YACB Bulletins

ITEM! Apparently TokyoPop's Kingdom Hearts is doing big business in the bookstores. It's also a rather bad comic. I wish I could be surprised at that.

ITEM! Freaky: Real people, manga-fied. (via BasuGasuBakuhatsu)

ITEM! At the current rate, I'm anticipating that we'll hit our 100,000th visitor milestone on Thursday this week, and thus we'll probably be having our Special 100K Visitor Give-Away Contest that day as well. Stay tuned...

ITEM! The new DC Solicitations are out today, and two things immediately jumped out at me: 1) Following Marvel's lead, DC are increasing all of their remaining titles to $2.99 (except for Johnny DC titles and 52); 2) Cynthia Martin is the guest artist for Blue Beetle #3--a name I haven't seen on a comic in a long, long time, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing her drawn a comic again.

ITEM! Andrew Pepoy will be doing a Katy Keene feature in Archie and Friends. I don't really know a thing about Katy Keene, but I usually enjoy Pepoy's work very muchly (I don't think he's written & drawn a feature since Simone & Ajax) so I'll be checking this out.

New Library Comics: Week of February 6, 2006

Here are the comics we got in for our library collection last week:


Cibos, Lindsay. Peach fuzz /Hamburg ; Los Angeles : Tokyopop, c2005- v. 1

DeCarlo, Dan, 1919-2001. The pin-up art of Dan DeCarlo /Seattle, Wash. : Fantagraphics, 2005.

Great comic cats /San Francisco, CA : Pomegranate, c2001.

Komikwerks presents rockets & robots. /Boston : Komikwerks, 2004.

Masters of American comics /Los Angeles : Hammer Museum : Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ; New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, 2005.

Matsumoto, Reiji, 1938- Galaxy express 999 /San Francisco : Viz Communications, 1998- v. 1-3

Nishiyama, Yuriko. Harlem beat /[Los Angeles, CA] : Mixx Entertainment : Tokyopop, c1999- v. 1-4

Takahashi, Rumiko, 1957- Maison ikkoku /San Francisco, CA : Viz Comics, c1993- v. 11, 13

Takahashi, Rumiko, 1957- Ranma 1/2 /San Francisco, CA : Viz Communications, c2003- v. 21

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

Today we feature Art Adams' cover from Martian Manhunter Annual #2. As part of the JLApe crossover (really, the best annuals crossover event ever!) A gorilla-fied Martian Manhunter (Martian Apehunter?) faces off against everyone's favorite evil primate, Gorilla Grodd.

(Standard disclaimer about apes not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Quick Comic Reviews

Jeremiah Harm #1
by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant, & Rael Lyra

From the writers who once brought you DC's Lobo comes another comic featuring intergalactic badguys beating the snot out of each other. A couple of nasty SOBs escape from a prison satellite, so the warden lets out Jeremiah Harm--a prisoner with a mad-on for the escapees--to bring them back. The story is solid and sets up the situation with enough violence for the die-hard violence fan, but it could have used a bit more humor for my tastes. Lyra's art is appropriately grotesque for the story. Bottom line: if you've been missing Lobo, this may fit that hole for you.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)



JLA #125
by Bob Harras, Tom Derenick & Dan Green

And so it ends. Not with a bang, or a whimper, but with a solid thud. Six issues of Batman and Green Arrow grimmacing at each other, and The Key doing, um, something. JLA was once a big idea super-hero spectacular, but it ends on such a sour note I'm glad to see it go. Let us hope that when Meltzer's new Justice League of America starts up later this year that he restores the bigness.

Rating: 1.5 (of 5)



Supergirl #4
by Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill & Norm Rapmund

Yet another issue-long fight scene, with an evil black suited Supergirl split-off battling Lex Luthor and then the Justice League. Is this what the kids want these days? I guess it doesn't matter as long as Kara is wearing her midriff-bearing costume.

Rating: 2 (of 5)



Superman #226
by Joe Kelly, Jeph Loeb, Ed Benes, Mariah Benes, Jerry Ordway, Howard Chaykin, Tim Sale, & Renato Guedes (whew!)

Now this is a comic. In the midst of Infinite Crisis, we get the start of an overview of the career of Kal-L, Superman of Earth-2. It kicks off with a scrapbook of young Clark Kent by Loeb & Sale, recalling their work on the excellent Superman for All Seasons. Howard Chaykin provides the art for Superman's depression-era debut and WWII adventures, and Renato Guedes illustrates the JSA vs. HUAA portions. We even get the return of the old-style logo on the cover. An enjoyable and classy product all around. Let's hope the remaining two chapters unfold just as well ov erhte next two weeks.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)



(A review copy of Jeremiah Harm was provided by the publisher.)

YAFQ: Are You Spending More or Less?

Yet Another Friday Question:

Are you spending more or less on comics these days than you have in the recent past?

For me, my monthly orders through DCBS had been going down; I was spending about 20% less than I was a year ago. But for this month's orders it shot way back up, mostly due to several high-ticket items.

What about you--are you spending more or less on comics these days?

Always Remember

Yeah, I know that the meme has pretty much run its course, but I couldn't resist one more.)

Review: A Trip to Rundberg

A Trip to Rundberg
by Nate Southard & Shawn Richter
Frequency Press, $11.95

Do you like zombies?

More specifically, do you think that zombies are best used as cannon fodder in an action/horror fest? (As opposed to a metaphor for the human condition or some such nonsense...)

If so, then A Trip to Rundberg is the graphic novel for you!

The situation is set up in the first 10 pages: A mysterious zombie plague has swept the land, but the small rural Indiana town of Millwood has been spared, mainly due to the fact that they're a small rural Indiana town. But food supplies are running low, and with winter fast approaching, they need to restock. So a group of volunteers (a term used rather loosely in a couple of cases) are selected to travel to nearby Rundberg to raid their food stores.

What follows then is a combination of interpersonal conflict and action zombie violence, complete with exploding zombie heads and dudes getting gnawed on, all in the best tradition of late-night cable tv.

Southard and Richter previously brought us Drive, and A Trip to Rundberg is in that same action-packed tradition. Richter continues to bring a action-movie quality to his art, using three 'widescreen' panels per page to give it a cinematic feel. His action-based storytelling is clear and never loses the reader--a definite plus in this type of story. His figure work is a bit improved though still rough in places on the humans, but he draws some pretty damn good zombies and imbues them with a touch of individualism--before they get their heads blown off by a shotgun.

So if the above description sounds like the sort of zombie comic you'd like, you probably will want to check this out.

Rating: 3 (of 5)


(a review copy of A Trip to Rundberg was provided by the publisher)