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back for yet more early Marvel comics, this one is going to be a bit painful; Strange Tales #101: so here we have the first of the Human Torch's solo comics(as the cover says "By Permission of The Fantastic Four Magazine") and well to say these comics are generally bad is a huge understatement, for whatever reason they move the action out of NYC to some fictional small town and try to retcon in Johnny Storm having to maintain a secret identity(though they at least acknowledged that previously he had friends who did know his identity) and it just doesn't work, like nothing on paper should indicate why these comics are so bad and no one element is especially awful it just all collides together into a steaming pile of mediocrity and weirdness Tales to Astonish #36: Hank Pym's second adventure as Ant Man is a fairly average story with moments of cleverness, I'll definitely be glad for when they stop hitting the "Communist Agent" well so often for villains though Journey Into Mystery #86: a fun little time travel tale for Thor to experience, meanwhile Donald Blake only appears for three panels at the very end of the story, it's amazing how obvious that they had no idea what to do with Thor's alter ego Strange Tales #102: this one is actually pretty decent for a solo Human Torch story, if mostly because The Wizard made for an interesting foe, unlike the previous issue the copy I have on hand has the other stories in this issue, but honestly they're nothing special Incredible Hulk #4: the tagline on the cover says "Fantasy As You Like It" and man is that a lie, this issue like pretty much this whole run(except issue 1) has been an exhibition of mediocrity, it becomes really obvious why Hulk's first comic only lasted six issues before getting canned
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Feb 13, 2021 09:38
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site posted:hey i didnt color it Maybe don't share racist fan art though. I'm sure it came from a place of love for the characters, but loving christ.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:47
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So is it me, or does Countdown make absolutely no sense? Why do you hate silver age Marvel comics so much?  Yeah, that's a not fun block of issues. I think Hulk #4 is the one where Hulk flies like the golden age Superman did, though! Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 14:19
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Random Stranger posted:So is it me, or does Countdown make absolutely no sense? It's not you! I think part of the issue is Morrison only gave DC a loose outline of what they were planning for Final Crisis, so editorial kinda just... guessed.
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Feb 13, 2021 14:22
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Gaz-L posted:It's not you! It definitely doesn't help that Countdown apparently ties into half the comics in the line so every issue I'm going, "I didn't see that. Did I skip an issue?"
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Feb 13, 2021 14:25
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The first ~300 issues of CMRO are a slog. The pacing of the stories is slow and they’re very much still in the figuring thing out stage. Just looked and my first 5 star rating doesn’t come up the 233rd issue. Good luck. I thought there was some decent stuff in around where you are though - Hulk gets better with 5 and 6, and you’re only 20 issues away from Spider-man getting a regular series. He’ll quickly become the best part of the marvel universe, along with Dr. Strange and (once Kirby comes back around issue 97) Thor.
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Feb 13, 2021 16:10
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My storage unit has a crate of absolutely terribad 90’s comics in it. Like, it contains a nontrivial amount of the run of Force Works and also the issue where it’s revealed spider man’s parents were CIA. If I made a thread about em: A)How much can I scan before I run afoul of rules? And B)Would anyone actually be interested in it? E:i ask in advance because it weighs easily, easily 120 pounds and that’s a lot of effort if no one is interested. Double e: if the trading cards are in there, those are super fun and I’ll at least bring the binders to scan. Ugly In The Morning fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 18:11
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Ugly In The Morning posted:My storage unit has a crate of absolutely terribad 90’s comics in it. Like, it contains a nontrivial amount of the run of Force Works and also the issue where it’s revealed spider man’s parents were CIA. If I made a thread about em: I think as long as you don't scan enough that it would be a decent replacement for reading the whole issue you're fine.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:35
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Gaz-L posted:It's not you! A clear-cut example: Grant Morrison requested a moratorium on using the New Gods anywhere for a year or so before Final Crisis #1, so when Orion shows up murdered in FC #1 it's a big shock/signal something big is going on. Like literally, in FC #1 there's an exchange between Hal Jordan and John Stewart: STEWART: You ever hear about 1011, Hal? Apparently it doesn't happen too often. JORDAN: 1011? Deicide? STEWART: Somebody just murdered a god on our watch. At which point they decide this is an all-hands on deck emergency that freaks out both the Guardians of the Universe and the Justice League. So knowing that, they decided to bring the New Gods back in a big way in the run-up to Final Crisis, systematically killing them off across Countdown and like a dozen other books, so you'd have a New God turning up dead or getting murdered just off panel literally 3-6 times every month, covers asking "which New God will die in this comic???" Which is the exact opposite of what Morrison asked for, and directly contradicts the idea that if one New God turned up dead in Gotham that anyone at all would be shocked or surprised, especially when the two guys who find the body were actually in many of the comics where they watched New Gods get murdered Also members of the Justice League and Green Lantern Corps were in the comic where the final battle of the New Gods took place, and Orion killed Darkseid (in Countdown to Final Crisis), as well as the final battle of the New Gods in Death of the New Gods, where The Source killed all of the New Gods except Darkseid, then brought back the ghost of Orion to kill Darkseid, then told Superman to go back to Earth to know that the Fourth World is dead and the Fifth World is coming. Again, Grant Morrison asked DC not to use the New Gods at all for a year or two so that Orion's death would be a big shock, and Darkseid and his crew emerging would be a second big surprise. This is how they responded. There are dozens of smaller examples of this, or of them taking concepts that had been kicking around entirely external to Final Crisis (Amazons Attack, Salvation Run) and just slamming them into the middle of Countdown. It's a very bad book for a multitude of reasons but "Grant Morrison didn't tell them what they wanted" is not one of them. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 18:39
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Skwirl posted:I think as long as you don't scan enough that it would be a decent replacement for reading the whole issue you're fine. ... I think posting the dumbest stuff of mid 90’s marvel without context would make it even funnier.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:39
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Gaz-L posted:It's not you! My favourite/most frustrating part of this is the Flash storyline where a bunch of rogues meet, discuss a vague big evil plan, then a few issues later we hear that the big evil plan went wrong. Wanna know what that big evil plan was and how it went wrong? Read Flash. This kind of plotting was done repeatedly.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:45
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Skwirl posted:Maybe don't share racist fan art though. I'm sure it came from a place of love for the characters, but loving christ. I didn't know, sorry
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Feb 13, 2021 19:19
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Jordan7hm posted:The first ~300 issues of CMRO are a slog. The pacing of the stories is slow and they’re very much still in the figuring thing out stage. I think doing it in these little 5 issue blocks will be a big help(especially since the versions I'm finding for a lot of these chop out the ads and the non canon stories so they end up being only like 15 pages an issue), especially as I'll usually be jumping between multiple books in each block Edge & Christian posted:From all acounts he gave them a pretty clear outline and they had the full script for the first issue or two of Final Crisis in hand and he had some specific requests, but for some reason DC editorial decided to ignore/contradict/just straight up misunderstand a bunch of those plot points. Due to that very little about Countdown or it's tie-ins ended up staying canon once Final Crisis actually came out, making it even more pointless to read
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Feb 13, 2021 21:18
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Madkal posted:My favourite/most frustrating part of this is the Flash storyline where a bunch of rogues meet, discuss a vague big evil plan, then a few issues later we hear that the big evil plan went wrong. Wanna know what that big evil plan was and how it went wrong? Read Flash. This kind of plotting was done repeatedly. The thing is that this is very intentional. Countdown being 52 "done right" was intended as the "backbone" of the DCU at the time of publishing, so you'd get bits and pieces of stories that vaguely tied into the not particularly interesting main plot, but if you actually wanted to read that story, you were expected to go pick up Flash or Teen Titans or whatever. Of course, this doesn't even work in practice, since there's definitely parts where for the timeline to make any sort of sense you'd have to read like half of a story from the previous week, pick up Countdown, then finish that story, then this week's Countdown.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:33
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It didn't even work when they tried it again later with Brightest Day, which also had a bunch of tie-ins as I recall. And the afterthought JLI series that ran in parallel only had one or two and worked much better.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:34
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The only thing I remember about Amazon Attacks is so I've got no clue why they're attacking on one page in Countdown, what happened, or why Amazons who just attacked Washington DC are running women's shelters in Gotham after it... Tying Countdown into everything just makes it totally unreadable. And yet here I am.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:43
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Random Stranger posted:The only thing I remember about Amazon Attacks is Oh that one I know, and the best part is they literally poo poo-canned a ton of groundwork Rucka had been laying for a conflict between the US and Themyscira for about 3 years (the well-known arc with Diana fighting Medusa has a subplot where Artemis and Phillipus are at the White House listening to the president give veiled threats to attack them unless they give up their technology like the purple ray and invisible jet) to have a terrible plot where the Amazons are all cartoon misandrists that murder men on sight and at the last second it's meant to tie in because SURPRISE it was because of Granny Goodness all along.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:50
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once more into the breach with the next block of early Marvel comics; Fantastic Four #8: the Puppet Master might just be the creepiest villain of the Silver Age and he also is one of the biggest assholes of the era(and considering that list includes literal Hitler that's really saying something), meanwhile Alicia Masters has a very strong debut as Marvel's purest soul, showing love even to someone as monstrous and hateful as her step-father(seriously he yells at her about her calling him father instead of step-father), overall a very strong issue Tales to Astonish #37: an okay little story but nothing special either Strange Tales #103: this one was an okay if kinda weird little dimensional jaunt for the Human Torch, again nothing special Fantastic Four #9: an excellent issue overall, the Fantastic Four going broke because of the Stock Market and then going to Hollywood to regain their fortune is a wonderfully silly premise and there's some great moments of both action and character building in this one, only negative is an awkward section where the Human Torch fights against an African Tribe that has not aged well one iota Journey Into Mystery #87: ugh this issue blew chunks, not only do we have another tired Red Menace plot it also highlights just how bad of a secret identity Donald Blake is, and how shallow Jane Foster as a love interest is
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Feb 14, 2021 00:26
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drrockso20 posted:Fantastic Four #9: an excellent issue overall, the Fantastic Four going broke because of the Stock Market and then going to Hollywood to regain their fortune is a wonderfully silly premise and there's some great moments of both action and character building in this one, only negative is an awkward section where the Human Torch fights against an African Tribe that has not aged well one iota There's a good argument to be made that FF #9 is the moment Marvel comics was truly born. AF 15 and earlier issues of FF were a bit offbeat, but a story all about how the superheroes have lost their home due to money issues is wildly different from anything before. And it was probably born from Lee and Kirby's own experiences with the financial destruction of Atlas.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:41
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drrockso20 posted:Fantastic Four #9: an excellent issue overall, the Fantastic Four going broke because of the Stock Market and then going to Hollywood to regain their fortune is a wonderfully silly premise and there's some great moments of both action and character building in this one, only negative is an awkward section where the Human Torch fights against an African Tribe that has not aged well one iota
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Feb 14, 2021 03:08
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drrockso20 posted:once more into the breach with the next block of early Marvel comics; I need to stop reading the bottom of a post before reading the rest of it.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:20
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Anyone knows where this panel is from? Morrison came out as nonbinary and uses "they/them" pronouns. Vincent fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 08:15
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Vincent posted:Anyone knows where this panel is from? Justice, which has several great Captain Marvel moments in it
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Feb 14, 2021 08:52
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drrockso20 posted:Justice, which has several great Captain Marvel moments in it Beautiful art, pretty weak story since Alex Ross isn't a great writer.
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Feb 14, 2021 13:01
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How Wonderful! posted:Bobby being gay was a huge fan thing in the aughts, the sort of thing that you'd see on scans_daily although as if with many interesting and enduring things from s_d it was in some ways an exercise in creative reading as much as anything else. I presume that most writers from at least Stan Lee through Louis Simonson with the slim possible exception of DeMatteis and Gillis were writing Iceman as a straight guy without giving it too much thought, but the theory was circulating for at least a few years before Bendis had him come out and it did have a fair bit of fan traction.  I thought it was a messed up homophobic joke at first, till I realized Iceman wasn't out at this time. It's still a messed up joke but it really does seem like Iceman has been the butt of these jokes a lot.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:28
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Random Stranger posted:Beautiful art, pretty weak story since Alex Ross isn't a great writer. It’s a weak Justice League story. It’s an amazing Super Friends story.
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Feb 15, 2021 05:45
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more Marvel Comics time; Tales to Astonish #38: the debut of Egghead, actually a really fun story as the majority of it takes place from his perspective rather than Ant Man's Incredible Hulk #5: so besides the fact that the second story in this issue is racist as hell there's also the fact that the Hulk as a character just does not work at all, at this point he's just an abrasive rear end in a top hat and not a funny or interesting one either Journey Into Mystery #88: Loki returns in this story that's fun but nothing super special Strange Tales #104: the introduction of possibly the doofiest villain of the entire Silver Age; Paste Pot Pete, in spite of that the story treats him as a serious foe for Human Torch to deal with and he's surprisingly competent for a villain of this era too, Human Torch manages to stop his plans but he manages to get away to freedom, setting him up as a recurrent foe of Johnny Storm, actually pretty decent story overall, the other two stories in this issue(for once the non-Human Torch stories were present in the scan I found) were kinda goofy and not too great Fantastic Four #10: while Marvel has done some meta bits before this issue(see Reed using pinups of monsters from the monster comics in #2 to scare the Skrull Armada or Johnny reading a Hulk comic a couple issues ago) but this issue went heavy duty on it by having Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the Marvel Comics offices appear directly in the story and play a major role in it, once again an excellent issue
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Feb 15, 2021 07:58
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Gaz-L posted:It's not you! also whatever attempts at coordination there were between Morrison and the countdown writers just made things messier hence you have Mary Marvel turning evil, being redeemed, then turning evil again near the end of the series and Earth-51 (Nix Uotan's Earth) being destroyed, recreated, and then destroyed again
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Feb 15, 2021 21:24
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Hey, spoilers! Just kidding. Countdown is already spoiled. I think I've come to understand the biggest problem with Countdown. It's all bridging scenes. All telling, no showing. It's scenes of people talking about things that just happened in another book, then setting up what will happen next. Since all of the important story beats happen in other comics, there's no story for Countdown itself. 51 issues of wheel spinning.
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Feb 15, 2021 21:50
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https://twitter.com/ComicBookHerald/status/1361333223150809098?s=20
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Feb 16, 2021 06:33
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Planet Money did an episode about trying to buy Doorman from Marvel. Also has an interview with Alex Segura of Archie. https://overcast.fm/+YsPQDOUAI
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Feb 16, 2021 19:28
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FoneBone posted:
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Feb 16, 2021 20:07
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The letterer deserves a lot of credit there, the repeated sound effects add a lot, because otherwise you'd think she only smacked Wonder Woman with him once. e: Oh wait, that's Donna, right? Well, she was Wonder Woman for 5 minutes in Heinberg's run, so I'm technically not wrong! Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 22:09
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Endless Mike posted:Planet Money did an episode about trying to buy Doorman from Marvel. Also has an interview with Alex Segura of Archie. Leave the GLA alone! (It actually kind of bothers me that they treat a joke character as a serious one...)
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Feb 17, 2021 01:37
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I've seen a few derails recently asking about what the state of the comics medium was in the 90s, if it was really that bad, etc., and it made me realize how avidly I like to come to that vexed decade's defense whenever this issue pops up. Would people read/post in a thread exclusively about gems of the 90s? Maybe it could be a rotating things where we cherish and adore various decades at different times. I get defensive about my sweet baby 90s and would love an opportunity to wax rhapsodic about Naughty Bits or whatever.
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Feb 18, 2021 15:23
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Personally I'd be more interested in a thread showcasing Bloodwulf and Web-man type stuff. You don't know how bad it is until you see it for yourself.
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Feb 18, 2021 15:32
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How Wonderful! posted:I've seen a few derails recently asking about what the state of the comics medium was in the 90s, if it was really that bad, etc., and it made me realize how avidly I like to come to that vexed decade's defense whenever this issue pops up. As much as I post anywhere else, yes
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Feb 18, 2021 16:37
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I think it would be an interesting thread I would like to participate in, though it would also run the risk of just turning into "Post Bad Comics Art II: image dumps of unsourced Image parodies" and one-liners.
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Feb 18, 2021 16:42
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Bad 90s art: post more liefeld
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Feb 18, 2021 16:45
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I would want it to be more of an appreciation of good comics but I guess I can't account for taste. Like I think just posting crummy splash-pages is deeply boring but on the other hand I've seen people like Michael Fiffe do really eye-opening re-appraisals of 90s pencilers who used to get lumped into that post-Image coterie so I suppose an honest encomium on Tom Tenney could be cool.
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Feb 18, 2021 16:46
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