Sperg about comic books here

[Detrogen]

A friend of mine insisted I borrow his Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 1. I’ve just gotten up to the prison. So far most of the changes the show made from the book were for the worse. The main exception being keeping Shane around a bit longer.

There’s a bit more to the relationships in the book and that certain characters don’t just stick around for-fucking-ever makes people leaving the main group actually come as a surprise.

It’s a long ass book, so it’ll be a while before I finish, but this is the most I’ve enjoyed zombies in a good long while.

 

[Liquid Kent]

Fuck yeah.

 

[Commander X]

Grant Morrison is quietly and oh so subtly letting his feelings about the recent state of affairs in the DC universe be known in his "Green Lantern: Blackstars" miniseries. Covered, no doubt are Tom King's storylines, the DARK MULTIVERSE nonsense, Scott Snyder's Justice League, those who are unable to characterize Wonder Woman as anything besides 'angry warrior lady with a sword', etc.

 

[Detrogen]

Grant Morrison’s GL run was a nice refresher from the doom and gloom of DC’s other recent books. I enjoyed Doomsday Clock, Dark Nights Metal, and even some aspects of Heroes in Crisis, but I wouldn’t say Morrison is wrong to think DC should take a break from cataclysmic mega-events.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

While I agree with Morrison there (my favorite Batman era is the '80s and '90s, where the stories largely focused on street-level crime and the weirdest reoccurring villain was Man-Bat) I don't think he has much room to talk. It was undoubtedly his million part Final Crisis super epic and the Death of Batman event with a time-traveling Bruce Wayne that kick started this current era of supernatural, sci-fi focused stories.

 

[Commander X]

The stories that get the big push and advertising now at DC are ones like Heroes in Crisis where everyone's depressed and has mental health issues and goes to secret superhero therapy then somebody snaps and kills everyone for no reason, or Scott Snyder's Justice League which is just boring "big fights" with the latest 3dgy evil god villain or the EVIL MULTIVERSE where every world is in a permanent bad end state and the heroes just barely surviving and containing that darkness is treated like some great hopeful victory. It's just all depressive and boring and sad because no one in charge knows what to do with these characters anymore or cares about the sense of wonder they used to carry. Morrison's GL at least looks great and is crazy without all the lame depressing stuff.

Especially the EEEEEVIL MULTIVERSE, which is the worst thing I've read a summation of. What if there was a Batman who was also the Joker so he's a brilliant strategist AND crazy and he does a whole lotta killin', isn't that like DARK and RAW and stuff?!? What if...Punisher Batman? What if there was an evil version of THE FLASH called...(sighs)...Red Death? It's not just "edgy" it's the most boring sort of "edgy".

 

[Detrogen]

Reading Dark Nights Metal was like staring into the abyss. It was very incomprehensible to someone who likes comics. I couldn’t even imagine how it reads to someone who doesn’t. The Batman Who Laughs is an incredibly lame villain. He’s just the Joker but with ridiculously detailed plans on the same scale as Tom King’s current Bane story. Somehow he’s dragging Bruce Wayne’s from alternate universes into the main universe to kill them (a ‘la Moonshade in the Moon Knight Infinity Gauntlet tie-in story) for seemingly no reason. I don’t know if he wants to kill Batman, replace him, or just corrupt him or whatever. Now he has a super duper Joker mind control toxin that can effect superhumans like Captain Marvel and Supergirl. He’s DC’s Knull right now basically. He’s the most baddest bad that ever badded, and it’s all very tiresome.

Complaining about The Batman Who Laughs aside, Dark Nights Metal did spawn the whole New Age of Heroes line which was fantastic (I particularly enjoyed Curse of Brimstone), as well as the current Flash Forward miniseries and Tales From the Dark Multiverse which is basically a very dour take on Marvel’s “What if” books. It’s such a shame the New Age of Heroes stuff did poorly. It was probably the least grim corner of the DC universe at the time and we could do more with stuff like that.

 

[Affluent Reptilian]

Grant Morrison is quietly and oh so subtly letting his feelings about the recent state of affairs in the DC universe be known in his "Green Lantern: Blackstars" miniseries. Covered, no doubt are Tom King's storylines, the DARK MULTIVERSE nonsense, Scott Snyder's Justice League, those who are unable to characterize Wonder Woman as anything besides 'angry warrior lady with a sword', etc.

I kind of agree but on the other hand Morrison has such a track record of being up his own ass with metatextualism that my gut response is still 'Fuck off Grant Morrison' (when he writes straight-up cape stuff he's pretty good tho).

 

[Cyber Bowling]

I like the Dark Multiverse as a "what if" series of stories, but trying to tie it into a main story isn't particularly interesting, especially since we had "Forever Evil" with the evil Earth-3 JL counterparts not too long ago. The Batman Who Laughs always struck me as fanfic tier writing, even in terms of comic writing. It also seems like a largely unnecessary decision, because a Batman infected by the Joker isn't really different from just using the normal version of the Joker. Even having it straight up being Bruce Wayne isn't particularly interesting since the idea of Joker being a dark mirror of Batman has been used plenty of times in comics, so there's no need for a literal mirror. Now that I'm thinking about it, there was even a similar Joker event, where he thought he was dying so he decided to go out with a bang and infected a bunch of DC characters.

I think DC's biggest problem is just trying to drag things out too much with no room to breath. That means the big things they want to feel epic are just kinda lackluster and becoming "average". I was much more interested in the two issue arc of Superman going to the fair with his wife and kid than the 30+ issues of Bane declaring he broke Batman or Lex doing...whatever he is doing, or having some dark multiverse villain appearing in the main universe to be evil for the sake of being evil.

 

[Affluent Reptilian]

I like the Dark Multiverse as a "what if" series of stories

Yeah. Having the occasional Ruins-esque (still love that comic, and Ruins v2 is up there with Twilight of the Superheroes for comics I'd like to see but won't happen) mini with the imprint would be cool - kind of how they have the Tales of the Dark Multiverse oneshots going on now. But integrating it should be done with care. Although what I found more odd with Dark Metal was all this weird shit I'd never heard of - Batmanium? Barbatos (and not the Books of Magick Barbatos)? Divine metals? What the fuck is this shit? It was really esoteric and felt clumsy... Batmanium was the worst offender.

 

[Water-T]

Complaining about The Batman Who Laughs aside, Dark Nights Metal did spawn the whole New Age of Heroes line which was fantastic (I particularly enjoyed Curse of Brimstone), as well as the current Flash Forward miniseries and Tales From the Dark Multiverse which is basically a very dour take on Marvel’s “What if” books. It’s such a shame the New Age of Heroes stuff did poorly. It was probably the least grim corner of the DC universe at the time and we could do more with stuff like that.

The Dark Multiverse What If books were pretty good and took turns I didn't expect. The New Age books that I enjoyed were The Terrifics, Sideways, and The Silencer. I tried to get into the other books but they just didn't grab me.

 

[Detrogen]

The Dark Multiverse What If books were pretty good and took turns I didn't expect. The New Age books that I enjoyed were The Terrifics, Sideways, and The Silencer. I tried to get into the other books but they just didn't grab me.

I still haven’t read Terrifics, but I heard it was good. I read a single issue of Sideways and decided I’ll pick up the paperbacks at some point since it seemed a lot weirder and more interesting than its “Spider-Man in the DC Universe” premise gave off. I liked Silencer on an issue-by-issue basis but will probably never read it again.

As far as the books that just did not grab me at all, Immortal Men had one of the most dull first issues I’ve ever read. I have almost the whole series but I doubt I’ll finish it. Then there’s Damage, which is literally just the Hulk.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

They say good writing can save a comic with bad art, but have there been times where the art in a comic was so bad that it kept you from reading/enjoying it? I really liked the Jem reboot comic, but when they got this artist it hurt my enjoyment that I stopped reading the series until they got rid of the artist.
View attachment 1007361

The more I look at this shit, the more I'm sure I've already seen this style somewhere else, probably in an old webcomic a few years ago. Who's the artist? I tried to do an image research and I found nothing.

 

[Hummingbird]

The more I look at this shit, the more I'm sure I've already seen this style somewhere else, probably in an old webcomic a few years ago. Who's the artist? I tried to do an image research and I found nothing.

The no-talent artist is Meredith McClaren.

 

[Where Do You Find Them?]

Just read the first volume of the new Hellblazer:

Pretty shitty all in all. It's just missing the feel of it. They censor the swearing for sakes. I don't mind swamp thing showing up occasionally. He fits with the Hellblazer world, but only as a rarity. Women fucking woman shouldn't be showing up at all. It just tramples on the themes to be reminded that they live in the same world. It's meant to be gritty and present an illusion that maybe this is our world. Being reminded that superman is busy fighting alien invasions right now just shits on that.

More importantly Constantine just didn't feel like Constantine. He's got the wisecracks and the trenchcoat and the cigarettes but no undercurrent of desperation. He doesn't feel like he's constantly in way over his head and the bravado is just a facade. Even more importantly, Chas wasn't Chas. He's meant to be a no-nonsense taxi driver who does not want magic in his life. Upon finding swamp thing growing in his greenhouse he should be hoofing John out on the streets with a warning not to come back, not cheerily giving swamp thing a lift . For some reason every adaptation of Hellblazer gets Chas totally wrong and he's so essential for keeping everything grounded.

All in all I'm giving it methadone/10. It's clearly not the real deal but I'm jonesing bad so I'll probably keep reading.

Edit: Just finished the second volume:

Terrible. Like god awful. It just stops. I'm hesitant to say it ends because there's no ending. I opened the next volume and was very confused when a new story started. Got about 50 pages in wondering when we were going to get back to the "main plot" before checking that I hadn't missed an issue or something, but nope, that's how it is. It just kinda stops right where you'd expect the climax of the piece to be. Theoretically the bad guy is about to take over the world and nobody is trying to stop him but somehow I get the feeling we're never going to hear of it again. Total letdown.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

The no-talent artist is Meredith McClaren.

Thanks!

Edit: more or less ten years ago, there was a Sailor Moon webcomic AU running on Deviantart, it was called Tenth Charm, where all the senshi looked inexplicably dark-skinned like Sailor Pluto, and three of them were adoptive sisters (there was a lot of child neglect going on in the story).

The artist signed the pages as Kae, but that Jem comic by that Meredith Mclaren has a similar style, keeping in mind that the artist could evolve (or devolve).

 

[sKr0n]

The stories that get the big push and advertising now at DC are ones like Heroes in Crisis where everyone's depressed and has mental health issues and goes to secret superhero therapy then somebody snaps and kills everyone for no reason, or Scott Snyder's Justice League which is just boring "big fights" with the latest 3dgy evil god villain or the EVIL MULTIVERSE where every world is in a permanent bad end state and the heroes just barely surviving and containing that darkness is treated like some great hopeful victory. It's just all depressive and boring and sad because no one in charge knows what to do with these characters anymore or cares about the sense of wonder they used to carry. Morrison's GL at least looks great and is crazy without all the lame depressing stuff.

Especially the EEEEEVIL MULTIVERSE, which is the worst thing I've read a summation of. What if there was a Batman who was also the Joker so he's a brilliant strategist AND crazy and he does a whole lotta killin', isn't that like DARK and RAW and stuff?‽ What if...Punisher Batman? What if there was an evil version of THE FLASH called...(sighs)...Red Death? It's not just "edgy" it's the most boring sort of "edgy".

The worst part about The Batman who Laughs is that he is the logical conclusion of the Batgod mentality, where writers are either so insecure about Batman's place on the JL or think he is just that cool that gods and cosmic entities job to him on the regular. To the point where Batman is the apex predator in the DCU and obviously the apex villain would just be a evil Batman. The rest is history and just like the regular Batman, the BwL shows up where he does not belong either and well overstays his welcome(He was/will be central to two crises in two years and has popped up in a plethora of other books ruining there first arc in Batman/Superman, which will hurt the sales of the book).

And let's not even get started on what inspired the design...


and then the whole story he debuted in about evil twisted versions of the MC coming from a evil dark world to fuck everything up

 

[Detrogen]

If The Batman Who Laughs wasn’t so lanky to make him more visually similar to the Joker, I think he’d have more appeal. If he stayed totally shredded like every other Batman, he might be more imposing. The Joker’s mentality with Batman’s physicality. As he is right now visually, he just looks like Joker in a Penance costume.

Also, of course in Scott Snyder’s other book Last Knight on Earth we now have (I assume) an evil clone of Batman who stole Darkseid’s powers named “Omega”. DC needs to really take a break from all these high concept, original Batman ideas. Other comic companies need room to breathe.

 

[Water-T]

Well, tomorrow is when the last issue of Doomsday Clock finally drops (a year late), and Tom King's 85 issue run of sucking off Bane comes to a close. I don't know which one I will end up being disappointed by more.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Well, tomorrow is when the last issue of Doomsday Clock finally drops (a year late), and Tom King's 85 issue run of sucking off Bane comes to a close. I don't know which one I will end up being disappointed by more.

Doomsday Clock, if only because, unlike a Tom King comic, you actually expect it to have some semblance of quality. The original Watchmen built up to an epic confrontation between our heroes and Veidt on his moon base. Doomsday Clock builds up to nothing and ends with a disappointing whimper.

In the thrilling conclusion to our storyline, Dr. Manhattan praises Superman for 20 pages before

Spoiler

kidnapping a child and imbuing it with his power.

What did it all mean? Nothing! What role did any of the characters play? None at all! The whole thing was just multiverse porn for continuity-obsessed dweebs like Geoff Johns. What a fucking waste of time.