Author Archives: Phil

About Phil

With 40 years of experience in comic reading, collecting and reviewing, English Professor Phil Mateer has an encyclopedic mind for comics. Feel free to ask Phil about storylines, characters, artists or for that matter, any comic book trivia. He will post your questions and answers on the AABC blog. His knowledge is unparalleled! He is also our warehouse manager, so if you are looking for that hard to find comic book, ask Phil!

Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #229

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Phil

Daredevil #17 — Writer: Mark Waid;  Art: Michael Allred Guest artist Allred puts this book at the top this week (although it doesn’t need a lot of help — the letters page mentions the three Eisner awards it won this year, for best writer, best continuing series and best single issue (#7), and also lists the great artists it’s had  — the Riveras, Marcos Martin and Chris Samnee — so it’s been doing just fine, thanks). The story’s little more than treading water from last issue’s Matt/Foggy split — DD muses about an earlier case he and Nelson argued over … Continue reading →

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It Came From the Back Room #52

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items. I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed (especially now that school’s started again), this amounts to a three-year project.  This week, we’re focusing on the east end of the store, and the discount racks there that have had Captain America books for most of the summer. Those are now gone, and have been replaced with a bunch of DC “B” titles, like so: The Brave and the Bold This was … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews:Stuff I Bought #228

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Phil

Hawkeye #1 — Writer: Matt Fraction;  Art: David Aja Invincible Iron Man #522 — Writer: Matt Fraction;  Art: Salvador Larroca Defenders #9 — Writer: Matt Fraction;  Artists: Jamie McKelvie with Mike Norton Three by one of Marvel’s top go-to writers.  If Hawkeye’s creative unit feels familiar, that’s because Fraction and Aja were teamed (along with co-writer Ed Brubaker) on the cult favorite Iron Fist a few years ago, and since then they’ve only gotten better. This reminds me a lot of the sublime Daredevil, with its very clean, clear art, its masterful use of small panels to make the narrative flow smoothly, its firm … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #227

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Phil

Everybody Loves Tank Girl #1 — Writer: Alan Martin;  Art: Jim Mahfood This gets first place this week because Mahfood (who has a big Phoenix connection, having attended ASU and drawn for New Times for a number of years) turns out to be a perfect artist for the ordinance-obsessed Australian riot grrl. With scripts by Martin, her original co-creator, all the characters “sound” right, and, given the typically tossed-off nature of the stories here, Mahfood’s knack for humor, cartoon violence and obsessively-detailed background bits adds just the right ingrediants. If Jamie Hewlitt stays too busy with the Gorillaz to draw … Continue reading →

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It Came From the Back Room #51

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items (these are featured at the discount racks at the west end of the store for a couple of weeks after each post, and then go to the discount racks on the east end of the store for a few weeks, and then disappear into our warehouses, so get them while you can). I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed (even now in the summer, when I’m not teaching), this amounts … Continue reading →

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