paper crack | a pointless comic book blog

Trudging through the comics sorting...

2007-04-26T13:00:48Z

So the past few days have consisted of me trying to sort my old Marvel Comics to get rid of the shit. I'm not evening going to try and deal with the DC stuff at the moment since it is taking me so long just go get the Marvel shit in order. And quite frankly, I haven't been seriously interested in Marvel books since the 80s. I realized as I was going through the comics that I remember the actual stories of the 80s books but I apparently bought various Marvel books in the late 90s that I can't tell you a single damn thing about. Uncanny X-Men from the issue #94 to the early #200s I remember every single story. Apparently I bought a lot of stuff later than that and I can't guarantee I read any of it. Marvel all kind of collapsed for me once Uncanny X-Men split into multiple pointless books and when The New Mutants became the godsawful X-Force. And once John Byrne left Fantastic Four in the 80s, I can't really say what happened after that for those characters either. **warning** picture heavy ]]>

Iron Man #152 holds a special place for me since my friend Dean had this and it was the first comic that I saw where the cover artist Bob Layton, had composited an actual photo into the background. Plus it was the first time in my comic-reading life where a change of armor appeared, though that gimmick would become common every 10 issues in the 90s. ---

I seem to have a few bronze age Iron Man issues too. I must have picked these up when working at the various comic cons during my teen years. ---

For me, Marvel during the early 80s can be summed up by one man: John Byrne! Now a lot of people can't stand him, and I'll admit his specific style hasn't evolved as the decades have gone by, but his art on Uncanny X-Men, and his writing/art on Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight was fantastic. His style was consistent and his pencils, especially when inked by Terry Austin, was fantastic. ---

Another artists who I love from that period is Barry Windsor-Smith. Now I don't really know his work from the early 70s and discovered him when he did some Uncanny X-Men, some New Mutants (above), and his Machine Man series. His line art became his "own" and his style was unlike others. A good chunk of 70s and 80s Marvel art is totally interchangeable to me but BWS stands out. I'd love to see him illustrate some Neil Gaiman written DC superheroes. ---

Now when I think of boring comic characters, the Incredible Hulk is usually right up there. But there was this brief period when Peter David was writing on the book when it was brilliant, especially with the "Mister Fixit" Grey Hulk. ---

I also loved Louise Simonson's Power Pack series. It was a great series about kids that got superpowers from an alien and when June Brigman was illustrating the book it was top notch. She actually could draw comic book children that looked like human children. Many artists can't draw children (*cough* John Byrne *cough*). I even liked when Franklin Richards started appearing in the book as Tattletale. Alas, the books when through art changes and once the kids' powers swapped it went downhill mostly.

And of course, we have this oh-so-great cover of Wolverine threatening a 5-year old Katie Power with his claws. The funny thing here is that 5-year old could pretty much incinerate him. ---

Marvels Epic subline brought me Alien Legion which to this very day should still be made into a film or tv series. With the advent of decent and relatively affordable television CGI effects it makes this series totally possible. Pssst... Marvel... why not try to develop one of your other properties as a film??? This one. This one right here! ---

Oh. And can you guess which tv star was popular when this issue of New Mutants came out?

I'm back.

2007-04-25T22:57:50Z

Well I'm finally working on the comics in the basement. Yay! Must... get... rid... of... 90%... of... them...

Almost ready...

2007-01-07T16:15:10Z

Well the back bedroom remodeling is almost done! And that means I can start sorting through all the comics soon! I so need to get that done and get these out of my life.

Paper Crack Adventures with Giga and Sutekh!

2006-12-28T20:29:34Z

So with the recent holiday, crack day got pushed to Thursday. Since I'm on vacation I decided to join Giga and Sutekh on their paper crack adventures. We arrived at Discount Paperback, the local crack dealer who supplies Giga's weekly fix of four-color addiction. DP is pretty much you typical comic shop/geek toy shop/porn shop/miscellaneous paperback shop. The 50% off bins (above) were rummaged through for goodies. I was going to get a Sandman Mystery Theatre trade and a Judas Contract trade but ended up putting them back since I have no need for more paper here in the House of Love at all. DP has quite a selection of graphic novels and trade paperbacks. My eventual goal is to only by trades of content I want to own. It takes up less space than the individual issues and of course can sit easily on a shelf where the issues kind of fall all over the place. However, I wish Marvel and DC would trade shit that probably will never be done such as ROM and All-Star Squadron and such. DP also has a ton of non-transforming-flavored plastic crack running the gamut from superhero shit to mango to a ton of crap that I thankfully don't know about. (It is a point of pride for me that I know so little about a ton of modern current geekage!) Ramayana" /> Last night, while at The Family T's house, we discovered Mister T. reads Ramayan 3392AD, an totally kickass beautifully illustrated comic by Deepak Chopra of all people. This book is sweet and I may end up getting it when it is collected... or at least borrowing Mister T.'s copies. Sandman is purty!" class="img-l"/>I finally got my hands on a copy of Volume 1 of The Absolute Sandman collection. Damn this is purty. Of course, I own the originals and the trades already and I can't justify buying yet another version of the same thing but man it is nice. Someday. Maybe. I suppose a lot depends on how much I can make off the comics collection and crap when it goes. In the end, Giga got 52, the new JLA, and some books I don't read. He got a Weaponer of Qward too.

On hiatus!

2006-12-23T15:12:13Z

On hiatus until after the holidays!

The Day After...

2006-12-22T02:17:11Z

It is Thursday. And that means... it is the day after! *spoilers ahead* My ass is still hurting from the pounding I got yesterday from Catwoman #62. Yes. As expected, DC Comics fucked me pretty hard. It was too good to be true that Helena Wayne would exist again. I hoped DC would do the right thing but they failed me. So. I'm going to be a shallow asshole and stop reading Catwoman. But it doesn't matter since Giga buys the books and he likes the title.

Teen Titans #42 was ok. I'm always back and forth about this book and Peter Snejberg's art saves it for me. Barely-a-sidekick Kid Devil finally gets his story but quite frankly it was kind of wimpy. I mean, it was obvious it would have to involve some kind of demon involvement to explain Eddie becoming an actual demon but did it have to be the craptastic Neron? Ugh! I guess I'm really spoiled by Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey's version of Hell and the general Abrahamic magic religions over at Vertigo and it is always hard to read anything comic-related with Hell in it. Neron is like bottom of the barrel for me. ]]>

Previews for December 20th

2006-12-18T18:35:04Z

I can honestly say that I pretty much only read what Giga buys these days. Yeah, there's the occasional "Oh buy that!" comment but it is rare. This week brings one superhero title that I hope will finally explain a major character change and another that will stab me in the back as most comic writers seem to do to me. I'm really looking forward to Teen Titans #42 and finally getting some back information on how Kid Devil became a literal fire-breathing demon! Plus Peter Snejbjerg is doing the art and I fell in love with his shit back during the awesomeness that was Starman. On the opposite side of the spectrum I'm not looking forward to being bent over by Will Pfeifer and pounded really hard up the wazzoo with Selina Kyle's daughter not being fathered by Bruce Wayne over in Catwoman #62. I didn't ask much from the mediocre Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later" jump but when they announced Selina was going to have a baby girl it meant that one of my all-time favorite characters could possibly some day come back, albeit in a very different form than we had a chance to see her the first time around. But of course, that would mean actually making a significant development in the life of the old über-asshole and of course we can't have any of that. Why they bothered to name the baby Helena other than to dick over the fans in hopes that the real Helena Wayne would return just pisses me off. Now true, DC could actually surprise me and reveal that Bruce is the baby daddy (like he cosmically should be) but no, that's unlikely. Which pisses me off even more because we have the lame ass apparently legitimate Kingdom Come son now officially canon! That damn Earth-Prime Superboy better pound some reality walls about this soon!

What am I going to do with this shit?

2006-12-17T22:38:07Z

What am I going to do with this shit? Yes. You read that correctly. This shit. It is going to be extremely hard to make any form of return on the 20+ years of investment made in wasting massive amounts of money on comics. I'll be lucky to maybe get 25¢ a book for the majority the contents of my 70s and 80s stuff and Giga and I will be lucky to get even less for the stuff we've mutually purchased from 1997 to the present. Right now 95% or so of the comics in this house have been moved to the Basement of Love pending the completion of the back bedroom remodeling and the holidays. There's many many many hours ahead of sorting and cataloging this stuff just to see if anyone wants to buy a run of this or that book. I talked to a friend who manages a Half Price Books and even he has said they rarely buy many comics. The local paper crack dealers aren't really buying this stuff either. Know that when all is said and done, if I can't sell some of this stuff I will be giving it away to any readers that want to pay for the shipping and handling of the books to their homes.

Happy Birthday to Paper Crack!

2006-12-17T22:18:08Z

Paper Crack: From the Massive Comic Boxes of the Attic of Love™ is now officially 2 minutes old. In the hopes of not boring my Plastic Crack readers I've split off any conversions about comic, comics reading, comics lameness, and all other assorted comics related shit to this new blog, much like I split Plastic Crack off of my main blog a 18 months ago. While the real purpose of this site is to document and explore the massive 30+ years old comic collection before I dispose of it to the public it is also an experiment for me to learn some additional internet-related crap, especially where Movable Type is concerned. But rest assured I will have absolutely nothing of true value or importance to say about the sick disgusting habit of reading comic books. So bookmark Paper Crack! This isn't The World's Most Useless Spin-Off Website for nothing now!