The JBS Personal Best of the Decade 2000-2009.

Since we have reached the end of another ten year period (and yes, I know the Decade of the Aughts proper technically encompasses the years 2001-2010), I'm feeling the itch to issue forth with another list, this time putting out there for the record my favorite comics series of that period, i.e. the comics that rocked my world in that space of time, as remembered through the filter of time.

As always, the usual disclaimers: this is not intended to be a definitive best-of the decade list. It's limited to series, one-shots, GNs, etc. that I read in the past 10 years. There are a great many excellent (I'm sure) comics that I did not read in that decade, for various reasons, and regardless of their perceived merit, I won't include them here. No webcomics, either- that's a separate list on Planet Dave. I'm going to omit trade collections and reprint series as well, which is why you won't see Showcase Presents: Bat Lash, Bambi and Her Pink Gun, or Starstruck here, to name a few.

Since we're talking 10 years here, I think I'll extend the list to a nice, even 20 titles. I realize I may be contradicting myself here- over the years I may not have rated these titles as highly as others. But with the laws of hindsight and revisionist thinking fully in effect, I simply regard a few of these with more affection (for lack of a better word) than I may have previously. These will be in alphabetical order, to show lack of favoritism. Of course, merely being on the list shows favoritism, but you know what I mean. And just for shits and giggles, I'll post them in cover gallery format without a capsule description. Also, bear in mind that I started blogging in 2002, and while I tried to go back and research what was released in 2000- September 2002, I may have forgotten or overlooked something. It's easier to collate the information when you have it all in writing, as I do from October 2002 to date. I've got a lot on the list below, and I'll bet I'll be thinking of others I've forgotten for another 10 years at least. OK. Enough blather, let's go:

HONORABLE MENTIONS: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen V2, Asterios Polyp, Underground, Aqua Leung, Top 10, B.P.R.D.: 1946, Nocturnals: Carnival of Beasts, Batman: Year 100, Beasts of Burden, DC: The New Frontier, Empowered, Hellboy: The Wild Hunt, Freddie & Me, Planetary, Sleeper Seasons 1-2, Criminal Seasons 1-3, Batgirl: Year One, Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin, Captain Britain & MI-13, Same Difference and Other Stories, Dr. 13: Architecture and Morality, Hawaiian Dick series, The Legend of Wild Man Fischer, Ursula, Courtney Crumrin series, Black Metal V1, Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil, Peculia and the Groon Grove Monsters, Scurvy Dogs, Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Owly.


I also feel I should cite certain titles that may not always have been among the very best in any particular month in which they were released, but over the decade were consistently very, very good, and I bought them on a regular basis throughout. To wit:

100 Bullets, John Constantine: Hellblazer, Gotham Central, Lucifer, Daredevil, Meat Cake, Love & Rockets (incl. New Stories and Penny Century), Catwoman, Fables, Incredible Hercules, Guardians of the Galaxy, Invincible Iron Fist/Immortal Weapons, Invincible Iron Man, X-Statix, Hero Squared.


And now that this is out of my system, I will resume hiatizing. Hope everyone has a happy 2010.

The JBS Personal Best of 2009.

Or, to be more accurate, the works of sequential fiction from which I derived the most pleasure in the past calendar year, gleaned from the various Spinner Rack Junkie columns I've inflicted upon you in the last 11 months.

As always, this is a highly subjective, entirely personal list; in no way is it intended to be comprehensive or any sort of guide for the unwary consumer looking for enlightenment. There are many, many excellent works that I have not read, for a number of reasons. You won't find too many critical darlings here- no Ganges, no Footnotes in Gaza, no manga (haven't read a single thing from ol' Nippon this year), no Pim and Francie, no The Hunter. I'm sure they're awesome, but I haven't read 'em. Maybe someday, but not in 2-double aught-9, so they're not on the list. No webcomics, either, though I do read 'em and love many. I don't own any of the physical printed collections, so I don't put 'em up here.

So anyway, here they are, 12 total, because most people do 10 and I like to be different, in alphabetical order so I can avoid the appearance of ranking one over the other.



ASTERIOS POLYP, the long awaited GN by David Mazzuchelli, is such an audacious burst of creativity that one hates to take shots at it- the protagonist isn't terribly likable (although he does improve), quite often the art reminded me of Chester Gould meets Hank Ketcham (a far cry from the MillerTothisms of his Batman: Year One days, for sure) or reading certain chapters of Understanding Comics, plus there's a strong Lifetime Movie of the Week vibe to its basic story - but no matter. The narrative as a whole becomes absolutely engrossing, with the creator taking opportunity to hold forth about a great many philosophical and esoteric notions, and I appreciated the uncynical tone of the ending, even though it's another of those ambiguous types that drive me up the wall. This one, though, kinda depends on your perspective, one of the themes of the story as a whole. Mazzuchelli's unorthodox art gymnastics take on a definite bravura, and it's exciting to see what kind of daredevil (no pun intended) leap he takes next. It may be a bit, just a bit, overrated- but it's still worth your time, I think.



BEASTS OF BURDEN: Evan Dorkin playing it (mostly) straight, and Jill Thompson turning in some absolutely stunning watercolor art in service of one of the odder story ideas in recent memory- talking animal (well, talking among themselves) occult detectives. No Scooby-Doo Mysteries here, though- this is on the level, and after a tentative first issue we got two back-to-back excellent, often moving supernatural adventures. I may be jumping the gun by including this since I have yet to read #4, but I've no doubt it will be right there with the others.



CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI-13: Paul Cornell's Anglo-centric superhero saga went out on a gonzo high note, as the team faced off with a very vicious and very overconfident Dracula, with assistance of a kind from Dr. Doom, and it was (as so often the case) well-written and illustrated enough to not sell enough copies to avoid cancellation. What a shame, and yet another example of how some radical rethinking needs to be done if the market won't support this sort of comics.



EMPOWERED: Adam Warren's gorgeously illustrated R-rated superhero exploitative cheesecake satire has been good since issue one, but was represented in 2009 with its best issue yet, as well as a nicely done one-shot at years' end.



HELLBOY: THE WILD HUNT: I know, what with all the various spinoffs and side projects under the BPRD/Hellboy banner, it's beginning to get a little confusing. That said, this particular branch, even though there was a long delay in the middle of the run, was never less than clever scriptwise (with Mike Mignola taking the opportunity to add to H.B.'s mythos a bit) and illustrated in excellent fashion by one of Mignola's best collaborators (besides Corben and Guy Davis), the underrated Duncan Fegredo. Best Hellboy adventure since last year's Crooked Man, the only one in recent memory that was better. Plus, a couple of issues featured Gary Gianni's Monster Men series, always great.



POTTER'S FIELD: STONE COLD: Under-the-radar one-shot from Boom! that I enjoyed very much when I read it earlier this year. Interesting premise (that TV, not surprisingly, co-opted via the Christian Slater vehicle The Forgotten) and excellent art by favorite Paul Azaceta. Hope there will be more.



SANDMAN: THE DREAM HUNTERS: Anytime we get this much new Craig Russell art, especially in the service of the sort of things that Neil Gaiman cooks up, it's a good thing. This was a masterful re-presentation.



SCALPED: If ever a series deserved the tag "grim and gritty", I guess it's this one...even though the term has taken on a pejorative tone in the last decade or so. This gripping account of crime, pride, greed and desperation in a Native American reservation has been consistently excellent all year long.



SCOTT PILGRIM V5: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE UNIVERSE: I suppose it points to the fact that 2009 just didn't send me a lot of comics that blew me away that I include this very well done but somewhat forward-looking chapter in this list. All the stuff that makes O'Malley's protagonists so endearing and yet so frustrating are here again, and that makes it good enough for me...but "good enough" really shouldn't be on this list.



STARSTRUCK: I hoped for years that Elaine Lee and Mike Kaluta could somehow get around to giving us more of the inventive, clever, densely detailed world that I fell in love with back in the mid-80s, but eventually I had to face facts and give up. I am pleased to report that the unlikely did indeed come to pass, and it looks beautiful thanks to the colors by Lee Moyer. Sometimes, I suppose, you can come home again.



UNDERGROUND: Down to earth (no pun intended- well, maybe a little pun intended) saga of park rangers vs. greedy locals, written with satisfying verisimilitude by Jeff Parker and drawn for maximum tension by Steve Lieber, who's never done better work that I've seen, anyway.



WINTERMEN WINTER SPECIAL: Long-awaited finale to the outstanding, albeit indifferently presented, Soviet supersoldiers miniseries by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon. Despite more editorial and company interference than any five series should have had imposed on it, what did come out in fits and starts was always engrossing and often flat out brilliant.

Honorable mentions: Showcase Presents: Bat Lash (I did not buy this, but I do still have the originals, which are not diminished by the lesser mid-70's reprints included in this long-overdue collection.); B.P.R.D: 1947, Greatest Hits, Incredible Hercules, Ghost Riders: Heaven's on Fire, Fables, Criminal: Sinners, Sir Edward Gray, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels, Marvel Divas, The Mighty, Guardians of the Galaxy, Madame Xanadu, Phonogram: The Singles Club, Solomon Kane: Castle of the Devil, Invincible Iron Man, Incognito, Immortal Weapons, Umbrella Academy: Dallas, 100 Bullets, Jack Staff, The Boys, Terra, Sub-Mariner: The Depths, Power Girl, Detective Comics feat. Batwoman, Agents of Atlas, Doom Patrol (V5).

Just in case you're interested...

I'm going to extend this posting break here, perhaps at least until the end of the year. The stars, planets, humors, vapors, and all other sorts of esoterica in my personal life are just not conducive to me being a regular blogger right now. Plus, I'm just a bit burned out on the whole thing. I can't see a single damn thing that I bring to the party anymore that you can't get in better, cleverer fashion in a multitude of places. I don't want to go away completely, but I just can't see me contributing anything much here right now...and while I hate it like sin, I don't want to be just putting bullshit up here (well, more so than usual) for the sake of putting something up.

That said, unless ADD tells me to stop, I do intend to keep contributing infrequently to Trouble with Comics, so there's that if for some sad reason you just can't make it without my musings on books of the comical variety. I'll probably still do the Five for Friday at the Comics Reporter, whenever I can think of answers to the relevant topic in time to get them to him. And, sure, I'm still on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook, so it's not like I'm going away for good, as pleasurable as that may sound to some. Oh, and I'm going to continue to put NFL predictions up on the LJ as well.

So anyway, be good, and be good to each other, have a happy holiday season, and sayonara for now, at least as far as the Johnny Bacardi Show goes.

Pumpkin Pie.

I guess that title is in poor taste, no pun intended, but I couldn't think of anything else more appropriate to go with this nice Autumnal picture of a young Marilyn Monroe, sitting in her sincere pumpkin patch.

Just wanted to get something up here, to show that I'm not dead or anything. Not much time or energy for blogging lately, and I hope that changes soon...I'm more behinder than ever, reviews-wise, and I'm behind on some stuff I'm writing for Trouble With Comics for Alan Moore month as well. Anyway, just checking in to let you know that I'm not done just yet.

Picture taken from this very nice Marilyn pics post at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

CONFESSIONS OF A SPINNER RACK JUNKIE.

Please be upstanding for 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 16th and 28th, 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, once more I'm way behind, so please bear with me as I look at comics you read and most likely forgot about three weeks ago...

BATMAN AND ROBIN #5: Looks like Grant's just giving us a more genteel version of Miller's ludicrous Spillane-with-Tourette's All-Star Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, and the more I read, the more squalid the whole thing seems. I know he can do better, and I know he knows that, too. Not helping: artist Philip Tan, who gives us not one but two absolutely incomprehensible action scenes. My interest is hanging by a thread, and only the promise of Grant's Squire drawn by Cam Stewart, coming eventually, is keeping me around. C-

THE BOYS #35: The sad/weird backstory of likeable Boy "Mother's Milk" takes center stage this time out, and it's typically Ennisian, with smirks riding shotgun with pathos. As always with this title, for them that likes, here's more. B+

B.P.R.D.: 1947 #4: Continues to flow along nicely thanks to the Moon/Ba art, but the story feels like it climaxed last issue. Hopefully Dysart and Mignola have something extraordinary in mind for the ending. A-

CRIMINAL: SINNERS #1: Wait, aren't all criminals sinners by definition? Anyway, Tracy returns, and is once more placed between the proverbial rock and the proverbial hard place. All your favorite noir tropes are once again present and accounted for, and those who seek to wallow will find this a most acceptable trough, especially as it's once more illustrated with aplomb by Sean Phillips. A-

DAREDEVIL #501: The first issue of the Diggle era reads pretty much like the last eleventy-hundred from Bendis and Brubaker, which is not necessarily a bad thing- consistency does have its virtues. As you probably know, the new wrinkle is that DD is leading longtime pain-in-the-necks the Hand, but we don't wanna get too crazy out of line so he is of course all angry and angsty about everything, just like Miller Christ didst intend. Lotsa good character work, especially with the supporting cast, and a decent enough plotline that while it doesn't break any new ground, at least moodwise, at least shows that Diggle will keep the dramatics compelling and I guess that will keep me buying for a while longer. I recall liking artist Roberto De La Torre on Thunderbolts; he told the story well enough, and his style, while derivative, at least had some personality. I'm pleased to report he brings that to bear here. B+

FABLES #89: Most of this issue deals with Bufkin the flying monkey, left behind in the old Fabletown digs and faced with the threat of not only Aladdin's old genie, but the Baba Yaga as well. It's almost impossible to describe the events in this comic without sounding nuts, you know. Also, more with Frau Totenkinder, now all young and hot and stuff, as she tries to find out more about the threat of the Dark Man. Lots of stuff going on; this title is as engrossing right now as it's ever been, and it's been pretty good before. Artist Mark Buckingham once more saves most of his creativity for his nifty panel borders, and does everything else as well as he needs to- he's always reliable. A-

GHOST RIDERS: HEAVEN'S ON FIRE #3: OK, I'm buying this now for Aaron's take on Daimon Hellstorm, so naturally only has a cameo in this issue. Even so, this one's still got a lot of fast-paced action, as the bickering brother Riders battle an old Marvel Monsters-age baddie whose schtick it is to possess inanimate objects like cars and bulldozers and such, as well as one of the House of Ideas' less-inspired ones, Big Wheel. It's the sort of left turn that would ordinarily be offputting, but Aaron makes it work. The action scenes pop thanks to a god job by Roland Boschi and Dan Brown. More drive-in movie-style fun. B+

HELLBOY: THE WILD HUNT #7: The lead story keeps on keepin' on, gearing up to what should be an appropriately apocalyptic finale. As always, Mike Mignola is Hellboy's best writer, and Duncan Fregredo is the next best thing to Mr. M himself on art. What I've been enjoying the most, though, and forgetting to mention is the backups- first, the return of Gary Gianni's quirky and bizarre MonsterMen (or Corpus Monstrum, or whatever the hell he's calling it these days), which I've missed, and this issue's not-as-good-but-still-pretty-good Henry Hood spotlight, which ties in with the Witchfinder series running concurrently. Whew, it is to make the head spin, keeping up with all this... A

INCREDIBLE HERCULES #136: Maybe the best comic I've read this year, certainly the funniest. Exhibit A for the jury:

Now I can cross "Seeing Hercules dressed like Thor giving a tittie twister to Thor dressed like Hercules while they're battling" off my bucket list. A

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #19: Somewhat anticlimactic resolution to an arc that was pretty good as a whole; your satisfaction depends a lot on whether you think Osborn would care all that much about being seen beating the crap out of a defenseless Tony Stark on worldwide TV. Me, I'm a bit skeptical- would Dubya or Cheney have had the same scruples? Anyway, the literal ending itself was pretty interesting, and I think I'll follow along a while longer to see what happens. B+

LIBERTY COMICS: A CBLDF BENEFIT BOOK #2: Just like last time, we get several somewhat heavy-handed and obvious stories, mostly of the barbed satire stripe, apparently OK because it's done by some outstanding creators such as Paul Pope, whose "Loverman" finally sees print, Brian Wood, who dusts off the Channel Zero concept, Paul Grist, more Apocalypstix by Ray Fawkes and Cam Stewart, and others, all for a good cause- it's great art showcase. I'm down with the cause, and the propaganda this time is slightly better than last time, but I prefer subtlety. Character flaw on my part, I suppose. B

SCALPED #32: Things are rapidly coming to a head, it seems, for both Dash and Chief Red Crow...and about the only thing I can predict is that the resolution will most likely be very bloody, and I'm pretty sure nobody will learn any damn life lessons. Once again, consistently consistent in its constant excellence. A

STARSTRUCK #2: It's difficult for me to be impartial about this series, so I guess I won't even try. As excellent now as it was 20 plus years ago, and the added scenes are providing clarity- I don't recall if the whole Mary Medea boards the spaceship to go to war in the aftermath of the botched Bajar spy mission scene was in the B&W Dark Horse reprint series, but it read as unfamilar to me, and made her motivations clearer. The dialogue is great, the helter-skelter script construction is still fun, Kaluta's art was never better and has rarely been better since, and the new coloring continues to kick ass. Perhaps I'll find something to nitpick eventually- the Galactic Girl Guides backups still strike me as somewhat trivial- but for now I'm completely in the bag. A

STRANGE TALES #2: Indie artists slumming once again, or so the attitude of most of these stories would have you believe; still, some are having fun and that gets this across just fine. Best of show, Jacob Chabot's amusing "Lookin' Good, Mr. Grimm" which carries the Thing's resemblance to chia pets to its logical conclusion and reminds us that hig-spirited humor was always a big part of the old FF formula; others which impress are Jim Rugg's long-shelved Brother Voodoo story, Matt Kindt, doing his Super Spy thing with the Black Widow, Jhonen Vazquez's cutesy MODOK, and Tony Millionaire's goofy Bob Burden-esque Iron Man tale. Less impressive is Pete Bagge's long-delayed Hulk, which only reinforces my own held belief that when it comes to the Bradleys or the Beach Boys, Bagge is golden. Everything else, not so much. B+

WITCHFINDER: IN THE SERVICE OF ANGELS #4: Continues to be an entertaining smorgasbord of cultists, ghosts, demons, and Mignola's ever-spreading Hellboy mythology, ably brought to moody life by Ben Stenbeck. A-


As always, sorry about being so late with these. More coming soon.

I had Seven Seconds to say...

Today's Bacardi Show Birthday Greeting goes out to writer ROBERT LOREN FLEMING, 53 years young today. Above, a small cover gallery of the many series he's had a hand in over the years. There seems to be one exception, though, and I just can't quite seem to put my finger on which one it is. Oh well, I'm sure it will come to me.

It also happens to be the birthday of the great JIM STERANKO, and Guy Fawkes Day as well! (Boy, wouldn't a Steranko-illustrated, Fleming-scripted issue of Thriller have been something to see?)

I gazed a gazely stare.

Back in the hazy, crazy days of 1973, Scottish pop singer Lulu, who was by then past a string of Sixties hits including "To Sir With Love", the theme for a film in which she also appeared with Sidney Poitier and for which she was probably best known here in the States, gravitated into the orbit of David Bowie (she years later confessed to a fling, Bowie hasn't commented) and Mick Ronson at the height of the Glitter era...and the a single, a cover of Bowie's 1970 title track from his Man Who Sold the World album, was the result. Above is a TV performance of same from 1974. Although I dearly love the music the Bowie/Ronson team made together, I had not gone as far as to check this out before- although I was aware it existed. The slightly-different arrangement isn't bad, although the sinuous guitar melody line that runs through the original is missing until closer to the end, it's definitely got that honkin' sax that DB liked in this, the pre-Ronson split Pinups era...but I don't think Lulu's vocal does much for the song at all, sorry to say. Her calm, sweet demeanor doesn't really jibe with the ominous paranoiac mood the song (especially in its original version) evokes. I haven't heard the B-side, "Watch that Man", a fave Bowie track of mine from Aladdin Sane.

Anyway, today is Ms. Lulu's birthday today, and reading about it got me curious to hear her cover. Thought I'd take the opportunity to send along a BSBdG. Wish I could have been more complimentary- I did like "Sir", and she was definitely a big part of the whole Swingin' '60s scene. So there's that!

"Your bodies will be unlovely..."

A two-page scene from Druid #3, Warren Ellis' sequel-of-sorts to his Hellstorm run in the mid-'90s. I was totally taken by surprise at the cultist's reaction to Ludgate's demand, and I still remember laughing out loud when I read it. Who says Ellis can't do teh funny?

What a cut-up.

Wishing you all a happy and safe Halloween!

Art by Matt Dixon, found via Drawn!

Another multi-cover Bacardi Show Birthday Greeting!

Yep, it's another of those big multi-cover birthday tributes, this time in honor of P. CRAIG RUSSELL, who turns 58 on this very day.

The first time I saw his art, early in his career on an Ant-Man tale in Marvel Feature #7, inked by mentor Dan Adkins and someone named Mark Kersey, I wasn't impressed. But then, a year or two later, I spied a copy of Amazing Adventures #28 on the spinner rack, and was surprised to see how much he'd progressed in the interim. And not only that, but I soon discovered that I loved the feature as well- War of the Worlds feat. Killraven, and began a fandom for both that has lasted to this day. It's been something to see how he's refined and developed his style over the years as well, from trying to play by the Marvel house rules to streamlining it, incorporating a myriad of influences. He's gone on to do a ton of work for a variety of publishers, including many adaptations of classic fairy tales and operas, and he brings the same verve and imagination to all of them. It's always a treat for me to see new artwork by Russell, one of my art heroes.

Here's his official site.

Sign of the times.

You see it happening all the time these days; there's even a blog devoted to it. Newspapers and print magazines are dying out, or at least the more repetitive iterations of same-- a winnowing of the herd, if you will-- and the Internet, along with the economy, are mostly to blame, it seems.

So with this in mind, it's a bit sad- and yet it isn't- to see the announcement today that the Comics Journal will no longer be on its bi-monthly, or quarterly, or whatever it was on, publishing schedule. Instead, they will offer a twice-yearly "bigger and more elaborate" issue, and concentrate most of their efforts towards expanding and redesigning their website, and providing most of its content there, supposedly free to all. Click on the link above to get the skinny.

Like Alan David Doane said this morning, back in the day- we're talking late 70s and into the 80s- the Journal was a hell of a thing, comparable mostly to the nothing-is-sacred attitude of rock's CREEM magazine than anything else, always striving to point out work that was better than the norm, and comparing/contrasting that work to the current output of the major companies of the day. While sometimes shots were taken that were uncalled for (the slagging of Don Heck's reputation comes to mind), at least they had opinions, and often passionate ones at that. Also, for my money, TCJ featured some of the best interviews I have ever read (and I'm not always crazy about interviews), and always had top notch art, even the filler illos in the letters page, some of which were done by the Hernandez Bros. early on, pre-Love & Rockets.

Ad now, I begin a rambling and personal account of my history with the Journal. You may skip ahead one paragraph if you don't care.

After buying an issue here and there via mail order or from my friend Dave Puckett (probably the first place I ever saw a copy), I eventually broke down and subscribed, and did so for many years. The cover of the earliest issue I own now is posted above. Finally, sometime in the mid-late '90s, turned off by the increasingly sour, dismissive and cynical tone that had begun to really become noticeable in practically everything that was written (It was always that way to an extent, but it had gotten excessively so by then, in my opinion), as well as an ever-increasing price point combined with the ever-crappier gray newsprint stock paper that the interiors were printed on...well, I stopped buying. By then, I had stopped subscribing (my comics shop gave discounts for holds customers then, and I figured I was breaking even), but it was five or six bucks that I could spend elsewhere, so I bade farewell to the Journal, thinking I'd pick up an issue when I could afford it and if someone I was interested in was featured. And sure enough, I did that for a while. But eventually, the Interweb came along, as did Fantagraphics' web site, and hey! They reprinted stuff from the Journal right there on their site! Plus, they had a cool news column that could actually report current comics news (a longtime bugaboo with the print edition)! And hey! When I got started blogging, I even got mentioned in that column a couple of times! (A far cry from today, where I do not exist as far as Deppey is concerned) And eventually, a lot of outstanding comics-related content became available to all via the rise of the Comics Blogosphere, much of it written by people who had read and were influenced by TCJ itself. So the upshot is that it's been quite some time since I actually purchased a physical copy, this one was my last, I believe...and I can't believe I'm the only one.

So this is a natural and inevitable progression, I believe, and while I, who will always have an nostalgic attachment to paper (not only comics and magazines, but album covers as well), still must acknowledge the necessity of this move. I wish them the best of luck- even though I gripe about them, I can't imagine the world of comics without Groth and the Journal to comment on it.