Friday Night Fights: Superman vs. Earth-Man

Earth-Man probably spits into the wind too.

(From Action Comics #862. Story by Geoff Johns. Art by Gary Frank & Jon Sibal.)

Round Nine? Darn Skippy!

Must Be the Last Week of the Month

Point of interest to probably no one but me: Every week as I catalog the new comics I've purchased I stack them in three piles: 'DC,' 'Marvel,' and 'everything else.' This week the 'everything else' pile was just as tall as the 'DC' pile, which included the massive Showcase Presents: Superman Family vol. 2!

I seem to recall that Diamond considers a comic late and therefore returnable if it arrives more than a month later than it was solicited for. Thus this was the last week for anything that was solicited for shipping in January 2008 to not be 'late.' Thus my shipment this week included the January 2008 issues of Rex Libris, Ninja High School, Nexus, Misericordia, The Engineer, and Doctor Who...

This is a Concept?

I visited the much-heralded Borders Concept Store on Monday, and I wasn't terribly impressed. Overall the feeling was of something cheap; more like a Media Play than a regular book store. A lot of half-height shelves but no clear organization or clear walking paths.

The highly-touted graphic novel island was just a set of half-height shelves near the science fiction & fantasy section. There's a funky display hanging overhead that isn't labeled antyhing (unlike the Cooking island) but does have giant cubes with manga characters (and Spider-Man). It was clearly dominated by manga, with the amime dvds shelved adjacent. It wasn't any larger than the manga & graphic novels section at Borders #1 in downtown Ann Arbor, which is much more impressive as a gigantimus tower of manga & GNs that lies at the entrance to the youth & genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mysteries) sections.

No doubt I'll return to the new Borders store, as it is much more conveniently located than the other two Ann Arbor locations. But I wouldn't exactly call it a huge success from a promotional or marketing perspective. Still, it's good that Borders has a store with which they plan on experimenting; maybe they'll hit the right formula one of these days...

New Library Comics: Week of February 17, 2008

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Irwin, Jane. Vögelein vol. 2 : old ghosts / Ann Arbor, Mich : Fiery Studios, 2003-

McNeil, Carla Speed. Finder book 1 : sin-eater / Annapolis Junction, MD : Lightspeed Press, c2007-

Obrist, Hans-Ulrich. Robert Crumb / Köln : König, 2006.

Reumann, Helge. Elvis Road. Oakland, Calif. : Buenaventura Press, c2007.


This listing is now available as an RSS Feed!

This Just Might Be the Greatest Marvel Comic Ever

Newsarama has the story that Paul Tobin will be writing a new comic in the Marvel Adventures line, Marvel Adventures Super-Heroes. One of the issues will feature art by his wife and Banana Sunday collaborator Colleen Coover (her again!), and it will feature Spider-Man, and Hellcat, and Mary Jane, and She-Hulk, and Clea, and the Enchantress, and Marvel Girl, and the Scarlet Witch. Also: Millie the Model.

BTW, Tobin is also starting a four-issue run on Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four with YACB fave and ex-Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane artist David Hahn on three of those issues. It starts this week with MAFF #34, so be sure to look for it tomorrow at your friendly local comic shop!

Phoebe Gloeckner Vid

Randomly caught this on the Michigan Channel while channel surfing late at night. I went to all the trouble of transferring from the TiVo and converting to a usable format, then discovered it was already on YouTube:

Colleen Coover's Power Focus

Another Colleen Coover Alert!

According to her LiveJournal, Colleen will be illustrating a series of 2-page back-ups for the upcoming Power Pack: Day One mini under the umbrella title "Power Focus." In these pieces written by Fred Van Lente (of Action Philosophers fame) the Power Pack kids take turns explaining the laws of physics. Fun!