Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #229

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

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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The Latest and (Mostly) Greatest #55 by Dan!

Holy guacamole… I’m back! Weird scheduling gave Phil the best shipping week in a while last week, and what do I get? Well, let’s just find out! Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #6 Writer: David Hine Artist: Shaky Kane Well, this was a thing. I decided to look up the word disinterred, and got the phrase “to bring from obscurity into view” and ya know what? I’ll accept that. This book has been a plethora of strange stories that don’t even remotely tie together. Individual issues that pretend to be a cohesive mini-series based almost entirely in the world of the strange. … Continue reading

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Phil’s Reviews:Stuff I Bought #228

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

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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