A Descent into Dullness

Two weeks of comics and three of them Conan comics.  Van Lente's Conan the Avenger where young-ish Conan continues to try and replace heart-ache and loss with blood-shed and cheap sex.  Then old man Conan finishes his tale of when middle-aged Conan retook his kingdom and married his second great love in King Conan.  And finally the match-up demanded by all begins with the first issue of Groo Vs. Conan.  With Aragones joined by Thomas Yeates, who I'm guessing does the non-cartoony Conan bits...

I like Fejzula's art on Veil.  The story doesn't really hold up as well sadly.  Especially when compared to Fatale, which has its big finale issue.  And traps are sprung and lives are ended and happy endings are in short supply...

Also up, more of Burbaker's burned spy Velvet where, among other moments, we see what moment led to her being moved to an administration position...

Prophet sort of finishes up with plenty of future weirdness and alien nightmare monsters.  And what looks to be the two "good" John Prophets joining forces for the upcoming Prophet Earth War mini-series...

Saga gives us a rampaging janitor, a drugged out actress, a pet walrus monster and Prince Robot learning of the murder of his wife and birth of his son...

Malcolm Dragon is held prisoner by the Freaks of the Danger Zone neighborhood in Savage Dragon.  While Dart II sends her Vicious Circle goons out hunting for him...

With Wonder Woman captured by the First Born, its all out war between his forces and the residents, old and new, divine and mortal, of Paradise Island...

Tom Taylor continues his quest for the Grail in the Unwritten: Apocalypse, gaining headway by playing with the story tropes for the setting.  While Pullman throws some obstacles in his way from differing story concepts...

Dead Boy Detectives has Crystal forcing Charles to meet with his living half-sister and learn more of his family...

Amidst all the fun of violent smugglers and pacifist Harkonen refugees, the Alien Legion's Force: Nomad see the return of Jugger Grimrod's ol' "pal" Pike.  Which is to say one of the many people with a grudge and a gun...

The dread Aku devises a new plan to put an end to Samurai Jack. Direct invasion of his brain in order to destroy his memories!

And finally more Turtles in Time: TMNT.  Currently, for given values of currently, the turtle brothers are in Feudal Japan.  Specifically at the moment of their (and their father's) previous incarnations.  Almost worth it alone for Mikey's joy at getting to hug his mom...

Didn't get to the shop today, but still a huge pile from the previous two weeks.  Starting with the Legend of Bold Riley by Leia Weathington (words) and Jonathon Dalton (drawings).  I recall having read some of the earlier issues of this online years back and meaning to get the collected print book for those.  Which, I see from the in-house ads, is still available.  The titular Riley is a wandering lesbian adventurer in a fantasy India setting...

Samurai Jack spends an issue wandering some crystalline caves and fighting a small army of his twisted mirror duplicates.  As wandering heroes are wont to do...

After Finn wrecks Anti-Ghost Princess' anti-ghost equipment and frees all her captured jerk ghosts in Adventure Time.  Leading Princess Bubblegum to come up with a plan to turn all the citizens of Candy Kingdom into ghosts to solve the ghost problem.  Probably not going to be her finest moment...

Wonder Woman works to convince her sisters to help her in the raising of godling Zeke.  While Hermes and Dio take a trip to the Underworld after seeing the Dead wandering the world...

The Dead Boy Detectives (and their new Living Celebrity Girl partner) use their contacts among the supernatural set to solve the Case of the Bisected Girl...

The latest the Unwritten: Apocalypse checks in with Pauly the Former Rabbit and Lord of Hell.  Who mostly wants to go back to being a Rabbit in a children's story...

Invincible has the start of Mark attempting to put a stop to Robot's plans for global domination.  Things don't begin well...

The main thing to take from this issue of Prophet is it has Dave Taylor doing all the art.  Normally you only see him doing colors.  Beyond that its more of the normal theme, far future scifi weird awesomeness...

New Saga!  Yay!  Opening with the vaginal birth of a baby royal Robot.  Plus bad acting!  Going to playgrounds!  No Lying Cat.  Boo!

Velvet spends most of its current issue flashbacking to 1956 and her spy marriage and 1946 for her spy training...

Southern Bastards gets some setting laid out as well as the likely main antagonist, Coach Boss...

King Conan fights a lady vampire in the Temple of Set.  And Conan the Avenger partners with his former witch-hunter opponent to battle some zombies...

And finally Dark Horse Presents, with the second half a "Usagi Yojimbo" story, as well as some Mike Mignola, Jaime Hernandez and Kel McDonald short pieces...

A pair of heavy weeks, with fifteen titles between them.  Rat Queens is still a violent, drunken delight for my D&D playing heart.  With some more character backstory and heartache leading to the reveal of who hired the anti-adventurer assassins...

I'm liking the concept and set-up of Pretty Deadly and its Weird West setting.  But I'm having a hard time tracking all the varied characters and sub-plots.  Still its only issue two so hopefully things will get clearer...

Savage Dragon goes with a big ol' execution fake out.  Plus Dart II stabs a dude in his eyes.  With darts.  That explode.  Owey...

This time around Saga has romance and vomiting and journalism.  IN MAGIC SPAAAAAAACE...

The main focus for Knights of the Dinner Table seems to be setting up for another Crutch centric arc, though there is still more of the Knights ongoing (with Weird Pete sitting in for an absent Dave) as well as a Black Hands game...

If its not one crazy sibling (Strife or Hermes) Wonder Woman has to deal with, its another (Siracca, Milan or Cassandra)...

Samurai Jack fights some twins and gets another magic thread thingy.  I mean first he tries to be all reasonable but then its fight time.  Then rematch time after he loses the first fight...

Marceline and Princess Bubblegum race for a safe room as the pink goo continues to smother the Candy Kingdom.  Just as Finn & Jake arrive hoping to get help from the ladies in Adventure Time...

The Young Avengers basically call up their entire social network friends list of super humans to help them face Mother and her posse of exes plus all those screwed up alternate universe Thems she subverted.  And Leah lets Loki in on a secret...

Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe involves teaming up with magical themed heroes Scarlet Witch, Ghost Rider, Dr. Strange and Deadpool (look hes got a Fairy Wand ok) to assault the S.H.I.E.L.D. hellicarrier.  Now run by the Order half of the In-Betweener.  Also where his ex (not that he remembers) Dazzler works...

Daredevil gets healed by, fights and then teams up with the Legion of Monsters against a Son of the Serpent sort of wizard.  With Jason Copland filling in and trying to ape Chris Samnee's pencils...

itty bitty Hellboy and friends go to Heaven and meet aliens.  Or do they?

The Massive's post-apocalypse environmentalists get shown up by Norse whalers in long boats.  Though maybe the head whaler dude should have remembered that before becoming a peacenik enviro-activist, Callum Isreal was some kind of elite mercenary assassin thing...

Conan the Barbarian and Belit the Pirate Queen head into their final arc with "the Song of Belit".  I wish I knew how to do those accent things over her name...

Amidst the latest Dark Horse Presents is a Roman dragon fighter story by Fred Van Lente, a non-Usagi Stan Sakai anthromorphic animal tale and the last bit of the aging luchador vs. mutant vampires story...

Two weeks worth of comics because..well because..um..because shut up thats why. Yeah, thats why...

Starting with some Courtney Crumrin, with Courtney and her teacher on the road and battling the hunters of the Council...

Then a one-shot return to Marvel's zombie Earth for Van Lente with Marvel Zombies Halloween. And a survivor story with a holiday appropriate guest spot...

Next Daredevil reveals the mastermind behind the whole Matt-is-crazypants plot. And while I can always appreciate a good D-level villain reinvents themselves tale I still am amazed that Daredevil figures out who it is without ever even thinking "vampire". 'Cause I totally would have gone with vampire...

the Dark Avengers face off against the returned full team of Thunderbolts. They don't come off so well. Especially as that includes a re-empowered Cain Marko...

Saucer Country is past the world/mythos building to get back to the focus on the joint presidential race/x-files investigation...

Decided to at least try out the new Sword of Sorcery title from DC, since Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld was always one of those off-genre bits of the DCU I've been curious about. Its a decent if somewhat stereotypical lost heir to the magical kingdom thing. Still its a hard sell at $4 for 20 pages with the "extra" value of a re-imagined Beowulf back-up story....

Wonder Woman begins its new big story arc with Diana and her allies, including a banished from Olympus Hera, looking for allies amidst Zeus other demi-divine children...

Glory and company set off from her base to begin searching for her little sister, Nanaja. Who is basically Glory with all the brakes taken off...

And then we've got Savage Dragon with more alien invasion aftermath for Malcom and Angel Dragon. Plus some more violent overreaction by the new Overlord...

Then its this week starting with the Unwritten. And Tommy goes on a walkabout back into the world's of fiction by after hearing the Australian whale origin myth of Kondili...

I also grabbed the A-Babies Vs. X-Babies one-shot. 'Cause Skottie Young and Gurihiru writing and drawing half the Marvel Universe as brawling babies is too adorable for words...

Over on Adventure Time Finn & Jake engage in multiple time trips and crazy Princess Bubblegum science-ings in order to get back to the status quo they started from...

The majority of the Knights of the Dinner Table cast is still at Garycon. Where we learn that Felicia Day is so magical she can even overcome Brian's near crippling shyness around women he's attracted too...

And then a doubleshot of Brandon Graham. First off with the scifi crazy awesomeness of Prophet. And then a different kind of scifi crazy with the return of his Multiple Warheads series. Which is totally crammed with visual puns and concepts, much like his King City. MW follows Sexica, former alien organ smuggler and her werewolf boyfriend Nikou as they go on a road trip in search of a new life and home...

After that Invincible wraps up the Flaxan/Robot/Monster Girl story. Relationships are rebuilt, secrets are revealed, secrets are kept, love is confessed and awkward sex is had. Not necessarily all by the same people...

And finally a new Dark Horse Presents. With "Finder" getting the main cover this time around. Plus a "Mr. Monster" story that features Munden's Bar...

Ok, lets get to this big ol' stack. Beginning with Marvel and Annihilators Earthfall. Where now our cosmic dudes and the Avengers are working together to try to stop Space-Church and the Magus. I still love Ronan talking smack to Cap. Though I wish the art was better. Like the stuff in the Rocket Raccoon vs. Mojo back-up...

And then more Captain America team-up with the "bad" Thunderbolts group working with Cap and Namor to rescue robot Human Torch from original Baron Zemo. Which somehow leads to Namor and Satanna sharing a sexy, sexy bath together...

Avengers Academy has Pym needing some help with energy analysis of Jocasta's murder. So of course he calls up the X-Men to get Magneto to do it. 'Cause he's a good guy again right now. Leading to fun family times with Pietro and Quicksilver's protege Finesse. And props to her for being ballsy enough to attack Mags with a pair of fuckin' batons. Not the smartest move, but high points for guts...

Away from Marvel to Image with a new supers book from Paul Grist (Kane and Jack Staff). Featuring a teen hero named Mud Man. Who looks to have mud powers, natch. Not much just yet, but I'm hopeful given Grist's previous work...

Also a new Invincible, where we go back to space and Allan the Alien and Oliver. Where Nolan briefs Allan on what happened with the last of Viltrumites and Earth...

And now DC. Starting with Wonder Woman, with Brian Azzarello shaking up the status quo of Diana's origin. One that shakes her basic belief in herself and her family...

I'm still not sure about everything on the revamped Blue Beetle. Except for the whole making La Dama actually a bad guy in attitude. She always seemed to soft in the original for someone who supposedly had a hard-core reputation...

And then the Shade isn't dead. Which, of course isn't much of a shock. But for now he's off on a quest to find out who hired Deathstroke and wants to try and make him dead...

On the Vertigo side the zombie mini-apocalypse is mostly over in iZombie. Though both the Dead Presidents and the Hunter group are still lurking about. So Gwen's trying to lay low hiding in her crypt. And Spot attempts to date a dude...

The Unwritten takes a look back into the past, with stops in China's giant destruction of knowledge, some Hearst paper political cartooning and a certain Mr. Guttenberg. All as part of Tommy's Dad's journals and the search for the conspiracy's origin...

Scalped keeps racing to the end, with a couple players getting taken off the board. And Shunka and Dash moving to a confrontation...

And next up is a new Dark Horse Presents. The "Finder" story this time around is a ghost story. Plus a quirky little short piece from Fabio Moon. And a new "Beasts of Burden" story involving Midevil war dogs and a basilisk...

Dungeons & Dragons continues to examine the love lives of the dwarven folk. And how that involves hitting monsters with hammers. Kinky, kinky dwarven folk...

And happily a new Rasl. Not a huge amount of story this issue, but a lot of the life of Tesla. And I'm always up for more Tesla biography stuff...

Also the final issue of Comic Book Comics. Looking at the rise of the graphic novel, the arrival of the direct market and the boom and bust black & white and 90's speculator periods...

And finally a new Knights of the Dinner Table. Mostly Nitro and the PeeWees on the HackMaster front. With the Knights taking a break for a Halloween game of not-Call of Cthulu...

The shop didn't have my new Xombi or Dungeons & Dragons which makes me unhappy. They did have the finale for the Power Man & Iron Fist mini-series where the duo beat up an army of racist skinheads while breaking into Rikers. Which makes me less sad...

Actually got the most recent Comic Book Comics. With this issue covering much of the copyright, trademark and creator's rights issues that have plagued the field since its start...

The second issue of the Li'l Depressed Boy in a geek/hipster kind of way. This issue involves bowling and trying to learn a person's name without actually asking it...

Guarding the Globe is full of interesting new characters. Too full at times. In addition to the previously used heroes and villains we get seven new characters. Two old Kirkman characters from Capes, the rest all new as far as I can tell. Add in numerous fight scenes (which themselves feel rushed) and thats not much space for character and story. I mean I love that they have a French super-powered pug dog but it would nice if the bad guys had a real motivation beyond Because We're Super-Crazy Evil...

iZombie is similar in that it has a zombie and a ghost and a were-terrier and a possessed chimp and a mummy and Promethean/created woman and a flock of vampires and a rogue vampire and a pair of monster hunters and probably some people I'm forgetting. But Roberson and Allred seem to work the limited space better and the characters are better defined with real motivations and personalities...

And Chris Roberson again with the second issue of Cinderella: Fables are Forever. Cindy reminisces about past meetings with rogue Fable Dorothy Gale as well as the "Shadow" Fable communities of Russia and China...

A decent sized haul this week, with a couple of new mini-series and a new book I'm trying out. The new book being Li'l Depressed Boy from Image. About a human sized sock-puppet guy who meets a girl. And creator S. Steven Struble turned out to be right about the band Khepi Ghoulie...

ps238principal has said that he will most likely stop doing floppy editions for ps238 in the near future. Probably going the webcomic and trade-paperback route that the Foglio's took with Girl Genius. I'm betting he'll go two more issues and end at issue 50. This time around continues the inter-dimensional hijinx with the VonFoggs and Zodon and his recruited classmates. And getting more on the back-stories of Zodon and the Praetorian Academy's Headmaster...

Over on the Unwritten Tommy moves on after breaking the story in Moby Dick, ending up aboard ship with Sinbad...

And while I've been feeling burned out on Willingham's Fables and Jack of Fables, I'm very glad to get a new Cinderella mini. In Cinderella: Fables are Forever, the Fable super-spy may be dealing with a rogue Fable she thought she'd killed and buried...

Zack Overkill continues on his double or triple or whatever level undercover mission at the midpoint of Incognito: Bad Influences. At the same time a new Lazarus is leaving a bloody mark in the criminal community, one that overlaps onto innocent civilians...

Heroes for Hire moves from drugs and guns to human trafficking. And has Misty recruiting Moon Knight again, since Paladin is busy with freelance work. Though really he's attempting to find out exactly WHERE Misty is and what may be wrong. Leading to a confrontation with Iron Fist...

The co-star of the new 5-issue Power Man and Iron Fist. With his partner/trainee being the new Power Man, Victor Alvarez. Written by Fred VanLente, I decided to try get this mini after hearing nothing but good things about his Power Man mini that tied into Shadowland. One of the few things I heard anything good about that Daredevil based event...

Update was delayed due to LJ or just my connection to it going out last night, then me crashing hard for the night. Though it was a very light pull week. Only three titles in fact...

First up is War of Kings: Ascension. Which seems to mostly be a continuation of the Darkhawk two-shot, except written by regular Cosmic Marvel scribes Abnett and Lanning. So, you know, considerably less emo than Cebulski. Though, because its Darkhawk, still some emo. I'm actually more interested in whats going on with the dying, just-barely survived Skrull commander floating in space from having the Inhumans blow up his fleeing armada. The one who has a glowy diamond that looks like Darkhawk's amulet approach him...

Then I again return to the Marvel Zombies concept. Stupid Van Lente being such a good writer. Marvel Zombies 4 kicks off with a terrible Greg Land cover (quick guess which wrestler he light-boxed to make Demian Hellstorm) and the new Midnight Sons clearing a cruise ship of zombie Fish-Men while hunting MZ-Earth Deadpool's head. Which apparantly escaped with the help of Simon Garth - Zombie. And it turns out, regular zombies like Garth aren't tasty to the Hunger Virus zombies. Oh yeah, and this issue has Black Talon, who's a voodoun bokor that dresses like a rooster...

And lastly we've got the Secret Six with Deadshot and Scandal going on a double-date. And beating up on people. Its probably the strongest issue of the new volume so far. And a bonus story that looks at one of Ragdoll's dreams, drawn in the style of Tiny Titans. That boy just ain't right...