Tracie's Pull List - Week of November 14, 2012

Still playing catch-up, here. Sorry folks.

A lot of these are going to be more like mini-reviews than hyperbole/conjecture, seeing as I've read all of these issues by this point. But still, take a look won't you!

Tracie's Pull List - Week of November 7, 2012

AMERICA, WE HAVE A PRESIDENT! You made your voices heard and stuff and it was great even though we almost tore each other apart over it. But it's cool now and we can get back to our regular-ass lives and talk about important things like comic books.

You like comic books, right? Good, so do I. Let's talk about them. Here is what I am purchasing with the money I earned at the job that I have.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of October 24 & 31, 2012

Doubling up this week as I still play catch-up.

Also, did we actually have an October this year? This is ridiculous.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of October 10, 2012

Apologies to the one or two of you that follow my little shopping lists. I had this one partially written and completely missed writing up the releases for the 17th. I've been caught up in a move, performing several shows, and being without internet.

Here's my 10/10/12 write-up but we'll just skip 10/17 and move on to this week's in the next post.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of October 3, 2012

So I watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Nick.com last night and I really dug it. Like a lot. Probably shouldn't type much about it right now as I may want to cover it on our Google+ Hangout tonight but you should check it out if you're a Turtle fan. Specifically one who grew up with the 80's cartoon.

I really just wanted to stay at home all day and watch my TMNT blu-ray collection after that. May yet throw one of them on tonight.

But not until after I pick up THESE babies from the shop tonight...

Tracie's Pull List - Week of September 26, 2012

You guys, I'm hungry and I've been sitting around my room all day so I'm gonna go and get some eats and pick up the following fine comics before throwing on the Joss Whedon commentary track for The Avengers and packing stuff away.


Let's hit it.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of September 19, 2012

I've been on a kick lately of reading all these old Marvel/DC crossover books I never read when they originally came out. This was spurred on by the fact that I recently just found the issue of DC/Marvel: All Access that I was missing so I could finally read the mini in its entirety and squee and gush over the Jubilee and Robin pairing all over again. Their little Romeo & Juliet romance was undoubtedly my favorite thing about the DC Versus Marvel event, though the whole thing had me pretty stoked when that hit. I bought the trading card packs, sent in my votes, bought dang near all of the Amalgam books. Fun stuff! I missed out on or wasn't interested in the books that preceeded and followed that event but I grabbed a super cheap Crossover Classics IV TBP and have been enjoying the Green Lantern/Silver Surver and Batman/Punisher clashes. John Byrne's Darkseid/Galactus was expectedly overwrought but the novelty was still interesting. And he draws a heck of a Galactus. I've still got the Batman/Spider-Man and Superman/Fantastic Four crossovers to get to next.

I could probably write a whole column about the Jubilee and Robin romance or DC Versus Marvel in general so maybe I'll save that for another time and just get to this week's comic offerings...

Tracie's Pull List - Week of September 12, 2012

I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking about the poor box office of this past weekend, which had no real major film releases of any note, unless you were cool enough to see Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk With Me, like I was. And, yes, it was the poorest box office weekend since 2008. This conversation quickly started to sound as though this summer was basically a movieless void and, while I understand that I am listening to NPR, they weren't even specifically talking about film quality but box office quality and I have to be like UH HEY GUYS, did we already forget The Avengers broke a ton of records and made an unexpected, powerful climb to being the 3rd highest grossing film of all time? Do we not remember The Dark Knight Rises making a buttload of money? Brave made money, Ted was a surprise hit, Amazing Spider-Man did huge despite initial remake backlash... I mean, I don't know what the barometer is. Is the summer box office down from last year? Sure. (like 4%?) But last year had the final Harry Potter, the final Transformers (well...), another Hangover movie, another Pirates, three huge Marvel movies... Like... I dunno, every year I guess we just have pundits lament about how bad Hollywood is and how bad the box office is and how much better things were last year or something and that is bunk. I mean, outside of the statistical numbers stuff, fine, 4% or whatever. But like... It was just weird for me to hear a conversation where not a single movie was mentioned and it was treated like there weren't any movies of quality released at all this summer like Prometheus never happened (cue disagreements) or all that money Magic Mike brought in somehow (SOMEHOW cough cough). How about Moonrise Kingdom snatching the highest opening Wes Anderson has ever had? I get that theater attendance goes down every year. The 3D "fad" that everyone likes to complain about helps to bring people back into the seats but it's still a downward trend thanks to the internet and sophisticated home theater systems. But c'mon you guys, let's not talk about these things like we're living in a wasteland bereft of art and entertainment. Just because our superheroes keep outdoing all of your regular-ass movies. STEP IT UP. Be better. Hire Joss Whedon.

That's my weird rant this week. Let's talk about comics now.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of September 5, 2012

I saw The Avengers again this weekend for the Labor Day rerelease. There was nothing new added but I loved it all the same. And even better than that was seeing it with a group of people who had somehow never seen it before this point. That is the best when you get to see something again for the first time, vicariously, through friends. Their love just refueled my love that already existed for it. Just the best.

And then I got to shred any "wow, Avengers was cool, Tracie likes something cool" cred by geeking all over them with explanations of who "Ron Perlman's brother" was at the end. Anyway. COMICS!

Tracie's Pull List - Week of August 29, 2012

JOSS WHEDON IS MAKING A S.H.E.I.L.D. TV SERIES FOR ABC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Jed and Maurissa too)

This is the only thing you need to know about anything before we rundown this weeks' comics.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of August 22, 2012

Hey, if you are looking for a movie recommendation, I highly recommend ParaNorman, the new stop-motion animated feature from the studio that brought you Coraline. (which makes it like 2-3 degrees seperated from comics, right?) Without spoiling anything, it did some stuff that I did not at all expect from a PG-rated animated feature and bravo to them. I hope that it resonates with audiences and, even though it's probably pretty scary for little kids, I feel like it has some good things to say to kids and parents and I hope it strikes up some good conversations.

Now, let's strike up some conversations about this week's batch of comics!

Tracie's Pull List - Catch Up To August 15, 2012

HEY, okay, so... so it's been a few weeks.

Sorry about that. Life has been very busy/exhausting for a while but things are maybe starting to settle down. BUT YOU DO NOT CARE! We are here to talk about comics! So, let's have ourselves a little bit of catch-up...

Tracie's Pull List - Week of July 18, 2012

BATMAN IS HAPPENING YOU GUYS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Wonder of wonders, I am actually attending the midnight opening of The Dark Knight Rises. I honestly don't think I've been to a midnight opening since X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Is that film to blame or is it merely a window to state my life has been in since that time. I don't know. What was I talking about? The Dark Knight will Rise at 12:01 AM on Friday (though the movie theater thinks that still counts as Thursday) and members of Comicbook Crossfire will be there, openly weeping into each other's arms. Y'know. For justice.

A 3 hour midnight movie on during the workweek would normally be a terrible idea for me, lacking access to any Lazarus Pits, but I managed to get a half day off work for morningtime sleepings SO WE GOOD.

Almost as exciting for me is the rise of another superhero in comics this week so let's talk about that, shall we...?

SDCC: Home-Con 2012 or "I want my Marvel NOW! now"

San Diego Comic-Con 2012 has come and gone with not a single Marvel NOW! announcement to be found. Disappointing. But it... makes... sense in a way? I guess? SDCC has become so much less about comics and more about movies (and video games and things people actually still spend money on). The only big DC Comics announcments were Neil Gaiman's return to Sandman (major crossover appeal) and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained comic (movie dude does comic of his movie). Oh... and the confirmation that Stephanie Brown is in fact being replaced by Barbara Gordon in the Smallville comic. Because she's "more iconic." (STILL GONNA CALL HER NIGHTWING, THOUGH) Also they hate us.

The only company that seemed to have anything to say about comics was Image (and, I guess Legendary... which is a comic publisher founded by a movie studio). Being on their home turf in southern California, it makes sense for Image to want to make some waves (not a surfing reference, sorry). They definitely turned my head by announcing a lot of high-profile creators creating new books for the company... and strangely, most of them are folks you'd normally associate with Marvel, these days. Greg Rucka and Michael Lark reteaming on Lazarus (billed as Godfather meets Children of Men), Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin teaming up to tackle some controversial topics, and my personal favorite, a spaghetti western from Kelly Sue Deconnick and Emma Rios. All this plus two new books from Joe Casey, a new series by James Robinson and J. Bone, and new stuff from Chris Roberson and Derick Robertson. That's a good chunk of comics from some great creators AND they're all brand new concepts/characters to boot.

The best Marvel had to offer, comic-wise, were a handful of AvX follow-ups, details on "Minimum Carnage," the breaking of my heart with Punisher: War Zone being Rucka's last run with the character, and a Marvel NOW! Point One, which appears to do much what the last Point One one-shot did, setting up new creative teams and status quos (it was a big part of kicking off AvX). The most light shed on Marvel NOW!'s behalf was the creators behind the Point One book,which could give an idea of who to look for on books in the line: Bendis, Fraction, Loeb, Spencer, Gillen, Hopeless, McNiven, Allred, McGuinness, McKelvie, and Larroca. There seemed to be heavy hinting that, much like the last Point One book, this one would include another Nova story by Loeb and McGuinness. (I'd be terribly happy if this lead to a series/mini by the team)

Now, to be fair, I'll be buying all of these books they announced (minus the Minimum Carnage event and probably Red She-Hulk). I'm all about Kieron Gillen doing an AvX: Consequences book. I'm all over Jeph Loeb and Dan Slott doing A Plus X Avengers/X-Men hugfest/makeout session. Then there's AvX Babies by Skottie Young and Gurihiru which appears to be a book created only for me. What I was really, really hoping we'd see, though, were more announcements/clues regarding Marvel NOW!. Aside from the Point One book and the list of creators contributing to that, we really don't have anything new to go on. Now, I suppose being only halfway through AvX, Marvel should want to keep the focus on that and these new follow-ups but... the timing of the initial Marvel NOW! announcement seemed like it was to prime the pump for further reveals and excitement at SDCC. But then... SDCC isn't really a con about comics anymore, is it? Not primarily. Not in the way it used to be. It's still a great event for comic fans, certainly, but it's not the same the for publishers. All the biggest announcements of the year used to come out of SDCC. Now I'm hearing that the Marvel NOW! news might be held back for New York Comic-Con in October. It makes sense, considering it's still a new-ish con that holds a bigger spotlight on publishers, taking place on the home turf for DC and Marvel, and hasn't been around long enough to become completely taken over by TV and Movies. NYCC and C2E2 appear to be where the real comics news happens anymore. It used to be SDCC and Wizard World Chicago. (the latter is now but a ghost of its former self) This is... This is fine, I guess, right? It's just the changing landscape of things. I think the timing of things and the history of SDCC easily led to a lot of anticipation and expectations for things, particularly from Marvel pubishing, that it just really wasn't the time or place for. They got some huge attention for Marvel Films (again, a home-turf announcement for that branch) and nice things from Image and the like. I guess the Fangirl in me was hoping for just a little bit more but I can choke it down and be patient for a couple more months to see just what else will come out of this mishmashy world that Marvel NOW! is teasing us with.

Tracie's Pull List - Week of July 11, 2012 (plus a "Why So Skeptical?" rant)

For the record, I loved Amazing Spider-Man. LOVED it. I've seen it twice now so I can confirm that that's not just the new movie glow clouding my judgement. It definitely resonated with me on levels I wasn't expecting and I think it's a very smartly done reboot and I can't wait to see these people come back and do it again in two years.

Now, it feels like the only thing we fanpersons have to live for in the movie world is The Dark Knight Rises, next week. I've seen weird reactions from both close friends and internet stalking victims. I thought we were all on the same page with this you guys. Remember how much we loved Batman Begins and what a glorious breath of fresh air it was for both the Batman franchise and comic book movies in general? Then remember when The Dark Knight happened and completely change the landscape and all of a sudden a dude can dress in a cape and mask and still have his movie be legitimized as art and get nominated for awards and bring in insane amounts of money? It was like the culmination of everything we've been working towards as comic fans to show people that we're not just trapped in some sort of state of perpetual childhood, that there are actually compelling stories to be told with these characters that can and should be enjoyed by everyone and not those with a predilection for people in tights.

So then what happened to where all of a sudden we're just... not sure about this Dark Knight Rises movie? Why. So. Skeptical? I hear concerns about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman which make me feel as though you've never seen an Anne Hathaway movie that didn't have the word "Princess" in it or maybe that you've just never seen her, period, or maybe don't know what beautiful, intelligent women look like. That's certaily a possibility. Then there's all this being iffy on Bane stuff which is fine I guess but I, myself, don't get it because I think he looks and sounds scary as hell. I mean, I'm sorry he's not covered in tubes full of mutant juice, dressed in a luchador outfit. That's all well and fine for comic books and Schumacher movies but that's not the world Nolan has built here. Clearly you must understand by now, there have BEEN two movies, and this is a very particular world that has been set up very carefully and there are things that don't work in this reality like they do in the comics but that doesn't make them any less valid. Nothing about these films has been about being a slave to canon. We've seen enough different versions of Batman by now to realize they all have their place, they all have validity. This is Nolan's version and it's been a danged masterpiece thus far so I have no reason AT ALL to think he'll suddenly fail to stick the landing when, if anything, he's gotten better with each and every film, Bat or not Bat.

And let's please all take a moment to remember how wrong we were about Heath Ledger. Remember that? I was skeptical once, too, and I was wrong, wrong, wrong, so you know, maybe this Nolan guy knows just what the heck he's doing so let's all stop our hemming and hawing and GET EXCITED. Please.

Oh, also there's comics out this week and I want them and two of them even have Bat Men. Read on!

Tracie's Pull List - Week of July 4, 2012

There appear to be some sort of anti-nerd forces working against me this week. I missed my chance at getting free passes to an early screening of Amazing Spider-Man. My BROTHER got passes and didn't invite me to be his Plus One. The CBXF crew all appear to be too busy on Independance Day to sneak out and see the movie with me. AND every comic shop in town appears to be open tomorrow except the one I have my pull list with. Seriously, we are a town FULL of comic shops but the ONE that I choose to patronize the most is the one that actually decides to honor the holiday.

Harumph.

So MAYBE I'll have to go by myself or wait til the weekend to see Spider-Man and I GUESS can wait until Friday to pick up my comics. (can't make it Thursday, unfortunately...) TOUGH BREAKS. Tough breaks for Tracie who just wants to read comics and see comic book movies. I DON'T ASK FOR MUCH IN LIFE. WE AGREED THAT I COULD DIE ALONE SO LONG AS I HAD THESE THINGS.

Ah, well... at least I can still TALK about comics. ...To myself... Unless one of you looky-lous would like to chime in. WHICH YOU MAY! Chime, chime away with this week's Pull List:

Tracie's Pull List - Week of June 27, 2012

YOU GUYS, I loved BRAVE so hard. SO HARD. And another incredibly inventive and adorable short. Hot dang those Pixarians.

Before the film, they had what may be the best Amazing Spider-Man trailer I've seen. I may be in the minority on this but every new trailer I've seen has got me more and more exctied for The Amazing Spider-Man. I know it has the misfortune of being sandwiched between The Avengers and Dark Knight Rises but, dare I say it, I've got hopes for this. HOPES.

Also, hey, if you've found yourself missing our charming faces, we do apologize. The Crossfire gang has been going through some busymaking life changes and that's made it difficult to keep up our monthly vidcasting. We're floating around an idea of how to make up for this, though, so stay tuned for that. And, in the meantime, we've got a 30-part series of Robb and I talking about Superman on the YouTubes. (it's actually only 5 parts I think) ("ONLY...")

If you enjoy OPINIONS, you'll love these PRE-OPINIONS regarding this week's comic releases:

Tracie's Pull List - Week of June 13, 2012

Comics Pull List is a teensy bit late this week due to technical problems and time contraints and also Robb, Sean, and I totally watched Superman Vs. The Elite. But hey, it's just Wednesday Thursday. Here are the comics I'll be buying/have just bought today yesterday:

Tracie's Pull List - Week of June 6, 2012

PROMETHEUS is opening this week and I hopehopehope the trailers have not already given away the whole movie but I'm putting a lot of faith into Ridley Scott's return to sci-fi, Damon Lindelof's script, and am excited for any sort of return to form for the Alienverse.

Also exciting? THIS WEEK'S COMICS:

Tracie's Pull List - Week of May 30, 2012

Apparently Omaha, NE won't be getting Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom until the end of June, so... so much for THAT plan.

On the plus side, I was very pleased with Men in Black 3, as I treated my brother to an IMAX 3D viewing for his birthday. I completely forgot that there was to be a 6 minute preview of Amazing Spider-Man beforehand and I'm glad that my chronic lateness still got us in the theatre in time to view this. I gotta tell you, I'm excited for it. Yes, there's still some hesitation, but hot dang I enjoyed that preview. Going to DEFINITELY make a point to see this one in 3D IMAX because it's got the BEST use of live-action 3D I've seen in some time. Very cool. And while my brother was not at all won over with the extended Awkward Hallway Scene between Peter and Gwen I thought it struck as very honest and genuine and cute and I like that Peter is (super)smart and awkward and wirey.

This should continue to be a pretty sweet summer for movies.

You know what's LIKE a movie but smaller, shorter, and unmoving?

COMICS!