This Week's Comics: 3/20/19

In late July 2005, I bought the first issue of Dark Horse's mini-series, Serenity: Those Left Behind...which was the first comic book version of Firefly. And I'm pretty sure I've bought every issue of every iteration of Firefly that's come out since then. Until today.

I've been really happy with Boom! Studios's Firefly. So I was really jazzed about them releasing a second Firefly book: Firefly: Bad Company. Until I saw it on the stands, that is. I picked it up, thought about buying it, then took a glance through it. First off, the big price tag: $7.99. Admittedly not too bad considering it has a lot of pages...50 according to Comixology, but they usually count the cover, and there was a not-Firefly back-up feature in there, too...but still, bad. And the story was not written by Greg Pak, nor was the art by Dan McDaid. Worse, I'd never heard of the writer or artist...and the art looked pretty bad, from the Big Titty cover to the Big Footy interior art. So for the first time in almost fourteen years, I did not buy a new Firefly comic book that I saw on the stands.

I will confess that if I see it at a big discount I'll go for it, though. But it's going to have to be at least 50% off.

In other news...I bought two comic books today:

Justice League #20

Despite my not being overly fond of Justice League #19, when I saw #20...and my empty holds box at The Great Escape...I went for it. And even though I really don't like that Mxyzptlk character at all, it was a pretty good read. I really enjoyed the new character designs of the 6th Dimensional Justice League, for one thing. And whatever is rotten in the state of 6D is starting to stink by story's end, so I suppose I'll be back around for #21.

The Life and Death of Toyo Harada #1

I don't know enough about the Valiant universe to have the slightest clue who Toyo Hard is...but when I saw that beautiful David Mack cover on the first issue, I had to pick it up. And when I saw the interior art...by CAFU and Mico Suayan...well...take a look for yourself (Comixology gives you a three page preview). I would have to rate it A for Astonishing. And I will admit that I felt a bit in medias res on the story, it didn't get in my way. And it was a good story, with very little Stupid Comic Book Shit going on. I'm definitely coming back for another round of this. It also really sparked my interest in Valiant overall. I think I have about a dozen Valiant comics in my 33 boxes of comics books...each of which, I'm told, holds 300 comic books. So obviously they don't represent a very big portion of my collection. (And to add insult to injury, I'm pretty sure that most of them were freebies or FCBD editions.) But maybe I should have tested the water a little more. More news as it happens, but meanwhile...I'd definitely give two thumbs up for this first issue of Toyo Harada.  And oh: It's $4.99, with 30 pages of story and art. Comixology says it has 41 pages, which can only be true if you count the cover and all of the ad pages. So there's that.