dispatches from a comic shop with no heat

Whenever I do fill-in work at my old comic shop--as I'm doing right now--I'm always amused to see old customers I've known for ten years and watch them slowly get puffier.

One thing that never fails to disappoint me: the "loving and patient girlfriend," dragged into the comic shop by her boyfriend, who stands off in the corner, looking supportively bored as she checks her watch. Granted, I know how they feel: I get the same way after five minutes whenever Henchgirl wants to visit the Disney Store (love youuuuuuu), but still, I'm like, "But, but, BOOKS! We have books! Pick one up! Explore! I know they're comics, but come on, didn't LeVar Burton teach you anything?!"

Another risk of working at the comic shop is encountering something that ticks me off. You don't want your comics rung up by someone flying on geek!rage.

Y'know, it used to be that whenever I came upon something that enraged my fanboy heart, I did everything I could to cool and suppress my fury. Anger is a very ugly emotion, one I positively do not enjoy feeling for fear of rocking the boat, of overreacting (that's a big one), of being wrong and offending and looking like a thoughtless fool. This, of course, is why I was headed to a full-on clocktower-with-a-rifle mode, if the ulcer doesn't get me first.

Then I met Henchgirl, who finds my impassioned furious geek rants to be incredibly hot, and encourages me to let it all out. Before her, I probably wouldn't have had the nerve the write the following when someone recently posted these pages from WIZARD Magazine from a couple years back, following COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS.

( You may wonder why I'd be so pissed about Blue Beetle being named Hero of the Year, but read on... )

These damn WIZARD articles on Beetle and Max still piss me off so much. They're both just such blatant propaganda for DC's big event at the time.

If they really gave a shit when it came to talking about Ted's heroism, they could have delved into any of several DOZEN instances from JLI, BIRDS OF PREY, and more. If you want to address the people who're wondering, "Who is Blue Beetle," THAT'S where you frickin' start.

But no, no let's just continue to pretend--like COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS wanted you to pretend--that Ted was always considered a joke, and that this is the ONLY example of him truly being a hero, rather than a shitty way to throw out a wonderful character with tons of unused potential for the sake of cheap shock value. Which was the only point of COUNTDOWN. It was crass, it was cynical, and it wasted not one but two wonderful characters because DC doesn't understand what to do with fun.

As for the Max thing, guess what, WIZARD: it's still fucking "hard to swallow" that Max would kill the Blue Beetle. Because anyone who actually read JLI past the first volume would have seen that he had a little something called character development, one of the many things that DC decided to totally ignore (along with Max being a FUCKING CYBORG WHO CAN'T BE KILLED BY A SNAPPED NECK) so that could pull a lame "OH NO WE IZ BETRAYED" twist.

Fucking WIZARD. This is why I stopped reading it years ago. Someone likened it to the STARLOG of comics, which I suspect is slightly more damning than me likening it to ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

...

See, that was actually kind of fun. And that's all due to the encouragement of a girlfriend who loved DC Comics long before we actually met.

I really am a lucky duck, which is an appropriate animal to be considering that I've been force-feeding her ten years of DC to catch her up on THE BLACKEST NIGHT. She's "Geoff Johns foie gras" right now, and that's only after finishing DAY OF JUDGMENT and FLASH. She hasn't even started INFINITE CRISIS (a necessary evil) nor GREEN LANTERN yet, since she's been hard at working composing an epic rant about Johns' strengths and weaknesses.

If I ever want to annoy her in my writing, I'll just use the sound effect "KRAKOOM" for everything. Am I spelling it right, sweetie? "KRAKOOM?"

further dispatches from the Big Planet

This blogger's interpretation of Two-Face has shaken this Harvey Dent fanboy to the core. He makes a great point, and it flies in the face of possibly everything I hold to be the essence of the character. Obviously, I don't agree, but I'm having a hard time explaining just why in the face of those very compelling points. Expect an epic post in response, depending on what happens when I parse it out with Henchgirl tonight. Man, I really need to start up that about_faces LJ.

And to make it worse, the blog seems to be affiliated with my store's old nemesis, Big Monkey Comics. My boss had a fit when they opened their store in Georgetown, a mere three blocks from our shop, the well-established Big Planet Comics, knowing it would confuse the hell out of people. Big Monkey's boss was like, "Yeah, as if people can't tell the difference between a planet and a monkey." Which, as it turns out, they couldn't, if years of people say of "I can't remember the name, it was 'Big Something Comics,' like, 'Big Blah-Blah Comics...'" is any indication.

I still have loyalty to my shop, which is helped by the fact that the Big Planet way of selling comics is superior to any store I've seen. Simply put, it's about the enjoyment of comics, not the collecting of them. Did I rant here about how much I hate hate hate shops that bag and board their new and recent issues, so customers can't browse in the store? Because I do. Lordy, how I do.

Great Comics: I KILL GIANTS and THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD by Straczynski

Anyone want to tell me why, exactly, this series wasn't on any "Best Comics of the Decade" lists?



Because I remember the hype it got when it came out, and that hype is certainly justified. It's not the most brilliant thing I've ever read, but it hits all the right notes to qualify it for noteworthiness. Great to know that Joe Kelly can still knock it out of the park when he tries, and this was easily the best thing I've ever read of his.

For that matter, why has no one been talking about how great THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD has been? Do people not even notice that they're being written by J. Frickin' Michael Goddamned STRACZYNSKI???





JMS has written some not-great stuff in his time, but when he's on his game, there are few writers who can tell such... poetic and moving sci-fi and fantasy stories. I mean, BABYLON 5 was so great, you didn't even care that half the cast couldn't act their way out of a nutsack!

And even before that, he made the Saturday morning REAL GHOSTBUSTERS cartoon far more excellent than it had any right being! Not to mention that around that time, he wrote one of the greatest Two-Face stories of all time, a story borne out of the unlikely meeting between two characters you wouldn't expect to interact.

I hope the editor who collects THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD is smart enough to include the Two-Face/Cyborg story, because JMS' work now is a direct continuation of those sensibilities. These aren't world-shaking event stories of action, but rather wonderful nuggests of character exploration.

Not that it's been without its flaws. The Flash/Blackhawks issue was too blunt in its "the soldiers are the REAL heroes!" moral, and the otherwise-great Batman/Brother Power issue suffered from having a Batman that sounds more like Dick, even though it's definitely Bruce (he has flashbacks to his childhood, but as an adult he also says things like, "Okay, fine, screw it."). But the strengths made up for it enough to make them flawed but great stories.

Until the most recent issue. TB&TB #30 one was flat-out wonderful.




No big action scenes, or much action at all, for that matter. Just a conversation between Hal and a time-displaced dead friend. It's rare to be moved by a superhero comic, but this issue did it for me.

It's only of the only times I've ever cared about Dr. Fate (I've wanted to love him, with that awesome costume and all, but no writer's ever made him click for me), and my god, that's the kind of Hal Jordan I wish we'd see from Geoff Johns!

Holy heck, can you imagine JMS writing GREEN LANTERN, tackling Hal and the whole GLC? Can you? Seriously. Start imagining. It's brilliantly perfect, isn't it? Someone make this happen.

Right right, quittin' time!

in which Twitter becomes momentarily exciting

As Henchgirl was entrenched in her epic LJ analysis/rant, "Pros and Cons of Geoff Johns' FLASH Run," it's strangely appropriate that the following should have occurred on Twitter:


GeoffJohns0: Never put a bowl of marshmallows in the microwave thinking you can make s'mores.

GeoffJohns0: I guess it serves me right for trying to have s'mores as an afternoon snack.


johnhefner: @GeoffJohns0 That's what toaster ovens are for! Slightly grease a sheet or tin foil and you can toast marshmellows for s'mores indoors!


GeoffJohns0: Maybe I can microwave it again, let it get melted and clean it off.


johnhefner: @GeoffJohns0 I don't care if you're not going to read this, I'm gonna shout it to the heavens above: TOASTER. OVEN.


GeoffJohns0: @johnhefner My toaster oven is for Pop Tarts ONLY.


johnhefner: @GeoffJohns0 ... then it is a holy place. Perfectly understood. Suggestion withdrawn. Enjoy your goo.




... maybe I'll rethink tweeting about how I may have inadvertently guilt-tripped a customer for enjoying INFINITE CRISIS. Seriously, he was all excited, and I started saying how I just couldn't enjoy something so ugly, pointlessly violent, and full of empty shock value... the dude just deflated before my eyes.

I tried to make up for it by assuring him, "But that's okay, because now you can be better prepared for SINESTRO CORPS, which even I think is awesome!" I don't think that helped.