Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Day Seventeen: This week in the funny books...

Ah, what to say, what to say...

I would have updated during my lunch break today, but I spent my lunch break going to Bedrock City Comics to catch up on the books I've missed the last couple of weeks, and that ended up taking a bit longer than I thought it would. Then, I had about a week and a half of touring office work to get caught up on (and I'm still not quite there, but I'm confident that by 5:00 tomorrow I'll be back on track).

I went ahead and bought Amazing Spider-Man #583 (or, as most people would know it, the Barack Obama issue). I know I made this big deal two weeks ago about how lame it was that people flocked to this book while meanwhile just a few rows over Batman was (not really) dying, but I've been picking up ASM pretty regularly for the last month or so, and the President is really only in a special story in the lat five pages, and I know that some day this particular book is going to be a collector's item (as opposed to most of the comics I've bought, which most people will never care about), so I picked it up. (Side note: $1.00 more expensive than normal books. Lame.)

Overall, it's kind of a nice issue. I mean, nothing really happens. It's mostly about the relationship between Peter Parker and his friend Betty Brant, and it's a pretty sweet story in all of that. But really, almost no Spidey appearances at all until the "Spidey Meets the President" story at the end. (Which was exceedingly lame; whether you like President Obama or not, this is a really pathetic story, though it's got some nice one-liners and is fine for what it is: a tribute to a man who is a life-long Spider-Man fan and well wishes for the future of the country) All in all, the book seemed like one of those "And now for something completely different" moments in the current story arc.

Other BCC highlights for the week include the new New Avengers book, in which (spoilers!) Luke Cage and Jessica Jones get their baby back from the Skrull who kidnapped her and Luke bashes Bullseye and Venom with a crowbar and breaks his word to join up with Osborn. All in all, one of the biggest cliff-hangers at the end of Secret Invasion is wrapped up with very little pomp and ceremony two NA issues later. A bit confusing, but a good story nevertheless. (end spoilers)

Meanwhile, Avengers: The Initiative continues to be one of the coolest books out there. Very glad I stumbled upon this one during SI.

In other news, The Thing is engaged to a kindergarten teacher, which is good, but Dr. Doom's genocidal mentors are coming to our dimension while the Fantastic Four go to Scotland on vacation, which is bad. Don't worry, though. I'm sure everything will be smooth sailing again before 2010.

I'd like to see a storyline in a couple of years where the super heroes battle the Mayan gods to keep the world from ending in the year 2012.

No, I'm kidding. That would actually be lame.