Sperg about comic books here

[Nick Obre]

I think maybe I liked one of his early story arcs with John stuck at a diner in blizzard but even that had John gleefully watching someone commit suicide and ultimately acting like Spawn, dishing out judgment from the shadows.

Fuck me, that brought it all back. I remember liking Hard Time, the prison story, and yeah, Freezes Over, the blizzard story.
But the one I really liked, and which I think colored the whole memory of the run in my mind, was the first issue of Good Intentions, the one where he's hitchhiking and runs into some killers and talks them into going off a cliff.
But only that first issue, the rest of the arc is the pornographers bit and that's really bad. So is the thing with the guy who's Not Bruce Wayne.

The thing about Azzarello's run is that, well, John and Hellblazer are so intrinsically British, and he's got him doing a road trip through Americana. Not to say John can't work outside of Britain, but he takes him and for much of the run he plays him more as a haunting presence than a character. And when he pulls him down to be a character, he's... getting drugged by rednecks and forced to fuck a dog, or becoming the BDSM boyfriend of a rich guy as part of one of his schemes.
Gives a bit of a whiplash.

 

[Commander X]

Recently came into possession of the IDW collection of Walt Simonson's Star Slammers, which developed from an early concept that he created for his college thesis at the Rhode Island School of Design, which he returned to for one of those original Marvel Graphic Novels they published back in the 1980s, as well as the 1990s mini-series published by Malibu. This is truly among the types of comics they don't really make 'em like anymore.

Once upon a time, there was a race of men who could out-shoot, out-fight, and out-kill anybody. They were paid fabulous sums to act as mercenaries. The practice became so lucrative, they decided to go into business. They became the most successful businessmen in history, and they called themselves...The Star Slammers!

Spoiler

 

[Mississippi Motorboater]

I like Morrison's X-Men in a vacuum. like if that was essentially what ultimate X-Men was or it was just some other out of continuity whatever I liked the majority of the broad strokes of the ideas. however in context literally nobody in the whole run is really in character.

That's honestly what turns me off about most of Morrison's work. He always puts his own ideas before the characters...completely disregarding their personalities or proper relationships/dynamics. Everything's open season for his reckless creative impulses, which makes his work a no-go for anyone who isn't predisposed to like everything he does for the sheer novelty of being "different" or "2Deep4U" cerebral. And what gets me is that he does this everywhere he goes. His Batman doesn't feel like Batman. His Judge Dredd doesn't feel like Judge Dredd. He doesn't write Marvel or DC or 2000 AD comics. He writes Grant Morrison comics, for himself and for the crowd of blind fanboys predisposed to like anything he writes, regardless of how much continuity or characterization he breaks in the process.

Again, if any other writer with a far less overhyped reputation did this, they would be crucified by comic book readers. But because Morrison belongs to that elite circle of pretentious British talent who confuse acid-trip ideas for intellectual genius, he gets a free pass.

As someone who tends to love Morrison he's always just been a bad fit for anything Marvel because he didn't grow up reading it

Tbh, after Final Crisis and whatever the fuck the Bat Saga was supposed to be, I'm not so sure he's a good fit for DC either...and that's a stable of heroes he proports to have grown up reading.

He's stated multiple times that he's a die-hard fan of the Silver Age incarnations of these characters and stories...which might go a long way in explaining why so much of his work reads like incomprehensible ass-pulls in the true Silver Age tradition.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Tbh, after Final Crisis and whatever the fuck the Bat Saga was supposed to be, I'm not so sure he's a good fit for DC either...and that's a stable of heroes he proports to have grown up reading.

He's stated multiple times that he's a die-hard fan of the Silver Age incarnations of these characters and stories...which might go a long way in explaining why so much of his work reads like incomprehensible ass-pulls in the true Silver Age tradition.

Morrison is a fucking faggot and the only thing hes written which is remotely good is either Zenith or the Invisibles which only reach the heights of okay at best in hindsight. Even the Adventures of Hitler isnt even that good despite the fucking premise. Serious House on Serious Earth is good if youre willing to consider it a field trip to Arkham Asylum, not a Batman story cause Batman isnt even the main character and every villain is either gay retarded or something else. Joker is a faggot, Clayface has AIDS and literally disintegrates, Two Face is retarded, Maxi Zeus is a Scat Fetishist, Amadeus Arkham fucks his mother and whatever the fuck else.

 

[Mississippi Motorboater]

Serious House on Serious Earth is good if youre willing to consider it a field trip to Arkham Asylum, not a Batman story cause Batman isnt even the main character and every villain is either gay retarded or something else. Joker is a faggot, Clayface has AIDS and literally disintegrates, Two Face is retarded, Maxi Zeus is a Scat Fetishist, Amadeus Arkham fucks his mother and whatever the fuck else.

...You know, I hadn't read A Serious House On Serious Earth, and I had it on my reading list because the art looked intriguing...but now I'm having second thoughts.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

...You know, I hadn't read A Serious House On Serious Earth, and I had it on my reading list because the art looked intriguing...but now I'm having second thoughts.

Its a good read but you should go into it like youre watching animals at the zoo or going to a 1920s circus for watching the freakshows. Thats the point of the story, its a showcase for arkhams villains and sort of Morrisons terrible attempt to humanize them despite basing a lot of their characteristics on himself and his drag persona in the late 80s. Dave McKeans art is really good as usual, a lot of it isnt even drawn but actual clay models and magazine pictures stitched together but in a very appealing schizo way. But yes all the stuff I stated is completely true at least metaphorically, its supposed to be a very camp over the top with metaphorical references to the stuff I mentioned. I also forgot that the Mad Hatter is one of the villains, he is supposed to be a fat pedophile in the script but that was a part cut out from the comic.

 

[CowPox]

Paul Jenkins' Hellblazer run was great.

Brian fagarello's run was god awful.

Did Brian write that issue where Constantine goes to prison?

 

[PHILLIP BANKS]

any nice comic book that is not super hero suggestions please?

 

[UCT]

any nice comic book that is not super hero suggestions please?

The current Conan book is great if you are into that sort of thing.

Also on the topic of capeshit hows everyone who pays attention to Marvel feeling about the new Ultimate Spider-Man? Im kinda excited for it just because I still kinda like Hickmans work and I really like seeing Peter married with a happy family and interested to see if they do something fun with it. Though I wouldn't be shocked if it let me down lol.

 

[Mississippi Motorboater]

any nice comic book that is not super hero suggestions please?

Bandes Dessinees (Franco-Belgian Comics). Literally all of them.

What they lack in superheroes, the French make comics about literally everything else. Every genre and topic you can think of, no matter how obscure. As an example, I'm reading a series called Angel Wings that's one big love letter to WW2 Flying Aces and 1940's Pin-Up Girls--more specifically, a story about an ace pilot with an obsession with pin-up girls, and then gets saddled with a female pilot who's literal walking cheesecake out of a pin-up magazine, as the two of them fight on the dangerous fringes of the Japanese theater.

The characters are fun, the love for the period and the history seeps out of every page, and the artwork is gorgeous.

Spoiler: NSFW

When they want to be, the French can be pretty based when having fan-service in their comics, due to having way, way more artistic freedom infinitely less social pressure than American comic talent.

 

[Nick Obre]

Did Brian write that issue where Constantine goes to prison?

Yes, Hard Time, but it's like 5 or 6 issues.

any nice comic book that is not super hero suggestions please?

I've shilled it before, but Do A PowerBomb! by Daniel Warren Johnson. It's great if you like energetic art, dynamic action, emotional stories, and/or wrestling.
In fact, a lot of his comics are like that: Murder Falcon is that but with Heavy Metal, Extremity is like that but with art in a post-apocalyptic world.
They all deal in some way with loss (even the Marvel and DC minis he's done, at least the ones I read: Beta Ray Bill: Argent Star, and Wonder Woman: Dead Earth), so he's got a pet theme I think.

 

[Calandrino]

does anyone know if that Batman Adventures Continue DCAU series is any good? Or if it even fits into DCAU really? I read the one they put out a year or two ago that's a sequel to Justice League Unlimited and it was fine, I liked it but the way it ends really makes no sense knowing where Batman Beyond goes and I was wondering if this is a similar deal or if they fagged it up by retconning DCAU Tim Drake into a homo like his current year comic counterpart or anything wild like that.

You mean Justice League Infinity? I gave that a chance because a couple people involved with the show worked on it, and it completely sucked. It weirdly rehashes things that already happened on the show while also contradicting it and retconning it (probably by accident). I get the feeling Tucker and DeMatteis haven't thought much about JLU in the past 20 years and have mostly forgotten it. And if you take out the mangled DCAU callbacks then it's just another generic multiverse story with another generic Evil Nazi Superman, quite literally the single most boring overly-done thing they could possibly have shat out, and something the DCAU has already done better multiple times.

I don't trust any new "DCAU" material. The animated Fatal Five movie wasn't great and that had Bruce Timm on board. And Timm has straight up said it's a "possible future" or "could be canon" or whatever. He knows what it is, he knows it's not on part with the old stuff. DC otoh doesn't have any qualms about quality control, every time they try to draw some more blood from the DCAU's corpse they will promise it's DEFINITELY TRUE CANON. I haven't read the "official" Batman Beyond comics but the plot summaries sound utterly shit and at odds with the show.

 

[el bandito loco]

You mean Justice League Infinity? I gave that a chance because a couple people involved with the show worked on it, and it completely sucked. It weirdly rehashes things that already happened on the show while also contradicting it and retconning it (probably by accident). I get the feeling Tucker and DeMatteis haven't thought much about JLU in the past 20 years and have mostly forgotten it. And if you take out the mangled DCAU callbacks then it's just another generic multiverse story with another generic Evil Nazi Superman, quite literally the single most boring overly-done thing they could possibly have shat out, and something the DCAU has already done better multiple times.

I don't trust any new "DCAU" material. The animated Fatal Five movie wasn't great and that had Bruce Timm on board. And Timm has straight up said it's a "possible future" or "could be canon" or whatever. He knows what it is, he knows it's not on part with the old stuff. DC otoh doesn't have any qualms about quality control, every time they try to draw some more blood from the DCAU's corpse they will promise it's DEFINITELY TRUE CANON. I haven't read the "official" Batman Beyond comics but the plot summaries sound utterly shit and at odds with the show.

Yeah, I didn't hate it as much as you did, but I also hadn't sat down with Unlimited in years so I probably had what the writers obviously did of not engaging with it recently enough to know how contradictory it was although the ending definitely stood out to me. Fatal Five was mostly terrible, so was the Batman/Harley movie and Timm's killing joke movie. He can't help but shove unhinged fetish shit like Batman fucks his best friends daughter on a roof or Harley fucks a tied up Dick Grayson into his movies these days.

some of the Batman Beyond comics are pretty good. there's an initial run from 2010? Hush Beyond that sucks ass but the series following it was a pretty good follow up to the show all the way through its relaunch Batman Beyond 2.0 however everything published after 2013ish in that universe has been horrible, both in terms of how it works with the show and just as Batman comics. But I'm stupid and always go back and keep trying whenever they relaunch it every other year and it always sucks.

I'll probably just ignore the Batman Adventures Continue shit and just let the DCAU shit die for me. it's not perfect like some people act but it's pretty fucking close as is and I don't need to bother reading shitty follow ups that will just taint it. I just always hope for the best with shit like that because obviously I'd like it to be good

 

[Arthur Morgan]

I like Morrison's X-Men in a vacuum. like if that was essentially what ultimate X-Men was or it was just some other out of continuity whatever I liked the majority of the broad strokes of the ideas.

New X-Men is what got me into the series, and I fell out pretty quickly after it because I realized how incompatible it was with the rest of the line, which was super convoluted thanks to everyone needing to put their spin on things. I feel like if Morrison had been given Ultimate X-Men instead of Millar, it would have worked better but only if it was allowed to be like Ultimate Spider-Man and mostly act as its own thing without needing to be a part of the larger Ultimate Universe.

That's honestly what turns me off about most of Morrison's work. He always puts his own ideas before the characters...completely disregarding their personalities or proper relationships/dynamics. Everything's open season for his reckless creative impulses, which makes his work a no-go for anyone who isn't predisposed to like everything he does for the sheer novelty of being "different" or "2Deep4U" cerebral.

Not just the characters, but the other books going on. Here's the thing, I liked his Batman run as it was coming out because it's one of the few legacy character arcs that actually worked. Dick and Damian were a great team, and he worked to give Dick his own new villains and his own identity as Batman. However he completely ignored the One Year Later set up and also what Paul Dini and other writers were doing at the time. Again, he works better in a vacuum because he just refuses to play with the others. Except for Fifty-Two, but then he was forced to co-write and share ideas on that one.

any nice comic book that is not super hero suggestions please?

The Sixth Gun was good. Transmetropolitan was fun, though weird for the sake of weird at some points. And 100 Bullets is one of my favorites from Vertigo.

 

[jspit2.0]

You mean Justice League Infinity? I gave that a chance because a couple people involved with the show worked on it, and it completely sucked. It weirdly rehashes things that already happened on the show while also contradicting it and retconning it (probably by accident). I get the feeling Tucker and DeMatteis haven't thought much about JLU in the past 20 years and have mostly forgotten it. And if you take out the mangled DCAU callbacks then it's just another generic multiverse story with another generic Evil Nazi Superman, quite literally the single most boring overly-done thing they could possibly have shat out, and something the DCAU has already done better multiple times.

I don't trust any new "DCAU" material. The animated Fatal Five movie wasn't great and that had Bruce Timm on board. And Timm has straight up said it's a "possible future" or "could be canon" or whatever. He knows what it is, he knows it's not on part with the old stuff. DC otoh doesn't have any qualms about quality control, every time they try to draw some more blood from the DCAU's corpse they will promise it's DEFINITELY TRUE CANON. I haven't read the "official" Batman Beyond comics but the plot summaries sound utterly shit and at odds with the show.

Timm inserted the babs/bruce into Killing Joke, so no. Don't trust Timm.

They did do a series of DC Beyond expanded before Nu52 that I remember liking well enough with Beechen and I want to say Dustin Nugyen. But for me that plus the adventures tie ins were enough.

I agree with @MirrorNoir @Mississippi Motorboater

There's a difference between not liking art and not crediting a good artist. I loathe the anus scratches of Bill Sienkbitch or what ever, but I can't deny the artistry behind say New Mutants or Elektra. Frank Quitely is an amazing drafter with a keen sense of sequential art as a medium. There are tons of standout moments in the series, whether the scene with the admittedly eye rolling two dimensional Cassandra Nova using her powers to drive Beast to attack the bird mutant or #121, where Jean and Emma delve through the unconscious Xavier's mind.

To be sure, the state of the X-men plays a role in justifying it. Because yes, the Claremont X-men were well and truly dead. The 90s had made them unreadable. I note you mention Magneto and making him a villain. Well, how can a man using nukes to threaten world annihilation who ripped the adamantium from Wolvie's skeletons be anything but?

There are two interpretations. Either the way Magneto views himself (via Claremont) as a misguided but good man is accurate or he's delusional. At some point, you cross the event horizon though. Since his 'redemption' he did all those things. That was the state of the X franchise. And I'm just giving one example of how wholly malformed it was.

I don't know if Grant disregarded all characterizations...or any. I'd be happy to discuss the bat saga, because....

...You know, I hadn't read A Serious House On Serious Earth, and I had it on my reading list because the art looked intriguing...but now I'm having second thoughts.

It's....something different. I view it as a dream. There are moments that work and look good. here's the thing. If you want to read Morrison, be prepared for him to approach based on the point he's at as a creator...and he's not the typical edgy britbong faggot, making it tougher to deal with

Morrison circa 80s was a Moore larper, he was pretentious and treated superheroes not with outright contempt but some level of disdain. Deconstruction. Then around 90 as he's getting done with Animal Man and doing Doom Patrol deconstructing heroes, he starts to change a little.

He was starting to grow and change, I think effected by his friendship with Millar in..94ish

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

Has Nightwing done anything worth talking about since getting shot in the head and being called "Rick Grayson" for two years?

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Has Nightwing done anything worth talking about since getting shot in the head and being called "Rick Grayson" for two years?

the JLA got disbanded and then the trinity asked Dick to become the new leader of the superhero community by making the Titans global. . . instead of just letting the Titans take over the JLA.


he's apparently on some kinda pirate adventure thing because now Bludhaven's got some mysterious pirate illuminati/secret society.

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

the JLA got disbanded and then the trinity asked Dick to become the new leader of the superhero community by making the Titans global. . . instead of just letting the Titans take over the JLA.


he's apparently on some kinda pirate adventure thing because now Bludhaven's got some mysterious pirate illuminati/secret society.

I will continue to mourn the loss of my favorite Superhero

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

He's stated multiple times that he's a die-hard fan of the Silver Age incarnations of these characters and stories...which might go a long way in explaining why so much of his work reads like incomprehensible ass-pulls in the true Silver Age tradition.

That would explain why I still hold his JLA run and All-Star Superman (with the latter being self-contained) in high regard, but don't really care for the rest of his work. His run on The Green Lantern was a mess, to say the least, so I'm finished with Morrison.

 

[el bandito loco]

I'm not gonna go dick deep on defending Morrison because I get why he's so divisive and agree. I will say I was a teenager during the later parts of his batrun into n52 and I think the way his run worked fine with other books at the end there while Dick was Batman was pretty good. his Batman & Robin was fine but I loved Dick as Batman in Streets of Gotham & Black Mirror in detective. Those were at the time my favorite running bat comics. but I think the rest of the run prior to that didnt. he bitch slapped Tim Drake into having to be Red Robin and having his entire future character development raped. Editorial forcing Damien to not die and stay dead (although Damien has had some good stories since) has totally screwed the other robins from ever getting their due again. but for a period there (outside of battle for the cowl I remember that was gay and terrible) he seemed to be playing nice to some extent. I might just be biased because Dick Grayson is probably my favorite character outside of Superman and that was a good couple year period for him in general. I never wanted him to STAY Batman but if anyone was gonna do it, might as well be his oldest son. for that same reason, (on paper) the idea dark crisis put forth nightwing should lead the dc universe works for me, because no shit. not only is he literally Batman's son and been involved in shit from street level to justice league shit since he was 8, but metatextually he's literally the prototypical sidekick/next generation.

If anything though the BatFamily since the late 1990s is just too many motherfuckers and nobody knows what to do with them. Characters just disappear, and come back radically different, multiple characters with the same mantles, character development is reversed every other year, it sucks. I was always a fan of Nightwing & Tim, Cassandra Cain to some extent. but fuck it would suck ass to try and follow those characters today. I stopped giving a shit about Batman continuity with New 52 and if I was still reading any of it for any of that I'd probably kill myself