JD's Comic Book Thread

[Kai "the spy"]

So, less than a year ago DC left Diamond and all hell broke loose, remember?! Well, prepare yourselves.

Newsarama| Marvel picks Penguin Random House as new distributor

Yep, starting on October 1, Penguin Random House Publishing Services will be the Direct Market distributor for Marvel. Diamond apparently negotiated a deal where comic shops can still order the Marvel products through them, but Diamond themselves will be getting them via PRHPS, so they probably won't be able to offer the retail discounts they do now. Presumably, PRHPS will themselves offer such discounts, so I'd expect a lot of comic shops to make the switch, especially considering the economic pressure they're probably under after over a year of lockdown.

Diamond puts on a brave face for now, but make no mistake, this comes as a big blow to them. Until a year ago, DC and Marvel made up about three quarters of Diamond's monthly business. While they probably won't lose all their Marvel business, they will depend on Image, Boom and Dark Horse all the more now. And some of these smaller publishers might feel the need to "leave the sinking ship".

Now, Marvel made a safer choice as new distributor than DC last year, as PRHPS is already a successful distributor, and I don't think there will be any growing pains the way we saw with Lunar and UCS. So, my guess is that comic readers probably won't notice any change. Not immediately, anyway.

 

[JD]

So is this probably another nail in Diamond's coffin?

 

[dupersuper]

Loosing Marvel and DC? Ouch!

 

[JD]

Is Reginald Hudlin's Black Panther run any good? I got the digital version a while back, but at the time I had thought it was the Christopher Priest run, which I heard a lot of good things about.

 

[JD]

I finished up Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet: The Complete Collection Vol.1 last night. It was really good, although I was expecting all of the different arcs in it to be a bit more tightly connected. I had thought the whole thing was about the Kravinoffs sending the villains after Spidey, so I was expecting them to play a lot bigger role in it than they did.
The Rhino storyline was my favorite, but I was a little disappointed Alexi went back to being the Rhino in the end, I was really hoping he'd get a happy ending with Oksana.
I'd fogtten just how creepy the new Vulture was.
While the bickering between Peter and Michelle was fun at time, I was glad they appeared to have made up at the end of the last arc.

 

[JD]

Just finished reading Batman (Snyder/Capullo) Vol. 4: Zero Year- Secret City. This was great, I thought it really cool new take on Batman's origin. I know this is blasphemy as a Batman fan, but I think I actually enjoyed this more than Year One.

 

[JD]

In honor of it's 20 anniversary DC is bring back Fables in a Batman crossover, Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf in Gotham, and a continuation of the original series starting with #151. Batman vs Bigby will be a 6 issue miniseries, and is being written by original Fables writter Bill Willingham, with pencils by Brian Level, inks by Jeff Leisten, and colors by Lee Loughridge. #151 will kick off The Black Forest, a new 12 issue story arc that picks up where the original series left off, and is written by Willingham, with returning penciler Mark Buckingham, inks by Steve Leialoha, who I believe also worked on the original series, colors by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Todd Klein.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

That's kinda cool, actually!
Kinda over Batman at the moment, but a Fables crossover is pretty neat, especially by Willingham.

 

[JD]

I have to admit, I was a little hesitant about the crossover, until I saw Willingham was writing it. My only problem is I left off on the third trade, and it's been so long I'm probably going to just the whole series over when I go back, so it's probably going to be a while before I get to the crossover, depending on where it is in the timeline.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Same, I only have a few trades as well. Loved what I read, and even played through the Telltale game twice, but for whatever reason it just fell off my radar.

 

[JD]

I never did play past the first episode of Wolf Among Us. I enjoyed it, but it was the last PS3 game I got before I got my PS4, and once I got that I got distracted by it's games and never went back.

 

[dupersuper]

I have the first 10 trades or so, alas...there are more than 10...

 

[JD]

I started Monstress Vol 3, the other day and I love this series, but I do have one issue, I really wish they had recaps somewhere. I've been going months between the different volumes, and I have trouble remembering what was going on when I have that big of a gap between volumes.

 

[TheSeeker]

Just got this in the mail and I'm really looking forward to reading it. It was funded through Kickstarter and was delivered in a very timely manner.

 

[TheSeeker]

Sorry for the double post, but I finally came across this piece of original art by John Romita Sr. He did it for me for free when I met him at comic shop in Ottawa back in 1990.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Don't apologize, that's fantastic! Was it an official signing or did you just happen to know who he was?
The closest I have to something like that is when I saw David Finch years ago during his New Avengers days in a local sushi restaurant (nobody at my table understood my excitement) and he drew me a Captain America portrait on a napkin haha.

 

[TheSeeker]

Was it an official signing or did you just happen to know who he was?

It was an official signing. The shop was brand new (sort of) and brought him in as a promotional event.

Here I am with him at the ripe old age of 18 or 19.

I also got him to sign a few copies of the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (both covers) as well as the poster below which I later had laminated. I still have it in storage waiting for the day I finish my basement.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Love it, I've been to many local conventions in my time but never had the pleasure of meeting him. That's fantastic! Great choice in book, too! I didn't even realize there were 2 covers until you just said so. Couldn't tell you which one I have, I suspect the one without villains.

 

[TheSeeker]

When I said this was "sort of" a new shop, it's because there used to be a different shop in this location, which I worked at. The store gave a 40% discount to employees so I bough multiple copies of both covers.

The crazy thing about the new store is that they only bought the rights to sell comics from this location. The owner of the old store took all his inventory with him when he left.

 

[Josh Kelton]

The first issue of a fan comic continuation of TMNT 2003 has been released.

https://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showpost.php?p=1917587&postcount=88