9.1   

HYRULE HISTORIA

Dark Horse released Hyrule Historia yesterday.  I hadn't heard about it until I saw it on the diamond release list, which made me look it up on Amazon.  It was already getting some insane reviews from Zelda fans.  Apparently American fans have been waiting for an English translation from the original Japanese for a while. It's not a comic book.  It's essentially a guide to everything Zelda including chronology, which is pretty cool for anyone who has played more than one Zelda game.  I was pleasantly surprised when I found a comic in the back of the book, and I decided this page was too awesome not to share.
from: The Legend Of Zelda: Hyrule Historia

Enjoy it because this is most likely the last time you'll see me posting anything that has anything to do with Manga.

9     

FIRST OFFICIAL STOP A SUCCESS

   

Yesterday, despite my difficulty breathing, I was able to get out of the house with the help of an Oxygen tank, a wheel chair, and my pal Kenny.  I only fell on my ass once. If you don't know what it is I'm hunting for, which would be understandable because I've posted about so many other things since I explained the purpose for this, just check out the first post.

The destination on yesterday's journey was "Comicazi".  Slightly offensive name, great comic shop. 

Comicazi
407 Highland Avenue
Somerville, MA 02144
(617) 666-2664

Show on Google Maps

I called in advance to ask  one question: "Do you have long boxes with back issues?"  The answer was yes, so in my opinion, the risk of coming up empty handed was minimal.  My main mission was to find some Ultimate Spider-Man issues as well as a couple random comic books I had written down in my notes.  When I got there, I was pleasantly surprised to find a really nice place that didn't suffer from any of the problems that have plagued a number of the comic shops I've been to recently.  It was clean, not musty.  The shelves were well organized.  I could tell where the Image TPBs were and where the DC ones were.  The new release wall was organized in simple alphabetical order.  The inventory was great, too.  There were tons of TPBs and plenty of new releases and back issues.  One more plus that I never would have noticed if I hadn't been in a wheel chair that day was that this place wasn't cramped.  There was plenty of room for two people to walk past each other between walls and shelves.  This made my life a lot easier when it came time to go diving into the bins.

For my Ultimate Spider-Man collection, I found 14 issues.  There are 15 in the picture below because yesterday I received a package in the mail from midtown comics and I included Ultimate Spider-Man #15 in that order.  That way I would know for future reference what I was getting if I ordered any future books from midtown in "NM" condition.

Anyway, here's what I came up with.  As usual, please excuse the poorly taken photos, the meds make my hands really shaky so it's tough to take professional photos with iPhone.


I know the picture is horribly blurry, so let me name the issues for you, left to right:
-Ultimate Spider-Man #12 BATTLE ROYAL
-Ultimate Spider-Man #13 CONFESSIONS
-Ultimate Spider-Man #15 CONFRONTATIONS
-Ultimate Spider-Man #20 LIVE
-Ultimate Spider-Man #23 RESPONSIBLE-Ultimate Spider-Man #25 PLASMIDS
2ND Row:-Ultimate Spider-Man #27 ILLEGAL
-Ultimate Spider-Man #28 SIDETRACKED
-Ultimate Spider-Man #29 STOLEN IDENTITY
-Ultimate Spider-Man #31 BLACK VAN
-Ultimate Spider-Man #50 BLACK CAT
-Ultimate Spider-Man #56 HOLLYWOOD PART III
3RD:
-Ultimate Spider-Man #59 HOLLYWOOD PART VI
-Ultimate Spider-Man #60 CARNAGE PART I
-Ultimate Spider-Man #61 CARNAGE PART III should peak briefly about the process that went into purchasing each one of these.  I mentioned in one of my first posts that I had been advised that a better way to do this would be to buy a full run from someone selling it online as one complete set.  My initial response was that that takes all the fun out of collecting them, and that the cost of doing it also seemed a little high when compared to what I could get it for by scouring comic store boxes and getting them one by one.  I realized yesterday that one more benefit to my way of collecting these is condition.  The store I went to had bags with massive chunks of the USM run all bagged up together, and given the prices of the bags, I'd be spending a dollar an issue, as opposed to the $2 an issue I was paying to search the long boxes.  Why am I willing to pay that extra dollar?  Because I get to choose which copy I take.  I looked in the bags, and while some of the comics in them were in pretty good condition, some of them had bent corners or bends in the covers.  That type of condition would be fine if all I wanted was to read them to get the story and then get rid of them, but I'm collecting these to keep.  I love the series.  I love the covers.  I love the art inside.  I have the luxury of patience.  It doesn't matter to me how long it takes to collect every issue, so why should I take any shortcuts?  The store had more mint(NM grade in comic book terms) condition issues than I could afford, so why would I ever leave there with something flawed?

So I ignored the bags containing massive chunks of the collection for $1 an issue and went to the everything for $2 bins and picked through carefully, keeping only the nicest issues.  Rest assured every one of the issues I picked had sharp corners, no scratches or bends on the cover, and no little paint chips or dents.So I now have 24/138 if you count Annuals and the Ultimatum issues.

I found a few other gems in the $2 bins, each of which got me very excited.




On the left is Daredevil(Vol. 2) #15.  This one is important because it is in this issue that Kingpin, probably Daredevil's most formidable adversary, is stricken blind(a trait he and Daredevil would now share).

In the center I have Amazing Spider-Man #349.  I found this issue by chance.  While flipping through the ASMs I noticed a really lame super villain, "The Black Fox", who I had previously only known because he was the burglar who stole Eric O'Grady(The Irredeemable Ant-Man)'s Nintendo Wii after the two had briefly befriended one another.  I had no idea that he had ever tangled with A-listers, never mind appeared on a cover with Spider-Man.

BLACK FOX!

On the right is Amazing Spider-Man  #400.  It's hard to tell in the cover but the grey part is a cardboard flap with spider-man art and the title and number embossed on it.  Recently when #700 came out I read in a lot of places that #400 had the most moving story of the milestone 100th issue stories.  Here's the cover underneath the odd grey cardboard flap:

Thanks for checking in.  Thanks to popular suggestion, I'm planning on adding a checklist somewhere on this page where viewers will be able to look at a complete list of issue names and numbers with check marks next to the issues I've found.. and maybe a little spot for a comment on condition.

8   

   

YOUNG AVENGERS, NEW AVENGERS, AND VENGEFUL SENTIMENTS

(This post got deleted somehow after it was posted.. sorry.)

   

I had no idea what to expect with this new title that came out yesterday.  "Young Avengers" from Marvel comics had given me kind of a "muppet babies" vibe when I read it's preview in "Marvel Now .1".  I read it, and it was entertaining, but I still have no idea where and when it's supposed to take place, so if you're reading this, don't expect to gain any new information.  What I do know is this: If you want to see cute, young versions of your favorite Marvel heroes, check out A-Babies Vs. X-Babies, because this is a whole other thing.

The book opens when a teenage girl, who you thankfully find out is 18 when you read the message in the back from Kieron Gillen, wakes up in some dude's bed, unsure of where she is.  She looks out the window and sees the planet Earth just below, at which point her male companion returns from his shower, and dances to oldies in his underwear until the Skrulls attack.

Then we're whisked away to see a guy pretending to be Spider-Man take a bullet from a street thug before his right arm becomes two stretchy arms and he punches out two street thugs at once.  He then turns into a kid with a Justin Bieber look and climbs into a window, where he gets in a brief fight with his boyfriend, and then they make up.

As soon as that's over a hot chick wearing a stars and stripes costume similar to that of Captain America, who calls herself Miss America, is intervening at a diner where a young man who looks like, acts like, and is named Loki, has just refused to clean up after himself.

I won't spoil the ending.

But if you want to know what's going on in Comics that's got my juices pumping, it's Black Panther in "New Avengers #2".  Black Panther, also known as T'Challa, King of Wakanda, is unhappy with the most hate-able character in the Marvel Universe: Namor.  Namor is the same asinine scumbag who broke two doors and an elevator on his way into Matt Murdock's office while trying to obtain a lawyer to help him sue the entire human race for possession of the Earth's surface.

During AvX, Namor got a little trigger happy with the power of the Phoenix and let his dislike for the human race get a little out of control.  If there was anyone wondering if T'Challa may have forgiven him, they won't be after reading NA2.

Will it happen?  Doubtful, but any super hero who threatens to kill Namor jumps right up in my reading list.  In my last post I mentioned that I'd be hunting for some Black Panther; that was because I had just read this issue.

7   

Gotta clear up some wall space

My Mother agreed to buy me some picture frames for my comic art in exchange for an already framed set of Picasso sketches that I had and she wanted for her living room.  Of course the first thing I did when we came to that agreement was order a new piece of comic art.  

I'm sorry it's a bit blurry.. all I have is a phone camera and my hands are shaky from the meds.  You'll just have to come visit me at home(this offer is only open to people I know, not folks on the internet who accidentally stumble across m blog) to check it out.. but here it is.

This is the original pencil and ink artwork used for page 6 of Issue #7 of the current Daredevil volume which started in 2011.  Daredevil #7 won the Eisner Award for "Best Single Issue".  As far as I'm concerned, this is the best single page.

Paolo Rivera and his father, Joe Rivera are the artists responsible.  Because their process involves two stages, I actually get a little more bang for my buck.  On the left is the original black and blue pencil work by Paolo Rivera.  When Paolo finishes a page he scans it and hands off the copy to be inked by his Dad.  Obviously, the inked copy is on the right.  I accidentally cut off a little of the bottom right hand corner, but Joe Rivera signed the second one next to where Paolo signed and I thought the father/son autograph was kinda cool.. I'll make sure it shows when it's framed.

Tomorrow is comic book day, and Friday I'll finally be making another excursion out to a comic book shop I havent been to to sift through bins of back issues.  Hopefully Friday night I'll have something to post about that's Ultimate Spider-Man related.  If not, maybe I'll at least have some of the following: Black Panther 513-524, Walking Dead 99, Amazing Spider-Man 400, or Cable & Deadpool 37-50.  At the very least I'll be able to describe my first day using my new handicapped placard to park Kenny's car wherever we want!  

6

   

Stilt man!!

I know this blog claims to be about Ultimate Spider-Man, but right now I can't even walk so it's gonna be a while before i go bin hunting.. But that doesn't mean i'm gonna stop posting about comics.

This week my focus is on one single issue: Daredevil #22... The return of STILT MAN!

The absurdity of this issue was already set up last issue at a rooftop meeting between Kirsten Mcduffie (NYC's DA) and the creepy new "superior" Spider-Man with the following line: "I understand what you're asking me to do, yes. I will find Daredevil... And I will crush him."  Considering Doc Ock is supposedly a genius, I have to assume he's not really trying that hard.  You really can't go around saying things like that and not expect someone to notice that something seems a little off with Spider-Man lately

5   

Late Christmas

I would have updated sooner because I was hoping to do a day trip some time before Christmas or the days around it, but things fell through.  I woke up on Christmas day in a hospital bed, apparently after being in a coma and on a respirator for over a week.   I don't remember any of it.. but I'm ok now.

I was in recovery from a bone marrow transplant almost 2 years ago, and now I'm back on track.. just having a little bit more trouble breathing.

I wanted to post anyway because I thought  it would be poor form to start a blog and start leaving long open spaces between posts so quickly.

Obviously I don't have any new Ultimate Spider-Man issues to mention, but I did get a few good things for Christmas.  First, my father picked up my pull list at the comic shop, so I go to read Amazing Spider-Man #700.  I was actually a little upset at the ending, but I was really glad that the book actually shocked me.  It caught me off guard with an ending I didn't expect, and I don't know where this story line is gonna lead.    I'd choose that over the story going my way any day. It's about time the Amazing Spider-Man started throowing in plot twists that actually shocked me once in a while.  For a while the only Marvel book I've been able to get surprises from has been Daredevil.  I still made a few good acquisitions though when it came time to get my Christmas gifts

Daredevil #16 from 1966.  My two favorite super heroes on one cover together long before I was born.  My mom picked this up for me.  It's in great condition.

 Megaman X in blue chrome.  Came with all kinds of interchangeable arms and faces and what not.

My parents also gave me a copy of the Death of Spider-Man Omnibus.  It's material I've already read.. but I'm more than enthusiastic to have another piece of the Ultimate Spider-Man story in Omnibus form.  I'll continue to double dip any time a piece of USM or UCSM gets released in an Omnibus.  The art throughout the entire series has been well worth the larger page size and I love the stitched bindings on these hardcovers.