Who'd Like A Cocktail? #255

Yeah, you tell . . . hey, hang on, that's what I do . . .

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?

The Rock In A DC Movie?

Read this last night: The Rock has met with Warner Bros about something connected with DC Comics and the article contained this paragraph:

The Rock was previously connected to the role of DC Comics villain Black Adam in a proposed "Shazam" film, dating back to 2007. In July 2012, he tweeted that he was "possibly playing" another DC character, Lobo. And of course, there's the 2015 "Man of Steel" sequel, which still hasn't announced any villain role -- and could possibly add another hero alongside Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman Gal Gadot).

That last line made me instantly think - the Rock would be perfect (physically at least) as J'onn J'onnz, Martian Manhunter who appears at the end of Superman vs Batman as a lead in to a Justice League film.

Meet back here in a couple of years to see if I'm right.

Cocktail Of The Year 2013

Yes, it's that slightly embarrassing, self-concious moment once again when I tally up which comics have made me the happiest throughout the year.

As regular readers know, each week I get my comics and run through them, posting a short review and what I did or didn't like about them. At the end of each week's reviews, I post a panel that, quite simply, made me smile that week and it's those panels that earn their respective titles the Cocktail for that week. I've gone through the 2013 Cocktail posts and using a hideously complicated process that I'm not going to bore you with worked out who gets the awards.

Taking over from Paul Cornell on Demon Knights was, in my opinion a hard act to follow but Robert Venditti managed it; he did the same picking up the reins from Geoff Johns on Green Lantern as well. The team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are consistently good on All Star Western which is a delight to read month in, month out.

However, it's Geoff Johns who with his work on Justice League, Justice League of America, Green Lantern and even Forever Evil that gave me something to smile about the most this year.

Johns's work on Justice League of America helped it make a good run for the top three and, as mentioned above, All Star Western is still one of the best comics around - each month in terms of writing and art it's consistently excellent.

That said, though, with writing duties being split between Geoff Johns, Robert Venditti and a splendid one-shot contribution from Charles Soule, it's Green Lantern that takes the top spot this year.

Thanks very much for reading Crisis on Earth-Prime whether you do it regularly or have come here looking for some very specific things - there's a lot of comic blogs on the net and it's appreciated that you spend some time here. Even more so if you choose to leave a comment! :)

Have yourselves a great New Year whatever you're doing and see you in 2014.

Monday Memories #52 - Young Justice #31

Each Monday this past year I've been taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics were chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I didn't know what I'd be looking at in the weeks ahead!

And now here we are, number 52, one entire year's worth of posts completed. What am I going to do on a Monday now . . . ?

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.

Merry Christmas!

Judge Dredd by Carlos Ezquerra - does it get much better?

Have a good Christmas everyone!

(I told you this was coming months ago...)