Ennis gets shit on frequently but I really like his work. Preacher is in my top 5 comic book series, would definitely recommend. The Boys is good but I think you've got to be in the right mind-set to read it, it feels very much like a product of its time but in a good way.
This comic depicted what DC comics should do about the amazon island: crazy women using drugs to rape men and get numbers, sacrificing the ones who are men.
This comic depicted what DC comics should do about the amazon island: crazy women using drugs to rape men and get numbers, sacrificing the ones who are men.
I think it was edgy retard Brian Azzarello who tried something like that with Wonder Woman but everyone hated it because having your most popular female super hero come from an island of rapists is retarded. Not everything has to be grimdark.
So there is going to be a new Defenders series, and the team will consist of America Chavez (because Marvel is trying to make her next Wolverine and shoving her in every team) and Galactus' mom (no, seriously).
Supposedly they will be bringing The Beyonder back, for reasons I cannot understand. After everyone fought The Beyonders (grown, fully powered versions of him) in the 2015 Secret Wars series, where else is there to go?
My money is that it will be a fake, just like in the BEYOND! miniseries.
BTW - go read that. It's fucking great and makes you care about D list characters like Firebird, Gravity, and Medusa.
Ennis gets shit on frequently but I really like his work. Preacher is in my top 5 comic book series, would definitely recommend. The Boys is good but I think you've got to be in the right mind-set to read it, it feels very much like a product of its time but in a good way.
I like his punisher work and Jennifer blood was the perfect mix of action and comedy (naked husband showing up at his wife's front door in nothing but a latex top, boots and gimp mask was my first issue of the series and i had to find out the context behind it) If you told me JB took place in the same universe as kick ass and I knew next to nothing about comics aside the movies I'd believe it. never read preacher before but i heard its good. The boys however falls into that trap a lot of comics in the early 2000's post 90s era fall into.
They were written by writers who seemed to hate superheroes and shit on them every chance they got, whether it was Mark Millar with the authority or wanted, or Ennis with the boys. Like you said, product of its time and that time was not kind to superheroes, and it does require the right mindset to read it.
Anyways on a lighter note I think i found the reason they made Iceman gay, if that's still a thing.
From uncanny x-men 139 in 1980 by the way. and apparently its a remake of what happened in the very first x-men comic 17 years prior
I really enjoy Pokemon Adventures (Pocket Monsters Special in Japan). I know it's a series for kids, but I still like it. It's action-packed, surprisingly dark at times for a children's series, the characters and plots are good (and renewed every few volumes, so they don't outstay their welcome), and the art is really nice.
Plus, if you're reading the Viz version, you get some hilarious censorship edits (uncensored Singapore translation first, censored Viz translation second):
I really enjoy Pokemon Adventures (Pocket Monsters Special in Japan). I know it's a series for kids, but I still like it. It's action-packed, surprisingly dark at times for a children's series, the characters and plots are good (and renewed every few volumes, so they don't outstay their welcome), and the art is really nice.
Plus, if you're reading the Viz version, you get some hilarious censorship edits (uncensored Singapore translation first, censored Viz translation second):
I agree, Pokemon Adventures is one of the things that got me into comics back when I was a kid. I like how it's a familiar story in which it follows the path of the games, but it still does it's own thing and isn't afraid to branch off if it wants. Really it's Pokemon at its best in my opinion.
This comic depicted what DC comics should do about the amazon island: crazy women using drugs to rape men and get numbers, sacrificing the ones who are men.
I'm not into porn comics but I wish comics could just depict sex and nudity like films do. I don't need to see close-ups of the roast beef of old England, but showing tits and dick where it makes sense is just good storytelling. If you're in a brothel, there's supposed to be titties. If your hero is the modern equivalent to a Greek god, his dick is going to be out because that's what gods do.
He was the youngest of the team and a real goofball. That's why he would always team up with the Human Torch and Spider-Man. Back when comics had older heroes and younger heroes instead of everyone being the "old guard" for an increasingly diverse cast of new-and-forgettables, this was a thing. So Iceman was pretending to not be interested in girls in the same way your 13-year-old kid acts like you're a retard for asking him if he's interested in a girl. He's bashful, unsure of himself, plays it off like everyone else is weird.
Nowadays that's immediately diagnosed as homosexuality if not outright transgenderism. In more ordinary times it just meant you had some growing up to do.
They've been fucking him up for a long time though. Operation: Zero Tolerance was in the 90s and despite a cool edgy 90s design he's stuck protecting a useless nigger from a bunch of white supremacist sentinels. Sure, they weren't overt with it, but the trends were in place even back then.
I'm not into porn comics but I wish comics could just depict sex and nudity like films do. I don't need to see close-ups of the roast beef of old England, but showing tits and dick where it makes sense is just good storytelling. If you're in a brothel, there's supposed to be titties. If your hero is the modern equivalent to a Greek god, his dick is going to be out because that's what gods do.
I think this is more of an american problem, you guys can put ultra violent shit in your media, but the moment a nipple appear it is 18+. European usually can see the human body and differentiate between nudity and sex per se, americans can't.
I still cant deal with the fact that you guys censor pieces of art and statues on TV reports
To anyone saying comics didn't used to be political let me point you to amazing Spiderman 91 the issue published immediately after Captain Stacy died. and the character Sam Bullitt
It's not overtly obvious but given this issue was published in 1970 during the Nixon Administration, but Sam is clearly meant to a stand in for Nixon. Peter even compares him to Hitler a few pages later no joke.
To anyone saying comics didn't used to be political let me point you to amazing Spiderman 91 the issue published immediately after Captain Stacy died. and the character Sam Bullitt
View attachment 3101490
It's not overtly obvious but given this issue was published in 1970 during the Nixon Administration, but Sam is clearly meant to a stand in for Nixon. Peter even compares him to Hitler a few pages later no joke.
Can comics be political? Yes. Captain America is an obvious example.
Does it have to be in all of them? No.
Spider-Man is not a political character and shoving in politics leads to unnecessary, pointless shit like the above that aged poorly. That Nixon stand-in wasn't needed because we already had J Jonah Jameson as a old man with a hard-on against Spidey.
But thanks for letting us know that ORANGE MAN NIXON BAD, Marvel.
The comic version of The Boys is worse than the TV show. Butcher is the most reviled and unlikable comic characters of the last twenty years and he never gets his comeuppence and gets everything he want in the end. Even Mockingbird, Riri, Carol Danvers, and America Chavez at their most toxic can't hold a candle to Butcher. A character who might as well be Garth Ennis's most toxic Marty Stu power fantasy.
The only good thing is the twist where
outside the rape of Starlight and the murder of a family who won a dinner with him, Homelander was gaslit into his descent into villainy by Black Noir and the arc about the X-Men as a pedophile cult that the corporation behind the Seven straight up MASSACRE when they find out about it
I like Millar sometimes but he's overrated. I still think the Ultimates 1/2 is one of the best marvel comics of the 2000s, but a lot of that is more time and place and the fact they let him do some pretty wild shit alternate universe or not. not all of it works, the horny hulk thing is horrible dialogue but I think there's a lot of good ideas in that series, particularly I think it somehow strikes the perfect balance of it's readable as both a satire of bush post 9/11 america, and also as some AMERICA FUCK YEAH action movie shlock. I generally think he's at his best when he's doing actual superhero shit and not edgelord bullshit. His Superman was always pretty good, I liked that Buck Rodgers pastiche, all his work with Morrison in the 90s, shit like that. I like Kick Ass well enough but it came out when I was actually 13 and a lot of his work, going back to it it's obvious that was his target audience. Ennis has always had a more consistent balance between edgelord and more straightforward work that I think speaks to his superior writing chops in general. Millar also seems to generally have interesting ideas but executed like shit, and Ennis tends to have more layered execution. A plot synopsis of Punsiher Max arcs could probably sound like Millaresque shock comics but the actual book, for the most part is actually a pretty layered series.
The only good stuff Millar did on the Ultimates was Ultimate War and Grand Theft America. Sadly, Ultimate War isn't in any Ultimate collection series (it's officially part of the Ultimate X-Men trade line, even though the story only exists to keep the Ultimates front and center after Ultimates lost all semblance of a monthly release schedule after the first arc and can't be reconciled with the second Ultimates V1 arc).
Ultimates is a HUGE lost oppertunity as it came out with MASSIVE gaps between appearances, featured asshole versions of the entire main cast, brought the bullshit "Hank the wifebeater" crap back to the forefront, and utterly squandered the potential of doing an Ulitmate Avengers team especially given that the only "name" villains we got were Crimson Dynamo and an off-brand version of Abomination.
I like his punisher work and Jennifer blood was the perfect mix of action and comedy (naked husband showing up at his wife's front door in nothing but a latex top, boots and gimp mask was my first issue of the series and i had to find out the context behind it) If you told me JB took place in the same universe as kick ass and I knew next to nothing about comics aside the movies I'd believe it. never read preacher before but i heard its good. The boys however falls into that trap a lot of comics in the early 2000's post 90s era fall into.
They were written by writers who seemed to hate superheroes and shit on them every chance they got, whether it was Mark Millar with the authority or wanted, or Ennis with the boys. Like you said, product of its time and that time was not kind to superheroes, and it does require the right mindset to read it.
Anyways on a lighter note I think i found the reason they made Iceman gay, if that's still a thing. View attachment 3072983
From uncanny x-men 139 in 1980 by the way. and apparently its a remake of what happened in the very first x-men comic 17 years prior View attachment 3072992
That wasn't the reason, that was something people referenced/misinterpreted after the fact. The whole "Bobby is gay" shit started when Scott Lobdell had Emma Frost fling some homophobic slurs at Bobby in Uncanny X-Men when Bobby confronted Emma for hijacking his body. Emma's homophobic comments, which she claimed came from when Bobby and her minds crossed as part of her possessing his body, were taken as gospel by CBR who then took Bobby's lack of interest in Jean as "sign" that he was a closet case.
Also, the bullshit with them rewriting Bobby as always being gay recently popped up in the recent Sabretooth mini where they outright engage in full-on continuity denial not seen since Marvel explicitly and purposely mislabeled a Venom mini-series in a foot note because the story they didn't want to reference was one where Venom met Ben Reilly, by way of saying that Bobby and Opal (his asian girlfriend) NEVER EVER fucking dated and ALL stories involving Opal in X-Factor and Uncanny X-Men and post-Whedon/Ellis Astonishing X-Men involved Angel. Even though Angel, at the time, was dating a black police officer.
I think it was edgy retard Brian Azzarello who tried something like that with Wonder Woman but everyone hated it because having your most popular female super hero come from an island of rapists is retarded. Not everything has to be grimdark.
Sadly they liked it enough to not only have Donna Troy (in the story that introduced her to the New 52) MASSACRE the male Amazon rape babies after Diana freed them from slavery and forced her sisters to give them half of the island (with Donna's New 52 origin being that she was outright created by WW's fellow Amazons BECAUSE they were pissed off that WW took over the island and banned rape and selling male children into slavery and wanted to replace her with Donna, who would allow rape and enslavement of male children to resume) but, when Rebirth happened and they used that event to explicitly erase the entire New 52 Wonder Woman from canon complete with plot point that WW never returned to Paradise Island after leaving it, David Finch's wife (who wrote the story where Donna killed the male Amazons) threw a MASSIVE, MASSIVE hissy fit that her run was being outright erased. And since DC wanted to keep Tom King happy and Tom King wanted Finch to keep drawing Batman stuff for him, the writer of Rebirth Titans (who had explicitly used Rebirth and Titans Hunt to restore Donna to her pre-Crisis backstory) was forced to EXPLICITLY restore Donna's villain origin and mass murder of the male Amazons (and Wonder Woman's hatred for Donna for it) while at the same time, explicitly banning the writer from referring to it/forcing MORE retcons to WW's backstory so that the male Amazon massacre happened EARLIER in her career (even though it was impossible to do it in the Rebirth origin) and that Zeus pulled an audible on Diana and "rewrote Donna's memories to give her the "Who Is Donna Troy" backstory" to explain away references to it and making Donna's future self turn out to be a genocidal maniac that got forced upon the writer when he was banned from using Doctor Manhattan as the villainous mastermind behind all of the bad shit the Titans were facing at the time.
Man I loved Ultimates, sure the “heroes are shitheads” is overdone now but I really like how Ultimates did it, the twists (at the start) were clever.
Cap actually acting like a man from his time period was kino and his conflict with modern culture/survivor’s guilt made him very interesting and really sad to read, like the saddest Cap has ever been. He is alone, in a wholly unique and unrelatable way.
Tony acts like a man who has been a privileged hedonist for the entirety of his adult life, who got a brutal reality check with an inoperable brain tumour. He’s a deviant for sure, but he’s determined to do some measure of good before he goes.
Thor is a hippie, self-help guru who claims to be a god, and is treated like an absolute lunatic by his teammates. The irony is that he is the nicest man in the team and neatly balances the political trinity set up with Cap and Tony.
Black Widow being an actual villain was also a clever twist, cause you the reader are so accustomed to her being the “redeemed Bond girl” that you don’t notice her latching onto the clinically depressed rich dude because “muh alternate universe.”
Then she goes and murders Jarvis, the Bartons and reveals that she was the mole for the Liberators.
@MirrorNoir : "The comic version of The Boys is worse than the TV show. Butcher is the most reviled and unlikable comic characters of the last twenty years and he never gets his comeuppence and gets everything he want in the end."
Didn't he end up losing control of the team and then die of a broken neck at the end, and then it turned out his vendetta was again the wrong guy because it was someone else that had raped his wife?
