Meet The New Blog...

No idea how many (if any!) people will catch this as it's been 18 months or so since I last posted here at Crisis on Earth-Prime.

As mentioned in the last post, I did sign up for a Twitter account . . . and took about half an hour to realise that I really, really dislike Twitter and so killed that off pretty much instantly.

However, you can't keep a good blogger down but rather than start up this old thing again, I've gone and bought myself a domain and set up a site not only to babble about comics, but to get back to the annotations side of things that I started even before this blog.

Come join me at Crisis on Earth-Prime.com (because I'm nothing if not consistent) and say hi.

Time For A Change?

Haven't been around for a while fr a couple of reasons but mostly (for the last month or so) it's been due to getting promoted in work and just not having the time to write those wonderful, in depth posts you've all come to know and love.

Though it may not seem like it, this blog took up a fair amount of my time. The weekly Cocktail posts alone often took a couple of hours to prepare - scanning the covers of the books, combining them into one picture, typing out the heading and quote, posting that along with my reviews of the comics themselves. Sometimes I could get them done on a Friday afternoon, sometimes I was frantically writing them on the Sunday morning just to meet my self-imposed publishing deadline of 1pm on a Sunday.

I know - it's hard life, isn't it?

Self deprecating sarcasm aside, it's been bugging me that I've let this blog sit without an update for a few weeks. So, in an attempt to aim for brevity, I'm heading off to experiment with Twitter. You can find me over at @CrisisOEP though, at the time of writing, there's nothing there except the bare bones of an account. Hopefully over the next week or two I'll find out whether that's for me or not - if not, I might end up back here anyway!

So, for now at least, this'll be the last post here at the blog. If you tweet and want to come see me, feel free to follow me and I'll return the favour.

One way or another, see you soon folks!

I'm A Dick Who Reads Books

From Our Valued Customers

Yeah, that's what it is - it's also my god who will destroy your tiny mind by making you look upon his other dimensional true self sending you into the depths of insanity and despair at the inconsequential nature of your very existence...

But in other news, thanks for the kind comments and the couple of emails following the last post. As you can imagine, things haven't been great here on Earth-Prime but we're getting there and with the funeral and everything now done and dusted we can pick ourselves up and get on with things.

Which means, among other things, getting back to the comics.

Man, I have so many to read right now...

Be back soon!

Won't Be Around For A While

My wonderful mother-in-law passed away due to cancer a few days ago. Obviously comics are kinda taking a back seat right now.

Be good to each other and see you soon.

New Year's Resolution: Must Diversify More

Would it surprise anyone that someone who collects, blogs about and annotates comics also has a slight interest in numbers, statistics and graphs? No, didn't think so.

As part of my year's end round-up I found myself wondering about what I'd bought this year in terms of ongoing monthly comics or one-shots. Five minutes later, thanks to the export facility of my comics database and the joys of Excel, I was able to produce this:

That's a break down of how many comics I bought each month by publisher. You can click on it to enlarge it but those tall red columns? That's DC Comics, folks - 90% of the comics I bought in 2013 came from one publisher with Image Comics in second place getting a mere 5%.

I've always been a DC fan - I started reading them as a kid and their characters and series (Green Lantern and the various Justice Leagues in particular) called to me more than Marvel ever did. But that graph shows me that I need to branch out a little more . . . hell, a lot more.

Am I going to go towards Marvel? No, I don't think so. There's only so much convoluted superhero history and continuity I can keep in my brain at any one time and it's still full of pre- and post- Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis and the New 52 at the moment.

What I will be looking for, though, is more from other publishers, Image in particular.

Wonder what that graph will look like next year?

Christmas Comic Books

The lovely Mrs Earth-Prime bought me two comic-related books for Christmas this year: Mail-Order Mysteries by Kirk DeMarais looking at all the old stuff that used to get advertised in comics in the 50's to 70's:

and The Horror! The Horror! by Jim Trobetta which discusses and reprints a whole host of old horror comics that fell victim to the US Congress censorship mania in the 50's:

That's my reading matter sorted for the next couple of weeks!

Hope you al had a good Christmas, folks.

No Cocktail Today

A combination of being busy in the run-up to Christmas and a couple of other things meant that I didn't get to pick up my last delivery before Christmas hits in a few days; not a massive worry as there was only three comics this week.

With the exception of a couple of pre-planned posts I'm probably not going to be around much this week so will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas from Earth-Prime - have fun however you're celebrating (or not!) and be nice to each other.

See you in a week or so!

You're Looking For What, Now?

As regular readers now, I occasionally dip into the search terms that people use to either find this blog deliberately or find it by accident while looking for something else. In today's search terms I noticed what has to be the most . . . ummmm . . . shall we say "specific interest" in the comics world?

Skipping over the "angry cuckold comics" I'd just like to highlight this one:

Someone out there (and it was a single person on one day) found their way to my little corner of the web by searching for crisis on infinite earth detroit breasts.

Lord knows there are plenty of places on the web to find the most debauched variation of whatever your hobby is - not for nothing has Rule 34 (link is SFW) become well known - but I have to admit to being surprised as the exactness of the term.

Not just breasts but breasts from (presumably) the Justice League Detroit era. And not the whole era, either, just the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I'm really not judging someone else's particular interest, but if you know that much, if you know of Crisis and the Detroit League, would it not have been simpler to search for Zatanna, Vixen or Gypsy followed by breasts?

Man, with that many mentions of breasts I'm going to get a lot more people looking for superhero boobs now, aren't I? Best if I get the Power Girl cosplay out of the way:

Off This Week...

...celebrating the lovely Mrs Earth-Prime's birthday on Thursday.

Will be back for the usual Cocktail on Sunday.

Happy Halloween!

No Cocktail Today

This week has been stupidly busy in work and at the weekend so I didn't get chance to buy my week's comics, hence no Cocktail today.

So have a picture of a female Blue Beetle for the hell of it:

Manners, Please

I don't get a massive number of comments on my posts - there's a handful of you who post semi-regularly and that's appreciated - so I've never felt the need to enforce a commenting policy. Comments on older posts have to be agreed by myself before they show up and I put that in place after a spate of spam-bot comments that seemed to target the old stuff.

If you like what I write then I'm happy to hear that; if you disagree with what I write, I'm equally happy to take some criticism as long as it's reasonable and constructive. As this blog's primarily DC based, there have been some readers who've offered their opinions of what has and hasn't worked since the reboot and I'm fine with that - some of it I agree with, some I don't. I hope they don't mind me name dropping them but neither Shlomo Ben Hungstien nor Dale Bagwell appear to be massive fans of the New 52 but at least they put sensible arguments across and I have no problem with that.

I'm not in the business of preventing people expressing their opinion as long as it's done with a certain degree of maturity and thought. By all means get angry about a person's work but don't get personal about the person - I've mentioned before how Ann Nocenti's writing on Green Arrow was so poor it led me to drop the title, but I never said anything about her as a person.

All of the above was prompted by a recent anonymous comment that someone left on an old post which read:

"DC comics began to suck in the nineties and becane [sic] worse until they became the joke they are today with the new 52 reboot DC Comics suck suck suck suck"

That's the sort of thing that I don't like. It's childish, basically. It's just someone standing in a school playground telling another kid their toys are rubbish or they smell or something.

There are things about the reboot I'm not a fan of and yes, part of me wishes we still had Ted Kord's Blue Beetle, Wally West's Flash and Donna Troy's . . . er . . . Donna Troy still running around. However, I'm glad we had Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE, Demon Knights and even the much maligned Voodoo. Not all of it worked for me and I find myself caring less and less about new titles coming from DC - Forever Evil's not doing anything new and the recently announced Forever Evil: Blight crossover just leaves me cold - but I'm not going to stand there and shout "You suck!"

What I will do is not buy the books and move on to something else.

Comments on my posts are more than welcome - seriously, I love interacting with my readers. But if someone posts examples of the above . . . well, from now on . . .

No Cocktail Today

I'm on my way back from a weekend in the big city of London. While you wait for me to get, read and review my comics, have a look at this:

Isn't that just gorgeous? I would so buy that.

Borrowed from the lovely people over at Super-Team Family.

I'm On Holiday

Make sure you enjoy yourselves, be nice to each other and tidy up after you've finished. All being well, I'll be back on the weekend with the usual Sunday Cocktail post.

No Cocktail Today

Why not, I hear you ask. Because this:

is the only comic on my pull list that's out this week.

One. Sodding. Comic.

I shall put my feet up and relax instead of writing short reviews today, if that's all the same to you.

A Bit Quiet Round Here

I'm not quite at the vomiting burning blood stage yet but I am feeling more than a little under the weather. I blame the ridiculous heat around here at the moment.

Back soon.

No Cocktail Today

This blog is about comics so I don't often talk about anything outside that but by the time this post is published, I should be most of the way through a 54 mile charity bike ride from London to Brighton.

You can't help looking at that map (or any, really) and thinking because you're heading South, it's all down hill, isn't it?

Sadly no.

At the 46 mile mark there's an absolute bugger of a hill which just might kill me.

With that in mind, things might be quiet around here for a few days while I recover.

Delayed Cocktail

Life's a bit crazy here on Earth-Prime at the moment - lots of visiting friends and family including our nephew's third birthday (dinosaur ice cream - trust me, it's a winner with small boys) as well as applying for a new job and trying to stop our house from falling apart.

And now I find that Picasa has morphed into Google+ Photos and I can no longer embed photos into my blog! I may need a new picture host - any recommendations?

No Cocktail This Week

As is traditional when there's the merest hint of the possibility of the mention of the slightest chance of snow, Britain has ground to a halt. To be fair, the area where I live had a "severe weather warning" on Friday which is when I normally pick up my comics so I didn't bother heading into town to get them.

Still, double the amount next week!

Merry Christmas!

Poor Captain Britain . . .

Have a good one, everyone! I shall be taking a few days off so will be back next week.