7/18/2004

Can YOU find the hidden "Identity Crisis" joke in these assorted thoughts???

* Best line of the weekend, from Paul O’Brien’s review of issue #1 of the new "Books of Magick" series:

"Another Vertigo title based on a concept from the Neil Gaiman archives? Why, there must be a vowel in the month."
 
* Nick Hornby’s column in the July issue of "The Believer", which I flipped through on the newsstand upon discovering that it was indeed a new issue (damned similar covers), features several comics reviews. Hornby liked "Y: The Last Man", marveling at the dirty language in what he refers to as "a proper comic book". He also gives a very fast positive recommendation to Dan Clowes’ "David Boring". I wonder if that’s the first Clowes book Hornby has read? Only because that’s probably not the one I’d recommend to start with. But most importantly, the very same issue features another swell one-page strip by the great Michael Kupperman. Anybody who has not purchased a copy of "Snake ‘n’ Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret" and subsequently had it bronzed upon committing each strip within to memory must attend confession and remedy the situation at once. It’s one of the very few comics that literally made me laugh until I cried.

* Anybody out there in comics-related Internet land happen to know why the third issue of Grant Morrison’s run on "Spawn" (that’s issue #18) appears to command such a high price? I was visiting my local shop and I plucked the first two issues of Morrison’s arc out of the quarter bin. I then looked around for the last issue, since I can’t stand to read only parts of arcs of back-issues I collect, and I found it for $10!!! And I looked online and discovered that Spawn #18 tends to cost quite a bit more money than the average issue. So what happens? Is it a MILESTONE EVENT that ROCKS SPAWN TO HIS CORE? Will the Spawn universe NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN? Does someone’s wife die in a horrible manner? I must know, but I don’t really want to pay more than cover price to find out.

Man. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Dave Sim. All of them have worked on Spawn. Man. I was more of a "Savage Dragon" kid myself.