Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks at the arrival of Superman in Cincinnati, The Walking Dead in Walmart, and some of the NYCC announcements.

With the arrival of Superman #703 today Superman finally made to Cincinnati.  I found a preview of it on the Cincinnati.com website and while one panel does feature a fairly accurate depiction of our downtown area I wish the artist had given us a more panoramic shot of its skyline.  We don't have a lot of bragging rights in Cincinnati, besides our chili*,  but we do have one real nice skyline.

I went to the Walmart SuperSaver today and found a prominent display, no doubt for Halloween, of vampire and zombie books.  The titles included Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, a 'mash-up' novel I hadn't heard of called Romeo & Juliet & Vampires, and several volumes of The Walking Dead trade paperbacks.  I'll admit I didn't see that coming.

Every year it always seems to happen; I spend so much time wishing I could go to Comic-Con I completely forgot how much I'm going to wish I could go to NYCC.  There's lots of announcements to get through so, in no particular order...

I like to think we're all in agreement Marvel and DC lowering their prices is a good thing, though something they should have done over a year ago.  And while it's hard to find a bright side to DC reducing their story content from 22 to 20 pages hopefully it'll cut back on the gratuitous misuse of the double page spread.  I speak specifically of the kind that criss-cross repeatedly from left to right; like most storytelling innovations it was welcome at first but both publishers have been using as a lazy crutch for far too long.  And speaking of novelties  I really, really hope Marvel was making one of their funny jokes when they said Fantastic Four #587 (the one where, we're serious this time, one of the team dies) will arrive in shops in a black plastic bag.  As someone who lived through the 90's I think I'd rather see the return of foil, Tyvek or even bullet hole covers over the polybagged comic.

I'd like to say that I was going to miss DC's co-features but most of them were leaden failures from the get-go that did nothing to give their comics any added value; the only exceptions that I can think of is the long-gone Metal Men from Doom Patrol and the just launched Jimmy Olson in Action Comics.  The latter is getting a one-shot but I say DC go one better and give us the return of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson on a regular basis.
You've got to admire the sheer volume of Stan Lee related announcements, there's the NHL deal, the MTV deal, doing a Romeo and Juliet graphic novel with 1821 Pictures (the company that's doing a documentary on him titled Stan Lee: True Believer), and I just barely believe this one; he's teamed with Yoshiki, founder and drummer of the band X Japan to create a superhero based on him.  And Archie announced the line of comics Lee will be doing for them will be known as Stan Lee Comics and the first one, formerly Super Seven, has been given a name change (apparently for legal reasons) and is now known as Stan Lee's the 7.

Happily for us who'll never play the game Disney Publishing will doing a graphic novel based on Epic Mickey as well as another set in the world of the game.  Hopefully comics based on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit will shortly follow.

Also in Archie news we've been promised the return of Katy Keene and Cosmo the Merry Martian (though given how much a thing of his time it is I don't know how you can update him without completely destroying its original appeal) plus Kevin Keller, Riverdale's first openly gay character, will be getting his own four part miniseries.  I have to give Archie credit for doing this; there's no way of knowing just how helpful it can be to a lot of people knowing there's a gay comic book character who's treated like just another character, given the recent spate of gay teen suicides.  Especially given DC's history of heel-dragging when it comes to scheduling their on-going Batwoman title.

* I'm something of a chili fiend yet have never liked it Cincinnati style, which I once referred to as "hot dog sauce with cinnamon in it", but I was willing to coexist with it.  That is until while researching Cincinnati came across an entry in Wikipedia which described it as "...a regional style of chili characterized by the use of unusual ingredients... and by the absence of chili peppers or chili powder."  I hate to be a stickler but I fully expect chili to have chili actually in it.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.