A visit to the comic shop

I've spent a long time working on converting my kids into nerds and the effort is finally bearing fruit. We started with Star Wars, the nerd gateway drug, and have moved along nicely. Now the kids love Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ray Harryhausen, and giant monsters (can Godzilla be far behind?)

The next great leap is to comic books. My oldest likes the Marvel Adventures Avengers books. The Marvel Adventures books are geared for the younger set. This is handy as comics are increasingly being made for more mature types. It is fun to take them down to Cosmic Monkey and look through the kids section. It also means I get to pick some up for myself. Here are some recent reads.

Locke and Key Head Games. This six issue series just wrapped up. Unlike the first six issue series (an absolute must read), this one is more transitional, setting up action for the next book. The weirdness quotient goes up quite a bit in this story as does the complexity of the narrative. Author Joe Hill writes horror novels as well, and it shows in the story.

Unwritten - I picked up the first one, and will certainly be reading more of this title. The book is about the son of a writer of Harry Potter like stories. The father has disappeared and the son plays on his fame at comic conventions. At one convention, an audience member calls his identity into question and then the story gets really strange. Pretty soon characters from the books start appearing in the real world. Here is a LA Times piece on the book.

Y the Last Man. How on earth have I not read this already? At the shop yesterday there was a display of "After Watchmen, what next" comics. For a buck you get to try classic darker comics. So I finally picked up Y the Last Man, a story about all the men on Earth dying, except for Yoric. Wow what a book.