Buy This! - December 28th, 2011

Every Monday Seth picks out three items that are due to ship on Wednesday and directs you toward your best bets for a quality purchase. Some times it's a single issue of a comic, other times a massive omnibus edition of a beloved series, and occasionally a figure or shiny bauble that caught his eye. Read on to find the three items you shouldn't leave your comic shop without this week.

Sooo, that happened. Another Christmas has come and gone and left me with a bunch of trinkets and baubles I didn't have before it came. I received a very cool Knight (of Knight and Squire fame) action figure and the first volume of the Flash by Geoff Johns omnibus courtesy of my girlfriend, as well as a talking Boba Fett helmet... which I've worn far too much for a grown man. I wrapped up Christmas by going to the comic store yesterday and was dismayed to discover they weren't running any sales so I bought my pulls and a couple older trades and called it a day. I have to say, all in all I got very little in the way of comics this year. Maybe it's my relatives trying to tell me to grow up or something...

This week's pulls should be hitting on Wednesday as usual but I'm hearing rumblings that some shops won't have new comics till Thursday. I know, it makes no sense since essentially all the major shipping avenues were open Monday but, there it is. In the way of housekeeping, the TMNT micro series continues this week with the Michaelangelo spotlight that I picked for my Buy This column a few weeks ago. Also, it's not there anymore but I hope some of you managed to snag that Rocketeer Adventures hardcover from Thwipster while it lasted. Mine should be arriving in the next two days.

Tales from the Long Box: Year In Review

Every week Seth goes into his back issue bins, picks out a single issue, story arc, or creative run, pours through it and then writes about it. He calls it Tales from the Long Box. Though old and now either retconned out of existence or made irrelevant by the latest event, these books still share something in common... they're bagged, boarded, and a part of comics history.

Around this time last year I'd reached a sort of lull in my excitement for comics. Not just buying them every Wednesday but even reading them. The big superhero books (with a few exceptions) seemed to be in a state of either transition or had grown stale. No where was this more obvious than my pull list which by the end of December 2010 was around a meager 8 or 9 titles. Even my graphic novel/trade paperback purchasing had dwindled. All of this culminated when I sold off a large portion of my single issue collection and a bunch of my trades and hardcovers. Honestly, it was looking bleak for a while there.

Paul's Picks! - Dec. 21

Well, it's that time again folks: Wednesday! And you know what Wednesday is?... Well, of course you do, you're reading a blog about comics, so you obviously know it's New Comics Day, a.k.a. Paul's favorite weekly holiday! And in celebration of this weekly, well, celebration, Paul is here to give you his favorite book of the week.

Justice League #4 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee

Fish-man no more!

First of all, Merry Christmas! Well, almost. I'm sure many of you are just getting settled in for the holidays, and what better way to kick back than with a nice stack of comics? At least, that's the first thing I did when I arrived at the parents for the weekend, and man was I in for a treat! Not one of my pulls this week were a let down. As a matter of fact, any of them could easily have wound up as my favorite this week. Azzarello's Wonder Woman was great as usual, Snyder continues to blow my mind in Batman, and this was probably the best issue of TMNT yet. Sadly, there can be only one, and the inevitable winner this week is the fourth issue of the Johns/Lee Justice League!

The Ancillary Character's Favorites of 2011 List-a-mania!!!

As the holidays grow near and 2011 draws to a close, we here at Ancillary Characters would like you to join us for our First Annual Comics Awards. Seth and Paul poured through their short boxes to choose their favorites from 2011. What follows might not be the best books in terms of craftsmanship, but rather, the books, characters and creators we enjoyed the most.

Obviously, not every book that reaches stands makes it into our greedy paws so if you notice something absent from the list, mention it to us. Who knows, maybe it passed us by. Though a number of great, small publisher books were released this year, for the most part this list sticks to the big companies.

No doubt if a larger list were compiled books like Morning Glories, Locke & Key, New York Five, and Moriarty (to name a few) would have been there. However, rather than a tedious, top-five-per-category tome we narrowed it down to our absolute favorites in each category. Read on...

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer is here... and here's what we thought!

Did you just see that?? I did, and I got chills!

As this year is drawing to an end, we have a nice handful of comic book movies to add to our collection: such as Thor, Green Lantern, X-Men First Class, and Captain America. Regardless of your opinion about any of those movies, we must all recognize that we are living in the era of the Superhero movie. The most critically acclaimed of these movies is the beloved Batman Begins sequel by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight. On July 20th, 2012, audiences will finally get to see Nolan's Batman legend come to an end.

As a movie lover, the first two installments in this Bat series were some of the best made films I've seen in ages. Nolan develops his characters deeply, and he has created a Gotham City that absolutely cannot survive without the Dark Knight. In his third film, The Dark Knight Rises, we are going to see a Gotham eight years after the end of the second movie. This trailer only gives us a small glimpse into what Nolan has in store for us, but the tension is just palpable. This is not a Batman that is finding his way (as in Batman Begins) or even a hero that is finally coming into his own (as in TDK). No, this is a Batman that is losing control of his life and his city. This is a Batman that doesn't know what to do, and if he wants to save Gotham, he is going to have to rise to the challenge.

I know you're wondering how I got all this from a 2 minute trailer, but I have a feeling that The Dark Knight Rises is going to be as different from the second movie as TDK was from the first. Nolan has created something here that no one else could have, and he has made it clear he is finished after this one. I don't know what's going to happen, and I almost hate to speculate, but this trailer (along with that haunting teaser) tells us one thing for sure: When this movie ends, "The Legend Ends."

Buy This! - December 21st, 2011

 

Every Monday Seth picks out three items that are due to ship on Wednesday and directs you toward your best bets for a quality purchase. Some times it's a single issue of a comic, other times a massive omnibus edition of a beloved series, and occasionally a figure or shiny bauble that caught his eye. Read on to find the three items you shouldn't leave your comic shop without this week.

T-minus 6 days till Christmas, boys and girls. Hope all your shopping is done with and you made sure to buy yourself a little something. I picked up the Prelude to the Death of Spider-Man (Ultimate) hardcover on Sunday, and my girlfriend and I decided to open our gifts early so I was also blessed with the Flash by Geoff Johns omnibus. Very excited to dig into that.

As usual, be aware that any or all of these books might not show up in your shop when they're solicited to due to the chaotic nature of the industry.

Onto this week's buys...