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...

Been really slacking on these again.  Which does highlight how little DC/Marvel I'm buying as singles right now.  If I don't count Vertigo imprint books, its a single title from each right now.  Mainline DC just isn't putting out much I want to follow and Marvel's $4 per issue thing is becoming more and more of deal breaker.  Including on the title I'm still getting in singles, New Warriors.  I'm liking this relaunch.  The characters, Yost's dialogue, the High Evolutionary based initial arc.  All good.  But I still may switch to trade waiting like I'm doing on Superior Foes, Ghost Rider, She-Hulk and the Daredevil relaunch.  'Cause $4 for a 20 page book is bullshit...

At least from the Big Two.  I'm ok with that price point for twenty pages of transgender action/adventure for IDW's Samurai Jack.  Plus shinier paper.  Or even better, $4 for twenty-TWO pages like kaboom!'s Adventure Time and Adventure TIme: the Flip Side.  Four bucks for Finn & Jake mistaking a nucleur silo for a traditional dungeon?  Or teaming with LSP to try and rig a prom election to get a monkey to kidnap a lady painting?  I'm down with that...

Hunh, Wonder Woman is only twenty pages as well.  Didn't notice that happening.  Still its sticking at the three dollar price point.  Plus its more cross-title setting with DC, and WW mostly avoids the general ongoing DCU stuff...

The Unwritten gang continue to try and make their way across broken London while avoiding the constant war stories.  But they do find out that Pullman is behind the whole thing, all part of another plot by him to try and slay the Leviathan...

Charles and Edwin and Crystal manage to avoid damnation and death and such in Dead Boy Detectives.  And someone gets to burn down their school.  Sure it was accident.  Mostly an accident...

Knights of the Dinner Table sticks to concentrating on the ongoing return of the uber-sword story.  With Brian and Sara getting an offer from said mad sword...

I'm pretty sure I missed an issue of Pretty Deadly at some point here.  Because there is otherwise an awful big jump in the story before it reaches the climax of this first arc...

In Invincible Universe, the Lizard King learns a valuable lesson.  Just 'cause you alter a person's DNA to make them a reptile, doesn't necessarily mean an alignment change.  And then IU goes on hiatus.  Again.  Hopefully when it gets started again it will have the same title.  I'd say even money on whether or not that happens...

Fatale picks back up with Jo and Nick and soon enough everything is all obsession and murder and stolen magic eyeballs...

This issue of Prophet gives some back-story on plant person Hiyonhoiagn and his race the Kinnian.  Plus..well plus the normal hard to accurately and easily describe scifi weirdness...

I'm starting to wonder if Police Chief Higgens' drive to arrest Lobster Johnson is entirely in the cause of Law & Order...

King Conan returns to the sea in pursuit of the Heart of Ahriman, gets captured by slavers and meets some old friends amidst the rowers.  And just like that Amra the Lion is reborn...

Empowered: Internal Medicine is another one-shot.  With Warren teaming with Brandon Graham on this one.  Graham is pretty damn amazing drawing Emp and Ninjette doing super-surgery on an alien spaceship baby...

And another one-shot from Dark Horse, this time Beasts of Burden: Hunters & Gatherers.  With the animal guardians of Burden Hill facing off against an invisible giant lizard monster.    And ending with an alliance between the Crows and the Rats.  Who still have their Rat King...

And finally a new Dark Horse Presents.  The main things interest for my in this one would be the "Nexus" story, a Kel McDonald Revolutionary-era balloon crossing of the English channel and the monstery mystery story involving kids teamed with the ghost of Davey Jones...

In this latest Saga someone gets shot, someone gets scared and someone gets stabbed.  These are all separate someones though...

Prophet is full of..um..stuff.  Stuff that happens.  And is crazy.  And also Troll flies into action as Badrock approaches.  Two things from the 90s I never thought I'd be interested in seeing...

While I missed the 2nd issue, I did get the latest itty bitty hellboy with the most adorable trip to Hell ever...

So this issue of King Conan is number six of six.  But next up is a six-volume mini, King Conan the Conquerer, with the exact same creative team.  And KC #6 has a bit of a floating ending.  So I'm not sure why Dark Horse decided to do two six-issue minis, rather than one twelve-issue one.  Even with a three month pause between them...

And finally the Adventure Time 2013 Spoooktacular.  This one-shot has the Ice King crashing a party, Finn & Jake encountering a Pumpkin Princess, Starchy's missing moustache and Marceline getting upset when people are nice to her after she pretends to be a nice person...

Even for two weeks that is a big ol' stack of comics. Ok there are two issues of King Conan 'cause I missed last months. Which would be bad because it has Conan killing a giant crazy gorilla. Again. And the next issue has a forest witch with a pet wolf and eagle...

I've got like one trade I think of Baltazar & Franco's Tiny Titans. But, while cute and funny, their DC never fully clicked with me. Still I can't resist seeing what they do with Hellboy's cast in the non-shockingly cute and funny itty bitty Hellboy...

Just when you think the Massive is a normal post-apocalyptic story with a ex-mercenary turned environmentalist turned nuclear power Wood throws some mystic mystery act curve ball...

Oh Dark Horse Presents how did you know what I've always been wanting is Peter Bagge crafting a comic about Alexander Hamilton?

And no more lengthy drug trip dreams or wandering the desert. Back to Conan the Barbarian and Belit killing dudes in search of phat loots. In this case cultists in a spooooky mysterious village...

And Lobster Johnson ends up working with the Tongs to take down the deadly Japanese agent who has been killing their couriers and stealing their money. Money meant to aid the Chinese resistance to the Japanese seizure of Manchuria...

Adventure Time books and comics! I demand you stop giving me sad feels for creepy weirdo Ice King!

Daredevil and Silver Surfer, working together to track down intergalatic scofflaws...

Young Avengers needs more Leah. And less sad Billy in the rain...

More family squabbling on Wonder Woman with Diana and War and Orion piling onto the Firstborn...

Ugh. There are still TWO more stupid issues of this stupid Fables/the Unwritten cross-over. So tired of it already...

And finally we've got the 200th issue of Knights of the Dinner Table. With a few retro strips to go with the ongoing story of Crush's Crime Nation campaign. Plus more SnarfQuest back-up and a return of the Brothers Grinn and Fuzzy Knights...

Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo written by Joe R. Lansdale, Drawn by Timothy Truman, Inks by Sam Glanzman, Colors by Sam Parsons and Letters by Todd Klein

Two-Gun Mojo was my introduction to both Jonah Hex and Lansdale. Its possible its even my first real introduction to Truman, before I found Grimjack even. Hex is a scarred Civil War vet turned bounty hunter. And thanks to various animated appearances on Batman: the Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave & The Bold he's probably DC's best known Old West character...

In "Two-Gun Mojo" Lansdale mixes together his two favorite genres, Westerns and Horror. Here he uses a two-bit snake-oil salesman and his carnival of freaks that cross paths with Hex. And making them especially dangerous is that one of the freaks is the animated corpse of legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock...

The story is as violent as a Peckinpah movie and darkly humorous. Lansdale and Truman are both recognized master's in their fields and letterer Klein has more Eisner nominations than I've got fingers. Together with Glanzman and Parsons they craft a classic tale of murder, vengeance and dark magics...

Yes, I know Sunday is past, but I was sleeping...



Conan and the Songs of the Dead by Joe Lansdale, art by Timothy Truman

Lansdale and Truman on any book is an easy sale. The two doing Conan? That doesn't even require thinking about. In "Songs of the Dead" Conan rescues a friend who's been buried in the desert by cultists of Set. The friend had stolen an artifact for a sorceror. Which leads the two of them to seeking out another artifact, which leads to a book, which leads to Conan chopping zombies into dogmeat. Plus of course beautiful women who sex up the barbarian, uppity caravan masters who get their fool heads chopped off and all kinds of dark sorceries. So a normal week's work for the Cimmerian...