I came pretty damned close to buying the November 6th comics on November 6th. (Made it on the 7th.) One of the reasons I got out on a Thursday was because I knew (from the preview stuff online) that Vault Comics Heist #1, Justice League #35, and Legion of Super-Heroes #1 were going to be hitting the stands, and I really wanted to make sure that I didn't miss out on any of them. And as you can see (⬆️), I didn't.
And?
Well. Justice League #35 is Part 6 of the Justice / Doom War storyline...which features...in a minor kind of way...Kamandi. So once again I'm buying a shitty comic book because of Kamandi. I have bought quite a few comic books for The Last Boy on Earth. (Until recently I thought I'd bought EVERY comic book in which he appeared...until I happened to pick up a copy of last year's DC Nuclear Winter Special #1 and found out, much to my surprise, that there was an eight page Kamandi story therein. But it was a $10 comic book...and the story was by Phil Hester ((both story and art)), who I don't really love...and I read the story whilst standing in the store ((shhhh)) and it was pretty much meh...so I didn't. But other than that, I've bought every comic book that included a story with Kamandi. Except for at least one one panel cameo thing, but that doesn't count, does it?) ANYway...this Justice / Doom War is just The Kamandi Challenge all over again. I'm buying it, reading it at a slog, and then wishing that I hadn't wasted my money. Sigh. Why oh why can't DC just give Kamandi to Paul Pope and / or Paul Dini? SERiously.
And Legion of Super-Heroes? Well...I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. And I've been reading the Legion for a much longer time. (I'm pretty sure my first LoSH book was the #1 issue that came out February 7 1973--the one with Superboy swinging Mon-El into a lamppost, ya know? So that's 46 years's worth of togetherness.) I was not delighted when I heard that Brian Michael Bendis was handling the writing chores, since I kind of soured on his writing when he was busy ruining Action Comics a year or two ago. (Man, before BMB took over that was one of my favorite books.) And I was even less impressed when I read the two prequel LoSH issues in Superman #14 and #15. But I still wanted to get my hands on the new #1 issue, and was happy when I did. And then I read it. Well...it wasn't THAT bad. But what the hell happened to BMB? His dialogue feels like it was stripped from the mouths of high school students as they rush through the halls to their next classes. It's just...squirrelly. And irritating. And the LoSH has definitely been politically corrected. I'm all in favor of diversity. More than that, I'm really sick of the whiteness of comic book characters. But I don't think you fix that by making Lightning Lad a black dude, ya know? In fact, in a way I think that's even worse...kind of like the people who paint their black lawn jockeys white and think that they're socially evolved because of that. For fuck's sake. If you want to introduce black characters into the Legion, then fuck, do it. But don't reverse engineer the characters that are already there. That's just lazy, anyway.
So. I'll be back for issue #2. And probably a lot of issues after that, too. But I can't imagine that I'll be very happy about it. Maybe Bendis will leave and they'll get Jim Shooter back. Now that would make me happy. Say what you will about him...but Big Jim could write the Legion.
And that brings me to the center of the donut: Vault Comics's Heist #1. Or, more properly, Heist, Or How to Steal a Planet #1. The regular cover of which is okay-ish...
...but check out that Love & Rockets homage cover above. Is that The Tits or what? I would happily have spent my $3.99 on that alone, for sure. But I got more. Quantity wise, nobody does it better than Vault Comics. This one was at least 28 pages long. (I've already bagged it and don't feel like going back to count it up, so it could have been longer than that...but shit, 28 is 6 more than Marvel or DC give you these days, so good enough at the possible low-ball.) And the story was inventive and interesting enough to bring me back for more. Though I have to admit that I wish Vault would do homage covers beyond the first issue, cause I really dig that shit.
And then there were some books I wanted but didn't buy:
Undiscovered Country #1 from Image, New Mutants #1 from Marvel, and Dungeons & Dragons: Baldur’s Gate 100-pager (a whole lot of comic book for $5.99) from IDW. But I figure that UC will be cheap on Comixology soon (Image is great about that), realized I was only thinking about NM because of the Big Titty Variant Cover
...and even I know that that's stupid, and although the D&D was a great value, I really don't give a shit about D&D.
So that about wraps it up, I suppose.
☮📤
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