Sperg about comic books here

[Alexander Thaut]

man, I hate how the Krakoa era has so many interesting pieces and concepts, but it feels like there's too many fingers in the pudding to make it genuinely compelling. Maybe it'll be considered good in hindsight when it's all done but I feel like Hickman's just having fun in the sandbox and the actual shite writers at marvel made him extend the krakoa era because they liked it.

Re-read the Donny Cates venom stuff. It's all goofy fun. While making venom cosmic is weird, I miss the feeling of comic books making something way goofy and out there.

Jason Aaron and Tom Taylor don't seem to be all that fun. Tom King's also kinda not that fun. idk how to put it but there's a feeling you get in seeing hijinks and "out there" stuff in the capeshit genre. It's part of the reason why I don't consider Al Ewing to be as asinine as Taylor because Ewing seems to be having fun just tossing together cosmic schlock in his runs. Aaron seems to be trying to do worldbuilding or sth but his leadups to his big "War of the Realms" event and the end of Jane Foster Thor wasn't all that entertaining.

I kinda hope we get another Rick Remender book on something like the X-Force one he did. Maybe a Rick Remender Suicide Squad/Thunderbolts run?



at the end of the day all I really want are Abnett/Lanning just being given the keys to do cosmic marvel, sheesh.

 

[Nick Obre]

man, I hate how the Krakoa era has so many interesting pieces and concepts, but it feels like there's too many fingers in the pudding to make it genuinely compelling. Maybe it'll be considered good in hindsight when it's all done but I feel like Hickman's just having fun in the sandbox and the actual shite writers at marvel made him extend the krakoa era because they liked it.

That's why you gotta follow just the Hickman, Gillen, Ewing, and Spurrier stuff. There's unfortunately no choice but to put Duggan on the list too, and if you squint, you can add Percy as well.

The rest? Some have decent things in them (like the Sabretooth books, or Hellions which was actually great) or are important at certain points (little bits of Excalibur, Trial of Magneto), but generally they're trash and pointless.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

That's why you gotta follow just the Hickman, Gillen, Ewing, and Spurrier stuff. There's unfortunately no choice but to put Duggan on the list too, and if you squint, you can add Percy as well.

The rest? Some have decent things in them (like the Sabretooth books, or Hellions which was actually great) or are important at certain points (little bits of Excalibur, Trial of Magneto), but generally they're trash and pointless.

Duggan flies under the radar to me, but I find myself enjoying it.

Speaking of which, I kinda want Cullen Bunn to write more Marvel stuff. I enjoyed it, in as corny as it could get.

Hell, give me Charles Soule trying to do street level heroes again too. Fuck's sake, I'd take Matt Fraction's street level stuff.

 

[Ser Prize]

man, I hate how the Krakoa era has so many interesting pieces and concepts, but it feels like there's too many fingers in the pudding to make it genuinely compelling. Maybe it'll be considered good in hindsight when it's all done but I feel like Hickman's just having fun in the sandbox and the actual shite writers at marvel made him extend the krakoa era because they liked it.

Re-read the Donny Cates venom stuff. It's all goofy fun. While making venom cosmic is weird, I miss the feeling of comic books making something way goofy and out there.

Jason Aaron and Tom Taylor don't seem to be all that fun. Tom King's also kinda not that fun. idk how to put it but there's a feeling you get in seeing hijinks and "out there" stuff in the capeshit genre. It's part of the reason why I don't consider Al Ewing to be as asinine as Taylor because Ewing seems to be having fun just tossing together cosmic schlock in his runs. Aaron seems to be trying to do worldbuilding or sth but his leadups to his big "War of the Realms" event and the end of Jane Foster Thor wasn't all that entertaining.

I kinda hope we get another Rick Remender book on something like the X-Force one he did. Maybe a Rick Remender Suicide Squad/Thunderbolts run?



at the end of the day all I really want are Abnett/Lanning just being given the keys to do cosmic marvel, sheesh.

I don't like X-Men, but I do like Nightcrawler. Used to read his solo stuff. So the fact he's on board with mutant land being this gay marxist orgy seems really stupid. He's an eastern european catholic, for fuck sakes.

 

[Nick Obre]

I don't like X-Men, but I do like Nightcrawler. Used to read his solo stuff. So the fact he's on board with mutant land being this gay marxist orgy seems really stupid. He's an eastern european catholic, for fuck sakes.

For what it's worth, he's one of the few characters who starts seeing the cracks in the culture they're creating, and his books (Way of X and Legion of X) deal with him trying to find a way to instill the Krakoans with the values needed to prevent them.

 

[Ser Prize]

For what it's worth, he's one of the few characters who starts seeing the cracks in the culture they're creating, and his books (Way of X and Legion of X) deal with him trying to find a way to instill the Krakoans with the values needed to prevent them.

Yeah, but then I look into it and apparently Xavier made him the spiritual leader? And he was on-board with all this because "mutants have surpassed god" or something?

I dunno, maybe the fact I only read Nightcrawler's solo miniseries gave me a false impression of him but I don't think I could ever see him saying he's above his God or His laws.

 

[Nick Obre]

Yeah, but then I look into it and apparently Xavier made him the spiritual leader? And he was on-board with all this because "mutants have surpassed god" or something?

I dunno, maybe the fact I only read Nightcrawler's solo miniseries gave me a false impression of him but I don't think I could ever see him saying he's above his God or His laws.

Magneto has a bit in the House of X book where he tells some humans "you have new gods now", but it's not something Nightcrawler adheres to.
Again, I can only recommend you give a look at the books he stars in (Way of X, then Legion of X; he's now in Uncanny Spider-Man, but that one isn't about those ideological issues) and see if you like what you see.

 

[Elite Miko]

Ngl, the modern incarnation of Venom has probably been the best the character has been written since his inception. I really loved Remender's Venom as Flash and Cates more or less made Eddie enjoyable and gave him a fitting ending.

Revisting Flash Thompson as Venom is really surprising given how unabashedly America the character is, seeing how left leaning Remender is.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Yeah, Agent Venom was the first time since the original Michelinie & McFarlane stories that I liked Venom. Also made good use of a long-time supporting character who had been fucked over since New Chapter.

 

[Ser Prize]

Ngl, the modern incarnation of Venom has probably been the best the character has been written since his inception. I really loved Remender's Venom as Flash and Cates more or less made Eddie enjoyable and gave him a fitting ending.

Revisting Flash Thompson as Venom is really surprising given how unabashedly America the character is, seeing how left leaning Remender is.

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Eddie as Anti-Venom felt perfect for me as an allegory for a man who beat addiction and came out stronger for it.

Flash is indeed my favourite Venom and I loved seeing him struggle with his own demons, and at the same time become friends with adult Peter Parker. Genuinely one of the best characters to come out of the 2010's.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Eddie as Anti-Venom felt perfect for me as an allegory for a man who beat addiction and came out stronger for it.

Flash is indeed my favourite Venom and I loved seeing him struggle with his own demons, and at the same time become friends with adult Peter Parker. Genuinely one of the best characters to come out of the 2010's.

Flash's death made sense and I wish his resurrection had more pathos.

Still a good hero. Deserves to be in an avengers team or something.

IDK where Eddie is rn but the current venom book is kinda loaded with goofy cosmic stuff. I'll read it all when the run's over because I don't like following ersatz cosmic stuff on a monthly basis, but I do enjoy Cates.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

I've always been obsessed with the "meta" of superhero universes and who's truly important to them, so I may as well ask you guys: who do you consider the core/A-list characters of any barebones/mainstream/quintessential DC universe? List them as characters, titles, or both, I don't mind.

Spoiler: Who I think it is alongside rambling on why.

I've always considered it to be:
1. Superman
2. Batman
3. Wonder Woman
4. Flash (Barry Allen)
5. Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)
6. Justice League (founding members, including Aquaman and Martian Manhunter)
7. Teen Titans (basically the New Teen Titans version, Dick Grayson-as-Robin as series lead)

I think you can fit in the vast majority of the DCU into this framework by tying them into one of the solo heroes' books and respective corners, or as recurring characters in team books - IE Green Arrow and Shazam as JL regular guest stars, Supergirl a regular in Superman's book and Batgirl in Batman's and John Stewart in Green Lantern's, split Robin and Wally West between the Batman/Flash and Titans books... etc. I'm also game for Action and Detective Comics being hybrid anthology books with a starring Superman/Batman story and then rotating fan-favorite characters and teams as the second. I also admit I feel there's very few true solo/A-list heroes who have enough narrative or gimmick meat to lead a book, even the same for teams, which is also why I ask. I would imagine in another world a shakeup where superhero books contract to those and give a lot of cool villains or stories to the main hero who can make them work just as well as their not-so-popular associated hero, or a B-list hero elevated by being a good regular supporting character for the A-lister to bounce off of in their own book, would do better for all characters involved.

I debated Aquaman as truly core to a basic/quintessential DCU but... his solo book only came post-JL in '62, it's been cancelled the most, and story-wise he's stuck underneath the sea with little to do outside too many plots revolving around who has the throne of Atlantis. I also have a hard time seeing him with a big solo career on land in-universe, his logical reason to be above ground would be entirely for the JL membership and thus he makes more sense as a pure ensemble hero like Martian Manhunter - Wonder Woman purposely came to Man's World and can at least establish herself in Gateway City to give a setting for solo plots and her existing non-myth villains, Green Lantern would logically hang out in Coast City during Earth hours and fight Earth-based villains of his there, and so forth. Speaking of, Wondy had her continuous own title and Sensation Comics, Flash and GL always had solo titles, since 1940, so of course they're always gonna be around in some form. You can argue the Justice Society proves the League concept existed since almost the beginning, same for Robin leading team heroes as well, hence the League and Titans as core.

 

[Nick Obre]

Ngl, the modern incarnation of Venom has probably been the best the character has been written since his inception. I really loved Remender's Venom as Flash and Cates more or less made Eddie enjoyable and gave him a fitting ending.

Revisting Flash Thompson as Venom is really surprising given how unabashedly America the character is, seeing how left leaning Remender is.

View attachment 5489215

I'm not a fan with what's happened with Venom at any point EXCEPT during Remender's run, which is to say, Agent Venom. It was really good.
I actually really like Remender's whole bunch of books from that era, Frankencastle, Agent Venom, Secret Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Captain America... I may be missing some. But AXIS? That sucked.
I've noticed that whenever a writer pops up and starts getting success and acclaim in Marvel, they saddle him with the responsibility of coming up with an event, which invariably derails the stories he was working towards, and ends up being horrible. In Remender's case it burned him so bad, he swore off mainstream comics and went to work only on indies.

 

[The Feline Solution]

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.

I think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is worth a read just for the artwork alone. Last thing Moore i read was his run on Crossed +100 which i thought was bad but not as bad as Crossed as a whole is. His try on some nadsat style of language was the most grating thing about that book. Reading the stuff about Lost Girls in this thread makes another thing happening in Scalped +100 also very, very questionable regarding Moore's views on sexuality.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Flash is indeed my favourite Venom and I loved seeing him struggle with his own demons, and at the same time become friends with adult Peter Parker. Genuinely one of the best characters to come out of the 2010's.

Yeah, Flash was a great character. During the original thirty-ish years of Spider-Man he had a pretty good character arc of going from Pete's high school bully to the best man at his wedding.

Sadly, during the New Chapter era the retards at Marvel tried reverting every character back to their old '60s - '70s era personalities with Flash now suddenly being a bully again (plus other dumb shit like the Sandman becoming a villain again, trying to bring in Gwen and George Stacy stand-ins, attempting to kill off MJ), with Flash eventually getting in a car crash that gave him amnesia and completely reverted his character back to his high school days. Peter David tried salvaging the situation in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man but all the Spider-Man books got fucked over during that time due to Civil War and everything that followed that.

Luckily Agent Venom came along and finally redeemed the character after more than a decade of character assassination.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

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.

I actually found the whole whatever happened to the man of tomorrow storyline to be trash. I dont like superman stories but there are ones where its just very boring and artificially happy cause supes is a very jolly man like the man of tomorrow storyline and all star superman. Red Son is probably my favourite superman storyline cause its alternate history and does a lot of history shenanigans. I think thats the best way to do a superman story, to deal with history stuff. I would like to see a graphic novel which covers his entire life from depression era 30s and his disillusionment with humanity due to the USA weaponizing him during the Cold war, like a Curious case of Benjamin Button but with Superman similar to how Joker used Taxi Drivers framework. Moore couldve given Superman the Marvelman treatment, disillusionment depression things like that it wouldve made it more interesting but he just closed the book on Silver Age superman and gave him a happy ending. To be honest most of his work is indeed overrated, theyre all psychological faggotry and if theyre not that theyre boring hippie shit. I want to read his supposed feminist masterpiece Halo Jones but I cant get beyond the first few chapters.

I've always been obsessed with the "meta" of superhero universes and who's truly important to them, so I may as well ask you guys: who do you consider the core/A-list characters of any barebones/mainstream/quintessential DC universe? List them as characters, titles, or both, I don't mind.

DC is a character focused universe, Marvel is an event focused universe. Thats something I think people should understand getting into both respectively. Even Z tier DC characters like Hawk and Dove or Peacemaker are very three dimensional complex characters even if their plots are not necessarily good while Marvel has only a few S tier characters who are complex and three dimensional like Wolverine, Daredevil, Punisher and probably Hulk. Thats partially why DC storylines stand out for their characters and character arcs while Marvel storylines stand out for the carnage no pun intended and scale of the conflict. With that in mind outside of Batman and Superman I dont think DC has any Core characters but any character of DC from the Golden Silver or Bronze Ages can be made into an A tier character with just the right script as we saw with Peacemakers mainstream success, albeit a bit undeserved cause John Cena is a Chink Nigger. Thats partially what happened during the dark ages with Sandman Wesley Dodds from the golden age and Watchmen which was supposed to be full of Charlton characters, The Comedian being a standin for Peacemaker.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

DC is a character focused universe, Marvel is an event focused universe.

are you joking

Marvel's entire popularity rose from its interpersonal drama between characters, the soap opera-y social lives of the casts, and the attempt at a consistent universe with tight continuity. They didn't have a big event until 1984 with Secret Wars, 23 years after Fantastic Four #1 (largely seen as the 'birth' of the regular Marvel universe).

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

are you joking

Marvel's entire popularity rose from its interpersonal drama between characters, the soap opera-y social lives of the casts, and the attempt at a consistent universe with tight continuity. They didn't have a big event until 1984 with Secret Wars, 23 years after Fantastic Four #1 (largely seen as the 'birth' of the regular Marvel universe).

Interpersonal drama itself is conflict and an event, theres little to no character arcs or archetypes. Theyre also not explored properly if there are. Thats the point, its soap opera-y its more focused on the event itself than the characters as the characters and their conflict are just a tool to propel the story not the opposite, the story being used to explore the character which is what DC does. The characters of Marvel cannot exist outside of the Marvel Universe while DC characters are closer to real life character wise.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Interpersonal drama itself is conflict and an event, theres little to no character arcs or archetypes. Theyre also not explored properly if there are. Thats the point, its soap opera-y its more focused on the event itself than the characters as the characters and their conflict are just a tool to propel the story not the opposite, the story being used to explore the character which is what DC does. The characters of Marvel cannot exist outside of the Marvel Universe while DC characters are closer to real life character wise.

are you joking

Spider-Man's origin story is him getting an inflated ego due to his media success as Spider-Man, refusing to stop a robber because "lol not my problem", and it leading to the death of his uncle. That is all driven by the character's flaws and personality.

Much of the original conflict between Namor and the Fantastic Four was due to a love triangle between Reed, Sue, and Namor. Eventually Reed and Sue get married, which is all driven by the characters and is a character arc.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

are you joking

Spider-Man's origin story is him getting an inflated ego due to his media success as Spider-Man, refusing to stop a robber because "lol not my problem", and it leading to the death of his uncle. That is all driven by the character's flaws and personality.

Much of the original conflict between Namor and the Fantastic Four was due to a love triangle between Reed, Sue, and Namor. Eventually Reed and Sue get married, which is all driven by the characters and is a character arc.

The first one I sort of agree because Spiderman and Hulk were Stan lees first attempts to make two dimensional characters and beyond, characters who had a single flaw or some emotional baggage which gave them one extra layer and only one extra layer, partially why Peter is a teenager.

The second one not so much. Thats a soap opera and it belongs aside how I met your mother and friends, not in a superhero comic. It is an arc in the sense of a soap opera character getting married at the end of the show, its not really an arc is it. Its a change of circumstances around the characters, not necessarily the characters radically changing or representing any radical principles.

There are instances Marvel tried to do character oriented stories like Old Man Logan, Enemy of the State, Frank Miller Daredevil, Murdock Papers, almost every Punisher storyline, Hulk Grey, Hulk the End, Marvels Ruins, Marvels, Iron Man the End, Wolverine the End, Fury 2001, Fury Peacemaker, Fury My War Gone By, Days of Future Past sorta, Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandos sorta, Frank Millers Wolverine and couple more. There are some stories where Marvel tries to do the same but fails, stuff like Death of Captain America and other Ed Brubaker Captain America shenanigans are not very good. Most of everything else is just a big event or builds up to big events through the characters, not necessarily fleshing them out into a philosophical three dimensional figure.