All Filler, All Killer

It’s the New Comics Day of Memorial Day week here in the United States, and in my experience, that leads to a truly shitty week of new comics. It means a short, truncated take after a bunch of regular books punt off by a week so that comic creators can relax and attend what I call the Lynchburg, Tennessee Comic Convention, while we normal comics fan are stuck with a small pile of what appears to be mostly annuals by second-string creative teams.

And on paper, this week’s take appears to be no different that prior years, what with at least two different DC annuals, along with one by Marvel. And to add (potentially) insult to injury, the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to show the paying customers my definition of a “small pile,” threw in a complimentary promo poster of J.G. Jones’s Before Watchmen drawing of The Comedian in a gimp mask to make my take look less anemic.

So on paper, things sound dire for this week’s take, but for good or ill, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But you know something? For a week that is normally a time-waster, I can only say that, of the three books I read at the bar, not one of them wasn’t one of the best books I’ve read in months. From a new The Walking Dead, to the new Bendis / Oeming Powers (which is the best issue of that book in literally years), to the Scott Snyder written Batman annual, which gives us the traditional origin of Mister Freeze, only with a truly interesting and satisfying twist, there are some damn good books here. Chuck in an Animal Man annual,  a new Angel & Faith and personal favorite Rocketeer Adventures, and we have a damn good, if smaller than usual, take of comics this week.

But before we can review them, we need time to read them (and also to dry out). So until then: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Brain Bleach: Chef Chris Cosentino To Write Digital Wolverine One Shot.

Somehow I missed it back in April when it was announced at WonderCon that Incanto chef Chris Cosentino had been asked by Marvel to write an issue of Wolverine. Cosentino says that Marvel Senior VP Of Creator And Content Development, C.B. Cebulski, and he tweet a lot and that while Cebulski was a guest at Incanto he asked Cosentino if he’s be interested in writing a comic book. Cosentino says that his comic will be set in San Francisco, be food-centric, and have lots of giant robots. The book will officially be titled Wolverine: The Fifth Quarter (“the fifth quarter” being a nod to the food most commonly associated with Cosentino, offal) and the art will be done by Tim Seely (Hack/Slash).

With Anthony Bourdain set to release Get Jiro! in July, one does have to ask if this is going to turn into a growing trend. Can we expect one shot publicity stunts from other celebrity chefs? Would Emeril write Gambit? Gordon Ramsay pen The Hulk? Should we look forward to a Flash tale from Rachel “30 Minute Meals” Ray? I’m sure the answer is most likely “no”. At least I hope so. Maybe Bourdain and Cosentino will prove me wrong, but I’ve got a fifth of Old Crow that says we’re going to see exposition heavy text and a story that leans heavily on the art. Hell. I’m willing to drink Crow.

So, why is this back in the news today? Well, over on The Daily Meal, Cosentino has a video interview in which he promotes his new cookbook, Beginnings: My Way To Start a Meal, and also talks about his comic book at around 1:35 or so.

Wolverine: The Fifth Quarter is set for this June as a digital release.

…You Rent Them: The Tale of The ComiXology Backup Script

Earlier this week, some dude posted to the Reddit Comic Book board that he had written a short Bash script (for the technologically challenged, think an old Windows batch file with ambition) that would allow you to download any digital comics you purchased from ComiXology, strip the DRM (again, for the uninitiated, DRM stands for digital rights management, which is nothing but copy protection with an official-sounding acronym to make it sound intimidating, like “FBI,” “CIA” or “DIAF”), and convert them to a format you can store locally and read on anything. Clearly this is a young man with plenty of free time to spend frittering on coding and hanging around in courtrooms.

The script author even posted a copy of the script with detailed instructions on how you could use it to download copies of the books you bought from ComiXology. Isn’t that nice? Oh, don’t go searching for it – ComiXology caught wind of it and asked the kid to delete the script.