An anecdote

So I went to my favorite comic shop, Rocketship, yesterday. I was perusing the racks and talking with the fair owners thereof and some foreign person. One of them, I'll call him Mr. C., he was going around recommending books for me to try that I hadn't tried yet. We discussed the fact that Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan is frickin AMAZING and not enough people are talking about it. Really, folks, it's GREAT FF stuff, with weird monsters, unbelievably good art, fun moments, everything you could want.

So we keep moving along the shelves and we get to X-Factor. I'm all ready to start making fun of it. Mr. C. points at it and I work up a chuckle.

"This is really good," says he.

"What? Seriously?" I reply.

"Yeah. Actually, yeah." He points out the beautiful Ryan Sook art, can't go wrong there. But, really, the last time I was genuinely entertained by a Peter David book was, hm, X-Factor. There's talk of playing with conventions, that David's annoying habits are reigned in to the betterment of the story, and, yeah, there's that beautiful art. And I've got a soft spot for noir detectives and, uh, Jaime Madrox.

So I give it a try.

And he was right, it was good. A good PAD comic featuring mutants post-Decimation. I can recommend it without reservation, and it makes me feel funny. It's not FF/Iron Man good, but it's good.

Amazing Joy Buzzards continues to thrill and entertain with a slew of guest artists, some that work better than others, but even the least among them gets the job done. You just can't help but love these characters.

Finally got the first two issues of DMZ and Local, and, uh, local boy Brian Wood done good.

Anyway, just basically wanted to talk up FF/Iron Man the amount it deserves and man up and actually admit I enjoyed a PAD book. What a world.

EDIT: I just remembered a PAD-ism that bothered me about this book. He worked in Bill Mumy AND Harlan Ellison into the VERY FIRST ISSUE of his new book. It's like a first year film student that uses all his high school buddies' names in his screenplay. Amateurish and silly.

The rest was good, though.