Comics I Bought: May 31, 2007

Only one regular comic for me this week:

Usagi Yojimbo - 103. Always reliable. Always good.

Plus I picked up a hardcover collected edition:

Conan: "Hall of the Dead and Other Stories"

Conan is one of those books that I've decided to pick up collected instead of issue by issue. It reprints seven issues of the regular series and 7 x $3 per issue is $21. The hardcover retails for $24.99 minus a discount from my local shop brings it to about the same price. I'll take the hardcover in this case.

Some comics I want month to month and some not. Deciding which is which isn't always easy. You run the risk of growing disinterested if you wait for the collected version and never actually picking it up. Some comics I like so much that I pick up both versions. I should make a list of those one day.

Week Twenty One of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes 23, 27-28 - Three kinda random issues of this series that are only a couple of pieces in a couple of stories. But it left me wanting more and that's a good thing.

The first issue has to do with Supergirl and her lack of a clear memory and issues 27-28 were about the Legion's home base planet (Earth) being attacked by another planet. Nothing to make you change the way you think about the world but fun stuff.

The art (Kitson and Gray) was quite nice as was the writing. The "Earth is being attacked" plot was fairly typical and the turning point a little predictable but well executed. I'm a fan of well executed. Check it out for some super hero action.

Wetworks V2. 2, 4, 6-7 - Another gaggle of random issues to read. I read a few issues of Wetworks V1 back in the day and remember some guys in liquid golden metal suits and a war between vampires and werewolves. It never grabbed me. But here we are with volume two. Back with vampires, werewolves, and one guy in a golden suit of armor.

I liked the story. It is thick with plots and characters. It was a little hard to follow being that I only had four issues out of seven but I managed to catch on by issue seven. We got vampires and werewolves from another dimension now. This book is filled with sci-fi supernatural stuff.

The art is only okay though. Issues 2 and 4 are inked like a normal comic but issue six is digitally inked and not as good as the previous ones. Then we get a new penciler for issue seven. His drawing isn't as interesting as in the earlier issues but his storytelling is better.

So if you like sci-fi, military, supernatural stories that are filled with violence and a few intriguing ideas check out Wetworks. It could stand some improvement but it's better than volume 1.

Now I need to go find some complete stories to read.

Proto Cards

I mentioned my set of fortune telling cards a few blogs back. Well I finally made a full color prototype deck of them. I have one thing to say after that experience: Holy cow is it a pain in the ass. Forty eight individual hand crafted cards. I'm not even counting all the work that goes into the concept and illustration stage. Just the printing, cutting, and pasting stage.

Of course I used a computer. They make things a whole lot easier. Except when they don't. I already had all the cards designed and laid out in an illustration program called Illustrator (clever name no?) but to line them up for printing on my Epson printer I used a design and layout program called InDesign. That's when things got crazy and baffling. I'm not a novice in these programs but sometimes they do things that I have no explanation for. This is one of those things.

Each card is 2.5 x 4.5 inches. In Illustrator each card was 2.5 x 4.5 inches (no stroke for those in the know). I then use InDesign which is a program that makes it easy to line up and print out all forty eight cards. I should be able to line up all of the cards four to a page, print out the cards, and them flip the paper to print the card backs which are lined up exactly like the fronts. Computers are good at such precision. Except when they're not.

I made an InDesign template with four 2.5 x 4.5 boxes to place my 2.5 x 4.5 in. Typical stuff. That's how InDesign works. Make a box or shape and tell it to put a piece of artwork you have already prepared in that box. That's how all the logos, pictures, and text get into books and magazines these days. The problem was that every time I brought my 2.5 x 4.5 cards into InDesign they measured 2.502 x 4.5. That's two one thousands of an inch difference and you might think it wouldn't matter but in the world of computers it messes up all the alignments. I have no explanation for why this occurred but I couldn't correct it.

So I cut my losses and redesigned the cards directly in InDesign and imported just the artwork. Now all the type and little parts were out of Illustrator and into the design program. Everything lined up perfectly and it was a go for printing. Forty eight cards, four cards per page, twelve sheets of double sided matte paper, and twenty four print dialogue boxes latter they were all printed.

Now I had to cut and laminate them. Even thought the paper I was using was fairly thick it would stain or wear out easily without some sort of coating. I decided to try some self stick laminating paper because I didn't want to by a laminating machine or use a wet spray on coating. It's basically a clear contact paper and it was a little frustrating to use. Especially at first. Out of the twelve sheets front and back that I had to laminate I wrecked one (the first one) and had to redo eight cards because of air bubbles. Getting that laminate to lay flat isn't always easy. So that's three additional sheets I had to do. Twenty five percent failure rate isn't very good. But I got 'em done.

The final step was rounding the corners. Most decks of cards have round corners so that is what I was going for. Of course I had to cut mine by hand. Forty eight times four is one hundred and ninety two cuts. My X-acto blade got a workout. The corners certainly don't look machined but over all not bad.

And now I'm one more step closer to being able to tell the future.

Comics I Bought: May 24, 2007

Man what a slow week at the local comic shop. I got no new comics. None of my regulars were in and there was nothing new that I was interested in. I did pick up the latest issue (22) of "Back Issue" magazine to tide me over. It's a mag all about comics of the 70's and 80's. Meanwhile here are some reviews.

Week Twenty of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Checkmate "A King's Game" TPB - Collects "Checkmate" issues 1-7 - Well, I only made it through one issue of this trade. Life is too short to read anymore of it.

Checkmate is a U.N. team of citizens and super heros set up to deal with super powered problems. More stuff like StormWatch but not as good. The first issue has a U.N. meeting with them voting on extending Checkmate's charter and a team of secret agents infiltrating and brutally killing some bad guys at the bad guy's hide out. It's not a good thing when I end up pulling for the villains because the good guys are so brutal, merciless, and unheroic.

Mediocre stuff. I'm going to see if I can find something better to read.

Testament "West of Eden" TPB Collects "Testament" issues 6-10 - Another trade that I only made it through one issue of. This is getting depressing. It's a good thing I was gifted these books.

At least I'll give this book credit for trying something different. It's about gods and prophets existing and how they influence life and mankind. People write stories of the gods and the gods write stories of the people. But it's all done with a heavy hand. There is not much subtlety and everyone is always having "deep" conversations. I find it all pretty awkward and neither entertaining or enlightening. Ah, well...

The Exterminators "Bug Brothers" TPB collects issues 1-5 of "The Exterminators" - Finally a trade I made it all the way through! I was hoping this one would be good because I liked some of the artist's(Tony Moore) previous efforts. He drew issues of both "Fear Agent" and "Walking Dead".

The Exterminators is about, what else, a group of exterminators who live and work near LA. The lead character is an ex-con who just started working at his mother's boyfriend's extermination business.

The book is filled with wacko characters and the plot involves mysterious deaths, shootin' up bug poison, mutant insects, a mysterious box, an assumed evil corporation, and some thugs. All in all it makes the extermination game seem exciting. Good stuff all around.

The only complaint I have is that the dialogue is a little stiff at times. I could also do without the lipstick lesbians who are obviously there for male titillation. I'm a little tired of that gimmick. But overall the writing is solid and the story interesting. Check it out for something a little different.

Things I Almost Want To Get

Todays blog is not about rampant consumerism but about unrampant consumerism. It's about things that have been on my "to buy" list for years but never get bought. None of the items on it are important enough to rise to the top of my "to buy" list and new things are always added to the list that rise above these and get purchased. I don't know if anyone else has a list like this but I do. All that these items have in common is being stuck in limbo on my list as others come and go. They do have staying power if nothing else.

PSP - A Play Station Portable. This item would almost fill two spots for me. I like hand held video games and want a portable photo album for my snap shot collection. As a handheld I chose the Nintendo DS over this years ago because the DS was much cheaper and had some good games that I wanted. The PSP sure is cool but it just doesn't have the games. It can display photos nicely but I don't know if it has the software (I suspect not) to handle my collection of 8000 photos all organized and labeled by person, time, and event. Plus I'd have to get a big memory card to store all the photos on which would drive up the price of the PSP even more. I'm still waiting for a full screen iPod for this purpose but Apple is not exactly racing that full screen iPod to market so the so the PSP languishes on my list.

A mountain bike. I love bike riding. I hop on my road bike three times a week and enjoy the exercise and the ride. So a mountain bike seems real cool. It looks like fun going down trails and riding through the woods. Everybody on TV always rides mountain bikes. Except that they are really expensive. You can drop a grand on one in the blink of an eye. And that's not even a good one. Ouch. And then you have to drive somewhere to find a trail to mountain bike on. With my road bike I just go out my front door. There are plenty of roads. Not so with trails. So the mountain bike sits on the list never to be bought. But I still think it's cool. I can imagine myself zooming through trails. Zooooommm...

Zoot Suit - C'mon who doesn't want a Zoot Suit? Long, baggy, snazzy, and garish they are quintessential cool. If only I had a place to wear one too. It's not like I'm a hipper than thou twenty two year old clubber. Halloween might be my only excuse to get one of these. And I might this year. They're one of the cheaper things on this list. It's gotta be bright green too.

Self healing cutting mat - I've been meaning to resurface my drawing table for about four years now. This is what I would put down on it. I had one of these on my old table and it is a great surface. Better than the dirty old Borco I have now. Except that the Borco is still in pretty good shape. I like the self healing cutting mat better but not enough to spend money ($80) on it. There are always other art supplies to buy. So it stays on the list. Still wanted but in no way a priority.

11x17 inch scanner - My Epson 8.5x11 scanner from 1996 is my oldest piece of computer equipment. It cost a fortune ($1300) when I got it but a 11x17 scanner was way to expensive ($3000-4000) for me to ever get. It's been a work horse for me as I scan things almost every day and it's been running great for over ten years. But a lot of my work that I scan in is 11x17. This means I have to scan things in two pieces and stitch them together. It obviously can be done and I have been doing it but it would be nice not to. A decent 11x17 scanner is now about $1100 and though that is more doable than $3000 it is still a ton o' dough. One of the questions I ask myself before buying a new piece of computer equipment is, "What new thing will I be able to do with this?". If the answer is "nothing" that the equipment moves down the list. The 11x17 scanner offers me great convenience but I can scan as fine without it. Just slower. So it sits on the list.

Flash 300-350 - These are comics I bought in High School (early 80's) but got rid of years ago. They are drawn by Infantino and feature "The Trial of the Flash". They are not even especially good comics but I've grown nostalgic for them over the years. I not even sure why. I just want to read them again. I'll probably even be disappointed when I do. They're not considered a hight point in the world of Flash comics and they've never been, and probably never will be, collected or reprinted in any way. They are not very expensive but they are hard to find because nobody wants them. Plus that's a lot of issues to track down. I always get other better comics ahead of them. Every now and then I check out Ebay where individual issues can always be found but not a full run. So there they sit on my list.

Yes, my list of things I never seem to buy. There you go.

Comics I Bought: May 17, 2007

Once again I'm back from the comic shop with two new comics:

Ex Machina - 28

Local - 9

Plus I bought the new vinyl figure of "Skullboy" (of the Mighty Skullboy Army). It's produced by Dark Horse Comics based on a character by my friend Jacob Chabot. It's really cool and and a bit bigger than I thought it would be. Nice.

Last week I bought Criminal Vol 1 "Coward". It's a collection of the first five issues of the series named "Criminal". It's by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips and published by Marvel Comics under their creator owned "Icon" imprint. It's about a criminal who's especially good at running away when a plan goes wrong. Because of this "talent" he's seen as a coward by other criminals. He gets involved in a heist with some crooked cops and the plan goes wrong so he has to, guess what, run away. It seemed kind of obvious that was going to happen.

I'm generally a fan of Brubaker's writing and I think his crime noir stuff is better than his mainstream super hero stuff. That said I think this is B level Brubaker. Still, his B level stuff is good so I'll take it. Especially since the art and coloring were good.

Maybe it was because this is one of those stories that was all about criminals and there were no good guys but I didn't find it as involving as Point Blank, Sleeper, or The Fall. I found some of the dialogue to be clunky and stilted. Usually when the criminals were bantering or threatening each other. I'm not sure if it was the fault of the artist's storytelling or the writer's words but something seemed a little off at times. The narration was always smooth and believable though.

I found it a little odd that there is no lettering credit on the book. The balloons look like they were drawn right on the art work but the lettering itself is done on a computer. Maybe Sean Phillips did his own lettering and the "art" credit covers the lettering. There is a coloring credit after all (Val Staples).

All in all there is definitely enough good stuff here to recommend this book. Don't let my minor problems with it stop you from getting it. After all, I'll be there to buy the next volume.

Sabre - A graphic novel by Don McGregor and Paul Galacy from 1978. I have some old issues of this series from the early Eighties but I never read this, the original, graphic novel. I haven't read the issues since the early Eighties either. So I remembered nothing.

It's an interesting read over the distance of time. The basic plot is that it is a post apocalyptic world and Sabre wants to live free and the powers that be want obedience and order. Nothing too new there but it's the execution that is absorbing.

The artwork is very modern. It's done in a high contrast, photo referenced, and detailed kind of style that any reader of "The Ultimates" would find familiar. It's the story telling that is different. It's dense. The book is only 44 pages but it takes longer to read than one of today's 220 page trade paperbacks. It's magazine size so the pages are bigger and there are 6-12 panels per page. Six is the most amount of panels you'll find on the page of a modern comic but here it's the least. Detailed story telling not decompressed.

As a matter of fact the writing is the complete opposite of stripped down. It's lyrical. There are a lot of words in this book and McGregor is doing his best to make them dance. He's trying to say something rather than just move the story along. A complete change of pace from a lot of today's comics and from comics of its own time. These guys were really trying to make a "graphic novel". Track it down. It's worth a read.

Majestic "The Final Cut" TPB - I used to read "The Wild C.A.T.S." back in the day and I think that was the only reason I was able to follow what was going on in this book. It starts in the middle of a tale and there is an awful lot of back story to Majestic's world. I didn't even understand some of it. Is this Earth Wilstorm or Earth Majestic? I didn't know they were two different Earths if that is the case. Or does this story take place on some different Earth? These questions are relevant because the story involves the end of the world and some pretty major stuff happens.

I thought it was some solid super hero stuff. Too much royal family intrigue in it for me (Maj is royalty from another planet or some such) but some people like that crap. Lots of fights, blood, and guts to keep you entertained but the very end (there were a couple of endings) made me go "huh". I still don't understand it. But it didn't ruin the story.

So there you have it. A decidedly mixed review. A decent trade but I wonder if a newbie who knows nothing about Majestic will be able to follow it very closely. And three different pencilers didn't help that. Still, it whiled away a little time as I sat in the hammock waiting for my power to come back. We've had a thunderstorm today and have lost power. It still hasn't been restored. I'm typing this in the dark. 79% power and dropping on the laptop.

The Work of Painting

Man, making a painting is a lot of work. To further clarify: making a large oil painting is a lot of work. I do a lot of things. Drawing, paintings large and small, photos, and prints. Each takes its own amount of work but it's the large oil (30x40 inches on up) that easily soaks up the most time. Before this week I haven't painted a large one in a over year so I almost forgot what it was like.

A couple of years ago I tired of the larger works. I'd been doing them for a decade and a half as my primary painting outlet and I wanted to work with smaller images mare quickly. Smaller canvases don't have the impact bigger ones do but I wanted to compensate for that with more images. Speed was inportant. I started doing small 8x10 inch canvases in acrylic. I've done plenty of those smaller canvases over the last two years. Maybe a hundred of them. I'm now tired of how little time they take; compared to the big oils at least. The small ones don't really go that fast. They're not sketches.

This week I've gone back to painting a big oil. Hour after hour of laying down paint. The craft of it can clear the mind in a way other things can't. My way of painting is very methodical and the finished work slowly reveals itself almost like it's inevitable. It's an interesting experience again. But it's a lot of work.

I move in and out of concentration fairly easily. It's a way of keeping my mind limber and when doing preliminary work on a painting it's essential so that I can see new things. When doing smaller works I also move in and out of concentration because dynamic changes are always happening in small stuff. Things are easy to change.

In the larger works things have to be worked out in advance to a much higher degree. As the scale changes it makes it harder to fix mistakes so planning is a must. When I get to the final painting much of the art is done and much of the craft is left to do. It then takes a fatiguing amount of concentration. I had forgotten this.

I also mix almost all of my colors that I will need and have them all laid out on my palette. This means the clock is ticking. Oil paint takes a long time to dry when it is in huge lumps but leaving it there for days isn't a good idea. A skin will develop and ruin the paint with chunks. That will still take a couple of days so its not like acrylic paint which will dry in hours. But when a large oil takes anywhere from 50-100 hours to paint you have to keep moving. Days go by.

It takes a lot of work. It's much more tiring than the same amount of time doing numerous small pieces. I had forgotten that. Now I remember.

Comics I Bought: May 10, 2007

I'm back from an afternoon trip to the comic shop. I picked up two of my regulars and a collected edition:

StormWatch Post Human Division - 7

Samurai Heaven and Earth Vol 2 - No 4

Criminal Vol 1 "Coward". This collects the first five issues of the Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips series. I loved their work on "Sleeper" and have heard this was good so I'm looking forward to it. It's Marvel so I waited for the trade. I don't need endless pages of ads filling up my shelves.

I'm tired of reading so many DC Comics so I'm not going to review any of them this week. Instead here are my thoughts on some of my recent purchases.

Supernatural: Origins 1 which I bought last week was pretty good. It's a prequel to the TV show (I've seen season 1 but not 2) and it's well written and well drawn by two guys I've never heard of: Peter Johnson and Matthew Dow Smith. I was a little anxious at the initial page's use of first person narrative (the proliferation of bad first person narrative in comics being a pet peeve of mine) but the writer moved between narrative and dialogue quite skillfully. The art was also quite good. I liked the storytelling and it was illustrated in a Mike Mignola high contrast style. Check it out.

City of Others 2 - Once again I kind of like an issue of this series. The story is well told and interesting. At least interesting for a Gothic horror story. They're not really my cup of tea. The ending of the issue made no sense but the rest was good. The "shot from pencils and then colored" art work combo is more refined than last issue and almost there. This is still a new technique in comics and I don't think it has really been perfected yet. All in all I'l probably pick up the final two issues of this mini.

Buffy Season Eight 3 - This issue read a little clunkier than issue two. The art looked a little more rushed and less well defined. I'll still pick up the next issue but if this is the first issue someone buys they might not like it as much as one or two.

The Shadow 1941 - Hitler's Astrologer - This is a Marvel graphic novel from 1988. I wish all Marvel graphic novels were this good. It's a historical fiction tale that starts in good old Times Square and moves on to all sorts of plots and intrigues in Nazi Germany. I love history so this is right up my alley. Denny O'Neil does a good job with the plot.

I've never been a fan of the Shadow and am only familiar with him through a handful of mediocre comics and a bad movie. In what I've seen of him he has always been portrayed as a second rate Batman (though he predates Batman) but I have never read any of the original stories or heard the original radio show. That being said, the Shadow was handled real well here. He was the prime mover behind events but he was only on stage for about a quarter of the book. It's a real ensemble piece.

I can't sing the praises of the art highly enough. It's by Michael Kaluta and Russ Heath and it is one of the nicest jobs I've ever seen. It's stunningly beautiful at times. I have to complain a little about the coloring. There are three colorists and for the most part the colors are fine except for some pages where people's faces are without color. Just the white of the page. It seems without reason and is distracting. Still, everything else is of such high quality that you have to see it.

Posession

I just stocked up on some art supplies last week. Paper, pens, paint, and brushes came through my door on Thursday. One of the things I purchased was a new technical pen. For those who don't know what that is it's a pen that was created to make technical drawings. It makes a single width line in ink. It doesn't do variations in line weight. No thick to thin like most drawing tools. You can fill it with any ink you want and it comes in various sizes. I originally bought a set of 5 pens but over the years I came to only use one size. It is a fairly thick lined one at 1 mm but it works for me on most occasions.

Technical pens are not used as much as they once were. Most technical drawings are done on a computer now. In the world of cartooning, where I saw them used quite often, they have been replaced by thin black hard lined markers. Many younger cartoonists I know have never used a technical pen as they have always had easy access to these markers. I use those markers but I still like technical pens.

I had to replace my technical pen because it just plain wore out. I've been using it since about 1991 so it had a long and useful life. Each technical pen costs roughly twenty dollars, so they are not cheap, but a fine line marker costs about two dollars and doesn't last nearly fifteen years. Even factoring in buying ink to refill the technical pen it's way cheaper than markers.

I am glad to have a nice new functioning tech pen again. It draws smooth and silky as opposed to my rough old one which clogged up constantly. But I am a little sad. After all, the old one was my tech pen for so many years. It got me thinking about how we can grow attached to little things and be sad at their passing. There may be a thousand other pens just like mine but mine is mine and that makes it unique. It takes time to grow a fondness for an inanimate object. This new tech pen doesn't seem like mine yet (it's even a different brand) and if I were to lose it today it would be no big deal. Except I'd be out twenty bucks.

I felt the same sadness when I had to buy new drawing triangles. A triangle is another piece of drawing equipment that isn't used much anymore. You use it in conjunction with a T-square to draw lines at right angles. And other angles too. It was a few years ago that I had to replace my triangles. They were the triangles that I bought as a freshmen in college. They put in nearly twenty years of service. But finally they were too nicked up to be of use. The new triangles don't have nearly as much charm as the old ones.

That's another thing, the new versions of all these nearly obsolete drawing tools are made much crappier than they used to be. The new tech pen seems to work fine but the company logo that's printed on it looks like it was put on by a ten year old. The new triangles are flimsier then my old ones and just try and find a good French curve. All the curves at the store I was in had burrs and imperfections along the edges that are supposed to cleanly guide your pen. Madness.

So hold on to the things that are yours and treat them right. Old things don't get better made with time.

Comics I bought This Week: May 3, 2007

This week I picked up five new comics and one old graphic novel:

Strangers in Paradise 89 (Only one more issue before the series ends!)

Buffy Season Eight - 3 (A good series so far.)

City of Others - 2 (I'll give Wrightson another look.)

Supernatural Origins - 1 (A tie in to the TV series "Supernatural")

Books With Pictures - 3 (I never saw issue two. Issue one was amateurish but amusing. The art in issue three already looks better than issue 1)

Kelly Green 1 "The Go-Between" (This is the old graphic novel. I got it because I wanted some Stan Drake artwork.)

Week Nineteen of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Detective Comics 826 - 827 - These are a couple of Paul Dini written issues and they are okay. I liked the second one better because we a get a story of Batman actually being a detective and not just a "creature of the night" hung up on vengeance. That's the Batman I prefer.

The first issue would be better except for the Joker. He is one of my least favorite villains because he is, quite often, written so unbelievably. The Joker must have killed ten random people in this issue. When he's written as a serial killer/mass murderer I just can't buy it. If you are a serial killer in our world you will be hunted down and locked up or killed. But in a world with DC super heroes this doesn't happen if your name is the Joker. Why? My willing suspension of disbelief always goes away when the Joker is written like this. Other than that the issue was good.

Detective Comics 500 - No this isn't a recent DC comic but one I pulled out of my collection on a whim. It has a cover date of March 1981 which means it probably came out around Christmas 1980. This comic has been sitting in my collection for 27 years just waiting for me to come read it a second time. That's a long time between reads.

To set the scene: I was fourteen years old when this book came out. I was also a Marvel kid so I didn't buy many DC comics. I read a fair amount of them as hand me downs but this is one of the very first DC comics I bought on my own. I couldn't pass up an triple sized 500th issue with this line up of talent. The bang for my buck got me. And this is the pre "Dark Night Returns" Batman. Before he became a psycho when he and Robin could occasionally be seen smiling on a cover. So here we go.

Story one" "To Kill a Legend" by Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano - Batman and Robin go to an alternate Earth (via that all purpose plot tool the Phantom Stranger) and have a chance to save Bruce Wayne's parents of that world. A solid outing for the 19 page lead story. Batman has to go through some emotional turmoil (early 80's DC style) and do some detecting. The ending will bring a little tear of happiness to your eye as this alternate world is without heroes even in its fiction.

Story two: is a Slam Bradley tale by Len Wein and Jim Aparo - This is a 13 pager that has a bunch of DC characters in it like the Human Target, Mysto the Magician, and Pow Pow Smith "Indian lawman". They're all competing to solve a murder case but it's Slam who's the man. It's a hard boiled detective story and Aparo's art really shines. As a matter of fact I'd say this is Aparo at his best and you should check it out just for his art.

Story Three: "Once Upon a Time" by Len Wein and Walt Simonson - A two pager. Almost a Batman poem. Dark scary and violent as Bats breaks up a violent crime and saves a women.

Story Four: An Elongated Man Story by Mike W. Barr and Jose Garcia Lopez - An eight pager involving Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious death. I never liked Elongated Man stories and this is no different. It's not terrible just uninteresting and EM is annoying as he is always drawn stretching for no apparent reason. But it was over in eight pages.

Story Five: "The Batman Encounters Grey Face" by Walter Gibson (creator of the shadow) ills by Tom Yeats- An eight page text story that I can't be bothered to read. When I'm reading comics I want to read comics. Batman short stories? C'mon. If you care then go read it yourself.

Story Six: A Hawkman story by Paul Levitz and Joe Kubert - A straight forward little eight page mystery that unexpectedly ties into the origin of the Martian Manhunter. Nothing great story wise but the art is Joe Kupert at his best. Hawkman and Hawkgirl are just flying around and talking for most of the story but Kupert does a masterful job of keeping things visually interesting. Worth a look just for the art.

Story Seven: "What Happens When a Batman Dies?" by Cary Bates and Carmine Infantino - A twenty two page story about Batman being poisoned and needing Deadman's help. The mystery part of the plot was ludicrous but the art was interesting. My introduction to Infantino was from various fill in issues he did for Marvel in the late 70's. They were awful. I used to cry whenever I bought a one of my regular comics and then noticed he drew it. But I like his early eighties DC stuff. This story had a nice afterlife sequence that was all done in red and yellow color holds. Again nothing terrific plot wise but interesting art. This story makes me want to track down the Infantino's early Eighties run on the Flash. I'm sad I got rid of that stuff years ago. I'd like to see it again.

So there's my walk back to 1980. Maybe I'll read this comic in another 27 years.