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Hey gang, reading an old comic series and want to post your live reactions but the Marvel thread is arguing about which characters prefer deep dish to actual pizza? Well fear no more, because now you can just keep your updates here instead of possibly getting buried by news, brand new comics, and the latest hot takes. If you are lost: A liveblog is basically like running updates. Posting your thoughts on a piece of media as you are experiencing it, and discussing it with other people who are also reading your posts. Some rules: 1. The comic/run has to have concluded. Any discussion of current comics should go in the appropriate thread. This is to make sure that this thread doesn't just steal all the activity from other threads into this one. 2. Hatereads are, of course, accepted here. 3. Please make most of your updates more than just a panel with a snarky comment. I know it's tempting, but it would be nice to keep posts a bit more in-depth. Obviously, you can still try to be funny in your posts. 4. Presumably, people will be posting liveblogs of their first reading of a comic. As such, please avoid discussing in-depth spoilers as a general courtesy. I will try to keep track of everybody's liveblogs in the OP as we go on.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:59
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Rereading Ultimate Spider-Man for the first time in years. It was the first series I read month to month and became obsessed with. It's probably had more of an effect on my comic loving brain than anything else. The first comic I ever bought with my own money was Ultimate Spider-Man #8 and then I saved up the 15 bucks to buy the trade with 1-7. This reread has been a trip. On issue 9 now, the real introduction of the Kingpin. Been basically doing this on Twitter the last couple days. https://twitter.com/MrMattJay/status/983240862548111366 https://twitter.com/MrMattJay/status/983770031057088512 Most of these issues are seared into my brain after reading them over and over as an 11 year old, but I've forgotten some little details like how much of the greater Ultimate universe they reference. In these first few issues we get shout outs to Captain America, mutants, Matt Murdock, and of course the Kingpin. I also forgot how many scenes are directly adapted from here into the first Raimi movie. Man I love this series. EDIT: And thanks for starting this thread, OP! It's a good idea.
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Apr 11, 2018 01:19
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I’ve been reading USM to my kid and it really holds up. I love teenage Spider-Man. Anyway I’m still doing the Marvel reading order thing so will post my thoughts on comics from that. Will try to do panels when I am near a computer. I just finished a short run of Herb Trimpe / Roy Thomas Hulk. It’s dire. Trimpe was not good in 69, and Roy Thomas was the worst Marvel writer around, worse even than Drake. I finished that and jumped right into some X-Men. A couple of Drake Arnold issues with Werner Roth and Don Heck art (oh god), but then I got to experience Neal Adams. Dude is legit. And as much as I can’t stand Thomas, the origin for Sauron’s name:that he’s evil just like Sauron in LoTR, is actually great. Plus he seems to be taking baby steps with writing women, or at least introducing some nuance to Lorna. Too bad there’s only a couple issues left and then this series goes away for years.
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Apr 11, 2018 04:08
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I have longboxes upon longboxes of comics that I haven't read yet! So expect to hear about some really weird stuff! Most of it ranges from the 1960s to the 1990s. So we'll have a good time unearthing the wonderful crap I bought.
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Apr 11, 2018 06:23
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Savin' this space for a Geoff Johns JL/JLA/Trinity War/Forever Evil re-evaluation. Everything after is mildly okay, so won't be covered. edit: Scratch that. Countdown. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Apr 11, 2018 |
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Apr 11, 2018 06:43
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Jordan7hm posted:I just finished a short run of Herb Trimpe / Roy Thomas Hulk. It’s dire. Trimpe was not good in 69, and Roy Thomas was the worst Marvel writer around, worse even than Drake. Trimpe never becomes good. He's a lot like Don Heck where he seemed to get a lot of work from Marvel by being consistent and able to deliver on deadlines. Every time I stumble across Trimpe when I'm going through old books I groan. I've been reading some Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos and the early Lee/Kirby issues are not very good. It seems mainly like an excuse for Kirby to draw a bunch of tough guys killing Nazis, which you'd think he wouldn't need an excuse for. The issue for me, I think, is that these are the absurdly over the top, hyper romanticized vision of war. There's no weight to anything; the Howlers waltz into occupied Europe, cause mass chaos, and waltz right back out again. Okay, they lose a guy on a mission, but even that doesn't really seem to carry any weight since we don't really know him from the first few issues. The characters aren't soldiers, they're adventure heroes. Comparing that to Kubert's war comics over at DC, Kubert's vision of WWII was also heroic war movie, but not as absurdly over the top as this. I've heard that later issues improve so I might skip ahead to the Friedrich/Ayers run.
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Apr 11, 2018 17:58
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Aw man, I gotta say I like both Don Heck and Herb Trimpe! Roy Thomas does his best work when he gets Golden Age heroes. That dude loves the Golden Age more than I think it's humanly possible. All Star Squadron is really some amazing stuff. Then again I'm literally the biggest apologist for the Silver and Bronze age of comics you'll ever met. For about a decade or so it was all I would pick up and read, only just now getting into picking up trades of newer stuff (and really liking a whole lot of it) but those two eras of comics is where my heart really belongs.
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Apr 11, 2018 20:35
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Principal Hellmann posted:Aw man, I gotta say I like both Don Heck and Herb Trimpe! I actually read a Heck story a couple of weeks ago where I was impressed by the art. I think in the 50's he had a very EC style and it looked really good. Then the superheroes came along and Heck was bargain basement Kirby for those times when Kirby couldn't get to a book because that month had thirty days instead of thirty-one. And even then it wasn't instantaneous. His very early Iron Man looks fine; nothing I'd say someone had to go check out but nothing wrong with it either. It's when Heck gets on the Avengers that he starts looking really sloppy.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:02
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Random Stranger posted:I actually read a Heck story a couple of weeks ago where I was impressed by the art. I think in the 50's he had a very EC style and it looked really good. I was looking at some Fifties comics recently and was amused to find a series that was being marketed on the cover as being all Don Heck art. Yeah, he had a totally different style back then, very Milton Caniff influenced. One of the notorious pre-code horror covers is by him and it's really effective. https://www.comics.org/issue/10201/cover/4/
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Apr 11, 2018 21:27
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Random Stranger posted:I actually read a Heck story a couple of weeks ago where I was impressed by the art. I think in the 50's he had a very EC style and it looked really good. Then the superheroes came along and Heck was bargain basement Kirby for those times when Kirby couldn't get to a book because that month had thirty days instead of thirty-one. And even then it wasn't instantaneous. His very early Iron Man looks fine; nothing I'd say someone had to go check out but nothing wrong with it either. It's when Heck gets on the Avengers that he starts looking really sloppy. He needs time. I think his early iron man looks like trash though. His later work was better, but it was still trash compared to Colan's run. That's the problem - Heck is always replaced by someone better than him, always. Random Stranger posted:I've heard that later issues improve so I might skip ahead to the Friedrich/Ayers run.
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Apr 11, 2018 23:46
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I re-read the entire run of Sandman last year (excluding supplimental stuff like Endless Nights, the two Death mini-series, The Dreaming series etc) and now I want to re-read more of my Vertigo stuff. Maybe a month or so (going away on vacation soon) I will re-read Transmet or Unwritten and do a write-up about those.
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Apr 12, 2018 00:52
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Madkal posted:I re-read the entire run of Sandman last year (excluding supplimental stuff like Endless Nights, the two Death mini-series, The Dreaming series etc) and now I want to re-read more of my Vertigo stuff. Maybe a month or so (going away on vacation soon) I will re-read Transmet or Unwritten and do a write-up about those. So I'm assuming Sandman held up? I've read it 2 or 3 times but not for several years at this point. I keep considering rereading it, though.
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Apr 12, 2018 13:10
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Chamber of Darkness #1. Story B. It’s about a man who buys a house, told from the perspective of the house. The house hates him. The story is about rape from the perspective of the victim. One of the biggest wtf moments in my reading thus far.
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Apr 12, 2018 15:59
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Jordan7hm posted:Chamber of Darkness #1. Story B. W-what? Why? That's...that's just odd.
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Apr 12, 2018 18:17
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A Strange Aeon posted:So I'm assuming Sandman held up? I've read it 2 or 3 times but not for several years at this point. I keep considering rereading it, though. It does, but I personally preferred the short stories stuff over the long reaching arc. I still felt like there were some plot points near the end that jumped out of nowhere, even with re-reading (Morpheus having a relationship with the witch whose name I forgot, and said witch was angry about the breakup and decided Morpheus needed to die for instance). What also took me book on the re-read is how many stories took place with Morpheus either not appearing in at all in the issue (like most of Game of you) or as a background character (like most of Worlds End). The stories themselves definitely hold up though and I loved how the themes and genres changed throughout, going from horror to family drama, to romance to everything else.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:00
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Jordan7hm posted:Chamber of Darkness #1. Story B. Isn't Chamber of Darkness an anthology of 1950's horror reprints? Or am I thinking of another early 70's Marvel horror anthology revival title? Edit: Looking it up, apparently I'm thinking of Tomb of Darkness. I don't know how I could possibly have gotten those two confused. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 20:04
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gently caress it, let's see how long I manage this for: Astro City Life In The Big City This is the first trade of Astro City, composed of the first mini-series for the eponymous title. Astro City, for those that don't know, is a series/setting created by Kurt Buseik, Alex Ross and Brent Anderson, with Busiek scripting, Anderson on pencils and Ross doing covers for much of it. This volume is actually one I've owned for a while and have read in the past, though not for a long time, but I recently splurged and bought most of the series during a Comixology sale, and have begun going through it, so everything past #6 of the first mini is new to me. Astro City is a fictional city, set in a self-contained superhero universe. Every issue reads like the 300th issue of an ongoing title that you've never seen before, with casual references to other heroes, teams, villains, events that give the impression of decades of history and continuity, but none of it is presented in an alienating manner. This first run is 6 stand-alone stories. They go as follows: #1- In Dreams We're introduced to one of the most obvious stand-ins in Astro City's pantheon of heroes: The Samaritan. He's a pretty blatant Superman figure, with the addition of some Electric Superman powers. This story is an interesting day-in-the-life tale with the framing device of Samaritan timing how long he spends in flight during a typical day. See, despite how much he loves the sheer joy of flight, in order to be the kind of hero the world needs him to be, he has to be as fast as possible, so he spends seconds crossing continents, instead of actually flying for the feeling. It's a wonderfully melancholy and elegiac story, and the slight wispiness of Anderson's art, and the colours add to the issue a lot. #2- The Scoop This one is told by a Perry White-esque newsman to a new reporter, filling him in on the tale behind a seemingly out-of-place article on the editor's wall. It's mostly notable for introducing a poo poo-ton of new heroes, and creating a silver age vibe to the flashbacks. Otherwise it's a fun, but kind of boilerplate story of a civilian being caught up in a big superhero battle, with the twist that no-one believes the civilian when it's over, because this is before superheroes were treated like celebrities or NGOs. Props to the designs of the Silver Agent and Old Soldier, though, the two most prominent heroes in the flashback. #3- A Little Knowledge This one is just fun, and has a dash of Batman: TAS to it, or even a Spider-Man story. A low level thug finds out the secret identity of Jack-In-The-Box, one of Astro City's main street level heroes. And spends the rest of the night pissing himself because he assumes every coincidence he comes across is due to him being targetted for this knowledge. The main character is appropriately scummy so that we don't sympathise too much, and I like that Jack and his wife are basically immediately shown as African-American and there's not even a mention of the POV thug being surprised by it. It's a simple little insertion of diversity without immediately 'tempering' it by making racism a part of the story when it otherwise wasn't about that. #4- Safeguards A girl from Shadow Hills, the more traditional and immigrant community heavy part of Astro City, and the part at the base of the mountain the city rests on, has to choose between following tradition or breaking out on her own path. Being a superhero universe, the traditions include blessings and rituals to protect you from vampires and demons, and those creatures are a very real part of daily life. Not sure how I feel about the ending of this story. It's a little bittersweet, but I'm not sure if Busiek and co intend it to read like that. #5- Reconnaissance This is a blast! I love how the opening splash page introduces the Astro City Irregulars, a Teen Titans or New Warriors-like group, and they have nearly nothing to do with the story, but set the tone and premise perfectly. An alien is disguised as an elderly retiree, and he is gathering info on Earth's super-powered defenders in order to assess us for invasion. His final assessment ends up being torn between his hatred for the gossip of the old ladies in his apartment block, and a Booster Gold-esque hero called Crackerjack. The ending is pretty priceless #6- Dinner For Two Back to Samaritan for a date night issue when the rest of the Honor Guard, the JLA/Avengers type team, plot to set him up with Winged Victory, a Wonder Woman by way of Hawkgirl figure. This one has aged... not so great. The discussion of feminist issues during the main date portion of the issue feels a little heavy-handed and straw-woman-y. It's presented like we're probably supposed to be unsure whose side to be on, but the book seems to pretty clearly lean on Samaritan being in the right. He's the POV character, he's the established one, he has the Supes factor, and he is never the aggressor in the arguments. Some of WV's talking points come off like a conservative checklist of how to deal with inequality. *** All in all, mostly just as good as I recalled. Next up, the first volume of the main run: Featuring the FF (but not the ones you're thinking of!), hopscotch, time travel, the 90s, and a cartoon lion!
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Apr 13, 2018 01:09
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Covok posted:W-what? Why? That's...that's just odd.  Anyway just read X-Men #64. It a Don Heck issue between some Neal Adams stuff, and it’s actually solid. The intro of Sunfire. Heck must have had time to draw it properly because there’s some solid action in this one. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 13, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 03:22
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Gaz-L posted:gently caress it, let's see how long I manage this for: Excited for this, I've just read up to the Dark Age trades, but can't find them inexpensively so am taking a break for a bit. It is a really wonderful series.
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Apr 13, 2018 03:57
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Madkal posted:I still felt like there were some plot points near the end that jumped out of nowhere, even with re-reading (Morpheus having a relationship with the witch whose name I forgot, and said witch was angry about the breakup and decided Morpheus needed to die for instance). I thought the way the romance with Thessaly was handled was kind of cute. She and Morpheus flirt at the end of one storyline, and then there's a relationship that happens offscreen, including the break up, which then is the impetus for another storyline a few issues later. And her deciding Morpheus needed to die or whatever is totally in character for her from what we see in the one storyline that she's in the spotlight for. One hot take I would be curious to read would be if someone did Moore's Swamp Thing and then Sandman right after. I read all of Sandman before I read most of Moore's Swamp Thing issues, and I remember finding a bunch of stuff that seemed to make Sandman sort of a semi-sequel to Moore's Swamp Thing, beyond just Gaiman aping the format and writing style. I knew who Matthew the Raven had to be before I read Sandman, but I didn't realize that Moore had brought back Cain and Abel and made them grim and gritty before they appeared in Sandman, and I think there was more stuff like that.
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Apr 13, 2018 04:43
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I actually reread Swamp Thing before rereading Sandman (up to volume 4 at least) and yea there is quite a bit of bleed through and stylistic similarities between the two, especially at the start of Sandman from a horror stand point (there is a striking similarity between 24 Hours and the issue where Floronic Man releases too much oxygen into the air and people go crazy). I have a book somewhere called the Sandman Letters or something like that, that is a bunch of essays about sandman and the themes of the title. I should look for that. Astro City is an awesome title to reread. I picked up some random volumes from a second hand book shop ages ago and it's nice that you don't really need to read them in any particular order. Wait until you get into Tainted Angel.
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Apr 13, 2018 06:00
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Read a bunch more stuff last night while laid up in bed. Captain America 114-119. This is post Kirby stuff. The last few issues have been pretty good with some wicked Steranko work on the title, but this little run holds up pretty well art-wise too. Romita Sr. and Big John Buscema handle the first two issues, and then Gene Colan takes over. Now that Steranko and Kirby are basically done with Marvel for the forseeable future, those three are far away the top dogs in terms of talent (though Neal Adams is elbowing his way into the conversation), so Cap is in good hands. You could tell Stan wanted to put the best guys on Cap. No Don Heck, Marie Severin or Herb Trimpe on this book no sir, nothing but the best for Are Cap. From a story perspective, Steve Rogers is dead, so Cap is trying to work out how his new life will work when the Red Skull suddenly appears with the Cosmic Cube. We all thought he was dead, but nope, shockingly he is still alive and more dangerous than ever. I love the sequence with the Red Skull. He's large and in charge early on in this appearance. You know it'll all work out for the hero in the end, but it's great to see the Red Skull being super evil.  After sending Cap to another dimension for a little bit, really just as filler and an excuse to have some cool art, the Red Skull finally unveils his true plan: to use the the Cosmic Cube to switch places with Cap. This isn't the first time the hero / villain switch has occurred (Daredevil and Dr. Doom has already happened, not sure if there are others I'm forgetting), but I think it's the first one where a hero and his arch-villain switch spots. The panel with the switch is great:  The story kind of goes off the rails a bit here, though it's still just fun superhero antics, as Cap in the guide of the Red Skull gets into a car chase and then fights the Avengers. Finally he's transported to the Isle of the Exiles. We get to see some murder chair action!  Gene Colan draws a smug-rear end Cap...  And we get The Falcon! I'm honestly surprised that his only superpowers are that he's a natural at Karate and that he has a well trained falcon. I don't know what I expected, but uh... I expected more. More his updated backstory of "was an army guy, has sweet flying tech". Oh well, it's still awesome to see a black hero.  Anyway the story has to wrap up pretty quickly as Marvel decides they want to start doing one and done's at this point, so we get a quick wrapup where Red Skull switches bodies back with Cap and then AIM & MODOK (also thought dead) interfere and whisk the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube away, presumably never to be seen again in comics. I love chair-less MODOK.  ... I'm kind of at a point in the list where I have no idea what's coming up. I'm at the end of the 60s, so I know that Kirby's time with Marvel is coming to an end very soon, but I don't know what there is to look forward to. I like horror books, so more horror stuff popping into the list is good, but I'm afraid I'm just going to have to read story arc after story arc about Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel. Oh well, at least the trippy poo poo should be showing up soon. Apparently Captain Marvel gets pretty out there for a bit.
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Apr 13, 2018 21:43
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How would people feel if I occasionally did a running dramatis personae for Astro City? Or the superheroes/powered folks anyway?
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Apr 14, 2018 00:04
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Someone needs to bring back the guy with the Murder chair and his friends....
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Apr 14, 2018 00:26
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Jordan7hm posted:After sending Cap to another dimension for a little bit, really just as filler and an excuse to have some cool art, the Red Skull finally unveils his true plan: to use the the Cosmic Cube to switch places with Cap. This isn't the first time the hero / villain switch has occurred (Daredevil and Dr. Doom has already happened, not sure if there are others I'm forgetting), but I think it's the first one where a hero and his arch-villain switch spots. Doom swaps with Mr. Fantastic in FF #10. Kirby draws a fun over the top evil Reed on the cover. https://www.comics.org/issue/17456/cover/4/ You might be screwed for a while with Marvel superheroes if you're about to head into 1970 and 1971. I don't really like Lee without Kirby or Ditko, so your mileage will vary, but my recollection of Cap is that it's very mediocre between the end of Kirby and the start of Englehart and Sal Buscema (in #152, years from #119). Some OK art from people like Colan, but the stories are really formulaic as Stan basically is doing soap opera shtick and not innovating on anything, and that holds true on all the features pretty much. The books get very static and it's a chore to read in sequence. Conan's supposed to be good if you're reading that?
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Apr 14, 2018 07:02
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Get hyped because after work I am going to start a liveblog of Future's End
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Apr 14, 2018 20:41
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Astro City Family Album First thing's first, some sources have the next volume in my list as the second volume, and this as the third. There's no good answer to this because this one has volume 2, issues 1-3 and 10-13, and the other one has 4-9 because that is one single arc, and this is a handful of one-and-dones and a couple of 2 parters. #1- Welcome To Astro City A tale from the POV of a recently divorced dad who has moved himself and his two kids to Astro City, and trying to cope with living in a city where occasionally a weather demon will threaten to kill all of humanity in five minutes if his demands are not met. This one shows off both the strength and weakness of the format Busiek et al have been using in this book. The vignette style lets us have unique stories with characters we may never see again like this, and the nature of the property means he's not compelled to have, say, Winged Victory be a prominent part of the story because her name's on the cover, the way they might if this was a JLA or a Wonder Woman or a Spider-Man story. On the other hand, we get so little detail on the reasons for the character's divorce and move that he risks coming off as a cipher. It mostly worked for me, but I think the creators wanted me to care more about the dude than I did. The resolution to the weather god plot was nice and traditional, although a little hokey, and the continued hinting of something dark to explain the Silver Agent's absence in the modern day is intriguing. #2-3 Everday Life/Adventures In Other Worlds AKA "Valeria Richards Goes To Public School". We get a nice closer look at the First Family: Patriarch Augustus, Jack Kirby-alike Julius, adult children Nick and Natalie, Natalie's hubby Rex and Rex and Natalie's daughter Astra. This arc obviously focuses on the last of these. Astra sort of fills the Val role in the FF-esque team, although her abilities are energy manipulation, kind of more like a Monica Rambeau, and she just happens to be super-smart because her family is surrounded by super-science stuff. There's a delicate balancing act in telling a story from a kid's perspective that isn't necessarily aimed at a juvenile audience. For the most part I think this worked. Astra does come off a little too naive in some ways and too mature in others, especially in how she deals with a bully, but Anderson does draw the kids better than many artists, mostly avoiding 'tiny adults', and the whirlwind tour of the First Family's rogues gallery and the typical FF locales was fun to contrast with Astra's adventures in the 4th grade. #10- Show 'Em All Honestly? I feel like a quick spit and polish of an inventory script was done here. A little editing and a find-and-replace of some names in the script and this could easily be an issue of the Flash, JLI, Avengers, Spider-Man or even Detective Comics. On one level, that's neat, but on the other... it's nothing you haven't seen before. Crook could get away with it except for his ego, he needs acknowledgement more than the money. There's a smidge more about the backstory reasoning for this than you might see in, say, a Riddler story like this, but only because the character is new. #11-12 Serpent's Teeth/Father's Day On the other hand, this feels like a straightforward story from an ongoing title in a much better way. This feels like a full-on Jack-In-The-Box story, and actually a pretty important one. It also brings the notions of time travel more clearly into Astro City, establishes legacy heroes as a thing more plainly, AND shows how Busiek and Anderson feel about how comics were headed in the late 90s/early 2000s. We get some fun 'edgy' designs for the future legacy Jacks, an immediate establishment of the legacy of the name and costume, a small but well-formed supporting cast and eventually the introduction of a brand new character under the clown mask. This was just a blast! #13- In The Spotlight OK... let's get it out of the way: This story has a beat where a cartoon lion is responsible for the death of an underage prostitute, a 14 year old girl, whose services he regularly employed. It pulls the "but she lied about her age" card (and does, to be fair, admit that it's not like her being 18 would make it much better), but that's an element of this story, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. It's certainly not out of place in the Hollywood fall-from-grace narrative that's established for Leo. But it's mixed in with poo poo like him hanging out with a tuxedoed superhero like a Technicolor Talky Tawny, and a period where he was revamped into a mythology themed supervillain, and it's basically one of those moments where Grant Morrison or someone tries to reconcile 80 years of comics instead of just cherry-picking the stuf that works... except this is all invented continuity. It's well crafted, but the tonal whiplash has massive G-forces behind it. *** Next Time: Confession, alien invasion and dancing.
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Apr 15, 2018 02:58
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So, here's my first attempt at a liveblog. Let me know if there's anything that could be done better. My "style" if it could be called that, was genuinely just commenting on this stuff as I was reading it, so if that's not really working out, or it could be improved, I'm open to feedback. Ok, this can’t be that bad, can it? Jeff Lemire’s on it the job!  Never mind, it's already bad.  Not even 10 loving pages and somebody has already had two arms chopped off. This has got to be a record for DC.  I’d like to remind everybody that this is what DC decided to put out for Free Comic Book Day 2014. The day whose stated mission is to get more people to get into comics, especially kids. Have fun, new readers, with Frankenstein having sewn Black Canary’s face to his chest and having her blast away Bearded Barry (Barry for short).  Arm dismemberment counter is at 3 in the first issue. Impressive   Dead gay count: 1   Truly a mystery why Grifter never took off.  This is now my favorite panel in anything ever.  I’m counting this towards the count Dismembered arm count: 4 So I'm not just going overboard with images, let's talk about Grifter for a second. My experience with this character has been: Flashpoint Paradox the movie, The Wild Storm, and New 52: Future's End. I know he has a terrible New 52 series, and that he was as major of a Wildstorm character as I guess a Wildstorm character can be, but I am really baffled by what the appeal of this guy is supposed to be. His costume is terrible, and he's the Punisher in a universe that already has a ton of rough anti-heroes. It's like all he's there for is to be the only character worse than Jason Todd and Hawkman.  Yeah, yeah, alternate universe bad future and all that. But Mr. Terrific calling anything “dope” just feels wrong  ... 5  I assume next we’re going to meet evil, cyborg Captain Carrot  So all I knew about this before I started reading it was the hilariously edgy FCBD issue. So, if there’s a twist coming that will make this comment look dumb, so be it: I’m glad that it’s not Darkseid for once.  Why does everybody have big beards now in this comic? Black Adam just showed up in issue 6. Because no DC-edge fest is complete until Black Adam shows up.  Six dismembered arms in 162 pages.  Your goals coincide with each other, why would you not work with Slade? Villain or not, it’s not like Grifter is that much more of a moral high ground.  In a comic as dour and unfun as this, this is a loving breath of fresh air.  Ok this is also pretty good. But only because I just plain hate Grifter.  Is this supposed to be meta-commentary on DC’s habit of dismembering arms? I’ll let you decide. But for now: 7 And that was the first 200 pages of volume 1. To recap: The major ongoing plot threads are: A) Terry going back in time stop the bad future, but ending up with the events already set in motion B) Mister Terrific trying to hunt down Terry C) Frankenstein and S.H.A.D.E. investigating the Wildstorm team going missing D) Grifter killing dozens of innocents (who are also evil monster men), and meeting up with Slade E) Tim Drake is in hiding for some reason after faking his death Reading this it's really hard not to notice certain trends. We're at 7 arms being cut off in 200 pages out of a 1200 page series, and multiple characters have gained rugged beards It's weird that things that specific resulted out of four writers working on it. The main thing about this series is that it's just so loving unfun. I could accept the gore and dumb edgyness if it at least had fun with it some more. Instead we just get a cold opening first issue that is absolute craziness, and about ten issues later we've seen pretty much nothing that gets that ridiculous again. Granted, this is, like, the first sixth of the comic, so I'm assuming it'll eventually get to that point again, but it is quite a slog to get through so far. Not helped by the fact that this has just the most bog standard DC house style art I've seen in a while. Outside of the image of Canary's face sticking out of Frankenstein's chest, the imagery in this thing is really unimaginative. I'm excited to read more.
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Apr 15, 2018 03:25
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I don't want to live in a world where Frankenstein appears in a comic without being dismembered 
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Apr 15, 2018 03:34
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Teenage Fansub posted:I don't want to live in a world where Frankenstein appears in a comic without being dismembered He's part of a larger trend in this case. In this 20 page essay, I will discuss how the dismembering of arms in DC Comics represents the writers' subconscious resentment towards jocks.
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Apr 15, 2018 03:37
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The other weekly book of the time for Earth 2 actually had a pretty decent art team, including some early Jorge Jimenez stuff. Future's end was almost worth it for Ryan Sook's covers.   
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Apr 15, 2018 03:52
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The covers are about the only thing good about it so far.
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Apr 15, 2018 04:41
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Astro City Confessions HOLY poo poo #1/2- The Nearness Of You I... I don't even know how to talk about the two stories in this volume. This one is the only other Astro City tale I'd ever read before starting this, and it's been one of my favourite sappy comics forever. It's a perfect synthesis of four-colour spandex stories and human heart and feeling. It's hopeful without being naive, and emotional without feeling overly manipulative or sentimental. GO READ THIS. "NO ONE FORGETS" Gah! #4-9- Confessions This one is drat near as good, although it's much longer form. I'd gleaned the twist from cultural osmosis, but here's the thing: If your story doesn't work or satisfy when you know the twist going in? It's not much of a story. It's basically the broader artistic distinction between an actual scary movie/game and one that relies on jump-scares. Busiek and Anderson do not rely on jump-scares. In a different world, this is a DC mainline book and it's a Batman tie-in to a big event, and then Tim Drake is Batman forever after. That may seem reductive, but here's how good this is: It takes a character with a goofier name and look than old-school Robin, in Altar Boy, and after like 2 gags about it? You have no more trouble taking him seriously than Robin in any given issue of 'Tec. The way it pays off threads from multiple earlier stories while having that all be background to the simple tale of a sidekick who thinks that being a hero is about being lauded and getting praise and girls and respect, and learning that a real hero is defined by what you do in the shadows. What you do just because it's right, even if you don't even get a thank you. Even if you get abuse. Just... gently caress, man, read this volume. Just pick it up. *** Next time: Forget it, goons: It's Kiefer Square.
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Apr 16, 2018 23:41
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The Steeljack arcs are some of the best parts of Astro City. What a great comic.
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Apr 17, 2018 09:22
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I'm done the 1960s!!!! (well, technically I have a handful of stories left to go that aren't on MU, and I'm also going to go back and read some of the war stories, but whatever, I've now basically read every Marvel superhero book released after FF1 and before 1970. I started in August.) My favorite Marvel cape stories from the 60s: Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, #18, #19 (October - December 1964) Ditko is loving awesome at drawing action scenes, and he's awesome at drawing Peter struggling through failure and achieving redemption. This was the first big kick at the can at that. The annual was just Ditko action at its best, while 18 and 19 were the second Spider-Man interaction with the Sandman, and one of the early moments of Spider-Man quitting because Peter Parker can't handle the double identity anymore. This is a must read three month run. Journey into Mystery #116-123 (main story) Kirby and Lee kick it up a notch as Thor really starts coming into his own. This run sees Thor and Loki face the Trial of the Gods, and Thor battling some "world destroying" caliber monsters and villains like the Destroyer and the Absorbing Man. Kirby is at his best when he's drawing these big bombastic scenes and the craziness that is Asgard, and that's basically all you've got in this story. Note that there are some minor clunkers in here where Thor takes a brief sojourn back to Earth, but by and large you can forget about Blake and just see the big guy at work. Which is the best part of Thor. Tales to Astonish #70-76 (Namor stories) Gene Colan, drawing under the moniker Adam Austin, bursts onto the scene with Marvel. Before he came in you had Kirby and Ditko and a bunch of pretenders. Now, finally, you have a third artist who can hang with them. This is a fairly standard adventure story, but Colan does an awesome job of playing up the underwater depths Namor does battle in.  Strange Tales #130-144 (Dr. Strange stories) This isn't perfect throughout the entire run, but Ditko's run on Dr. Strange reaches sheer excellence around #138 as Dr. Strange defeats his archenemy Baron Mordo and has to go hand to hand against Dormamu himself. If you've only ever read Ditko's Spider-Man, this will make you re-think your opinion of what Ditko's art can achieve. There is a sense of scope and scale here that I expected from the Fantastic Four, but not from the doctor. I think between S-M and Dr. Strange, in the early to mid 60s, Ditko was putting out the best books Marvel produced, even better than Kirby.  Fantastic Four #49-50 The end to the Galactus trilogy (#50) isn't as strong as the first two parts, but the first two parts are about men fighting God, so... this is another one that is a must read, and which holds up better than you expect. The Immortal stuff Kirby starts doing around here is interesting too, but Galactus and the Surfer are something else entirely. Journey into Mystery #119-144 (backup) Tales of Asgard is the best true backup material Marvel will ever run. This is must read Thor, as you explore his backstory in Asgard. Epic quests and fighting dragons and monsters and the Warriors Three and Balder the Brave and gently caress yes. To me this if the first Kirby I read where I actually thought "oh my god, this is what everyone was talking about".  #132 is maybe my favorite one. Every panel is magic. Amazing Spider-Man #31-33 If This Be My Destiny is as good a story in comics as you'll ever read. Sometimes stuff like this ends up having been good for the time, but nothing more, but not this. This story holds up. I have nothing more to say, if you haven't read it go read it. Thor #134-139 (main) The High Evolutionary, followed by the Troll-Asgard war. This is like that Tales of Asgard stuff brought into the modern age as Thor goes hand to hand against all kinds of bigger than life monsters. Sif shows up and is amazing, and they get rid of Jane in a moment that highlights how much of a dick Odin is and it's great. Amazing Spider-Man #39-42, Annual #3 John Romita Sr. shows up and brings a level of polish that Ditko and beauty that Ditko was lacking. I love Ditko, but Romita's drawings were just so clean, and it seemed like Stan was re-invigorated with the new artist and coming up with some of the best material Spider-Man had seen since the Master Planner saga. The Rhino lets Romita play to his strength and draw some wonderfully kinetic action scenes. And of course:  Honestly one of my favorite scenes here actually comes in #41 though, when Peter meets Betty Brant in a coffee shop and they have a super awkward conversation and Pete makes an excuse to GTFO as soon as possible. It's perfect. Your first love is not your last love, people change and evolve. It's so drat human and mature and I just love everything about it. Oh, and the annual was about Spider-Man clowning the Avengers and then beating the Hulk. Dude was legit right from the getgo. Strange Tales #156-168 (Fury stories), Nick Fury Agent of Shield 1-3,5 Ok so just to be clear, what I'm actually recommending is literally every book Steranko wrote or drew for Marvel. He was a revelation. At the start of his work on Fury he was really just building off of Kirby, doing Kirby layouts and some really awesome drawing, but as he got more comfortable with the book and as Stan gave him more space, Steranko dragged Marvel into a more modern age. Stuff like his 4 page spread (a loving four page spread!!!!!), his provocative sexual innuendo, and his amazing covers, it's my no question absolutely favorite stuff from this decade. I am so disappointed that he burst onto the scene and then just disappeared, but at least you can see the influence of his work spread into other books, and into the work of other artists.      Also, his cheesecake was top notch, in that old school Bond way.  I love everything about this run. I bought the omnibus, I'm seriously considering buying the floppies too. Hell, I'm considering buying pages of the original art. Thor #155-157 Mangog, the creature even Odin fears, goes on a wrecking and killing spree against Asgardian warriors while Odin is taking a nap. Yuuppppp. More Thor being a god doing god things. The warriors three, Loki being tricky and evil and cowardly, Sif and Balder, the Recorder, this story has it all.    This is also the start of the whole Queen of the Norns & Balder thing, which I haven't seen through to any kind of resolution yet (I've read some of Simonson's Thor, so I know this is an ongoing thing), but which I already love. And as a side note, oh man Kirby draws a perfect Loki. Oh and the ending to this story kinda sucks and is a great reason why Odin is just the worst, but don't let that dissuade you from the awesomeness that is the first 60 odd pages. Amazing Spider-Man #63-65 The old Vulture is back with a loving vengeance, and then Spidey launches into a jailbreak. I dunno what it is about this, but this whole era of Spider-Man really speaks to me, and I love these issues. Silver Surfer #1-3 This is a story about a Christ figure suffering for humanity, while trying to find something redeeming about humanity. He has to dig deep to do so. Drawn by Buscema at the top of his game. The whole series is pretty good, but some of the later issues get a bit wonky in terms of scripting, these earlier ones hold up the best. Stan had a fundamentally positive view of humanity, and he clearly thought about how we treat one another (sometimes expressing it in his bullpen boxes). He shared them here too.      X-Men #57-61 Whhhhhaaaat? An original X-Men story on the list? Yes my friends, this series is better than you expected. Honestly the first couple issues are fine, and we had some wicked Steranko work on the title too, so this isn't completely out of the blue, but I don't think I expected it to his these heights. Neil Adams does a masterful job with the Sauron saga. He's another one in the Steranko vein who just does layouts and panels that other artists weren't doing. For as much as I love Kirby and Ditko, and even Colan and Romita, those guys drew standard comics in this time period. They stuck to grids, sometimes fewer panels, sometimes more, but they weren't doing nearly as much freeform stuff as the younger guys, and when they did it was almost entirely wicked one pagers. They didn't play with the form. It helps that Thomas wrote an entertaining script here, including my favorite naming origin of all time.   Technically the story starts a few issues earlier but you can probably just jump in mid-stream. Heck and company did an ok job, but they just don't stand up to Adams. e: re-reading what I wrote here... let's be clear, the X-Men is loving terrible for the most part. It just hits some real high notes with Adams and Steranko, and as a result I have generally much more positive feelings about the series than I would have had. ... That's it for must read runs, but I also want to call out particular series that I think need more love. Colan's Daredevil is wonderfully madcap. This is the run with aliens that make everyone blind, the introduction of Matt Murdoch, the repeated deaths and rebirths of Daredevil and the Murdochs, villains like Stiltman and the Gladiator and the Owl, that time Doom stole Daredevil's body and then Daredevil started an international incident to get his body back, all played straight despite the inanity. And of course Colan on art, making it look like the 70s were here years before they actually were. Obviously different strokes for different folks (CMRO generally hates this series), but if you like wacky in your comics, this is honestly the place to go. Captain America. It's Kirby, drawing Cap, with Stan writing him. It never reaches the heights of Thor, but it's just good solid comics all the long way through. You've also got some highlights later on with guys like Steranko on the title, and then that wicked run I talked about upthread with the Falcon. Kirby's run on Shield. Similar to his run on Cap this never reaches those great heights, but it was a fun spy series with a bunch of old WW2 vets getting into fights with evil people and lasers and bombs and flying cars. Great stuff and of course some wicked art. Dr. Strange. It never really stops being good. After Ditko leaves there's a drop in quality, but Marie Severie does a great job of picking up the pieces and then others like Colan kind of take the ball and run with it. Strange doesn't really fit with the rest of the Marvel Universe, and that's ok. Some series that don't need love, but which I love anyway: Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are consistently good. I don't think they have more than one or two bad issues in the entire decade. Must read books. For me Kirby never goes too far beyond the Galactus Trilogy, but he comes drat near close several times, and there are some amazing single issues throughout the run. Spider-Man is kind of similar, in that I'm not sure anything beats Ditko's If This Be My Destiny / Master Planner arc, but drat if Romita doesn't make a run at it several times. Thor is a must read, almost from start to finish. And some great single issues: Captain America #110, 113. Jim Steranko, baby.   Daredevil #47. Brother, Take My Hand. A story about DD helping out a blind black Nam vet. Iron Man #18, 19. Boo on Bendis for making this a joke fourty years later. George Tuska does great work on Iron Man, really impressive stuff.    X-Men #50, 52. Steranko, of course. With some real over the top inking from John Tartaglione. It does kind of take the wind out of the sails of this (not very good Arnold Drake) story to have the artists switch up (you've got Roth bookends). This is kind of where you see one reason why Steranko didn't stick to comics, because the dude doesn't seem capable of keeping his schedule on a full size book. He struggles here, on Cap, and on Nick Fury. Goddamn he was good though.  ... Bring on the 70s! Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 03:42
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I was feeling nostalgic, so I read the first two collected volumes of the Eighties run of Batman and the Outsiders yesterday. They're... perfectly fine Bronze Age superhero comics, but not really worth collecting in hardcover? Mike Barr brags in his introduction about how this became DC's number three best-selling title. That's because it was DC's third most competent X-Men wannabe after New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes. From an adult perspective, it's funny how obviously Barr was aping early Claremont X-Men here. Batman is like Cyclops, the stern leader riding herd over a group of unreliable beginners; Metamorpho has Nightcrawler's happy-go-lucky freak slot; Black Lightning is a ringer veteran like Banshee who's feeling some guilt about a casualty when the series starts; Katana is the Wolverine-like badass who doesn't have a problem with stabbing mooks to death on panel in a tasteful Code approved manner; Halo is the Kitty Pryde-esque cute irresponsible teenager who has the same younger sister/daughter relationship to Katana that Kitty did to Storm, plus she's an amnesiac with a mysterious origin (and her origin ends up being pretty Phoenix like); Geo-Force a la Colossus is their naive lunk from Eastern Europe who's a constant screw-up. (And after the run here, Barr would add Looker to the team who was also pretty Phoenix like in both origin and power set.) Not only do they all have Claremontian characterizations and personality conflicts, but each one has a readymade mystery in their backstory to resolve, providing most of the subplots in these two volumes. Generally the writing is tighter here than in Claremont's X-Men; the dialogue is terser, most of the stories are done-in-ones or two-parters, and the boiling subplots aren't as haphazard as the supposed Claremontian "long game" (that was mostly really him forgetting about stuff and then being reminded about it later by his editors when he complained about not having any story ideas). But all that makes this feel more like product, which I suppose is why X-Men is still a huge franchise while this is a quarter bin book that seems to get revived once a decade for trademarking purposes. This is also weirdly sort of the origin of the grumpy Batman who's a lousy team member that would be such a fan favorite after Dark Knight Returns and Morrison's JLA. He flies off the handle and quits the JLA in the first issue, with a dare to Superman to stop him by killing him that sort of comes out of nowhere. He's constantly being a pain in the rear end and trying to handle things himself. He treats the Outsiders like "soldiers" Miller-style and half the time is manipulating them instead of trusting them to do their jobs. He plays the man of mystery around them like they're Commissioner Gordon instead of people that he's basically living with. (And there's some funny panels where they're complaining about how they have to humor him over things like starting meetings with them sitting in the dark so he can make a dramatic entrance.) Unfortunately what I was really feeling nostalgic for were the issues that Alan Davis drew, and only his first couple are in here. Jim Aparo does most of the art and it's fine, but he's obviously already at the point in his career where he's cutting a lot of corners doing his monthly grind. The rest of the work is by not-ready-for-prime-time players like Bill Willingham, Trevor Von Eeden (whose work is so sketchy that it doesn't really look professional even though his layouts are fine), and the young Alan Davis. I read an interview where Davis talked about turning down an offer to draw Uncanny X-Men around the time he took the Outsiders gig, because he was worried about being the X-Men's first bad penciller after the run of Cockrum/Byrne/Smith/JRJR. When I read that it seemed absurd, but looking at his first couple Outsiders issues here, he still hasn't found the mature technique that he would use for Excalibur and the X-Men fill-ins he eventually did. His faces/anatomy/perspective still look off, even though he's immediately putting a lot more effort into drawing the book than Jim Aparo did. Hopefully DC puts out a third volume of this eventually and my library orders it, so I can read the rest of his stuff.
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Apr 26, 2018 23:44
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More Astro City soon. I made a bad decision and bought a poo poo-ton of IDW TNMT comics and have been powering through them. (Unpopular opinion? Eastman's art kinda sucks except for covers. The first annual was near incomprehensible due to that)
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Apr 28, 2018 01:46
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Gaz-L posted:More Astro City soon. I just started reading Astro City and it's so good I'm genuinely surprised I hadn't heard anything about it when it was coming out. Even during the times when I wasn't heavily into comics, I would still hear about good series from friends. With this book, I didn't even know it existed until I heard about it on War Rocket Ajax one day. I've never had a book that good fly completely under my radar before.
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May 1, 2018 14:02
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I feel like Wizard pushed it a surprising amount for something that wasn't a bad girl comic or getting optioned for movies or 90s edge or whatever. Busiek has been publishing it on and off for a long time and it's always been praised, but never really broke through as a major book compared to other indie darlings.
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May 1, 2018 14:05
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I reached Conan in the Marvel reading project. Holy poo poo you guys, it's so much better than almost all of what Marvel was putting out at the time (the arc with Capt Stacey is fairly contemporary, so Spider-Man is still better). It hit right as Kirby was leaving, and it was just a massive breath of fresh air and wicked art.
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May 15, 2018 01:19
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