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!

It Came From the Back Room #24

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, this amounts to a two-year project. This week, we’re on the letter “H”: specifically, Marvel’s Green Goliath: The Incredible Hulk The Hulk, a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby riff on the Jekyll and Hyde archetype, is one of the earliest Silver Age Marvel characters, first appearing in his own series in the May 1962-dated Hulk #1. In this earliest incarnation, Bruce Banner’s monstrous alter-ego is … Continue reading

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #197

Uncanny X-Men #537 — Writer: Kieron Gillen;  Pencils: Terry Dodson;  Inks: Rachel Dodson The two main X-books are in good hands right now: here, Gillen is in the middle of a sequel to Joss Whedon’s “Breakworld” story, and it’s the point in the narrative where things are going very badly for… well, everyone, but especially for Kitty, who’s the focus of this issue. Solid characterization, with clear motives even for the bad guy, and the Dodsons’ art is both pretty and expressive enough to make Kitty’s wordless attempts to get help poignant and clear. Lots of good bits (Wolverine to … Continue reading

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It Came From the Back Room #23

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, this amounts to a two-year project. This week, we’re doing miscellaneous Marvel and DC “I” books, and, as always, discount copies are available on the rack near my corner by the west end of the store: Identity Crisis This was one of DC’s first attempts to make its mainstream superhero comics more “adult,” almost seven years ago now, and they got a lot … Continue reading

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #196

Hellboy: Being Human #1 (of 1) — Writer: Mike Mignola;  Art: Richard Corben A Hellboy story by the Mignola/Corben team is always cause for celebration, and this one-shot is no exception: it doesn’t have the over-the-top backwoods craziness of their The Crooked Man, from a few years ago, but there’s enough Southern gothic atmosphere, with crumbling mansions and various decayed corpses (as an old woman, scorned and unjustly institutionalized, enacts occult revenge against long-dead adversaries) to remind everyone of why Corben’s always had such a fine reputation for horror work — and to show that, even in his seventies, he … Continue reading

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It Came From the Back Room #22

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, this amounts to a two-year project. This week, we’re breaking the regular alphabetical pattern, and time-traveling back to stuff I pulled a year ago (before I started doing these writeups). Why? Because it’s a comic character who’s hot right now, with a movie, a crossover event miniseries, and a new number-one issue all calling attention to him: The Mighty Thor We can pass … Continue reading

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