We visited several different comic book stores last week and Jess and Isaiah took some pictures at one. The mood, more and more, is along the lines of Bomb Queen (check out the poster above) and we'll assume that has to do with the economy.
It's an economy that's leading to all sorts of 'bargains' if you're a customer but not if you own a comic book store. For example, DC comics just finished their online sale -- that lasted all of June -- where you entered "LANTERN" and got "25% OFF ALL DC COMICS & BACK ISSUES!" It's why the upcoming debut issue of Snarked ("From The Muppet Show's Harvey Award Winner Roger Langridge") will sell for "ONLY $1." It's why clever comic collectors are making big bucks these days buying up the discards many comic book stores are now letting go for 25 cents a piece.
And it's probably why novelty items include the frightening one below.
What's with those teeth and is the doll cross-eyed?
In better times, we might still see some celebrity comics.
Some. Not all. Only in an economy that is hurting and possibly on its last legs could anyone think the country needed a Kathy Griffin comic.
We didn't read it, but we'd guess it's a comic about a woman who, two decades ago, was a third banana on a sitcom no one watched and has gone on to even lesser fame.
What did we read? Five comics for a quick overview.
The Walking Dead Weekly, No. 23, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn opens with a fist fight over whether a man killed a woman. The fight continues for seventeen black & white pages before the news comes that Allen (another character) is dead -- thereby stopping the fight. Image Comics puts out the one-note weekly and also is the publisher of The Intrepids by Kurtis Wiebe, Scott Kowalchuk and Donna Gregory. Issue number four of The Intrepids actually has color pages and a journey taken by the character Crowe -- a journey that can hold the reader's interest. By page 18, things really start to change and the last page is truly a cliffhanging suprise.
Richard Moore's Ladies of the Night debut issue is little more than a poorly drawn peep show. The Antartic Press produces that comic while Max's Comics puts out Deadpool by David Lapham, Shawn Crytal and John Raunch. Deadpool is a comic which appears to exist to wrap wicked humor around grotesque images of women, especially in issue 9.
We're back to Image Comics for Hack/Slash by Tim Seeley and Kyle Strahm. In issue five, Fantomah "Mystery Woman of the Jungle" returns in stylish throwback to comic's first golden age before quickly morphing into a state of the art style that still manages to retain some of the warmth of the first golden age.