Friday, March 21, 2008

Rip Off!

On Wednesday when I was on my way to the comic shop I very nearly got into an accident, which wasn't a lot of fun. I was driving along Belmont Ridge Road, a winding, hilly back road that cuts across Route 7 and leads to the town center where the comic shop is located.
There's one last valley right before you get to the light at 7, where a side road/driveway connects to Belmont. It had been raining most of the day, and the road was pretty slick.
As I was heading down into the valley I noticed something odd a couple hundred yards ahead of me, though it took a second for it to actually register. Someone was trying - unwisely - to pull out onto Belmont from the side road, which caused the driver ahead of me to slam on his brakes, which caused the car to begin spinning out of control on the rain-slicked road.
I hit my brakes and felt my car start to skid, so I eased up on the brakes to avoid mimicking the actions of the car ahead of me that was getting ever closer. I did my best to slow down carefully, fully-realizing that I was unlikely to stop in time to avoid hitting the other car. Fortunately the other driver gained a modicum of control in the nick of time and was able to pull off onto the side road, very narrowly avoing what otherwise whould have been an inevitable collision either between me and the spinning car, or me and the car in the opposite lane.
So yeah, not a lot of fun.
Once I got to the comic shop, I decided to settle my nerves by splurging on one or more of the more expensive volumes in the shop. I was thinking about buying the entire Sin City collection, but ultimately decided instead to purchase another Frank Miller book: Absolute Dark Knight, which contains his 1986 masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns - beautifully recolored and generally given the "Absolute" treatment - and his early 2000's minorpiece The Dark Knight Strikes Again. I didn't buy it so much for the latter work. In fact, I bought it in spite of the fact that it includes Strikes Again. Once I got home I put my comics in their standard least-anticipated to most-anticipated order (at the bottom and most-anticipated spot: Fables #71, which features this wicked awesome cover), and set them aside for later reading. Somewhere along the line I had to adjust the order because I noticed something odd on the cover of Birds of Prey #116: the cover stated that it was written by Gail Simone.
Gail! Back on BoP! I have to admit that, in my opinion, the guys who have been writing BoP since Gail left haven't done a terrible job, and really, it's a decent title - certainly better than a lot of stuff out there - it's just that...well, they're not Gail. Gail is a phenomenal writer in general, but in my opinion it was her run on BoP that really stands out as her best work to date, and I was very sad to see her leave the title. I knew that current BoP writer Sean McKeever was leaving the book after a very short run, but I didn't think he was done yet, and I'd read that Tony Bedard, who was the fill-in writer between Gail's and McKeever's runs was taking over as the new regular writer.
So did McKeever bail early?
Was Gail just doing a fill-in issue?
Was she - one dared to hope - coming back as the regular writer?
Whatever the case, I was thrilled to see Gail back where she belongs. And then I actually opened the book up and found that Gail was not back for either a fill-in or permanent run.
In fact, she wasn't back at all.
While the cover said Gail Simone, the interior credits said Sean McKeever.
Why did it say Gail Simone on the cover? I have no idea, but whether it was an error or a bald-faced lie, the fact of the matter is that, per the interior credits, and the style of the writing, it seems that Gail did not write the issue.
So that was a bummer/rip off.

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