Yeah, this thing is even more impressive in person.
I still had $10 on that Barnes & Noble gift card that I used last month (4-14-22) on an Archie comic. When I was back at the store, I decided to
get the then latest issue of Baseball
America. It’s a thin tabloid, but
they’re charging $10 for it. Don’t worry.
I’m not reviewing it. It was a good issue though with a rundown of
all the new rules changes for the season and profiles on the Tigers, Royals, Orioles, Pirates, and the Mariners (basically saying that these loser franchises may get
better in the near future). (The current
issue questions “Is your ballpark compliant?” and has features on women in
baseball. I passed that one over.)
In the comics section, I was surprised by two volumes of Moon Knight omnibuses. I was unsurprised by the price, $45
apiece. Thanks to the crappy new TV
show, they’d pushed these out in softcover.
I was tempted, but the Bill Sienkiewicz material that I was most
interested in was spread over the two books.
Also, it didn’t seem to include the earliest material from Werewolf by Night. I’d also read a lot of Book #2 and hadn’t
liked most of it. (It was that Fist of
Khonshu stuff. I had a subscription in
the 80’s.)
As I walked by the Bargain Books sections, I saw this
oversized hardback just lying there for $10.
The suggested retail price is $40, so I was shocked by this deal. After a quick flip through, I realized I
needed to have this, even though I don’t have anywhere to put. Aside from being a pretty picture book, I
thought that there’d be some practical value, since there’s plenty of good
female art inside for me to butcher with my own sketching.
Artist Jim Lee
came to prominence drawing the X-Men. There’s no X-Men art inside, which is too bad, because this book really made
me want to see his old issues. This
volume just contains his DC and Wildstorm work. This is also named, “Volume 1,” but there’s
no Volume 2. Although it has the New 52 versions of DC’s Trinity on the cover, that material
isn’t covered inside. Overall, this is a
picture book. There’s some text about
the characters and stories, but not in a detailed way.
First up, and the biggest section, is on Lee’s take on Batman.
Hush is his most well-known
work outside of the X-Men. I have a beat-up, used issue of the series
and was very impressed by it. (I’m
surprised I didn’t review it here on the blog.)
I did pass over a trade paperback version the last time I saw one,
though. That was probably a
mistake. However, Lee’s done other work
with Batman and drawn him in slightly different ways each time.
Jim Lee has also done work on Superman. Notice how great Superman looks with the red shorts, as opposed to without on the cover. It’s the same way with Batman’s shorts. The Classic look is “Classic” for a reason—it looks good. (Superman without the shorts is Earth-3’s evil Superman, Ultraman.)
There’s a small section with Jim Lee’s work on other DC
heroes, along with his collaboration with Stan
Lee on Wonder Woman.
The other half of the book features mostly Lee’s Wildstorm
characters. I’m not familiar with Wildcats or most the rest of them,
except for Gen 13, which I did like
(though that was mostly the J. Scott
Campbell issues). I’d mostly bounced
from comics in the 90’s. Gen 13, X-Force, and Sandman were
the only titles I really collected then.
One of those titles is a bit different from the other two. By the same token, Jim Lee also branched out
on some alternative material with Vertigo,
company promotional material, video games, and movie work.
The volume finishes with Jim Lee’s work on a Legion of Superheroes story. Apparently, they’re one of his
favorites. (One of mine, too.) Him doing a run on LSH would have brought me
to the comic book shop every month. As
is, the group has been completely destroyed by universal reboots and
remakes. Oh, well.
Anyway, this book was a cool random pickup. I almost feel like I stole this.
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