Born to a destitute existence,
J.Hues quickly rose to the prominent level of uncomfortably poor. His real name
is shrouded in secrecy but if you ask him he might tell you it's Jason Hughes
(Dammit!).
Nothing much happened until he
graduated from college with a completely useless degree in English, and then...
nothing much continued to happen. Subsequently, J.Hues found himself working
at a toy store. Later, through some strange accident he fell sideways into the
IT field and has been trapped there ever since.
To keep his sanity, he writes:
novels, poems, comics, grocery lists, checks (too many checks), fake doctor's
notes... Maybe someday he'll get paid for all this.
A genius in his own mind, J.Hues
uses various grammatical no-nos to mask his complete and total inability to
craft a single genuine or unique idea. He's never happy unless he is blathering
on with his own obnoxious opinions and ideas. Wait, are you still reading this?
Read the damn column already!
“If a comic geek and a game geek meet in a dark wood and a tree falls on both of them, will there be any girlfriends back at home to miss them?” --me
PRE-MATCH HYPE
Okay, I don’t even want to LOOK at another run of any comic books for awhile. I am still exhausted from breaking down those books. And if you’re looking for another lengthy review from yours truly, well you’re not going to find it. Truth of the matter is I’m just plain reviewed out. Well, that is to say I’m reviewed out AFTER completing the excellent breakdown that I and Brandon Thomas (future comics writing superstar and fellow SBC Columnist (over in his digs at Ambidextrous)) did of Rawhide Kid #1 over in the latest Ambi. Too lazy to navigate to it? No problemo kiddies. I’ve got your back. Just click right here and go read it. In fact, you might rather read that than the rest of this. With Ambi I can at least guarantee you that half of it will be insightful, well thought and impeccably worded.
ROUND 1
Isn’t the new MillarWorld pretty? Isn’t it amazing how quickly it began to fill up with new and exciting threads? This appears to be one of the hippest new hang-outs for comics fans, though I’ll never understand why the trendiest hang out isn’t our own message boards here at SBC. I mean hell, we even gave me a comic! Wait, maybe that’s the problem.
At any rate, one of the first things to appear there and quickly explode into like a ten-plus page discussion was a thread devoted to Rob Liefeld. I know, insert lame crack here. It’s amazing to me that it can making fun of someone can become passé. If you’re that someone, it’s quite an accomplishment in incompetence if it’s become passé for people to mock you. As for the thread, the reason it grew so quickly was because Mr. Liefeld himself has made frequent (and by frequent I mean he has the thread open in his browser and is hitting refresh every thirty seconds to see if anything new has been posted that he can reply to) responses and appearances in this thread. It is a quite lively discussion and in some ways fascinating while in other ways somehow pathetic.
So naturally, I jogged down to my local comics shop to pick up the latest Youngblood: Bloodpost only to be told by the shop owner that it hadn’t shipped and in fact wasn’t even done yet I was confused. If the book wasn’t done, then wouldn’t Rob Liefeld, being the consummate professional that he is, be working on it?
If he’s not careful he’s going to start getting a reputation. And not a good one.
ROUND 2
Oh yeah. Remember how I said that if you send me free stuff then I’ll talk about it. Well cue the excited music because we’ve go—
I said cue the excited music.
What the hell is going on? Where’s my excited music?
We don’t have—oh you’ve got to be kidding me! We have what? Oh alright, I guess it’ll have to do.
Cue it.
***** playing in background: “I’m blue da-ba-dee-da-ba-die…” *****
Now where was I. Oh yes, the free stuff. The fine folks at CGE dropped off a nice little package in my mailbox and I finally got my first good look at the new Forge and Edge. The result? I am absolutely pumped about the new Travelers collections for Meridian, Scion and presumably eventually the whole damned line coming out soon! What an amazing little package. For eight bucks you get like seven complete comic books. The art looks great, the paper quality is top-notch and I didn’t even have to squint to read the text. The absolute only drawback is that by it’s nature, the binding is too constrictive of double-page spreads.
Since you can’t lay it flat like the magazines, the gutters of those two-page spreads get lost, causing some awkwardness in the visual presentation. The word balloons are placed so as to avoid any problems, but with books like Ruse and The Path that are almost exclusively designed with a two-page layout it creates some awkward moments as you try and look at the art. Of course, this problem exists for the larger Trade collections too.
Maybe they should invent a new format with a small indent about a quarter of an inch or so from the edge of the page (the side that’s in the binding) so that when it opens, the indent will be at the crease. Then print only to the indent and it will be easier for the fans to fold at the indents and have the illusion of a perfect two-page spread. And because the page is indented naturally it won’t damage the book or the paper any. Does that make any sense at all? In my head it’s brilliant!
These little tomes are heavy for their size but they are just as convenient as you would expect from a format called Travelers. As convenient to carry and read as a paperback novel, and we know how the invention of the paperback novel revolutionized the reading market and the book industry. This could be the next great revolution for the comics industry. Take a few minutes the next time you’re at the comic shop and pick one of these up. Flip through it, heft it, sample what it would be like to read in this format. You could be holding the future of this industry!
Oh, and thanks and keep ‘em coming, CrossGen. My mailbox gets lonely!
ROUND 3
While we’re on the subject of CGE, ‘Your Man @ Marvel’ is now ‘Your Man @ CrossGen.’ In what should be seen as more of a coup than it is, CrossGen snatched up Marvel’s former Director of Marketing Communications and created a brand new position for him. He’s the new… uh… Director of Marketing Communications for CGE. He doesn’t even have to get a new name plaque that way!
Nice to see that the ‘stealing away of Marvel talent’ isn’t only limited to the artists.
I wonder when CGE will realize that they need a President and make an offer to—
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
I’m sorry, I couldn’t even finish that one. Whew!
ROUND 4
Entertainment Weekly premieres their new comics section on Friday, to coincide with the launch of the sure-to-be-a-blockbuster Daredevil film. Okay, mixed reactions from reviewers aside, I anticipate DD will have a strong opening, because of the post-Spider-Man factor and how well that one did. Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess; really it depends on the quality of the film.
The folks at EW have had this in development for some time, but it wasn’t until the aforementioned arachnid clobbered box office records that they determined it may be worth doing. So it’s starting out as only two paltry pages and it’s only going to exist during the weekends of the upcoming spandex set: Daredevil, Hulk and X2. That last one is X-Men 2 for any really stupid people out there. The point of this is that they hope to amp up this feature to a monthly. Anything more will depend on reader response. This is one of the premiere magazines on the Entertainment Culture in this country. It has millions of readers each week. That’s like at least ten times more readers than our top books.
This is exactly the validation the comics industry needs. What we need to do next is launch a grass-roots letter writing campaign to the EW editors telling them that we LOVE this section, better yet we need it! Make suggestions of other things they could cover in it. Great publishing initiatives. An expose on ‘Free Comic Book Day 2.’ Help them realize how rich this industry is and how there is a passionate and loyal following for it.
ZENtertainment started out years ago as an Entertainment news site focusing on the more mainstream entertainment mediums. When they added comics coverage to the site, it immediately became the most popular section. Cinescape recently added comics coverage to their magazine and it immediately became one of the most popular features. Comic geeks are fanatical about other people acknowledging that what they enjoy isn’t completely weird and kind of creepy (or that it’s some kind of sick homosexual spandex fantasy—unless that’s what it is for you in which case—YOU GO GIRL!) so this should be a no-brainer.
We are on the cusp of mainstream acceptance as a viable entertainment medium. I wonder who’s going to screw it up first?
My money’s on Jemas.
ROUND 5
The long cold winter is over. Finally, the drought has passed and I can breathe again! Long time readers (hi Mom!) may remember me talking about how I haven’t been getting my weekly comics for several weeks now, fallout of setting up my own business and re-establishing my account with Diamond. And so for the past FIVE long weeks I have been without my weekly comics goodness.
I appreciate all the prayers and cards and well wishes I’ve received from you all, it has truly helped me through these troubling times. The good news is that today I received a big ol’ box of comics from Diamond! So now I have over 200 new books to keep me busy until the next Ice Age.
Yep, that’s right. After a hellacious month or so, we’re back in business. Setting up the digs over at the ‘coming soon’ popbuzz.net, the future of comics mail order services is here and now. Okay, well not just yet NOW but soon, you know. Just think, when everyone asks you “Hey, where do you get your mail order comics?” you’ll be able to answer…
“Why from that jackass over at ‘Rolling with the Punches.’”
Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have some comics to read!
K.O.
disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this column don’t necessarily represent those expressed by any sane and rational adult; they barely represent the views of the author and they barely resemble coherency as it is; nevertheless this column is chock full of satire and parody (as protected by laws protecting such things) and as such don’t sue me. look at it this way, this is all for fun, don’t believe a word of it (even if it is true), don’t take it too seriously, and if you do take it, take it all with a grain of salt—better yet have the truck back up to your house.
