I am a comic book collector and happy to be one. I might say “proud” if I hadn’t, over a year ago, switched to reading digital as opposed to print comics. I feel a bit robbed of the tactile sensations of the hobby – of the turn of the page, the sneaking look to the panel a page over, the bagging and shorting and stacking and filing. Though I read my comics in a different medium than I used to, I still treat each Wednesday (comic book delivery day to specialty shops around the country) as different from the other days of the week. I subscribe and now, rather than go to the comic store to be handed the books pulled for my “Hold Slot,” I click a button on my iPad and watch them download.
Then I read them.
Rare is the week that I don’t read them all between Wednesdays and some weeks I have, well… let’s just say more comic books in my digital downloads than a grown man should. Comic book legend Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit) is one of the most influential men even to put pencil to drawing board in the pursuit of making comics. So influential was he that the industry awards (think the Oscars or the Emmys or the Grammys) are named The Eisner Awards. He called comic books “sequential art,” perhaps because he became embarrassed by his profession when he had to admit what he did for a living. This is my weekly reaction to the comics I read.
I read 11 comics last week: Action Comics #40, All-New X-Men #37, Amazing Spider-Man #16, Amazing Spider-Man Special #1, Batman Eternal #49 Detective Comics #1: Endgame, Justice League United #10, Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #11, New Avengers #31, Star Wars #3, Star Trek: Ongoing #43: Five-Year Mission.
The best comic I read last week was Action Comics #40.
Greg Pak writes a very interesting Superman. He also writes a very good Clark Kent. What I didn’t know is that he writes a tremendous Bizarro, a hilarious Bizarro World and creates a terrific jumping off point for the upcoming Bizarro comic.
I mean it, this comic is laugh-out-loud funny. But the funny is balanced by a great Superman story as the Man of Steel tries to deal with a world he cannot understand and cannot change. The issue is well structured, the comedic beats pay off, the contrast between Bizarro and Superman brilliant.
There is a sweetness about the comic and the character that one doesn’t normally find in a monthly. Pak is to be congratulated on this issue and, really, on the run he’s putting together on Action Comics.
The real star here is Aaron Kuder. He does an amazing job channeling Frank Quietly’s Bizarro League and he evokes a world that I want to see more of. That’s hard for me to believe even as I write it. Kuder’s art makes me want to read more about Bizarro – a character by which I’ve never really been that taken.
Kuder’s Superman is heroic and larger-than-life just the way the character should be. He’s outdrawing John Romita, jr, who has the main Superman title, and that’s saying something.
I want Bizarro by Pak and Kuder. Now.