Comics Thread (was My OFFICIAL Apology to Dave)

[Lord_Nabu]

Lets see, what did I get for the past two weeks... Not much. NEW AVENGERS: best part is the writer acknowledging his characters are in so many books they need to warp time and space to meet. Lots of brooding on impending Doom, namor and t'challa argue and plan to go to war with each other. Mister F and Doc Strange have dinner in Latveria... And nothing happens.

I was annoyed with the last issue I read because they had dumped Dr. Strange back to being arrogant and incompetent...

Apart from that Earth 2 has given Dr. Fate poorly defined magic powers again. I don't think they will ever realize.

I miss Steve Gerber...

[salamanca]

Ah, good old Earth 2... Where they are realizing the potential of Hawkgirl, made the original Atom cool, put a nice twist on Green Lantern, and made Captain Steel viable. (i will even concede the new version of Sandman as interesting). But in exchange we get excessive levels of bad Kirby villians, a terrible version of Flash and a horrid mauling of Dr. Fate. (not to mention Terry Sloan being trashed and wasting time on the Red Torpedo). I want to love this book but every step to the good gets followed by a stumble backwards.

[Lord_Nabu]

Ah, good old Earth 2... Where they are realizing the potential of Hawkgirl, made the original Atom cool, put a nice twist on Green Lantern, and made Captain Steel viable. (i will even concede the new version of Sandman as interesting). But in exchange we get excessive levels of bad Kirby villians, a terrible version of Flash and a horrid mauling of Dr. Fate. (not to mention Terry Sloan being trashed and wasting time on the Red Torpedo). I want to love this book but every step to the good gets followed by a stumble backwards.

I quite liked the first issues but it hasn't really lived up to that since then. I'm inclined to agree with your final assesment.

[Black Jack Rackham]

In my pull today I discovered Nick Spencer is an evil, EVIL Bastard. I have been enjoying both his Morning Glories comic and more recently his Bedlam comic. The latter has a very distinctive style about it, lots of black and grey with hints of red in every cover. Here's an example:

This week, I got my usual fix of Morning Glories only to discover THIS...

In one fell swoop, he's implied there is a connection between the two and NOW I have to go back through all the issues to see if he's been hiding stuff on me.
This is of course, after having to read and re-read Morning Glories because its damn complex in the first place.

[salamanca]

Comics day for Sal!. Red Lantern Corps...this is a Guy Gardner story that Geoff Johns should have written several years ago but was too busy killing unnamed lanterns to bother with. It does little to further any plot and leaves you wondering when we will see some action in a comic book while Guy goes over to the red side because nobody believes in him. I swear, you give me or Mark a power ring, we will go to Oa, fix all the daddy issues and get back to heroic bashing of aliens and rescuing space princesses. Larfleeze got his own book by...Giffen and Dematteis? They had me at that right there. If you remember their Justice League run, it's more of the same comedy. If you remember the Manga Khan issues, this is a continuation on the theme of monologuing. It's a funny read. SECRET AVENGERS: hawkeye questions staying on the team when ordered to kill, Black Widow boldly does her job which is apparently to not be a factor, and Nick Fury expresses some issues and gets to work doing 007 spy stuff. Then there is lots of debriefing to retell the story. But at least somebody realized SHIELD should not be run by a 19 year old girl. Second post for X- titles.

[salamanca]

There were 4-5 X-men books out this week. I bought 3. X-men (in which there really are no men on the team) quickly.revealed the bad girl from last issue, an all powerful technology parasite that infects a nanite filled former member in a coma. Said baddie infects the entire school for a lockdown, tosses the Beast around, tosses Rogue around and keeps the rest of the team locked out of their own house. Kitty Pryde threatens to kill the host and then lets Storm make the worst judgement call, so Jubilee joins the pursuit of the escaping baddie with an infant in her arms. Over in Uncanny X-men, it's all about Illyana asking for help with her "power problem" and telling a flashback of the battle in limbo. The new kids fail to succeed, the old broken team members fail to succeed and nobody feels very comfortable about their place on the team (including Scott) but it's well written and paced. And Illyana's choice for help is obvious yet perfect. Meanwhile in All New X-men, the team chases and catches up with Mystique and we finally find out why she needed to steal that much money. It's the purchase of the century until wolvie and the old kids catch up and spoil the deal. (and Jean flips out...again).

[salamanca]

And the book of the year goes to...Hawkeye number 11!. I know, I keep saying best book ever but this time it's pure genius. The entire story is written from the dog's point of view. The dog investigates the death of Grills, the dog fights crime at the building, the dog saves the day. And it appears we will reread parts of this story as it looks like Kate leaves town but the word balloons are written in dog so most words are inintelligible. It's worth it for the icon version of dog thinking alone.

[salamanca]

In case you missed DC's big mistake for the summer... Turns out that DC believes their own New 52 hype and are now declaring a "long history of big events in September" (meaning releasing the new 5w and doing "zero issues" a year later). So this year, the september books will be stand alone villian issues. With wraparound 3D covers. For a dollar more to cover part of the cover expense. And since every hero has many great bad guys, there will be 4, yes FOUR, issues of Action comics, Detective, Batman, Batman and Robin, Justice League, Justice League of America Green Lantern, and several others. Pretty much every book is going to release 2-4 issues in september. So if you bought 10 DC books at 2.99 this month you will need to buy up to 40 books at 3.99 to keep those collections complete. So your 30 comic budget just hit160 bucks or more. I think they may have just killed their own line.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Interesting stuff I've been looking at in the last couple of weeks. Scott Snyder is doing The Wake for Vertigo comics (a 10 part mini-series). Haven't read it yet but have high expectations. Brian Azzurello returns to the world of 100 Bullets with his new mini-series (also for Vertigo) called Brother Lono, and my guilty pleasure of this week is Matt Fraction teaming up with Howard Chaykin for Satellite Sam complete with all the garter belts you've come to expect from HC.

[salamanca]

Well, finally got last week's books and read them.

Mister X part 3 of 3. as usual, Motter has a hard time doing interesting endings. Things sort of just drift and stop with less than major conflict. Which strangely works.

Satellite Sam was cool fun. It's gonna be trashy because that is what Howard does with these period books but it was written in an interesting fashion and fun to read.

Earth 2 finally time for some fighting then the other wonders show up and there is more chatting and no bad guys. I want to see bad guys get beat on. I want to see a team of superheroes form in less than 14 issues. But it was one of the good read issues of a series that has been very hit or miss.

Green Lantern You know, this book is just switching teams and I respect the need to get something going but it was just another dust up with Larfleeze, another barely established lantern getting killed, and more of the same that we have read many times before.

Avengers AI ok, new book featuring Hank Pym, the Vision, a couple characters I never heard of and a Doombot. Vision displays all new and totally goofy nanite powers, Hank bounces between driven genius and goofy sidekick personality and the Doombot steals the book as the reluctant teammate. Doombot is almost as good as the Parademon from Simone's run in Secret Six. If I stick with this book it will be from Vision nostalgia and Doombot.

[Lady Grace]

I've been following Jim Steranko's twitter.

Dear gawd, the man is entertaining!

[salamanca]

Almost forgot to update:. SECRET AVENGERS came out and I will admit to a touch of confusion. The artwork by Guice and Magyar is awesome but I have no idea WHEN this story takes place. It may or may not be a prequel to the last issue. We get a cool fight between Taskmaster and Mockingbird that ends up being a cliche allies fighting thing and we find out the horrible secret method SHIELD uses to control and mindwipe the operatives. And WarMachine commandeers a bunch of sentient Iron Patriot drones. Annnd I still have no clue what is going on or why. It's like a spy agency run by my Rodrigo character and Don Miguel with no dancing.

[salamanca]

GREEN LANTERN CORPS: Looks like this book is going to end up surviving my new 52 / post Johns purge for a spell. John Stewart shows his face on Oa and has some touchy feely moments with Salaak and Kilowog before getting browbeaten into delaying his leave of absence to lead some rookies to shore of a dam on a boiling sea annnnndddd then their power rings glitch and the Khunds show up. But the end of the story hints as to why the rings are failing which likely will require some reading of new guardians. (thinking about this... The Green Lanterns have indomitable will power. Convincing them to delay their vacation should be impossible).

[salamanca]

UNCANNY X-MEN: So, the kid that makes the Gold Balls appear quits (having realized that he was only created so Bendis can send his editor terrible and offensive name ideas every month) before he gets himself killed. Scott demands the team MUST train and develop better control over their powers but fails to actually carry the order out. Instead, he goes outside and has a whiny discussion with Magneto (who used to have a spine but apparently lost it with the phoenix force). Emma and Magik recruit some new kid who has the ability to remote start cars and make them honk. (if Bendis names him "keychain" I will kill the man). And the issue ends with an appearance by Alison Blair: Agent of SHIELD.

[salamanca]

Most importantly, HAWKEYE was out. This one features Clint's brother, Barney, and has some more funky time overlap with last issue. The main impetus for it is using flashbacks of Barney to tell the hakeye origins story prequel. If you are not totally rooting for Hawkeye after reading his horrid childhood then you are just an evil person. Added bonus: the art is by Francavilla who has been working for dynamite on Shadow covers of late.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Looks like I'm going to have to get The Shadow again. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/07/16/chaykin-returns-to-the-shadow-after-30-years/

[Lady Grace]

I have the original "Blood & Judgement"...this should hopefully be just as badass.

[Black Jack Rackham]

So I made my once a year or less pilgrimage to Top Shelf Comics in Bangor, ME. (where I picked up issues 1-3 of Saga, cool!) but I also saw a DC limited series there called The Shade. Anyone heard of it/know anything about it? I bought it cause it was cover price for the whole set. So we'll see if it's any good.

[salamanca]

The Shade has been around since the 40's. The miniseries (there have been 2: one came out about 2 years ago in the new 52 run. The other about 6 years earlier). Both are written by James Robinson and spin the Shade out of his Starman title. Conceptually, he is an immortal libertine that is unrepentant about his criminal hobbies but also highly protective of his adopted hometown and decendants. The first mini series delved into his origins a bit more the second was a 6 issue run that covered his more recent past and his family as well as some international heroes he has befriended. I love the books. If you missed out on the Starman run, look into that as well, brilliant effort to tie the mythos of 7 heroes with the same name together over 60 years.

[salamanca]

Short pull list this week for me. GL: New Guardians, the new big bad appears and hands Kyle his butt without raising more than a finger. It's yet another big bad that is immune to light weapon rings, bends reality to his will, ignores the laws of physics and is pretty much only stoppable by the writer needing to keep the book going to get paid. (not a fan). From the kids at Marvel, All New X-Men is out and the time displaced kids plus wolverine and Kitty Pryde hand mystique's brotherhood their hats. JEAN FREAKS OUT AND GOES ALL PHOENIX ON EVERYBODY. Professor X returns to scold the kids, people die. WAIT, STOP. Lady Mastermind is in this issue, most everything is an illusion and never happens. But Iceman does pick a fight with Thor. 'nuff said.

[salamanca]

Larfleeze #2 good read for the comedy if you are a fan of the "bwah-ha-ha-ha" days of the Justice League. The book is pure comedy bickering between the lackeys of very powerful and immature immortals. HAWKEYE ANNUAL: This one features a story entirely about Kate opting to go west and be her own girl without realizing what that will entail. And Madame Masque shows up looking for revenge from back in issue 5. And the book of the summer (that's right, something outdid Hawkeye) "the reason for dragons". It's a 20 dollar hardcover from Archaia written by Chris Northrup about a boy who doesn't fit in getting bullied into a dare to enter the haunted ruins of a renn faire where he meets a knight in armor. Epic story and growing up ensue. Great piece of work. It will likely be a tough find on shelves. (i want to loan it to a dozen people already but dare not let it leave my possession).

[Lady Grace]

And speaking of The Shadow again...

http://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewP ... 0880400111

All I'm saying is if his head ends up on a robot body again, somebody's getting shanked.

[salamanca]

Don't worry Grace, Chaykin is also doing a new Buck Rogers comic. Odds are good the robot body will end up there.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Checked out an AWESOMELY fun comic today. It's kind of old (originally came out in 06) but I just recently heard of it. Anyway, Mouse Guard is a fun little romp, and there's even an RPG out for it...

[salamanca]

Yeah...mouseguard. Epic doom filled tales of struggle. I want to run that game as the darkest most tragic RPG campaign ever invented. As for my weekly pull list, it was all weak stories with average art. AVENGERS AI did little but set up future issues (but the stubborn doombot is still cool. VISIONS NEW NANOBOT TRICK IS ALREADY STALE IN ISSUE 2). All New Xmen was sort of a filler issue, Green Lanternis proving Hal never learns or changes, Earth 2 had some big fights and just sort of sat on the page. Dull week.