J. Caleb Mozzocco
@jcaleb
Library clerk by day, semi-professional comic book critic and comics blogger by later in the day, asleep by night. Author of the upcoming book "Giant Monster Movies: 100 Years of Big-Screen Behemoths" from McFarland.
On my way to see THE ODYSSEY I stopped to pick up my holds at the library and dang, look at this haul…! It might prove challenging sitting in a movie theater for three hours knowing this stack of books is waiting for me in the car…
Can’t believe I am just now learning of the existence of Skeletor’s son, Skeleteen.
I just reread this before packing it up to mail to a friend and her baby. It’s such a great little book.
I'm from Ohio, so this concept is foreign to me: Is one's Yankee-ness relative...?
I've been gradually skimming my way through 2017's way-too-complete HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: A CHARACTER GUIDE AND WORLD COMPENDIUM (left), and I was pretty surprised to find an entry for a Caleb (right). You know, if I grew my hair out, that's pretty much what it would look like...
Can someone please remind me when this comes out next spring...? As a fan of HAIKYU!! and CRIMSON HERO, I'm definitely interested in checking out another high school volleyball manga for comparing and contrasting purposes, and this one sounds like it might be pretty fun.
I've been moved to tears by comics before—Craig Thompson's 1999 GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE and Sara Varon's 2007 ROBOT DREAMS being two tear-jerkers that come most immediately to mind—but it's been a while, and, now that I think of it, I'm not sure if a manga has made me cry before. BLUE FLAG did.
I decided to go the intentionally, exaggeratedly amateurish route instead, and it turned out way better. You can still tell who it is right…? I mean, they’re wearing their numbers, so they’re labeled (This is a card for a friend who is a HAIKYU!! fan, btw).
Finally, someone has developed an ice cream flavor to oppose Superman (or superhero, or “Super Kid” or whatever) flavor ice cream. Good color choices; personally, I would have just went with green and purple, but maybe they wanted three colors like Superman has, and/or maybe it’s a flavor thing…
Hmm… Do you guys think Spider-Man really is “America’s Favorite Superhero”…? (And, if so, by what criteria?) I would assume that America’s favorite superhero is actually Batman, followed by Superman and THEN Spidey…
Wait, just HOW 1993 are we talking here…? Well, these are the house ads: One for TMNT III and another for a superhero book I’ve never laid eyes on in real life (It’s from the great Michael Dooney, and GCDB says it lasted four issues…all of which actually came out in 1994).
Woohoo! Look what arrived in the mail today: Jim Lawson’s two-part 1993 Mirage mini-series DINO ISLAND, which I have been trying to get my hands on for decades at this point! (It wasn’t until I set them side-by-side that I noticed the covers connect into a single image).
By the way, here's a favorite panel from RECORD JOURNEY that I couldn't work into the review, in which a young woman from an unnamed economically disadvantaged country confronts the book's Beatles analogue, The Staggs:
If I had a nickel for every time Alfred Pennyworth was replaced by a young female relative, I would…Ah, you know how the rest of the post goes…
Quick question, Batman fans. The first time through BATMAN Vol. 1: DAYLIGHT, this panel reminded me of Norm Breyfogle. Looking more closely at it now as I write about the book, I'm fairly certain artist Jorge Jimenez swiped that pose from a Beyfogle panel, but I don't know which specific one...
That said, THE BULWARK’s film critic Sonny Bunch isn’t wrong about the downer of a plot:
I was in a Barnes and Noble today, so I took the opportunity to flip through this. I didn’t see Lobo at all, but I DID see Comet the Super-Horse. I kinda of wish they put him in the movie. It would be pretty funny if the new DC movies introduced MULTIPLE super-pets before Batman…
So I’ve read various Lobo comics now and then over the course of the last 30+ years, and the idea that “bastich” is “a non-gendered fusion of ‘bastard’ and ‘bitch’”, as Jesse Hassenger suggests in his AV Club review of SUPERGIRL, has never occurred to me. Is he right…?
I am just finishing up the fourth volume of manga-ka Kaito's BLUE FLAG series, and I just wanted to report that it is excellent and seems to get better and better as it goes on. It's still occasionally quite funny, but the characters and their conflicts get deeper and deeper. Highly recommended.
I'm sorry Back Cover of the Blu-ray for 1985 Sex Comedy SCHOOL SPIRIT, but WHAT did you say that college student's name was...?
How sad is it that Christians have so consistently used passages from a particular book of the Bible to attack gay people that the name of the book itself is now a perfectly appropriate title for a horror movie with gay protagonists....?
While writing that post, a thought occurred to me. Since we've already had a JLA/AVENGERS crossover, and I don't think it's possible for anyone to top what Kurt Busiek and George Perez gave us in that ambitious epic, I kind of hope DC and Marvel don't do another JLA/Avengers. Instead? Well...
Well, I certainly can’t think of any joke to make about this particular out-of-context panel from a 63-year-old comic book.
Batman has been saying “HH” more and more as time goes on, but have we seen him say it AS Bruce Wayne before? Not just out of costume, but when he is, like, “performing” Bruce Wayne to someone who doesn’t know his secret? He does so at least twice in BATMAN Vol. 1: DAYLIGHT.
Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata just introduced a new character in ZOM 100 Vol. 19. I already love her. She first appears riding a tiger like a horse, she immediately kills a zombified honey badger and then proceeds to says this:
This is what I brought home from the library tonight. I know I’ll like the new BOP and ZOM 100, based on the previous volumes, but I’m pretty uncertain about the BATMAN. I haven’t read the title since…maybe two-thirds though Tom King’s run…? (Still annoyed about Alfred being killed off, too.)