Just Another Cosmic Pooch

Name:                          Lyco Barks

Notable Aliases:           Ranak

                                   Darkness on the Edge of Town

                                    狂犬

Attended:                    Punk Rock Church

Workplace:                  Clubs and the Cosmos

Hungry Heart

Who is this pretentious goofball? Goofy I am. I’ll be the first to shoot my own ego down. But don’t let that stop anyone out there from giving me some kicks. This pup can take it.

I’m a proud resident of Hope Street and a true believer in the power of fictional superheroes. I’ve learned more from a 22 page comic and “a 3 minute record” than I “ever learned in school” (Springsteen, 1984). I’m also the lead singer and rhythm guitarist in a Japanese Ramones cover band, though we’re looking into doing some original tunes. Occasionally I moonlight as a chaos magician and mystify drunk salary men with my tarot.

I want to kindly thank the Nerd for extending the invitation to write on his arbitrary blog. I look forward to leaving future scribbles of hopefully worthy additions of insights into arbitrariness. There’s plenty of randomness going on in my head to share. 

Space is a valuable commodity

I’m too humble or lack the moxy to claim to be a master of all things DC, though sometimes I like to think I’m PreNew52’s Tim “Robin III” Drake’s biggest fan and that I’ve seen and read every Grant Morrison interview I could find. I would probably own Gardner Fox’s entire Silver Age Justice League run or all the Jack Kirby Omnibuses if only international shipping rates were cheaper on Amazon.

One of the pitfalls of living in Manga Land Japan is limited access to U.S. comics. I’ve scoured a country a little smaller than California for the allusive American consumer product. I manage to get my monthly fix from digital comics with their gorgeous backlighting on a computer screen. Currently I’m enjoying Batman Inc, Justice League, Justice League of America, Wonder Woman, but might be picking up  forthcoming Justice League Dark issues after liking Pete Milligan’s opening arc, and catching up on Animal Man.

Although I love DC and quite a few Vertigo books, Marvel isn’t a neglected child in my eyes. I adore the first fifty issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Chris Claremont’s X-Men, Life of Captain Marvel, The Kree-Skrull War, and other great past and recent stories.

 Other interests I’ll probably be exploring at a later date are Kurosawa films, Mad Max, TV’s The Prisoner, Anime’s Darker than Black and Occult Academy, and maybe anything that might be connected fundamentally with Bruce Springsteen. No, I’m not from Jersey, but I usually picture Gotham City there.

  

 For the immediate future I’ll be reviewing Grant Morrison’s recently completed Action Comics, Geoff Johns’ Shazam backups from Justice League, and Wonder Woman beginning from #15 and onwards.

First up, I’ll be doing a 7 part series of suggested introductory collections to new and recent readers of the expansive DC Universe outside of Superman and Batman.

           Be seeing you.