Potter’s Field has a great premise – a mysterious chap, nicknamed John Doe by those who know him, makes it his personal mission to put names to all the unidentified corpses buried in New York’s Potter’s Field Cemetery. I actually said “what a great idea” out loud, that’s how well it works. I could see a really good, 100 Bullets style ongoing – initially about these individual cases, but becoming part of a bigger story as we learn more about John Doe and what drives him to put names to gravestones. And then I looked at the cover of #2 – #2 OF 3!

How disappointing. Issue 2 rushes into the bigger-conspiracy storyline head-on, and while it’s still engaging I can’t hlp feel like there’s been a massive opportunity missed for Boom! to have the the next great ongoing noir series.

All in all, I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

Also, O’Malley has posted a teaser page of artwork for Scott Pilgrim Vol 4 on his LiveJournal

However over the years, as my list of RSS feeds has increased, I’ve realised a few things about Boing Boing

1) There’s nothing there that’s generally not already been blogged somewhere else, often days earlier.
2) With the exception of Cory Doctorow’s anti-DRM rants, there is very little in the way of op-ed. It’s basically a glorified cut-n-paste exercise.
3) There is very little fact-checking of their articles, and the lack of comments make it almost impossible for inaccuracies to be quickly corrected. Occasinally the original poster will ‘update’ a post with correct information, but that relies on someone emailing the poster and them picking up the mail – very ‘old media’ in approach, that.

 These have been small bugbears for me for a while, and I’ve resisted blogging them because to be honest it seems to be somewhat trendy to bash Boing Boing at the moment. Unfortunately, Cory Doctorow’s recent spate of graphic-novel related posts have really got my back up.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great when anyone comes out and recommends graphic novels as being more than a collection of comics, and someone with Doctorow’s readership is in as good a position as anyone to be championing this stuff, but it’s the tone of his recommendations that get up my nose – it’s got the smug “I know something you don’t” tone that permeates all of his posts, combined with a complete lack of background research. Basically, he discovered his new favourite comic shop in October last year and as a result all of his recommendations are pretty much the big-hitters of the non-superhero comic book world. It’s the same problem that I have with Jo Fucking Whiley and the earnestness with which she excitedly recommends a “really good new band” who are, in fact, on their fourteenth album and then proceeds to pronounce their name wrong.

 So, here are my predictions for what we’ll be reading Cory gushing about next:

•  Azzarello and Risso’s 100 Bullets – he likes a bit of the old noir, does Cory, and there are currently 10 volumes of increasingly complicated plot for him to sink his teeth into. Volume 11 is out in a month or so, so maybe The Secret Headquarters will put it somewhere obvious for him.
• Ennis and Robertson’s The Boys – recently dumped by DC and picked up by Dynamite, the trade of the first arc should be out in the next couple of months. Cory will use Warren Ellis’s ‘underwear perverts’ line in his write-up.
• Ellis and Templesmith’s Fell - the first hardcover is out this week, or something. Given that he appreciates both Ellis’s writing and Templesmith’s artwork, this should be a no-brainer.
• Gillen & McKelvie’s Phonogram – The first volume finished in singles a week or two ago so the trade should be on its way soon, and Cory’s something of an Anglophile so Britpop should be right up his street.

 I decided I’d rather not take the obvious option and go with Forbidden Planet – they’re kind of the HMV of the comic world, and they have an infuriating habit of listing things for sale on their site which they actually don’t have available – so I poked around for an alternative. I was looking for an online store with the ability to easily mantain subscriptions (preferably by email), who would dispatch monthly or thereabouts and wouldn’t require me to constantly remember to do things, as that’s something I’m not very good at.

I narrowed it down to 3 places – here’s how it broke down.

INCOGNITO COMICS offer a mail order service based on ‘Previews’ magazine. I guess it means you have to subscribe to previews, which is around three quid a month, and then you put your order in. I quite like this method from the point of view that it’s a bit more wide-ranging than just ordering some titles and being done with it and it’s a good way of discovering new titles, but at the same time it does require me remembering stuff, which I’m not good at. I may have mentioned this.

THE COMIC GURU were offering a bit more like what I was after, but their online store isn’t working yet and so I’d have had to ring them to purchase/change my order, which also requires remembering on my part. They do, however, offer a 5% discount on subscription comics, which isn’t to be sniffed at.

In the end, I plumped for A PLACE IN SPACE. I’d had some dealings with them on eBay before, picking up stuff I’d missed and always found them reasonably priced and friendly. To top that off, they do a standing order service where they send me comics every month and bill me, which doesn’t require me to remember anything. Finally, in the 2 or 3 phone conversations I’ve had with them, they’ve seemed genuinely pleased to have my business and have kicked all kinds of customer service ass. So these guys get my monthly dollar…

Anyway, Vaughan has announced that he’s leaving the title at the end of this run, which I thought might limit my bookshelf to only 2 volume, mercifully saving my pocket money. However, it seems that Marvel haven’t taken their eyes off my wallet, as Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel and Firefly fame) is moving onto Runaways after he finishes his stint on Astonishing X-Men. I’m rather too excited about this news than is becoming for a thirty-year-old, it would seem.

Unfortunately, this potential wasn’t fully realised in the first story arc, ‘Born In Blood’, which seemed to simply slavishly follow the standard formula of “introduce adversary, fight fight fight, issue ends with big revelation or a new, bigger adversary to fight next month (or both)”. However, there was (just) enough story to keep me interested, particularly in the flashback sequences where we see pre-hero, pre-Weapon X Logan going about his nasty, torturing, murderous business and we really don’t like him. This fits, as does everything here thanks to Daniel Way’s devotion to continuity. However, continuity isn’t an end in itself – Marvel’s Tom Brevoort has likened it to icing on a cake (you don’t have to have it, but who wants a cake without icing?) – and just because this series seeks to join all the dots left by previous writers in continuity, it still needs to bring something original to the table.

I’m also conflicted about the art. Steve Dillon is a master of facial expression, but his very distinct style does have the worrying side-effect of making a lot of his secondary characters look very similar. You can tell apart the main characters by their costumes or other trademarks, but facially a lot of hic characters share a certain face. Compare his depiction of Hellion in #5 with the GF agent from Global Frequency #3 with Preacher’s Jesse Custer and you’ll see what I mean. Custer’s girlfriend Tulip also seems to have a new career aboard a SHIELD helicarrier now.

So conflicted, but there are enough positives in here for me to follow for maybe another story arc. With a bit more bad-Wolvie backstory and a bit less of the ‘rumble-of-the-month’ formula and I might be convinced.

This first issue is mainly setup - phonomancer David Kohl (part John Constantine, part Johnny Cigarettes) goes to a gig, runs into a lady from his past who he’d really rather not see and is tasked with helping her – but what a setup it is, especially if you happen to have lived through British music in the 90s and weathered the thing they called Britpop. A meditation on the pop-perfection of Kenickie, a butchering of Kula Shaker and a Glossary to explain it all to the septics. Marvellous.

Oh, and I must make special mention of the cover, a note-perfect pastiche of the cover to Elastica’s eponymous debut album. From what I’ve seen on the Phonogram blog, future covers will include takes on notable albums from Black Grape, Oasis, Blur and Suede.