Terra by Amanda Conner

I continued my rapid reading of some of Amanda Conner's DC stuff (she does the art whilst Palmiotti and Gray come up with fun stories) by finishing this 5 issue trade in one day. I love the holidays!

I actually only needed to read 4 issues as one issue was also included in the Art of Amanda Conner. Still the story was fun and easy to follow. Just like the art really. Conner's style is right up my ally being a mixture of cartoony and detailed at the same time. Her regular inker (and fiance I believe) Palmiotti ensures that the art has a light touch and is not too heavy and dark. She would have been perfect for Justice League back-in-the-day.

Art of Amanda Conner

I've finished this oversized 300 page hardcover yesterday. It reprints the following comics:

Superman: Lois Lane #1, Birds of Prey #47-49, JSA Classified #1-4, Supergirl #12, the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special, plus stories from Secret Origins 80-Page Giant #1, The Joker: Last Laugh Secret Files #1 & Wonder Woman #600,

That's quite a lot of comics. I really enjoyed it (hence why I managed to breeze through it in a week but that's also modern comics for you). The stories were by different writers so some were better than others but the art was consistantly great. Favourites - Birds of Prey, JSA and Supergirl.

I'm going to continue with the Amanda Conner theme with a couple of trades next.

One point to note. It's ironic that this week, whilst I was in the middle of this, DC announced that next Feb (2014) a trade reprinting all Amanda Conner's Powergirl will be released. That's JSA Classified 1-4 & Powergirl 1-12. Well the only issues I'm missing out of that run are 7-12 but that trade apprears to be very hard to find and an ex-library copy went for £17.77 on ebay. So the good news is I can get the complete run...the bad news is, I needn't have bothered getting the first Power Girl trade. Bad timing!

Continuing with Howard the Duck

 As I said in a previous post - I'm finding Howard the Duck easier to read in fairly small doses. So I' am breaking up reading the run into 5-6 issue chunks. This last week I've read from 15- 18 plus Annual #1.

The regular issues feaure the villian Dr Bong who I gather is a bit of an arch-nemisis for old Howard.

However the story is interrupted by the infamous issue 16 where Steve Gerber, the writer, gives us a weird essay on the problems of coming up with plots as a writer. Some people loved this issue - I'm not one of them.

Things improve when we return to the regular storyline and at the end of #18 Howard has been transformed into a skinless ape. So I will find out what happens after reading some relatively modern comics featuring the art of Amanda Conner.

Forbidden Planet bargains

On a trip to London with work today I managed to spend a happy lunch hour ploughing through the Forbidden Planet Megastore bargain shelves. I've left the prices on the scans. That £4.99 for the Star Wars collection is a real bargain. It had been on my wish list for ages but I couldn't bring myself to part with over £20 for it. They did have vols 4 & 5 for a £10 each but as I still haven't got Vol 2 I resisted.

I got Codename Knockout for the Amanda Conner art. Hope the story is reasonable?

At the Movies: Oz the Great & Powerful

Well even though I only went to see this because it was a birthday treat for my son - it still counts doesn't it?

Sharn't be too bothered if I never see it again though!

More Amanda Conner - Power Girl Trade

Just the one trade this week! Ha ha.

This is the first of two trades reprinting Amanda Conner's run on Power Girl. I bought this using the proceeds from recent ebay sales. Unfortunately the second volume looks hard to get. It's priced at aver £40 on amazon marketplace and there's just one copy on ebay as I speak and there's bids already on it.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Brian Bolland

First off - this is a lovely and huge & heavy book. It's lovely to pick-up and flick through. Bolland's art is fabulous (much nicer in the black and white than in Camelot 3000 IMHO) and I enjoyed the strips what I read.

Unfortunately, because it just features the strips which Bolland drew it's ultimately not as satisfying as I wanted to know what had either happened previously or what was going to happen. The complete stories such as Judge Death were few and far between which was disappointing.

Perhaps I will have to purchase the complete case files as reprints now I've a taste for more Dredd.

More trades this week

A couple of new trades arrived this week. Both collecting relatively new material. The Alan Davies book collects 2012 annuals he did whereas the Terra collects the 2009 mini series by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner. This is actually the second copy of this book as I returned the first one I received because it had a binding error for about 12 pages which made it awkward to read those. Unfortunately the "new" copy had the same error so I've decided to keep this one as I suspect Amazon had a duff batch and it is difficult to obtain from anywhere else. It's still readable - just not perfect.

Matt Fraction's Iron Man conclusion

I finished the final two premier hardcover collections of The Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction this week. There was a big showdown with the Mandarin and an epilogue with Tony going out on his own. Some nice work although I found it difficult to believe that the Mandarin could have got away with some of his secret controlling schemes for so long without being undetected. And that wasn't explained to my satisfaction but I still enjoyed these comics all the same.

Plenty to read here!

Two big collections arrived in the post this week.

Rex Mundi Omnibus Vol 2 is another massive (500+ pages) collection. It will take me some time to read this together with Vol 1which I got last September. Good value at aroung £14.

Just hope it's as good as I've been promised.

Another title with excellent reviews is Daredevil by Mark Waid. and this collection is an oversize hardback collecting the first 12 issues. A quick flick through shows it looks nice.