Category Shelby Peterson

Shelby Peterson, Editor, Designer
shelby@retcon-punch.com

Location: Chicago

History With Comics: While the X-Men will always hold a special place in her heart, Shelby’s first love was Batman. Between Michael Keaton and Kevin Conroy, she fell hard. Like many, her first graphic novel was The Watchmen in college, followed by a handful of the Batman must-reads. Fast forward to last year: Shelby discovered the awesomeness of the DC universe through Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern Rebirth and Blackest Night. She once again fell in love with a comic book character, but this time it was Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus from his Sandman series, and now all her thoughts are translated into 8 or 9 panels per page with the occasional 2-page spread.

New 52 Favorites: Batgirl, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Batman

Other Favorite Comics:

Oct 31 2012

Foster 1-5

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing the Foster 1-5.

Shelby: You may not know this, but we don’t review everything we read. We’ve stuck primarily with DC up until now because we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew. DC was starting at one, we were already basically familiar with the characters, it was an easy starting point for us. As we became more familiar with the creative talent DC has harnessed, we realized there was a huge chunk of titles we were missing out on. I’m not talking about Marvel, I’m talking about the endless array of independently published comics. Good independent titles can be hard to find, literally; if the creator doesn’t have the funds for a wide distribution, there aren’t going to be a lot of physical copies to be had. Unless you knew to look for it, you could pass right by it. So, when Patrick and Drew heard that Brian Buccellato (famous ’round these parts for his awesome work on The Flash) had a Kickstarter to fund an anthology for his self-published title Foster, they jumped on it, and pulled me along for the ride. Like all our reviews, this one is going to be spoiler heavy, so if you’re interested in reading the issues before the review, head over to Dog Year Store to get yourself caught-up. It’s cool, we’ll wait.
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Oct 30 2012

Batman, Incorporated 4

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing the Batman, Incorporated 4, originally released October 24th, 2012.

Shelby:  When I set out to write a review, I like to be as fully caught-up on the story as I can be.  I don’t feel that I can accurately judge an issue without taking into consideration the story which has has taken place so far. That’s why the relaunch has been so easy; even if I pickup up a new title, I’ve only got 13 back issues to get through. There is certainly merit to the uninformed opinion, we proved that with zero month, it’s just not the approach I prefer to take. Batman, Inc puts me in an unique and frustrating position; I am fully caught-up, in that I’ve read all 5 issues, and yet I still have no idea what’s going on.
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Oct 29 2012

Hawkeye 1-3

Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Hawkeye 1-3, originally released August 1st, September 5th, and October 17th, 2012.

Patrick: My Improv 101 teacher, used to stop our scenes all the time to give the following note: “Today’s the day.” What he meant was that today was the day these characters confronted the thing that was already weird about their relationship: everything comes out into the open, and friendship may not survive the encounter. It’s fantastic advice for making a short narrative infinitely more compelling – we all have routines and we all inherently understand the drama that unfolds when one of our routines is broken. As superhero comics have grown in such cultural importance, the need to express the routine of a superhero has gone the way of Blockbuster Video. There’s so much implied crime fighting between the issues we actually read, that they tend to focus on gigantic, world-shifting EVENTS. And those events are grim. Somewhere between the Rotworlds and Deaths-of-Families, among the Third Armies and H’els on Earth, I forgot that comics can speak the language of fun. Hawkeye not only speaks that language, it’s a master dialectician, artfully deploying the most elegant fun you’re going to see printed on the page.

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Oct 26 2012

Justice League Dark 13

Today, Mikyzptlk and Shelby are discussing Justice League Dark 13, originally released October 24th, 2012.

Mikyzptlk: In my 9 to 5 work life I find that it’s important to remember to have a little fun from time to time in order to get through the day. If you neglect to reward yourself with a little fun in your work life, you might not be able to handle the stress that the average work day may present you. Issue 13 of Justice League Dark could have felt like just another stressful day of work, but because series writer Jeff Lemire made sure to infuse the issue with a sense of fun, he made it more than what is essentially just a lead up to the big conclusion taking place in the upcoming Annual. Continue reading →

Oct 25 2012

Talon 1

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Talon 1, originally released October 24th, 2012.

Shelby: It’s not easy meeting someone for the first time. There’s a lot of business you have to get through before you can get to the really interesting stuff. All of the “where are you from? what do you do for a living? etc.,” stuff is boring and awkward, but it’s also necessary to establish base for the relationship. Even though this is really the second issue of Talon, we’re still firmly in the “getting to know you” camp. That means a lot of exposition, and while it doesn’t make for the most compelling reading experience, I find I’m really intrigued by what I’m learning about this new addition to the DCU.

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Oct 24 2012

Catwoman 13

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Catwoman 13 originally released October 17th, 2012. This issue is part of the Death of the Family crossover event. Click here for complete DotF coverage.

Shelby: Last week, we talked about the overuse of darker tropes as a means to make a story excessively dark and gritty in our Chat Cave discussion of Sword of Sorcery 0. The particular example we were discussing was an attempted rape scene which many viewed as a way to make the comic edgier and sell more copies. Drew made the point that the same argument can be made of any emotion; character’s emotions and their reactions to the emotions of those around them help propel the story forward, and they can easily be twisted to sell comics first, and develop plot second. The same can be said of madness. It can be used to effectively display a character’s unraveling, or it can be included in a story merely to push the envelope and be unique. The big problem with madness is it is, by nature, very confusing. So, when we’ve got a story that pushes madness to the extreme with very little reason behind it, we’ve got a disorienting mess on our hands.
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Oct 23 2012

Red Hood and the Outlaws 13

Alternating Currents: Red Hood 13, Drew and ShelbyToday, Drew and Shelby are discussing Red Hood and the Outlaws 13, originally released October 17th, 2012.

Drew: I hate recommending art. From movies to books to music, I think there’s something really presumptuous about the statement “you’d like this.” Moreover, I hate what recommending that art says about me, especially if the person I recommended it to didn’t like the art in question. This may all stem from a particularly traumatic recommending experience where, while staying overnight at my cousins, I insisted that we all watch the TGIF programming bloc — a mainstay of my Friday nights at home. For whatever reason, this particular Friday aligned with all four shows delivering episodes uncharacteristically romantic in nature. I’m sure it was as tame as a kitten fight, but it struck my young mind as profoundly inappropriate — at least in part because I was acutely aware that my aunt had already banned The Simpsons in her household, which seemed unfathomable to me. As if to intentionally make me feel more devious in my tastes, at the conclusion of the night, she remarked, “well, that’s really not the kind of thing we like to watch around here.” The absurdity of being made to feel TGIF was inappropriate aside, I still get incredibly nervous when someone consumes art on my recommendation. That feeling is only exacerbated in cases of serialized narratives, where the sampled episode/issue may not be indicative of what you actually like about it. That’s more or less the feeling I have introducing Shelby to Red Hood and the Outlaws with issue 13. Continue reading →

Oct 22 2012

Birds of Prey 13

Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Birds of Prey 13, originally released October 17th, 2012.

Shelby: A common trope for team titles is the “member with a problem.” You’ve got one member of the team with some sort of personal issue which spills into their superhero-ing. The team wants to help, the individual says they can do it alone and end up in trouble, the team saves the day. It’s tired, but it works; as a plot device, it injects character moments into the story while bringing the team closer together and providing a quest for us to read. Birds of Prey 13 delivers perfectly on this trope, so why do I feel like I’m missing something?

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Oct 19 2012

Nightwing 13

Today, Scott and Shelby are discussing Nightwing 13, originally released October 17th 2012.

Scott: The other night I just could not get to sleep. I was lying awake restlessly, my mind racing through any number of thoughts until the desire to know what year a certain Guided By Voices album came out was nagging at me so much that I convinced myself to open my computer and look it up. 40 minutes later I found myself on John Woo’s Wikipedia page and decided it was time to call it a night once and for all. Dick Grayson is having one of those restless nights, but instead of GBV’s chronology, what’s nagging at him is Gotham’s lack of gang activity — the city is too quiet for him to sleep easy. The sequence of events that follows is something like a night spent with Google and Wikipedia: a bunch of tangentially related bits and pieces — some very intriguing, others merely dead ends — that by the end has you wondering what you’ve really learned.

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Oct 18 2012

Sword of Sorcery 1

Today, Shelby and Taylor are discussing Sword of Sorcery 1, originally released October 17th, 2012.

Shelby: It seems a common element of fantasy is the quest for power. You’ve got multiple countries, or cities, or houses, or whatever, all scrambling for as much power as they can get. In Dune, the power comes from control of the geriatric spice melange. In Game of Thrones, the power is in owning land and controlling trade. Amethyst seems a little different: the power is in your blood, is literally passed from generation to generation. This isn’t a power that can be bartered for, or distributed through a treaty; there appears to be one way to obtain more power in Gemworld, and it is a bloody one.

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