Popgun Bullets V3 P4

- Bulleted mini reviews of the entire contents of Image Comics anthology Popgun Volume Three (the final installment)

• 303 The Jailhouse Swing - Jamie S. Rich, Joelle Jones - I particularly like the style of this 8 page narrated piece about a down on his luck palooka and the Angel that loves him regardless. The art goes heavy on the lines in some places, and uses a very sketchy style when showing bits of his fights.His girl seems always drawn with a bit of delicacy. It has a little bit of the feel of something you might see related in Ed Brubaker's Criminal (not the only piece in this review that made me think of that).
• 311 50 Miles to Marfa - David Hopkins, Daniel Warner - The art in this piece sits on a weird line for me. I am not sure if I love it or if I hate it.The lettering got on my nerves a little, but as I sit here going over the whole thing again, I will say that I really like the art. It's bright, and certainly conveys the setting well, also, the hot-headed character is so expressive he is almost manga-like. The story itself is funny and well written. It is a clever double-cross, and I kind of love those.
• 319 Cuffs - Derek McCulloch, Peter Krause - Speaking of double crosses and things that could be right out of Criminal, this story has at least three twists in it. The art is very good, and yet again a different style. It's a decent story all the way through.
• 333 These Kids Today... - Eric Skillman, Connor Willumsen - I love Willumsen's art in general, but I don't love the coloring on this piece. This is a narrated piece that is 3 pages long and a bit abrupt. It isn't badly done, I just don't like it very much. It may just be the theme.
• 336 Tackle Goes Fishing - Robbie Lawrence - This is a single page bit, and is really cute. I have a hard time saying anything negative about it. It's a kid fishing for birds with a balloon. It's brightly colored and whimsical. I looked at it a few times and thought... ok... graphic mixtape... I get it.
• 337 Eternal Warrior: Endings - Paul Grist - I like Grist's work a lot, and like this piece as well.
• 345 The Real Incidentals in Kill Phil - Zac Gorman - I really liked the art and the humor in this one. This is sort of a super heroes meet Captain planet rings that summon embodiments of music styles. The enemy they are tackling is Kill Collins who ruins parties with his insipid Lite Rock. There are a lot of embedded jokes in this thing to look for, The art and color are great. I enjoyed it.
• 349 Sanz Pantz: Home Al-Owned - Chris Moreno - I love Sanz Pantz. This is another good piece. Every aspect of it is polished and well done. Nothing wrong with Ninja Platypus in my book.
• 355 Curse of Silence - George Gousis - This is a good efficient anthology piece. It tells a complete story in 4 pages with a twist and good distinctive art. The art and writing are equally strong and both contribute to the story.
• 359 Bunnyboy - Robb Mommaerts - A cute little girl, a cute little bunny and an atomic chemistry set. This entry takes those three things and remains cute through the entire bit, even when it's horrific and gross. Facial expressions are especially well done in this, and I liked it.
• 367 Lumberjack in The Root of All Evil - Stephen Reedy, Greg Titus - I loved this piece. The art is very slick and polished, the colors are great, and the writing is sharp. If this were a serious super-hero bit, I would probably not like it, but it is the story of a larger than life, plant hating lumberjack who seems to exist solely to eradicate plant based threats to humanity. He sort of reminds me of the Tick in a way. There is a vibe about it, rather than any direct correlation. He spouts lines like 'My ass will be wiped by your children's warm leafy bodies!' as he leaps in with axes and chainsaws flashing. It commits, takes the risk and succeeds.
• 379 Avocado Allegrando - Maximo V. Lorenzo - I don't love the lettering in this piece, but that's about it for things I don't love about it. It has a strong manga flavor about it with dynamic layouts and intense one on one duel action. The action is a musicians' battle between a guitarist and a violinist. It is clever and very well done.
• 387 Deathnaut: Emotional Baggage - Danilo Beyruth - Deathnaut is another very slick good looking entry. It's another one that is a bit tongue in cheek in it's delivery, while not being jokey at all. It works for me, although I am not sure I would want to take this in much larger doses than this. It's solid, but isn't particularly exciting to me. It IS very well drawn and written, though.
• 403 Londown - Alberto Mielgo - I am sadly mixed on this one. The story is brilliant and touching and kind of lovely. It is a strange sort of super-hero love story with a strong de-emphasis on the super part. The art is my issue. I loved it at first, but after a while it really started feeling like it was done entirely by drawing over top of pictures. After that got into my head it somehow brought down my opinion of the art and got in the way a little. I still think it is very artfully done, and it isn't like I don't consider it a top notch comic even if that is the case. It tells it's story pretty well and I like that story a lot. I don't love the odd text effects it has and the way the word balloons are done, but on a whole, they just cement it's uniqueness whether I love them or not.
• 421 Failure After Failure - Vassilis Gogtzilas, K.I. Zachopoulos - this is kind of a sweet little sketchily drawn piece lifted out of a relationship between two currently jobless people. It is more a slice of life/moment in time kind of thing that shows the tensions, but also shows some hope. The dialog is a little stiff, but it's nice. Some of the text is hard to read.
• 429 Olympus: They Say... - Christian Ward, Nathan Edmondson - gorgeous art. The story isn't so much of a story, but the art is just beautiful, and the piece is decent regardless.I like the underwater color effects in particular.
• 435 Found In The Attic - Olaf Brill, Donald Hello - Time travelling 'secret in the attic' creepy twist sort of story. It works well, and definitely captures the flavor of the sort of story it is patterned after.
• 443 The Young Macaw - Derek Yu - This is pretty funny. The last page is a bit of a surprise, and should put a smile on your face. The art is well done, and pretty different from anything else in the book. It is set up as a cultural/tribal coming of age ceremony and it fits that pattern well. The pacing is good, and I think the payoff is cute. Plus it has an owl bear in it, and that is worth something.
• 453 King's Hollow: The Trade - Ryan Cody - I love this piece. I love the main character Nissa, I love the art. I love it and I may just marry it. It really feels like something there should be more of. It is a nice self contained bit, but it really feels like there should be a graphic novel of it somewhere. It looks like there is a one-shot with the same character in it, and I think I will seek that out at some point.
• 461 Hairballs - Gary Fields - I don't love this. It is an itchy and scratchy sort of piece by way of the campy unfunny Sunday funnies. It's all puns and things that look like puns. I get it, but it isn't my favorite thing. Not badly done for what it is, but not my thing.
• 463 Mickey Maus - Erik Larsen - It is what it sounds like. It is a one page gag about Mickey Mouse being in a concentration camp and not getting it. Atrocities are funny! I would like to see an edition of this with no Mark Andrew Smith, and no Erik Larsen. No offense to them, but really, make this about other things and other people's work. Innovative and widely varied stuff.
• 464 Twilight - Michael Woods, Nic Klein - Wow. This is stunningly beautiful and equally sad. The art is lovely, but man is it sad. It's both lovely and haunting. It's a hard situation to face, but the idea of the piece is a good one. It involves a child in a coma, but paints an extraordinary world around them. It will probably stick with me.

Thoughts, opinions, comments? let me have it!

I enjoyed this volume, and if I can afford it, I may very well try to continue this project when the next volume of Popgun comes out. I like this series best when it is giving me really different and innovative stuff, or when it is giving me a very broad range of styles and subjects and genres and art, etc. It's nice to get to see 50 things or so I wouldn't have otherwise seen, and get a maximum number of creators in front of my face. I really do want to experience as much as I can, and this continues to be a decent way to do it. It also forces you to think about short works and anthology pieces as a very different thing from serialized comics or long form graphic novels, etc.

Talkinboutcomics - One year anniversary

Roughly a year ago I started this blog. Prior to that I posted pretty frequent comics related posts on my Live Journal. The Live Journal was and remains mostly friends locked these days, although I often didn't protect the comics related posts. I wanted to really try and make a go of having a real blog that was out there for anyone to see, where I could post about things I was reading, or interested in, and encourage discussion, and otherwise interact with others who share my interests, or at least my love of comics. At the time I had been reading a number of other blogs, and decided that I would do this with my normal good natured geeky voice, and not play it overly harsh, or try to come off as something I'm really not... like a scholar of any sort. I would stick to reading everything I could read, and giving my honest opinion (which is inclined to skew on the positive for whatever reason).

I did several things when I first started. I created all of my accounts with more or less standard branding. I made a talkinboutcomics gmail to go with the talkinboutcomics blogger account, and when I eventually got a twitter account I made it talkinboutcomx to stay within the link restriction. I read a lot of other blogs, and tried to comment whenever I had something to say. I consider commenting in that way to be good blogosphere citizenship. That doesn't mean you ever need to comment on anything, but if you have something to add, do so. If someone solicits responses, do so. A hope in the early days is that if people appreciate your point of view, they may track back to your blog. I don't think anyone likes people who obviously comment only to shill their site in the middle of a normal discussion, but I certainly go to the blogs of people whose comments intrigue me.

I watched what other people were doing. I added a stat counter that I saw someone else using. I joined comic blog elite as a way of trying to get my site listed in a place that some people might look. I want people to read my blog, but the existence of my blog and my continued posting are in no way affected by the number of readers I get, or even if no-one ever reads it at all. I have the luxury of that, as my well being and my livelihood are not tied to the relative success of this blog. I do indeed WANT people to read it. I want people to read it, and I would love to meet people at conventions that I have had conversations with online, etc.

I am not the most socially gifted person. I have a great deal of social anxiety, and have tried to use my convention going as a way of muscling myself through it. The blogging is sort of an extension of that. I picked a name that was anonymous enough, and still don't generally through my whole name around. I think a consistent presence is probably more important than my full name, but who knows.

The good thing about this so far, is that it has given me exactly the sort of forum I had wanted. I have had little pieces of my reviews used on the web sites of products I genuinely love, and I consider that pretty cool, even though I understand that it doesn't mean anything beyond that. I have people whose opinions I value, and whose writing I love to read, fairly regularly comment on things I post. I have gotten a free copy or two sent to me to review, and several requests for me to read online material and review it. I do not do this to get anything for free, and I am always straightforward when I get free copies, even though 'the pros' may say that is amateurish. I say it's being honest and straight forward.

If I ever valued the statistics of my stat counter, I can't say that I really value them now. I like to see that my site is getting a steady stream of hits, and I like to see whatever I can divine from the patterns, but mostly that behavior leads to heartache. Once in this past year, I was somehow linked through 'stumbleupon', and that lead to an uncharacteristically high volume of hits. I have also had reviews linked to through Red 5, and through a site related to Supergirl(cait8g). Those returned a lot of looks, as did my blurb about visiting Forbidden Planet in NY which somehow got linked to some travel thing, or something. Truth be told, I think I accidentally figured out how to get a ton of hits, if that is your goal. I would rather get 3 that are reading and sometimes commenting, than 1000 that think they will be able to download a Batman The Brave and the Bold episode from me because I posted episode reviews, or the unending stream of people that come to my blog from a search for pictures of the scantily clad heroine Empowered (awesome and funny, but I don't think those are the qualities these hits are looking for). I also posted a review of a Ghost whisperer comic where all the teen girls were drawn with visibly protruding nipples, and I still get a lot of hits from nipple seekers.

The most recent thing I have done, is reluctantly enter into the world of Twitter. The more I thought about it, the less reluctant I became. My desire to have a Twitter presence started when I saw the little window on people's blogs that showed their recent twitter posts, and intensified when I saw that you could have it tweet a blurb and a link whenever you posted to your blog. I quickly realized that I didn't really want my twitter to show up on my blog. I didn't want someone's first glimpse of my blog to include what might be a seemingly inappropriate, or incomprehensible reply to something they aren't seeing, so I took that off, and don't really miss it. anyone following me on twitter can certainly see every dumb comment I make, and I don't mind that. I am who I am.

All of that said, and all of that aside, I think it has been a pretty good year. I've had fun doing this, and it has helped me to some degree connect with comics and appreciate them even more than I used to. Much of that comes from the flipside of having my own blog, which is reading and appreciating other people's blogs and their insight and opinions regarding comics. In keeping with that thought, I must say that I genuinely appreciate the people who have routinely replied and offered opinions and insight here, especially Eden from Comicsgirl, Sandy from I Love Rob Liefeld, John from Witwar, and the folks at the Inkwell Bookstore blog. If you somehow made it here, and aren't already aware of those 4 very good comics related blogs, you should certainly go check them out.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to comment any time you'd like. I appreciate what others have to say about all aspects of the comics medium. I hope to keep doing this for as long as I am still reading comics.

Anniversary Reprint-My first post is relevant again

HECTOR PLASM: TOTENTANZ

Written by Benito Cereno, art and cover by Nate Bellgarde.

The creative team behind Invncible Presents: Atom Eve return to their original creation, a modern-day member of an ancient cult whose duties dictate that he roam the earth to protect the living from the dead...and occasionally to protect the dead from the living. It's the follow-up to the book WIZARD MAGAZINE called one of the top 200 comics released during its publication history.

48 pages, $5.99, in stores on Nov. 5.***(2009 ship date is 10/14/2009)***

I will do something here that I promise won't be an everyday occurrence. I am recommending that you buy this before I have even read it. Hector Plasm: De Mortuis is the previously published volume of Hector Plasm stories, and having read that I can recommend that you buy it if you can find it (Copies were still available through Diamond a while back, and may still be as far as I know). Benito Cereno and Nate Bellgarde have created a compelling character with wit and intelligence... Wit, Intelligence and lots and lots of untold stories.

Hector is a Benandante, a 'well-walker' or 'do-gooder' He wanders the earth with his blade astayanax, his companions Sinner and Saint who are in the tradition of the angel and devil that sit on your shoulders, only much bigger, and the humors within his body that he manipulates to his needs to aid him in solving problems, helping the living and the dead, and fighting evil.

The stories so far range in their pacing and level of action, much in the way that Hellboy stories do. Sometimes the story is about the legend as much as it is about the title character, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always enjoyable. De Mortius is good to pick up as it has the sort of origin story 'Born with a sillyhow', Sillyhow referring to the caul Hector was born with, the layer of amneotic sac that covered his head. The Caul is taken as a sign of good luck and that he will grow up special.

It's good stuff, Well written, well drawn with a style of it's own and packed with folklore and supernatural goodness. Buy it, you'll feel smart that you did.

Note: I re-read Hector Plasm: De Mortuis again before I wrote this, so that my opinion was fresh on it again. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first several times. If you get it and read it, tell me what you think here, or in email - talkinboutcomics@gmail.com. The same goes if you have already read it. This place should be about discussion and exchange of ideas and opinions.

Rob

2009 Edit - The Previews code for this item is AUG090299. DeMortuis is being offered again and its code is AUG090300

This same creative team is doing a 3 issue Invincible Presents:Atom Eve and Rex Splode series. Issue 1 ships in October as well, and its diamond code is AUG090292.

New Hector Plasm shipping in October!

Hector Plasm Totentanz - I have been waiting for this to come out, and it finally is. It will be shipping in October. You should go put your request in for it now. Hector Plasm is a great supernatural themed comic, with humor and style. Well worth picking up. It is written and drawn by Benito Cereno and Nate Bellegarde. This is the same team that did the 2 Issue Invincible spin off Atom Eve, and has a 3 issue Atom Eve and Rex Splode comic also coming out in October that you should also pick up.

Destroyer #5

I picked up Destroyer #5 yesterday. This was the 5 issue mini series by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker, with colors by Val Staples, and obviously the last issue came out yesterday. It's a Marvel Max product that was in the works I guess prior to the image partnership thing. It had been solicited before and then came out a good bit later (I believe)

The Miniseries picks up with Keene Marlow, the hero from way back, known as the Destroyer. He's like the Punisher and Rocky mixed together. He knows he's at the end of his life cycle, and has set about to clean up certain messes, certain potential threats that he never completely eradicated. He does this in the most direct and badass bloody ways possible.

In addition to this persona, and this mission, he is a husband, a father, a grandfather, a mentor, and he cares deeply about his family. The thing that completely makes this comic awesome, is that it could easily be a one dimensional splatter-fest, and it would still be a pretty good comic, but instead, it has these layers of real humanity to it. Keene and his wife Harriet genuinely love each other. They are an old married couple in a world where super heroes exist. I don't feel that this aspect is heavy handed at all, but it makes everything else matter more. They have a daughter, and a son-in-law, and a grand-daughter, and all of them come across as real, living breathing characters with a real stake in things. This whole series has been very well written, very well drawn, and excellently colored. I recommend it highly.

This issue specifically is great. He literally fights death, and the ultimate resolution of the story is done without a lot of the standard things that usually happen in stories like this. I think this issue makes the series. I won't elaborate too much right now, as it is just out, but it is certainly worth a read.

Benefit of the doubt? - LCS edition

I wonder sometimes about my loyalty. I wonder also about my need to like things that I want to like. I think that my desire to be friendly and happy, and enjoy the things I surround myself with, causes me to act as though I like things that I have no great incentive for liking, or to artificially inflate the degree to which I enjoy/appreciate them.

The comic shop I go to is the only one to survive an extended time in my immediate area. It is clean and brightly lit. It has a good amount of titles on the wall, a hefty collection of Trades, as well as Trading card games and Heroclix and comics supplies. It has a section set aside for all ages and kids, and bins that have additional trades and some bagged sets, etc. It has a good sized manga section and some figures and plushies.

The staff are all good people. All nice guys. I have no issue with anyone that works there on any sort of a personal level. They are nice to me, they know my name, they are nice to my kids, and I have witnessed them tell people to watch their language, etc. when kids are in the store. The times my wife has gone in to get things for my birthday or Christmas, they have always been good to her and have steered her in the right direction, even though the air in comic shops makes her chafe.

Going over all of that, I guess I see why when I feel a need to speak critically of the store, I generally say they have a very conservative ordering strategy, or something similar to that, to explain away why they seem to generally underpurchase anything that isn't Blackest Night or items of a similar vein.

They really seem to have a disdain for anything even remotely 'alternative'. In this case I am going to call Incredible Hercules 'alternative. When I first started getting into that title I was chatting with the owner and made a comment about how good Incredible Hercules was, and his only comment was a grunt about how it didn't matter because a Hercules title wasn't going to sell.

Another time, recently when talking about SPX I mentioned seeing Brian Lee O'Malley there (interviewed by Jog, in what was a very enjoyable scheduled event. His response was 'That would be great if I knew who that was." When I brought up Scott Pilgrim he made a dismissive comic like 'whatever... wasn't that a webcomic...?" Which I guess is also dismissive of webcomics.

I'm not sure what I expect of my LCS, but I guess it's more than that. There are other things that happen and that are said that make me feel like if they could just get away with selling the top Marvel and DC titles, they would. Even when they get in something out of the ordinary, it is generally in such a small quantity that it is gone before 5pm on the Wednesday it comes in.

These things combined with other similar incidents make me a little sad in some weird way. I have been cutting down my pulls pretty heavily. I still have titles I will get, and I still add new ones when I see something that interests me in Previews, but if not for Previews and the comics internet, I would never have any idea what else was out there. The pull system at the shop I go to is entirely run on index cards. This results in a lot of titles that just don't get ordered and dropped for me, or sometimes titles that continue to be dropped long after I have canceled them. They are really good at getting me any issues I have missed, and would never make me buy anything I didn't want, but it still adds to a feeling I get about the place and the whole process.

If I already have to be aware of everything I might possibly want well prior to it coming out, and I get no real extra value from being at the store, and there is no benefit to browsing, as only the bigger mainstream titles will be on the shelf, then do I really need the store?

I went to two different comic shops when I was in New York earlier in the year. One was Forbidden Planet, and the other Was St. Mark's Comics. St. Mark's was like a hole in the wall filled to overflowing with everything imaginable, including some Love and Rockets singles and various underground and alt comics in pretty high volume. Forbidden Planet is slick and has an enormous selection of trades including a large variety of independents and lesser known works. I imagine there is probably something, somewhere in the DC area that would give at least some of that, but it certainly isn't anywhere close to where I live.

Watchmen on DVD

I watched the Watchmen movie this weekend with my dad and my brother. Neither of them had seen it, and neither of them are active comic book readers. Both of them have read and enjoyed some comics in their lifetimes, but neither of them pick them up for themselves, nor had they ever read Watchmen.

I was at my parents house this weekend. My brother was there as well for the weekend. I went out to pick up ingredients for dinner with my dad and picked up the Watchmen DVD so that we could all watch it the next evening. Sometime between buying it and watching it I misplaced it and asked my mom if she had seen my watchmen video... She thought I was talking about some sort of handheld device. I almost laughed at her, but had to admit that it did sound like that.

I thought the movie was thankfully long. I thought the movie was very faithful to the comic, and that the change to the ending was smart and didn't really hurt anything. As a big fan of the brilliant comic, I think the movie was nearly perfect. It did a great number of things well, and made what I see as a handful of minor adjustments to make the movie a little easier for general audiences to grasp. The original plot in the comic, and the original resolution are a bit of a stretch when you look at how reasonably things were tied up in the movie. In the comic, it was a perfect plot for people who are into comics. There is a lot more too it than the movie, but I think general audiences would have had more issues accepting it.

I thought that the movie hit all the right notes, and gave us a living breathing Rorschach in a way that could only be suggested at in the comic. Jackie Earle Haley's performance was perfect, and he left the same impression on my dad and brother, that the character in the comic had. I also love that this is the guy that played Kelly in the original Bad News Bears movies. Who didn't love Kelly when he showed up all badass delinquent on his motor bike. I am really happy that he is getting a bit of a renaissance.

At the end of the movie, after commenting on not realizing just how long it was (although I do think we watched the long director's cut). Both of them wondered why the movie had been panned so much. They thought it was very good, and very much a comic book movie, albeit a dark one. I asked them about the dialog, as I know a lot of it was right from the comic, and comes off a bit wordy or slightly strange being said by real people, and they felt it really just affirmed that you were watching a comic as a movie.

I was very happy with it, and my two impartial observers were happy with it as well. It is a movie that tries at the expense of mass audience appeal to be true to its source in my opinion. I will go slightly off course now and compare this briefly to the first Harry Potter movie. That is another situation where a movie tried to stay extremely faithful to the source. The first movie came off as a long slow animated storybook that I don't think really succeeded as a movie on any other terms. The HP movies in my opinion, have gotten progressively better as they have started really tailoring the story the deliver to the screen. Yes it means that they leave out important things, but it also means you are getting a better movie experience in my opinion, and one that can carry over just fine to people who may not have ever read the book.

Watchmen as a movie delivers a bit of both of those ideas. It is long and very faithful to the source. It made some changes in the translation to the screen, and it could be appreciated by people that hadn't read the original. However, I think that given the source, and the need to have at least something of a comic book super-hero background to really appreciate what you are seeing, I don't think Watchmen could be pared down and still mean anything in the same way that the HP movies have. Watchmen isn't an ongoing story in the Way the Harry Potter Volumes are. If you are making a movie of it, you need to really include all of it, or none of it.

I recommend it. If you like comics, watch it. If you love Watchmen, it shouldn't hurt you at all to watch it. If you really haven't ever read the comic, now is the time to do it.