Familiar Justice, Or: Happy Semi-Annimaversary!

Our weekly visit to our local comic book store, where they know me by name and ask me, “Jesus Christ, you’re still alive?” brought us an unexpected reminder of the week before DC’s New 52 debuted. You remember – back on the last day of August 2011, when the only main line book DC released was Justice League #1… and Crisis On Infinite Midlives was in the late planning stages before our September 4th launch… and by “late planning stages,” I mean that Amanda and I were alternately asking each other, “Were we talking about starting a comics Web site? And do you have my pants?”

Well, this week’s visit reminded that we are six months old this week, because there is only one DC New 52 book – Justice League, I’m sure purely by coincidence – and regardless of how many DC books are available this week, for the 25th time, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But what a week it is! We have Justice League #6, a new issue of both Avengers and New Avengers, a new The Walking Dead, and, most impressively… Ralph Wiggum #1!

But, as is has been for the past six months: before we can review them, first we need time to read them. So until then and as always: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Crossdressing: I, Vampire #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last review before the comic stores open…

I tuned out of I, Vampire after protagonist Andrew Bennett left Boston for Gotham City. I figured that we just in for yet another meeting of a vampire and Batman, and besides: being from Boston, I was getting a charge out of seeing a major comic set in my town. Maybe I was being unrealistic, but I sort of hoped that we’d see Mary, Queen of The Vampires, take a bite out of David Ortiz and grow about three horse testicles in her armpits.

So robbed of the chance to see some Boston University knuckleheads get bled out on Lansdowne Street, I checked out for a little while, and I clearly shouldn’t have. Because sometime between then and now, all the shit has hit the fan.

The book opens in some kind of gothic building (A subway station? A church? Being Gotham, maybe a 7-Eleven?) with Bennett, some allies and yes, Batman, fighting about a scrillion vampires. And it is an impressive scene… and it says something about the state of the modern vampire story that I’ve written and deleted about seven different “sparkling vampires” jokes just now.