead Days one shot, Comics gone Ape and 2000AD #1536

I swerved Countdown #51 and remain determined not to get hooked into World War Hulk either.

So, where to start. Well I guess Marvel Zombies Dead Days is as good a place as any. I loved the original mini series and the Millar scripted Ultimate Fan 4 crossover arc but this prequel isn't great chiefly because it seems that Robert Kirkman's heart isn't really in it.

The great thing about the original was the vein of dark humour that ran through every page. That sick sense of fun is missing from this one shot which is a wholly pessimistic affair and less enjoyable as a result.

Sean Phillips' art is still nice to look at and we get another pretty Arthur Suydam cover to savour (this one's based on Jim Lee's X-Men #1) , but overall this is a bit of a let down. It'll still sell bucketloads and no doubt we haven't heard the last of Marvel Zombies, but super-hero zombies need to be fun to work and sadly there isn't a great deal of fun to be had in Dead Days.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four is much better. I wish Jeff Parker was doing The Ultimate Fantastic Four, because this book is everything that the Ultimate title should be but isn't. It zips along at a nice pace, doesn't get bogged down in unnecessary dialogue and most of all it's fun.

I've said it before, but I think Parker really gets Spidey. Reading this it's clear that he also understands the FF too. An excellent writer whose stuff I must make it a mission to read more of.

Gamekeeper #2 continues to read like the comics version of an X-Box shooter. Didn't feel that the second issue quite matched up to the promise of the first and there were several moments of clunky dialogue this time out, but it's still an enjoyable read and is different enough to some of the other stuff out there to keep me on board for the duration.

Tales of the Unexpected #8 winds up a mini-series which I was only buying out of a misguided sense of nostalgia for I Vampire who features in the Doctor 13 back-up story. I stopped reading the main Spectre story after issue 1, but Dr 13 was a smart piece of DC weirdness which read more like a Grant Morrison story than Brian Azarello's normal stuff.

I guess the main problem with Thunderbolts is that as fun as it is watching a team of bad guys being sponsored by the US government to take down good guys, we're never going to be allowed to see them tackling any A listers. I don't mind that too much, and #114 is another enjoyable beat-em-up featuring a selection of heroes direct from the Appendix of the Handbook of the Marvel Universe. But for this book to really deliver the goods we need to see the Thunderbolts messing up one of the big boys. Bring on Spidey v Norman Osborn I say.

The Weekly Shop #5

Violence. There's a lot of it about. Especially in this week's comics.

Yes sir, we've got

Throat slitting

disembowelment (kung fu style)

cat fighting

good old fashioned punching

and of course...

What a week. A week that gave us Wolfskin #3 and Midnighter #6. Two comics, 1,000 gory deaths and a whole heap of fun.

Wolfskin is, I understand, over and done with. Warren Ellis only wrote the thing for a bet. He won and so did the handful of people who picked up these three nasty little comics. Not much to say really, apart from the fact that its Conan ramped up to the power of 10.

The lovely art by Juan Jose Ryp looks like something straight out of a 1980's Fighting Fantasy book and to British men of a certain age (such as my sad self) that can only be a good thing.

A mucky little gem.

Midnighter goes on though. Glenn Fabry takes over pencilling duties from Chris Sprouse this issue, but Garth Ennis hangs around to do the writing and produces something quite brilliant.

I don't want to spoil the issue by talking too much about the plot, but know this fan boys its got ninjas and kung fu and..and...if like me you have the DVD box set of The Water Margin and still go apeshit for Monkey then you are going to love this comic.

As they say on E-Bay: Speedy delivery, excellent packaging, will use again. A+++!

You know what? If I see a comic with Guy Ritchie's name on the cover I'm probably not going to buy it. Except I did. I bought it expecting it to be awful, but Guy Ritchie's Gamekeeper is really very good.

The fact that it has nothing to do with Guy Ritchie or his gamekeeper helps. There's some bullshit in the back about how the whole thing was his idea and how he looks closely at all the scripts, but clearly he's just been paid a shitload of money by Virgin to put his name to the thing. It's actually written by Andy Diggle and he knocks out a damn fine comic which plays out like an X-Box 360 shooter and is strong enough to make me want to pick up issue 2 when it comes out.

I didn't pick up the Alpha Flight Classic trade which came out this week. I don't need to because I own all the originals. It's not very cool to admit it, but Alpha Flight was my favourite Marvel title as a kid so obviously I'm going to be one of the first in the admittedly short queue for any new Alpha Flight comic even if it is called Omega Flight.

Enjoyed issue one a lot. Some nice art from Scott Kolins and a fantastic seven page fight between Sasquatch and the Wrecking Crew which continues next issue. I'll be there.

Ant-Man was excellent as per usual. More perving over girls in the shower from our erstwhile anti-hero and an overload of thought bubbles just to piss off everyone who's been moaning about their re-emergence in Bendis's Mighty Avengers.

Even with the aforementioned Mighty Avengers all over the front it's doubtful whether Ant Man is going to attract enough new readers to keep it going for much longer, but never mind I'm enjoying it while I can.

Other stuff I bought this week: Alter Ego #67, The Batman Detective trade by Paul Dini, Elk's Run trade and last but not least 2000AD which gave me something enjoyable to read on the loo.