Marvel Comics is clearly making comic collecting as hard as possible. My son bought Amazing Spider-Man #588 a couple of weeks ago. Today I wanted to see when the next issue would be out and I can find...#592 on April 22. With a variant cover! What happened to issues 589 through 591? Who knows?
Click on "Spider-Man" on the Website and you find Amazing Spider-Man 588 (got it, thanks!) followed by Spider-Man: With Great Power, Sensational Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl (Zombie Variant), Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl, Spider-Man Fairy Tales, Amazing Spider-Man #544 (Djurdjevic Variant (!)), Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, and absolutely no sign of Amazing Spider-Man 589.
Do not under any circumstances attempt to use the search function. Even if you think that by unchecking "Trade Paperbacks", "Digests", and "Hardcovers", and then putting "amazing spider-man" into the search box, and narrowing the release date to April 2009, even if you think by doing all that you'll somehow find what you're looking for; don't do it, because the results will lead off with Ms. Marvel #40 followed by Spider-Woman #1. The cover of which is creepy -- how does one get a superhero costume with a navel? Those crazy unstable molecules!
What the hell is wrong with Marvel Comics? Oh, wait, the answer's right there on the bottom of every Web page, where you can find prominently linked "Corporate Information & Investor Relations".
Click on "Spider-Man" on the Website and you find Amazing Spider-Man 588 (got it, thanks!) followed by Spider-Man: With Great Power, Sensational Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl (Zombie Variant), Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl, Spider-Man Fairy Tales, Amazing Spider-Man #544 (Djurdjevic Variant (!)), Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, and absolutely no sign of Amazing Spider-Man 589.
Do not under any circumstances attempt to use the search function. Even if you think that by unchecking "Trade Paperbacks", "Digests", and "Hardcovers", and then putting "amazing spider-man" into the search box, and narrowing the release date to April 2009, even if you think by doing all that you'll somehow find what you're looking for; don't do it, because the results will lead off with Ms. Marvel #40 followed by Spider-Woman #1. The cover of which is creepy -- how does one get a superhero costume with a navel? Those crazy unstable molecules!
What the hell is wrong with Marvel Comics? Oh, wait, the answer's right there on the bottom of every Web page, where you can find prominently linked "Corporate Information & Investor Relations".
Incidentally, if you search from Google, you can find the "missing" issues. Apparently Amazing Spider-Man is biweekly, which strikes me as mildly insane and hardly conducive to quality product.
I'm feeling glad that I only read Elephantmen, Dark Horse's Star Wars titles, and DC's Fables and Jack of Fables. Superhero comics are impossibly fragmented and difficult--and that's leaving aside the hundreds upon hundreds of issues of backstory that you'll be confused about if you just walk into the comic shop and pick one up. When I started getting into comics again last year, I was reading Batman stuff. There's Batman, there's Batman: Detective Comics. There's Batman & Superman (or something along those lines.) There's JLA. Batman Confidential. Gotham After Midnight (a 12-issue limited that has actually just finished up). Then there are Batman's friends' comics: Robin, Nightwing... Plus, when I started reading it was the utterly incomprehensible RIP storyline. I'd *like* to read a superhero comic, but it'd have to be off in it's own damn continuity and fairly recent--no 600+ issues, thanks.
Spider-Man is actually, I believe, three times a month now. Last year, Marvel decided to end two of the Spider-Man series and just make Amazing three times a month instead.
If your son likes Spider-Man, there's a line of digests called Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man that you can get from Amazon or other places. There's also a series of trade paperback collections of Ultimate Spider-Man (the only Spider-Man series I read, and one that I've long enjoyed).
I haven't been on the Marvel site in years, but I do remember it being impossible to find anything. It wasn't user-friendly to say the least.
Marvel's trade paperback thing is another can of insane worms. Have you looked at the prices on those things? I bought Whedon and Cassady's run on Astonishing X-Men as it was being published originally (not, I want to point out, because I'm a big fan of Whedon. Quite the opposite -- that would've kept me away). I gave away my copies to another old-time X-Men collector (he had gone back and bought the old John Byrne issues and even Dave Cockrum's original run) because he never seemed to remember to get to the comic store. A few weeks ago I was discussing comics with Dean Haspiel and he mentioned some awesome part of Astonishing which rang not a single bell with me. Apparently I have the long-term memory of a sea sponge. I decided I needed to re-read the series and went to the comic store with cash money in my pocket -- cash money! -- but when I saw the cover price for comics I'd already bought -- TWENTY BUCKS for SIX ISSUES! -- I couldn't bring myself to buy any of them. I found myself some copies...another way.
Which brings me to the state of comics today: How bad is it when a comic fan like me can walk into a comic store with a pocketful of legal tender and walk out without a single purchase? I can't find a single comic I really want to read. Astonishing was good, really good, but Whedon and Cassaday are done and their replacements are...less than optimal. I've looked through a lot of stuff, but ultimately all I've been buying lately are comics done by people I know.
Hi Christopher,
At the risk of sounding like a soulless consumer who purchases items from Wal-Mart and probably doesn't recycle as much as he should (okay, probably doesn't recycle ANYTHING that he should), may I make a suggestion?
Never buy anything from a comic book store.
Personally, I buy all my books (and they're trade paperbacks almost exclusively) from a company called mailordercomics.com. You have to pay shipping, but the price of books - especially ones that are preordered (you don't receive them until three months later when they're actually published) are usually 38% to 50% less than retail price.
I didn't mention this earlier because first of all I didn't want to sound like a spam ad and second of all I'm not sure it's worth it if you're only looking for a couple of books. I spend around $100-$120 a month there, and it would cost me $160-$200 if I was buying at a comic book store.
I'm all for supporting local guys if they can match the prices online. Which means I'm an evil whore who would sell his mother's kidney for a cheaper price on the new Stephen King book. :-)
You make me so bitter. Back in 1996, I think it was, I started putting together an online comic shop. 20 percent off cover price and so on. This was early in the online retail wave. The first comic store I brought the idea to blew me off but the second was interested. Then the owner stopped returning my calls. I knew nothing about starting a business -- nothing about venture capital or anything -- and the whole thing just kind of evaporated. Very sad. I could've been the Jerry Yang of comics, maybe sold my business to Amazon before the bubble burst in 2001, walked away with millions.
Instead I'm just a schmuck. So thanks for reminding me!
More to the point, to order comics in advance, I'd have to know what I wanted in advance. Which I don't. Although as I wrote my son is currently interested in Spider-Man. Who knows how long that'll last?
The trouble is less the comic store and more the product itself. There's very little I want to buy.
Chris, your son would probably most enjoy Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man, which takes place in a reality where Peter Parker _didn't_ sell his marriage to the devil to save his dying aunt. The Marvel Adventures line is designed to be particularly kid-friendly, but it's also cultivated a reputation as a clever, charming, and often very funny bastion of good old-fashioned superhero comics.
I also hear good things about Marvel Adventures: The Avengers. The excerpts I've seen have included the Hulk chasing pigs at a county fair, Spidey and the other Avengers trying to distract a visiting Odin so that Storm can go on a date with Thor in peace, and the Avengers teaming up to try to dissuade Ego, the Loving Planet, from putting the moves on Earth. ("Stupid planet!" Hulk bellows at one point. "Earth just want to be friends!")
Also, good stuff worth buying:
- Top Ten Season Two, with Zander Cannon and Gene Ha ably picking up the reins of the superhero Hill Street Blues they co-created with Alan Moore. The original's one of my all-time favorite series, and the sequel, though not quite Moore, is impressively good.
- Jack Staff, by Paul Grist. Basically everything you ever loved about comics (superheroes, cops, detectives, reporters, vampires, mystics, thieves, masters of disguise, and secret agents) in one volume, by one of the medium's most wildly underrated talents. And you can pick up the black-and-white, 240-page first trade for $20.
- Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Hardcore crime noir comics, without all the creepy personal issues Frank Miller brings to the genre.
- Agents of Atlas, which I would totally be buying if I weren't trying to wean myself off comics, in which a talking gorilla, a spaceman, a badass mermaid, the godess of Love, a killer robot, and a kung-fu superspy run Ocean's 11/Mission Impossible-type con games on supervillains in the guise of an international crime syndicate. Also, there's a dragon.
... On second thought, I may have to break down and start buying that.
Today Reilly told me of an upcoming must-have from Marvel: Pet Avengers. Lockjaw and Lockheed and Frog Thor and some cat and some bird team up and...I can't even imagine.
At least it's not Marvel Monkey Zombie Pets.
Nathan, I caught the Agents of Atlas mini-series and it was a blast. Huge fun.
I can highly recomment Invincible by Robert Kirkman -- thanks Lisa! -- and also The Walking Dead by Kirkman. Talk about different vibes. But both great.
"At least it's not Marvel Monkey Zombie Pets."
I would totally buy that.
Considering that Mr. Brown's currently drawing "The Amazing Spider-Monkey" (and quite well, at that), is he really qualified to throw stones? Or, you know, that other thing monkeys like to throw?
To be honest, I kinda want to get Pet Avengers, if only because it includes Niels the bouncing cat from the insane old Steve Ditko Speedball comics.
Oh, and ditto for Snell's recommendation of "Invincible." If you like pure, old-school superhero comics, they don't come much better than that.
Let me start by making it as clear as possible that Reilly, whose paycheck comes from Marvel and has not yet bounced once, evinced nothing but love and admiration for the very concept -- to say nothing of the skillful execution -- of Pet Avengers. Any contempt, snorting, or statements along the lines of "Sounds like the House of Ideas has run oh-so-dry" were and are entirely mine.
Reilly's work on The Amazing Spider-Monkey -- and I got to watch him work on some of the pages, which is pretty fantastic -- his work is so far and above the call of his duty to that title. It is, by the way, a one-shot, or anyway a very limited series. Now he's working on something with the Inhumans and doing a bang-up job -- he does a really excellent Gorgon. I could tell who it was but also that he'd changed a lot since I saw him last, which is good pencilling in my book.
Reilly had an idea who the cat was but I was totally stumped. Also on the falcon, although we kind of concluded it was the Falcon's falcon. Not too hard, there. We're a little unsure of who Frog Thor is: Wasn't Frog Thor just Thor, turned into a frog? So, like, is this Thor again, or did they find some other frog worthy and noble enough to wield Mjolnir? We're not sure.
Judging by the cover art online, it looks like the artist is saying to himself, "Dammit, I'm going to do the best frigging Pet Avengers they've ever seen so they say, 'Hey, what is this awesome guy doing working on frigging Pet Avengers?'" But you know the Marvel cover bait-and-switch, so who knows. Maybe they're getting the interiors done by Monkey John Romita Jr.