Reviews, Plugs and Mini-Mini-comics

Been a while since my last post but I have been working on stuff to get up here on the ol’ LazyBlog. I’ve been on a real kick of reading old stuff that I lettered and attempted to get through a few trades. One I almost finished and the other I just wound up flipping through after reading like 10 pages or so. The first was Peter David and Lee Weeks’ Incredible Hulk “Tempest Fugit”. The story was fun when Hulk was smashing, but meh when he was plain’ ol’ Bruce. The art by Lee Weeks was just amazing though, man that guy is good. I don’t believe he’s on a regular monthly book right now and I have no idea why. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the ugly green type lettering in the Hulk-in- Bruce’s-mind sequences were not my doing. They were done by production at the request of the editor. If the need for a special balloon was wanted I’d surely have done one a bit more exciting than making the type process green. But why ask the letterer do that when you’ve got a production office full of disgruntled underpaid workers to do it instead?

The book I couldn’t get through was a Black Panther trade by Christopher Priest. The wise cracks by an annoying sidekick through the first issue of the trade were just awful jokes shoehorned in strange places that just took your right out of the story. It also jumped around like crazy through a number of flashbacks and other story threads all of which bored the hell out of me. I’d tell you what volume it was but I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. Ugh.


A co-worker of mine found a couple of tiny Marvel comics somewhere around the office and gave them to me. I’d never seen anything like them and they sure are neat. A tiny bit bigger than a business card but with nice glossy cardstock covers and full-color interiors. As you can see I got a copy of Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and The Incredible Hulk #34 which kicked off Bruce Jones’ famously boring 47 issue run. I remember getting issues of that run in my comp bundles back when I worked in the bullpen and I’d quickly flip through to see if he’d really gone another issue without the Hulk showing up. It was quite an amazing feat, really. I actually reread issue 34 and was reminded how good an issue it was. Amazing art by John Romita Jr. (no surprise there) and a nice throwback to the Hulk TV show with Bruce on the run from whatever havoc his green alter ego left in its wake. But boy did that storyline just run out of steam quicker than Posh Spice in a pie-eating contest. What a shame.

I borrowed the first 2 issues of World War Hulk from a friend and I’m happy to see that Pack is really “Packing” (bad pun) tons of action into the story. Again with top notch penciling by Romita Jr., who is bar-none the best superhero comic artist in the biz, the story just flies by with Hulk smashing every single hero he can get his green mitts on. I’m waiting for Betty to show up at the end to calm the Big Guy down but that answer seems almost too obvious. It’ll be fun to see how it all comes together.

Oh, and Erik Powell finally finished his yearlong hiatus on The Goon. Issue 19 just hit shelves this week, so go pick it up. I’m been pimping that book like crazy since I started this blog.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned, Randall is almost ready to come back.
--Randy