paper crack | a pointless comic book blog

Sad.

2008-10-25T13:11:08Z

I had such high hopes I'd get rolling on the visual revamps of all my blogs, especially finally making papercrack a weekly reality but none of that has come to pass yet.

I wish I had 20 more hours in the week.

Legion of Three Worlds #2

2008-10-16T21:37:32Z

Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #2
Written by Geoff Johns and Art by George Perez.

Finally! If feels like it has been ages since the first issue came out.

But man oh man, if there is one book that is practically 100% inaccessible to the uninitiated it is this series!

While I love the original LSH and can appreciate continuity heavy stories, even I have to admit that Geoff Johns' pulling a Roy Thomas here and meshing more of the DCU up into continuity porn is a bit too much.

The book is way pretty though and as always, Perez makes you feel like the money you paid is 110% worth it!

DC had an Infinite Crisis and all I got was this lousy confusion!

2008-09-29T13:39:39Z

What exactly is the history of the characters of the DCU anymore?

There!

I said it!

The elephant in the room that nobody really seems to want to address.

After Infinite Crisis, I have absophrockinglutely no idea what is and what is not canon and quite frankly, it does effect my ability to enjoy a given story.

It would have almost been easier to have suffered a 100% reboot of the DCU after Infinite Crisis if there at least had been some kind of overriding editorial vision but like so much of collaborative fiction, that really didn't happen.

Now I'm not saying that the Post-Crisis On Infinite Earths DCU had a cohesive vision.

No. That took a bit to build up after 1986 but it did seem to gel relatively well by 1990 or so.

Hell... even the Legion, with all the post-Crisis rebooting, still made more sense to me than much of what has come after Infinite Crisis.

Now I will admit that my pre-2002 habit of buying a ton of weekly books has stopped for some time now. The value of spending $3.00+ on 3-4 minutes worth of read each issue really couldn't be justified at all anymore.

And after Infinite Crisis, both Giga and I really curtailed pretty much everything we bought on a monthly basis to about 3-4 books max.

Because of that, I have had to live vicariously through so many comics bloggers' reviews to even begin to have an idea of what the DC Universe is even like anymore.

But honestly, I don't think it would have mattered if I had bought every post-Infinite Crisis DC comic or not.

There just doesn't seem to be any attempt at a cohesive whole any more regardless of what books one follows.

My rambling train of thought now moves forward and maybe, if you've started to read Paper Crack, you can either point me in the right direction of some blogger that can answer my questions or some source of meaningful data.

]]> Question #1: Exactly what is Clark Kent's origin?
Now I've always been a lover of a simplified Superman.

Yes. The simple Golden Age/Earth-2 Superman's back history, and The Man of Steel 1986 reboot are the Supermen I love.

But this current Superman? What the hell exactly is his continuity on "New Earth"?

Obviously, 90% of more of continuity from the late 80s to around 2000 or so has been made non-canon. And of course, that has to have affected a ton of secondary stories as well.

It looks like once again everybody but Jor-El and Lara survived Krypton.

You've got a totally pointless modern Supergirl that the majority of DC readers (or at least the ones I follow) seem to despise.

The "Death of Superman" can't have happened. The Matrix/Linda Danvers Supergirl could not have happened. And so on.

Hell. Jack Knight's awesome visit to Krypton's past can't have happened.

I... I just don't get any of it anymore. I try reading some of it, but quite frankly, just bringing back a ton of horrible Silver Age stuff coated in modern rewriting just isn't going to cut it for me.

But that seems to be what they've done.

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Question #2: Did we really need to have the multiple Earths shoved down our collective pie holes?

Now I love the multiverse! I was a sad 15-year old the day it was done away with.

It killed so much of what I loved (Earth-2) and pointlessly convoluted so many wonderful characters' histories.

Yes. I was happy to see some a multiverse back and I figured out that some part of 52 would do that.

But... did we really need the multiverse shoved down our throats in such an awful haphazard fashion in so little time?

I had to stop reading Countdown after about issue 4 when it became immediately apparent it was going to be one of the most pointless and poorly written pieces of shit I'd ever lay my eyes on.

And I think that for the most part, most comic readers agreed!

The multiverse... this wonderful storying telling engine when used in small doses was literally made into a haphazard "in-your-face" crapfest!

I've tried to go back and read the Countdown trades and I can't see any purpose whatsoever to this series now that it is over.

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Question #3: When does Final Crisis occur anyway and should I even care?

So I'm picking up Final Crisis but man oh man can a series that is supposed to be a major DCU-spanning storyline have so little impact?

I mean, I'm all for some stories being isolated from others. That's always good. But giving this the "crisis" moniker implies it is significant in some way but clearly, even DC doesn't really view it like that.

I can't even begin to see how this fits into the regularly published titles.

And don't even get me started on how it Countdown to Final Crisis clearly had absolutely nothing to do with this series!!!

At $3-4 a pop for comics, is it too much to ask the publisher to make some damn sense of what the hell is going on?

Do comic readers find this fun?

Is this better than the massive crossovers of the 80s and 90s that at least attempted to seem cohesive?

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Question #4: Why the hell do I even bother trying to read comics anymore?

Let's face it. I sure as hell am not the audience for superhero comics anymore.

DC and Marvel really don't appeal to me anymore because they quite frankly can't make sense of their own properties.

I imagine that they exist today to keep the trademarks alive (in the cheapest way possible) in the hopes that their companies can profit off of the use of these characters in other media such as films, television, toys, etc.

I understand it is a business... but damn... is it too much to ask to have them make some cohesive sense to me.

I really don't know why I let myself get sucked in when I manage to get out!

Superman #680

2008-09-28T13:35:19Z

Superman #680
Written by James Robinson ; Art by Renato Guedes and José Wilson Magalháes; Cover by Alex Ross

So this is part 4 of James Robinson's recent take over of the Superman title.

I had purchased #677 when he came on but there was no usual "gotta keep reading it" vibe for me that I usually get from Robinson so I never picked up the next issue.

Let's face it... dragging out Superman fighting Kirby's Atlas character pretty much smells of the good-old modern "let's pad it all to fit a trade paperback" story-telling mentality.

And I'm sure as hell not interested in wasting cash on the individual issues of most of these padded storylines anymore.

Anyway... from the moment this cover came out I knew I was going to buy the book.

Krypto sans silly Silver Age human-thinking thought balloons = a very hard Nala.

Even as a kid I wanted Krypto, who rarely appeared in the 70s even, to be a real dog that just happened to have Superman-level powers.

And it only took me 30 years and three continiuity reboots to get it!

Suffice to say, Superman's getting this this shit beat out of him by Atlas and Krypto comes into whip the bite this hell out of Atlas. And he does a remarkable job of this.

What's the point of this pointless blog?

2008-09-28T13:23:45Z

So I see that you are saying... "Nala? What's the point of this utterly pointless waste of this Apache directory filler called Paper Crack now that you've sold off your 15,000+ comics and you always seem to hate comics anyway?"

Well...

While I have a love-hate relationship with comics that exceeds my love-hate relationship with Plastic Crack, there's still some strange lame vane part of me that wants to write and discussion frigg'n comic books.

Yes. I barely buy anything any more.

And no, my opinion is absolutely not important either.

But let's face it... I'm a f'n geek and if there's one thing geeks like to do is pointlessly waste valuable personal free time discussing the useless minute details of utterly worthless shit.

And so... Paper Crack™ is resurrected to not annoy the few readers/contributors I have over at Plastic Crack by my mixing comic shit in with my Transformers shit.

So there.

I've wasted another $10 on registering a domain (though I should have done that ages ago) and because I am the World's Most Beloved Polish-American™, you now can read my comic book rantings almost 99% free of my gay Transformer rantings.

Happy Re-Birthday!

2008-09-12T10:58:18Z

A new pointless comic book collective blog has been reborn.

Invites have gone out to potential authors.

Maybe.

We can be as cool as About Heroes one day.

Trudging through the comics sorting...

2007-04-26T12:00:48Z

So the past few days have consisted of me trying to sort my old Marvel Comics to get rid of the shit.

I'm not evening going to try and deal with the DC stuff at the moment since it is taking me so long just go get the Marvel shit in order.

And quite frankly, I haven't been seriously interested in Marvel books since the 80s.

I realized as I was going through the comics that I remember the actual stories of the 80s books but I apparently bought various Marvel books in the late 90s that I can't tell you a single damn thing about.

Uncanny X-Men from the issue #94 to the early #200s I remember every single story. Apparently I bought a lot of stuff later than that and I can't guarantee I read any of it.

Marvel all kind of collapsed for me once Uncanny X-Men split into multiple pointless books and when The New Mutants became the godsawful X-Force.

And once John Byrne left Fantastic Four in the 80s, I can't really say what happened after that for those characters either.

**warning** picture heavy

]]>

Iron Man #152 holds a special place for me since my friend Dean had this and it was the first comic that I saw where the cover artist Bob Layton, had composited an actual photo into the background. Plus it was the first time in my comic-reading life where a change of armor appeared, though that gimmick would become common every 10 issues in the 90s.

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I seem to have a few bronze age Iron Man issues too. I must have picked these up when working at the various comic cons during my teen years.

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For me, Marvel during the early 80s can be summed up by one man: John Byrne!

Now a lot of people can't stand him, and I'll admit his specific style hasn't evolved as the decades have gone by, but his art on Uncanny X-Men, and his writing/art on Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight was fantastic.

His style was consistent and his pencils, especially when inked by Terry Austin, was fantastic.

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Another artists who I love from that period is Barry Windsor-Smith.

Now I don't really know his work from the early 70s and discovered him when he did some Uncanny X-Men, some New Mutants (above), and his Machine Man series.

His line art became his "own" and his style was unlike others.

A good chunk of 70s and 80s Marvel art is totally interchangeable to me but BWS stands out.

I'd love to see him illustrate some Neil Gaiman written DC superheroes.

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Now when I think of boring comic characters, the Incredible Hulk is usually right up there.

But there was this brief period when Peter David was writing on the book when it was brilliant, especially with the "Mister Fixit" Grey Hulk.

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I also loved Louise Simonson's Power Pack series. It was a great series about kids that got superpowers from an alien and when June Brigman was illustrating the book it was top notch.

She actually could draw comic book children that looked like human children. Many artists can't draw children (*cough* John Byrne *cough*).

I even liked when Franklin Richards started appearing in the book as Tattletale.

Alas, the books when through art changes and once the kids' powers swapped it went downhill mostly.

And of course, we have this oh-so-great cover of Wolverine threatening a 5-year old Katie Power with his claws.

The funny thing here is that 5-year old could pretty much incinerate him.

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Marvels Epic subline brought me Alien Legion which to this very day should still be made into a film or tv series.

With the advent of decent and relatively affordable television CGI effects it makes this series totally possible.

Pssst... Marvel... why not try to develop one of your other properties as a film??? This one. This one right here!

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Oh. And can you guess which tv star was popular when this issue of New Mutants came out?

I'm back.

2007-04-25T21:57:50Z

Well I'm finally working on the comics in the basement.

Yay!

Must... get... rid... of... 90%... of... them...

Almost ready...

2007-01-07T16:15:10Z

Well the back bedroom remodeling is almost done!

And that means I can start sorting through all the comics soon!

I so need to get that done and get these out of my life.

Paper Crack Adventures with Giga and Sutekh!

2006-12-28T20:29:34Z

So with the recent holiday, crack day got pushed to Thursday. Since I'm on vacation I decided to join Giga and Sutekh on their paper crack adventures.

We arrived at Discount Paperback, the local crack dealer who supplies Giga's weekly fix of four-color addiction.

DP is pretty much you typical comic shop/geek toy shop/porn shop/miscellaneous paperback shop.

The 50% off bins (above) were rummaged through for goodies. I was going to get a Sandman Mystery Theatre trade and a Judas Contract trade but ended up putting them back since I have no need for more paper here in the House of Love at all.

DP has quite a selection of graphic novels and trade paperbacks. My eventual goal is to only by trades of content I want to own. It takes up less space than the individual issues and of course can sit easily on a shelf where the issues kind of fall all over the place. However, I wish Marvel and DC would trade shit that probably will never be done such as ROM and All-Star Squadron and such.

DP also has a ton of non-transforming-flavored plastic crack running the gamut from superhero shit to mango to a ton of crap that I thankfully don't know about. (It is a point of pride for me that I know so little about a ton of modern current geekage!)

Ramayana" />

Last night, while at The Family T's house, we discovered Mister T. reads Ramayan 3392AD, an totally kickass beautifully illustrated comic by Deepak Chopra of all people. This book is sweet and I may end up getting it when it is collected... or at least borrowing Mister T.'s copies.

Sandman is purty!" class="img-l"/>I finally got my hands on a copy of Volume 1 of The Absolute Sandman collection. Damn this is purty.

Of course, I own the originals and the trades already and I can't justify buying yet another version of the same thing but man it is nice. Someday. Maybe. I suppose a lot depends on how much I can make off the comics collection and crap when it goes.

In the end, Giga got 52, the new JLA, and some books I don't read. He got a Weaponer of Qward too.

On hiatus!

2006-12-23T15:12:13Z

On hiatus until after the holidays!

The Day After...

2006-12-22T02:17:11Z

It is Thursday.

And that means... it is the day after!

*spoilers ahead*

]]> My ass is still hurting from the pounding I got yesterday from Catwoman #62.

Yes. As expected, DC Comics fucked me pretty hard.

It was too good to be true that Helena Wayne would exist again.

I hoped DC would do the right thing but they failed me.

So. I'm going to be a shallow asshole and stop reading Catwoman. But it doesn't matter since Giga buys the books and he likes the title.

Teen Titans #42 was ok. I'm always back and forth about this book and Peter Snejberg's art saves it for me.

Barely-a-sidekick Kid Devil finally gets his story but quite frankly it was kind of wimpy.

I mean, it was obvious it would have to involve some kind of demon involvement to explain Eddie becoming an actual demon but did it have to be the craptastic Neron? Ugh!

I guess I'm really spoiled by Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey's version of Hell and the general Abrahamic magic religions over at Vertigo and it is always hard to read anything comic-related with Hell in it.

Neron is like bottom of the barrel for me.

Previews for December 20th

2006-12-18T18:35:04Z

I can honestly say that I pretty much only read what Giga buys these days.

Yeah, there's the occasional "Oh buy that!" comment but it is rare.

This week brings one superhero title that I hope will finally explain a major character change and another that will stab me in the back as most comic writers seem to do to me.

I'm really looking forward to Teen Titans #42 and finally getting some back information on how Kid Devil became a literal fire-breathing demon! Plus Peter Snejbjerg is doing the art and I fell in love with his shit back during the awesomeness that was Starman.

On the opposite side of the spectrum I'm not looking forward to being bent over by Will Pfeifer and pounded really hard up the wazzoo with Selina Kyle's daughter not being fathered by Bruce Wayne over in Catwoman #62.

I didn't ask much from the mediocre Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later" jump but when they announced Selina was going to have a baby girl it meant that one of my all-time favorite characters could possibly some day come back, albeit in a very different form than we had a chance to see her the first time around.

But of course, that would mean actually making a significant development in the life of the old über-asshole and of course we can't have any of that.

Why they bothered to name the baby Helena other than to dick over the fans in hopes that the real Helena Wayne would return just pisses me off.

Now true, DC could actually surprise me and reveal that Bruce is the baby daddy (like he cosmically should be) but no, that's unlikely.

Which pisses me off even more because we have the lame ass apparently legitimate Kingdom Come son now officially canon!

That damn Earth-Prime Superboy better pound some reality walls about this soon!

What am I going to do with this shit?

2006-12-17T22:38:07Z

What am I going to do with this shit?

Yes. You read that correctly.

This shit.

It is going to be extremely hard to make any form of return on the 20+ years of investment made in wasting massive amounts of money on comics.

I'll be lucky to maybe get 25¢ a book for the majority the contents of my 70s and 80s stuff and Giga and I will be lucky to get even less for the stuff we've mutually purchased from 1997 to the present.

Right now 95% or so of the comics in this house have been moved to the Basement of Love pending the completion of the back bedroom remodeling and the holidays.

There's many many many hours ahead of sorting and cataloging this stuff just to see if anyone wants to buy a run of this or that book.

I talked to a friend who manages a Half Price Books and even he has said they rarely buy many comics.

The local paper crack dealers aren't really buying this stuff either.

Know that when all is said and done, if I can't sell some of this stuff I will be giving it away to any readers that want to pay for the shipping and handling of the books to their homes.

Happy Birthday to Paper Crack!

2006-12-17T22:18:08Z

Paper Crack: From the Massive Comic Boxes of the Attic of Love™ is now officially 2 minutes old.

In the hopes of not boring my Plastic Crack readers I've split off any conversions about comic, comics reading, comics lameness, and all other assorted comics related shit to this new blog, much like I split Plastic Crack off of my main blog a 18 months ago.

While the real purpose of this site is to document and explore the massive 30+ years old comic collection before I dispose of it to the public it is also an experiment for me to learn some additional internet-related crap, especially where Movable Type is concerned.

But rest assured I will have absolutely nothing of true value or importance to say about the sick disgusting habit of reading comic books.

So bookmark Paper Crack! This isn't The World's Most Useless Spin-Off Website for nothing now!