Good writers borrow. Great ones steal. That's my justification for unabashedly stealing from fellow Chicagoan Brandon Thomas' "Stackology" series over at the Fiction House. For a while here, I've been looking for a good way to convey my weekly comics take in a manageable way. Writing a small blurb about each and every book was unmanageable, and the truth is, I don't always have anything remotely worth saying about even a very good random issue of a comic I'm reading.
When I stumbled upon Stackology, though, I knew Brandon was onto something. He organizes his comics exactly the way I do, and have been doing since I can remember - from worst to best. He throws a few more rules in there that I don't subscribe to, such as staying away from back-to-back's by certain creators, but overall its a similar thing. So from now on, I'll be posting a full list of books I took home, in reading order, and picking a "winner of the week" from that crop. I may also make some other comments, like soliciting opinions on books I'm thinking about dropping, as I've noticed my pull list has grown a bit large lately.
So without further ado, here is the Stack from last week, with the champion of the week in bold:*
Batman/Doc Savage Special # 1
JSA vs. Kobra # 6
SWORD #1
The Amazing Spiderman # 611
Red Herring # 4
Dark X-Men # 1
BPRD 1947 # 5
The Unwritten # 7
PunisherMAX # 1
The Authority: The Lost Year Reader # 1
Batman & Robin # 6
Phonogram: The Singles Club # 5
Amazingly, in a week where I bought two books by Grant Morrison (the God Of All Comics, hallowed be his name), neither of them took home the grand prize. The Authority book was technically a reprint, so though I had never read it and it was new to me, I took it out of the running for best of the week. Had it been new material, it probably would have won. Batman & Robin was sabotaged by some really hard-to-look-at art by Phillip Tan, whose work isn't great to begin with, and really did not fit the tone of the book established by Frank Quitely in the first three issues. I was tempted to pick it anyway based solely on the sheer meta-textual deliciousness of Jason Todd conducting a dial-in phone poll to determine the fate of Batman, but after slogging through a poorly rendered fight scene where I could hardly tell what the hell was happening, I couldn't in conscious crown it the winner.
That thought was only reinforced by the brilliance that is Phonogram: The Single Clubs # 5. Each of the seven issues shows the same night out from a different character's perspective, making each issue a self-contained reading experience in and of itself, but one that gains new resonance when taken in context with the others. Issue # 5 focuses on "Laura Heaven," a phonomancer (music magician, basically) obsessed with the British indie group The Long Blondes. Its a real testament to writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie that my complete lack of familiarity with that band did not detract from my enjoyment one bit. Instead, I was able to relate to Laura's obsession with the band and her use of their music, lyrics and image as things she can both recognize as aspects of herself and aspire to. While her constant quoting of lyrics is something that the other characters, and the reader, may find annoying, its a pretty accurate portrayal of someone using pop culture to craft an identity when she finds her sense of self in flux. The back-up material in this issue is also great, including a quick essay about the main strip by McKelvie, a critical piece about the Long Blonde's music, and a short strip about ska, of all things. At $3.50, all these quality features give you bang for your buck that is rivaled only by Brubaker's Criminal and Incognito packages.
* I'm only including the Top 12 this time around, as I didn't decide to do this until the rest of my stack from last week had already been dismantled and is now out of order. Plus, I plan to do a separate post on the Blackest Night "ring" books sometime in the near future anyway....
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