The BEST NEW SINGLE PRINT COMICS I READ in 2012

Hi pals.  This is NOT a "best of" list for 2012 or anything like that.  I may do that later.  This is just a collection of all the comics that I named as my "BEST SINGLE NEW PRINT COMIC I READ THIS WEEK" in my Other Comics News Parade-O-Links columns during 2012.  I did not start the Parade-O-Links until May and did not start with the BEST NEW PRINT reviews until sometime later.  Also, I did not necessarily post them every week because maybe I forgot.  The only criteria taken into account for eligibility in my weekly post was that I had read it in that week.  For, the most part they were new or new-ish.  For the most part the were single issue pamphlet print comics bought in a direct market comic book shop.  Sometimes they were not.  I think they were always comics.  Here are the links to each review:

Animal Man #0

The Surrogates Case Files #2

Bezoar

Savage Dragon #182

Batman Incorporated #4

Superman #13

Action Comics #14

Adventure Time #10

Action Comics #15

Marceline and the Scream Queens #6
Patrick Dean's Big Deal Comics & Stories Issue #12 "A Weekend at the Atwood"
The Amazing Spider-Man #700

Hmm.  So yeah.  Pretty random but that has more to do with my reading habits than it does the quality of the books that came out in 2012.  Not a lot of Marvel in there.  I did read plenty of new Marvel comics but I'll just say that, in general, the colors in any average 2012 Marvel comic were just so awful, terrible, horrific and bad that it is hard for me to put any of them beside the word "best".  I only managed 12 this year because the Parade-O-Links has been a work in progress.  Maybe I'll get closer to a "best" review in 2013.  Hope to see you there.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 12022012

(Spain Rodriguez poster art stolen from Larry Rippee and Molly Rea Art.)

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 12022012:

“It seems to refer to the core of the American vision or the democratic vision, that there’s an aspect of yourself that you owe to your society in terms of omission and commission, but there’s an aspect of your life that you don’t owe to anybody. This is something that there’s a constant fight over. In terms of underground comix they certainly broke through that fifties fantasy that conservatives are so dedicated to maintaining, despite that fact that it was a fantasy in the fifties, and now it’s an absurd charade. Comic books are really something that are part of some core of this country. And that’s the struggle.  Liberty and justice for all should mean you can say what you want. Unless you can show some tangible harm I’m doing to somebody, fuck off. That’s the battle line I want to be on. I intend to remain here until they carry me away on my back. If it doesn’t sound too grandiose, I think the undergrounds were really a continuation of the American Revolution. Hell, it sounds too grandiose, but so what?”  -Spain Rodriguez. 

(Image stolen from The Comics Reporter.)

• Comics titan Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez passed away.  Here is a nice piece about him from The Comics Journal.  Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has a thorough index here.  Danny Hellman posted some great Screw covers here. 
• Grant Morrison versus Alan Moore as annotated by Grant Morrison.  It is amazing how much easier Google search makes a feud.  Honestly, I love a good rivalry.  The nastier the better.  I don't have to choose sides.  I'm happy to enjoy the spectacle.  I think that comes from having grown up watching professional wrestling.  There is always a rivalry in wrestling and it is (almost) always fake so I've been conditioned to sit back and enjoy without ever worrying about who is telling the truth.  I will say this though.  I became aware of Moore, Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman  and all those UK guys around the same time.  If anything, Moore was the last of them that I ever read.  Other than maybe some Superman comics, the first time I read Moore and was aware of him being a big deal was probably those Spawn comics he did.  But it was weird, how anytime you read an interview with any of the UK guys in the early 90s the interviewer would ask them about Alan Moore and Watchmen.  As if all the UK guys just HAD to be influenced by him.  And for the most part they would all be nice.  "Oh, yeah Alan's great, Watchmen is great, but um, I've been writing comics in the UK for a decade or so..."  It reminds me of Pete Townshend being asked over and over about The Beatles.  At some point you've had enough and you say the biggest pop group on Earth are "flippin' lousy". 

(Image stolen from Joe Hunter.)

• Speaking of Grant Morrison... the Supercontext marches on. 
• But enough with the antagonism.  Here are girl scouts making comics. 
• And smoochies!
• "But all superheroes catch people at some point in time. Otherwise they're not as super as they think they are."
• Rich Barrett on digital comics. 

• Last week I did not get to check out Robert Newsome's podcast until after my Parade-O-Links when up but here it is/was.  And here is this week's tunes. 
• Jason Horn on his Nijasaur app. 
• World class cartoonist and man on the street Rich Tommaso takes over Fox 5 News.
• "Drop your punchline Joker!"

• Tom Spurgeon puts on his digital comics hat.  Cyber Spurge!
• Speaking of digital comics, my pal Jeremy Massie is through the first chapter of his webcomic, All My Ghosts.  It's great!  And it was his birthday this week so happy birthday pal. 
• The Punisher and other nasty comics dudes are burning in hell.  
• Julia Wertz talks to the LA Times. 
• Jimi Hendrix would have been 70 this week.  Here is a comic I made about that time he took some punk dude to Electric Ladyland. 
• Charles Schulz, the most important human the United States has ever produced, would have been 90 this week. 
• For absolutely no reason at all other than that I spend a good amount of time thinking about The Great Kabuki- "Get your Asian in the ring!"

• One of my favorite Brad McGinty pieces is/was the November cover of Big Issue.  King Kong y'all!  Life is weird people and sometimes it just all seems to come from or be going to the same place.  In issue 2 of my favorite comic, The Invisibles, the main character is selling Big Issue.  I read that before I ever became pals with Brad McGinty.  Years latter, I'm sitting in front of a computer monitor talking about Brad being on the cover while I'm wearing a Brad McGinty t-shirt.  I don't know what any of that means. 
• Here is a neat post on movie ads in comics.  When I read old comics, the movie ads are great for helping me place the comic into the context of its time. 
• The Ink Panters Banthas make a sneak return to talk Star Wars 
• Another critics round table at Inkstuds.  And in putting this together I notice that a show with Box Brown just went up. 
• Dustin Harbin did a neat illo for Charlotte Mag.  And this Miles Davis print might be my favorite Dharbin piece yet.  

THE BEST NEW PRINT COMIC I READ THIS WEEK

(Image stolen from Comics Alliance.)
...was Adventure Time no. 10 by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb, Jon M. Gibson, Jim Rugg and some other people.  And really, it was no contest.  I read some other new comics that were okay.  The new Grant Morrison Batman Inc. was about as good as a Batman comic book can possibly be.  The new Bendis All-New X-Men was pretty good but the colors are just terrible.  The new Superman was okay but just two issues in they already have the new team bogged down in a crossover.  But Adventure Time was the best.   The main story is a choose your own adventure thing that was a lot of fun and full of great jokes.  I read it three times to try different options.  My daughter read it four times.  But the main attraction in this comic as far as I'm concerned was the back up story which Jim Rugg drew in ball point pen on notebook paper.  It is fantastic.  And I can see this thing really inspiring a lot of kids to make comics.  Not that it looks like the kind of thing anyone could do.  Quite the contrary.  Rugg's art is outstanding.  I think it will inspire kids because they can see the tools right there on the page.  They can look at it and think, hey, I've got ball point pens, I've got paper, I could do that.  This one could be a game changer for crafty young Adventure Time kids out there.  Comics Alliance has a preview that shows a good bit of Rugg's ball point magic. 

• And finally... song of the year.

Oh, and one more last thing!  Did you know you can leave comments on these posts here at file under other?  It's true!  And, I'll probably respond.  Twitter and facebook killed the message boards but that's no reason why you can't argue with me, praise me or leave me recipes.  It's your intronet.  Have fun!

And that's just a taste of some of the interesting things going out there in the wonderful world of comics and things. I can't keep up with it all but I do keep up with a lot of it on twitter and I try to re-tweet the good stuff. You should probably follow me there. If you did something to make comics better this week then high-five!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

Random Mainstream Meltdown 07172012

Hey pals.  Why don't we talk for just a second about some random mainstream monthly periodical floppy comics that are lying about my house?  Yes, let's do that thing.

The Walking Dead #100 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and a bunch of other people.  Published by Image Comics.  $3.99.

So this comic is the biggest deal ever or at least since back in the days when comics sold in the millions.  Apparently it sold out of it's initial print run of close to 400,000 copies in a day or so.  Whoopeee!  When I was in the local comic shop  video game store that sells comics, I bought one and the bro dogger at the counter told me that there was a guy waiting at the door at their other (bigger) store and that he bought every copy.  Okay!  Suck on that recession!

I had not read any Walking Dead in a long time.  I found out about the comic through the book store market and the 1st thing I read was the 2nd trade paperback.  (Full disclosure:  As a book store manager I got a comp copy of the 2nd trade paperback for free.  It sat on my shelf for a few years before I read it because horror ain't my bag bro.  When I finally read it, I liked it but did not feel the need to catch up.  The the TV show came along and wango bango pow here we are.)  

I think that is how a lot of pre-TV show fans discovered the comic.  (Not through my long comp copy story but through the book store market.)   

I've talked about this a little bit before but to me the thing that is interesting about The Walking Dead phenomenon is that it really came from a different place.  Not a superhero comic.  Not a Marvel or DC comic.  Not even a color comic.  Not a comic the direct market pushed at first.  And its audience, which has become a television audience as well, has never really been the comics audience.  It is the horror audience.  And that audience is astounding.  That audience is huge.  That audience is the cute girls that read Sandman in the 90s and 00s, the spastic kid that drew Johnny The Homicidal Maniac in his high school notebook, the 20 something dude waiting in line for the midnight showing of Saw 37, the 30 something rockabilly dude with three different tattoos of monster themed hot rods, the 40 something lady reading 50 Shades of Grey....  That audience has a lot of buying power.  

Looking through this 100th issue of the comic I was very interested in the advertising in the comic.  It is not the ads you see in comics.  These are ads for horror related things for the horror buying customer.  That is smart.  I don't know who the credit for that goes to but someone in The Walking Dead/Image family knows which side gets the butter.  And I'm not going to go crazy patting Kirkman on the back for his amazing industry changing brilliance.  This is still genre fiction.  It is still a franchise about running away from zombies.  But yeah, let's at least give Image a high five for realizing that there are customers out there for more than just one genre.  That nerds come in many colors and costumes.

The comic itself is okay.  Part of the reason I bought it was because when I picked it up it felt really thick.  I was expecting something substantial.  But, reading it felt slight.  Not a lot happens in this thing.  It is mostly talking.  Or yelling expletives. And then some really brutal violence.  Like ya do.  I probably don't need any more of this comic in my life.  I enjoy the TV show plenty.  That is probably good enough for me.  But I'm not the horror fan audience that buys zombie toys and comics.  And apparently that audience is big enough that they don't need me.  Enjoy it folks. 

Earth 2 #3 by James Robinson, Nicola Scott and a whole bunch of other people.  Published by DC Comics.

I don't have much more to say about this comic than I said about issues 1 and 2 in my recent New 52 post.  I like it.  It is good.  Or, it's about as good as a DC Comic where you are establishing a new team made up of ancient characters can be.  Which is to say, it is about a million times better than Justice League.  I don't have this comic on my "pull list" or anything but so far I've bought all three issues.  The Nicola Scott art is what keeps me coming back.  Very solid.  I enjoy it.  And that Robinson guy is a okay too.  This Alan Scott Green Lantern is probably the first Green Lantern I've cared about on the page since Grant Morrison was writing JLA or since James Robinson was writing JSA.  Either way, the point is, this is the first DC team comic I've cared about in many many years.

Adventure Time #5 by Ryan North, Mike Holmes, Paul Pope, Georgia Roberson, Chris Roberson and a bunch of other people.  Published by Kaboom.

I wanted to write a longer review about the Adventure Time comic book series as a whole but I'm busy/tired/insert-excuse-here so we will just talk about the most recent issue.  I think it is the best so far anyway.  My family owns three copies of this comic.  I have the Dave Cooper HeroesCon variant cover (thanks Peagler's) which I happen to think is the undisputed current front runner for 2012 cover of the year.  My oldest daughter wanted the Eleanor Davis cover.  I think it is a close second for 2012 cover of the year.  And my youngest daughter had to have her own copy and she picked out what I think is the standard cover.  Which, is a pretty great cover too.

The comic is great.  The whole series is great.  I was a little worried with issue 1 because it was a bit too much like the TV show but by the time we get to issue 2 the collected cartoonist are cutting loose and having fun.  I think issue 5 is the best.  The main story is probably the least ambitious of the series so far but a slight cut back on action allows for a lot more laughs.  There is a part where BMO is talking about making a cupcake and says "I make baking".  My kids and I have been  calling the act of cooking "make baking" ever since.  "I love eating baking!" yells Jake.  Haw!  Comedy gold I tells ya.

This issue has a back up story by one of my favorite cartoonists, Paul Pope.  My five year old loves that story.  The art is off model but the dialog is perfect and Pope is playing around with some pretty far out ideas for a kids comic but it seems like the less sense these things make the more hilarious my kids think it is.

This comic has been so good.  Five issues in I can tell you that this comic has forced me to make more trips to comic book shops this year then I probably did in the past three years combined.  My kids demand to get this comic as soon as it comes out.  I've not been in this much of a hurry to get the next issue of a comic since I was buying Transformers, GI Joe and Star Wars off the spinner rack.

Marceline and the Scream Queens #1 by Meridith Gran, Jen Wang and a bunch of other people.  Published by Kaboom.

This is a solid comic.  Not quite as fun as the Adventure Time series but close.  The main thing dragging down the main story in this comic is that it is part one of a longer story and feels like it has a lot of set up.  I mean, the set up is super simple.  It's the same setup you have read a dozen or so times in various Archie comics where they put together a rock tour and rival characters have to get along to make it work.  That is if you have read that story in various Archie comics as many times as I have.  If not, then sorry for the spoiler.

There is nothing holding back the Jen Wang backup story though.  The art and lettering are great and the story does a perfect job of summing up in just eight pages everything that makes Marceline such a fun character.

Again I'm too insert-excuse-here to scan my own comics so I stole images from other websites.  Remember kids, whenever you steal you should link to the people you stole from.  Both on the net and in real life.  Here are the people I stole from for this post:

Comics Alliance

What Culture

Super Podcasto Magnifico

Moresay

Thanks comics bros I don't know!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.