My Latest Comics Haul!

I’m off to have a wisdom tooth pulled out, later on this afternoon, and I’ve got a few bits and pieces that I should really get done before I go (actually, I should have done them before I went on holiday but there you go!) All this means that you won’t get the book review that I originally had planned but what you get instead are the fruits of my comic buying labours last night. That’s still pretty cool isn’t it? :o) I thought so after picking up my monthly comic fix last night.

These days I’m more about collecting the trade paperbacks rather than individual issues. They’re a great way for me to quickly get up to speed with stories and the bottom line is that they just look better on the book shelf. For anyone here who buys comics regularly, how do you store them? Just wondering...
There are a few series that I will pick up in individual comics though; either while I’m deciding to go for the trades or because I’m a sad obsessive fan who has to get their hands on everything. Here are a few of them...

‘Olympus #3’ – Edmondson/Ward (Image)



We’re onto the third instalment, of this four part series, and as you would expect things are rattling along at a very fast pace indeed. The time spent, right at the beginning, establishing the character of Tantalus is well spent in that while he may be the villain of the piece, I ended up having a measure of sympathy for him and am left wondering how this approach will affect the outcome of the final issue. Everything is up in the air (especially given the revelation about Tantalus’ plans) and that’s just the cliffhanger you need when there’s only one more issue to go. Castor and Pollux remain great characters to hang out with; Castor’s meeting with Summer brought a smile to my face!
Christian Ward’s artwork remains superb on the whole but (as was the case with the previous two issues) it’s still a little hard to work out just what is going on in the action scenes...

‘Conan the Cimmerian #12’ – Truman/Giorello (Dark Horse)



I love fantasy so it was inevitable that Conan would feature heavily whenever I buy comics. Issue 12 is the penultimate chapter in the ongoing ‘Black Colossus’ storyline and this is something that I’ll be covering in a little more depth once I’ve picked up the final issue. In the meantime though, #12 delivers everything you would expect from a Conan comic; brash heroes spitting in the face of overwhelming odds, sultry heroines and an evil villain looming large over the proceedings. Truman’s writing really brings Conan to life and Tomas Giorello’s art is spot on in depicting a harsh time when a man’s life was measured in the sharpness of his blade and the stoutness of his heart. I especially loved the aftermath of Count Thespides’ doomed charge into the valley...
I’ll more than likely start collecting the trades at some point but I’ll definitely be picking up the individual issues in the meantime.

‘Dethklok Versus The Goon’ – Eric Powell/Brendon Small (Dark Horse)



There are times when you pick up a comic and say, “what the f...”
Sometimes this is a good thing because the comic is one hundred percent awesome; sometimes all it means is that you don’t have the slightest clue what is going on. It was very much a case of bewilderment here! A fictitious heavy metal band is somehow pulled through a temporal rift into the world of Lonely Street and outright chaos ensues. There’s maybe a little too much here to fit comfortably into a ‘one shot’ issue and what it felt like to me was that things were glossed over instead of being properly explored. It was still good fun though, even if it was all over before I knew it. The Goon and Franky are funny and outright psychotic in equal measure and it’s always laugh out loud funny to see people dumped in a completely unfamiliar environment and the comedy of errors that come about as a result. Plus I’m a huge fan of The Goon and would buy anything with his ugly mug on it! :o)

Book reviewing should get back to normal on Friday. In the meantime, definitely come back tomorrow to see if you won any of the competitions that were up while I was on holiday (that’s if you entered them of course, I can’t really do anything about it if you didn’t!)...