COMICS THAT ARRIVED ON MY DOORSTEP THIS WEEK: With apologies to Franklin Harris:

100 BULLETS 41
AQUAMAN 2
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST 112
BIRDS OF PREY 51
EDENS TRAIL 3
FABLES 9
FANTASTIC FOUR UNSTABLE MOLECULES 1
FUTURAMA SIMPSONS SPECIAL CROSSOVER CRISIS 2
GI JOE FRONTLINE 3
GREEN LANTERN 158
JSA 44
KARE KANO VOL 1 GN
KILLRAVEN 4
POWERPUFF GIRLS 34
POWERS 27
PRIEST VOL 4
THE PRO
RAGNAROK VOL 5 GN
STORMWATCH TEAM ACHILLES 7
SUPER MANGA BLAST 27
SUPERGIRL 78
VAMPI #24
WAR STORY CONDORS
Y THE LAST MAN 7

COMMENTS:

--Yes, there's a lot of goofy crap in this shipment. But this was my distributor for goofy crap.

--Garth Ennis' WAR STORY comics are the best American war comics ever. That I've seen, anyway. If you consider American war comics as something starting out of FRONTLINE COMBAT and TWO-FISTED TALES and EC Comics and going through the 60s and 70s and G.I. COMBAT and OUR ARMY AT WAR and a million different DC war titles, half done by Joe Kubert, moving through the 80s and G.I. JOE--a military comic that reflected the covert wars of its time--then--yes--Garth Ennis WAR STORY comics are the best I've ever read. CONDORS is about four guys hiding out in a foxhole in the Spanish Civil War and how they got their, and to reveal much more would be to reveal everything, but this is great as have been all the WAR STORY titles I've read.

--Garth Ennis' THE PRO, on the other hand, is a silly little superhero story by somebody who (I've heard) hates superheroes, concerning a prostitute who is given superpowers by a goofball The Watcher stand-in. She ends up saving the day and not really subverting the genre as much as I thought this thing would. It wasn't a be-all end-all genre-KILLER!, more of a mild hate letter to the American comics industry for depending on superheroes and endless continuity to sell books and shrinking the audience for comics so much. I mean--there's no good reason you're not reading WAR STORY.

--RAGNAROK and PRIEST are the first TokyoPop comics I've bought that read the right way and not the right-to-left Japanese way. Do Koreans read the patriotic American way too? I certainly hope so.

--KARE KANO is a girls' manga I'm looking forward to. I always dig POWERS. That's about it. I think I bought too much, but everything looks so good when you preorder.