Daredevil Message Board

[Neilan]

I keep thinking about this old Duke Ellington song called, “I’ve Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good”. On Saturday, I drove 75 miles to a town called Kenilworth, New Jersey to get to a comic book store that was having a 50% off sale. I found out about this on the internet, surfing for online stores that would carry books that I can’t find at mycomicshop.com or impulsecreations. When I found this store’s site and saw this big sale, at first I was excited, then came back down to reality, realizing that it would be a tough sell to the wife, who I don’t think fully understands my particular illness. To my shock, she volunteered to fill in for me taking the kids to karate and running the usual weekend errands, even though she has to go to work on Saturdays. Yes, I know I’m a very lucky guy. Well after about an hour and a half up the Jersey Turnpike (I live in Pennsylvania), I managed to find the Wild Pig II store, and I was not disappointed. Their back issues are normally a $1. I was the veritable kid in a candy store. After picking up 12 trades, including Bone, the complete edition, and 43 single issues at fifty cents each (10 of them were on The List), I drove the 75 miles back home on cloud nine. The thing is, that past week I had received a 7 trade order from Instocktrades and the previous week had seen the arrival of shipments from Mycomicshop and Newkadia. Is there a rehab facility for comic book addicts? The Will Eisner clinic, maybe? I definitely need to go into purchase hibernation for a while. I figure I can refrain for about a month, as long as we don’t count Wednesdays.
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

[Neilan]

Well, I’m baack. What, nobody missed me?! Well, I certainly missed you “guys”. Besides working like the proverbial dog, I’ve read a few titles in the 2 months that I’ve been away from the board. So before I get caught up on the approximately 4,000 posts that I’ve missed, here are my thoughts on the following:

One More Day – The final issue came out on my 50th birthday. Some gift. It definitely wasn’t my size. I had been a big enthusiast of the so-called Spider Marriage and would have hated to see it dissolved, regardless of what methodology was used to get rid of it. The Mephisto method certainly didn’t make it any more palatable. I’ve felt that for the last, at least 10 years, that the best writers for Spider-Man were the ones who could made MJ and May interesting characters in their own right and who built on those characters’ past experiences as strong survivors, who when put together with Peter into a family unit, made a family that was even stronger than the sum of its parts. I’m sure that this topic has been beaten to death already (and besides, its now old news) but if, as Mephisto said, his motivation for striking the deal with Peter was because of the epic, unique relationship between Peter and MJ, then why would Quesada want it to end? Yeah, I know he felt that the writers had very little room to work in, but that’s only an issue if they are not good writers.

Brand New Day – I’ve only read the Dan Slott issues, and as much as I really enjoy most of Slott’s other work, I hate seeing Peter Parker as a loser. He always had problems, but they were due to his circumstances, not his character. To me he was an iconoclastic everyman hero. Now, he’s a loser. I don’t know what else you call someone who has great abilities but can barely keep a job, has no home of his own and has to mooch off his elderly aunt.

American Way – Not great, but definitely enjoyable. I liked the art and I liked what it had to say about race in America in the sixties, as well as marketing in America.

Global Frequency – I like that it featured a different artist for each issue and that they were mostly standalone stories. While I would have liked a bit more cohesiveness in the overall story, it was decent.

Give Me Liberty and all the other Martha Washington issues – Just fabulous work through and through. The questions raised, the fantastic action, the unfortunate parallels to real events, all made for a wonderfully, entertaining, thought provoking, reading experience. And Gibbon’s artwork was just outstanding.

Y The Last Man – I’ll post this in the dedicated thread. There's got to be a thread already, if not, I'll start one

The Inititative – I’m really enjoying this title, and I thought that the Annual was fantastic. It fleshed out some characters while keeping the story moving. I don’t know how good Secret Invasion will be, but I have faith that this title will be the best tie-in. Dan Slott has become one of my current favorite writers.

Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her – Competent yarn, but nothing special. Perhaps I would have enjoyed this 6 issue mini more, had I read the previous 6 issue mini. I usually like the challenging nature of Bill Sinkewiecz’ art. Here, I thought it was just okay.

Seven Soldiers of Victory – An interesting undertaking. Seven, either old or b list characters, updated and made relevant by 1 overarching plot. I really liked all of the individual issues, but I found the bookends of Seven Soldiers #0 and #1 didn’t bring the story together for me, as well as I would have liked. Exposed me to a bunch of good artists that I had previously had no experience with. Yanick Paquette was the one that stood out to me the most.
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

[jumonji]

[Neilan]

[jumonji]