• Transmetropolitan (So long, Spider...I saw your midget version in Punisher #16.)
  
• James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diaries (Every four panels are a Wes Anderson movie.)
  
• Breakfast After Noon (Andi Watson is the nicest man on earth and his comics are amazing.)
  
• Preacher (Ennis&Dillon's opus would be a Tarantino masterpiece.)
  
• Powers (Nail-biting crime-noir and hi-larious hero hyjinx from Bendis and Oeming.)
  
• 100 Bullets (Grittier than your uncle Dick's calloused hands and dirty fingernails. Azzarello and Risso are approaching status as my favorite ongoing creative team of all time.)
  
• Barry Ween, Boy Genius (Funniest read in comics. Period.)
  
• Amazing Spiderman (Straczynski and then Smith? New super-hard-to-beat bad guys and maybe a few cameos of confused young Jay Phatbuds-yeah, that's Mewes' actual movie last name. Can't get any better...)
  
• Ultimate Spiderman (Unless it's Bendis having Mary Jane rip Petey's heart out. Um, metaphorically.)
  
• Stray Bullets ("Cool Beans!" is what he wrote on my #1 at the last San Diego Con. One of comics' most twisted guilty pleasures that actually involve a lot of intelligence.)
  
• Optic Nerve (Adriane Tomine really knows what's going on-eerily perfect life perspectives jump out at you from the pages.)
  
• 40 oz. Comics (Jim Mahfood drew me a sketch of Smoke Dog in the Spider-man costume!)
  

A bunch of creators I like:

• Brian Michael Bendis
  
• Judd Winick
  
• Kevin Smith
  
• Woody Allen (He's really influenced my writing, and he'd make a great comics writer, too.)
  
• Scott Morse
  
• Mike Huddleston
  
• James Kochalka
  
• Greg Rucka
  
• Stan Lee
  
• Peter David
  
• Andi Watson
  
• Mike Allred
  
• Joe Matt
  
• Daniel Clowes
  
• Wally Wood
  
• Will Eisner
  
• Ernest Hemingway (Whatever. You know they did a Classics Illustrated of The Old Man and the Sea.)
  

One thing I can contribute to comics: I'd like to write a mini-series for Vertigo featuring the entire battered and long-forgotten Legion of Super Pets taking a vacation from being super heroes and hitting Las Vegas. Virgin apple martinis, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog vs. Streaky the Super Cat in a death-defying, martial arts super-fight extravaganza on top of the Empire State Building even though the series is set in Las Vegas would pepper the pages as just a few of the plethora of highlights in this unwritten masterpiece. I also have an idea about the life of a villainous vigilante of an old woman that drives around your hometown and has all the cars in the handicapped spots towed. You've got a huge to-go order at a downtown chain restaurant and its' 12:30pm on Friday. What do you do? What do you do?!

My intentions regarding this column are simply to have fun talking about comics and trying to pass along as much useful information as I can in order to help educate new and old readers alike just a little more about.

And also to be discovered by Wizard magazine, then by a small but dedicated group of eclectic fans, then by Oni Press, then by the Eisner Awards, and then by the people within comics that I admire.

That would be nice. So are you for reading this column. See you next time.

My comics pick for next week: Hate Annual #3. Man, was I surprised to see this book on next week's shipping lists, since as far as I remember, it was supposed to come out more than three months ago. Regardless, I'm not complaining-it's nice to see Peter Bagge still spinning his sometimes-gratuitously gross sitcom/ & satire tales with a journalistic sort of style that I really enjoy, being an aspiring journalist-type myself. His cynical and analytical views of the world always hit home, and he gets me interested in things I'd never cared about before reading about them in his books. If you haven't read Hate, you really should...a good way to know if you'd like it is to read Bagge's fantastic one-shot for Marvel called "The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man", which offers the question: what if Uncle Ben had been a two-bit hustler and crook, and what would the repercussions be regarding Peter's life and Spider-man's life? It's one of the best Spidey stories I've read in years, and if you're interested, you can buy this fine book, and all of the Hate trade paperbacks, at Samurai.

Best read last week: Lots of good stuff to choose from; the Cage Hardcover is a steal at $19.99-that's only five bucks more than what you paid for the single issues, and Good Lord! Richard Corben's art looks incredible in the oversized format. My favorite read was a close call; I thought Ultimate War #1 was awesome, with the kick-ass first appearance of one of my all-time favorite Avengers, Ultimate Hawkeye, and the return of my very favorite comics villain (you'll need to read it to know who the villain is, pal). The other book I really enjoyed otherwise was Gotham Central #1. Greg Rucka told the Samurai Bullpen about the book while he was here for our Grand Opening celebration, and it sounded interesting then. I have to say it was even better than I expected, and I can't wait to see the series take off. The new characters introduced, Gotham detectives Driver and Fields, are really intriguing, but what I really like is the underlying love/hate relationship the police force in Gotham has with the Batman. They can't defeat super villians (and man, the bastards are really vicious in this book) without his help, but they get sick and tired of the world thinking they need a man in tights to do their dirty work for them and get all the accolades. A hugely promising beginning from two of my favorite writers, Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker, and Michael Lark's art is dark and perfect for this type of gritty crime-based book. Come on over and pick it up! And I can't believe what MJ did to Peter in Ultimate Spider-man #32...it really mirrored my own horrifying and traumatizing high school years regarding my infamous lack of girlfriend-types during my adolescence.

End note: I'm not going to complain about the new Ultimate Marvel covers, because there are enough people complaining already, but I do have a couple of questions:

1.) Why?

2.) Wouldn't you think, of all the companies producing comics today, that Marvel would remember how ridiculous and annoying special gimmicky covers were in the horrible early '90's, and how they helped drive readers away?