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Originally uploaded by emmetmatheson

Here's our weird Regina link of the day.

This is what my house looked like that time the lawn got mowed. It was a group effort. I kinda binged on comics this afternoon, buoyed by a reading of Douglas Wolk's excellent Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean and hungry for some good comics after not visiting RX in three weeks. I don't know if the comics I got are any good--in fact, I'm willing to bet most of them aren't. I've been real ambivalent towards comics lately. Ever since 52 ended and Countdown began, I've felt oddly dissociated from the DC Universe. I suppose the ennui goes back further than that, but 52 was such a remarkably FUN ride, that its absence is sorely felt.

I've quit reading most of the series that initially got me back reading comics a few years ago. Green Lantern, Green Arrow and the Flash have all gotten terrible in the last year or so (though the most recent issue of the Flash, by Mark Waid and Daniel Acuna, shows considerable promise of goodness to come). Titles that were really exciting me only one year ago--Kurt Busiek's Superman, Dan Slott's She-Hulk, and Action Philosophers--have, for various reasons, become less and less enjoyable.

But here are some comics I am enjoying:

The Brave & the Bold (DC) - Mark Waid and George Perez reinvent the team-up book and throw away the rules. I make comments that don't mean anything. Anyway, the scope is huge, the art is grand, and it's everything that's fun about DC Comics.

Punisher War Journal (Marvel) - Matt Fraction and Ariel Olivetti deliver what Frank Miller and Jim Lee think they're doing in All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Loud and grotesque ultra-violence that parodizes as it celebrates.

hmmm, that's about it in terms comics that I really look forward to. Whatever Grant Morrison's up to (especially his All Star Superman), Ed Brubaker's surprisingly awesome Captain America, Blue Beetle, Keith Giffen's Midnighter, and Duncan Rouleau's Metal Men are all satisfactorily thrill-engaged. The current Batman Confidential storyline is great, too.

p.s. I have more to say about Reading Comics, and I'll say it real soon. I just want to make sure I finish reading it before I endorse too heartily, just in case Wolk non-chalantly sucks up the joint in the Tomb of Dracula chapter.