The poster from 2012, the mask from 2011, but I've had them for two comic-cons...

This week's issue of BPRD: Hell on Earth (#124) is an excellent, single issue story; a great place to start reading. And super-creepy. But if you've been reading since 1994's Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1, you are both old, and in the possession of a pretty good pile of comics. Especially if you're not trade-waiting, and you've been getting the assorted Mignolaverse books like Sledgehammer 44, Lobster Johnson, and Baltimore. Strictly speaking, the latter isn't in the same universe, but it's Mike Mignola so it's going in the same box!

However disorganized you may assume I am...let me assure you, it's far more so. But most of my Mignola-books were together in a box...that got full. And has been in my garage, so I haven't been putting new issues in. Problem, or opportunity, for a proper longbox home for them? After some liberal application of packing and duct tape, yeah! It's reinforced and water resistant!

I've had this in mind forever, so it'll be nice to finish putting all those issues in there. Plus, it's a good opportunity to re-read a ton of them. Have a great weekend!
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OK, this week's comics:

I need to sit down and read the whole set, but while the last issue or two picked up, I kind of wonder if maybe this shouldn't have been a four-issue series instead of six. Still, the conclusion of Mad Rupert's Regular Show: Skips is a lot of fun: Skips gets out of his Groundhog Day predicament, but now has to face the menace of the monstrous Destruction Lord. Which is slightly less destructive than Mordecai and Rigby, even on it's best day.

In most crime comics or even movies, the mob planning to hit ten vaults in one night would be a dramatic conclusion; in Lobster Johnson: Get the Lobster #3 it's the midway point, and not the main focus! The cops are intensifying their manhunt for the vigilante Lobster Johnson, his friendly reporter Cindy is starting to get fed up with burying stories, other foes haven't forgotten about him; and Lobster isn't going to take a break or lay low. But he may be pressing his luck too far this time. This may be the best of the Mignola-verse books right now, and B.P.R.D. hasn't been bad lately either. (Story by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Tonci Zonjic, colors by Dave Stewart.)

After the four issue Winged Victory story, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson are back to stand-alones with Astro City #11, "The Sorcerer's Assistant." The young magician Silver Adept may be "the savior of more living souls than you can possibly imagine," but it's her assistant that has to answer the emails, schedule her appointments, reschedule her appointments, and occasionally save the day herself. Fun, well worth reading.

Lastly, Chris Claremont and Todd Nauck's Nightcrawler #1 is a good start to the series: back from the dead, Kurt's adjusting to the changes he missed--Wolverine has a school, lost his healing factor, and seems to be losing his grip; amongst others. After visiting his adopted sister/occasional girlfriend Amanda, they are attacked by an armored creep calling himself Trimega. The Bamfs are still following Kurt around too, which seems like it doesn't match up with the end of Amazing X-Men, but it's still neat: not reinventing the wheel, but I quite liked it.

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OK, this week's month's comics:

Although I bought some cheap trades and some ninety-nine cent Deadpool Corps and MAX issues; I hadn't picked up the bulk of my comics for the better part of a month. Which you probably guessed by the title. And it was a little gloomy, since there were two second-to-last issues and the end of a mini-series. We aren't going to do a lot of scans this time around, since I'm doing this on the fly, but let's take a quick look.

First, Static #7 was a bit more together than the previous issues, but still felt like too little and too late. On the other hand, O.M.A.C. #7 felt like there was a lot of gas left in the tank; as DiDio and Giffen channel a ton of Kirby and have Superman guest-star for a whopping four pages before going into a straight-up Kamandi tribute. And My Greatest Adventure #6 wraps the series with Robotman, Garbage Man, and Tenga not getting anything they want. Seriously, at all.

Demon Knights is the only DC book I've been reading that'll be around in a couple of months, but as the first storyline wraps I'm not sure if I want to stick with it or not. It's not bad, but the siege seemed to run a little long, and the outcome was a bit of a given. (A seeming traitor wasn't maybe, a character aged to near death is back, and they totally had to destroy that village to save it.)

On the other hand, the end of the Lobster Johnson story in Dark Horse Presents #9 is likewise a given, but it's executed better in less pages. I might have to write up this issue for a much-later 80-Page Thursday; but suffice to say I'm enjoying DHP a lot...but not as much as I theoretically could. Future issues are going to have Nexus, Ghost, and Evan Dorkin; and I selfishly want them all in the same issue. Every month.

There was also Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #3, which was terrifying and awesome. Tying into an old B.P.R.D. villain; this issue a mobster's new hires burn down a few buildings and fight the Lobster, but they are more than the mobster realizes. Much more. The mobster should have a lot more fear at this point than he does. Artist Tonci Zonjic is killing it, too.

Lastly, the conclusion of Atomic Robo & the Ghost of Station X wraps that series up nicely, although I think I missed an issue. Gotta get back on that. And I picked up the reprint of Adventure Time #1 for the Youngest, but haven't read it yet. Man, that's a bit light for a month; and I'm sure I missed or forgot to mention some stuff, but we'll get to that as it turns up.
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The last week or so:

Over the long weekend, I was offline for most of it. I managed to catch a bit of reading, after hitting up The Book Exchange in Missoula, MT. (For quite a while when I was in college, I bought most of my comics there.)

First, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. It's a fun, fast-moving, hilarious read, that's inappropriate for just about anybody. A private eye with a knack for stumbling face-first into the worst perversions you can think of, is hired by the heroin-addicted chief of staff, to find the secret Constitution of the United States. It's not as hard as it sounds, after he realizes the book is "currency for perverts."

If this had been written by, say, Chuck Palahniuk, this material would doubtless be soul-crushingly demoralizing. But Ellis is really a big softie. There is a moment I particularly liked, where the hero didn't necessarily want to roll America back to old-school conservative whitebreadism; but thought a blind guy raping his guide dog was a bit too far...

Since you already know I'm a big Hellboy fan, it should be no surprise that I enjoy the novels as well. While they don't reveal any big secrets about the character, the fun is in the foes, and the main characters' interaction with new characters. Hellboy: the Fire Wolves (written by Tim Lebbon) does well with both: monsters escaped from Vesuvius, the ghost of a fallen demon hunter, and a young Italian woman who escaped her family and now has to escape the family curse.

In the same vein, Thomas E. Sniegoski's Lobster Johnson novel the Satan Factory has a great villain (a disgraced mob doctor, who finds a demon's bones that ooze monster-making blood) and a good supporting character (a framed and broken ex-cop) but Sniegoski doesn't get the luxury of interaction with the main character. The Lobster remains a mysterious, aloof figure; even to his agents: in the end, you don't gain any more understanding of him than when you came in, but that's rather true for most of his tales. Lobster Johnson's an enigma even now; but check out the link: as usual, the cover design is a winner.

I also got Shocker Toys ShadowHawk for cheap at gohastings.com. I had ordered the Watchmen Nite Owl as well, but they sent the classic version (old guy, short pants) when I ordered the modern, armored one. Might send it back, but in their defense, it was still cheaper than cheap. I am hard-pressed to remember if I've ever read any ShadowHawk comics...or even appearances...and his helmet inexplicably reminds me of Phantom of the Paradise, a movie I know of but have never seen. Still, while he's a little bare-bones, he's a good figure.

In Montana, I picked up Star Wars: the Clone Wars volume one--the Genndy Tartakovsky animated series, that predates the current, more computer-animated one. They're shorter, 'micro-episodes,' and I know I've seen some of them, but not many. Maybe I should just sneak in an episode here and there, then. Got it for two bucks, and got them to throw in the old PS1 game Hellboy: Asylum Seeker for free. While it's archaic, by all accounts it's not very good. But I slogged my way all the way to the end of Evil Dead: Hail to the King, so apparently my standards on the low end for games. (If you ever try that Evil Dead game, it's definitely enjoyable if you're a Bruce Campbell fan, but the controls and the camera are iffy; and when I played it, it was so dark it was like being in the forest in the middle of the night...with a bucket on your head. That may have just been my TV, in retrospect.)

Lastly, my parents are loving their iPads, so my mom passed me her Sony Reader thing. I downloaded a fair pile of free stuff from Project Gutenberg: some Edgar Rice Burroughs that I hadn't read yet, a couple Philip K. Dick shorts ("The Defenders," "The Gun") and Robert E. Howard's "Red Nails." OK, that last I've read more than once before, but I'm now in the market for any free stuff I can find, so any hints, let me know.

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"Four pages yesterday, one today. Seems fair."

I watched the Robot Chicken Star Wars DVD the day after I did this one, and caught the Seth Green commentary. He wasn't picked because of that: I just needed a hapless victim figure, that had more joints than Timmy.

Marvel Comics' Zombie has been haunting me for years, though. Like a lot of characters, I saw him first in the pages of the original Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. That's not terribly unusual, since as a kid I didn't have the piles upon piles of comics I have now. In fact, I think I saw Nick Fury in OHOTMU before I ever saw a S.H.I.E.L.D. comic, for instance.

But the Zombie was the second to last entry in the original OHOTMU's Book of the Dead, before the Weapons issue. And it was a bit of a change from the superheroes, aliens, and even other monsters I'd been cramming into my head over the year-plus I'd been reading the series. It was a little grimmer than the usual Marvel character's bio, but intriguing.

Unfortunately, more than twenty years after reading that entry, I still have never read the Zombie's comics, even though I think they've been collected. Need to rectify that one of these days. See if it grabs you, the original entry from 1984, with art by Bob Hall.

Note that unlike most Marvel Universe entries, the Zombie's first and final appearances are omitted, presumably by accident. And out of thirty-six entries this issue as dead or inactive, at least twenty-three, including the Zombie, have reappeared since then.

EDIT: Some time later, it occurred to me that if I did this post the Robot Chicken way, it would've been a good five minutes of the Zombie humping Seth's leg... Read more!

"Admittedly, if I could wear goggles and jodhpurs at work, I would too."

Lobster Johnson has made a couple of appearances in B.P.R.D., that you really need to have read...to get the joke in the fourth panel. Since I love shared universe stuff, I like the idea of Lobster, the Shadow, the Spider, the Crimson Avenger, the Grey Ghost; all concurrently mowing down gangsters and hoods with .45's and alternately laughing like madmen or leaving calling cards or whatever.

Newsarama just ran the write-up on the San Diego Comic-Con Hellboy panel, and I think io9 also had a piece on the possible end of Hellboy. Check them out. Done?

Everything ends, but it was a little shocking to me to think about Hellboy ending. Not just because I've been reading Mignola's comics for what, fifteen years? but considering most comics go on and on and on, I hadn't even thought there would be an ending in sight, or in mind. It's also interesting that Guillermo del Toro could end the movie version of Hellboy: after all, no matter how much money the Dark Knight makes, would DC Comics let Christopher Nolan write a definite end for Batman? Doubtful, huh?

But although del Toro and other writers have done Hellboy stories, it's still Mike Mignola's character and his book. I feel like I should be more glad that someday, I'll get to see the end of the story; but right now I'm just a little down at the thought that someday it's going to be over.

Of course, this is from a guy that remembers reading the end of the first Gunslinger/Dark Tower novel, where Stephen King notes at the rate he's writing them, he's never going to finish the story. I was so pissed, I almost didn't keep reading the series; and of course I did and King eventually did end the story. Soooo...I guess I might've been just as weirded out if Mignola said Hellboy was going to run for 500 more issues like Spider-Man or Batman. Hmm.

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