The following titles are scheduled to ship on December 3rd, 2014. As always, not all books will get into all stores, and depending on the region you’re in, certain books might have come in a week earlier, or will come in a week later. For reasons, I guess.
This list is pulled from the good folks at Wizard’s Comics and Collectables. Head over there where you can see telling people what to do and how to do them before my last day on December 31st.
Hi there. Hello.
My name is Brandon Schatz. If you’re coming to this site for the first time today, chances are you just saw me on the television. I’m sorry about that, but in time, the pain will subside. In the meantime, I thought it might be pertinent to talk about the site, and what we do here.
IT’S A BLOG ABOUT COMICS
Or at least it is in theory. When we started this site, we had a simple goal: to talk about comics and pop culture in a positive and constructive light. Pop culture sites are filled to the brim with people who want to dismantle or shrug at the things that they love, and we wanted something different. We talk about the things we love and we talk about ways the industry and pop culture in general could build instead of rend. We push inclusion, rather than exclusion. We want everyone to be able to enjoy the things that they like without judgement, because their opinions are valid and they matter.
But mostly, it’s a blog about comics.
COMING SOON…
It wasn’t mentioned on the CTV broadcast, but I will be leaving my job as manager at Wizard’s Comics on December 31st for bigger and better things. While I’ve loved my time there, a couple of great opportunities came up that I couldn’t pass up. One of them involves writing a whole lot more, and getting paid to do so. Some of that writing will be here. Some of it’s going to be elsewhere. All of it is going to be tailored to give people a better understanding of comics and the comic book industry in general.
To that effect, we’re starting up a series of newsletters here at the site:
All of these start tomorrow, so if you want to dig your heels in deep into comic culture, you can subscribe to one or all of our newsletters here.
RECOMMENDATIONS
If you’re interested in getting into comics, or if you want to buy a comic for someone and don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always available to make recommendations @soupytoasterson on Twitter - or if you’re more of the e-mail type, you can send an inquiry off to bschatz-at-comicstheblog.com. I promise I’ll find you something that’s going to be loved, either by yourself or someone else.
Again, thank you for coming to the site. Feel free to poke around, there’s over four years worth of content to explore - and please come back through-out the week.
The Pitch: Batman ’66 by way of Japanese pop influence
What It Is: This series of Batman stories ran for just over a year across the Pacific from April 1966 to May of 1967 in an attempt to capitalize on the big Batman craze that had hit during that time. While the series didn’t last long, it’s filled to the brim with crazy Batman stories that are quite unlike those we are used to today. Hearkening back to the period they were created, these stories reflect the crazy style of silver age comics (and the Batman ’66 TV show) while retaining the clear influences of a different style of comics entirely.
Recommended if you like: Fun Batman stories, B-movies, and absurd humour.
Currently Available:
More Information:
(If you’ve read Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga and would like to give your personal recommendation or help populate our “Recommended If You Like” section, please comment below!)
Catwoman #36
by Genevieve Valentine, Garry Brown, Lee Loughridge, Sal Cipriano and Taylor Esposito
Synopsis: As Selina attempts to find sure footing as the new queen of organized crime in Gotham, many plot against her.
01. My kingdom for a time machine, and some form of editorial control over at DC Comics. Actually, scratch that last part. I’m not one for politics, and the environment seems a bit poisonous with it these days. Just give me the time machine, please. And a basket of kittens. My wife would be very pleased if we could do the whole time and/or space thing with a basket of kittens. What was I supposed to be talking about?
02. The second issue of this new status quo is quite stellar. For the longest time, Catwoman hasn’t been the book for me. I would check up on it every now and then to get the shape of what was happening, but would always fall away and let the customers who enjoyed it read in peace. As always, I decided to drop in again when the new creative team hit, and I’m very glad I did. The book seem is a completely different animal from what it was when it began. Selina has relinquished her costume, and has traded in her life of disorganized crime for the organized variety, and has risen to the top of the Gotham underground. As is natural in these kinds of stories, enemies abound from within and without. Good guys think she’s gone bad. Bad guys think she’s no good. The balancing act is quite precarious, but Selina takes everything in stride, making moves and countermoves in turn, all in service of her own goals. While new to the medium, Genevieve Valentine has hit the ground running with a story that doesn’t feel like prose or a teleplay mashed into the form of a comic. The medium is utilized beautifully with a steady pace, and I’m left wanting more - which should always be the goal of serialized storytelling.
03. The contributions of Garry Brown can not be overstated. As always, comics are the result of words and pictures working together to form narrative. Brown does exceedingly well here, bringing in shades of Tommy Lee Edwards’ sure hand and staging. Colourist Lee Loughridge compliments this with a muted palette that runs through different prevailing shades as lighting and locale change. Action scenes break out into a kinetic pace and layout while the more conversational set pieces remain compelling, camera angles and scene panel breaks building a tension that holds just below the surface.
04. This is an incredibly strong book that has been lost among the twelve different books DC launched or relaunched last month. With the marketing budget stretched a little thin, many of the books were left to sink or swim on their own accord. The teams behind Batgirl and Gotham Academy did some Herculean self-promotion to really put their book on the map, but Catwoman was stymied by the fact that cards had to be kept close to the chest, as the inciting events had yet to be revealed elsewhere in the line of comics. It’s a shame, because this book could have done a whole lot more if it had disappeared for a couple of months and returned with a brand new number one. (Time machine, please!) As it stands, it should hold its own with this level of quality. People will surely come in as those who enjoyed the previous iteration of the character find themselves reading something new that might not be for them. I hope this team gets a lot of room to move, and gets to play this story out to a conclusion. I’m itching to see where this goes.
In which there’s actual baby death.
We’re back to bi-weekly in this week’s installment, and our livers thank us. And we thank them. With liquor. It’s vicious cycle. This week, we head back to Torchwood for the first two episodes of Series Two, “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” and “Sleepers”. Along the way Max also gets half in the bag (a plastic bag), we talk about British diversity, and Danica cries and cries and cries. Hurray!
Outro music is “Super Pretty Naughty” by Buck 65.
Podcast picture is by GIRL NAMED SHIRL PHOTOGRAPHY
A few of you were wondering about my thoughts on DC’s upcoming Confluence event, so I went ahead and wrote ’em all down for Comics Beat last week.
Of the two, Convergence is being built as a necessity, more than something extravagant. Even if the concept was born out of creative decisions, the execution is all business, marrying the need for DC to pump out enough books to fill out their budgets while simultaneously alleviating editorial and creative pressures during the big move. As such, it’s already on the back foot, appearing as though it’s a fill-in event, something that is decidedly not their main line of books in any way, shape or form. If they don’t tackle this perception in the marketing, April and May might be a couple of DC’s worst months as many opt out of the two months of content.
The article goes pretty deep into what the company would need to do to make the event as successful as possible. Unfortunately, I think they’ve already screwed a few points up. You can read the whole article here - and when you’re done that, you can run straight into my thoughts on Marvel’s big multiversal event, Secret Wars.
While Convergence is an event being built out of near necessity, Secret Wars is an event that’s emerging from years of planning on the part of Marvel and writer Jonathan Hickman. Both approaches have their pros and cons. While I’m really enjoying Hickman’s work on the Avengers line, it was never anything I would be able to hand to a new reader easily – and his work on the title has only gotten more complex. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this approach, especially when you have several titles on the stands that new readers can easily gravitate to like Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, and Hawkeye – but when it comes to the big event, you want to try and make that thing as accessible as possible. DC can theoretically do this with Convergence by structuring their event as a low-threshold buy-in, featuring two part stories that exist without too much connective tissue. Marvel could theoretically do this, but there’s very little known about the actual structure of Secret Warsbeyond the fact that it will be impossible to escape if you’re interested in their line.
You can read that full article here.
Sometimes I think I go a little easier on Marvel because… well, because I’m enjoying more of their line right now, but I think I stayed pretty even-handed with presenting the potential problems and positives that both events could have. As always, your thoughts are appreciated, so comment below, or on the articles themselves!
Because I love puns, you guys. I love them so much.
This week, I returned to providing weekly final order cut-off commentary at Comics Beat with a little ditty about some of the splashier variants coming down the pike.
I’m not a big fan of variants in general (a longer column for another day), but I can at least get behind variants that you can order without qualification. That says you’re offering another variety for a reader to sample, letting them choose what cover they’d like. That, I understand. Qualified variants, on the other hand, are the dirt worst. They’re a dirty manipulation of the whole “supply and demand” market designed for cheap, easy money, both for publishers and retailers alike. If a retailer wants a bigger supply, they will have to order more copies. In order to cover the cost of those copies (many of which won’t sell), they will charge a premium for that cover. And hey, even if they don’t need to charge a premium to cover the costs of extra copies, they’ll probably mark it up because of the low supply, and the high demand.
You can read the full article over at Comics Beat where you’ll also see a quote from the publisher of one of the industry’s biggest companies talking shit about variants. You probably know who already.
In which we talk waaaay too much about Passions.
This week’s episode! An ending! Specifially, the ending of Series 8, and there’s lots to talk about. Did we end up liking what Moffat was throwing down after a rough season? Who knows! We were drunk! Also: stuff with Danny Pink (oh my god Danny Pink) leads to a pack of lies and we gab about Big Hero 6, probably. And yeah, Passions, but whatever.
Outro music is “Robots” by Flight of the Conchords
Podcast picture is by GIRL NAMED SHIRL PHOTOGRAPHY
In which Brandon writes a multi-part column, and totally commits through the end. Right?
Folks wanted to know what I thought about DC’s upcoming Convergence event, and so I laid things out based on what I know, and what I’d like to happen in a new Retailer’s View column. I’m saving the deep analysis on the structure for when I know a bit more about what it really looks like, creative teams and all. Also, if these god damn comics have special gimmick covers, you might find me swinging from the rafters. Just saying.
A snippet of the article:
Of the two, Convergence is being built as a necessity, more than something extravagant. Even if the concept was born out of creative decisions, the execution is all business, marrying the need for DC to pump out enough books to fill out their budgets while simultaneously alleviating editorial and creative pressures during the big move. As such, it’s already on the back foot, appearing as though it’s a fill-in event, something that is decidedly not their main line of books in any way, shape or form. If they don’t tackle this perception in the marketing, April and May might be a couple of DC’s worst months as many opt out of the two months of content.
For the full meal deal, head over to Comics Beat.
