A quick post for Friday:

I forgot to post yesterday, and then was having some computer trouble, but the JLApe posts ran without me. (I hadn't intended for both to go, but oh well.) But, I did finally get to the Comic Book Shop for the first time in a stretch. And there was good news and bad...

First, the good: The new issue of Unknown Soldier barely features the title character at all, and it's great. I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for whatever writer Joshua Dysart has planned after this one ends.

Everything from the Mignolaverse...and I don't know if they call it that...was also excellent: new B.P.R.D., Hellboy, and Baltimore. I need to order the Baltimore novel off Amazon: the miniseries is about a vampire hunter in an altered post-World War I setting. This first issue is set-up, but done well. There's a palpable sense of doom in all three books...in early Hellboy stories, you knew he was going to overcome the planned destiny of his stone right hand. Now, you're not so sure if he will, or even if he should; and Hellboy doesn't even seem like the only one that could end the world.

I also enjoyed the third issue of the Bob Layton Hercules mini; which was pretty much written for me since I liked all the old ones. Some of the jokes fall flat (the too-snarky ad-slogany logo on a terrorist's missile, for example) and you really kinda have to have read the old ones, but still, fun for me. And things continue moving in the Thanos Imperative #3, where Drax the Destroyer's policy on Thanos, friend or foe, is made clear; and Nova pulls a strike team to try and end the war with one strike. (Longtime favorite Quasar is back, and gets to do the slow badass walk to battle with Beta Ray Bill and the Silver Surfer!)

Now, the bad: Well, this first one isn't so much bad as rushed, the last issue of Warlord. Pretty obviously a much-longer storyline is crammed into one issue; which is admittedly better than being cancelled midstream.

The new Toyfare was better than the last couple of issues, but...maybe not as good as it used to be. Ditto Deadpool #1000. The only story I really liked was Howard Chaykin's "Today I am da Man." And that's probably because I like Chaykin's writing and art style; the story's pretty straight-forward, but the dialogue makes it for me. There were a couple others with moments--the last panels of Dean Haspiel's "Nightmare on Elm Tree" made me laugh, because I'm a bad person--but overall, lately Deadpool comics have been nonsense for nonsense's sake; and I dropped the regular Deadpool book from my pull box.

Now, that's not to say I probably won't end up with some: there's a wrestling issue of Deadpool Team-Up that should be good, but all too often that book's taken an idea or pairing that should be a slam dunk, then utterly failed to execute. That Frankencastle/Pool team-up was the last one to really disappoint me, and it was the last one I bought.

But that brings up another point: number of regular DC or Marvel books in my pull box? Zero. I gotta say, it's probably mostly price: there's more than a few books I'd be reading if they were cheaper. But I also have this weird theory...that I need to think about, try and articulate it a little. We'll see if I get it figured out over the weekend!

Oh, and I found a surprise or two in the quarter bins, but those'll keep 'til later!