Comic Reviews
Blogathon Best of 2012: Pre-2012 Comics – Crécy
Something that always seems to get lost in year-end lists is that no one experiences just new things. You always have a mix of new and old and the old always get lost. So, mixed in with my top ten comics of 2012, I will discuss five comics (in alphabetical order) that are from before 2012 that I read in 2012 and loved. We continue with… CRÉCY BY WARREN ELLIS AND RAULO CACERES!
Blogathon Best of 2012: #7 – Wonder Woman
We continue the countdown with the only regular DCU entry… WONDER WOMAN BY BRIAN AZZARELLO, CLIFF CHIANG, TONY AKINS, AND OTHERS!
Blogathon Best of 2012: #8 – Ultimate X-Men
We jump back into the countdown of my top ten comics of 2012 with a surprising book that I would have never guessed would make this list this time last year… ULTIMATE X-MEN BY BRIAN WOOD, PACO MEDINA, CARLOS BARBERI, AND OTHERS!
Blogathon Best of 2012: Pre-2012 Comics – 100%
Something that always seems to get lost in year-end lists is that no one experiences just new things. You always have a mix of new and old and the old always get lost. So, mixed in with my top ten comics of 2012, I will discuss five comics (in alphabetical order) that are from before 2012 that I read in 2012 and loved. We begin with… 100% BY PAUL POPE!
Blogathon Best of 2012: #9 – Scalped
We continue the top ten comics of 2012 with last year’s number one comic… SCALPED BY JASON ARRON, RM GUERA, AND OTHERS!
Blogathon Best of 2012: #10 – Prison Pit Book 4
We kick off the top ten countdown (with breaks for some of those pre-2012 books that made my 2012 so much better) at 10am with the comic on this list most suited to not being discussed at such an early hour… PRISON PIT BOOK FOUR BY JOHNNY RYAN!
What I bought – 23 January 2013
And now let us believe in the long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been. (Rainier Maria Rilke)
Review time! with The Nao of Brown
For some inexplicable reason, I didn’t order this when it showed up in Previews. Am I stupid? Blind? Insane? Well, it could be all three of those! But I have it now, and I’m going to review it!
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What I bought – 16 January 2013
If so, that impression was in his mind on that last day of 1807 when he was forty and played Surrey to Burr’s Wolsey, exclaiming to the ravening crowd that Burr had “no religious principles, and little, if any sense of reverence to a moral Governor of the Universe.” How could even an Adams purport to know such a thing? John Quincy Adams’s theologically trained father would have been aware that one makes a statement about the state of another person’s soul at great peril to one’s own. (Roger Kennedy, from Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson)
Let’s celebrate – it’s time for my Best Comics Of 2012!!!!
Yes, the new year can’t really begin until I chime in with my ill-informed and under-informed and generally all-around mis-informed Best Comics of 2012! Cronin may have posted one, Kelly may have posted one, but can we really trust those East Coast Liberal Elitists? Sonia may have posted one, but can we really trust those foreigners? I think not! Luckily, from the West comes an independent voice, one you can certainly trust! If you can’t trust someone who lives in Arizona, really, who can you trust????
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What I bought – 9 January 2013
She said, “In every age, there must be truths people can’t fight – whether or not they want to, whether or not they will go on being truths in the future. We live in the truth of what Freud discovered. Whether or not we like it. However we’ve modified it. We aren’t really free to suppose – to imagine – he could possibly have been wrong about human nature. In particulars, surely – but not in the large plan –” (A. S. Byatt, from Possession)
Review time! with Sharaz-De: Tales from the Arabian Nights
Well, I wish I had heard of Sergio Toppi before he died, but I guess it’s better than never having heard of him, right?
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What I bought – 2 January 2013
The writer was pacing. “I have never been a violent man. I don’t believe in violence. Violence does not advance the human condition. Ideas do.”
“Ideas don’t perish in prison cells,” Levanter said. “People do.” (Jerzy Kosinski, from Blind Date)
Best of 2012: Hawkeye and the Little-Known Precursor
I think we likely place too much emphasis on our “top ten” comic books of the year, as obviously with the thousands of comics out there in any given year, there is a much bigger difference between the cream of the crop and the bad books than there are between the best books. So rather than giving honorable mentions in my Top Ten Comics of 2012, I will spotlight a few of my favorites through New Year’s Day. – BC
One of the interesting things when it comes to popular culture is when you watch enough TV or read enough comics you begin to see intriguing little precursors that inform current works. Most common, of course, are TV show runners who have specific actors that they clearly enjoy working with, so you can always expect to see these actors pop up in the show runners’ new works (I know people keep expecting Amy Acker to show up in Joss Whedon’s new S.H.I.E.L.D. program). Similarly, if you followed John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad then you would be well prepared for how prominent Father Craemer turned out to be in Spectre (also, if you read Ostrander’s early Star Wars work, you would not have been as surprised at the reveal of the big bad guy in his Star Wars: Legacy story). I bring this up because there was a notable precursor to Matt Fraction and David Aja’s excellent new series, Hawkeye, that I think should be better known (besides, of course, the better known precursor that Fraction, Aja and colorist Matt Hollingsworth all did outstanding work on Immortal Iron Fist).
Review time! with Iron: Or the War After
So many anthropomorphic animal comics! You can’t escape them!
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