The Ancillary Characters Christmas Shopping Guide Extravaganza!!!

The Comprehensive Christmas List, a Paul and Seth collaboration event!

With Christmas looming and so many options for comics fans to choose from it can be difficult to buy gifts that truly fit your loved one's interests. What do you get for that cousin who loves sci-fi and dancing cats? What about that wacky uncle who's mildly obsessed with people with antlers growing out of their heads?

That's where we come in. Armed with an abundance of knowledge about what book, toy or accessory fits which personality we've thrown together this Christmas Gift Buyer's Guide just for you. Buying for your deranged aunt who has a weird proclivity for reading books about serial killers has never been so easy!

Buy This! - November 30th, 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.

 

Bad news, guys. Christmas is less than a month away. If you haven't finished (or, like me, even started) shopping for your comics-loving friends and family then I'm here to help. Consider these next few weeks of Buy This your handy Christmas gift guide. I'll be tossing items into the next few columns that may be older releases but deserve to be handed out or just selfishly purchased none the less. As usual I'll be picking current releases and also as usual some of the items I mention may or may not actually make it to store shelves when they're supposed to.

Paul's Picks! - Nov. 23rd

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.

The Flash by Francis Manupal and Brian Buccellato

Happy Turkey week! In a time of festivities and much food consumption, I'm sure many of you will be busy spending time with your families and eating your weight in turkey and dressing. Still, in the midst of all the food and fun, us comic geeks will certainly find the time to swing by our local store and grab our pulls. I waited to head home for the holidays until today just to make sure that I could grab my books, so you all would have my Pick to check out this week. Don't you feel special?

My folder was packed pretty full this week, with Superman, Teen Titans, Flash, Aquaman, and even more. However, even with a wider selection than usual, this week's winner was a shoe-in. While I'm loving Johns' Aquaman, this week's issue was a little more bland than the first two (at least the ending was). The star this week was undeniably Barry Allen in The Flash, by Francis Manupal and Brian Buccellato. When I heard that Johns was leaving the book post-Flashpoint, I was apprehensive to say the least. Manupal's art had been fantastic on the series. I'm a big fan of Scott Kolins' work on the character, but Manupal is rapidly getting closer and closer to my favorite artist, especially with Barry. By the time I finished the first issue of the DCnU title, I knew these guys were here to play for real. Manupal gets in Barry's head so well that sometimes I forget there even is an author, leaving me to almost believe that I'm reading the real thoughts of a real person.

Buy This! - November 23rd, 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.

It's Thanksgiving week and therefore I'm writing up a longer edition of the Buy This column in celebration. Instead of the usual three items I normally toss at you I'm writing about five, and probably will write a wee bit more than usual about those five titles. 

Tales from the Long Box: Boris the Bear Slaughters the Teenage Radioactive Black Belt Mutant Ninja Critters #1

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.

Boris the Bear Slaughters the Teenage Radioactive Black Belt Mutant Ninja Critters #1

Sometimes I stumble across comics that I have no idea where they've come from. Such is the case with this one about an anthropomorphic teddy bear who sets out on a heinous killing spree. I have no recollection of buy this title, and no memory of ever reading it before. However, after finding it tossed haphazardly in a drawer I knew I had to not only read but write about it as well.

The first thing to know about Boris the Bear is that this is a really awful book. It also perfectly exemplifies late 80's/early 90's comics culture and pop culture in general. As such, it was obviously meant as a direct stab at the prevailing trend at the time, which apparently was stories featuring animals that solve crimes, perform kung-fu and carry a variety of weapons. It is the comics equivalent of those late-night tv movie Twilight parodies and just as awkwardly not-funny.

Going Digital

We've all had the arguments over the death of print media, and more specifically comic "books". By now everyone has voiced their opinion as to which view they take. Will comics as a printed form of entertainment die? Will it outlive this tablet craze? Or maybe you fall into the they-can-co-exist camp. Whatever the case may be, the digital comics revolution has begun... or maybe it began years ago and it's just now hitting a turning point...