Yeah, that's what most people tell me. But since I bought the first one on the advice of ya'll, I'm going to stick with it to see how it plays out. I adore Gaiman anyway. It's not really a hardship.

My current addiction is Ultimate Spider-Man, which is re-telling the Spidey story from the beginning, but set in modern times. It fucks with canon in several places, and for most parts I'm good with the changes, but some of them bother me as much as the organic webshooters in the movie did.

The whole point of the "Ultimate" Marvel Universe is to disregard (or more accurately, re-invent) the canon as a way to entice new readers so they don't get lost in references to the old canon. What I find interesting is how this approach differs in how DC handled this problem by wiping out pretty much all of their existing canon in the massive Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover. In the DC case, they still carried the characters forward, but re-set the canon for them. In the Marvel case, they are running the "Ultimate" universe in parallel with the established one I wonder how long they will continue that, or will they just "Ultimatize" everything. t /finally read "Crisis" without wondering "who's that" in every panel.

I hope they choose not to... while there are some advantages to the fresh perspectives on the characters (I for one am religiously reading Ultimates whereas I haven't bought a copy of Avengers in years), it would be a shame to lose the years of continuity that help make books like The Fantastic Four special. Plus, the X-men line couldn't carry 47 cash cowsbooks a month without the massively convoluted history of the characters.

I agree. I'd like to know how continuity in the old universes interacts in old Marvel and current DC, though. Does anybody know if action in the Marvel Knights line (Captain America, Daredevil, Alias, Punisher) is supposed to be "canon"? If so, they've already screwed up current Captain America continuity with 12 issues of the lead series and a 4-issue mini. And I don't see how they can reconcile Batman continuity even amongst the three main titles, let alone all of the ancillary characters. (For such a dark, brooding loner, Batman sure has a lot of people on his "team".) t /way too much comic-geekery.

Does the new Fray come out today or next Wednesday?

Diamond Comics shipping list has it being shipped next week.

Thank you!

Right on!! You know WHY I say "Right on!!"?? Because I can't drive for 2 weeks b/c of the surgery, BUT I have an appointment on Wednesday morning to have the staples removed from the incision. My Dad is driving me up there, and I bet I can sweet-talk him into a swing past the comic store on the way back.

Because I'm still his little girl, and he doesn't like to think of me having the sex, and I think he equates comics with No-Sex-Having-Loser.

I haven't told him how good the male:female ratio is -- in my favor -- in the comic store...

This was in today's USA Today ( [link] ):

End of the series for 'Buffy' books, too:

Simon & Schuster will release its final Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel to coincide with the show's last airing on May 20. The 95-book TV tie-in series has sold more than 4.6 million copies since 1997.

And, as far as I know, Fray #7 is supposed to be released this week.

Simon & Schuster will release its final Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel to coincide with the show's last airing on May 20. The 95-book TV tie-in series has sold more than 4.6 million copies since 1997.

For some reason that makes me kind of sad. I mean, most of the books are pretty bad, but it's another piece of the Buffyverse vanishing.