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This Week in Comics: 03/29/10

Right now I’m listening to Weezer’s Raditude, which is more weird than it is good (though “Can’t Stop Partying” is a wonderful song for many reasons). Driving back from a bar last night, “Tired of Sex” came on the radio and reminded me of the spark the band used to have. “Tired of Sex” is so incredibly loud and angsty (it’s a major contributor to the emo movement circa Get Up Kids and Saves the Day, I think), but it’s clearly a young person’s song. It’s not a song (nor is Pinkerton a record) that you write in your 30s because it’s about being youthful and full of angst and hormonal despair. And when you’re a rock star in your 30s, you get access to expensive equipment and you can spend the rest of your life producing glossy garbage.

Raditude, conversely, is about writing the soundtrack to a teen comedy film, a stark contrast to The Red Album where Rivers Cuomo was talking about being an old man. In earlier records, he’d just sing about feeling like an old man.

Oh, right. This is This Week in Comics, where every day is a comic book.

Look, I have a lot to say about Weezer.

MONDAY

First Issues

Dragon Age #1

(Orson Scott Card/Aaron Johnston/Mark Robinson)

IDW Publishing

Let me explain: it was either this or Wildstorm’s God of War tie-in book, and I like the Dragon Age video game (though not as much as I do Mass Effect), so here we are. I dunno about this book — it’s one thing to play as a character in a standard fantasy story video game, but it’s a completely different thing to read one in a comic book. Also, why is Orson Scott Card writing this? He’s a real author.

TUESDAY

New Manga Day

Red Hot Chili Samurai Volume 1 GN

(Yoshitsugu Katagiri)

Tokyopop

Okay, I chose this book based exclusively on the title. Apparently it’s a humor book about a samurai who loves hot peppers. It’s got jokes, battles, and peppers. Okay, I’d read that. Especially with that title!

WEDNESDAY

Mainstream Superhero Stuff

X-Men: Second Coming #1

(Craig Kyle/Chris Yost/David Finch)

Marvel Comics

Normally I don’t complain about what comic book companies do to their characters as far as big events go, but reducing the mutant population to 198 via magical means was a bad, bad, bad idea. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run turned mutantdom from a sloppy metaphor for race into a literal minority in the world. A short while later we had the “No more mutants” scenario, and then the books had absolutely NO direction until the last year or two, what with Messiah Complex, Matt Fraction’s Utopia/Nation X and Craig Kyle and Chris Yost doing their X-Force murder thing. Second Coming may or may not rectify that mistake, so we’ll see. I will say the one bright spot of the pre Nation X “No more mutants” era was that you didn’t need to know any of this to read Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.

THURSDAY

Not Quite Friday, but Still Exciting

Justice League of America #43

(James Robinson/Mark Bagley/Rob Hunter)

DC Comics

You know it’s a bad week when I’m putting a Justice League comic book as my Thursday selection. You know I’ve run out of options and I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, because recent issues I’ve read of this book have been terrible. But they’ve been so exceptionally bad that watching the franchise spin wildly out of control has been fascinating. So at least there’s that.

FRIDAY

TGIS(teve Ditko, sorta)

The Creeper by Steve Ditko Harcover

(Steve Ditko/Don Segall/Dennis O’Neil/Michael Fleischer)

DC Comics

Steve Ditko co-created Spider-Man and created two characters (The Question and Mr. A) that inspired Rorschach, and still he’s a bit of an underrated creator. He gave you Speedball, dammit, and you give him nothing? That’s fucked up, comics.

Anyway, here’s a collection of his Creeper stories, part of a long line of bizarre characters that Ditko created. I mean, just look at him.

SATURDAY

Essential Reading

Penny Century

(Jaime Hernandez)

Fantagraphics Books

I’m so glad Fantagraphics is reprinting Love & Rockets in all these nice looking “Love & Rockets Library” editions. It makes catching up on like 30 years of wonderful story much easier, for one thing. If you’re interested in Love & Rockets and need a handy guide to the series, Fantagraphics has that: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=135

SUNDAY

Last Issues

Blackest Night #8

(Geoff Johns/Ivan Reis)

DC Comics

IT’S FINALLY OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!