NOT A HOAX! NOT A DREAM!: Fantagraphics

Showing posts with label Fantagraphics. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2021

Boy, these Unboxings have become few and far between lately, huh? I haven't done one since... July?! I can't believe that's right, but apparently it is. Between last summer and now, I bought no physical books. I have picked up some digital items here and there, but they've been so few and far between that they really weren't worth posting about. And this dearth of new purchases isn't for lack of trying on my part, mind you -- but rather, as I've mentioned once or twice before, Marvel and DC just aren't putting out as much of the classic material I personally want. (Or, more accurately, they aren't filling in the gaps that remain, because they've released a ton of classic stuff and I've bought it all already!)

Nonetheless, January always brings something, so let's see what we have this time. First, from Marvel as usual, it's two hardcovers: first is the MOON KNIGHT OMNIBUS, collecting many of the original stories written by his creator, Doug Moench, and drawn by several artists, most notably Bill Sienkiewicz. This will be replacing my MOON KNIGHT Epic Collections on the bookcase.

And the second item from Marvel is the THANOS: INFINITY SAGA OMNIBUS, which collects all of Jim Starlin's latter-day stories of the Mad Titan, released as various annuals, mini-series, and graphic novels throughout the past ten years or so. Since Starlin has sworn off working for Marvel ever again, this will close the book on Thanos as far as I'm concerned, and I look forward to reading it someday.

For Christmas, my wife gave me her custumary gift of one of the newest CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY books, THE TWENTY-FOUR CARAT MOON.

And then there's digital. To close out the year, Marvel and DC both had sales, as they always do. I have a bunch of Marvel Epic Collections on my digital shopping list, but I was a little bummed that there wasn't a big five dollar a pop Epic sale like they ran last year. Instead, there was a sale on Marvel Masterworks, at only 99 cents to two dollars each -- which is great in theory, except that I already have nearly all the digital Masterworks I want, or digital Epic Collections containing the same contents. Nonetheless, I did pick up a few of the books which I simply couldn't pass up for the price: DAZZLER MASTERWORKS vol. 1, DEATHLOK MASTERWORKS vol. 1, KILLRAVEN MASTERWORKS vol. 1, and SPIDER-WOMAN MASTERWORKS vol. 1.

And in the DC sale, I grabbed a few items as well: that old standby, BATMAN: TALES OF THE DEMON (which factored heavily into my look at Batman in the Seventies a couple years ago), NEW TEEN TITANS vol. 11 (which will hopefully someday factor into a continuation of my NEW TEEN TITANS reviews from a number of years ago), SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN (which I've been eyeballing for months and seriously cannot wait to read), and WONDER WOMAN BY GEORGE PEREZ vol. 4 (which, again, may someday down the line be used to continue the WONDER WOMAN by George Perez reviews I did in 2018).

And that about covers it! I don't know when the next Unboxing will be; in fact I may change it from a monthly feature (which it clearly has not been at all recently, with only four installments in 2020) to something I do on an "as warranted" basis. But I guess we'll find out going foward. I do know that I have two Marvel Omnibuses on order, which should release in February and March, respectively (meaning they would make the Unboxings for March and April), but after that I don't think there's much on the horizon at the moment...

Friday, January 24, 2020

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2020

The first Unboxing of the year is a little light on physical books, but quite hefty on digital. First, Christmas gifts: from my lovely wife and from my parents, I received two more installments in the Carl Barks Disney Library from Fantagraphics: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON and CHRISTMAS IN DUCKBURG.

Then, my normal book shipment for the month contained one Marvel tome: X-MEN: SHATTERSHOT, an oversized hardcover collecting a run of issues from X-MEN vol. 2. This book replaces the previously issued trade paperback, A SKINNING OF SOULS, as it includes all the issues contained therein plus more.

(Apologies; I haven't had a chance to take pictures of these books yet. When I eventually do, I'll add them to this post.)

And then we move into the digital realm. Remember last month when I mentioned the huge sale Marvel was having on Epic Collections, for only five bucks a pop? Well, I received some Amazon gift cards for Christmas and I, uhh... may have gone a little overboard. I have a huge blind spot for Marvel's Silver Age catalog, outside of Spider-Man and to some extent the X-Men, so I decided to stock up. Who knows if I'll ever find time to read all of these, but I picked up all of the following:

Also, via a couple of other Amazon/Comixology digital Marvel sales to start the year, I picked up DEFENDERS: INDEFENSIBLE and GALACTUS THE DEVOURER.

And lastly, in a recent Fantagraphics sale, I grabbed the digital version of THE CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON, as well as MICKEY MOUSE: THE PHANTOM BLOT'S DOUBLE MYSTERY.

Whew! That's it (and isn't it enough?) for January. Next month should be considerably lighter, I hope! Catch you in February!

Sunday, January 27, 2019

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2019

We'll kick things off this month with the Christmas Unboxing -- a few gifts from my family on December 25th. First and foremost among these is STAR WARS ART: RALPH McQUARRIE, a massive two-volume slipcased set collecting all the artwork McQuarrie did as a concept artist on the original STAR WARS movies. I'm positively in love with these books, and I may have to do a post about them at some point, if I ever get around to it.

Also, from my wife, we have Fantagraphics' CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE LOST PEG LEG MINE and CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA. I think I mentioned last year that my wife has been giving me these books every year for Christmas for a few years now (Fantagraphics releases two volumes per year). I believe there are only around ten books left before the full series is collected, but I could be mistaken. In any case, I read Barks' stories through Gladstone Comics when I was in elementary school, but I've never touched them since. Still, somehow they're indelibly burned into my brain to the point that every time I get a new volume, memories rush back as if I just read them yesterday.

I also made a number of digital purchases through Comixology via their year-end sales. From Dark Horse, several books which are no longer available to buy, since the company has now lost its license to Marvel: THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN vols. 1 - 9 (the series ran much longer, but I believe this is the full Roy Thomas run, which is all I really wanted), and CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA AND OTHER STORIES.

From DC, I grabbed WONDER WOMAN/CONAN and BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS vol. 2. From Fantagraphics, I picked up THE CARL BARKS LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA (yes, I'm double-dipping on these. I like having "digital copies" of a lot of my books) and THE DON ROSA LIBRARY: THE THREE CABALLEROS (I want to own Barks in physical format, but I'm okay going digital-only for Rosa).

And from Marvel, I got THOR BY WALTER SIMONSON vol. 3 and vol. 4, TOMB OF DRACULA: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, X-MEN CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1, X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN vol. 2, and X-MEN: THE MAGNETO WAR.

And that about covers my merry holiday haul. We'll check in next month for more of the same!

Sunday, July 29, 2018

THE UNBOXING - JULY 2018

I'm getting this one in just under the wire for the month, but there's a reason: I picked something up at Comic-Con that I wanted to include for our July Unboxing. First, however, a quick Digital Unboxing: You'll recall that just last month, I grabbed digital versions of a bunch of Dark Horse's USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA books, with plans to get the remaining, earlier Usagi stuff from Fantagraphics whenever they had a sale. Well, that time came sooner than expected, with a linewide Comixology/Amazon sale of the publisher's wares just this month. As such, I picked up USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 1: THE RONIN, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 2: SAMURAI, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 3: THE WANDERER'S ROAD, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 4: THE DRAGON BELLOW CONSPIRACY, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 5: LONE GOAT AND KID, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 6: CIRCLES, and USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 7: GEN' STORY, making me (as far as I know) the proud owner of all collected Usagi stories to date.

I also took advantage of a Viz sale to grab DRAGON BALL SUPER vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3, adapting the ongoing TV series into a manga format (which is totally the opposite of the original DRAGON BALL/DRAGON BALL Z, which was a manga adapted to television.

And now the biggy: from IDW (in cooperation with Marvel), the John Byrne's X-Men Artifact Edition. There have been a few of IDW's "Artist Edition" books which have intrigued me; specifically the John Romita Spider-Man books and the Walter Simonson Thor book, but I've always balked a bit at the price and considered them non-essential items. This, however, is the first in the series which really piqued my interest, and which I considered a must-have.

So since I had wanted the book anyway, when I saw IDW offering an SDCC exclusive version with an alternate cover, signed and hand-numbered by Byrne himself, I jumped to pre-order, and picked it up the first day of the show. I've only skimmed it so far, but it's really nice -- and it's huge! This is the first Artist Edition book I've seen in person, and even though I know how big comic book art pages are, it's still larger than I expected. I can't wait to really sit down and peruse this thing.

But for now, that's it. Will there be an Unboxing in August? Last year that started a three-month stretch of nothing. This time, I guess we'll find out together.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2018

As promised (and previewed) late last year, The Unboxing has been revamped a bit for 2018. It'll mostly be the same -- coverage of items I pre-ordered months earlier as they're released -- but with the added bonus of digital purchases as well as items which were acquired through means other than pre-order.

So let's start 2018 with a couple of Christmas gifts! From my dear wife and published by Fantagraphics as part of their Complete Carl Barks Disney Library, we have DONALD DUCK: THE SECRET OF HONDORICA and UNCLE SCROOGE: THE LOST CROWN OF GENGHIS KHAN. Fantagraphics began publishing the Barks library back in 2011 at a pace of two books per year, with the intention of reprinting every Duck story Barks produced across his two-plus decades writing and drawing Disney comics. There are seventeen volumes out now (out of a projected thirty or so), covering what is widely considered Barks' best period -- the late 1940s through the late 1950s. As a child, I read many of these stories via the Gladstone Comics reprints of the eighties, and I love the idea that I'll eventually have all of them on the bookcase. My intention is to start reading them to my son as bedtime stories in another year or two.

From my dad, I received two collections of 1960s-vintage James Bond newspaper strips from Titan Books: SPECTRE: THE CLASSIC COMIC STRIP COLLECTION and OCTOPUSSY: THE CLASSIC COMIC STRIP COLLECTION. These are companion volumes to the previously released DR. NO: THE CLASSIC COMIC STRIP COLLECTION and GOLDFINGER: THE CLASSIC COMIC STRIP COLLECTION, and between the four books, newspaper adaptations of every one of Ian Fleming's original Bond novels are collected. (And if you think this might be a clue as to an upcoming newspaper strip review project, you could be on to something!)

In the digital realm, I took advantage of some Comixology/Amazon year-end sales to grab a handful of titles at bargain prices, including: THE BLACK BEETLE IN: KARA BÖCEK from Dark Horse, Walter Simonson's classic creator-owned STAR SLAMMERS from IDW, X-MEN EPIC COLLECTION: MUTANT GENESIS and John Byrne's X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS vol. 1 and vol. 2 from Marvel, and BATMAN: YEAR ONE and BATMAN AND ROBIN ADVENTURES vol. 2 from DC.

Thus ends the Christmas haul. Next month is back to a slower pace with, I think, one or possibly two books, so check it out around a month from now!

Friday, June 9, 2017

SHATTUCK

About three years ago, I wrote about Wally Wood's CANNON comic strip, which was published by the Overseas Weekly some decades back. Wood also furnished two other strips to the Weekly back then: the very well-known SALLY FORTH, and the much more obscure SHATTUCK. Last year, Fantagraphics Books, who published the CANNON collection in 2014, issued a hardcover for SHATTUCK as well. I had enjoyed CANNON and SHATTUCK's price was right, so I went ahead and picked it up.

SHATTUCK is a western strip, and while the division of labor isn't perfectly spelled out, it seems that it was masterminded by Wood and produced by his studio: written by Nicola Cuti and drawn at various points by Howard Chaykin, Dave Cockrum, Syd Shores, and Jack Abel, with contributions from Wood himself as well.

The book's afterword notes that the story behind the strip's creation, and the people who worked on it, is probably of more interest and importance than the actual strip itself, and that may well be true. SHATTUCK isn't awful by any means; but it's not exactly groundbreaking, either. It tells the story of Merle Shattuck, an outlaw who kills the sheriff of a town called Sundown and then goes on the run.

CANNON

I've apparently been a fan of Wally Wood for far longer than I realized. I admit that I've read very little of his output -- he did some Silver Age DAREDEVIL for Marvel, but that's probably about all I've looked at. However he was a mentor to many comic professionals I enjoy, such as Larry Hama and Bob Layton. And he co-created Power Girl with Gerry Conway over at DC, so we have him to thank for that fantastic costume. As many know, the legend goes that Wood incrementally increased the size of Power Girl's breasts from issue to issue until his editors told him to knock it off. I've never seen this story confirmed, and I've seen it disputed more than once -- plus the artwork itself does not support it -- but the simple fact that it persists and is considered something Wood might have done is enough to make me a fan.

Which brings us to CANNON. Sort of. First, an anecdote to set the stage -- I distinctly recall, when I was about eleven or twelve years old, flipping through a SALLY FORTH collection some degenerate had left lying around in easy reach at a local comic book shop. It was black and white, it appeared to be a comedy, and it featured a buxom blonde girl soldier who wound up naked or topless every other page. I thought it was awesome. But I forgot about it pretty quickly after that chance encounter. It was years later that I discovered SALLY FORTH was created by Wally Wood -- who I had learned about through the Power Girl connection in the interim. From there, I disovered CANNON.

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