Apparently spent after all that Watchmen fever/disappointment/justification, and exhausted from stamping their little feet because Alan Moore won’t validate their hobby anymore, comics bloggers were mostly a well-behaved bunch this week. No name-calling, no tantrums, and even Abhay Kosla was almost wistful in his latest post. This time around, everybody actually had to be interesting, and they came through in surprising numbers.

THE WEEK’S BEST POST(S): During my stint as editor at Kitchen Sink, a search for something or other took me into the room where the art for future projects was stored. On one shelf I was surprised to find the original art for Big Numbers #3, still gathering dust from when the place was the Tundra office. (Maybe it was a photostat, but I don’t think so; photostats were less bulky and a lot less messy than originals, and I remember being a little intimidated by the thought of doing it some damage.) I gave it a quick flip-through, put it back and forgot about it. Until this past week, it never occurred to me that I’d had a casual encounter with one of the comics world’s Lost Arks.

The posting of those pages by Pádraig Ó Méalóid was the week’s big story, and one of those rare occasions when bloggers were actually justified in getting all atwitter. Big Numbers had the potential to be one of Alan Moore’s very best pieces of work, and the discovery of an unpublished chapter (with Bill Sienkiewicz art, yet) is a very big deal.

Of course, it didn’t come without a certain amount of half-baked speculation and dead-wrong assertions – this is the blogosphere we’re talking about – about Al Columbia’s role in the project and what really happened to whichever chapter it was that Columbia drew when he succeeded Sienkiewicz as artist.

Leave it to Eddie Campbell to straighten it all out, not in one or two but three posts that laid out the chronology, commented on the posted pages’ reproduction and provided some entertaining perspective on the whole affair. For those trying to track down the real story on this rediscovered artifact, Campbell’s posts (and the unusually useful comment threads) are your one-stop shopping.

NOW PULL THE OTHER ONE: Alan Moore may have more or less walked away from the industry, but people remain so obsessed with him and his work that he was the subject of two of the blogosphere’s best April Fools gags.

Heidi MacDonald pulled off the funniest one with a Big Numbers post of her own that riffed on the discovery of those pages with a mean but funny jab at the bright and shiny stuff that cluttered up so much of the old Tundra catalog.

And Glenn Hauman of ComicMix came in a close second with a deadpan DC-screwing Watchmen revenge fantasy calculated to send blood pressures in the Warners office soaring faster than a speeding bullet.

WHY JOHNNY SHOULDN’T BLOG WITHOUT AN EDITOR: Are Herve St. Louis and other Comic Book Bin reviewers all 16 years old? If they’re truly as young and unsophisticated as it appears from reading their stuff, that’s fine; not everyone has to write as well as Joe McCulloch or to reflect the maturity of, say, Tom Spurgeon, though knowing how to spell and proofread would be a plus. (Note to this reviewer: Your piece on the Captain America 70th anniversary book was so energetic and imaginative, head and shoulders above anything else I’ve seen on the site, that one could almost overlook your allergy to punctuation…but how hard would it have been to spell the main character’s name correctly? Captain America’s real name is no more Rodgers than Bucky’s is Hammerstein, and you got it wrong close to a dozen times. If I notice something like this, I can guarantee that the folks who actually give a damn about Captain America are going to be less than impressed. This is the kind of arrant nonsense up with which the fanboys you’re writing for will not put.)

If this bunch really are as young as evidence suggests, that’s fine. I don’t know anything about these folks and I’m certainly not making a case against their running a comics blog. It’s pretty bizarre to see so many apparent grownups out there reviewing superhero comics anyway, and there’s no reason that the kids can’t have their own online fanzine to play in.

But, seriously, whether you’re kids or not, pool your allowances and hire an editor.

SAD BUT PROBABLY TRUE: Steven Grant makes a persuasive argument for the value of backup features while laying out reasons why they probably won’t fly in today’s Catch-22 comics market.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Just as we were gearing up to award Sean T. Collins mascot status here for his recent tantrums, he turns in a first-rate perceptive review of David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp. He’s disarmingly forthright about his ignorance of the book’s literary heritage, but that doesn’t stop him from effectively evoking the reading experience and providing some sharp approachable analysis. He still gives lip service to that “I may not know ahhht” pose that he seems to hide behind, but here he proves that he knows it as well as anyone.

THANKS FOR REMEMBERING: CBR contributor “Scott” posted a brief but fond appreciation of pioneering Golden Age artist Bert Christman, and why he shouldn’t be forgotten.

THE WEEK’S BEST LINE: Eddie Campbell brought it all full circle with a typically candid comment re: Big Numbers vs. From Hell: “…I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Alan, but I always felt a certain resentment that Billy the Sink got Big Numbers and blew it while I was stuck drawing Jack the bloody Ripper for ten years (I once described it as a penny dreadful that costs thirty five bucks).”

filed under Bemusements