Kicks To The Skull, Prices Reasonable

We haven’t talked a lot about Skullkickers here because frankly, it flies a little under our radar despite being one damn fun comic book. It’s a story about two fantasy adventurers – one an alcoholic dwarf, the othe an alcoholic classic Conan type, only with a foul mouth and a gun – for hire to the highest bidder. Or any bidder. Think Lord of The Rings with a quualude habit. Or a messy, serialized Uwe Boll film that’s actually fun to watch.

The Image book became a hit quickly, selling out its early issues quickly enough that for a while it could be hard to find those comics to catch up… not that you need a lot of backstory to understand “Drunks… monster(s)… FIGHT!” The difficulty in hunting down back issues is, however, no longer an excuse for not checking the book out, because creator Jim Zub is releasing the book from the first issue on the Web. A page a day. For nothing. Gratis. Bupkis. Which is not a business plan that the protagonists of the book would embrace.

What the hell, Jim?

He Has But One Life To Give…And It’s Fun Sized – Review Of Secret Avengers #23

Rob got into a text exchange today with Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Pixiestyx about the size of our weekly pull list. Rob said “addicts…don’t count”. It’s true. We have a filthy comic book habit in this house, between the two of us, that sometimes results in multiple trips to the comic book store. In fact, just yesterday, Rob and I found ourselves early for a get together with some folks at a bar and you know what we did to kill time? Go to that neighborhood’s local comic book store where, despite having dropped about $120 dollars on Wednesday for the week’s take, we dropped another $80 on books. That’s $80 dollars we could have spent at the bar getting shit faced while waiting for people to show up at the get together. We might need an intervention.

With that many books coming into the house, I’ll fully admit that I don’t always get around to reading everything we buy each week. Sometimes I have to, I don’t know, go to work. So I can pay for more comic books and lights to read them by. Secret Avengers, which Rob has reviewed a lot in the past, no seriously, is one of those books. I read a couple issues of the Warren Ellis run and pretty much agreed with Rob that, dialogue-wise, it felt like a Next Wave retread. Now, Rick Remender has taken over writing duties and, with all of the other books to choose from in the pile this week, I decided to pick up the book on a Part Two of an arc already in progress.

Was this a wise use of my time? Short answer: yes.

Alert – Hawkeye is a dick, and other spoilers, ahead!