Search for Spider-Man and 4 Local Shops

In the quest to read all issues of Amazing Spider-Man (see this post for details) I had to make a trip to some comic shops.

As usual, this had its ups and downs.

Store #1: Mile High Comics (satellite store)

This store has a pretty good selection of back issues and trade paperbacks. It also has a selection of collectibles, such as the statue where the Punisher looks a little like he might have been a preemie.

This store suffers from what I call


Comic Store Problem 744Q: Surly Staff

I was there with friends, one of whom asked for an item that was in a case with a sliding glass door, the kind they use to lock up video games at Target and methods of birth control at Wal-Mart, which is a mistake in my book because I think that if people are either stealing condoms or not using them at all, that suggests a person who may not be prepared to finance a baby and should probably be given many, many condoms of all varieties.

The guy let out a big sigh, crossed the room to where the case was and where my buddy was standing, and then slid the door open without unlocking anything. Why he didn't just say, "It's not locked" is beyond me. OR he could have slid it open without the big sigh. Either way, he was doing the classic thing where someone pretends to be put upon because everyone else on the planet is probably too stupid to open a sliding glass door anyway.

Sadly, the Simpsons comic book guy is definitely more the norm than the exception to the norm. Oooh, train of thought: Have 5 kids named Norm, then one kid named Exception.

Store #2: New Genesis Comics

There was a time when the opening of a new comic store was just about the most exciting thing that could happen in my life. Fortunately, this also coincided with a time where a new comic store opened about every other week, so it was a very exciting time indeed.

Today, however, it's pretty unusual to see a new comic store of any kind open, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard there was a newbie in Fort Collins (home to two other shops, I might add).

I drove with glee to the new spot (with "happiness," not the soundtrack from that idiotic show), threw open the doors and was confronted with

Common Comic Store Problem 82A: STORE EXTREMELY SMALL

The guy working there had a huge afro, nerd glasses, and was very eager to help me out. The only problem was that, because I was looking for Spider-Man back issues in some form, I could tell that they didn't have what I needed the second I came in the door and had to spend 5 minutes looking around just to be polite.

When I say this place was small, I mean small. I live in an apartment small enough that you can plug the vacuum in once and cover the whole joint, and this place was small even by my standards. You can see the cover of every book from the doorway, and if you came in with a buddy the two of you would have trouble schooching past each other to get to the other side.

This is a fairly common issue with comic stores. You go in, see that they have relatively little to offer and immediately want to leave, but the one shred of niceness left in me wants to look around and at least see what's happening.

This might be a cool place if you buy new issues of shit, and maybe if they can hang in a couple years they can build up a little more selection, but for now it's just not for me.


Then it was on to Comic Store #3: Gryphon Games and Comics

This store has a pretty decent selection. Of comics.
Selection of staff...not so decent.

Okay, I have some respect for the fact that working at a comic store seems to be one of the few jobs where you can stand around the counter and talk to friends, play whatever the hell music you want, and basically screw around all day as long as you get done with the handful of things that need doing. In fact, if people never ever came in it would be my dream job because sitting around, listening to music and having asshole-y looks on my face is pretty much what I do at home, so to make a career out of it would be nice.

And I don't ask for much. I'm not a guy who goes out to dinner and is constantly waiting for the waitress to either perform well or suck it up, meanwhile I'm sitting and recalculating the tip in my head. I'm really not. I only need people to do a passable job.

A passable job, in this case, would have been a greeting of some kind. Wave, nod, word, anything would have cut it for me. But nothing.

Also, because this comic store is also a place where people play the kinds of games that involve bizarre dice and esoteric rules that come from various books with pictures of old-time hammers and axes on the cover, it has an odor. A distinct anxiety sweat that soaks into the walls and leaves the whole place with a light scent of old milk that was never aired out in any way. It's a smell I remember from young days, but not one I particularly like. Overall, this store had

Comic Store Problem 744Q: Surly Staff
Comic Store Problem 458J: Odors
Comic Store Problem 3777R: Combination of too many nerdy activities under one roof.


Finally, Comic Store #4: Halley's Comics

Aka, the Cat Store

This store is run by an extremely nice older woman and her less nice husband. I would call them ex-hippies except that in order to be an ex-hippie you have to stop being a hippie at some point. The upside is that the lady is usually pretty good as comic store workers run. The downside is that she is extremely nice in her taking in of pretty much every stray cat that comes by her rural home, and a good portion of these cats end up living part-time in the comic store.

Quickly, I hate when I go in a store and a animal lives there. That is so fucking stupid. Your dog doesn't need to come to work with you, especially considering that it mostly lays flat on the floor and doesn't fucking move for hours. That's normal dog activity, but it's not cool when you have to go to a store and feel shitty about nudging a dog so it moves so that you can look at the goddamn merchandise. I hate that shit.

Anyway, the cat thing is a problem because the cat odor ebbs and flows depending on the era, which cats are living there, how many, and so on. Because the owner seems to have no cat filter, no cat appearing to be too smelly, too angry, or the 47th, it can be pretty overpowering at times.

Fortunately for me, maybe because of the change of seasons, the cat smell was pretty tame. However, it was compensated for when the lady, a much older woman, had a long phone conversation describing how her underwear was visible in a recent picture due to long slits up the side of her dress.

Common Comic Store Problem #898ds: Clerk carries on without shame as though nobody is present.

Common Comic Store Problem # df89: House of commerce transformed into animal rescue remote unit.

Wednesday Comics

I want to start off this review of Wednesday Comics by letting you know that I am extremely excited to review John Byrne’s Next Men. But for the sake of posting something while I settle into some sanity, here’s a little something.

Every so often a comic book company decides to do things a little differently. Sometimes it’s awesome, like the Marvel Omnibus project which is reprinting damn near everything but the ads (which would make them PERFECT, by the way. I’m not a fan of advertising, but old comic ads are fantastic. I learned a shitload about OXY products in the 90’s that I would have otherwise missed). Other times, it’s well-meaning but kind of a waste, like Maximum Fantastic Four which reprinted the first issue of Fantastic Four with each panel blown up, sometimes taking up an entire page. The idea was that it would make readers slow down and enjoy the art and story, panel by panel. I would liken it to forcing someone to enjoy a movie by stopping it every 15 minutes and having someone come out and explain why what you just watched was awesome.

Wednesday Comics was a weekly anthology that came out in gigantic 14” X 20” broadsheet, like a newspaper comic book section. I read it in a complete hardcover volume, and I would say both were kind of idiotic in their own way.

The original, floppy printing was better as a physical object, but instead of printing an entirety of, say, Batman, each issue had on page of a story from each of the titles, 15 titles in all. So you got one page of Superman, one of Teen Titans, and so on. Just as long as you could keep track of 15 goddamn stories over a period of a year, you were set. People with human brains, like myself, found it a little frustrating.

Okay, so they learned somewhat of a lesson in the hardback format and printed the like issues back-to-back, so you could read the entirety of Metamorpho in order. However, they neglected to consider that a piece of paper this gigantic, when mounted on a hard shell, is almost impossible to read. If the page is almost two feet tall, that means the page is at least a foot away from where it would normally be in relation to your eyes. Imagine taking a full, unfolded newspaper sheet, mounting it on a rigid board, and then trying to read it. I’d rather blow my goddamn brains out, for which I would use a handgun as a shotgun would be long and unwieldly and difficult to shoot myself with. See! That’s all the thinking it takes!

I think I got about halfway before hitting this Wonder Woman story, seeing the number of tiny words on the page and saying Fuck It. Hell, look at the size of that fry box in relation. (Note: fry box may not be actual size, but is more representative of how I FELT about actual size. It’s an emotionally relative thing).

It would be nice to talk about the stories a little, but they were so tied to the format that it’s hard not to drag the idea of format into the whole thing. Some were cool, and Metamorpho by Mike Allred and Neil Gaiman was trying to do something different and had a very serial feel to it, which was appreciated. Batman by Azzarello was just a normal Batman story chopped into pieces. There was no reason for it to have been published in this format, and it’s kind of a waste when the publisher does something crazy and the creative team pumps out the same ol’ same. Thanks a lot, Bry Guy. Ever since you were not nice to me at ComiCon 2002 I’ve been waiting to get back at you, and it begins today, you writer of mill-running Batman tales. Also, you’re bald.

By the way, for fans interested in meeting this guy, here’s about what you can expect:

Hands in pockets, no smile. Google him, see how many pictures have him smiling. I’m not saying the dude’s got to be Mr. HappyAss all the time, but if you don’t want to meet people, don’t do the cons. Plus, it should also be noted that the woman in the picture is not a fan. That’s multi-Eisner award winner Jill Thompson, who seems capable of mustering a smile for the people who love her work.

Azzarello rant over. For now…

As is the case with most anthologies, whether it be literary or comic books or yet another collection of Power Ballads sold on TV for $800 bucks, I’d say the entries were 50/50 good and bad.

As an object, I’d call this one a failure. There’s just no good way to read it. You could buy all the issues and read them straight through, but then you have 15 storylines in your head. You could buy all the issues and read through, going story by story. But imagine folding and unfolding these goddamn things all day just for a shitty Batman story by a jerk who was a total…no, just imagine the paper part.

Final option, you could get the hardcover which they might as well use as the goddamn chart at the eye doctor. “Look through this lens and tell me, which makes Wonder Woman’s cleavage clearer. One, or two? One, or two?”

I appreciate anything that deviates from the norm a little, and weekly content is a plus. But Just because it’s weekly and different does not mean it’s good. See: Spider population in my apartment.

Astounding Wolf-Man's Astonishing Conclusion

So, apparently this is the last volume on this guy. Confession Time: I had no idea this was the last volume until I started reading the little added material at the end of the book, a commentary between Robert Kirkman and the artist, that started off with something like, "I guess this will be the last one of these."

The book had a little bit of a weird feel, but now it looks like that was because everything was busy wrapping up right under my nose. Maybe this feeling would have translated to more excitement if I'd known that we were heading to The Final Countdown, but as it was the thing felt a little bit confusing. In fact, I would almost suggest that these last installments were written in such a way that the writer not only SUSpected, but fully EXpected that readers would know they were getting towards the end. He can't be entirely wrong either. Comic fans are not exactly known for avoiding news about their favorite industry. But it felt weird, and I guess I prefer my stories be wrapped up in such a way that I feel a sort of inevitability about the whole thing, a now or never moment near the end. He went for it, but it happens SUPER late in the story, and the final confrontations don't feel much different from the other big battles throughout the book. Now, part of this is certainly due to the fact that Kirkman writes a story where change is the only constant and you expect characters to die, make big decisions, and so on. I've never read the wrap-up of a Kirkman series before, but it was a little disheartening, after reading other volumes which ended on climactic high points, to see it sort of fade out. In fact, I would say that, though the ending in this volume was perhaps the most satisfying, it was the least interesting of the four.

Okay, and here comes the nerdy part which contains spoilers.
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Part of the big issue in the book is the question of how you kill a vampire who is immortal and can turn to steam whenever he wants?

Well, it turns out that you just sort of decide to. You just pull out his heart really fast. That part pissed me right off.

Amazing Spider-Man #529-531

Okay, not off to a roaring start. Christ, usually it takes me at least a couple weeks to completely lose steam on a project. I must be getting old and tired. Or maybe I'm still young and unfocused. Either way, it's something to do with an age and what that means for my abilities.

These were a couple of the lead-up issues to Civil War that featured Spider-Man and Tony Stark doing some political shit.

Can I say something about Civil War? Overall, loved it. However, it was kind of annoying that they took Iron Man from being one side of a very sensible debate to being a complete wackjob. In this series, he secretly hires some Russian gun-for-hire to attack him and help prove some kind of point. I can't remember who it was. Das Bullet or some such shit.

Anyway, he does the whole thing to badly prove a point, and he keeps it a secret from Spider-Man, who explicitly asks whether or not that is exactly what's going on.

That's enough. I just saw it as taking that part of the story too far when really the whole appeal of the story is having two equally opposed, equally justified sides. Once you turn one side into the side being led by a maniac, you kind of kill the story.

Anyway, there were a couple baffling things about these issues. First:Okay, so my understanding is that Peter Parker and Tony Stark are talking about some kind of injury Mary Jane got. Peter says something like, "I was wondering what exactly you did for her..." and this conversation comes up. Then, in the middle, they both look straight at the reader like, "Huh? You know what I'm saying, dontcha?"

What the fuck? Is there a joke here I'm missing? My best guess is that the joke is, "Holy shit, we broke her arm and in the first panels of the comic she looked fine! We gotta write our way around this!"

Well haha. Some math: This panel is 1/3 of a page, and let's assume this is a 22-page issue. If you divide it up, you're paying about 14 cents per page. Divide by three, eh, just over 5 cents for that panel acknowledging that they fucked up earlier. I'll pass, thanks.

But it gets worse:



I'm not a big fan of editor's notes as-is. It's kind of a cute, comic-booky thing to do, but even the brief ones that say, "Remember ish #457, idiots?" are pretty unnecessary. But this, this goes on and on until even a third, boss editor gets involved. So we have a story within a story, but the story within the story is occurring outside the story, and is in fact creating the story in which it is contained. Pretty meta. WAY more meta than funny.

I will say that these issues certainly provided the most compact, coherent pro/con debate for the registration that led to Civil War. It was done in what is essentially a courtroom scene, which is a scene that No One needs to see ever again. But at least they did it.

Spider-Quest

What you're seeing here is my newest comic book project.

I made a list of every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, then checked off the ones I've read in the last year and the issues from a couple Essential volumes I've got on the shelf. So basically everything that I was 100% certain I've read.

The goal: Read every issue of Amazing Spider-Man.

But wait, it gets more boringer.

I miss my young days and the sweet uncertainty of failure, which was quickly replaced with an impending sense of failure, followed by the bitter sting of failure in progress.

Something I miss about those days was comic shopping, which was different from comic shopping now. You couldn't log onto a computer and buy anything that you could afford. In fact, you never really knew if you would come in contact with that last issue you really needed. The first time I saw a Giant-Size X-Men #1, it was an event in itself, making it worthwhile to go to the shitty comicon in the shitty hotel ballroom.

Here's a tip: If you're ever considering a wedding venue, ask if they've hosted a comicon. If the answer is "yes," search elsewhere.

There were the creepy stores, the creepy people who ran the stores, the weird "Over 18" sections, and the back issues on back issues.

I want to make this project a throwback, so here are the rules:

-No internet buying. That's an easy one.

-No using the internet to find a comic store and contact them. If they're in the phone book, cool. If not, figure it out some other way.

-Highlighted in yellow are issues available at the library. I'm reading those. No need to spend the cash.

That's pretty much it.

It won't be the end of blogging other comics, but just an addition. Hope you hate it.

World War Hulk

Finally, the ending to one of my favorite arcs in a long time.

When we last left the Incredible Hulk, he was really strong and getting fucked over. That should probably be his tagline. Real Strong, Real Fucked Over.

Anyway, he was back on earth, ready to kick the asses of Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange, Black Bolt, and Iron Man.

Overall...it was okay. I mean, how are you going to end it? Either the Hulk gets killed or he kills everyone else. Fine.

It was a little unsatisfying, but I think it's hard to end a really beloved story. Let's face it, the end of anything that is loved is pretty much panned. Sopranos, Lost. My boyish handsomeness.

There are a couple things that I didn't like too much, though.

Okay, it's kind of an impossible story. How are you going to beat someone who you spent the last year touting as the strongest, greenest, ripped-est-pants guy of all universes?

Well, you just call Sentry. You know, Sentry? The guy who we were all duped into believing was an old-school hero brought back from the past when really he was a new hero whose generic nature could be excused by creating this 4th wall shattering back story? Sentry?

Sentry is kind of a problem. For starters, nobody wants to watch the Hulk fight Sentry. Because who cares? When the Thing and the Hulk throw down it's way more entertaining even though it's nowhere near the end and only lasts about a page. Hell, it was more interesting to watch Dr. Strange possessed by a demon with weird mace hands fighting the Hulk.

Secondly, I know Marvel comics has a rich history of giving their characters flaws. Whether it's Iron Man puking up Grey Goose in his suit or Spider-Man being unable to pass a dumpster without trashing his outfit, they all have their hang-ups. But being the most powerful dude on the planet and being an agoraphobic?

I'm sure there are many, many people out there who suffer with this condition, and I would hesitate to make fun of them except for the fact that they aren't about to come out and get me. So fuck them.

The key to making an internal character flaw a story element is somehow incorporating it into the external story. Spider-Man always has trouble in his personal life because he's Spider-Man, which is demonstrated by him struggling with whether or not he killed Gwen Stacey, running out of cash for web fluid, and so on. It's a two-way road.

Sentry's internal struggle isn't really externalized in any way other than him standing in his doorway, and eventually just deciding to leave. Whoop-de-shit.

Also, agoraphobia was a bad choice. It's a really ironic choice, but it's really hard to buy that a character who is the most powerful dude on the planet, able to do anything including flying around and not encountering a single person or the earth itself, is scared of going outside. Maybe go with some other disorder next time. Or operate on his brain.

However, there was one Luke Cage panel that was particularly enjoyable on a level that I didn't expect at all.

Wow.

Powers and Monkey Sex

I know that I'm behind the curve on this one, but what kind of internet dork would I be without discussing the monkey sex issue of Powers?

No sort of internet dork at all, no sort at all.

There was a time when this issue lit up the internet. By "lit up the internet" I mean "caused a lot of negative posts that were featured on blogs with absolutely horrid design." But for those of you who either missed out or don't catalogue old comics in your brain, a quick summary:

This issue was the first part of a story arc that traced the origins of Detective Walker and some asshole. Apparently they go back to monkey days when there was a red monkey and a white monkey. Guess which monkey was the bad one! Anyway, we get the monkey story about these two battling, which I guess is all there is for monkeys to do before the invention of a tire hanging from a rope and the motion picture Dunstin Checks In. The next issue is a Conan-esque story, and so on through history, and in each one we get a version of what is clearly Walker fighting the same villain, both of whom seem to forget their identities over time, clash again, and then forget once more.

Clearly, most readers were not blown away by an issue of Powers without dialogue or a real plot. I can't say I blame them.

The issue does set up the foundation for a larger story, however, and one that pays off pretty nicely as we finally get an explanation of how Walker lost his powers. But it does bring up two very important issues in comics today, possibly more important than the classic debate of Me vs. My Brother and who owns Maximum Carnage issue #3.

The first is the idea of decompressed storytelling. Me, I don't mind a story that's a little slower. But I think that has a lot to do with the fact that my comic reading is exclusively done with trade paperbacks. I don't get an issue of Powers, read no words besides "Grunk" and then have to wait a month (if you're goddamn lucky) before starting to see how this would kind of, sort of pay off.

Reading trade paperbacks is sort of like watching television series on DVD. To go along with the example, if I watched an episode of NYPD Blue and Ice-T was a monkey...actually, let's not go there. If Ice-T was transformed into an elephant, it's possible that there would be a storyline that justified it, but if I had to wait a week to get it, I wouldn't be too happy. However, if I'm watching an NYPD Blue Marathon, Back-to-Back Blue (only on CBS) because I had already purchased and watched EVERY other show on DVD, I guess, then it wouldn't be so bad. I'd get my answer and move on.

My question with a book like this: Why don't they just publish it in trade format to begin with? If you're telling a decompressed story that could exist outside the normal Powers storyline, why does it need to be part of the monthly stuff? And so many books end up behind schedule, why not publish the entire arc all at once?

Take the Scott Pilgrim model. 6 books, all of satisfactory size. They didn't come out with 100% regularity, but it was close enough, and when you've got a full hour of reading ahead of you it's easy to ignore a couple months of lateness. Although you look like kind of an obsessed weirdo when you have "Scott Pilgrim!!!" on your calendar, circled in red on three different dates.

Writers should just make a decision. If you're going the decompressed route, fine, but publish bigger chunks. Format counts, people.

Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, it's time to discuss a little werewolf named Captain America.

When we were kids, my brother and I would subscribe to comics every year. They were usually picked at random, and my brother had the great misfortune of picking up Captain America for the period when he was infected with werewolfism. It couldn't have lasted more than 4 or 5 months, but that 4 or 5 months felt like pretty much forever.

I appreciate when somebody tries to do something new with a character. I do. But use some goddamn sense. A black, alien costume works for Spider-Man. But a Spider-Man car doesn't because it kind of defeats the point of Spider-Man when he sits in NYC traffic in a dune buggy. I'm not a guy who minds change, and I feel very sad that DC was bullied into bringing back Hal Jordan because who gives a fuck? But you need to justify your changes and they need to have some effect that justifies their existence. It's not impossible to do a police procedural with a monkey issue, but it's tough, and you have to watch your ass.

Overall, I'm cool with the monkey issue. It was worth it in the end. But goddamn, I would have been pretty pissed off to get it as a single issue.