What I Did On Christmas Break

The closet in my den houses a good chunk of comics. There's a dozen long boxes in there, plus a couple or three boxes of trades and hardcovers. A half dozen Artist's Editions and a stack of original art sit on top of all that. It's a motley assortment.

For the last month or two, it's doubled as the hiding place for Christmas presents. All of those comics have been blocked by an increasing series of toys, clothes, bags, wrapping paper, tissue paper, gift boxes, etc.

The glorious thing about having Christmas week off from work is that I got to get in there and clean it up, now that all the presents are gone.

The good news is, I fit more comics in there than ever before, and the closet looks cleaner and better organized.

The sad news is, it's not organized. I'm still working on a system for that. It's going to require another bookshelf somewhere else, and another mini-purge. I pulled out about 500 comics to get rid of, but it barely feels like a start.

On the bright side, I was able to put together some runs of books I had fallen behind on. I can start catching up on some things, or finally sitting down to read completed mini-series.

I have a whole short box worth of reading material that could be relevant for this column.

For example:

"Red Team: Double Tap, Center Mass"

I read the first six issues of this series last night. I believe it will run eight, in total. I'm still loving this book.

After getting off to a slow start, the first mini-series won me over completely with its tough NYC cop dialogue and crazy situations.

This second series is far more restrained, but that makes it even more dangerous, in some ways. Two remaining Red Team members find themselves in the midst of a big situation again, and the players on the board are making interesting moves.

The surprising star of the series so far is the lawyer, Dershowitz, who is the ultimate game player, doing so with a calmness and calculation that will make you cheer for him, even if he is a lawyer (who looks a little like Chris Claremont) for the bad guy.

There are connections to the first mini with this one, so do go back and read the original book first, if you haven't already. (It's available digitally for $6.99 at the time I'm writing this.) If you like a good cop show like "Homicide: Life on the Streets" or (especially) "The Shield" (which the series has a few parallels to), this series has a good shot to win you over.

The scripting is all from Garth Ennis, who you know does a good job dealing with messed up stuff. The art by Craig Cermak is a highlight of the Dynamite line. Along with colorist Vinicius Andrade, he tells a clear story while drawing characters who look and feel three dimensional and well-rounded. The facial expressions have gotten even better since the first series, too, which is fun to watch.

As the series enters its home stretch the plot is starting to twist and turn. Nailing the ending on this one will involve the right balance of surprise with not going too far and pulling things out of thin air. I'm not a big fan of guessing ahead on these kinds of things, but I still have no clue where this is going. It is, however, obvious that there's more than meets the eye beyond the twists we've already seen.

I'll just buckle my safety belt and enjoy the ride out to the end now.

Large Scale Organization

I don't know how many comics I have anymore. Honestly, I have a couple of boxes in my sister-in-law's house and a few at my parents'. There are some in the garage, some in the basement, and lots in this den.

Just typing that sentence made me think, "I have too many, don't I?"

I wish I had a leaner system. I wish I had a general overall organization that fit into one place and held true across all comics.

I hear about the people who organize their comics alphabetically and I gasp. How does that work? First, you'd need all your comics in one place. Secondly, you'd have to constantly shift comics around, wouldn't you? Once you fill up that H-J box, where do you put the next issue of "Invincible"? You need to push something starting with a "J" into the next box, right? But that's where "K" starts! And what if that fills up that box?

I worry too much, I know, but I'm a lifetime comics geek. I can't help but wonder about this from time to time.

One Last (TV/Movie) Thought

Every now and then, a new trailer comes out for a superhero tv series or movie and someone complains about superhero fatigue. They've seen it all already after a dozen Marvel movies or a half dozen tv shows.

And I laugh at them. I laugh and I laugh and I laugh.

There's more to superheroes than origin stories and attempts to cram as many villains into one story as possible.

Maybe if they read some comic books, they'd see that...

PipelineComics.com|| Twitter || Instagram || E-mail