According to my weekly e-mail from Newbury Comics, Astounishing #20 is out this week.

Hee. This just in from Warren Ellis:

The twelfth and final issue of NEXTWAVE is released today.

There is a place for you to share your memories of this deceased serial, the only comic released by Marvel in the last year that is in fact inside the Marvel Universe’s official continuity.

The NEXTWAVE #12 Comments And Weeping Thread is open for your remembrances.

It’s a sad, horrible and strangely endless day in the history of the universe. In some ways, every day will now be Death Of NEXTWAVE Day. For as long as you live. Whether you know what I’m talking about or not. Something will always be missing from your heart, and that constant incompleteness will drain the joy from every single moment of your existence until you lay on your death bed, listening to your pulse stutter and stop, knowing that somehow, someway… you failed at life.

Knowing that nothing in the world had been right since Death Of NEXTWAVE Day.

So, has anyone read Batman #663 yet? I hadn't seen any previews for it, and hadn't read anything about it, so I wasn't expecting it to be what it was.

I thought it was fantastic. And disturbing and creepy and oddly funny in places.

I've been poking around the interbunny, and the only place I'm finding any reaction to it is the DC forums, which aren't always the type of discourse I'm looking for. (And, in fact, the thread on #663 degenerated into an argument about whether people who didn't like the issue were lame. Or something like that.)

Anyone?

Huh. I'd given up on Batman -- so, it's good? Is it the beginning of something?

It's not the beginning of a story arc. The Joker returns (which I don't think is spoilery, given that the cover pretty much indicates that, but I'll whitefont it if people want).

The format of the issue is what's so striking (though it's been done before in comics) -- it's mostly prose, without the standard art format of several panels and word balloons and/or brief thought/narration text. There IS art, but it's not traditional panel-style art. So basically what you have is a text-heavy story that allows for an enormous amount of internal narrative, particularly on the Joker's part. And, frankly, given the direction the story was taken, I don't think that a traditional format would have worked to tell that story.

t edit If you go to DC.com, you can download the first 6-7 pages of it: [link]

Looks like a modern version of EC's Picto-Fiction comics from the mid 1950s.

Here's something I've never seen before -

Drawergeeks.com

It's a site where a mix of talented artists do their take on a variety of subjects including Harry Potter and a smorgasboard of superheroes. There's some really great stuff tucked away in here.

I suspect Plei will have a blast looking through some of them.

Okay, the Barry Fitzgerald Batman is too precious for this world.

It just rules.

There were a couple of really great ones in the Supergirl section. One involving the Bat.

That Joe Koberstein Viking longship is just beautiful.