Shout Outs! and Scream Ats! Vol. II

by Matt


Welcome to my second “Shout Out/Scream At!” column! With this column I will be taking a look at what makes me a happy fanboy (Shout Outs!) and what frustrates me (Scream Ats!) within the comic industry. With this column I will be covering Omnibus’s, Nowhere Man, Final Crisis, Jim Valentino and the Guardians of the Galaxy and Dave Lapham’s Young Liars.

SHOUT OUT! Absolute Omnibus Fever!
Seems like every company is putting out large collections of classic material. Type in Absolute or Omnibus when you search at Amazon.com and you will find a ton of new collections. I am WAY excited for the newly announced Captain Britain Omnibus, Secret Wars II Omnibus and Joe Quesada even mentioned an Inferno Omnibus. Keep them coming! DC is finally catching up as well, with the collection of Starman in hardcover along with Absolute Sandman and the Complete Death. Dark Horse has done a terrific job in their collections. Their line of Omnibus's are in full color and are slightly smaller than average trades but they are packed to the gills with comics. I love that Dark Horse is collecting a lot of thier old material like Aliens, Predator, Indiana Jones, Terminator, Ghost, Barb Wire, X and hopefully more. Other companies are getting into this as well. IDW is putting out an Omnibus of Deperadoes and Fallen Angel. Top Cow has also put out full collections of Rising Stars and Midnight Nation. They are also putting out a complete collection of Cyberforce. Checker is putting out larger collections of old Crossgen book as well. And if you purchase your books online, you will usually save quite a bit and you can get your hands on some fantastic collections for pretty cheap.


SCREAM AT! Nowhere Man Canceled
This would have been my first Virgin comic and I was really looking forward to the book. The premise sounded very intriguing and I was certainly looking forward to some fantastic science fiction art by Paul Gulacy. I contacted Liquid Comics to see if they had any news and I will share it here once I get a response. According to Paul Gulacy, he completed issue #0 of Nowhere Man which will be a special 16 page preview of the series. Liquid Comics will be announcing shortly which comics will be published.

SHOUT OUT! Dave Lapham’s Young LiarsI knew I was going to get a book so freaking screwed up with Dave Lapham at the helm. And you would think that if you read his Stray Bullets you would be a little prepared for some messed up crap but I was still totally taken surprise! The story revolves around Sadie and Danny. Danny is in love with Sadie and tries to save her from herself. Sadie is the daughter of the owner of the Brown Bag Superstore and she runs away from her family. Her father sends a group of assassins called the Pinkertons to find her. Sadie was shot in the head before the first issue (we see what happens in flashbacks) and she has a bullet lodged in her brain, which causes her to become a major risk-taker and action junkie. She also suffers from delusions, she thinks she is on the run from "The Spiders from Mars" because they plan to rule Earth. Danny and Sadie have other friends that hang with them and are pursued by the Pinkertons. One thing that Lapham does extremely well in all of his comics is that he has the ability to create characters that have major flaws and problems but writes them in a way that makes you sympathize with them, no matter what dumb choice they make. This book is filled with violence (decapitations, castarations, naked fistfights), twists and you will never know what happens next. This is not a book for the squeamish! The latest issue proves once again that I have no idea what is going to happen next. This issue reveals that Sadie is from Mars and that the Spiders from Mars are real. The Spiders plan to use Sadie to lay millions of eggs on Earth and capture and conquer it. She runs away from her Spider family and comes to Earth and inhabits a young girl. Whether this is just her imagination or this is really what has happened is anyone’s guess. All I know is that I am in for the ride! One of my favorite books! If you are looking for a book that goes down a different street I highly recommend you try this out. A trade Daydream Believer will be released in December.

SCREAM AT! Final Crisis Crisis
The online solicitations for DC for January 2009 came out this week and it looks like there was another art change for the final issue of the delayed Final Crisis event. While I think it was good for Jones to man up and apologize for the delays, I still think DC really screwed the pooch on this event. I might have been a little more forgiving but this had already happened with Infinite Crisis. I was really excited as a fan about the direction DC was taking right before Infinite Crisis came out. Unfortunately DC almost killed all my enthusiasm by delays and art changes made on Infinite Crisis and the endless mini-events and weekly books to keep up. But I was willing to give Final Crisis a try for 2big reasons. I am a sucker for large events and secondly I like Grant Morrison. The first issue intrigued me and I knew that with Morrison it would all make sense down the road but apparently that road has been under construction. Like Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis is suffering from delays and art team changes as well. You would think that a company would learn from its mistakes the first time. More than likely, this will be my final DC event. At one point I was collecting a majority of the big titles DC was publishing, now I am down to just one or two. But unlike most comic fans, I will wait until I get the final issue and read them all at once before I fully quit DC. It just doesn't look good.

SHOUT OUT! Valentino returns to the Guardians of the Galaxy
Jim Valentino’s run on the Guardians of the Galaxy back in the 90’s was one of my favorite books. What I liked about his run was that there seemed to be a natural evolution with his characters. Unlike other Marvel characters like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, no matter what happens to the characters, they will ultimately revert back to their core roots. Since the Guardians of the Galaxy were not major Marvel characters, Jim was able to make changes to them and evolve them. Almost all the Guardians went through a major change and that is what made the book so enjoyable. Sadly, when Jim was going to join Image, Marvel fired him from the book. I was overjoyed to find out that Marvel offered Jim to draw an alternate cover to the new Guardians of the Galaxy series with issue #7. It is fantastic of Marvel to extend the olive branch to Jim and honor what fantastic contributions he made to the Guardians of the Galaxy. This makes me want to try out the new series even more!

That's all for this time. I will be back shortly with a new set of Shout Outs! and Scream Ats!. If you are interested, you can see my first column here.