Sperg about comic books here

[Nick Obre]

At least Annihilation Scourge was sort of interesting. With any luck, we could get a half-decent writer to bring back more cosmic marvel fun without giving it to bendis. Ewing and Hickman are alright when they're reigned in. Maybe a Donny Cates Guardians of the Galaxy run could be fun?

I'm with you about everything else, but Scourge was trash, man.
And both Ewing and Cates had runs on Guardians. After Bendis, it was Duggan, then Cates, then Ewing.
They were all decent, even good; much better than Bendis but never again as good as the Abnett/Lanning run.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I'm with you about everything else, but Scourge was trash, man.
And both Ewing and Cates had runs on Guardians. After Bendis, it was Duggan, then Cates, then Ewing.
They were all decent, even good; much better than Bendis but never again as good as the Abnett/Lanning run.

I just wanna see my boy Rich Ryder walk off into the sunset with a good reward. Fuck's sake.

They fucking killed his dad in between Sam's 2 last Nova series. Bruh.

We haven't seen more of the Robbie Ryder Darkhawk stuff. etc.

Duggan, Cates, and Ewing aren't bad. I kinda wish we weren't heading into bisexual Hercules, but they didn't outright shove it in the same way they did other things.

Schizo Peter Quill was a fine enough idea that wasn't explored too well but I figure it's because Ewing got cancelled.

Abnett/Lanning's Nova popping up on Earth to lambast Stark during the Civil War era was so fucking satisfying. Watching him get a nice bit of being rewarded by reuniting with Namorita was a little heart-wrenching as well. (That was the DnA team writing Nova, right?)

I think they should have brought back Sam Alexander Nova. Hell, I think that the Nova stuff has more potential for fun stuff compared to Ms. Marvel or Miles Morales. Kamala being shoved into the X-Books seems like it'll work for a little while, until we get to the conclusion of the current X-Saga. (Hey, I really wish they'd just put Cyclops on an Avengers team.)


just found out Cullen Bunn did an Asgardians of the Galaxy book for a while. Gonna go read it as Bunn's one of the more enjoyable writers when it comes to capeshit.

 

[jspit2.0]

the JLA is my favorite superhero team but historically the book is almost always terrible. the new 52 book is horrible. weirdly enough outside of the Morrison & waid run the best modern run is probably when Bryan Hitch did his initial few issues, once he took over the ongoing it was obvious he had no ideas because he just did the same story over and over again. Snyder's opening arc was alright but it went to shit because the whole run ended up just being a set up for death metal or whatever. and bendis was shitting the bed so hard in the Superman books I never bothered with his run.

That whole JLA period from Morrison to I want to say Identity Crisis was a very long quality run. Waid's run was one of those things where he started out directly doing the opposite of Morrison's idea, had a good enough story with Tower of Babel and then it started to go down hill.

Hitch and Waid had very different impulses. Hitch wanted to do the gods among men big concept cinematic stories and Waid is a silver age fanboy with a penchant for that personal conflict. So they didn't click and it hurts the run. Kelly and Manke were more overall enjoyable, despite some clunkers when Kelly let his politics get in the way. Then you have a year of Busiek. A weird Claremont/Byrne story reunion for half a year, and so on. It's a solid almost decade.

Just a contrast from the JLA mess.

Look at Avengers. You have Stan Lee and jack Kirby for sixteen issues? Then you get a huge amazing run by Roy Thomas for nearly a decade. At that point, almost a decade has passed and the 70s are incredibly rich. A five year period were either George Perez or John Byrne draw the book. Great from Englehart, Micheline, Jim Shooter. Just night and day with the League during this period.

Come the 80s You have the fanboy beloved Stern run, followed by Walt Simonson and John Byrne round two. Yeah, you have a crummy six year 90s period where everything was trash, but by 97? you have Perez round two and then Geoff Johns. It's not until the middle part of the 00s when Bendis destroys the book.

A top five Avengers list is much harder to do! You have Thomas and Lee and that 70s era. The Heroes return runs. Night and day with in terms of creative output there.

 

[el bandito loco]

The JLA of the late 90s through mid 2000s is an important book for me personally, because it's partly responsible for me still being a comic fan today and represents when I was a kid when I was probably the most invested. In elementary school, I'd get to get a few comics once a week at the grocery store.

The books I got and read every month religiously were
Action Comics, Superman, Superman/Batman, JLA, Ultimate Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Star Wars Republic, Sonic the Hedgehog & I'd mix it up with an occasional wolverine or captain America or a Batman if the cover was cool.

That was probably the most I cared about any superhero shit was that period. I was still sort of around into high school but by that point the new 52 was on, ultimate marvel had gotten buttfucked by ultimates 3 and ultimatum, main marvel was in the beginning of it's horrible constant relaunching and I didn't really give a shit. by that point I'd figured out comic scans were easy as fuck to pirate so I moved into reading basically all of vertigo up to that point and pretty much never looked back until I was an adult.

the 2000s and early 2010s were kind of a weird time to grow up reading mainstream superhero books. I saw my dad's generation of DC end to get replaced by something that pretty much was dead on arrival, I saw my own generation's Marvel in Ultimates completely shit itself out after like 10 years, I saw marvel become completely incompetent and unreadable, and DC pivot back to where they were before but shittier because all the old guard was pretty much gone.

 

[Prehistoric Jazz]

Loved Peacemaker Tries Hard!, it was good fun.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

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 also think Dick abolished prisons or something in Bludhaven in some tone deaf message about how 'prisons only create crime' last I remembered. I love Nightwing, he's one of my favourites, but Taylor's writing has just been... Cringey? Bland Quirky? Just not fun to read. Definitely wasn't 'saving Nightwing' like people were telling me.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Alan is cursed chalice. He's given every collaborator timeless classics, he's also screwed co-creators out of profits and turned on them.

1963 stands out to me. Series is worth a fortune, never been reprinted, never will because Alan is a cunt.

It's not really expensive.

Also, blame Image for the cancellation and Liefeld, Lee, McFarland, etc for the book ending abruptly. Apparently the last issue was going to feature Image characters interacting with Moore's characters but several of the Image founders backed out of participating due to the book selling very badly and them not wanting to be associated with it afterwards. And Moore got pissed and refused to produce a new script without the Image characters.

Also, Lost Girls is fucked up. There is some decent ideas IN THEORY but it's mostly creepy sex fan fiction of the worst kind. The Peter Pan story was the only decent one if only because I have very little attachment to the Peter Pan mythos, the Wizard of Oz story was just plain nasty towards the IP, and tthe Alice In Wonderland story was creepy as fuck lesbian groomer porn.

 

[jspit2.0]

It's not really expensive.

It's not, but the reprints with Moore's name on them along with the others would have given them royalties in a TPB form.

Also, blame Image for the cancellation and Liefeld, Lee, McFarland, etc for the book ending abruptly.

Dynamite was publishing the TPB until more spiked it out of spite.

Apparently the last issue was going to feature Image characters interacting with Moore's characters but several of the Image founders backed out of participating due to the book selling very badly and them not wanting to be associated with it afterwards. And Moore got pissed and refused to produce a new script without the Image characters.

Imagine, Moore? Spiteful?

So it was supposed to be drawn by Jim Lee and he never did it was what I heard. I'd never heard of them not wanting to lend their characters, Valentino didn't mind, as they appear in Shadow Hawk.

Also, Lost Girls is fucked up. There is some decent ideas IN THEORY but it's mostly creepy sex fan fiction of the worst kind. The Peter Pan story was the only decent one if only because I have very little attachment to the Peter Pan mythos, the Wizard of Oz story was just plain nasty towards the IP, and tthe Alice In Wonderland story was creepy as fuck lesbian groomer porn.

It's disgusting and it's hypocritical.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I also think Dick abolished prisons or something in Bludhaven in some tone deaf message about how 'prisons only create crime' last I remembered. I love Nightwing, he's one of my favourites, but Taylor's writing has just been... Cringey? Bland Quirky? Just not fun to read. Definitely wasn't 'saving Nightwing' like people were telling me.

I kinda dipped out of comics with the Batman/Catwoman "war" going on.

Taylor's a mid writer at best.

It's not really expensive.

Also, blame Image for the cancellation and Liefeld, Lee, McFarland, etc for the book ending abruptly. Apparently the last issue was going to feature Image characters interacting with Moore's characters but several of the Image founders backed out of participating due to the book selling very badly and them not wanting to be associated with it afterwards. And Moore got pissed and refused to produce a new script without the Image characters.

Also, Lost Girls is fucked up. There is some decent ideas IN THEORY but it's mostly creepy sex fan fiction of the worst kind. The Peter Pan story was the only decent one if only because I have very little attachment to the Peter Pan mythos, the Wizard of Oz story was just plain nasty towards the IP, and tthe Alice In Wonderland story was creepy as fuck lesbian groomer porn.

Lost Girls is extremely fucked up, Moore's just kinda a writer that absolutely needs a wrangler.

It's not, but the reprints with Moore's name on them along with the others would have given them royalties in a TPB form.



Dynamite was publishing the TPB until more spiked it out of spite.



Imagine, Moore? Spiteful?

So it was supposed to be drawn by Jim Lee and he never did it was what I heard. I'd never heard of them not wanting to lend their characters, Valentino didn't mind, as they appear in Shadow Hawk.



It's disgusting and it's hypocritical.

1963 was fun, I think a part of why it got cancelled/eternally hiatus'd is a combo of Moore being retarded on top of other elements.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

@jspit2.0 this is where I got it dude, you can stop crying about its rarity now lmao

https://getcomics.org/other-comics/alan-moores-1963-omnibus-2023-fan-made/

 

[jspit2.0]

@jspit2.0 this is where I got it dude, you can stop crying about its rarity now lmao

https://getcomics.org/other-comics/alan-moores-1963-omnibus-2023-fan-made/

It's not fucking rare, it was printed by Image in the fucking 90s.

I'm pissed that Alan Moore was a cunt to his collaborators and prevented a trade that would have made them some much needed cash...

@Alexander Thaut

All the confusion made me go back, so here are the details of '63.

63 started conception in '92-'93, ending a period of extreme irrelevance for Moore following his 88-89 divorce from the mainstream. Jim Valentino reached out to Moore and his top 80s collaborators leading to parody/retro series '63.

'63 exists in two forms, like Watchmen. The pages stories, thin reinterps of the 60s with even period authentic ink, coloring, and paper. It was very thought out and deliberate. They did six issues; with Gibbons, Don Simpson, Rick Veitch, John Toltebeen, and Bissette. The series was to culimnate in a massive annual drawn by Jim Lee. The second was the behind the scene character assassinations of the Marvel 60s creatives.

Each issue had letters colums by Moore in his 'affable al' persona, a hit at Stan Lee. Affable Al interviews are a series of interviews he did at the end there.

Ultimately, it seems as if the Image guys never cared about the artists on '63, but the big name writer, Moore. That seems reflected in Bissettes interview, that led to him getting the ax from Moore's friends list.

Moore was highly sought after for clout, as all the Image comics were panned for being poorly written garbage. Moore wound up doing a ton of work for McFarlane, Liefeld, Lee. he did some smaller pieces for Valentino. But what's criminal is the list of collaborators on the project who are literally left holding the bag for a big project. They spent time putting this together and now their ability to monetize their hard work is literally scrubbed.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

I haven't read much of Moore's work outside of The Man Who Has Everything, Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V For Vendetta and Promethea. Promethea is where I lost interest in him. You had this interesting idea of a character who is so iconic, she actually gives the person in charge of her powers, and it was drawn by JH Williams III. So what does Moore do? Spend most of the run going on and on about the nature of magic.

Personally, aside from Swamp Thing, I found the other stuff overrated. Never read Lost Girls and from everything I've heard, it's a good thing I didn't.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Some X-Men/Spider-Man shit for those not following the books:

Amazing Spider-Man: More Rek-Rap crap, with Robbie being kidnapped by the demon hunter who Maddie sent to find Rek-Rap taking him hostage to force Peter to speed up his quest to find the wayward demo hero. Also, we find out that Hammerhead is secretly in league with Count Neferious (wearing his Byrne or was it Perez, super villain costume and Wells blotching continuity by thinking no one remembers that Neferious considers his daughter a disposable pawn as a plot point for why no one thinks he's plotting a gang war (even though we also have Hammerhead working with Silvermane too).

X-Men (I forget the number): Firestar helps Juggernaut escape so Stasis can't steal his powers and provides the X-Men with info on how to disarm the bomb attached to Cyclops' restraints. She also tells Scott via morse code that Jean forced her to infiltrate ORCHIS though it's left vague if he believes her. Finally, the X-Men go to Latveria to recruit Doom's army of mutants he's parading around to bait ORCHIS into a confrontation.

X-Force #46: Colossus finally kills his evil brother Mikhail and is freed from his control. Doctor Strange helps Domino and Tessa (who are joined by Deadpool showing up out of the blue) rescue everyone, including the Scrybe and the ORCHIS agent Mikhail was trying to brainwash ala Colossus. Ending has Colossus starring down a gun wielding Domino, pretty much resigned to being put down by X-Force for the bad shit Mikhail made him do.

I also picked up two new trades from Ollies on a whim: one is the fourth New 52 Justice League volume (The Grid) and the softcover version of Trinity Wars for $4 and $5 a piece. Sadly my Ollies hasn't gotten a single new trade in for months.....

 

[el bandito loco]

I also picked up two new trades from Ollies on a whim: one is the fourth New 52 Justice League volume (The Grid) and the softcover version of Trinity Wars for $4 and $5 a piece. Sadly my Ollies hasn't gotten a single new trade in for months.....

Man one of my closest friends lives in a different state than me and every time I visit him we'll go to Ollies and I always find all kinds of shit. He also whenever he goes grabs DC shit for me and I always end up with a back seat full of trades whenever I come home. What does suck about that period of New 52 (I can't remember if this effects these specific trades or not) but half the time the crossover volumes in a main series are missing half the fuckin story because it'll only include the issues from the series the trade is under because they released separate big volumes with all of it. they should have just only released those ones and then the next numbered volume of X series be the issues after the crossover. retarded. The worst offender I ever had was marvel during pak's run on hulk in the later end when it was clusterfucked up with red hulk and other titles the trades are literally unreadable because you literally cannot follow the story without the missing issues and then you're jumping between separate tpbs.

I've wanted to run the collected edition department of the big two since I was a teenager because it never ceases to amaze me how retarded and unreader friendly, casual or not 70% of their output is. they've gotten better over the years but still suck. Nowadays my current ramble is with the fact digitally so much is available from marvel and dc they need a print on demand tpb service. Let me pay a little more for cheaper stock paper in various sizes, 6 issue, 12 issue, oversized whatever. Pick what issues I want, in the order I want, and what comic cover I want as the cover of the book. Let me make my own themed compilations of artist, writer or theme. Let me make my own collections of a story arc in my preferred order. or my own collections of a run including ancillary titles or excluding them. I'd pay 25% more for cheaper stock and binding than an equally sized trade for this.

If this existed the last decade I'd have spent thousands by now on it. I'd have full superman from Byrne through the triangle years filling up a room, I'd have all of swamp thing with the early hellblazer issues where they go in Veitch's run, I'd have all of DeMatties Spectacular Spider-Man, probably the whole ultimate universe in order up to and quitting at ultimatum filling up another room, and tons of artist collections of totally unrelated shit by guys I like. they're so stupid for this not existing. people irl ask me about good superhero comics about characters they like from movies or tv or whatever all the time and the difficulty in reading older stuff (if its even collected) for someone who hasn't been reading comics forever is too much of a learning curve for me to help them with dick whereas I could be like here use this and for $40 get a marvel epic collection sized thing with these issues in a useful reading order and try it out

 

[Anon88]

Any of you guys check out the new punisher comic? They replaced Frank with some other guy and he has basically the same backstory and acts the same way that the original punisher did. There's no reason why they couldn't have just keep using Frank if his replacement is more or less the same person. It just seems really dumb to me and a waste of a opportunity.

 

[Nick Obre]

Any of you guys check out the new punisher comic? They replaced Frank with some other guy and he has basically the same backstory and acts the same way that the original punisher did. There's no reason why they couldn't have just keep using Frank if his replacement is more or less the same person. It just seems really dumb to me and a waste of a opportunity.

I have a theory that it's gonna be a Venom Snake kind of situation.
There's this bit in his backstory scene where he's going "this is too perfect", which is a typical cliche way for a character to cast doubt on the situation being real.
So I'm thinking the twist will be the villain is some agency or something trying to create a new Punisher by turning this random SHIELD agent into a Frank (I mean, the guy's fucking name is GARRISON, you know, like CASTLE), giving him false memories and grooming him into the role. There may even be other Punishers being made.
And in the end the message will be that the very concept of a Punisher is an evil and unacceptable thing, paving the way for the return of Frank, who will have a new role (last we saw him he was protecting kids in a wasteland) and a new hero name.

All because some cops liked the Punisher, but Frank is too popular to be completely ditched, so they'll irrevocably poison the Punisher brand but keep Frank around.

Or something, what do I fucking know.

 

[GoPro]

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

What kind of genres or stories do you like?

I mostly read manga and European books these days. My two favorite European comics from the last couple of years (by English publication dates at least) are Undertaker and The Revenge of Count Skarbek.

The Revenge of Count Skarbek is a Victor Hugo-esque story that's a mix of courtroom drama, adventure, crime, mystery, and romance. It's a story of an exiled nobleman who used to live in Paris and returned years later to exact revenge on people who ruined his life. Art is great 95% of the time but some can be a bit rough. The artist was experimenting with painting and pastels in this book and take risks. They do not pay off 5% of the time but even they are at least ok. Omnibus edition really amps up the erotica angle. It includes rough plan sketches for sex scenes that were cut out from the final publication. I think they were unnecessary and ruined story's pacing. I liked the original version published in two tomes more but new pages in omnibus are easy to ignore.





Undertaker is a great western with an unconventional protagonist. He's a traveling undertaker who's a jaded bastard who ultimately tries his best to do good. He tends to take odd jobs, like burying a millionaire in a gold mine where he started out as a struggling miner or retrieving a corpse from a territory under indian control. Each story spans two volums and so far there were six volumes publushed total. First four are great, most recent two are "only" good writing-wise. Art is absolutely great across all of them.

This is why I'm not on the whole "Western comics have lost the battle to Manga" Train. The "West" does not solely equal the pedesterian capeshit efforts of American comics....it also includes France. Which not only is superb, but has the added advantage over most long-running manga in that the authors actually fucking finish the stories they start.

True but when people say west in an English-speaking forum they mean the U.S. and maybe UK too. French and continental Europe's comic tradition is different than American and Japanese ones. It has more in common with American one but Europeans are typically more conservatives in the way panels are laid out, they focus on quality over quantity. Dramas, period pieces, adventure, and westerns are the biggest genres in Europe.
Another thing that does not help with popularity of European comics is Amazon gutting Comixology. Since then, the pace of official translations slowed down quite a bit. I am learning French myself to be able to read a bunch of stuff I am interested in. There are some Italian books that look interesting but they are even more obscure than French ones.

If Watchmen is seriously the height of comics as an art form, then comics need to give up.

You have to remember that Watchmen is great only by American comic industry standards. Just like Saga is good but mostly by standards of people who rarel ready anything outside of the big two capeshit from the last three decades.

 

[Anon88]

I have a theory that it's gonna be a Venom Snake kind of situation.
There's this bit in his backstory scene where he's going "this is too perfect", which is a typical cliche way for a character to cast doubt on the situation being real.
So I'm thinking the twist will be the villain is some agency or something trying to create a new Punisher by turning this random SHIELD agent into a Frank (I mean, the guy's fucking name is GARRISON, you know, like CASTLE), giving him false memories and grooming him into the role. There may even be other Punishers being made.
And in the end the message will be that the very concept of a Punisher is an evil and unacceptable thing, paving the way for the return of Frank, who will have a new role (last we saw him he was protecting kids in a wasteland) and a new hero name.

All because some cops liked the Punisher, but Frank is too popular to be completely ditched, so they'll irrevocably poison the Punisher brand but keep Frank around.

Or something, what do I fucking know.

Interesting that actually sounds like it would be a pretty cool story. I really hope you’re somewhat right because right now I’m debating on if I even want to read the second issue.

 

[Nick Obre]

Interesting that actually sounds like it would be a pretty cool story. I really hope you’re somewhat right because right now I’m debating on if I even want to read the second issue.

It sounds more interesting than it is, I think.
It's not like I was attentively theorizing about it, like "oh this is interesting, I wonder where they're going with it, let's see the clues"
It was rather like "Ah, -"Maybe it's too perfect"-, it's gonna be one of those, isn't it? Why would they do that? Oh, right, to finish fucking the Punisher brand for political reasons. Shit".

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

Taylor's a mid writer at best.

And that is being charitable. While Bendis started Jon Kent on the road to irrelevance through his forced aging of the character, Taylor cemented it during his abysmal run on Superman: Son of Kal-El where Jon became the sanctimonious activist "Superman". It later got ridiculous in the recent mini-series where he had a hugging session with Injustice Superman followed by a lecture about the endless cycle of violence and how he [Injustice Supes] would have to face justice. What bothered me most about both series was the glacial pacing and lack of action. The Warworld Saga in Action Comics spread out over a dozen issues, but Philip Kennedy Johnson at least added some bits of lore to make it somewhat interesting.