This & Last Week's (& Almost This This Week's As Well) Comics: September 10th & 17th, 2021

I didn't make it to the comic book store last week, so this week's haul was a whopping four titles! Unfortunately there was not a Milestone amongst them. 

Milestone is really the company that brought me back to the comic book store. I was just about at the point where I was ready to move on from comics...since I'd been out of it for a year and a half, was not excited about any of the books that I'd been buying before, was horrified at the new prices, and had been self-exiled from buying digital comic books from ComiXology. But Milestone? I'd been waiting for them to return for over twenty years. 

Speaking of which, I just got an Amazon gift card from my big sister, and since I could buy from Amazon without being tethered to a credit card, I threw that money down for the Milestone Compendium One. I am really hoping that it does well enough for the powers that be to continue this implied series, as it would finally give me a chance to get all of the Milestone titles that I missed the first time 
around...and at a really great price point. (Compendium One includes 55 issues for $58.69 is less than $1.07 per issue.)

ANYway...

This & Last Week's Comics were



As for this Mamo #3...the short version is: picked it up whimsically, sampled it, wanted it, read it, loved it. The long version is: HERE.

Suicide Squad #7  SS is not a book I would normally be interested in, but they had me at Ambush Bug, of course. There was a time when I was buying every comic book that The Bug made an appearance in. I loved that character. And I loved the fact that Robert Loren Fleming had a hand in the writing, because I was quite the fan of his work on Thriller. (Still one of my favorite series ever...so of course it only lasted seven issues with the real creators, and then the last four of the series were done by people who had no business working on the book at all. Also of course, it has never been released in a collected edition, and you can't even find a legal e-version of it.) And? Well, it was kind of amusing. Enough so that I will put my $4 down next month to see where the next issue goes. I don't think that writer Robbie Thompson has anything on Robert Loren Fleming, but he does seem to understand Ambush Bug, and there were a couple of AB-isms which amused me here. As for the story itself...well, who cares, really? There's only one Suicide Squad story, after all. 

Checkmate #3 Yep, it finally came in. And? I have to confess that I was less impressed by this issue than by the previous two, but even so, there were some things that I enjoyed. Such as the No Shit Superman take. It wasn't a bad issue...just seemed to be spinning the wheels a bit. Maybe we'll get some traction next month. And yes, I will be there for it.

Usagi Yojimbo #22 Well...I DO love Usagi Yojimbo. And I have bought lots of issues of the comic. In fact, almost all of the main series issues, starting with the Fantagraphics collections and all the way through the Dark Horse Grasscutter book, and then most of the single issues after that. And when IDW started this series...in color, which was the first time for that since the 1993 Mirage Studios days...I was excited. But to be honest, it seems like we've kind of steered back into the same old rut again. I wish Stan Sakai would put Usagi on a boat and send him off to visit The United States of Lions or the Gorilla Communes, you know? *  And let the bunny Get Old, Stan! I'm still down for the next issue...but I don't know how many more after that.

Next Week's Comics:

I'm looking forward to Fantastic Four #36, which seems to promise a real problem for Our Johnny: based upon the cover and something I read somewhere along the way, my guess is that Johnny Storm gets stuck in the Flame On! position. That could be a problem, hmmm? So I think I'm going to need to check that out and see.

Hardware: Season One #2  Of course.

Back Issue #131: The Kirby Legacy at DC...which means, among other things,  Kamandi & Omac, two of my earliest comic book love affairs. Back Issue is always an interesting book, but at $10 a pop, I rarely buy it. You can subscribe--a year / 8 issues for $90, but unless my math is off that's even worse. There is a digital only subscription for $36, and I am pretty seriously considering that...but I really like PAPer, man. Of course, it's not like there's a lack of that around this house....

* If you don't know, check out Jack Kirby's THE WORLD OF KAMANDI !!! map sometime. You'll be glad you did!