The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back.

I used to review comics on this blog, you know. But I kept getting more and more behind, and the amount of new comics I was getting and reading was directly inversely proportioned to my desire to write about them...so I finally said "enough". I needed to stop for a while. And thusly, I left the below post in draft status since about a week before Thanksgiving of last year.

Until now.

Frankly, I'm tired of seeing it in the draft queue. So, I thought I could either finish the darn thing, or post it as is for all to see and shake their heads at. Typically, I chose the latter. So here's the post, in all its incomplete glory, and now I only have 3 posts in my draft queue! Hooray! Listed at the end is the insurmountable mountain of comics I had yet to review.

Yes, here's another CONFESSIONS OF A SPINNER RACK JUNKIE, in which I opine in shortish fashion about comics that I have bought and/or received and/or read in the interval between October 29th and November 12th, some of which may even still be on sale at finer comics selling establishments worldwide if you're lucky. Or not, as the case may be.

And, yeah, I'm still way behind, so please bear with me as I look at comics you read and most likely forgot about three weeks ago...

ABE SAPIEN: THE HAUNTED BOY: Poor Abe just can't seem to keep from getting the short straw when it comes to one-shots, can he? A recycled Twilight Zone plot combined with grubby Patric Reynolds art might yank someone's crank, but not mine. D+

AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE #6: God only knows what happened to the real #6, but I guess it doesn't really matter. While this series certainly had its share of fun and yuks, (and a fair amount of rambling aimlessness as well, let's be fair) it was defeated mostly because no matter how hard Giffen and Fleming tried to poke fun, nothing is sillier than what's being presented as canon in the ongoings this sought to ridicule. The battle was lost before the war was waged. If this leads to Fleming getting a regular gig somewhere again (assuming he wants one), though, it will have been a success. B-

ASSAULT ON NEW OLYMPUS #1: Basically, this is Incredible Hercules Annual #1, what with the same writers and one of the artists currently doing the ongoing, so I guess it's just Herc's perpetually anemic sales figures that prompted this stand-alone, which fits right between epics in Herc's own book. While there's no tittie-twisting this time out, it's an enjoyable bridge to not only the ongoing but, I assume, another of Marvel's multi-title crossover events I really have no desire to follow. A-

BEASTS OF BURDEN #2: In which the WE3 effect comes into play once more; if you don't want to hug your pets after reading this, especially if you have dogs, well, you're a more cynical, heartless bastard than I (or Dorkin, for that matter), Gunga Din. As always, Jill Thompson's watercolor art is sensational. A-

BLACK WIDOW: DEADLY ORIGIN #1: Fairly routine update/rejiggering of the Widow's origins, marred by the jarring transition between xxx's slick, modern-comics art on the modern-day events and J.P. Leon's more aesthetically pleasing, illustrator-ish work on the flashbacks. What's more logical than to have the Winter Men's artist on a tale of an ambiguously timed old Mother Russia? If this only had some of Winter Men's style, this would be worth your time. C+

DETECTIVE COMICS #858
DOMINIC FORTUNE #3
FINAL CRISIS AFTERMATH: RUN #6
GHOST RIDERS: HEAVEN'S ON FIRE #4
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #19
HELLBLAZER #260
IMMORTAL WEAPONS #4
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #137
MADAME XANADU #16
MARVEL DIVAS #4
POWER GIRL #6
THUNDERBOLTS #137
UNDERGROUND #2

xxx= didn't know the artists' name when I wrote it, and I'm too lazy to look it up now.