GRRRRRAAAAARGH! Stop, stop, stop, STOP relaunching long-running series every five years or so to get the cheap sales hit of having a new issue #1! They don’t put the issue numbers on there as advertisements, they put them on there so that you can tell which order to read the freaking issues in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry. Captain America Volume Whatever reminded me of this.

I always think 12 year old, or really young teenager.

Middletons art looks nice, but when he draws girls, it creeps me out.
Take Meridian – his fantasy world/technology was great, but I didn’t need to see up-skirt shots of what at first appeared to be a 12 year old girl.

Seriously, though: Thanks for mentioning us! Issue #2 is a 100% improvement on #1, and we can’t wait for folks to see it. You guys will get the first two for sure. I can send out high end printouts, but I’d rather get them pro printed, bound, and send ‘em that way.

Thanks again!

I took another look at the cover. Given that the figure is pretty short on detail, I’m curious as to what makes you read her as young. I’m guessing that (consciously or otherwise), it’s the size of her breasts, which is (I think) an interesting comment on how women are generally drawn on comic book covers.
Cheers.

Grendel: Definately start with Devil by the Deed, which reprints the Mage back up series that really launched the character. When this comes out, this is what you should get! But I’ll warn you, the rest of the series is MUCH different from this book.

Manhunter: I read the first issue of it and thought it was really bad, very cliched. But with all the love it’s getting, I keep thinking that maybe I was wrong and I should pick up the trade. I think this might be one of those “found the trade cheap at a con” type deals.

Age of Bronze: Sorry, but it just reads better as a book. I wish I had waited for the collected version of Berlin, and I’m not making that mistake again. Image has to figure out a better way to market the title.

On Mahunter – it’s alright. Decent enough book, but way over hyped, and trying a little to hard to be realistic. It’s one thing to have a female character who smokes, but damn does it get old having a character mention it EVERY ISSUE.
Also there’s a scene where she lights a smoke off the oven, and goes on about how degrading it was and what sad old smoker she must be. That’s rubbish – every smoker has done it, and the majority of us never thought twice.
So yeah, good read, but just tries a little too hard to be gritty.

Age Of Bronze – I love that book, but I’m sticking to trades. I always assumed the singles would have been a loss leader on that one. Their infrequent, and the material, although some of the best comic work out there, lends itself more to the bookshop crowd than the comic shop crowd.
What school library could afford to go without it?

I don’t think God and The Devil and Devil’s Reign have actually made it into trades yet – which is unfortunate seeing as (for my tastes) that was when Grendel got really good.

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t (or will ever) have kids, but
sales of the comic are on the crapper and I fear that it
might be cancelled before the story’s completion – which
would be a Very Bad Thing.

So, please, I beg you to switch, say, one of your Marvel
books to TPB only (Marvel is pretty much TPBing
everything right now) and buy Age of Bronze. Pretty
please. With sugar on top.

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

Yes, Cap apologizes for America’s various old war crimes, but it’s notable that all the actual crimes discussed take place long ago in the past, and the clear implication is that modern America has learned from its mistakes and just doesn’t do that sort of thing any more – that the war on terror is more or less untarnished by the innocent victims and moral compromises of the Cold War.

In other words, the specter of Dresden is raised only so it can be dismissed. The idea isn’t to compare America’s past misdeeds to today’s terrorism and show that America, too, has blood on its hands, but to compare America’s past misdeeds to America’s current, and supposedly pure, deeds today, to show that now we truly are fighting the good fight.

So to sum up: you get America personified by Captain America, putting the Ghosts of Atrocities Past behind him to fight a purer, better fight, versus an Arab terrorist whose one goal is to destroy America because he’s been “blinded by hate.” It’s not liberalism; it’s rather simple jingoism dressed up as maturity.

Now most of the people who have written Cap historically have been lefties; At least most of the people who have written Cap well.

But at least you got the sense that, say, Engelhart or Dematties or Kirby at least kind of LIKED America. As opposed to J.N.R. Who doesn’t.

John Ney Reiber’s Captain America was truly wretched, but I don’t remember it being a “America is the real terrorist” take. I remember it being ridiculously conservative and hypernationalistic. Are we talking about the same comic?

You can certainly debate how liberal it was, but it was far, far from a conservative comic book.

The terrorist bad guys were supplied by SHIELD, there was a bit comparing the bombing of Dresden to 9/11 (“History repeats itself”), Cap apologizes for America – it might not be a “liberal” book, but it sure wasn’t conservative.

That’s very true; Morrison is very much a fan of self-conscious camp. In fact when I read those names the only thing that really surprised me was that they were coming from Ostrander, who tends to have a more level head.