Sperg about comic books here

[Nick Obre]

Any other good examples of God like art and shit stories?

Any time people like Bendis, Slott, or King get near exclusive access to artists like Immonen, McNiven, Mann, etc.

We've discussed in this thread (I think) how bad Hellblazer got by the end, but one of the worst things was that while Milligan was driving the book into the sodding ground, somehow they managed to get Simon Fucking Bisley for some issues.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Any other good examples of God like art and shit stories?

Everything Jim Lee did except Hush. I liked Multiversity but its very very mid.
Most of Dave McKeans work I guess?
Controversially Sin City, I find it really boring for some reason and I couldnt make it to the end. Hopefully I can.
Adding Invisibles here as well, I like Yeowell

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

I liked Multiversity but its very very mid.

Thunderworld Adventures is the Captain Marvel comic we need but will never ever get.

 

[Elite Miko]

Well IDW's TMNT book is ending at 150. I thought that Sophia Cambell was getting off the book but nope they're ending. He ruined the IDW run for me with that slice-of-life furry bullshit.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Thunderworld Adventures is the Captain Marvel comic we need but will never ever get.

I meant the alt history Nazi thing, I like alt history stuff especially Nazis and if theyre good. Multiversity is like Red son but worse cause its Grant Morrison.
As for Captain Marvel, I really dont care about Shazam and Captain Marvel tbh. I liked Alan Moores Miracleman but thats it and yes I consider it part of the Captain Marvel brand. Captain Marvel is one of dime a dozen 50s Superman clones.

 

[jspit2.0]

To divert for a second:

Has anyone else read this?
View attachment 5628854

Feels like the most worthless waste of art I've ever touched in my life, the story is shit, the characters are aimless retards with random power boosts and the antagonists are beyond irrelevant - the art is gold though.

Imagine a literal God of Chaos and Insanity, and you can literally just say, "No, I'm out" and run away, or just pull some magic out of your ass and kill them, and it has 3 issues that have the SAME TYPE of confrontation - Antagonist shows up, "No, I'm out", repeat until the publisher said you could stop writing and have the M.C. gain enough power trough jihad to be able to kill them.

Any other good examples of God like art and shit stories?

Oh ho! How long do you have?

Literally 90 percent of JH Williams work going from Promethea to Batwohman. Others have mentioned, It is CRIMINAL how many great artists were wasted on Bendis. I'd add in Gary Franks artistic collars with Geoff Johns post Flashpoint. The list is criminally, heartbreakingly long. US with art by Alex Ross. Kevin Maguire's run on Supergirl. Greg Capullo's run with Snyder.

Thunderworld Adventures is the Captain Marvel comic we need but will never ever get.

Typical Morrison. Multiversity 1 and 2 are shit with Obama superman as well as The Just. Thunderworld, Pax Americana, and the Guide book are amazing. Society and Mastermen are middling and full of squandered potential. Seven Soldiers is similar, but the book end is MUCH better storewise.

I meant the alt history Nazi thing, I like alt history stuff especially Nazis and if theyre good. Multiversity is like Red son but worse cause its Grant Morrison.

Well, the key is to do it justice, Morrison had an interesting premise, but failed at the human aspect, I suspect due to political reasons. Conversely, Allot of Red Son was him giving Millar an interesting idea and Millar making it good by doing the thing he's good at which is humanizing horrible people.

As for Captain Marvel, I really dont care about Shazam and Captain Marvel tbh. I liked Alan Moores Miracleman but thats it and yes I consider it part of the Captain Marvel brand. Captain Marvel is one of dime a dozen 50s Superman clones.

Bite your tongue! Captain Marvel is NOT a superman clone. The Fawcet comics OUTSOLD Superman. The characters have a cape and fly, that's the end of their parallels.

Moore himself would be triggered by you using Miracleman, the characters name was MARVELMAN for decades before Marvel stepped on them. He wrote a whole intro about it. Anyway, maybe Cap is too bright and colorful for your tastes, but those Otto Binder and CC Beck stories from the 40s were revolutionary stuff.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I feel like every comic ruins itself with the shared world more than elevates it. The Multiverse is the biggest example, but it comes down to writers needing to have their story interrupt fucking everything. Half the fun of Spider-Man was that he had his own shit to deal with, he had a life to juggle.

Multiverse just destroys any chance at stakes because why attach yourself to this character if there’s multiple versions that can and will replace this one if he dies? They’ve done that before with the X-Men like 90 times and Tony Stark back in the 90’s was killed and replaced with an alternate version of himself because they decided to do time travel fuckery with Kang.

There was a way to implement it well where both characters or teams walked away not being written like absolute retards or one being the villain of the week. Old Avengers comics from the 80’s actually did this pretty well from how I remember them. It usually just was characters team up to investigate shit, have an interaction, and fuck off. Now it’s the X-Men calling everyone racist and Spider-Man tongue bathing the nearest brown dyke as they stab him.

I’m inbetween Manga and bored. So it’s why I’m dropping this in here. Also, was Captain America ever actually liked? He feels like Wonder Woman where everyone is supposed to like him, but really is artificially elevated beyond a background character.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Well, the key is to do it justice, Morrison had an interesting premise, but failed at the human aspect, I suspect due to political reasons. Conversely, Allot of Red Son was him giving Millar an interesting idea and Millar making it good by doing the thing he's good at which is humanizing horrible people.

Only partially true, Morrison wanted to show how Nazi Superman would be a self defeating concept cause of contradictory principles. There's a Kotaku article which whines about this which also defends stalinism in red son. But he should've gone with one of two ways, either commit fully to the fascist Superman concept (you get somewhere between judge dredd and brightburn) and have him destroy everything or do what red son did where his understanding of the world collapses around him as he realises he's the bad guy. Lex Luthor is the actual good guy in red son, not Superman and he realises that fact only towards the end (sorta like how manhattan excuses ozymandias). In multiversity Morrison played god and hamfisted a bunch of shit to show how fascism bad cause Superman loses in the end.

Bite your tongue! Captain Marvel is NOT a superman clone. The Fawcet comics OUTSOLD Superman. The characters have a cape and fly, that's the end of their parallels.

Fawcett sold in both the us and uk before the DC lawsuit, whine about it. Captain Marvel is most definitely a Superman clone who himself is a clone of the ubermensch from Siegel and schusters first story and is also partially shares elements with doc savage, on and on it goes. Even Goku is partially a Superman clone with toriyama ripping off the origin story, the idea of the strong guy with too many powers who can do anything isnt a new concept, it's a 9 year olds first idea for a superhero.

Moore himself would be triggered by you using Miracleman, the characters name was MARVELMAN for decades before Marvel stepped on them. He wrote a whole intro about it. Anyway, maybe Cap is too bright and colorful for your tastes, but those Otto Binder and CC Beck stories from the 40s were revolutionary stuff.

Moore is a retarded faggot, I don't give two shits what the child pornographer and bestialty enjoyer thinks. The 40s comics were an offshoot of pulp stories for children which is why they were popular. Not revolutionary, capeshit just adapted pulp in a visual format and for children, combined with all the war propagandising of the time. That's why they were "revolutionary" cause they were for children and stuff which is for children generally is the most popular of the time period. It's true even now considering adults in the west are growth stunted.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Also, was Captain America ever actually liked?

Like Iron Man, until the MCU he never had much mainstream popularity but in actual comic nerd circles his book was always well liked.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

I’m inbetween Manga and bored. So it’s why I’m dropping this in here. Also, was Captain America ever actually liked? He feels like Wonder Woman where everyone is supposed to like him, but really is artificially elevated beyond a background character.

Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, where he brought back Bucky, was pretty good. Check out the Winter Soldier collection and if you like it, you'll probably like the rest of what he did for those six years he had the character. And plenty of people like Wonder Woman, it's just every writer has a different idea of who she should be so it screws up her continuity and personality.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, where he brought back Bucky, was pretty good. Check out the Winter Soldier collection and if you like it, you'll probably like the rest of what he did for those six years he had the character. And plenty of people like Wonder Woman, it's just every writer has a different idea of who she should be so it screws up her continuity and personality.

Don't forget Bucky teams up with Black Widow for his 2012 series and it actually works! It is something that the films lacked and sorely needed. Also he and Hawkeye went looking for Natasha after her demise. They found her alive but also her sister Yelena.

The Winter Soldier collection makes a great companion piece to the Black Widow: Widowmaker collection. Now they're on the Thunderbolts team together.

I still want to know what they were smoking when they decided to write Secret Empire.

 

[skykiii]

Like Iron Man, until the MCU he never had much mainstream popularity but in actual comic nerd circles his book was always well liked.

Captain America was very popular in the 1940s and I think generally respected in the 1960s, but yeah after that his fortunes waned. I think he was always respected at the very least, sort of like Superman--people love him as a symbol but don't care for the actual stories.

..................

Sooo... I actually came to this topic to micro-sperg.

Lots of people tell me Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is an example of actual intelligent comic writing. Now, I've read a few of the graphic novels and while there are interesting ideas.... intelligent? Come on! The very first storyline has a part where there's a convention meet-up for Serial Killers, with a booked hotel room and everything.

Like... that's just a fundamentally retarded idea even on its face, I don't know where to begin poking holes in it.

(I do like Neil's portrayal of Death though).

Also, since a lot of 1990s comic writers turned out to be loonies, I'm wondering if there's ever been any sauce on Neil Gaiman?

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Someone told me that the X-Men thing Pete’s has been obsessed with was supposed to end with Black Panther and Storm’s son being the Obama of the universe. Or that was the original plan before a tranny got near the reigns of power.

 

[jspit2.0]

Like Iron Man, until the MCU he never had much mainstream popularity but in actual comic nerd circles his book was always well liked.

Iron Man was always a character that was undervalued. Whereas quality Cap runs are few and far between (An excellent Jim Steranko mini run, an abortive Stern/Byrne arc) Iron Man legit had a period of excellence from the 70s into the 90s. Cap frankly never deserved to be bigger.

I’m inbetween Manga and bored. So it’s why I’m dropping this in here. Also, was Captain America ever actually liked? He feels like Wonder Woman where everyone is supposed to like him, but really is artificially elevated beyond a background character.

Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, where he brought back Bucky, was pretty good. Check out the Winter Soldier collection and if you like it, you'll probably like the rest of what he did for those six years he had the character. And plenty of people like Wonder Woman, it's just every writer has a different idea of who she should be so it screws up her continuity and personality.

Wonder Woman was created by a man with his hands down his pants half the time. Those original issues and his pitch are curiosities with the concept more entertaining than the reality. Then you get a period of people just rolling with it until in '69 Denny O'Neil, one of the more over praised writers in comics decided to 'fix' her with a feminist makeover, resulting in an abomination of a character arc where she lost her powers and became I spy. This was thankfully undone by I want to say 72 or 73? But honestly, nothing significant comicswise came of the actual Wonder Woman comic until George Perez, the rockstar who along with Marv Wolfman basically revived DC in the 80s.

In 86 87 Perez launched a two year run that featured wonderful art and a completely new take. He destroyed the Steve Trevor relationship, changing the character to sand down allot of the interesting parts of her to make her a Mary Sue. The problem is like what Alan Moore described in Swamp Thing, It's a finite concept that runs its course. In Len Wein classic Swamp thing (Which I love) either Alec Holland regains his humanity or he doesn't....the end. Sadly everyone lived in the shadows of Perez's run, half of which was good, he went for five long years, with the the second half being drawn by a series of literal who's.

Your mileage will vary for the rest. Bill Messier Loeb did a fantastic job with balancing it before throwing his hands up and deconstructing Perez's stuff in his last year. Then John Byrne came in, just outright for three years doing this bizarre what if Diana had had a decent Bronze Age. Then there's Eric Luke (Ghost of Dark Horse comics fame), Jimenez, and Walt Simonson. It's, not great. For an interesting what if, both Mark Millar and Brian Vaughn wrote filler scripts, there's an alternate world where one of those guys wrote Wonder Woman.

Then there's the dark ages. You have Greg Rucka, the man who literally screwed up Batman permentantly damage the Wonder Woman brand. Remember? Diana snapping a helpless captive Max Lord's neck? That meme is courtesy of Rucka and Simone. The fag retard Heingberg who did Young Avengers rebooted the character then fucked off where Gail Simone got to sit on the character with a bunch of average boring shit, JMS tried to right the ship and sadly got sick.

Then Flashpoint lead to NU52. Azz and Cliff Chiang delivered an outstanding run that is intensely divisive because they finally abandoned trying to just write their own Perez fanfic and leaned into the characters Greek mythos and built an interesting three year run that editorial ruined with Meredith Finch and then handing it to be erased by Rucka.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Thunderworld was boring, because let's face it: the Ordway Shazam reboot was the best version of Shazam and managed to be both retro and modern with how it fleshed out the classic Captain Marvel lore and canon and updated it for modern times while not losing what made it so great in a retro-sense.

The Earth 10/X issue of Multiversity was also one of the most blatant bait and switch stories with the Freedom Fighters being sidelined for Axis JLA and Nazi Superman being simped over (to the point that Grant explicitly had to handwave Nazi Superman being MIA when the Holocaust happened so Nazi Superman could remain sympathetic. The only decent thing to come out of it was the idea that the Freedom Fighters were, save Uncle Sam, all people who got their powers from a heroic Dr Sivana and the implication that they (save Doctor Sivana) were all minorities that got targeted for genocide by the Nazis.

Also, X-Men update for those not reading the books

Spoiler: Golden Goblins, death, and flashback stories galore!

Storm is planning a huge invasion force of Mars mutants that is landing in Australia with the main super heroes of the world going there to hook up with them. Though this may just be a ruse given comments made in previous Iron Man issues where Tony told Not-Musk that Emma had gone back to Mars to raise an army to conquer Earth and Firestar being the one who told them this. But either way, the AI squad in Orchis is already planning to kill Not-Musk and Firestar.

Scott refused to offer a defense at his trial and Jean has made contact with him but Dr Stasis thinks he's crazy.

The Gillen spent most of his first issue of Rise of the Power of X doing a weird flashback tale to a previous Sinister timeline (where Stasis tries and fails to achieve Dominion status) through unstated methods where Rasptutin is sent back to stop him but fails. Xavier, Rasputin, Cypher and two mystery teammates have decided that the Moira clone Save Scum machine is how OG Sinister Nathan Essax achieved dominion status and the only way to stop him is to go back in time before Moria's powers kick in and depower her. Or kill her.

Also, Norman Osborn and Peter Parker are helping Kitty's X-Men cover the Earth with a chemical that will "patch over" the chemical tainting that allows Orchis to kill anyone who took the Krakoa's drugs. But they need High Evolutionary's help and he kills old X-23 but Synch absorbs her mind into his so now he's schizo.

Also, Sabretooth and his army of alternate earth doubles made their annual visit to Logan on his birthday and not only killed Kid Omega but also dismembered Dakken and left Dakken's body parts in the snow to spell out "Happy Birthday" to Logan. And Cable and Teen Cable are off doing something that is totally divorced from the Krakoa endgame becuase Fabian doesn't want to tie-in his mini with the main event it seems.

Also some X-Men 97 spoilers have dropped

Spoiler: Guess Who Joins the party

Maddie Pryor is joining the 90s X-Men by way of the famous Sat-Yr-9 plot from Excalibur. Apparently the new show will retcon that Sinister murdered the real Jean Grey at some point and replaced her with Maddie Pryor, a clone of his that he created and inserted into the X-Men team to get Scott to give him a baby he can train to kill Apocalypse IE Cable. Midway through the run, after giving birth to Cable, Maddie will get outed and Cable stolen and she'll go full Goblin Queen to get him back; as far as the big end of season battle will be Cable and the X-Men vesus Maddie versus Sinister and Bastian.

Also, there will be a Mojo episode midway through the run that will be a love letter to the SNES/Genesis 16 bit graphic games where he traps Jubilee and Sunspot in a video game

Also whoever said Cap hasn't had any good runs but Iron Man has is full of shit.

Cap has the Englehart, DeMatties (which is now getting a lot more attention now that it's been fully collected in the Epic line), and Gruenwald runs.

Iron Man only has three really decent runs: the Michelinie/Layton run, the Byrne/Romita run, and the O'Neil run and even then, O'Neil spends most of his run shitting on Tony is a proto-Knightfall type storyline.

Well IDW's TMNT book is ending at 150. I thought that Sophia Cambell was getting off the book but nope they're ending. He ruined the IDW run for me with that slice-of-life furry bullshit.

It's not ending so much as being relaunched with a new #1. IIRC they are going the route of thinking that a new #1 will boost sales on the title along with allowing them to do a jumping on point for the series, since the feeling now is that the book isn't selling well because of the continuity lock-out nature of it where someone jumping onto the book currently would be confused as fuck with the number of OCs and how far the book has fallen in terms of becoming an incestuous slice of life furry comic with the Turtles as supporting cast to the OCs.

 

[Fartificial Insmelligence]

Captain America was very popular in the 1940s and I think generally respected in the 1960s, but yeah after that his fortunes waned. I think he was always respected at the very least, sort of like Superman--people love him as a symbol but don't care for the actual stories.

..................

Sooo... I actually came to this topic to micro-sperg.

Lots of people tell me Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is an example of actual intelligent comic writing. Now, I've read a few of the graphic novels and while there are interesting ideas.... intelligent? Come on! The very first storyline has a part where there's a convention meet-up for Serial Killers, with a booked hotel room and everything.

Like... that's just a fundamentally retarded idea even on its face, I don't know where to begin poking holes in it.

(I do like Neil's portrayal of Death though).

Also, since a lot of 1990s comic writers turned out to be loonies, I'm wondering if there's ever been any sauce on Neil Gaiman?

I thought the “Cereal” convention wasn’t all that bad, it’s not like the con-goers were openly telling the hotel staff “Yeah we’re all serial killers meeting up to talk shop!”. Sandman was p decent for me up until the fifth volume I think? Nothing earth-shattering, but solid with decent ideas, but in the fifth volume they introduce a troon main-ish character and I stopped reading then and there (I only read the comics via the collected editions years later).

Switching topics though, one of my FAVORITE Spidey runs was Superior Spider-Man, and I even read the 12 issue arc where they brought him back briefly, only to have him make ANOTHER deal with Mephisto… Now they’re bringing the character idea back a THIRD time because apparently Doc Ock needed help during his time as Spidey with some problem, and only a smarter younger female genius could help him! Now this laaaydeeeee is a bad guy, and something something actual Peter has to take on the Superior persona. God I hate modern comics…

 

[el bandito loco]

Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America, where he brought back Bucky, was pretty good. Check out the Winter Soldier collection and if you like it, you'll probably like the rest of what he did for those six years he had the character. And plenty of people like Wonder Woman, it's just every writer has a different idea of who she should be so it screws up her continuity and personality.

I've been saving this for if I ever made a YouTube channel about comics I like but I'm never going to, Grant Morrison's Batman run and Brubaker's Captain America run are the exact same thing. This is not exclusive to their specific stories but also what was happening around them in universe from other writers too. I like both but they're the same shit and weirdly ran at and I was reading them the same time. I'm going to be a little vague and obtuse so this isn't the never-ending post.

It actually starts before Morrison with Under the Hood. that and Winter Soldier are essentially the same concept executed with different plots and happened at the same time, like I was buying both storylines at my local grocery store every month together.

after this Morrison's run starts and does this wacky recontextualization of Batman in the Silver Age to make it work canonically in the then current DCU. over in Captain America we got a serious recontextualization of early Marvel tying things together fitting old stories better into the then current Marvel universe. both have some little who's who's bringing back forgotten characters and giving them a new coat of paint.

this is followed by both characters death as a major moment and tie in to a universe wide crossover. then their former protege takes over and is essentially the opposite of them in their role as Batman/Captain America, having solo main title adventures and also being compared to their mentor by other characters in universe in crossover books.

eventually it is revealed both characters were alive and actually got sent back in time and it's a time skipping adventure and race to get them back and have a major incident with a nemesis, then both books sort of after this have a strange business as usual period then have stories ending this era tying up lose ends.

not all of this was literally the same months between them but some of it was and it was strange as fuck to me at the time, I was a teenager throughout these periods and it blew my mind nobody seemed to talk about how Batman & Captain America, two series who usually didn't have much in common beyond superheroes were essentially doing the exact same thing in two opposite ways at the same time to a year apart and I to this day have never heard anyone mention it.

It's weird.

 

[jspit2.0]

Also whoever said Cap hasn't had any good runs but Iron Man has is full of shit.

Go on....

Cap has the Englehart, DeMatties (which is now getting a lot more attention now that it's been fully collected in the Epic line), and Gruenwald runs.

Meh, double meh, and some standout moments, The Captain/bloodstone hunt, but two words

werewolf cap.

Look, people talk. If you asked me, is Captain America the comics all that good run wise? Nah. It's got a long line of decent fare you can rifle through. But the big stuff, the good stuff? That's the little runs that never happened.

I don't recommend Brubaker or Waid or whatever and the guys you mention, well, if you like Cap sure. You can read and they aren't bad. The runs you mentioned are thoroughly decent. But good? Maybe some of Grunwald....

Iron Man only has three really decent runs: the Michelinie/Layton run, the Byrne/Romita run, and the O'Neil run and even then, O'Neil spends most of his run shitting on Tony is a proto-Knightfall type storyline.

Busiek/Stern/Chen for one makes it four, I could argue a couple of others.

But I wouldn't call the Michelin/Layton/Romita run decent. It's one of those sleeper runs that doesn't get appreciation for being outstanding run, either the first or second one. Demon in a Bottle? Armor Wars? The Doc Doom mash ups? It's filled with tons of great story, solid inks and artwork.

 

[skykiii]

I thought the “Cereal” convention wasn’t all that bad, it’s not like the con-goers were openly telling the hotel staff “Yeah we’re all serial killers meeting up to talk shop!”.

Yeah but.. it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

For one... serial killers are rather secretive. Why would they seek out and want to hang with other serial killers?

Two, how was this convention advertised? It would have to be coded enough that law enforcement would not figure it out, but so that the serial killers would. Which.... it varies but a lot of serial killers ain't intelligent--even in that story, there was that one fat guy who was seriously delusional that the kids he killed were actually his "friends."

Which goes to the third problem... it falls into a standard comic trap (which I've been discussing with @LORD IMPERATOR lately) of bad people somehow knowing/acting like they're part of a club whose job is to fulfill a certain role--"Secret Society of Super Villains" and the like--but of course, real people don't think of themselves as villains, and serial killers--even in the context of this story--don't think of themselves as killers. In their minds, its always "different in my case!" or "I'm not killing them, I'm saving them" or some shit.

That whole thing... the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. It's the kind of thing that would be laughable Silver Age charm if this were the 1950s, but it being done in a book that is "comics for intelligent people" is just eye-rolling.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I've been saving this for if I ever made a YouTube channel about comics I like but I'm never going to, Grant Morrison's Batman run and Brubaker's Captain America run are the exact same thing. This is not exclusive to their specific stories but also what was happening around them in universe from other writers too. I like both but they're the same shit and weirdly ran at and I was reading them the same time. I'm going to be a little vague and obtuse so this isn't the never-ending post.

It actually starts before Morrison with Under the Hood. that and Winter Soldier are essentially the same concept executed with different plots and happened at the same time, like I was buying both storylines at my local grocery store every month together.

after this Morrison's run starts and does this wacky recontextualization of Batman in the Silver Age to make it work canonically in the then current DCU. over in Captain America we got a serious recontextualization of early Marvel tying things together fitting old stories better into the then current Marvel universe. both have some little who's who's bringing back forgotten characters and giving them a new coat of paint.

this is followed by both characters death as a major moment and tie in to a universe wide crossover. then their former protege takes over and is essentially the opposite of them in their role as Batman/Captain America, having solo main title adventures and also being compared to their mentor by other characters in universe in crossover books.

eventually it is revealed both characters were alive and actually got sent back in time and it's a time skipping adventure and race to get them back and have a major incident with a nemesis, then both books sort of after this have a strange business as usual period then have stories ending this era tying up lose ends.

not all of this was literally the same months between them but some of it was and it was strange as fuck to me at the time, I was a teenager throughout these periods and it blew my mind nobody seemed to talk about how Batman & Captain America, two series who usually didn't have much in common beyond superheroes were essentially doing the exact same thing in two opposite ways at the same time to a year apart and I to this day have never heard anyone mention it.

It's weird.

So much fucking wrong with this that it's insulting

UTRH was Judd Winnick writing a largely editorially mandated story to bring Jason Todd back for real after the fake out of his return was the only thing from Hush to gain any sort of traction. Morrison didn't touch Jason until B&R, which had him shit all over the idea of Jason as a violent anti-hero as far as bringing back Jason having red hair and writing him as a failed influencer who's big scheme was to get Dick Grayson humiliated by having him stripped naked on webcam.

And the second time he wrote Jason was in the second volume of Batman Inc, in a story that was 100% incompatible with the Red Hood And the Outlaws book and indicated what Morrison wanted to do with Jason hand New 52 not happened: which was to stick him into one of the costumed identities of one of the League of Heroes characters Morrison revived going forward and basically stealth reboot him back to his pre-death personality via writer fiat since Morrison realized that Jason was here to stay and figured better to regress than deal with existential issue of Jason being alive and eternally pissed at Batman failing him on every conceivable level.

Also, Morrison's Batman was full-on reconstructionist fair as though Morrison realized how he eternally fucked up the character by making the Frank Miller DKR take his default Batman personality in JLA and how that influenced the Batman writing/editorial team in the late 80s/early 00s. Especially since, in the early 00s, the Batman writing team went out of their way to fucking make Bruce an utterly unlikable, hypocritical piece of shit and how it carried over as well to both Dick and Tim as well. To the point that Tim Drake was particularly damaged to the point of unfixability and why Damien bitchslapping him like he did in his first appearance was a cathartic as fuck moment given the shit Tim pulled in YJ and Teen Titans under this mandate.

Morrison made Batman likable again, gave him some humor and romance, and basically reminded fans why people like Batman; basically factory resetting Bruce back to the Bronze Age/BTAS personality-wise. It was a repudiation of the late 90s/early 00s Batman that he inadvertedly mainstreamed.

Brubaker on the other hand with his Cap run? Total abomination written by a man who stabbed Christopher Priest in the back and ran him out of comics by fucking him over so fucking hard with Bendis's help for nearly a decade, all because Priest was a Wanda/Steve shipper and because of Brubaker's nihilistic hate boner for Captain America being a goody-goody and not a violent gun toting he-man and basically despising the Mark Gruenwald run so much for enshrining this.

He killed Nomad off just for shits and giggles, had Diamondback get the shit kicked out of her, made D-Man a serial killer under the Scourge of the Underworld, threw a temper tantrum because he could not pretend Thunderbolts never happened and regress Baron Zemo to a disfigured lunatic racist with daddy issues, killed off most of Red Skull's running crew from the Gruenwald era, brought back Sin (a character most people like to pretend doesn't exist) so he could revamp her and Crossbones as a Natural Born Killers type killer couple, put Red Skull in the head of a corrupt Russian general, and Bucky..... let's take a character who represents the innocence of the Golden Age and make him an assassin even BEFORE he even became a brainwashed Russian assassin! Oh and let's make him a cyborg too because deep down, Brubaker is probably super fucking pissy that his teenage theory that Cable was Bucky didn't pan out as seen by the fact that he turned Bucky into Cable light complete with robot arm! And for the kicker? He didn't do a god-damn thing to try and stop Cap from being thrown under the bus as hard as he was by Millar because he was thrilled that he now had the chance to kill Steve off (and keep him dead for as long as he wanted, before sales dipped to the degree that Marvel made him bring Steve back) and make Murder Bucky the new Captain America AND carry a gun around!!!!!!!!!!!

Morrison's Batman run was gold and revitalized the character that was tainted in part because of Morrison giving into fan demand to make DKR the default Batman personality. Captain America by Brubaker was written by someone who actively DESPISED Captain America and spent his entire run shitting all over it and trying to make a character he default turned into a mass murdering assassin the new default version of Cap. To the point that I find myself breaking into laughing over Brubaker realizing how FUCKED he is, by making Bucky=Winter Soldier, because his desperate need to rape Cap lore inadvertently fucked him out of seeing a dime in royalties for the Winter Soldier concept being used in movies since he didn't create Bucky whereas had he created a new character and not defiled Bucky, he'd be rolling in movie royalty money!

The hate for Capwolf was 100% Wizard manufactured and mainly so they could suck off Mark Waid and claim his run was way better, especially after Waid got fired from the book the first time around.

The story eventually got reprinted (one of the very few Gruenwald Cap stories to get reprinted until the Epic trades) and is widely loved these days now that Wizard's influence has largely faded and most people seeing the Waid run as the crap shack that it actually was.

Also, Neil's "Cereal/Serial" Killer convention was both done for the absurdity of serial killers having meet and greet parties but also to make fun of conspiracy theories that said all serial killers being related, while at the same time spoofing the cliches that popped up in how such killers were portrayed in the media.