BATMAN STATUE GIVEAWAY BEGINS

Hold onto your potatoes, Doctah Jones! We're giving away our seven foot tall Batman Begins statue!!! Free!!! All you have to do is come by the store (840 Broadway @13th St.) on any of the following days and pick up a raffle ticket, no purchase necessary. What's more, even if you don't win, you do: All ticket holders are eligible for a huge, one-time only 25% discount on ANY and ALL items in the store between 6/1 & 6/3. Members of our comics subscription program get a nice little perk: an extra ticket. Pick up your ticket on:

Friday, 5/18 & 5/25

Saturday 5/19 & 5/26

Sunday 5/20 & 5/27

***** TERMS AND CONDITIONS *****

• Members of Forbidden Planet's Comics Subscription Program are entitled to two entries. All other multiple entries will be discarded.
• Tickets must be picked up IN STORE. Sorry, no phone or mail service offered.
• Winner must claim prize within 24 hours of notifaction, otherwise FP will redraw a potential winner.
• Winner must pick up prize, with valid ID, within 7 days of claiming prize, otherwize FP will redraw a potential winner.
• FP is not responsible for delivery, nor re-assembly of statue.
• Statue is to be given away AS IS and holds no cash value with regards to resale/return to FP.
• Drawing will be held Monday 5/28/07.
• Raffle contestants MUST be 18 & over only.
• Ticket stub must be presented at point of sale to be eligible for 25% Discount between 6/1-6/3/07.

Pretty damn cool, huh. Told ya a coupla weeks ago we were gonna give something huge away. What's bigger than a 7ft. Bats? Not much.

Releasing 5/16/07:

Magician Apprentice Vol 1 HC (Marvel Comics) by Raymond Feist, adapted by Glass, Booth & Stegman. The scene: My brother and I in the fair city of Dublin, Grafton Street I believe, flush with whatever spending cash we have left after a week of teenaged debauchery, when some bloke comes up to us asking if we want to buy U2 homecoming tickets. Also on the bill were Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, whom I was obssessed with at the time. Tickets were crazy cheap, relatively speaking, and what an opportunity! But we declined. Our dough was reserved for spending at the local Forbidden Planet, of course. Looking back this scene makes me cringe sometimes, but then I beam with the warm satisfaction of knowing had I rocked out that night we might not have even gone to the FP. Not even, on an employee's recommendation, have bought Mr. Feist's amazing fantasy novel epic: Magician, what was the first in a long line of super swell series of books the author called the Riftwar Saga that we tore through with a voracious palette not know to hyena nor pig. Mr. Feist is by no means the Dostoyevsky of fantasy writers, but he is one of the genre's best character writers. What's also wild- he writes books that drive the story forward, an ungodly anomaly in modern fantasy!

So here come the Dabel Brothers, who, in conjunction with Marvel, are acquiring the rights to and publishing some of the best Fantasy properties in the world as comics. Thing about comics is you don't have page after page to describe people and situations. The eye scans that page super fast and the writer and artist have only so much room to convey a hella lot of information and emotion. Messrs. Glass, Booth, and Stegman pull it off. No easy feat, and considering the above story you might imagine what lofty standards, what a fine magnifying glass I'd hold an adaptation to. The story's tersely effective and the art puts a very fresh and welcome spin on a book I've read so many times it's ingrained in my skull. If this collection of the first six issues wasn't so good, I'd be smearing it to holy hell instead of politely nudging you to Buy These Books!

Showcase Presents: The Flash Vol.1 TP - Robert Kanigher, John Broome and Gardner Fox (w) And Carmine Infantino (a). DC continues their procession of b&w phone book reprints of some of their best Silver Age comics. The Flash's first appearance in the pages of Showcase ushered in the Silver Age, and his adventures during those years, edited by the late, great Julie Schwartz, and deftly executed by the gentlemen above (virtuosoes all of them) heralded unprecedented and previously untouched heights of wacky imagination and inventiveness in the world of comicdom that holds up to this very day. Wanna see what Grant Morrison's career? These are the comics.

Why do you know the term "Rogues Gallery?" Well, forget, Batman's adversaries- the really bad baddies were born in these pages. Captain Cold, Mirror Master, Gorilla Grodd, The Trickster... to quote Otis and Lex Luthor from the '78 Superman movie: What more could anyone ask?

So to conclude this week's WP, I'm gonna pull a Nick Hornby. The author of High Fidelity has a regular column in The Believer, a wonderful magazine published by McSweeney's which he begins with a list of books bought, and a list of books read. Just letting ya know I'm gonna ape it this week, crediting my inspiration so's you don't call me a complete ripoff stylist:

Books Bought: I Wish There Was Something I Could Quit by Aaron Cometbus DC Countdown 51 by Paul Dini & Keith Giffen

Books Read: World War Hulk Prologue by Peter David (w) Clemente by David Maraniss

"Otis, do you know why the number two hundred is so vitally descriptive of both you and me? It's your weight and my I.Q."

Love Ya,
JEFF