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Ok. So I crack open Black Widow and the Marvel Girls trade paperback looking for some all-ages fun to read before passing it along to the kiddo, and on the first page of first issue collected, I’m greeted by this:
Now, I’m a freelance writer and editor. It’s sometimes distracting to see the written word through my eyes, because I see the errors where others might breeze past them. And this “an”/“a” one stopped me dead in my tracks. How does something like this slip through? Did the editor get confused by the “near-” being appended on the front of “ageless”? Or maybe think that the indefinite article is referring directly to the “Asgardian”?
I looked at those words so long that I actually started to doubt myself! Then I did some quick searches online to see if I was losing my mind and called my long-time editor John. According to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, Grammar Girl, and Compass Rose Horizons (the first three sites that came up in my Google search for "grammar rules an vs. a") and John, I can find no exceptions to the indefinite article rules to make me think what’s printed on that page of the comic is correct.
From Purdue OWL:
The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter. If the first letter makes a vowel-type sound, you use "an"; if the first letter would make a consonant-type sound, you use "a." So, if you consider the rule from a phonetic perspective, there aren't any exceptions.
I’m not infallible. I make grammatical errors all the time (there are probably some in this very blog entry), but I also don’t run everything I write by an editor and the writing I’m doing here is for fun. The writing in my book that has passed through my editor’s hands or in anything I have edited, however, should be grammatically sound. I can understand small errors here and there in a publication like this comic, but to be in large font on the first page of the book was surprising.
Regardless, I did enjoy the collection of four one-shot Black Widow team-ups (along with a bonus reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #86 and the debut of the Widow's modern costume). And that typo on page one is nothing that a black Sharpie won't fix.
I pick up quite a few single issues for the kiddo each month. The Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Super Hero Squad, all based on their respective animated shows, are always on the list, along with miscellaneous other books that either strike my fancy for him while going through Previews or pique his interest on trips to the comic shop.
In my April DCBS box, there were two reboots of the Marvel Adventures line I had ordered for the kiddo: Spider-Man and Super Heroes. I am a big proponent of all ages and age-appropriate comics for kids, and when I saw these in Previews I knew I needed to give them a try and support them.
I don’t regularly read the comics I buy for the kiddo. I’m confident as an informed consumer of what I’m letting him read, so it’s more about him having something that gets him jazzed about comics. But I couldn’t pass up giving these two books a go for myself. (Plus, I love the look in the kiddo’s eyes when I come to him asking if I can read one of his comics that says, “You want to read something of mine? Sure you can, Dad!”)
Both of these Paul Tobin-written books are a lot of fun. The Spider-Man is one-and-done, but has the feel of something that will have some continuity to it over its run. There’s dirty politicians, a young Captain Stacy, high school drama, and a cranky J. Jonah Jameson. And I think I enjoyed this single Spidey issue more than the five-issue Bob Gale-penned Peter Parker mini currently underway.
The Spidey book also benefits from two Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius backups. The kiddo and I are both big fans of Chris Eliopoulos’ work, so it’s nice to have these here, along with his Zabu (Ka-Zar’s sabretooth tiger) backup set in the Savage Land in the Super Heroes book.
Tobin’s work in Super Heroes is the kind of story you can’t help but get excited about. Inside the Iron Man cover, it’s actually an Avengers story with Shellhead, Cap, Black Widow, Thor, Nova, Invisible Woman, and Vision on the team battling Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants. Based on the “Next Issue” teaser inside the back cover, it looks like Marvel is going to rotate the “headline” character in this book, with Thor getting his turn above the title next month.
Tobin seems to have carved out a nice little corner of the all-ages Marvel Universe for himself, and I couldn’t be more appreciative. The kiddo and I both enjoyed Tobin’s Fantastic Four Giant-Size Adventures one-shot last year, his Black Widow and the Marvel Girls trade paperback arrived in the same box as the Spider-Man and Super Heroes issues, and I have his Spider-Man and the Secret Wars trade paperback on order.
I love having some books that both the kiddo and I are digging. For me, these two single issues were like a wayback machine to the stories I first discovered as a kid. And for the kiddo, I hope these are the books that are among his earliest memories of issues leaving a permanent impression on his comic reading psyche. I hope more people buy these books and keep them going. For our part, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man and Marvel Adventures Super Heroes will stay on our pull list as long as Marvel continues to offer them.
(And, on a similar note, Roger Langridge and the ever-awesome Chris Samnee’s Thor: The Might Avenger, launching in July, is already queued up to join Tobin’s books this summer.)
Northeast Ohio might collapse under the pressure of LeBron’s pending free agency, but there is one thing that can cure an Akronite’s ills: A new Black Keys album. I’ve been rockin’ to the advanced tracks (“Tighten Up” and “Next Girl”) and the bonus download (“Ohio”) for a while now... completely in love with the return of one of my all-time favorite bands. Nothing can buoy hometown pride like a new Black Keys album arriving Tuesday and tickets at the ready for a late July Cleveland tour stop.
To tide you over for the next couple of days, check out the return of Frank, the sweet dancing, eharmony profilin’ funkasaurus rex and the subversive Monty Python-esque video crawl genius of the “Next Girl” video.
Buy the new Black Keys album May 18. Do it for Frank.
I am a DCBS convert. I still throw money around in the local comic shops, but for the last year the bulk of my monthly haul and new-release collected editions now comes via UPS from Discount Comic Book Service. But even before I was buying my comics from DCBS, I was friends with Zack Kruse… first through forums and then from con-going.
So when the folks at DCBS decided to put on a one-day show in their Fort Wayne hometown, there was no way I could pass it up. I know I’m not “mention worthy” (or even belong on that great list of guest creators they’ve put together for the show), but I’m still pretty damn excited Zack asked me to be a part of Summit City.
There are so many artists and creators you should be looking forward to seeing at this show: Dave Wachter, Andy Jewett, Jim Rugg, Hilary Barta, Mike Norton, Katie Cook, Shawn Pryor, Steve Bryant, Zack himself, and the list goes on. These are all people with talent to spare!
I’ll of course have copies of my book, Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan, available for sale at the show. And if you buy a copy of it, not only can you get it signed by me, but more impressively, you can take it over to the book’s cover artist and Eisner Award Nominee Dave Wachter, and he’ll do a free quick head sketch in the book for you!
I’m looking forward to the short road trip and getting to see friends – creators, podcasters, forum family, and fans – who I only ever get to see during “con season.” Although I’m sure there will be deals to be had, Summit City Comic Con strikes me as filling the hole left by the Around Comics guys’ Windy City Comicon going on hiatus this year: A one-day show that is creator focused over vendor gluttony.See you nex
t Saturday!
I’ve mentioned my friend Pat on the blog before, but it seems worth mentioning again how awesome he is. He recently illustrated Blacklisted, written by Adam Witt. So I reached out to Pat to see about getting a copy directly from him, and he sent me a signed copy of the graphic novel that I’m excited to read. But Pat being Pat, he also included a little extra goodness in the envelope... this fun Cap sketch!
Pat’s also recently relaunched his podcast as Loikamania. It’s available as a part of Derek’s Comic Book Noise family of podcasts and on iTunes. Check it out!
So a couple of years ago I posted some of the classic Marvel Solicits around here. I recently was thumbing through some back issues in the Original Collection and stumbled on some more that brought memories crashing back. Like this one from The Thing #1, cover dated July 1983. I would have been 12 when this hit the corner convenience store’s spinner rack, and I remember immediately taking advantage of the very deals offered in the ad.
“The more titles you order, the more you save” says to me “if I order one title, I save x. If I order two titles, I save x+1. If I order three titles, I save x+2.” And so on. While the ad copy is somewhat suspect, I guess it’s logical from a certain point of view... if you order one title, you save 30% off the cover price. If you order three titles, you’re getting 30% off three titles. So, the “more” you save is referring to more titles at the same discount, not an incremental savings based on the number of titles ordered.
There is no denying Wolverine has always been a fan favorite, so the classic brown costumed Canadian is an obvious choice to help bring in readers. A quick look at the titles offered and it’s clear I was completely entrenched in the Marvel Universe at the time of this ad. There were subscriptions to G.I. Joe, X-Men, Alpha Flight, and The Thing showing up in my family’s mailbox. I was supplementing my regular Avengers, Marvel Team-Up, and Amazing Spider-Man newsstand reading with large helpings of Daredevil, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, and some Defenders among others.
Oh, and don’t be fooled by the copy that says the “Offer Expires May 31, 1983!” Remember, although the book’s cover dated July 1983, it actually was on the newsstands a few months prior to that, thanks to the wacky world of comic book publishing.
In a reenactment of events from two years ago, we missed a Friday night May Cavs playoff game to go out to dinner with good friends and see an opening weekend showing of an Iron Man movie. And, although not as much as the first installment, I really enjoyed Iron Man 2.
Of course, Robert Downey, Jr. continues to own the Tony Stark role and plays perfectly with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. The expansion of Rhodey into the War Machine character was great to see, and the change from Terrence Howard to Don Cheadle was seamless.
I was worried the movie might suffer from an overabundance of characters, much like what happened with Spider-Man 3, but Iron Man 2 seemed to get the balance right. I liked the way Whiplash and Justin Hammer worked together (Sam Rockwell chewed the scenery as Hammer). Neither was too broad or overshadowed the other as the antagonist.
The introduction of the Black Widow was handled nicely (Scarlett Johansson was great in the role) and recalled the post-credits Nick Fury cameo we saw at the end of the first movie. I love the way Marvel is tying these movies together, creating a larger Marvel Universe: Nick Fury in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Tony Stark in Incredible Hulk, the Captain America shield appearing in both Iron Man movies, and another post-credit tease at the end of Iron Man 2 that also plays into the larger picture.
One thing I really dug was that not all the bad guys died in the end. That’s something that has bugged me in the big screen adaptations of comic book properties. The comic book universe is an on-going world, and bad guys return as much as good guys. I get that you want to move on in the next movie to a new bad guy and not rehash a previous film, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have callbacks and cameos. So I’m hoping the surviving antagonist shows up in Iron Man 3, if only in a small part.
I’ve learned watching the Iron Man movies that I really don’t know a lot about the Golden Avenger’s rogues gallery. I knew who Obadiah Stane was from the comics, but not necessarily the Iron Monger aspect of his history. I did recognize the Mandarin from the first film and hope he returns in a future installment. I was not familiar with Whiplash or Justin Hammer at all. So it’s been fun to discover these characters right along with Tracy each time we head to the theater.
Now, I’m a freelance writer and editor. It’s sometimes distracting to see the written word through my eyes, because I see the errors where others might breeze past them. And this “an”/“a” one stopped me dead in my tracks. How does something like this slip through? Did the editor get confused by the “near-” being appended on the front of “ageless”? Or maybe think that the indefinite article is referring directly to the “Asgardian”?
I looked at those words so long that I actually started to doubt myself! Then I did some quick searches online to see if I was losing my mind and called my long-time editor John. According to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, Grammar Girl, and Compass Rose Horizons (the first three sites that came up in my Google search for "grammar rules an vs. a") and John, I can find no exceptions to the indefinite article rules to make me think what’s printed on that page of the comic is correct.
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