Infinite Crisis is DC preparing to make some changes like the "Crisis" series from the 80's. Theyr'e fucking with characters by killing them, Killing the ones they love, bringing back ones that died before, causing friction between friends, and so on.....

I don't know what this "House of M" is.

So I went to Wizard World Chicago on Friday ...

First things first -- I got a bunch of back issues. I wound up pulling together the first 30-or-so issues of Captain Atom, along with a nice stack of Aparo Brave & Bolds and a single issue of Captain Carrot (apparently, it's not a title that a lot of dealers felt like hauling to the convention). I also grabbed a healthy chunk of Gruenwald Captain Americas, Iron Man comcis circa the first Armor Wars, the first couple of years of All-Star Squadron, a batch of Ostrander Suicide Squads, Peter David's second Sin-Eater story (I thought I was grabbing the first Sin-Eater story, but the second is pretty good), a Peter Milligan Batman/Riddler story from 15 years ago which I remember absolutely loving at the time (it still reads pretty well, but not as good as I remember), and a batch of Super Powers comics which I bought under the mistaken impression that Kirby drew 'em (turns out, he only did the plotting and the covers).

I also wandered around and met a bunch of artists. No big names (the biggest name I met in artist's alley was Jeff Moy, who is no longer even in comics) -- just guys like Scott and Benita Story, who put out a book called Johnny Saturn (pretty solid first issue), the crew from a small prress called Quality Quill (they've got a number of titles -- the one that I'm most interested in seems like it's going to be a Dungeons-and-Dragons-by-way-of-Japanese-CRPGs book called Guild), and Casey Heying, a very talented artist who is doing a book called The Oz Wonderland Chronicles (and I really respect the fact that he is explicitly drawing on the Tenniel, Denslow, and Neill illustrations for his character designs).

I found out about a really neat Batman animated movie done by a class at a computer animation school and featuring voicework by Adam West (Batman), Mark Hammill (the Joker), Courtney Thorne-Smith (Catwoman), and Dick van Dyke (Commissioner Gordon). The DVD is free, by the way -- I posted something about it in the bargains forum, but go to www.daveschool.com to order it.

I met Sam Jones (from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane, of course), and Scott Schwartz (character actor probably best known as one of the wrestlers from the first Spider-Man movie or as the guy who pretends to beat up Clooney in the Ocean's Eleven remake). Scott was by far the nicest of the three.

Most importantly, I got to catch up with some old friends from my usenet days and from my comics blogging, most of whom I was meeting in person for the first time. It's nice to have faces to go with the names. Plus Cory Carani really stoked my ego by remembering me, even though he had only met me once, years and years ago.

Anyone else go to Wizard World?

Went Saturday and basically went into the convention to just check out what i've been missing the past year. It's been a while since I bought any comics, and at the cons, it's a great place to pick up issues I missed of recent stuff for cheap. Unless of course I'd want to get copies of recent HOT issues, which I really don't do.
But I think I saw grunter there. I shoulda said Hi, but I'm fairly a nobody here so I just thought "oh there's grunter...I think". Btw, I knew it might be him cuz his shirt said "grunter". heh. I wonder if he ever found the job he wanted...anyhooo.
Bought too much stuff, lots of Ultimate stuff..spiderman, iron man, x-men, astonish x-men, kingdom come and The Kingdom, got those exclusive The Batman and Batman Begins action figures, and several tshirts. Walked in with an empty gym back, walked out with about a 40# bag. Spent about 5 hours just wandering and looking. Didn't really want to meet any artists since there really weren't many I wanted to meet...wtf doesn't Matt Wagner ever come to this con!?
Some awesome deals were to be made, I just had going through long boxes issue by issue. My fingers hurt after doing that for a while.
Got stuck in line at the ATM with the geekiest, dumbest loser of a human being I have ever known. Oh and he had a friend who wasn't as bad as he was but still bad.
Fun time, but glad I only bought a one day pass this time.

Thanks for the con reports, always interesting to read. For me it's weird to read that Chicago's con is now in August, after San Diego's Comicon because I'm used to it being held on the July 4th weekend in Chicago, where it's actually cool to be in the city at that time (I went to 2 Chicago Con back in the last half of 1990's).

Has anyone picked up 1602 The New World? I was wondering if it will be worth looking at. How does it compare to the Gaiman series?

Infinite Crisis is DC's way of reverting back to their amazing Silver Age of chracters before the Modern Age started making people go crazy and killing off heroes left and right by...killing off heroes and making people go crazy...hmmmmmm....

House of M is Marvel's way of showing that they can indeed tell decent stories that are fully in 616 continuity.

Doh, my bad. I guess it comes out this coming week. I thought it was already out because he was selling it at the San Diego and Chicago cons. Everyone go pick it up this Wed!

I was there the same day you were.

I spent waaaay too much on 50% trades, enough to keep me plenty busy until next year's con.

YES! My friend picked this up the other day, read it immediately, and gave it to me to read (which I immediately did).

It was so nice to have a brand-new "Top Ten" story in my hands that I wanted to just savor the feeling before I opened it up. It was absolutely as good as you described it.

I picked up the tpb of Mark Millar's "Wanted." It's pretty good, in a "Sleeper"-ish criminal espionage kind of way, but as I read it I occasionally get the feeling Millar's trying a little too hard to be edgy with his character names and f-bomb-laden dialogue, almost to the point where it doesn't ring true. Still, it's pretty good overall.

MARK WAID

August 17th, 2005
5-7pm
(Wednesday New Comics Day)



Meet the writer of Top Cow's
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and
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Superman Birthright

Autographs! Giveaways! Trivia!

EARTH-2 COMICS
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Just a heads up - InStockTrades.com (DCBS' TPB only site) has the first 3 Walking Dead trades for 40% off. So you can have them all for about $21 bones. Great price for an awesome title.

Can someone direct me to where I can find out what happened to DC's Animal Man? I used to read his series back in the 90's but I haven't seen or heard from him since then.

Also, I hear Captain Atom is going to be appearing in a Wildstorm comic later this year. I realize DC owns Wildstorm so are we to assume that all the heroes in the DC universe and the Wildstorm universe exist together?

Yeah, the Captain Atom comic was solicited in this month's previews. Seems related somehow to his recent appearance in Superman/Batman, but I'm not sure. Previous to this, Majestic came to the DC universe, so I guess there is crossover, probably some multiverse thing. Of course, there was also crossover between the marvel universe and the ultraverse, and look how that turned out.

All you need to know about Animal Man:

http://www.sequart.com/animalman.htm

It has a good run down of the series. Morrison's run was damn near brilliant. Milligan's follow-up was interesting. I started losing interest in the title when Veitch took over but kept collecting as it switched to a Vertigo title. I dropped it a few issues after the first arc.

It was great seeing Morrison writing for Animal Man again when the character showed up for his final JLA arc.

Hey I have been thinking about trying out Invincible after reading that #0 issue. I was probably going to get that new HC collection, but my question was "What volume of tpb do i need to pick up after the HC?"

Thanks!

Wait!
This is out?
My store told me that it's not out yet, and doesn't know when it will be.
Grrr!

The HC collects issues 1-13, which is the same as trade volumes 1-3. Trade paperback vol. 4 collects issues 14-19.

Hope that helps.

Glad you liked it, & you will have even more new Top Ten story in you hand this Wed, as the first new mini-series since the original comes out.

But I must say, it is just not the same without Alan Moore & Gene Ha behind it. It was good seeing Smax again though.

James thanks for the info on the invincible books! I will definitely pick up the HC if it collects the first 3 trades.

Despero?

i picked up the invincible hc and it was pretty solid. not as good as walking dead, but solid.

Is it just me, or is DC putting out some great reads lately? I mean, I don't read everything they put out, but what I do read....wow!

Just picked up the four issue Sacrifice arc. Read Superman 219 and really enjoyed it. I hope the next three are equally good.

(Giantrobo gets excited because he's desperate to talk to someone... anyone about anything that isn't Marvel/Indie stuff I might as well start my own DC comic thread and post to myself.)

I agree! I can't wait to see where all this is going. I mean everyone is PISSED THE HELL OFF in the DC Universe. Where is this all going?

Identity Group Counseling?

I was really upset that I had to go out of my normal titles to get the entire Sacrifice storyline, but I'm damn glad that I did. They really made it worth my while and I didn't feel cheated at all. Not in a zillion years would I have seen that coming.

I've read a couple of times that Nightwing is going to play a major role in the upcoming crisis, so I'm really curious to see how he's going to get worked into things as he's been relegated to the Outsiders stuff as far as I can tell.