#pullist

JOSE: The tenth review of the year. After drilling out seven reviews last time, I have it easy with one this week. Let's go. 

1. Forever Evil #6, DC Comics, W/ Johns, A/ Finch

Seeing Lex Luthor and Batman together, side by side, is so cool. I can't write the feeling any other way. It is just cool. To put things bluntly, people are dying and it's about time. Earth 3 Alfred is gone. Dead. Murdered. It was brutal. The spread page by Finch when the battle begins, again, is so beautiful. Finch does great work and that is why the book keeps getting delayed. Just as a insider note for you all, I spoke with David Finch at a Comic Con last week and he said that Forever Evil #7 will be a double issue. He hasn't finished it and said it will be delayed, no doubt. So brace yourselves for a delayed ending to this title. Moving along, we get a new character introduced but the name of Mazhas! Why? I smell a spin off series. It's the only reason I can think off for them to introduce a new character in the penultimate issue of the series. Counter productive, no doubt. I shall expect a great double issue in the future to end this series that has been quite consisted throughout its course. 

Every month, we offer a graphic novel hand-picked by a comics professional and send it right to your door.

What is it that drew you to the artform of comics?

I was born in 1977, which means that I grew up in a post-Star Wars world, where pulp and genre and comics-type stuff was thick on the ground. Saturday mornings were full of he-men and robots and guys with perms driving around in talking cars, jumping over ravines and what have you. I remember watching the Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends cartoon and The Incredible Hulk TV series and have vague recollections of the Spidey sections of The Electric Company. I had a dresser that my mom decoupaged over with Superman wrapping paper and practically memorized the Reeves' Superman movies. The first two, at least. Which makes the fact that I don't recall coming into contact with an actual comic until fourth grade all the stranger. I was spending the night at a friends' house and we'd played enough Nintendo for the night, so he pulled out a box of comics and suggested we read some of those. I remember he had a Jonah Hex and an Nth Man one? Maybe a He-Man one, too? In any case,

I was intrigued. He told me he got them at the 7-11 at the end of his street and the next morning, we walked down there and I bought an issue of Steve Englehart's Fantastic Four run -- issue #313, in fact, also featuring Sal Buscema art -- that was the single-most mind-blowing thing I'd ever read in my life. Just a weird melange of soap opera, sci-fi and fantasy, all delivered with the least amount of set-up possible that just begged for you to want to know more about these people and this world.

By the summer, I was spending every dollar I could on comics (and yeah, Slurpees) and was stapling pages together to create my own comics. (It's no surprise that I spent way more time designing the masthead and company logo than I did on the comic itself.) I just love the unfettered creativity and the ability comics give you to tell these weird, but also personal, stories. It's an almost limitless art form, where your only boundaries are the page itself and your imagination. That's kind of really awesome.

What makes a comic book stand out to you? For me, a good comic is one where the words and art come together and communicate a feeling or an idea. I'm not all that interested in house styles or continuity porn. My favorite comics are ones where they feel deliberate, like they need to be created rather than have to be created to fill shelves every month.

Who’s your favorite superhero and why? The Ever-Lovin', Blue-Eyed Idol of Millions, aka Benjamin Jacob Grimm, aka The Thing. Not only is he incredible visually, but the idea of a grumpy curmudgeon with a heart of gold, a gentle monster, has always struck me as one of the more beautiful things to come out of Jack Kirby's pencil.

What’s one of your favorite graphic novels and why? Besides the one I picked for Pullist, I'd have to go with Kevin Huizenga's Curses. It's a collection of short stories that deals with God, golf, trolls and those "missing child" fliers that arrive in the mail. Huizenga's playfulness and insight are the perfect blend for me, and his E.C. Segar-inspired linework puts a soft touch on the heavier subjects he tackles in his comics.

Any particular graphic novels coming out that you’re looking forward to? Paul Pope's Battling Boy is on top of my list. I'm also looking forward to the second big collection of Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons' classic 2000 AD series, Rogue Trooper, Tales of Nu-Earth 2 later this year. It's already out, but I need to get Jason's Lost Cat sometime soon. Ed Piskor's Hip-Hop Family Tree looks like it's going to be awesome. The second collection of Al Ewing and Henry Flint's Zombo, titled You Smell of Crime & I'm the Deodorant is coming out this fall and I'm very excited. Zombo is kind of my favorite thing right now. I recently read through the first collection, Can I Eat You, Please? as well as the latest storyline that was serialzed in 2000 AD, titled Planet Zombo, and man, this comic has it all: living death planets, pocket-sized black holes, suicide gangs, Fantastic Four pastiches, presidents who speak solely in Kirby-speak, killer priests, Walt Disney's frozen head and the polite-est zombie you ever did meet. I've also been rediscovering Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City with the relaunch of the title over at Vertigo, so I'm looking forward to picking up those collections again, after sadly parting with them when I was hard-up for cash a few years back.

Updates as I read em rars

Mocking Dead 4- Van Lente u bastard I thought there was only 4 issues how'd it come to this eh how did it come to this!!  But yes.. it was quite amusing, the arts good and I really do wanna see what the punchline is.. 7.6/10

Brain Boy 0 - Van Lente u let me down!!  This was so boring, like all this msytery is being built up with no horizon for closures!!  Plus what's with these artists, they're not appropriate for this kind of storytelling Siva and this guys ok, just not for this comic, I felt very unenjoyed!  4/10

Black Science 2 - Ok this was more enjoyable after I read it's like Remainder's F4.. and it did need an issue extra to see if would roll.. not bad maybe I just like ur scripts.  7.6/10

Buzzkill 3 & 4 - So close.. so close to being good, narrative, storytelling dialogue, themes, appropriate ending was all there but.. idealistic ending for the story..fell through..the fight scene was too rushed compared to the story the narrative was inconsistant and the character was likeable enough..the story just ended too soon.  The world and the characters were really interesting as well it's a shame they wrote the ending first and didn't revise it, it really should have been at least a couple issues more to end like a 1st arc and just see where the narrative could have gone.  80% 9/10 20% 5/10

Aquaman 25 - (I know it's late) Decent, good, but dissapointing it's got a to be continued into Justice League, the low point of the whole series was Throne of Atlantis, infact if it focussed more on Arthur rather than Atlantis it is a better read, and now there a to be continued into JL..sigh, otherwise the story good, just find it hard to care about Atlantis since all it is a grand place yet nothing, people, cultures, variety of coloured fish, there is anything to make the place interesting, it's all just kinda blue.  7/10

Itty Bitty Hellboy 5 - Noooo it's over noooo, and we didn;t even find out what little Hellboy and the Rogers were doing in the bush with no pants on that felt so great (wait.. rogering the bush with no pants on and Liz runs away screaming..).. naaah!  8/20

10 Grand 6 - Dropppppped, thought  the change of art has made it artisically more intreguing and the incusion of the Angel should give the book some kind of dycotomy it's been lacking for a book about Angels.. it's taken too long for me to have faith in the subsequent issues like Midnnight Nation did ahhh some ppl will like it though, and seeing CP Smith's work like this is really interesting, so for artfilliacs should look at it.  4/10 (but for art moooreee).

The Savage Dragon 192 - Well Larson couldn't kill Dragon but he got im to retire and now Malcolm's the star of the book, I'm ok with this, still not amazing writing but I have been reading this for awhillllee!   7/10 (for Malcolm fans)

The Batmans and 2Face 26 thou - U know it's the best Batmans book, u know it don't feel like no shoemakers book, and u knooow ur gonna have to read it all again when the stories through again though.  PJT and Gleesoons thou 9/10

The Flash 25 - Late but am I glad I bought it cause I didn't think it'd have Manapul art!!  So good stuff, an run ended, awesome of the crativeness and the last 2 fanart pages were coool, I always see it more of a Manapil art book than a good story uhear.  7/10

by Matthew Meylikhov

Earlier this week, I read about an online service in which you could have a graphic novel mailed to you that you may never have read before once a month as part of a new ambitious semi-book club idea. Pronounced “Pullist” as one word (as in, the Pullist is the one creating the Pull List), Pullist is a new online subscription service in which a guest comic creator (such as this month’s Joshua Hale Fialkov) picks a book for you to read once a month, hopefully as something you’ve never read before, and all it requires is your blind trust and the cost of the trade.

December's offer is live! Don't miss out on a great pick by the incredibly talented Joshua Hale Fialkov.

What is it that drew you to the artform of comics?

As a kid it was something my substantially older brother loved, that I latched onto for the reason kid brothers do that sort of thing. Pretty soon though, I was falling in love with the worlds that comics created. A lot of that was due to the bredth of imagination in the creators. But, simultaneously, I was getting introduced to anime and manga, and I was learning these two similar but very different languages of storytelling. That's something that's always reverberated with me.

Also, the Ninja Turtles were awesome, so, y'know... Who’s your favorite superhero and why?

Captain Marvel. The DC one. He represents what comics can and should be. It's the story of a little boy who has NOTHING. No family, no friends, no money, and no home, and, thanks to a little bit of magic, he gets ALL of those and more. The magic there is imagination, which, y'know, for me, is the real magic of comics.

Every month, we offer a graphic novel hand-picked by a comics professional and send it right to your door.

Pullist is a service in which you receive a mystery graphic novel hand-picked by a comics professional. For November, that comics professional has two thumbs and is this guy (me, Benito Cereno).

Orders for this month close Sunday, November 17 (2013 [C.E.]), so hop to if you want a cool book I think you will love.

I've seen some concern from people about the mystery aspect of it, worried that they'll get something they already have.

Hey

HEY

HEY.

I know what I'm doing. You don't already have this book. But you should, because it's amazing.