A few random thoughts

1. Does anyone else miss TPB's having original covers?

I can remember getting The Trial Of Galactus and X-Men: Asgardian Wars back in Middle School, and they had covers that were created just for the collections, by the original artists involved. They were these montage images of stuff that goes on within the stories, and to my little 12 or 13 year old brain that made it seem as though the contents must be some majestic, Shakespearian epic, full of twists and turns, brave heroes and dastardly villains, world shaking events and etc etc. Now, all the TPB's just have one of the covers of the issues inside pasted on front, and it's usually something totally generic. What got me thinking about this was when I saw the Secret Invasion collection at the store - it not only has just some random issue cover, but it's that one with Cap & Thor (neither of whom really even do anything in this story) just kind of standing around. That's so.... boring and sad. DC is a little better about this - at least Infinite & Identity Crisis had original covers - but we need more. Especially for the Big Events - SI may have been of shaky quality, but it was most definetly important in the Marvel U, and don't they want future generations of readers to see the collected edition and, like me at age 13, think that this is a story that will forever change their world? A story they must read, must spend their allowance on lest they miss out on the splendors within? I want to see legions of heroes warring against the skrulls, Skrull supersoldiers with Wolverine's claws and Thor's hammer battling the Sentry at the top, while other skrulls writhe in mid-transformation and Iron Man bellows his anguish and guilt to the heavens above. A wraparound cover that the12 year old me would want to carefully remove and hang on the wall next to my bed. Not this boring crap.

2. I was mostly wrong about Scalped, possibly enitrely wrong.
I avoided Scalped for a long time because the descriptions of it made it sound absolutely riddled with cliches, and I despise cliched comics. Indian res., angry loner, undercover agent, rediscovering his proud heritage, yadda yadda. It didn't help that many of the people trying to convince me used meaningless, generic words like "powerful" and "complex" to describe the book which, without context, say nothing. Once I finaly read the first two trades, I thought they were cool & very well done, but didn't completely blow me away. The art was a bit too muddy for me to follow at times, and I thought Aaron's writing had just a tiny bit too much self-conscious badassness for me to take seriously.

I re-read issues 1-12 after being very blown away by other recent examples of Aaron's work - specifically, his Black Panther SI crossover that, while reeking of self-conscious badassness, was so much fun and did it so well that I just didn't care, and his Penguin one-shot that made the character at once disgusting, tragic, pitiful, and terrifying in ways I'd never even imagined. And I enjoyed them a lot more, having gotten a better handle on Aaron's writing and erspective. Yeah, the lead character in Scalped - Dashiel Bad Horse - is a bit too badass, and yeah, he's an angry loner. But, Aaron's not really making these things cool. He's a badass and a loner because he's a sad, lonely guy with nothing to really live for and low self-esteem. He doesn't give two craps about what happens to himself unless it involves him being numb and/or dead - he's certainly not a character to be admired. The book shows you the cliches, and then says "These are stupid". The book's third arc, Casino Boogie (collected in TPB - with generic single issue reprint cover - as vol. 2), is a mini-epic that demands to be re-read, so that you can catch all the little details and all the tiny little character bits. You get a sense of the crushing weight of responsibility Red Crow feels as he sits in his trashed office at the end of one issue, but you don't truly feel the consequences of that guilt, and how he handles it, until you see that same scene, and it's aftermath, from another character's perspective an issue or two later. Each issue stands up on its own, but the full mosaic, once you've read it all, genuinely enhances each individual issue at demands to be re-read. It genuinely is, well, complex.

All that said, I do still have minor issues with the art, but mainly only with the action scenes, where I can barely tell what's happening. But the ugliness of it, and the air of total despair permeatig every character, is wonderful. The book wouldn't be as powerful without the art, without Red Crow's monolithic presence feeling like a physical weight on every scene he's in. I hated, hated, hated, issue 12 - but only because it appears to embrace all those cliches that I hate ad was afraid of in this book. But, given the complexity (damn that word!) of the series, it's very possible that subsequent issues undermine and add to this issue's apparent simplicity and laziness. I'm still not convinced that this is the best series on the stands - but I'm definetly going to read the rest of it, and start paying attention.

3. Is it wrong to illegally download a comic you intend to buy but can't find?
I say no. Let's say you manage (just for the sak of argument here...not saying I did this or will do this) to find Morrison's entire Zenith run for illegal download. Youve been hunting through ebay and conventions for the individual issues for years, and if you ever manage to actually have opportunity to buy the things you will do so, because you are a fanboy and want/need to have the actual comic to hold in your hands. Is it wrong to download it, or is that just sort of a free preview of the glorious day you actually do manage to obtain these elusive treasures?

4. Bendis' writing of The Sentry is incredibly frustrating.
Over the past month or two I've read all of Bendis' Avengers work, and it's actually not too bad. There's a few frustrating moments (like the entire Collective arc, the SI crossovers, and most of the Civil War stuff - OK, about half of it), but mostly it's quite good. The one thing I can't stand? The Sentry. He's constantly hinting at doing something with this character - pushing his psychosis to the next level, exploring his psychosis, hinting at weird things going on with his dead/alive/dead/alive wife Lindy - but then the character just dissapears for 7 or 8 issues. And when he comes back, he's back at square one, with the same mysteries and hints. Pull the trigger on the character, or write him out of the damn book and give him to someone else to write. But do something already.