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sporklift
Aug 3, 2008

Feelin' it so hard.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:

Is anyone still binding comics? I looked for a binding thread but couldn't find one. I remember Redbackground was our expert, but I haven't seen him around here in a while either.

I have a complete run of Suicide Squad that I've been meaning to get bound for years, but never got around to it. Today I learned that JOHN OSTRANDER will be at my local comic convention, and I'd love for him to sign three hardcover volumes of his classic series, as opposed to expecting him to sign every issue of the comic (which he probably wouldn't want to do).

The convention is just under three months from now, in mid-April. Those of you who have done binding projects recently, which is the best bindery right now, and what kind of turnaround time are they dealing with? Assuming it would take me a few days to prep all my books (gently removing the double-sided ad pages and back covers, printing up nice, detailed tables of contents), do you think I'd get the bound volumes back in time, or is that cutting it way too close?

I've done all my though herring and robinson

http://www.herringandrobinsonbookbinders.com/html/comic_books.html

The turnaround is few months at least depending on time of year. They get busy with thesis and dissertations. Just shoot them an email and ask.

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Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:

Is anyone still binding comics? I looked for a binding thread but couldn't find one. I remember Redbackground was our expert, but I haven't seen him around here in a while either.

I have a complete run of Suicide Squad that I've been meaning to get bound for years, but never got around to it. Today I learned that JOHN OSTRANDER will be at my local comic convention, and I'd love for him to sign three hardcover volumes of his classic series, as opposed to expecting him to sign every issue of the comic (which he probably wouldn't want to do).

The convention is just under three months from now, in mid-April. Those of you who have done binding projects recently, which is the best bindery right now, and what kind of turnaround time are they dealing with? Assuming it would take me a few days to prep all my books (gently removing the double-sided ad pages and back covers, printing up nice, detailed tables of contents), do you think I'd get the bound volumes back in time, or is that cutting it way too close?

You're dividing it into three volumes, and I'm assuming you're keeping the front covers. Just bring those three issues that will be the first issue in each volume for him to sign after you've figured out where you're dividing them up. The signature itself will hold up better being on the inside of a bound volume.

Endless Mike
Aug 13, 2003



Comics press's war on Toms Taylor and King continues.

https://twitter.com/TomTaylorMade/status/1219953055346544640?s=20

PS: Archyduchess unsticky the closed quarterly thread and sticky this one, please.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Endless Mike posted:

PS: Archyduchess unsticky the closed quarterly thread and sticky this one, please.

Oh yeah, thanks. It completely slipped my mind.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:

Is anyone still binding comics?
Uggghhh. That thread was so frustrating. One goon had this wonderful self-made setup that made nice looking pocket-holders for loose comics. He had a brief photo post about the process but never actually followed up with a guide.

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

FilthyImp posted:

Uggghhh. That thread was so frustrating. One goon had this wonderful self-made setup that made nice looking pocket-holders for loose comics. He had a brief photo post about the process but never actually followed up with a guide.

BCW makes portfolios for single comics. I have a couple of them, they're good for small runs of singles.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Rhyno posted:

BCW makes portfolios for single comics. I have a couple of them, they're good for small runs of singles.
:aaa:
Holy poo poo they're beautiful. And pretty cheap. Thanks!

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

FilthyImp posted:

:aaa:
Holy poo poo they're beautiful. And pretty cheap. Thanks!

You're welcome! I believe they are making ones with art on them now as well. I just have a couple black ones and they do the job just fine.

Speaking of collection housing, the BCW plastic storage boxes are amazing. They're expensive but worth every penny.

https://www.bcwsupplies.com/short-comic-book-bin

Jordan7hm
Feb 17, 2011




Lipstick Apathy
I mostly use magazine folders on top of my shelves (for what I keep in the house at least, I also have long and short boxes in a storage locker), but wouldn't mind upgrading.



e: Binders is an interesting approach. I may consider that.

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

I believe in all the ways that they say you can lose your body
Fallen Rib

Jordan7hm posted:

I mostly use magazine folders on top of my shelves (for what I keep in the house at least, I also have long and short boxes in a storage locker), but wouldn't mind upgrading.



e: Binders is an interesting approach. I may consider that.

Those piss me off due to my own stupidity. The library I work at got rid of a good chunk of those ages ago and I should have swooped in grabbed the bunch for my place but instead i just let them go in the garbage. I regret that decision every year.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Jordan7hm posted:

I mostly use magazine folders on top of my shelves (for what I keep in the house at least, I also have long and short boxes in a storage locker), but wouldn't mind upgrading.



e: Binders is an interesting approach. I may consider that.

I'll admit I'm actually a little jealous of your Essentials and Showcase Presents collections(I'm still mad at DC and Marverl for discontinuing those)

A Strange Aeon
Mar 26, 2010

You are now a slimy little toad
The Great Twist

drrockso20 posted:

I'll admit I'm actually a little jealous of your Essentials and Showcase Presents collections(I'm still mad at DC and Marverl for discontinuing those)

Seeing the spines and covers amps me up and then I remember they're all uncolored and I relax a little about the fact I don't own them all.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

A Strange Aeon posted:

Seeing the spines and covers amps me up and then I remember they're all uncolored and I relax a little about the fact I don't own them all.

For the older ones, especially Kirby/Ditko stuff I like them being uncolored. Doubly so since modern recolorings of older stuff has almost always been bad.

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

A Strange Aeon posted:

Seeing the spines and covers amps me up and then I remember they're all uncolored and I relax a little about the fact I don't own them all.

The lack of color has never really bothered me regarding those, especially with how mediocre comic book coloring has been historically

Not to mention the combination of that and cheaper quality paper* allowed those volumes to have both a ton of comics included in each one and allow them to be dirt cheap

*if we're being honest I feel comics switching to glossy paper was the worst idea the industry ever had, it makes individual issues more expensive for no real benefit to the reader

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

drrockso20 posted:

The lack of color has never really bothered me regarding those, especially with how mediocre comic book coloring has been historically

Not to mention the combination of that and cheaper quality paper* allowed those volumes to have both a ton of comics included in each one and allow them to be dirt cheap

*if we're being honest I feel comics switching to glossy paper was the worst idea the industry ever had, it makes individual issues more expensive for no real benefit to the reader

Yeah, I have some old Vertigo comics that aren't glossy and it's really cool, especially for stuff with a lot of black like Hellblazer.

Jordan7hm
Feb 17, 2011




Lipstick Apathy
Does that old paper even exist anymore in the quantities that made it cheaper? I feel like the death of the newspaper may have killed that along with the pulp mills.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Jordan7hm posted:

Does that old paper even exist anymore in the quantities that made it cheaper? I feel like the death of the newspaper may have killed that along with the pulp mills.

Marvel is headquartered in NYC and DC in Burbank, within Los Angeles county, LA times is still distributed nationwide, as is NYT and the Wallstreet Journal. It might be harder, but the big two still exist within shouting distance of places that distribute nationwide on newspaper, so clearly there are still places that do that.

A Strange Aeon
Mar 26, 2010

You are now a slimy little toad
The Great Twist
I dunno, it's just something about reading old comics for me that I want them in color. Can fully accept it's my weird quirk but I love goofy Silver Age stuff and even though it's cheap enough to get the Showcase Superboy and Legion of Superheroes and other stuff of that era, reading it in black and white feels like a chore; even if the original coloring was mediocre, knowing it was created to be in color and I'm only seeing the line art bothers me for some reason.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

ASK ME ABOUT MY
UNITED STATES MARINES
FUNKO POPS COLLECTION



I found decolorized comics hard to read. Like it was harder for me to spot the important things in a panel. I think it's because they knew somebody was gonna color it so the artist didn't do any of the stuff you do in a black and white comic to differentiate things.

Gripweed fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jan 23, 2020

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



drrockso20 posted:

I'll admit I'm actually a little jealous of your Essentials and Showcase Presents collections(I'm still mad at DC and Marverl for discontinuing those)

I'm bothered by how if I want to get the last few Essentials and Showcases to complete my collection, I have to pay way too much for books that were intended as cheap.

At least I have my complete set of the GIT DVD collections.



Me yesterday: "Well, at least these send away books are done."

Me today: "Now, where does this issue 0 for this crossover come in... son of a bitch."

The February 1994 books from Extreme were all gearing up for a crossover that starts next month so get ready for lots of subplots about something big happening! There's also a back up story that goes through all of the books this month.

Supreme #10 - We have double digits! This is the first book to reach those lofty heights only dremt of comic creators.

This issue is an interview between Supreme and the hostile reporter out to get him that has turned up a few times. The dialog is painfully clunky and Supreme starts out by sounding insane shortly before declaring himself to be a god. It turns out that Supreme is like Prophet in that he was a normal person turned into a superhuman by the definitely-not-a-time-traveler Dr. Wells. Apparently the reporter doesn't understand that having a superhero declare that they are destined to rule by divine right live on television is slightly more serious than "making a fool out of them". In the end, the interview is cut short because a supervillain is fighting Youngblood and Brigade so Supreme has to go off to join the crossover.

Team Youngblood #7 - The team fights the psychotic psionic team member Psi-Fire who has transferred his mind into a woman's body. Honestly, I was braced for the worst and it wasn't here. There were a couple of lines that would get the stink eye today that I think came more from lack of language than actual transphobia. Psi-Fire was just another supervillain here and the change wasn't really commented on.

There were lots of revelations about characters, though! Masada's super power is that she can grow, something she has not demonstrated in any of the issues so far. Straight arrow military man Sentinel is a scientist.

Meanwhile, a supervillain who beat up all of Youngblood before has escaped his undersea prison! Oh no!

Brigade #7 - Magic versus Science: who will win?! I really hate the magic v science trope and this might be the worst example of it I've come across. The difference between magic and science isn't philosophical or cultural, it's what color beam you shoot. This is a comic where the main character is a zombie; he's literally been raised from the dead by science and in this story he's channeling an Atlantean wizard. And all they can do is say "Magic is better than science!" "Nuh-uh!" and use green or red beams.

Also, the power of the magic science fight has damaged an undersea prison where a supervillain is and he might escape! I swear I'm not trying to read the crossover stuff in reverse order, I'm going in the order of the back up story.

Bloodstrike #8 - "Okay, this is starting out stupid and I guess Tag no longer has zombie body underneath her costume and-- JESUS CHRIST!!" Page 1: Tag tries to seduce Chapel in his bed. Page 2: Chapel blows out her chest with the big gun that he sleeps with. It turns out to be part of an extended dream sequence complete with Chapel waking up while shouting "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" After that, the team has to head off to deal with a possible supervillain escape from an undersea prison.

This is kind of a nothing issue. There's still the sexually transmitted zombie-ism plot and a subplot about people apparently getting abducted used as spare parts for the Bloodstrike team, but there's nothing happening in this issue. Especially when over half the book is a bog standard "You killed me!" dream sequence where Spawn has a cameo.

Prophet #4 - This doesn't relate to this comic, but I just noticed Rob Liefeld hired his sister to be Extreme Studio's business manager. I'm sure that didn't lead to problems.

Prophet dreams of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and then wakes up in a government prison where he's confronted by the head of the project whose name is Phillip Omen who looks just like Death did in his dream. Omen is the guy Prophet has to kill to save the future and he's building an army of Not Terminators. Despite being the same people from the Youngblood storyline with the crash tubes and other dimensions, they are not completely different. Prophet agrees to help Omen make more superhumans, but it's definitely a trick because he wants to kill him.

There's so many expository paragraphs this issue. They've been turning up a lot in the past month or two of these books, just huge honking blocks of badly written dialog where everything is explained. It's like we've gone from one extreme to the other, but then it is Extreme Studios. There will be no half measures taken in storytelling!

Black and White - This is the back up story that is running through all of the books and rather than talk about it two pages at a time for each of these comics I thought I'd hit it all at once. Black and White are spies(?) breaking into a company. Black talks in black dialog captions and white talks in white dialog captions. The recap pages explain the story better than the actual story does which is they've got a company and some people are breaking in so they go beat them up.

Next time is Extreme Prejudice, a story that as far as I can tell is just one long supervillain fight. I'm going to bet that the villain has some really vaguely defined powers and no goals beyond defeating the heroes. Also, one of the Youngblood team members dies to prove how serious of threat he is.

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

I believe in all the ways that they say you can lose your body
Fallen Rib

Jordan7hm posted:

Does that old paper even exist anymore in the quantities that made it cheaper? I feel like the death of the newspaper may have killed that along with the pulp mills.

DC did Wednesday Comics with that old paper a few years back. They could still do it if they wanted to, but probably don't see a reason to use that paper anymore outside of special projects.

site
Apr 6, 2007

Trans pride, Worldwide
Bitch
jason has a pretty nice office

https://twitter.com/jasonaaron/status/1220167037261090829

Jordan7hm
Feb 17, 2011




Lipstick Apathy

Madkal posted:

DC did Wednesday Comics with that old paper a few years back. They could still do it if they wanted to, but probably don't see a reason to use that paper anymore outside of special projects.


Skwirl posted:

Marvel is headquartered in NYC and DC in Burbank, within Los Angeles county, LA times is still distributed nationwide, as is NYT and the Wallstreet Journal. It might be harder, but the big two still exist within shouting distance of places that distribute nationwide on newspaper, so clearly there are still places that do that.

My comment wasn't about whether or not the paper exists so much as whether or not it's as cheap anymore. The Wednesday comics were premium priced, weren't they? (3.99 for broadsheets ten years ago)

A Strange Aeon
Mar 26, 2010

You are now a slimy little toad
The Great Twist
What's the deal with Spawn making a cameo? Were all the Image titles set in the same universe? Or was that sort of an Easter egg?

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747
Image was initially supposed to be a shared universe, yes.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou
Jan 1, 2006

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

Image was initially supposed to be a shared universe, yes.

Until a miniseries called Shattered Image split up the different creators' characters into separate universes, culminating in Jim Lee's Wildstorm characters going off on their own (when Lee sold Wildstorm to DC).

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



A Strange Aeon posted:

What's the deal with Spawn making a cameo? Were all the Image titles set in the same universe? Or was that sort of an Easter egg?

Chapel was the guy who killed Spawn even though Chapel was a Liefeld creation. This was revealed in McFarlane's book where Spawn then took revenge on Chapel by turning his face into an actual skull instead of just the paint he had been wearing.

There have been a few cameos that I've mentioned, some borrowed concepts that I've occasionally mentioned, and a lot of name dropping that I haven't bothered mentioning to indicate that all Image books took place in the same universe. This didn't remotely make sense, of course. You know how there's a cognitive dissonance problem when you try to put the Avengers and X-Men in the same superhero universe? Or the Punisher on an island full of superheroes? Now imagine seven creators each trying to tell their epic story in their own vision from the ground up and then gluing them together the same way. The whole thing falls apart if you even glace at it wrong.

My personal feeling, and maybe I'm being generous to all of the Image creators here, is that it's best if you think about it the way they were doing it: it's a lot of separate comic book companies that are on friendly enough terms to occasionally lend each other their characters.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:

Until a miniseries called Shattered Image split up the different creators' characters into separate universes, culminating in Jim Lee's Wildstorm characters going off on their own (when Lee sold Wildstorm to DC).

I think Liefeld had been forced out by that point, too, so the Extreme books weren't there for that.


I see he has a lot of Showcase Presents volumes himself and a Blue Devil action figure. Jason Aaron is alright.

Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jan 23, 2020

drrockso20
May 6, 2013

Has Not Actually Done Cocaine
So we all know that the New 52 version of Earth 2 was overall incredibly mediocre(and incredibly awful at it's worst), however I do think there were some good ideas at it's core that might be worth reusing some day

Pastry of the Year
Apr 12, 2013

Random Stranger posted:

There have been a few cameos that I've mentioned, some borrowed concepts that I've occasionally mentioned, and a lot of name dropping that I haven't bothered mentioning to indicate that all Image books took place in the same universe. This didn't remotely make sense, of course. You know how there's a cognitive dissonance problem when you try to put the Avengers and X-Men in the same superhero universe? Or the Punisher on an island full of superheroes? Now imagine seven creators each trying to tell their epic story in their own vision from the ground up and then gluing them together the same way. The whole thing falls apart if you even glace at it wrong.

I fell off of Image early and hard, but my main memory of this dissonance was Supreme showing up to punch Trencher's head off and then fly away.

I have no idea if Trencher holds up, but it's the Image title I remember most fondly and I was bummed when it just got cancelled out of seemingly nowhere.

Lencho
Mar 16, 2012

drrockso20 posted:

So we all know that the New 52 version of Earth 2 was overall incredibly mediocre(and incredibly awful at it's worst), however I do think there were some good ideas at it's core that might be worth reusing some day

It got pretty good for while when Tom Taylor took over. It went bad again quickly after he left.

Agent_grey
Jan 8, 2007

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub!
https://twitter.com/badmachinery/status/1220448636003397643?s=20

Just in case any one else is like me and missing Bad Machinery here’s some good news from John Allison’s twitter.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

ASK ME ABOUT MY
UNITED STATES MARINES
FUNKO POPS COLLECTION



lmao

https://twitter.com/Polygon/status/1220456375219822592?s=20

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



It's time for a crossover covering all the March 1994 and some of the April books from Extreme Studios. And a new series will launch out of it, of course, since it's been almost three months since a new number one.

The storyline is EXTREME PREJUDICE which I'm kind of surprised isn't also the title of an X-books crossover. The story so far: there's a supervillain named Quantum. He lived in a prison under the sea. Then he got out.

Team Youngblood #7 - So this is the first time I've seen Quantum and he's a bearded order guy wearing a black and white body suit with a high collar cape flying around shooting energy blasts. He looks exactly like Count Nefaria. Much in the way that there's four short, clawed guys with weird hair that goes out to points at their temples running around Extreme Studios books only with a character that a lot of people wouldn't immediately recognize...

So at this point Quantum hasn't escaped yet (this one's not a story error; it's just that several of the issues last month directly lead into their part of the crossover this month which occur after this issue) but a lot of people are freaking out about the possibility of his escape without ever actually explaining why he's so dangerous. One of his guards in the broken, flooding underwater prison decides to release the villain because he has superpowers and thus will save them, apparently not understanding the concept of being a prison guard in a special super prison built to contain just one guy. When Youngblood confront Quantum he says that all he wants is to be left alone and then they attack and I finally learn what his power is. Quantum's power is that he's Magneto. Quantum easily beats Youngblood and then follows the Extreme Studios villain playbook and just leaves.

And as Not Magneto flies away, a guy makes a phone call because it's time to assemble the X-Men New Mutants New Men again. And I go, "Seriously, Rob? You're really going to do this?"

Hey, we've got another Image cameo in this issue as Stormwatch puts in a brief appearance where they offer to help and get turned down. Stay in the Wildstorm books, Stormwatch! This is for Extreme heroes!

Brigade #8 - Last issue, Brigade's kind of confusing underwater fight concluded with an explosion that damaged Quantum's prison. And-- Is that Aunt Petunia's Favorite Nephew, the Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Thing in the background of these first pages?! Well, it was a flashback to Quantum establishing a separatist state for those people with strange powers that led to humanity hating and fearing them. I'm only being very slightly sarcastic here, it really is just that.

Finding his nation in ruins, Quantum seeks answers with Brigade. Never mind that Battlestone wasn't a superhero twenty years ago for the previous fight and that Quantum has no way of locating their secret island base, Quantum just shows up and opens a hole in their roof so he can ask some questions.

OH FOR gently caress'S SAKE! QUANTUM SET UP HIS COUNTRY FOR PEOPLE WITH THE "NU-GENE"!

Anyway, Quantum is Battlestone's father. So Stone is a seventy year old , unaging soldier who was Not Bucky in WW2, was the son of Not Magneto and fought him twenty years ago, got superpowers five years ago for Youngblood, murdered a team member on his first time out, was turned into a zombie, tortured his brother and turned him into a zombie, decided to take down the US government, and then formed his own rival team to Youngblood. He's got a lot going on...

So one page, they're fighting inside, the next page they're fighting outside with no transition. Just making sure you know that the art is still a problem.

And because it literally never stops, the guy who freed Quantum is killed by a member of The Brotherhood of Man as a traitor to his species.

There a lot of X-Men rip offs in comics. I mean a whole lot of X-Men rip offs. They were the most popular comic book on the stands for over ten years and a lot of people who didn't have a whole lot creativity copied the concepts. This is the most blatant X-Men rip off I have ever seen.

Bloodstrike #9 - Rob Liefeld actually penciled two pages of this issue! It's the first time in a while since he's done that.

This time Quantum has gone to Arizona. Brigade and Bloodstrike go after him at the same time and their plan is... rush at him so they can punch him, maybe shoot him once or twice. They're defeated again in half a page.

The Brotherhood of Man's assassin is called "the Extreme Warrior" and I don't know whether to be relieved that it's not a direct rip off of an X-Men concept or irritated at that terrible name. The 90-degree rotated, two page splash of this guy are the two pages Liefeld penciled, too. Also, I don't think I'd give my racist supervillain a name and logo that come from my own studio's name and logo.

Supreme #11 - The art in this issue is by "Pedi", who has roughly five credits in his career. The art is strange to put it mildly. Everyone looks weirdly inflated in some parts, melty in others. It's cartoony, but not in any consistent way. It makes this a really ugly issue.

Supreme arrives where Quantum is and they punch for a while in vague, exploding places. Quantum can absorb Supreme's energy along with magnetic energy and that puts Supreme out of the fight. Meanwhile the New Men reform and walk right into the warroom at Youngblood headquarters somehow.

One of things at the end of this issue is that Youngblood needs more people to go with them and then walk up to Quantum one at a time and punch him. Except there's a whole other set of Youngblood characters who aren't showing up. Initially there was a "Home" and "Away" team for Youngblood, a domestic and international group. The thing is, the international team is the only one that appears in Team Youngblood and they've been fighting Quantum all over the US. I don't think I've seen an explanation of what Shaft and his group have been doing during this.

Team Youngblood #8 - Quantum heads to DC to just smash stuff up and now it's up to four combined teams to punch him. Battlestone is being held prisoner by Quantum on the far side of the country so some of them go off to rescue him as "one of their own", the man who Youngblood hates because he murdered a team member, Bloodstrike has been paid to kill, and the New Men have no idea who he is.

As Quantum has literally burned down Washington DC and smashed all the monuments on the Mall, I finally get an answer to where everyone else is: the president is doing a reorg. So, you know, it'll be days to file the paperwork, especially when the paperwork is on fire.

Anyway, the team in California free, Battlestone, but the Brotherhood of Man is there, too...

Brigade #9 - ...And they rid of them by saying that they're going to fight Quantum. Also, Youngblood's Dutch is the guy who killed Battlestone so that's another thing he has going on.

There's a lot more punching Quantum and it turns out that Extreme has the Nu-Gene.

Bloodstrike #10 - In the final part of the crossover, Sentinel has invented a device to stop Quantum. Extreme changes sides with no explanation beyond the statement last issue that he has the Nu-Gene. And in this issue a hero(?) dies.

There's something I was going to mention because it's bothered me about all of the Extreme Studios books and it was heavily featured in all of these comics until this last issue: despite this massive fight scenes involving teams of heroes, nobody ever interacts in the fights. It's always picture of one character using their power (or shooting, or punching), then one picture of the target being affected. Teams never have plans, never assist each other, never take advantage of their variety of abilities. Until this issue where there's a plan involving several characters joining forces to try to get anti-Quantum device to work.

And, despite a lot of issues with unsatisfying fights, this one ended in a pretty satisfying way. Cabbot walks up to his dad, gets his chest blown apart, and then while Quantum is going, "My son!!" he zombies himself back up to attach the device.

On the other hand, one of the New Men refuses to stop Quantum as he gives his big Magneto speech about the prejudice of mankind because she won't turn on one of her own. One of her own that she didn't know she was one of until two days before and one of her own that is in the process of killing a hundred thousand people directly and possibly billions indirectly. But by god the X-men have moral complexity in their villains so the New Men need it too!


Next time, the Deathmate crossover ended five months ago but here comes Rob Liefeld's issue!

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

ASK ME ABOUT MY
UNITED STATES MARINES
FUNKO POPS COLLECTION



https://twitter.com/ScienceNerd616/status/1220985565685792769?s=20

Inkspot
Dec 3, 2013

I believe I have
an appointment.
Mr. Goongala?

Looking through all of this, Extreme put out roughly two issues a month, regardless of how much or how little Liefeld actually drew, its first two years. That's no small feat.

I know it's antithetical to how Image got started, BUT, if someone had been there to smack Rob on the wrist every time he went to crap out a "new" character or start yet another spinoff, instead encouraging him to further develop maybe ONE or TWO books at a time, help differentiate his characters, figure out at least a few issues' worth of story at a time... you know, basic editing work... is there even enough actual plot material to do a year's worth of comics?

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
You don't dare contain the creative genius at work

A Strange Aeon
Mar 26, 2010

You are now a slimy little toad
The Great Twist

Rhyno posted:

You don't dare contain the creative genius at work

It does seem to have shades of that "Design is Law" philosophy that doomed Duke Nukem Forever from ever getting released.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Rhyno posted:

You don't dare contain the creative genius at work
Especially because they envisioned the fat sacks of cash that would result from another Spawn-like breakout.

So yeah, have him draw up a dozen new characters, maybe one of them will be the IT thing.

And it's not like they gave a poo poo about writers. Teen Younblood has 86 characters now? Uh, guess it's time for Teen Angst, the event that will CHANGE Teen Youngblood forever! And in their new ongoing monthly, the NEW BLOODS take to Los Angeles!

FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 25, 2020

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Elsewhere it came up that Rob seems to have made a shitload of money off selling options for everything he ever created but nothing ever made it to screen. I still have trouble believing it because he bold face lied about being at the Matrix premier with Will Smith and how they were buddies and were going to make THE MARK into a film. It later came out that Smith had turned down the Matrix and it was highly unlikely that he'd have been unaware of the similarities.


So yeah, don't contain the genius.

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Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Inkspot posted:

Looking through all of this, Extreme put out roughly two issues a month, regardless of how much or how little Liefeld actually drew, its first two years. That's no small feat.

I know it's antithetical to how Image got started, BUT, if someone had been there to smack Rob on the wrist every time he went to crap out a "new" character or start yet another spinoff, instead encouraging him to further develop maybe ONE or TWO books at a time, help differentiate his characters, figure out at least a few issues' worth of story at a time... you know, basic editing work... is there even enough actual plot material to do a year's worth of comics?

I try to look a little bit ahead so that I can anticipate what's coming up. There's yet another new series coming up pretty soon along with an explosion of one shots, things that I'm pretty sure are intended for miniseries.

I don't think Liefeld's inability to stick with anything past two issues is a result of trying to hunt for the next big hit. I think it comes down to his creativity extending only to the general design and very loose concept for characters. I think that Liefeld's process was "This character looks like this, and they're tough as nails and have a big gun." I doubt that he could write a full paragraph about one of these characters, let alone plot out something that can last as a series. Without an editor sitting on him and saying, "Okay, now you have do something for this month's issue," he just wanders off to do something else once that shallow pool of ideas is expended. In 1994 in particular, he's happy to draw covers and pin-ups, spit out another character design, and then rake in the cash.

While Rob Liefeld has "Story" credits in almost all of these comics, I'm pretty dubious that he's actually writing anything. In fact, Extreme Studios seems to have been running on a worse version of the Marvel method where artists draw whatever for 22 pages and then they fill in some dialog balloons later. It was almost a year into the studio before they went, "Oh, maybe we should have something other than one fight scene in this comic!" And none of the artists are really skilled at graphical storytelling; that is a difficult skill to learn and none of them are even trying because this isn't an environment for that.

Something that you'll note is that by only reading the comics, I am missing huge chunks of things because the comics don't explain things. I'd need to be following the trading cards and reading the Wizard magazine interviews and getting the explanations from letter columns to tell me about these characters. Rather than telling me in the comics who Vogue is, I'm supposed to know already (Vogue picked out because I tried to figure out when I'd have to read her miniseries and I got information on her from the one sentence plot descriptions that was deeper than any of her appearances so far). It "works" (for certain low values of "works") with characters that have decades of history behind them, it doesn't for someone who appears in a handful of panels and might not have really done anything.

I will agree that once some people got in running the business side of Extreme studios, they managed to start putting out the series kind of regularly. They still missed months from time to time, but they have about six series that are coming out 9-12 times a year. None of these seem to have direct involvement from Liefeld. I suspect that this came about because of retailers revolting against Image's insane lateness problem. A convenient and widely used example that I'll talk about soon is Deathmate which should have shipped October 1993 and the Extreme Studios volume shipped April 1994. A comic book shop can't work with that.

Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jan 25, 2020

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