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It's the new year, so don't you think it is a bout time for a new general chat thread? A new spring of renewal is in the air. Britain might finally leave the face of the earth behind in January. it's an election year in the States where America will decide yet again if they want a dime store level wannabe supervillain to be their president, Australia is on fire and could probably use your help just in case you wanted to a be a hero in your own way, and comic books keep on comic booking. Anyway, as an ice breaker for this thread, let's play a game. You know how people talk about their desert island disks (ie music they would want on an island with them if they were abandoned to isolation). Well being the comic nerds we are, what are your top 2 desert island comics? The top 2 comics (be them graphic novel, trade paperback or single issue) that you would want on an island with you that you would read over and over again; and also why did you pick those two comics? Of course I haven't given this much thought myself, but I will come up with an answer eventually! Anyway, onwards and upwards New Thread!
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Jan 14, 2020 17:25
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Madkal posted:It's the new year, so don't you think it is a bout time for a new general chat thread? A new spring of renewal is in the air. Britain might finally leave the face of the earth behind in January. it's an election year in the States where America will decide yet again if they want a dime store level wannabe supervillain to be their president, Australia is on fire and could probably use your help just in case you wanted to a be a hero in your own way, and comic books keep on comic booking. I'd pick Alex Degen's Soft X-Ray/Mindhunters because it's so incredibly visually dense while leaving a lot of interpretation up to the reader. It's the perfect balance of playful and challenging imo and I have not gotten bored with it despite revisiting it on and off more or less constantly since it came out. I don't know what my second would be-- maybe the big 700 page Complete Wimmen's Comix because 700 pages is a lot of stuff to read on an island. Or a big anthology of some dense old newspaper strips, like Krazy Kat or Little Nemo in Slumberland or that new Paul Tumey project. That feels like cheating so I'll say I've been into Tillie Walden lately but have not had time to sit down and read all of On a Sunbeam so I'd try to make lemonade out of island lemons. Just for fun if I were to restrict myself to superhero comics I'd pick the X-Force/X-Statix omnibus because I love it and it's also hefty enough that I could crack coconuts with it for sustenance. My second would be the first big Ms. Marvel omnibus because I think the first year or so of that comic approaches perfection at doing precisely what it intends to do. The collected edition of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man is a not very distant third.
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Jan 14, 2020 17:51
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I was very much looking forward to the 1 year anniversary post for the quarterly thread and you ruined it
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Jan 14, 2020 18:31
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We also failed to get to page 69 of the old thread.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:12
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mods close this thread and reopen the old one
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Jan 14, 2020 19:15
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Plenty of time to get this one to 69 pages if we all do our best.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:20
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site posted:I was very much looking forward to the 1 year anniversary post for the quarterly thread and you ruined it It's what I do. As to the the question I asked: I was thinking about it and what my fave comics were growing up that I have a special attachment too and I decided on the following two: Sandman #54 Honestly I would probably love to have the whole Sandman run as I can re-read that over and over again, but for some reason the Prez story stands out as my all time favourite (Seasons of Mist being my favourite arc though). I guess I could take the whole collection of Worlds End but I just need the Prez story. What I love about the story is the idea of hope and the search for something better. Prez's story is fantastical in a way, but the ending where he forgoes death to search for an "ideal America" (America can be substituted for anything here really) is just beautiful. If I was stuck on an island and feeling kind of down this is the story I would read to pick up my spirit.  Batman: Blades this an arc that I love way more than I should. Maybe I read it at just the point in my life where the hormones were really kicking in (and puberty just made everything seem much more intense or something) but this arc always seemed so....romantic? I don't know. It does contain the z-list character the Cavalier, reimagined by James Robinson with beautiful lush art by Tim Sale. The story tells a tragic love story about the Cavalier acting as both hero and villain (for love, damnit) and has some great Batman moments. I guess the real reason I would want this on my island is just so I can look at the beautiful Sale art over and over again. Sale manages to create a great "noir-ish" vibe that really left an impression on my taste of styles.  Bonus comic: Daytripper One of my all time favourite comics. The Brothers Ba give a story about, life, love, death, mortality, family and more. The premise being the life of obituary writer who "dies" at the end of each chapter of his life. This isn't a true death and it is done more in a magical realism way where each chapter begins without the death of the previous chapter being acknowledged (basically treating the deaths more as a question of "what would it have meant if he died now at that stage in his life). The issues are presented non-chronologically and explores everything from his childhood, adolescence, old age etc. The comic beautifully shows the chaotic, wonderful, strange and mundane things that happen in everyone's life and how everything is connected in who we are and who we become. If there is one (well another) comic I could read over and over again it would be this one, and it would be this one that would let me ponder my existence on a desert island with a sense of wonder. 
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Jan 14, 2020 19:20
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I kind of wish you hadn't posted this new thread since I told myself that if the chat thread gets refreshed I'd do another really stupid big reading project of an infamous, superlong comic. Go I guess I'm starting that tonight.Madkal posted:Sandman #54 Honestly I would probably love to have the whole Sandman run as I can re-read that over and over again, but for some reason the Prez story stands out as my all time favourite (Seasons of Mist being my favourite arc though). I guess I could take the whole collection of Worlds End but I just need the Prez story. What I love about the story is the idea of hope and the search for something better. Prez's story is fantastical in a way, but the ending where he forgoes death to search for an "ideal America" (America can be substituted for anything here really) is just beautiful. If I was stuck on an island and feeling kind of down this is the story I would read to pick up my spirit. For a series that was at its absolute best in those one issue short stories, that one stands head and shoulders above the rest. There's something magical about Gaiman redeeming Prez as a character, too...
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Jan 14, 2020 19:41
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Yeah I have cooled off on Sandman over the years but the Prez issue is really magnificent. I have a pet interest in the way that the past 50 years of pop culture have generally tried to portray Nixon, a wretched little rodent of a man, as a kind of bathetic quasi-tragic figure (see the opera Nixon in China or Robert Altman's Secret Honor) and I think that all kicked off with this issue, where his "realpolitik" is shown up as pretty meagre indeed next to Prez' idealism. It's just beautiful all around.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:05
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Random Stranger posted:I kind of wish you hadn't posted this new thread since I told myself that if the chat thread gets refreshed I'd do another really stupid big reading project of an infamous, superlong comic. Go I guess I'm starting that tonight. Speaking of superlong (but not infamous runs) I just started rereading the Ostrander Spectre trades (only 2 of them because DC sucks at trades and I hate them and I just want the whole run to be collected) and I am reminding myself how amazing the run is and how great the art is and how Mandrake should be talked about when it comes to horror artists but isn't. I was also wondering about the other Spectre runs and how those hold up. I looked up his wiki and he had a very spotty solo run with titles starting and ending fairly quickly outside the Ostrander run. I was wondering if these short lived runs were decent or not. I saw that Aparo did artwork in one of the runs, and Moench even wrote some Spectre comics. I also thought that if there ever was a DC character that would work in a police procedural tv show Spectre would be a good candidate.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:08
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Absolute All Star Superman and Absolute New Frontier. I don't think I'd need anything else.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:20
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If I had to pick two, one would have to be something big, like Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years. The other would be one of the Sandman trades, depending on my mood.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:34
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Are there any survival guide comics? I tried googling buts just got a bunch of "Comic-Con Survival Guide" articles.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:35
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I’d want something that I can read over and over again. Forced to pick, while thinking about what’s on my shelf, I’ll say the Steranko Shield omnibus is one, but I’m not that sure on it. The other is probably Bone. I’m more sure that this is a good call.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:49
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Jordan7hm posted:I’d want something that I can read over and over again. Forced to pick, while thinking about what’s on my shelf, I’ll say the Steranko Shield omnibus is one, but I’m not that sure on it. The other is probably Bone. I’m more sure that this is a good call. Oh man Bone is an outstanding pick.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:54
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Bone is maybe the only comic I would recommend to anyone, any age, any intererests, any reading ability.
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Jan 14, 2020 21:28
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 Because "The entire Chris Claremont X-Men library" feels like cheating, my first choice is "Essential X-Men" vol. 2. At the age of 13, I found one of these at a Borders and was stunned to find so many essential (hawr) stories in one trade. It collects the first appearances of Alpha Flight, Proteus, Dazzler, Emma Frost, and Kitty Pryde; the entire Dark Phoenix Saga; both issues of Days of Future Past; the Demon issue; and two pretty rad fights against Arcade and the Wendigo. Discovering that book is one of my happiest memories as a comics reader. It's arguably the best X-Men has ever been, and I never get tired of fawning over the artwork. John Byrne and Terry Austin were unbeatable together, and they're even better in black and white.  My second is Sam and Max: Surfin' The Highway. The lines are beautiful, it has superb lettering from Tom Orzechowski and Lois Buhalis, and it's the funniest goddamn comic I've ever read. I've gone through the entire trade dozens of times and I still cry laughing.
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Jan 14, 2020 21:34
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I think I'd get Complete Bone and the New X-Men omnibus. I'd still end up disappointed that I didn't grab some other essential tome, but that's what I got.
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Jan 14, 2020 22:55
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Madkal posted:I was also wondering about the other Spectre runs and how those hold up. I looked up his wiki and he had a very spotty solo run with titles starting and ending fairly quickly outside the Ostrander run. I was wondering if these short lived runs were decent or not. I saw that Aparo did artwork in one of the runs, and Moench even wrote some Spectre comics. The definitive Spectre run which Ostrander built on was is the Fleicher/Aparo run from the sixties. All of that "The Spectre does some completely batshit insane thing as he murders criminals" is from that run. The original Siegel run in the forties has a bit of that and it's better than average for the golden age but it's also not something worth going out of your way for. Everything else... woo boy. The 80's series is terrible. JM DeMatteis went into his full hippy spiritualism with his run. The bit where they tried to make him Dr. Strange was pretty weak. The time he hosted horror comics was pretty bad. Basically, the roughly twelve issues of Fleicher and then all of Ostrander and that's everything you need to read about the Spectre.
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Jan 15, 2020 00:18
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One-volume Bone and Lee/Ditko Spidey omnibus. I could read Spidey lifting that machine and Smiley Bone torturing Phoney until I die.
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Jan 15, 2020 00:36
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I just finished Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard's Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt miniseries for Dynamite, and it was excellent. Easily my favorite Watchmen homage/pastiche ever, extremely meta, and plays a lot with the form of comic storytelling, especially the nine-panel grid. I'd recommend it to pretty much everyone here, since y'all have good taste.
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Jan 15, 2020 01:08
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I feel like in reality if you were stranded on a deserted island you wouldn't want something too emotional. You'd already be going insane from isolation, and probably malnutrition. So some light, happy escapism would probably ideal. Something pleasant you can anchor your sanity to as you live out your last months in lonely toil. You'd also probably want some porn. Those are the two kinds of comics you'd want on a deserted island, imo
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Jan 15, 2020 01:14
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 and all that, but anyone interested in a thread about physical comics? I feel like posting cool and random poo poo I buy, but don’t want to just talk into the void. If there’s interest I’d make a thread. Half the fun of comics for me is digging through back issue bins or used bookstores and finding books that either introduce me to something new or move me towards the completion of a collection. Like yesterday my local library had the Fantagraphics run of La Perdida on one of the sale shelves, and today some local pawn shop had a stack of Yummy Fur. e: I thought about it and watched the cartoonist kayfabe episode about the TCJ Watterson interview. I would bring Bone, and I would bring the complete Calvin and Hobbes. I love that comic so much Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 03:15
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So when the last thread launched I decided to read all of the Clone Saga after years of avoiding it. That turned from a "I bet this will take me a few days to read thirty or forty comics" to a weeks long march through around 160 comics, virtually all of which were hurtful. While the story rarely dipped into the truly godawful, it was still a 500-hundred-year flood of bad comics. And I was thinking about doing something similar this time, but there's nothing else in comics like the Clone Saga. Anything on that level of bad and insulting is much, much shorter or anything of that length has a lot more bright spots. I thought about doing Cerebus but that would be several weeks of talking about a man's slide into mental illness and the challenge of separating art from the artist when the artist is right there and telling you that women are all monsters out to drain the vital energy from men. "This part is really good despite what Dave Sim did later!" over and over again would not be good to read. But then I had a terrible idea. There is a creator out there with one of the worst reputations. A creator whose work I ran away from from right as they were becoming extremely popular and so I never read some of their most infamous comics beyond panels used to demonstrate how awful they were. And despite having a tendency to delay and not ship, spawned a line of books in the nineties that go on for quite a while. Which means for my public exhibition of self-harm, I am going to read all of Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios output. I found a reading list that takes me in order through 1995 and hopefully I can fill in the gaps from there. My end point is when Liefeld leaves Image because that seems like a good cut off, though Awesome Comics goes for another four or five years past that. Maximum Press isn't getting included just because. I have read the Alan Moore Supreme stories already, so I know there's a bright spot at the end to look forward to. Let's get this rolling, shall we? Tonight, here's what Rob Liefeld did in 1992. Youngblood #1-3, 0 - The first book out of the gate for Image, there to show the world what these hot artists could do when not restrained by chains of work-for-hire publishers! And what they made is the most generic superheroes possible! I completely forgot that the first issue was a flip book with two different teams. This approach benefited neither of them since it gave no characters space to be developed; not that they would have been developed with more space considering Shaft has the most screen time and all we get is that he can throw things and has a girlfriend. The home team is probably the more readable of the two as the away team side of the book is completely incomprehensible as team attacks "Hassam Kussein" and it's totally incoherent. The dialog doesn't make any sense! [quote="Youngblood #1"] Cougar: War's just a game to you?! Combat: Yup! Combat: Otherwise, this wouldn't be fun, Coug! Cougar: I gotta admit-- Cougar: --this gets me PUMPED! Cougar: To rare for my taste. [quote] That's the dialog from the bottom panel of one page and then the next page. Issue two is dedicated to Jack Kirby, features a character called Kirby, and has a hell of a lot of trademark infringement with characters that are really, really, really close to characters from a different popular comic. Nothing in the issue has anything to do with either half of the previous issue which makes it impossible to know what's going on. There were about three pages this issue where I went, "Huh, it's actually improving. It's just a lovely superhero book instead of an unreadably incoherent one." Then characters started popping in out of nowhere picking up dialog that didn't connect to any of the action and it was back to what I was expecting. Also, wouldn't a "cryogenic animation tube" keep someone moving rather than frozen? Issue three actually continues the story from issue two! I wasn't expecting that after the total lack of connection between one and two. There's a bit in issue three where Shaft is unhappy about variant superhero merchandise because he feels like it's ripping off the consumer and I am choking on the irony. Starting a list of things Rob Liefeld cannot draw: the earth. Aliens show up looking for "Admiral Kh'rk" (  ) who's also a cadet?The conclusion of issue three says that the conclusion of the story is coming "in 60 days". It is six months before Youngblood #4 comes out. But somehow an issue zero was released before that, along with a few other comics from Liefeld. So, based on Youngblood #0, Ronald Reagan died in office and George Bush was president in 1988. That, or Liefeld doesn't know how elections work. Once more the team is attacking "Hassam Kussein", this time in the dense jungles of Iraq where they have booby-trapped tunnels used for guerrilla warfare. #0 is the first time there's a proper breakdown of who the team is and why they exist. There were contradictory bits before (sometimes in the space of a single issue), Apparently Battlestone has murdered lots of people under him by accident when he punched them with his superstrength? Since this was "one time too many!!" That's making him sound like a hero I want to follow in Brigade! So Bedrock in issue #1 is a teenage boy, right? That half page made him seem that way. And he's a member of the team in issue #0 which occurs four years before that issue and Youngblood is a military outfit. So the US has child soldiers, then? Brigade #1-2 I've got my first non-Liefeld penciled book (well, he only penciled a few pages in Youngblood #0). Of course, the Extreme Studios house style was to draw just like Liefeld so it's not a real improvement. I'm actually kind of surprised at Brigade. It's not good, but unlike Youngblood it's actually readable. Or maybe several issues of things not making any sense have lowered my standards. Brigade is generic and kind of stupid, but there's actually characterization, people do things other than leap from flying machines and punch things, and there's a plot. And I like that they gently caress up badly in their first mission; it gives the book something to do as Battlestone tries to show up Youngblood and deal with fallout from blowing up a skyscraper. Okay, the team somehow teleported out of the building in the space of ten seconds when the bomb was discovered, but compared to how bad the visual storytelling has been so far it's still an improvement. On to issue two, and Brigade is an outlaw team even before they blew up the skyscraper? Then why were the police waiting for them to show up and help out? Issue two doesn't live up to the first issue as it's just a boring punch up with an alien who shows up just because he wants to fight the team. Oh, and Brigade knocks over another skyscraper but this one was occupied at the time. They seem to have forgotten about that two pages later, though. It's still better than Youngblood, but that's a low bar. Supreme #1 A guy who is legally distinct from Superman returns from space and beats up Youngblood who don't know him despite Supreme being world famous. And they fight for a few pages and then stop just because. And Supreme doesn't like Youngblood because why would he. End of story. Supreme is kind of flat, actually. There's a lot of "Look at how tough this guy is!" and not much else to this comic. A few more things on the first nine months of Rob Liefeld's personal comic universe: there's a lot of extra fascist overtones in these books. I mean even more than you usually find in superhero comics. Lots of stuff about "genetic superiority" being presented as a positive thing. Not to mention a literal ubermensch named "Supreme". Early Image was a real missed opportunity as these creators went off and then basically cargo culted Marvel and DC superheroes. It's something you see a lot of across independent publishers where they decide to make their own superheroes but do none of the things that make those books readable at Marvel and DC. There's a lot to be said for having breathing room in the stories. These books are almost all action and it's tough to care about that. I can get supers beating each other up from anybody, and there's nothing else here. Finally, there's the art. It's not as bad as it could be. I could pick out a few Liefeld panels to demonstrate how ugly the books are but you know what Liefeld art looks like. The proportions are all wrong, important details are often missing, everything takes place in a void, and action doesn't flow from panel to panel. But there's still some things that look okay. About half the time on the books he penciled, the art is not hurting my eyes. Next time, roughly the first half of 1993. Just before they kind of start to get their production under control and start getting things out on almost a schedule.
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Jan 15, 2020 05:21
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The stories are garbage but the art rules.  I’ve been picking up those early image books for the last year or so and have about a long box of it. Savage Dragon holds up, Spawn is interesting, Rob’s stuff is for looking at only.
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Jan 15, 2020 05:42
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Jordan7hm posted:The stories are garbage but the art rules. I still hold that the first 50 issues of Spawn ranged from mediocre to be pretty good. The early issues felt less connected, what with the different writers and all, but the mid teens for the next 20 issues were fun enough. By the time it got to the 50th issue it was going to be a good time to end, and it seemed like the story at a natural ending point there filled with redemption and whatnot, but nope....
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Jan 15, 2020 05:53
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Reminds me that I need to get back to that thing I was trying to do where I'd read through all of the original version of Valiant Comics, or at least everything before Activision bought them out and retooled everything, it's a shame they got derailed by that whole Deathmate mess, cause early Valiant is probably the strongest competitor DC or Marvel has ever had in terms of a Superhero universe, at least from a quality point
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Jan 15, 2020 08:57
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My desert island comics would be... Did they ever release an Absolute Swamp Thing?
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Jan 15, 2020 09:29
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drrockso20 posted:Reminds me that I need to get back to that thing I was trying to do where I'd read through all of the original version of Valiant Comics, or at least everything before Activision bought them out and retooled everything, it's a shame they got derailed by that whole Deathmate mess, cause early Valiant is probably the strongest competitor DC or Marvel has ever had in terms of a Superhero universe, at least from a quality point Acclaim gave us some pretty solid books. XO was a neat update, Quantum and Woody stands on it's own (hasn't aged well) and the Acclaim Turok reboot is the best thing ever done with the character. The Man of the Atom special was a great update on Solar and Ninjak is one of the best all ages comics ever printed.
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Jan 15, 2020 10:04
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Jordan7hm posted:
Count me as interested, I like your eclectic, wide ranging taste and your write ups are always edifying. For desert island books, yeah, Calvin and Hobbes nails it. I reread my collection every year or so but by the time I finish I could probably just start over. So much humor and warmth and soul and great art, especially in the Sundays, plus a huge nostalgia factor because I read a lot of them when I was a literal kid. Still not sure on the second one. Joke answer for the guy who said porn would be Lost Girls, the least boner inducing comic I've probably ever read (not that I read a ton of that type of stuff to begin with).
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Jan 15, 2020 12:51
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Rhyno posted:Acclaim gave us some pretty solid books. XO was a neat update, Quantum and Woody stands on it's own (hasn't aged well) and the Acclaim Turok reboot is the best thing ever done with the character. The Man of the Atom special was a great update on Solar and Ninjak is one of the best all ages comics ever printed. Yeah I meant Acclaim, and I wasn't trying to imply that period was necessarily bad, just that there was something special that came from the early days of Valiant, perhaps the most unified in vision that a major superhero universe has ever been
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Jan 15, 2020 13:42
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Jordan7hm posted:The stories are garbage but the art rules. Rob Liefeld art never ruled.
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Jan 15, 2020 14:04
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drrockso20 posted:Yeah I meant Acclaim, and I wasn't trying to imply that period was necessarily bad, just that there was something special that came from the early days of Valiant, perhaps the most unified in vision that a major superhero universe has ever been I absolutely agree. I really wish the owners of the Gold Key characters had taken Dinesh's offer. I love the new Valiant but it feels like something is missing without Turok, Solar and Magnus.
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Jan 15, 2020 15:06
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Rhyno posted:I absolutely agree. I really wish the owners of the Gold Key characters had taken Dinesh's offer. I love the new Valiant but it feels like something is missing without Turok, Solar and Magnus. Not to mention gimps their ability to reprint the old Valiant stuff
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Jan 15, 2020 18:37
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This just reminded me that if there was a higher comics crime in the last few years than how DC treated the Prez reboot, I don't know it, and now I'm sad again.
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Jan 15, 2020 20:04
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drrockso20 posted:Not to mention gimps their ability to reprint the old Valiant stuff In the future pick a different verb please. I'm sure this was an entirely innocent usage in this particular case but gimp/gimpy/gimps is no good.
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Jan 15, 2020 20:29
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drrockso20 posted:Not to mention gimps their ability to reprint the old Valiant stuff It does suck that they can't reprint it. They can't even reprint Unity because the GK people won't allow it. Edit: I'm sure there's more to the story but back when I got go to the Valiant dinner Dinesh said the GK people were not interested in working with them and then they poached some V talent to work on their own relaunch which was like the second or third attempt at the time to make the Gold Key heroes into a thing. Rhyno fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 20:55
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A Strange Aeon posted:Count me as interested, I like your eclectic, wide ranging taste and your write ups are always edifying. One person being interested is good enough to me! Thread is now up. Post pictures of comics that are nice to look at or interesting to think about or that you're proud of owning or whatever.
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Jan 16, 2020 00:26
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Continuing my extreme journey through Extreme Studios into the first half of 1993 and we're getting into some of the stuff that makes Rob Liefeld look pretty bad. There's even more books launched to spin off of titles that hadn't even finished a single story arc, a relaunch of a book that comes out before the last issue of its previous series, a crossover whose second part comes out before its first part, and what might be the worst slogan for a cover gimmick that ever came out of the nineties. (Just as a weird aside, Humble Bundle put out a comics bundle of about two hundred issues of Spawn. I think I'm going to pass on that one; I've got enough Image founder reading going on...) Youngblood #4 - Starting off with the flagship title, the savvy among you might be saying, "Why is there only one issue when this post is covering six months?" To which I answer: early 90's Image. Maybe when I start on Deathmate next time I'll get into that more. I hope it doesn't take Hanna-Barbera much longer to get their lawsuit going. Bedrock's catch phrase of Yabba-dabba-doom is getting really annoying. This issue actually shows improvement from the previous. Part of it is the coloring and lettering is a big step up, but there's also finally some explanations of what the story is about (even though they contradict what was told in issue 3). There's a coherent narrative finally. It's still not good since it's just an action scene with characters I don't care about doing vague things. I'll take what I can get, though. I was tempted to post some pictures of Liefeld feet from this issue since there's some especially bad ones. You guys know what that looks like, though. Brigade #3, #1 - Yes, there's another Brigade #1, about eight months after the previous Brigade #1. It comes out about two months before Brigade #4 which would wrap up the first series. I'm going to be honest here, I'm having a weird amount of trouble finding sources on the actual ship dates on these comics and everything involved with these was an enormous mess. And I'm not even at Deathmate yet (probably next post for the prologue, then a few more down the line for Red, the infamous issue Liefeld did. Brigade is kidnapped by aliens because they were fighting with the alien who showed and just hit them for the entire previous issue. And then they run around for the whole issue and punch guys before some new guys who we've never seen before show up on the last page. To be concluded! There's so many panels with no backgrounds it's astounding. Everything in this comic takes place in a featureless void. Over to Brigade #1 which starts with a recap of the events of Brigade #4 which won't be out for two months. This is part one of the Blood Brothers crossover, but the prologue was released after it. The team has returned to earth where they're immediately confronted by Nothing like a character who has never been in any of the issues before, not in any of the art previous to page sixteen of the issue, suddenly being there and apparently someone important. Is this "Martin" guy their pilot? Then why is he in the spaceship they just took from an alien world? Is he their manager? Then where was he when they got off the spaceship and were immediately attacked before retreating to it? It's contextless supporting cast. On the positive side, Brigade #1 actually starts building a plot as the first team is destroyed and now they're building another team and there's evil corporate guys having something over their heads and evil government assassins. It's also one of the rare times in these books that there's a scene that isn't a fight scene. And when I say "rare" I don't mean once or twice an issue, I mean I think this is the second non-fight scene I've gotten. These comics have been a good example of why you need something other than fights. With no breathing room or time to develop characters, there's no reason to care about anything that's happening. Of course, I noticed the other Brigade #1 having a developing plot and it immediately retreated into nonsensical punching with the next issue so we'll see if this lasts. For what it's worth, I think Brigade #2 was released in June but the next part of this crossover was released in July. I've done enough damage to myself by trying to read in release order so I'm pushing that back. Bloodstrike #1 - Might as well go right into the actual first part of this crossover. Besides having the most 90's comic name ever, this issue featured a cover with heat sensitive ink that faded. Readers were told to "Rub the blood!" to change the color. Holy gently caress, this actually features decent art by Dan Fraga! While he still has a bit of the Liefeld-clone problem, he has interesting layouts, the posing and composition work well, and the story flows between panels. I kind of wish I could see him working on a decent story. Another team of hard people doing hard things and taking out the scum. I honestly can't tell these people apart from Brigade or Youngblood. The teams do the same things with characters that all act essentially the same. In this one they attack a secret base but it was a double cross! Darker Image #1 - Whoa, a comic that I actually bought in 1993. This was an anthology series, but guess how many issues came out. Yep, just this one. The Deathblow story had to be concluded in a separate comic. This was the first appearances of Deathblow and The Maxx, but I'm not here for them. I want to read about Rob Liefeld's newest character creation(?), Bloodwulf. In his short story he has "comedic" sci-fi mayhem as he shoots up a bunch of guys on a space station. It's Lobo, only less witty. This was a bit of nothing fluff, only really notable because it's a good example of Liefeld being an immature doofus and was completely unable to concentrate on anything. Supreme #2-3 - Issue 2 opens with Supreme, who is off-brand Superman, going to murder a person in prison because being locked up for fifty years is too good for them. That leads to a fight which just stops so that Supreme can be blackmailed into working for an evil corporation as the head of their private superhero team. Admiral Kh'rk (or K'hrk since they spell it two different ways) is back but he's no longer missing, he's a guy on a spaceship looking to fight Supreme just because he can. In issue three, Supreme deals with Bloodstrike who want to save hostages from some terrorists despite being government secret assassins. Supreme then kills all the terrorists including karate chopping a guys face in half. He ain't your daddy's Superman! I'm actually kind of disappointed at the violence in Supreme because it feels kind of boring. There's more evil Superman stories out there than you can shake a stick at and it wasn't even particularly novel at the time. It's also a real tone shift from issue one where he could have just been Superman. Still, of all the series, Supreme is the one that comes closest to being good. The art has a lot of people in voids, but the scripting is not all punching all the time. There's a reason that this was the book Alan Moore eventually took over rather than, say, Youngblood. Youngblood: Strikefiles #1 - This is another flip book and yet another instance of Rob Liefeld penciling a story unrelated to the work he was in the middle of. At the point this comic came out, there were six month gaps between issues of Youngblood and yet he found time to launch another new book with his pencils. The Die Hard half of the book is just an introduction to golden age heroes and apparently this deals with stuff from Savage Dragon... Two "As you know..." dialogs in two pages. That's impressive. Wow! It's Jae Lee art from back in his heavy ink splatters days! That makes the Chapel half of this book look good even if I have no idea what the story is supposed to be about. They're attacking a base and it's a set up and there's a guy who I have no idea who it is and then there's the government team's boss and he's going to call that guy. Weirdly enough, it takes a long time to read these comics where nothing happens. I think it's because I have to work my way through the ponderous dialog and try to figure out what's happening.
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Jan 16, 2020 04:34
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Random Stranger posted:Still, of all the series, Supreme is the one that comes closest to being good. The art has a lot of people in voids, but the scripting is not all punching all the time. There's a reason that this was the book Alan Moore eventually took over rather than, say, Youngblood. Moore wrote two or three Youngblood issues during his Supreme era at Awesome Entertainment. I have them -- they have some decent Steve Skroce art. And Moore's Judgment Day crossover truly lived up to the company name of being awesome, with art by Liefeld, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen, and more.
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Jan 16, 2020 05:05
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