I bought comics today!

Ok. I want to kind of get back into comics, and I am sick of being a dollar bin whore, so I gave myself 10bucks a month to spend on comics.

I went a little overboard. It was like 15 bucks, but the local comic shop always seems to give a discount, so it was only like a 12 bucks. Which still isn't that much over budget.

I'm not used to getting only four comics for twelve bucks, but there are some really cool comics out!

I picked out Blue Beetle#5, Metal Gear Solid#3, Street Fighter #4, and Batman Danger Girl Special!

Blue Beetle was a fluke. And actually the only brand new comic I got today. The cover looked typical, so I picked it up because the comic geek speakers have mentioned it. Wow! What a suprise. The coloring is cool. It's not all gradiented out, just flat cel-type shading. And it seems like Guy Major gave each setting has it's own color scheme. And Duncan Rouleau's art is amazing! It has that indy flare, kind of like a mix between Paul Pope and Humberto Ramos. Very cool, with high contrast black spotting, great looking faces, natural movement, and cool architecture and nice shot variety. He makes two people talking on a park bench look very interesting. And I really like how this comic takes a while to read. Keith Giffen and John Rogers have a nice slow pace, giving time for me to appreciate each panel. This issue definately makes me want to draw and look at his panel layouts for the rest of the week!

Metal Gear Solid I picked up because of the cool sketchy art by Ashley Wood. Not only is it sketchy and cool, and the colors are very tonal and indy, but the action sequences really looked cool. And I want to get good at drawing and writing action sequences, so it looked like a great study. That, and the camel toe splash at the beginning is a nice touch. The sensitive side of me wants to let you know that that's not what I look for in comics, but the horny male pig side of me would like to mention that that's what narrowed this issue down from the others, including no.1.

Street Fighter I got because of the awesome art and fight sequences as well. Alvin Lee draws the comic precisely as if the video game was a comic. The action sequences are very lively, there's two kickass fights in this issue, and the art looks straight from the game! Superb! And the colors by Espen Grundetjern are so sweet!The only gradients are in the sky and lighting fx, and the rest is flat cell shading, which is very fluid, and looks super cool! I wish I would have gotten the issue with the bonus feature in the back showing the process from Inks to final Colors, but the back-up story with art by Sven is a pretty nice conciliation prize.

Batman Danger Girl has art by the great Leinil F. Yu. Anyone named F. Yu is worth checking out. But this guys artwork can back that name out. This guy is amazing. But he did drop the F. from his name. Bummer! However, the art is simply too cool for words. It's like a mix between Frank Cho and Travis Charest! The linework of Gerry Alanguilan gave it the Charest Gen13 Vol.2 feel. This thing has a much better Charest feel than his previous team-up with Yu in the Superman Birthright No.4 that I got from the dollar bin a couple months ago. That comic had more of an Invincibles feel, with the less liney inks. Both issues kick major ass, and are definately worth checking out! These guys are my favorite art team and are on my top 5 for artists to buy books from! Along with Adam Warren and Paul Pope! The 5 dollar price tag for this Batman Danger Girl book was a bit pricey, but for 40 pages,it averages out to about 2.50 for two comics, so it's pretty much the average pricetag.

On a side note, the wife, the baby, and I bought this cement mix thing, and we all pressed our hands in it. The hands were kind of hard to make out, so we got some white paint at walmart to make it stand out. My boy is six months old, so we felt like that was a good time for him to get his hands dirty with cement! It was fun!

Now I have all the opaque white a guy would need for inking. Too bad I correct all my stuff via computer! Thank you very much, Scott Kurtz. If you don't know who he is, or if you do, he does this online comic, www.pvp.com, and he has some videos in time lapse on youtube, so check 'em out. He shows you how he arranges figures in a panel and makes corrections online, and how he colors to the theme of Benny Hill.