WHAT I'M READING (COMICS)

So what are you lot reading these days?I'm still looking to cut down on my pull list... but I've been spending a lot of moolah on comis... despite not really being able to afford to do so. Thank God I don't smoke, drink or gamble (too much).

My pull list:

DC (every month)
Booster Gold
Justice League of America
JSA
The Flash
Teen Titans
Nightwing
Green Lantern
Blue Beetle
The New Atom
Checkmate
Batman and the Outsiders

Booster Gold, JSA and Green Lantern have been excellent. JLA and been hot and cold. The Flash and Nightwing have been very uneven. Blue Beetle has been very good, but the Atom is losing steam for me. Checkmate is good more often than it's not. Outsiders is a strange book.. I WANT to like it... and it's not bad... but the jury is still out on it.

DC (Event Books and Tie Ins)
Final Crisis and it's various tie ins
DC Universe #0

Yeah I plan on getting them all (for the most part). Hard to say how this will be. DC Universe was very good. reminded me of a set of trailers before movies. Very interesting. And the "return" of a particular character is kind of huge.

DC (on occasion, depending on the storyline or just started and I'm giving it a try)
Action Comics
Batman
The Titans
Rann/Thangar: Holy War
Supergirl
Brave and Bold
Death of the New Gods

The Whole Legion storyline in Action has been excellent. I've been picking up some of Morrision's Batman... but plan on getting the whole BATMAN: R.I.P. storyline. Issue #1 of The Titans was VERY uneven... I like the idea of the book, but it needs to be better for me to continue with it. I was surprised to find out in 52 that I seriously liked the dynamic with Adam Strange/Animal Man/Starfire so I wound up trying (and getting all issues of) Countdown to Adventure. I'm normally not into the space epic books, but I'm giving this one a shot and the first issue was pretty good. Supergirl is a book I WANT to buy. I LOVE the character.. however, DC STILL has no idea how to handle her. It's been VERY hit and miss with more misses than hits. Brave and Bold should be a book I'm buying. the art is great and the story is fairly fun... but it just hasn't been grabbing me enough to keep buying it. Death of the New Gods... was ... well... HORRIBLE. Gave up on it fairly early. LOUSY concept. LOUSY execution (no pun intended). LOUSY everything. Big Barda and Scott Free deserved better than this.

DC (Mini-Series I WAS buying until they ended)
Countdown
Suicide Squad
Salvation Run
Countdown to Adventure
Black Adam: The Dark Age

Countdown was, for the most part, not that great. Very uneven... spirialed into too many directions like it didn't know what it wanted to be. It had some excellent issues (especially the two issue "Great Disaster from Buddy Blank's point of view" arc) but was more miss than hit. It WANTED to be 52... but was not. Suicide Squad was pretty decent... not great... but an enjoyable read. Salvation Run was a disapointment, but wasn't too bad either. I expected a little more from it. Countdown to Advanture was a huge surpirse. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did, although the Forerunner backup story just left me cold. Black Adam was EXCELLENT. I hear it may become an ongoing. If it does I am there.

Marvel (Every Month)
Ultimate Spider-Man
Amazing Spider-Man
Thunderbolts
Iron Fist
New Avengers
Mighty Avengers
Capt America
The Hulk
The Twelve
Dark Tower: The Long Road Home

Ultimate Spider-Man, Iron Fist and The Twelve are solid as they come. Capt America has been very good also. I'm enjoying the two Avengers books for the most part. I'm reading the Hulk until the reveal just who he is (I have my suspicions) and most likely will drop it after that. Thunderbolts has been hit and miss lately. Spider-Man... well... I don;t know how to classify it. It hasn't been HORRIBLE... but the last two storylines were pretty weak... and I'm still having an issue with the whole "One More Day" thing. I have NEVER stopped buying Spider-Man in the last 30 years as long as I was buying comics overall... I'm not ready to stop yet... but it MUST get better. Teh Dark Tower has been decnet... but as a huge fan of the books this particular storyline seems... well... wrong to me.

Marvel (Event Books and Tie ins)
Secret Invasion
Spider-Man: Secret Invasion

I loved the idea behind this event.. but the 2nd issue was not overly good. I hope it picks up. I plan to avoid a majority of the tie ins here. Frontline is just a rehash (in my opinion) of the actual event itself with Ben Urich thrown in running around in danger. I'll pass.

Marvel (on occasion, depending on the storyline, just started and I'm giving it a try, or once tried it and I'm done)
Avengers: The Inititive
The Last Defenders
Marvel: 1985
Astonishing X-Men
Exiles
Kick-Ass

The Inititive has been ok... not bad... not great. But I think I'm done with it. Same with Last Defenders. I'm giving 1985 a shot... but a short leash. Astonishing was very good at one point but the current world breaker plot has toiled WAY too long. I'm done at the end of this arc. As for Exiles... I bought this book for years. I LOVED the concept. However..it's so conviluted and soap operaish now it's a shell of it's former self... plus the fact that almost every new character in the book is boring as hell. The fun has seeped out of this title. I gave up on it a while ago. Kick Ass has been decent so far... but not world breaking like Miller wants everone to think.

Image (Every Month)
Invincible
Walking Dead

Two great books (both by Kirkman). Invincible is just about the best book out in comics today.

Dynamite (Every Month)
The Boys

I can't help it. This book is too wild not to enjoy. Crazy stuff.

Overall the BEST books out there right now are Booster Gold, Ultimate Spider-Man and Invincible.

How about you?

The King (Part One)

There are really only two men who I feel deserve the nickname "The King". One is Elvis Presley. The other is Jack Kirby.



Jack Kirby is famous thanks to his amazing contributions to the world of comic books. Kirby helped create Captain America, The Fantasic Four, The Hulk, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, Dr Doom, Galactus and the Black Panther. He created, all on his own, The New Gods, Mr Miracle and Big Barda, The Forever People, Kamandi, Omac, The Demon and Darkseid.

I honestly think that without him, the rich history and culture of the comic book world would have never survived to become the huge blockbuster industry it is today. For all of the credit Stan Lee gets for creating a juggernaut with Marvel Comics, he couldn't have done it at all without Kirby.

Endless amounts of books, essays and accounts of Kirbby's life have been written. I'm really not going tobe able to add much more than the tremedous accounts written about him. All I want to do here is pay tribute to a great talent that should be remembered and respected. I'll start off with a (semi) brief history of his comic career, and then get into the stuff I really enjoyed the most from him.

Jack Kirby was born in 1917 with the name Jacob Kurtzberg and raised in The Bowery in New York. He grew up in poverty and his ticket out of the slums was his drawing ability. In 1935 he got a job with Max Fleischer Studios working on animated cartoons. He did that for about two years and in 1937 he began drawing comic strips and single-panel cartoons for a small newspaper syndicate called The Lincoln News.

At twenty years old Kirby was already outputting a large amount of work and he managed to use some different styles and use different pen names on about a half a dozen different features. Some of those features were reprinted in the comic book market, and Kirby found a new world waiting for him. Some of his work found it';s way to Fox Comics.

At Fox Comics, Kirby met a freelance writer and artist by the name of Joe Simon. The two hit it off well and started producing work together. Simon started out doing the layouts of their work together with Kirby doing the finishing, but Kirby was so much faster and seemed to understand the way comic books worked a little more, and down the line he started doing the layouts with Simon finishing.

The two worked on a number of things before hitting it big with Captain Amercia, a character they created for Timely (ie Marvel Comics) Comics in 1941.



Captian Amercia has a HUGE hit and helped Kirby and Simon to get work over at DC Comics creating The Boy Commandos.

Not long after that, he was drafted into World War II and spent the war as a soldier.

Coming in Part Two: Jack's work following the war, and the creation of some characters that went beyond anything Jack could every have imagined.