Monday, May 05, 2008

My Weekly Recap

The biggest story for the week would have to be the release of Iron Man and the big money it's bringing in. But unfortunately I haven't seen it yet so I'll have to wait to comment on it. I have heard a lot of good things about it. And make sure you wait until the end of the credits before leaving.

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day so I decided to make an extra visit to my comic shop this week. Sales seemed to be good and the store seemed to have a few extra customers visiting (I could tell they were new because they had to ask where everything was and didn't know about the store selling at US prices). I got there fairly late (about 1-ish) and there wasn't a lot of selection left with the Free Comics though they still had a big pile of Superman and Hellboy. So I grabbed those two and the Marvel Adventures Iron Man (which was running low). I think the nice thing was that there was a father there with his two children looking for books for them. I always like to see that as it was my father and brother that got me started in comics. The downside was that his daughter wanted a Wonder Woman comic but was too young for the regular title. She had to settle for some Justice League books that were aimed at kids.

I also decided to drop by two other comic shops to see what they had going on (no, I did not go in to snag more free comics though visiting the second one allowed me to quickly flip through a few of the books that my regular store didn't have). Anyhow, one store was really amped up with employees dressed in Star Wars costumes (I guess that's all they had handy or something, but the kids seemed to like it) and one guy in a Spider-Man costume. They seemed to be busier than my usual store. The other store I visited, and it's the store I used to shop at, had pretty much nothing going on. They had a whackload of the free comics but only one employee working and no real presence. And they're in a mall with families walking by constantly. That one was disappointing.

I found it interesting that an anonymous donor gave the Library of Congress the original artwork from Amazing Fantasy #15. Considering Marvel's history of losing or accidentally destroying artwork I didn't even think that these pages were still around much less in the hands of one person. And a thumbs up to the donor for donating it so it can hopefully be enjoyed by future generations.

Marvel also announced a Captain America movie as well as an Avengers movie for 2011. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of the Justice League movie. And with Captain American, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and the Hulk all having movies out by then, it should be interesting what line up they go with. I'm guessing Spider-Man will be off limits. Not sure about Wolverine though.

And the New York post spoiled a DC storyline (obviously with DC's approval). The weird thing is that they said it spoiled something for DC Universe #0 but from what I gather (I haven't read the book yet) the spoiler is for an upcoming issue as the big reveal wasn't even done in DC Universe #0. Either way, this seems to be following in Marvel's footsteps where they spoiled the unmasking of Spidey or the death of Captain America in mainstream media the day of (or before) the issue coming out. Though, to be fair, DC also did it a while back with the death of a certain character... What's his name again? ;) As a regular comic book reader it seems to be a kick in the crotch for the companies to do this but it's probably effective marketting. They're aiming at non-regular comic readers, most likely people who did at one time read comics, to come in to the local shops to pick up these books and hopefully stick around. And if they waited a week and said "Oh by the way, Spider-Man unmasked in last week's issue" then these fans would probably not go rushing to their comic shops not to mention that the issue would probably have been picked over by then anyways. But DC's big story doesn't seem to work for me. It's only effective on a small amount of potential readers, for the most part, those who read DC 20+ years ago. So I just don't see much benefit for DC.

I could ramble on about that for a while but I think it's time to get back to work. So for one last little comment, I watched the American Splendor movie on the weekend and really enjoyed it. It's really different. I also watched some of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. I'm not a huge fan but my brother is. I'm kinda curious to see how it all ends though.

So that's it for the week. Feel free to let me know what you thought the big stories of the week were.

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