I spoil the first minute of the Superman movie because that's all I saw of it...
But I will save it for the end of this newsletter in case you want to go in fresh
Just some quick notes this time:
Uel repping for an anthology comic?! Are we in some Twilight Zone?
We must be, because Uel is hyping the new Twilight Zone comic from IDW which happens to feature an unusually strong line-up including Tom Scioli, James Stokoe, and Nate Powell.
The Joe Casey signing went great
Casey also signed the Fantastic Comics house guitar, which is now a priceless artifact that must never be played which is a good thing because something is up with that high-E string…
All-Star Superman oversized prestige edition makes for a heckofa coloring book
It’s no spoiler to say that the new movie is heavily influenced by All-Star Superman and Uel just put in a re-order for the oversized 11x17” B&W inked and lettered special edition of All-Star Superman #1.
There’s been lively discussion around the shop about just how you store such a thing.
Today is the last day to aid or possibly lightly wound our nemesis
We never figured out if The Beast actually loses money on Prime Day (we definitely would at those prices), but in any case, our landlord won’t judge if you partake of the following as he will get a cut, hopefully one that draws the blood of The Beast.
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol 1 under $8 (normally $19.99)
Akira 35th Anniversary Box set under $121 (normally $219.99)
But for those ideologically opposed to having anything to do with the beast (we thank you for your service!), our bookshop partner is running a counter-promotion of free shipping. If you’re out of town or looking for a book we don’t stock, do not be shy about ordering from them through any of our links to them, since the store earns more from there than if we ran our own online shop.
Here’s are some zines from the excellent (but apparently troubled) Silver Sprocket that against all odds is the same price or lower here compared to the beast:
Magical Beatdown Vol 1 (around $6)
Peepee Poopoo #1 (around $9)
Leftstar and the Strange Occurrence (around $15)
On this last book, which I highly recommend if you’re into gentle fantasy with mostly subtle gaming references, I do want to point out that if you search for it on The Beast, not only is it slightly more expensive, but you’re more likely than not to get the wrong book entirely; the cover image seems to be an Italian soccer book!
Finally, we can’t leave without hyping Absolute All-Star Superman (regular versions should be restocked in store soon), which thankfully the beast does not seem to have a steeply discounted version to taunt us with. Uel has repped for Grant Morrison’s takes on various canon before, and will again when the next SuperReboot comes around. Speaking of…
I found an old treat for Grant Morrison fans
From the heyday of 2004, when print mags were still a thing (I guess they’re still a thing now), someone has been dutifully scanning in old issues of Arthur magazine, one of which ran a cover feature of our favorite (or second favorite) chaos magician. Direct link to the PDF is here and the feature starts on page 29.
Finally, spoiling the first minute of the Superman movie… Avert thine eyes if ye wish!
Gunn takes a page out of All-Star-Superman by condensing the entire history of the DCU into pithy text set against an icy background.
I’m going to pause (and end) here. DC has been using the Metahumans term for basically as long as Superman has supposedly been around in this movie’s chronology, but I got to say, that term still sounds weird to me. It’s always felt like a way for DC to have its own “mutants” and Superman described as the most powerful mutant of all doesn’t sit right. Also, meta has a larger connotation these days of being self-referential or higher order, like metadata is data about data. Metafiction is fiction about fiction. It’s common to describe fourth wall breaks (or Source wall breaks!) as being “meta”. So there’s also a tendency to think of metahuman as someone who talks to the reader like Deadpool or She-Hulk, which is not what DC wants you to be thinking!
Unfortunately, the prefix that has taken the place of meta- in the superlative sense is “uber” and for a lot of reasons, DC probably does not want to describe its valuable roster of potential action figures as ubermenschen, not to mention the weird redundancy of calling Superman the most powerful übermensch. It doesn’t help that there’s a hated tech company called Uber, though come to think about it, Meta also has the same problem!
Alan Moore had "science heroes and science villains" in ABC comics. Tom Strong et al