Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Argghh (sp?)

-I had a whole post ready to go here, but it was eaten by some sort of internet gremlins--less the Joe Dante type, more the Bob Clampett version. I don't think they were from the Kremlin, however. Let's see what I can remember....

-Greg Burgas comes through with that review of Red Eye, Black Eye he promised. I think I might have scared him out of discussing the art with my complaints about reviews, when in reality I wanted the opposite: more reviews that say something about art! It's not that hard--his review of First Moon (also at the link) is a good starting point. It's certainly better than the review of First Moon which I complained about on Saturday. In fact, Tegan's review makes a lot more sense now that I've read Burgas' review--Tegan should have gone with her original thoughts about the art!

-Since when does Tom Spurgeon provide lists of notable new releases? I'm already dependent on other people (ie, Jog) to tell me what to check out when I go to the store every week, so I'd be glad to have another resource. (The alternative would be to actually look into this stuff myself, which I'd prefer not to do due to reasons of laziness.) Actually both these guys (and Christopher Butcher too, for that matter) confirmed my suspicions that this wasn't a week which necessitated a trip to the store. Though I am liking Casanova (got on board late, waiting for the trade) and Batman (I'll just buy it next week).

-The NYCC is next weekend, thus officially ushering in Hype Year 2007. Both companies are sure to tell us more about the comics they want us to buy this summer. Rich Johnston reports that DC will be announcing its rumored Countdown series--which, I have to admit, is of some interest to me. Meanwhile, I'm sure Marvel will have many, many things to say and projects to announce in the immediate wake of Civil War #7.

The only major convention I've ever attended was the 1994 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. We arrived on the last day of the convention, unaware that this is traditionally get-the-hell-out-of-town day for most guests at most conventions. I got in Jeff Smith's line about five minutes too late to meet him, although someone ahead of me in line was nice enough to get a couple of books signed for me. Mike Mignola and Mike Allred (my brother's favorite at the time) were long gone by the time we got there. I did meet Bob Layton, but I think I offended him when I told him I'd like to see him do more Hercules minis (which he interpreted as some sort of diss of his editorial reign at Valiant, I guess). All in all, I had such a good time that I've never been to a convention since.

3 comments:

Greg said...

One of the reasons I include scans of the pages in the books is BECAUSE I'm not confident in discussing the art. I don't know why more reviewers don't scan some pages, but it might be because it's kind of time-consuming.

With Red Eye, Black Eye, the art was just kind of there. So I could less about it than the other books. I know I couldn't draw the book, but it still seemed kind of dull. So I just showed it instead of talking about it.

Dick Hyacinth's Ghost said...

If you didn't like the art, you should have said so. Posting samples of the art is better than nothing, but if you had an opinion, you should have included it in the review. Even saying something like "The art didn't do much for me, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the book" is better than hiding your thoughts on the art.

Greg said...

That's a good point, but it's not even that I didn't like the art. It seemed like this was mainly driven by the story, and so the art didn't really do much of anything. It didn't hurt the story, certainly, but it didn't raise it up either. As you pointed out, I tried to talk about the art in the other reviews, and I think I'm getting better at it.