Observations on Recent and Upcoming Comics

I have a pretty full plate this weekend, with about 8,000 words to write for various print and internet publications sometime before Tuesday, but I don't want to ignore the blog-o-centric aspect of my career, and I do have some thoughts that I don't have time to develop into coherent and complete posts. So, here's the comic book related junk that's been kicking around in my mind as I should be working on other things:

1.
Five comics with "Secret Invasion" in the title come out this week. That seems like two too many, at least. I will buy them all, of course, because that's what I do, but the whole Secret Invasion event seems to have stagnated for me. It started so strong, but, yup, the Skrulls have invaded. That's what's happened. And...

Still waiting for something more. Although Fraction on the Thor crossover should be good times. And, it doesn't have "Secret Invasion" in the title, but the Captain Britain book is Skrully and consistently excellent.

But if I had to graph my interest level in both Secret Invasion and Final Crisis, the latter would be on the upswing (even though I thought the latest issue was a bit too expository) and the former would be on a sharp decline. I'm not going to graph it, though. I have better things to do, like describing the imaginary graph to you on my blog.

2.
The Olympics are on. I like the Olympics. It's all about personal sacrifice and humans striving to reach their full potential. But it can't really compete with the fail blog as far as my attention is concerned. That's got to be some kind of sad commentary on our society and/or my jackassery.

3.
I'm on the Young Liars train. Chad Nevett convinced me to give it a second chance, and I think it's the best work Lapham's done yet. Sure, I liked Stray Bullets for a while, but this is tighter, more polished writing. Less ambitious, perhaps, but stronger. (The "animation" in that "trailer" freaks me out, by the way. Note to DC: Flash animation doesn't make comics cooler--it just makes them look dorky. The Watchmen animated thing I downloaded from iTunes is an atrocity. Stop doing that. I can't help but link to it, though. So you can feel the pain too. But the Young Liars comic is good.)

4.
Being away from my LCS pull box for three weeks has really shown me what comics are not priorities for me at all. I'm still way behind on my reading for some books, and I'm not too concerned about ever catching up. Trinity, in particular. I decided to give it ten issues, and now I have issues 6-10 sitting here and I have zero interest in reading them. Trinity is not good at all, is it? Bagley can't draw an interesting page even after all these years in the industry, and Busiek can't seem to do anything I like at DC. I love his Astro City stuff, and I liked Arrowsmith too. His Superman was junk, and I don't think I'll bother reading any more Trinity. Does anyone like this series?

I read every single issue of Countdown, by the way. And yet I'm dropping Trinity. Take that as you will.

5.
Why is the kid in the movie based on Cormac McCarthy's The Road so old? Isn't he like five or six in the novel? That's what I seem to recall, but I could be wrong. Or, I could be projecting the age of my son--or how old he was when I read the book. Anyway, the movie news made me recall the earlier days of this blog, back when I used to read real books and debate them with the likes of the mighty Frank Tempone. Now, I just whine about crappy superhero comics.

6.
I have received a lot of mail in response to my first installment of "When Words Collide." It's all been very positive, and many of you want to get into some sort of debate about some assertions I made. That's cool. But I don't really have time to respond to everyone individually. Hopefully I'll have a "When Words Collide" forum at CBR sometime soon. That's the plan anyway. Then everyone can talk amongst themselves and I'll drop in to say something to piss everyone off two or three times a week. Until then, I'm reading all of your mail, I just probably won't write back anytime soon. Sorry.

7.
I really like the Dini/Nguyen team on Detective. Maybe it's just spill-0ver from my love for Morrison's Batman (and, by the way, I keep reading people who still complain about his run on Batman. What is not to like? Please tell me), but I loved the most recent issue of Detective. It has jack to do with "Batman R.I.P." which is absolutely fine with me (better than fine), but it's a sleek little Batman comic and it makes Hush interesting for the first time ever.

8.
I liked True Believers #1. Cary Bates, man. The guy wrote some classic Superman tales, and now he's doing some kind of Marvel-characters-as-internet-guerillas thing. Gulacy still draws those weird baboon faces on his women, but that's called a style and I like it more here than in some of his other recent work. But I'm in it for the Bates.