comics am good.

okay...

well, i don't know where YOU'RE planning to be on saturday, may 2rd--otherwise known throughout the galaxy as FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!--but i will be hanging out at a lovely little comic shop in the ballston spa area called EXCELLENT ADVENTURES COMICS! the owner, john belskis, is the cool guy who also organizes the bi-annual albany comics show and, when i was unable to make the spring show last sunday, he asked what my plans were for FCBD. i told him i'd be thrilled to come up and hang out with him, so if you're in the area (adam? walt? bob?) come on in a say hey!

here's the cool though somewhat embarrassing poster that john put together...



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every week over on the perhapanauts forum on the image comics message boards there is a thread called THIS WEEK'S COMICS (and then, in parenthesis, the date. like, April 1, 2009). this thread was first initiated by my pal, scott, back when the forum was first put up--thanks, scott!--and continually maintained by him, though from time to time other members of our 'gang' have beat him to it. it's all good. it's a place to share with the group what comics you're reading, what comics you're curious about, what books you're excited about.
i never post there.

mostly 'cause i don't get my comics on a weekly basis.
don't get me wrong, i love comics and, back in the day (i hate that expression), i used to be that guy, first one at the store on wednesday (or friday, back in the day. or monday, again, back in the day...), eager to get my hands on the week's newest offerings. when i worked at a comic shop...back in the day... i volunteered to be the guy to stay up late on thursday nights, waiting for the call to run down to the store and meet the distribution guy--tony--and sort and stock the comics. usually tony got there sometime between 11:00 and 1:30, but a couple of times he didn't get there 'til three.
didn't matter--it was comics! and i got to see them--and set mine aside--first! those were great times.

but now i live...i'd say rather rurally, but really it's out in the middle of nowhere. my "local" comics shop is 45 minutes away, and so, over the past five years or so, i've tried to economize and be more efficient with my trips to the store. i get there every three or three and a half weeks or so and so, by the time i get my few weeks of comics, i feel like i'm too behind the times for the thread. so i don't post.

but i will tell you the books that i'm reading, the ones that i'm excited about, the ones that i'm curious about!

though i tend to pick up all kindsa different books off the rack each time i go in--maybe 'cause i'm curious, maybe something about them caught my eye, sometimes just a cool cover!--my pull list goes like this;

~a huge mike mignola fan, i always pick up hellboy and bprd. that's a given.

~ eric powell's the goon is always fun to jump into! the story sometimes rambles about, but the artwork is just so pretty!

~ i'm also all about the conan series at dark horse! kurt did a hella job with it while he had it and now tim truman is keeping the legend alive!

~ at dc, i always pick up the spirit (a long time fan and i enjoy how they've updated him) and jonah hex (jimmy and justin aare just awesome storytellers!) i also pick up many of the showcase tomes--that's just fun comics!

~ at marvel, i get most of the marvel adventures books--to keep up with what's goin' on--and pretty much everything jeff parker's writing. as i said, i LOVED that sentry series! i'm really diggin' kurt's eye of the camera/marvels series--but i usually dig anything kurt does.

~ i also pick up anything mark (waid) writes and am all over the invincibles, and his hot new book, irredeemable (although wasn't that what kirkman called ant-man...?)--as well as boom! studios' other neat acquisition, the muppets!

~ add to all of this the stack of old archie's from the 60s and 70s that terry austin and kc carlson have been so very kind to gift me with--picking up one of those is like stepping right back into a saturday morning from my childhood...

~ i don't know why so many people refer to this as a guilty pleasure (...because of the gore-strewn violence? because of the bodily fluid covered sex? because it's garth ennis?), but the boys from dynamite is...dynamite! what a fun, sick book. i dig it. and as if to prove what a schizophrenic garth is, his battlefields books--a great carryover from his beautifully poignant war books over at dc/wildstorm--are just wonderful! his love for the second world war and the human drama that he brings to it makes this easily one of my favorite reads. check 'em out.

~ and, of course, i have kelly's amber atoms on the list, nick tapalansky's awakening, proof, and, though not found in your lcbs YET, scott's after school agent! *

i know i missed something...



* NOTE: scott's recently made after school agent into a webcomic!!!~
now you can check out the thrilling adventures of high school freshman gordon levitch FOR FREE!
go there!
now!

http://www.afterschoolagent.com/Home/Home.html


gotta run!
matt and suzanne are here and we're goin' siteseeing!
happy wednesday!
smell ya later!
todd