232 – Morning Doodle 3


There’s nothing to say about this.

I did, however, pick up a stack of comics, and felt like giving some encapsulated reviews of the ones I’ve read, most of which are from the The New DC 52.

First things first, Justice League. Joe Grunenwald and I reviewed the first issue as a special bonus episode of League Night. Check out the full review there, but I will say it was one of the most humorless, cliche-filled disappointments ever published, with stagnant bland art and nothing to be interested in.

I also read, Hannibal Tabu style, Detective Comics. Over at my other podcast, Gutter Trash, I recently declared Evil Ernie: War of the Dead to be the worst comic I’d ever read. Detective Comics # 1 came close to dethroning it. It’s a horrible mess of eye-gouging art, sub-intelligent writing and dialogue, unclear storytelling, and every terrible mish-mash of the “dark, twisted loner” Batman that I’ve come to despise, with a terrible “shock” ending that really demonstrates how low-common denominator this book is.

I never had any intention of reading those books, and may possibly be biased against them from the jump.

So, onto books I actually wanted to read:

Demon Knights: The weakest of the stack I bought, so far. The art is mediocre, and I do like Paul Cornell’s work. It reminded me of a medieval version of his work on Captain Britian and the MI:13, and sadly just made me wish that book was still around, instead of really wanting to pick up #2 of D.K. I like the characters involved in this book, but there was something lackluster about the entire package, and the art turned me off.

Resurrection Man: The second weakest book I’ve read yet. The art is fine, if inconsistent, and I love the central concept of the character. It’s a book I missed out on in it’s initial run, and this first issue made me want to track down the previous series. Unfortunately I don’t have much interest in picking up a second issue of this series. But I might be willing to give this a few more based on Abnett & Lanning’s track record.

Swamp Thing: I really dug this. While I felt Superman’s appearance seemed out of place, I like the atmosphere of the story, and the art was fantastic. Being a long-time Swamp Thing fan, I was worried about the sort-of backtracking on Alan Moore’s story, but Scott Snyder pulled it off well, and I’ll definitely be on for issue 2.

Batman and Robin: This one is weird, because other than Bruce Wayne being back as Batman, it simply felt like a continuation of the previous Batman and Robin series, which is fine. There was nothing wrong with it before, there’s nothing wrong with it now.

O.M.A.C.: This is one I was really looking forward to. Keith Giffen channeling Kirby, and it was fantastic. It was a bombastic, action packed first issue with a ton of setup and delivery. My favorite book, so far.

Action Comics: A really strongly written issue, some inconsistent, but good art. I’m pretty much on board with this book no matter what, so in many ways, the opposite of Detective and JL.

And finally

Ultimate Spider-Man: It’s a pretty light issue, but there are enough seeds planted to keep me coming back. Bendis has a knack for writing comics in where not much happens, but I’m never mad about it. So far, Mile Morales seems to not be just Brown Peter Parker, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Not that anyone cared. Whatever. Go fuck yourselves.

231 – Morning Doodle 2

230 – Morning Doodle


For those that don’t know, I commute to Cincinnati from Dayton every morning, which is about an hour drive. Luckily, one of my co-workers also lives in Dayton, and about three years ago after I had some extensive car trouble, we decided to start carpooling. We generally alternate weeks. Recently pretty much the entire braking system in my car went bad, and my co-worker had to drive for about a month straight while I saved up money to get it fixed.

So anyway, we have to be at work at 7:00 am. I am not a morning person. I have worked at this job for 5 years, and I am still not used to the getting up early part, which is usually between 5:00am and 5:30am (sometimes I can push it to 5:45am). When my co-worker drives, he usually arrives between 6:00am and 6:30am. In order to make sure that I am awake during that period so I don’t miss his arrival, I’ll usually watch TV or a cartoon on DVD. If I’ve gotten ready super early, I’ll play a video game. This past week, I decided to doodle a little while waiting. In the dark, still pretty much asleep.

229 – Wasp


Janet Van Dyne, aka The Wasp, White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Because I don’t care what anyone says, Ultimate Wasp was not an Asian character until it was pointed out in the dialogue that she was an Asian character. Same goes for Jubilee.

228 – Death of the Endless


Another request from a former friend.

227 – Dogwitch


A request from a former friend. I remember going to a comic shop with her back in like 2002 or ’03 in Yellow Springs, Ohio. If there was a city that could be my archnemesis, it would be Yellow Springs. Cut your hair and get a job, you fuckin’ hippies. And don’t you dare even think about talking down to me like I’m nothing. One of us showered today, and it wasn’t fucking you.

Anyway.

We were browsing, and I spotted the first issue of Dogwitch on the shelf. I pointed it out to her, as it seemed to be the kind of book she liked – supernatural, gothy, tongue-in-cheek, giant boobs. I only read a handful of issues, but they were fun, and the art was fantastic, and it seemed a cut above some of the other “bad girl” type comics.

Later on, the writer/artist of Dogwitch – Dan Schaffer – would continue his canine fueled fiction by writing a fun little zombie flick called Doghouse in which a group of dudes go on a dude weekend in the country, only to find that all the women in this small town have become flesh eating zombies and killed all the males. It’s good. Watch it.

Fuck Yellow Springs.

226 – Hellstorm: Son of Satan

225 – Figure sketch


I just wanted to try my hand at something not superheroic or monstrous.

224 – Troll


I recently watched the movie Trollhunter. It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to watching it again in its native language, with subtitles. But I had trolls on the brain, and recently recovered my brush pen from what I thought was a certain doom.

I had run out of ink, and following advice I had read online, decided to refill it with a different waterproof india ink using a converter. Apparently my first choice of ink was not good. It was really still and hard to use or make brush strokes with. So I washed it out, and tried again, but this caused the brush to now have a gray wash tone to it, which was unacceptable (though I used it on the Shade the Changing Man sketch from a few days ago). So finally, I washed it out again and let the components sit for three days, occasionally replacing the hot soapy water. Then I let the pen dry for about two days before touching it. The brush still was leaving washed out gray strokes when I was testing it’s dryness. Finally, when it seemed dry enough, I refilled the converter with a different ink.

The first few strokes were kind of a watery dark gray, but soon after, we achieved blackness, and my brush pen was saved. Then I drew a crappy troll sketch. The end.

223 – Adam Warlock


I think I read maybe three issues of Warlock’s 90s series, after he had taken possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. My only real memories are of Warlock passing the Infinity Gems out to various characters, one of whom stuck the gem on his dick. The other memory I have is of buying the first issue at the convenience store just a block away from my parent’s house. At the time, this was the closest thing I had to a comic book store that didn’t involve making my dad drive somewhere he didn’t want to go. The register monkey who sold it to me freaked out that it was Number One issue, and went on and on how he couldn’t believe that there was something that was gonna be super valuable for sale at this store, and how he was gonna buy the other copies of it because of their value.

Cover price for Warlock and The Infinity Watch: $1.75.

Near mint price at mycomicshop.com: $1.10

Autographed copy: $3.30