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AICN COMICS REVIEWS SHE-HULK! TRANSFORMERS! NIGHTWING! AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!!
#35 | 1/18/06 | align=right> #4 |
(Click title to go directly to the review)
BIRDS OF PREY #90
ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 5
IDENTITY CRISIS #4
SHE-HULK #4
FIRESTORM # 21
TRANSFORMERS: INFILTRATION #1
TESTAMENT #2
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #2
Comics Catch-up featuring NIGHTWING
Big Eyes for the Cape Guy presents SAMURAI EXECUTIONER
Big Eyes for the Cape Guy presents ANNE FREAKS V.1
Indie Jones presents…
CHEAP SHOTS!
BIRDS OF PREY #90
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Paolo Siqueira & Adam Dekraker
Publisher: DC Comics
Reviewed by Dave Farabee
It’s been well over a year since I’ve read an issue of BIRDS OF PREY. Got derailed by the crossover gloom of “War Games” and a general declining interest in DC’s line – no biggie, just lost the enthusiasm for it.
This week I decided to sneak a look back. Curiosity was the lure, and not because of events in the book, but because of the reaction it provoked in one of our TalkBackers: vitriolic would be an understatement (howdy, Lady C.!). In fact I was reminded of my own heated responses to the likes of IDENTITY CRISIS or Kevin Smith’s SPIDER-MAN/BLACK CAT.
Naturally, I had to read the issue.
And I did.
The end result?
Well…
I feel like I should drag out the tension for a moment.
Is that long enough?
Maybe now?
Oh, alright, I thought it was a pretty damn good issue. It actually made me want to backtrack and catch up on the book with how good it was. TalkBackers, please don’t hobble me.
The story I came in on was just hitting its climactic chapter. The interwoven subplot has Batman in the midst of a verbal showdown with Oracle over a mob operation involving the oft-unstable Huntress. Oracle’s backed by proud papa, Commissioner Gordon, though, and she’s not backing down. Front and center on the action side, we’ve got Huntress, Black Canary, and a few walking-wounded friends facing off against enemy agents. They’ve been sent by Oracle’s villainous, info-gathering opposite, The Calculator, in an effort to drive her out. Batch #1 apparently failed, as they’re unconscious when the story opens, but Calculator ups the ante to the tune of DC’s current master villain du jour: Deathstroke, The Terminator.
Now I can’t speak to continuity issues or even the flow of the story arc – I’m an outsider looking in for this review – but on its own merits BIRDS OF PREY #90 rocked. I’m a sucker for stories where the small, unlikely band of heroes takes on a menace entirely over their heads and really has to bust their asses off to keep up – and that’s precisely what happens. Deathstroke as currently characterized is ridiculously über - I never bought his takedown of the entire JLA in IDENTITY CRISIS – but he meets his match in a pair of really determined super heroines and one highly-motivated gay bodyguard (long story). Honestly, it’s a great showdown. Deathstroke is clearly holding back early on, not looking to kill over a simple mission to retrieve the Calculator’s henchmen, and that gives the good guys just enough of an opening to survive.
And really, that’s about all they do.
Through Black Canary’s narrative captions we see that she’s desperate just to find three seconds to enact a particular plan. Problem is, finding a three second window against a fighting machine like Deathstroke is next to impossible. Reminded me a bit of Marv’s grueling fight with serial killer Kevin in the original SIN CITY, and I wonder if that might’ve been a conscious or subconscious influence on Gail Simone’s handling of Canary’s desperation. In the end, my only complaint about the battle was one doofy line from Deathstroke (the milkshake thing). The heroes win the day, but only just, and not without some broken bones for their efforts. I’ll tell ya, Deathstroke’s always been a favorite villain, but even my favorite scumbags shouldn’t be regularly humiliating the heroes. Unfortunately, that’s been DC’s default approach since IDENTITY CRISIS, so if this is a small example of overturning that, I can only applaud.
I also enjoyed every moment of the Batman/Oracle face-off. Batman’s another character, like Deathstroke, who’s become gratingly über. I want him to be shown to be fallible, but not so much so that he ends up looking like a schmuck…or worse yet, falls into an editorially-driven funk that’ll take a thirty-part crossover to resolve. And again, Gail strikes the right balance. The motivations behind Batman’s confrontation with Oracle are dead-on – Huntress has been an unstable factor in Gotham crime fighting in the past – but maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have all the facts in this case. Cool thing about the scene is that you can’t tell whether Oracle’s arguing with Batman in true defense of Huntress of just because she’s bristling under his controlling nature. I enjoyed the emotionalism clouding the issue, which leads to a beaut of a pay-off that I certainly didn’t see coming. It actually made me smile, and coupled with the Deathstroke resolution, gave me hope for the first time in many months that maybe DC hasn’t abandoned the underlying optimism of superheroes completely.
Or maybe I just like Gail’s approach in particular. Probably that.
As for the resolution to the Calculator’s scene, a particular bugaboo of our esteemed TalkBacker, I saw nothing more than a classic case of villainous hubris come back to haunt the villain. Pretty standard melodramatic twist, actually, and one I’ve seen applied to even the biggest guns (your Luthors, your Doc Dooms). I’m sure Calculator will survive to commit evil again, same as they did.
Art’s by two fellas, both unknown to me, but there’s a surprisingly unified effect – I didn’t even realize I was looking at two different artists in the mix till I read the credits. Nice, clear action staging, the heroes and villains all look suitable cool, and I see a bit of Michael Golden and Chris Sprouse in the detail-work and spotted blacks. Very easy on the eyes.
And all told, a highly recommended issue. If there’s a perception that villains got short shrift, I think that comes down to a level of fan investment in them that will nearly always lead to disappointment in a corporate environment where writers and editorial directions are constantly changing. I mean, I’m still smarting from the shoddy treatment Captain Boomerang got before his ignominious death in IDENTITY CRISIS – and that’s based on fondness for the character dating back to his 1980s characterization in THE SUICIDE SQUAD! Writers shouldn’t be above being called out on mischaracterization, but you’ve got to allow for at least some leeway when you’re dealing with as big an ensemble of creators as DC. Without that leeway, Deathstroke wouldn’t be as powerful as he is now in the first place, and the Calculator would be a forgotten Batman villain with a computer strapped to his chest.
ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 5
Written by Steve Engelhart, Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Harlan Ellison
Art by Barry Windsor-Smith, Rich Buckler, Bob Brown, Jim Starlin, Don Heck, Sal Buscema, John Buscema, George Tuska, Sam Kweskin
Published by Marvel
Reviewed by Buzz Maverik
Stan Lee used to say that every comic was someone's first. I suppose that it's also true that every comic book review is someone's first. Up front, let me tell you that I'm a Marvel Zombie in the truest sense of the word. I review the old shit, the comics preceding the time in my childhood when I first started reading comics because I got sick of reviewing comics I didn't like.
If I were going to review new comics, I'd review something new and different. What would be the point of reviewing PLANETARY every time it came out? Well, PLANETARY got old for me, so it's a bad example. Anyway, here I am, reviewing comics that I know I'm going to love, or at least comics that will make me smile a little.
Volume five of the non-new Avengers opens up after a major bit of disassembling, in the form of the first Kree-Skrull War and an artist by the name of Neal Adams who greatly influenced the plots of the books he drew. The big treat here is that for the first three issues, Barry Windsor-Smith is the penciller. You know these are black and white editions, but here is an artist whose work is even better without color. Just wait until you see the magnificent splash page for AVENGERS # 100, in which the Black Knight, aboard his winged horse Aragorn, lands in front of a castle. This immediately followed panels of a powerful Captain America in stealthy action on the next page and appearances by every character that had been Avengers up to that point.
It's good to see something you hate vanish so quickly. In this case, we have Hawkeye, who'd gone MIA during the Kree-Skrull conflict, return in a god awful tunic and bare legs. We're talking Zap Brannigan from FUTURAMA or Sharon Stone from BASIC INSTINCT. If Bendis would have shot him in that state, there'd be no "Hawkeye lives, motherfucker..." movement. Yeesh.
Hawkeye leaving the Avengers is one of the big themes here. Probably what excited me most about this volume was the inclusion of a DAREDEVIL issue (then titled DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW). DD from that era has yet to be reprinted. HOWARD THE DUCK creator Steve Gerber, a true Marvel genius, wrote that one. Hawkeye turns up to try to win Natasha back and Matt kicks his ass. To make matters worse, the Avengers arrive to recruit DD and the Widow as replacements for their archer. It was enough to make Hawkeye join the Defenders, except that you can't really join the Defenders. You can only sort of hang out with the Defenders.
Artist Rich Bucker, creator of DEATHLOK and penciller of Kirbyesque FANTASTIC FOUR issues, immediately followed Windsor-Smith. Like Adams and Windsor-Smith, Buckler brought really strong art to a title that badly needed it. He gave us some mutant/Sentinel shenanigans that followed up Adams' definitive X-MEN stories.
You'll also see Steve Engelhart, one of the greatest superhero writers of the era, begin his long run on the book in this volume. On his own site, Mr. Engelhart talks about trying to write Roy Thomas style AVENGERS stories and sort of floundering until he started doing Steve Engelhart stories. These centered on the introduction of martial arts babe Mantis and former villain/loser hero the Swordsman as new Avengers. The next volume will bring a great series with these characters. Mr. Engelhart was teamed with an excellent artist named Bob Brown who did an incredible, moody, noir-ish, BATMAN-ish pre-Miller run on DAREDEVIL.
Toward the end, though, I had to remind myself that every comic, even an Essential, is someone's first. Reprinted here is the legendary Avengers/Defenders war, with Mr. Engelhart writing both books. I'd heard about these comics for years, longed for them as a kid ("Man, if I could have been buying comics in first grade!"). They were reprinted in color in AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR. Last year, they were reprinted in ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL. 1. We get 'em again in ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 5. I had to skip them this time.
The great thing about the stories here is that they are entirely pose free. If you really like story and character, with the strange beings behaving like real people and not the inhabitants of the freshman dorm's geek wing, this is the book for you.
INFINITE CRISIS #4
Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Phil Jiminez, George Perez, and Ivan Reis
Inks: Andy Lanning, Lary Stucker, George Perez, Marc Campos, Oclair Albert, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Drew Geraci
Publisher: DC Comics
Reviewer: Ambush Bug
Plant me firmly in the camp of loving this miniseries. I feel as if Geoff Johns and Co. have really kept this miniseries together. It’s a massive effort to coordinate these types of things, but so far, most of DC’s books have shipped on time and in accordance to the plot development in this main title. And I find that to be an impressive task and one worthy of mentioning at the beginning of this review.
Like the last few issues, this issue was packed with great comic book moments. The Society stages a cataclysmic attack on Bludhaven. A new Spectre is born. There’s a great character moment between Batman and Nightwing and an exceptionally powerful sequence involving all of the speedsters of the DCU. The plot involving the new Blue Beetle is developed a teense. The villains’ plan is revealed. And we are treated to one of the most contextual battle royales I have been privy to in ages.
Now I know this issue sparked a heated debate about comic book violence in last week’s Talkbacks. Some pointed out the outrage cried when Sue Dibny was raped in IDENTITY CRISIS and the admiration the same community seems to be having with Superboy’s meltdown in this issue. I see some people’s point in that these characters are world-wide icons. If a ten year old would pick up IDENTITY CRISIS #4 and see an incarnation of Superman punching the head off of one hero and slicing another in half with his heat vision and that was one of his first experiences with the hero, I’d have to say that this representation of Superman is not really a healthy way to promote a hero loved the world over.
Then again, I have to look past the concerns for that 10 year old kid and say that this 33 year old was thoroughly entertained with this issue. I’m in the camp of loving interesting stories, especially interesting stories involving some of my favorite heroes. Stories that matter. And this one surely does. It matters in the context of the story Johns is trying to tell. The further into this series we get, the more fascinated I am as to where Johns is going with this.
At first, I thought that INFINITE CRISIS was going to be a commentary on the dark turn the current DCU has taken in recent years. It seemed to carry the message that “enough is enough with all of this dark shit, let’s see our heroes acting heroic!” So when the first issue of this series came out and the idealistic heroes of the alternate earths were revealed to be involved, part of me was rooting for these “classic” heroes to swoop in and teach this current batch how it’s supposed to be done. But Johns pulled a switcheroo in issues two and three. Seems these heroes’ idealism is a bit blinding. More and more, it seems that the world these original heroes once lived in is gone forever, that any attempt to bring back that world would surely destroy the world we know. As the story progresses into this issue, it seems that the “good old days” don’t really have a place in the DCU and as illustrated in the above-mentioned Superboy meltdown, these guys are as easily corruptible as the heroes of today.
So what is Johns saying here? I know I’m confused and intrigued. So I guess the story is doing its job. Is he trying to say that DCU is a reflection of today’s society and cannot be changed by the idealism of the past? Is he saying that there is no crisp, clean heroism left in the DCU and that dark times demand harder heroes? Or is there going to be another development in the next three issues which will throw everything else we know and love on its ear? I don’t know.
I do know that I’m hooked. I do know that Phil Jiminez, George Perez, and Ivan Reis are doing a phenomenal job of illustrating this powerful story. I also know that every issue so far in this series has been better than the next and all of the hype that led up to it was well worth it. I don’t know what direction DC will be taking after this series reaches its conclusion. It could be a better, brighter, more heroic place or a darker place than ever before. There are some who long for a return to simpler times for DC’s heroes, but I don’t know if these same fans will be around if that actually happens. All I know is that, whatever the outcome, I’m going to be there, sticking with this Crisis till the end.
SHE-HULK #4
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Scott Kolins
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Dave Farabee
It’s common knowledge that writer Dan Slott can bring the funny. Anyone who’s read the SHE-HULK where Spider-Man told a jury that J. Jonah Jameson hated him because he was black knows this. Anyone who’s read the SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH where the Red Ghost’s super-apes stole the Spidermobile knows this.
The question is, can Slott bring the serious, too?
He’s dabbled with drama, of course, amidst all the lighter outings he’s had, and I’m 90% sure his ARKHAM ASYLUM mini for DC wasn’t a yuk-fest, but I haven’t read it yet (soon, soon). To use a little She-Hulk legalese, though, none of it amounts to a preponderance of evidence. That’s what made SHE-HULK #4 an interesting test. It’s a flashback story to events that preceded his run on the book, events from Geoff Johns’s not-so-highly-regarded AVENGERS run. Remember Hank Pym shrinking down for a gooey trip to the Wasp’s nether regions? Yeah, that run. But the only relevant thing to know about it for Slott’s story is that events within conspired to send She-Hulk on a rampage that tore up a small Idaho town. In short, her actions were much closer to those of her better-known and more destructive cousin, and we’ve never really seen how she dealt with that.
The framing device for the story is that She-Hulk’s filling in some gaps in the record of her life for the Time Variance Authority (cosmic time-travel bureaucrats from her current storyline). The biggest gap, we learn, represents a series of many months she spent in Idaho doing recovery work in the wake of her destructive tear. Slott introduces a neat idea here – the “Green Cross” - a charity organization created specifically to help out at the site of Hulk-related disasters. And because She-Hulk’s powers aren’t functioning during this period, she’s volunteering for the Green Cross strictly as alter ego Jen Walters.
This is pretty dark territory for a largely tongue-in-cheek adventure book like SHE-HULK. Jen’s got a lot of guilt to deal with, all the more so because she’s secretly attending a support group for victims of the disaster. Worst of all, the shroud of possibly having murdered someone in her rampage hangs over her head. Captain America told her there were 72 injured but no deaths, but new evidence seems to indicate otherwise. She-Hulk’s not sure if she can live with that knowledge – even given that the rampage was beyond her control.
This leads to an interesting observation on She-Hulk’s part, one I ended up jawing about a bit with a friend of mine: she’s of the firm belief that her cousin, Bruce Banner, the king of all gamma-related rampages…has never taken an innocent life amidst these rampages. From She-Hulk’s internal monologue:
“It’s a fact. And I can prove it with a simple, apagogic argument. Proof by contradiction.
I know my cousin. And if he ever took an innocent life, he would take his own. Because he would never take the chance that it could happen again. That’s who he is.”
And this, for me, is proof positive that Dan Slott gets the Marvel that I like: the Marvel of my youth, the Marvel that Lee, Kirby, and Ditko founded. Because to me, the Marvel setting, for all its tragic turns and occasional losses by the heroes, is and must be a setting founded on optimism, on the belief that a world of superheroes would ultimately be a world with less tragedy than our own. My friend had a problem with She-Hulk’s certainty on the matter because he just couldn’t buy into the notion of no one ever dying while Hulk smashed; whereas for me, that’s an essential component of the suspension of disbelief that accompanies the character. It’s essential to the character ultimately being a hero, if only reluctantly, in a world where the Avengers would surely put him permanently out of commission if he’d inadvertently killed.
Should Slott have stated it so unequivocally? Well, we’re still just getting Jen’s subjective perspective, not a factual account, so I suppose those on either side can believe what they want. If your head can’t accept a Hulk whose tantrums never resulted in death, then you need only presume She-Hulk doesn’t know her cousin so well as she thinks.
Me, I believe her.
Still and all, it’s just a few panels in the story. But where She-Hulk’s sure Bruce would end his life if he’d killed, she’s not quite so resolute. That’s the central dilemma and mystery of the story, with guest appearances by Doc Samson and a little magicking by the Scarlet Witch (pre-breakdown). The Scarlet Witch casts a peculiar spell on She-Hulk that seems a little far-fetched in its power and specificity, but I suppose it matches up with what Bendis would later do with the character. Slott’s sensibilities may seem old-fashioned, but the man’s a team player through-and-through and not one to overwrite what others have done. And I have to admit, the Witch’s spell plays out pretty interestingly as a component to the mystery.
Art is by Scott Kolins, a cool bit of continuity since he drew the original AVENGERS story with She-Hulk’s rampage. For some reason, I’ve never been so taken with Kolins’s work after his defining run on THE FLASH – maybe I miss that book’s muted coloring? – but his detailed, Euro-style penciling is quite effective at conveying a town ravaged by destruction. It’s good work.
In fact, the whole issue is. I wanted to know if Slott could handle drama, and the answer is an enthusiastic “YES!”. In addition to everything else he gets right and the strong emotion of the finale, by issue’s end he’s even come up with an inspired call-back to the first ever issue of THE INCREDIBLE HULK – the tragedy that kick started it all. It takes the issue beyond mere anecdotal seriousness to establish it as a key moment in the Hulk’s larger mythology, and that’s something special. Hey, it’s not as if I needed another reason to like Dan Slott’s writing, but if I did…
Why, it’s even enough to make me forgive the fact that the promised Avengers resurrection from the previous issue wasn’t the character I was hoping for. Somehow I’ve got a feeling Slott’ll still do right by ‘im.
FIRESTORM # 21
Written by: Stuart Moore
Pencilled by: Jamal Ingle and Eddy Barrows
Published by: DC Comics
Reviewed by: superhero
Well, with this issue of FIRESTORM they’ve roped me back into the series for at least a couple of issues. When they brought the Firestorm book back I was one of those severely disappointed fans that was disgusted that they had replaced Ronnie Raymond with a surrogate. I, for one, loved the old Firestorm. To me he was always DC’s answer to Peter Parker/Spider-Man and in the 80’s I ended up really liking Raymond and Professor Martin Stein as characters. I admit I didn’t read every issue, mostly due to finances at the time, but when I did get to read Firestorm it was a book I’d thoroughly enjoy. So when the heralded return of Firestorm made its debut and all we got was some new kid with Firestorm’s powers and appearance I was heartbroken. I tried to stick with the book but after several issues but I just couldn’t justify it. They’d replaced the fun-loving Ronnie Raymond I knew with some wuss who I could’ve given a rat’s ass about. In short, the new Firestorm sucked.
With this issue at least the creative team of the current FIRESTORM book brings back an element of the original that I actually enjoyed. It seems that Professor Martin Stein is back…or at least his disembodied spirit is. In a bit of comic book silliness Jason Rusch, the kid who currently has Firestorm’s powers, comes across Stein’s essence right after he’s mortally wounded following the events in IDENTITY CRISIS #4. Apparently the good Professor has become a Galactic Elemental wandering the cosmos. Because of his past connection with Firestorm, he was able to sense that something was wrong with the “Firestorm Matrix” (whatever the hell that is) and he came to aid Jason in his hour of need.
The long and short of it is at least one element of the old Firestorm is back and that’s enough for this fan to check out a couple more issues of this series before dropping it again. Sure there’s some really stupid elements introduced here like the fact that Jason is one in a long line of Firestorms (I mean, seriously, didn’t the writer of FIRESTORM see how badly that went over in the Spider-books?) but there was enough heartfelt writing here that it actually reminded me of the good old days with Ronny and the Prof. Therefore, FIRESTORM will be getting another couple of issues out of me. I’m sure that it’ll only be a couple of issues that I’ll need before dropping this book again, but this issue gave me hope for a new direction, so that’s something. If this writer can recapture the old days for me in this one issue maybe he’ll be able to continue doing it for a while. I have my doubts, but at least right now I have hope for the re-vamped FIRESTORM and that’s better than what I thought of it before I read this particular issue.
TRANSFORMERS: INFILTRATION #1
Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: E.J. Su
Publisher: IDW
Reviewed by Dave Farabee
Didja catch that purportedly-leaked ILM footage from the Transformers movie that made the online rounds a week back? Turned out to just be talented fan work, but it definitely tripped my nostalgia-switch, and just in time for the relaunch of the TRANSFORMERS comic. The license is now in the hands of the increasingly eclectic IDW Publishing, and I even came up with a positive review of the zero issue preview some months back. Does the early promise of quality maintain?
Mostly, yeah, and yet…
If there’s any real problem with this first issue – an all-new continuity, incidentally – it’s that it plays it as coy as the preview issue in regards to the Transformers themselves. Oh, they’re around – almost exclusively in vehicle forms - but they’re not exactly front and center, and the number of actual transforming instances? Big ol’ zero. To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in JURASSIC PARK: “Now eventually you might have transforming in your Transformers comic, right? Hello? Yes?”
Try and hear that with Goldblum’s stammering mannerisms.
So, okay, counting transforming sequences is a bit like counting fight sequences in a superhero comic, but the Transformers franchise is hardly a place where one goes looking for subtlety. The shiny trappings and cool robots ARE half the story, and holding out on ‘em is a definite risk. Writer Simon Furman knows it, too. He addresses it several times in the letters page (responses to the zero issue), promising plenty of robots to come but standing by the need for some good human characters for scale and to re-establish some awe for the Transformers. Good theory, but not exactly the stuff of a gangbuster opening issue. I think IDW should’ve sprung for a double-sized opener with a second half that delivered more robot punch.
The actual content is far from actionless, though. Picking up right on the heels of the zero issue, we’ve got hacker-girl/runaway Verity Carlo and conspiracy-dude Hunter on the run from a pair of decidedly homicidal vehicles. Apparently they’re some lesser-known Decepticons named Runabout and Runamuck – I didn’t even know the Decepticons had any members who turned into cars. And I like that, breaking out some obscure names for cool face time. Even as a kid, I was the one wanting to see more of dudes like Wheeljack and the Insecticons (geek moment), less of Optimus Prime and Starscream. Furman seems hep to the approach, and has as the Autobot of the issue Ratchet (the ambulance Transformer).
Since the series is distinctly playing up the old “robots in disguise” slogan, the robots pretty much remain in vehicle mode for the entirety of the issue – they really seem to be trying to keep their existence under the radar to humans. And so we get an extended chase sequence, the kids riding in Ratchet, the bad guys in hot pursuit. Furman handles the action in fine style, with miniature missiles blasting away and some very cool gadgetry on the part of Ratchet. Ratchet’s characterized as the rebel Autobot here, disobeying orders from on high to help the humans he empathizes with. He communicates with ‘em via a lifelike human hologram that appears as his “driver”, but Hunter’s on to the truth. Definitely liked Ratchet’s characterization; would actually have liked to see more of him.
The story’s MacGuffin is a datapad that Verity swiped randomly from a bus passenger, a datapad that just happens to have evidence of the Decepticons’ existence on it. That’s what’s bringing both the Decepticon heat and the Autobot protection, and it works just fine as a plot jumpstarter. There’s really not much more to the issue than that, with the chase sequence taking up the first half of the issue and downtime hiding out at a hacker pal of Verity’s for the second half. It was watching Verity, Hunter, and the new guy interact that I started to get a bit of that little-kid movie theater antsiness. Not only was a wanting to see more of Ratchet out there in their garage, but I wasn’t wild about the teen dialogue. I don’t often pine for more Bendis influence in comics, but I could’ve done with some of his ear for language here. Something to take my mind off the lack of transforming robots!
On the art front, E.J. Su’s slightly manga-influenced work is nice, but nothing spectacular. I like his work over the over-detailed muddle from the Dreamwave Transformers books, but his style’s a little flat, his depiction of cars a little “meh.” And you want someone who can draw cars on a Transformers book.
All told, though, I’m happy enough with Furman’s pacing, his moment-to-moment writing, and his “robots in disguise” approach to give TRANSFORMERS: INFILTRATION a few issues to snag me. The art’s workable, and the finale sets up a robot beatdown for the very next issue.
They just should’ve gone double-sized for the opener.
TESTAMENT #2
Writer: Douglas Rushkoff
Penciler: Liam Sharp
Publisher: Vertigo/DC Comics
Reviewed by Humphrey Lee
TESTAMENT is definitely one of those special reads that comes along to the world of comics once in a rare while. If you don't know by now, the premise of TESTAMENT is that of drawing a parallel between Biblical events and showing them as recurring phenomena in a slightly futuristic society. That slight blurb of a description does this book no justice, and quite honestly, this review itself is hard pressed to give any sort of full scope on this title, but it really is starting to become a dense and engaging read.
The first issue of TESTAMENT set the table of what this book is by detailing the old tale of Abraham and his testing by God as he is asked by God to make his son Isaac a sacrifice to him out of faith and loyalty. Rushkoff uses this event to dictate the "modern setting" as a period where the government is taking more control in the everyday lives of its citizenry. The government is making orders for its more youthful citizens to have devices implanted in them for the purpose of monitoring their activities and also making it a failsafe way of locating draft dodgers in a time of war. The main character of the story, Jake, and his father take center stage as Jake's father is actually a leading designer in the implant device. Long story short, Jake's dad is told to implant his son as a sign of loyalty to his bosses, and then takes up an act of defiance as a much more agreeable solution rears its head. The writing was solid, the parallels were actually very well established and never felt heavy handed, and a jolly good time was had by all.
Now here comes the second issue where we move onto the area of "Sodom and Gomorrah". Basically the government (i.e. God) is very dissuaded by a wide outbreak of recent protests over their implanting policy I just described, and now they plan to use some of the technology in those implants to hopefully quell any further outbreak. And Jake and a bunch of his friends we were introduced to in the first issue all become caught in the crossfire. If you know your Sodom then you can pretty well see (hopefully) the link between these two events in just that little description. While, again, I can't really do this kind of writing justice in this, the way events are shown to be playing out next to each other is very interesting. Books with thinking on this line can sometimes go over the reader's head, but Rushkoff does a very good job of giving said reader the information needed to follow along. In fact, if anything is wrong with this issue it's that it seems at times like he's spoonfeeding you what you need to know instead of letting you fill in the gaps more yourself. But so far I've never felt like I need to pop open the old stolen hotel bible and sit down and look out for references that I may have missed or whatnot.
This tale is very in your face, and actually quite scary as Rushkoff's view of society in the near future definitely doesn't seem to be without merit. The relevance of this story, or more accurately both of these stories, is very apparent and definitely gives one food for thought. If the narrative can be reigned in a little more and the reader allowed to expand his mind around these concepts a little more, this could easily become the standard for "high art" in the comic book form. I gladly wait for the next issue as I can't help but wonder what he's got in store for us next.
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #2
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Frank Quitely
Publisher: DC Comics
Reviewed by Dave Farabee
I’ve always loved Superman the concept, but the only time I ever liked Superman stories for any length of time was when John Byrne was writing and drawing ‘em during the mid-‘80s relaunch. Byrne’s approach was pretty much classic superhero adventuring, with his Marvel influences leading to a Superman that felt a bit more sci-fi than fantasy. For instance, Byrne would drop little hints here and there about the realistic workings of Superman’s powers: his flight was posited to be a mechanism of telekinesis, and his costume never tore because his body generated a very thin protective aura that left only the cape as shredable. I liked the approach. It appealed to my Marvel sensibilities, and it only occurred via minor asides - rarely if ever key to a story - and never stood in the way of good old-fashioned superheroing.
But soft sci-fi or no, it was still sci-fi, and some fans prefer the more fantastic approach to Superman. I’m talking the Silver Age approach; the Julius Schwartz approach; the approach where Superman can fly faster-than-light to travel back in time, where his Fortress of Solitude is locked by a door with a key the size of an APC, where he can move planets should the need arise.
This is Grant Morrison’s approach in ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, and for the first time ever, I’m starting to warm to its appeal.
In the first issue, we saw Superman rescue a group of explorers on the sun, only to find himself dying as a result of absorbing so much solar radiation. By issue’s end, he chose to reveal his true identity to Lois, and yes, they’re obviously far, far from married in this continuity - a clear-cut nod to Superman’s Silver Age days of pining in secret for her. I was a bit lukewarm on Morrison’s approach, brilliant at times, but marred slightly by his fire-and-forget idea-fetish and the fact that I walked away with questions like, “Shouldn’t Superman be a bit more troubled to see scientists making clones of him as some sort of super-slaves?”
Issue #2 opens with Superman whisking Lois to his Fortress of Solitude to talk through his big reveal. The first three pages are stunning. Artist Frank Quitely gives us a close-up of Lois in her car, seemingly driving along mountain roads until the camera “pulls back” to reveal she’s actually flying past the mountains as Superman supports the car on his back. She’s nonchalant – typical Lois - even reading a paper, but Quitely and colorist Jamie Grant give the backdrop a stunning majesty. It’s a neat encapsulation of the push/pull between the down-to-earth and the fantastic that drives this approach to Superman. It’s a world where near-magical occurrences are the norm around the character, but a cosmopolitan girl like Lois takes it as in-stride as she might a helicopter ride.
And she’s a bit pissed. As if all of Superman’s Silver Age identity trickery is canon once again, she thinks Superman is pulling some kind of cruel prank on her with this “I’m Clark Kent” business. She’s tried for years to prove the connection, never succeeding, and so she’s in full-on denial:
Lois: What about the time Clark was a witness in the Boss Grimaldi trial and you accompanied him everywhere as his bodyguard?
Superman: Batman was standing in for me.
Lois: …Or the time Clark presented you with the “Metropolis Man of the Millennium” award?
Superman: A robot.
What I love about this approach is that Morrison isn’t being tongue-in-cheek or kitschy – he’s just having fun. That’s a damn rare thing at DC these days. When was the last time superpowers were treated with a buoyant quality? With anything more than stern-faced solemnity? Dare we imagine that all the bright costuming and childlike ideas might be embraced with a smile rather than shoehorned into adult sensibilities?
Well Morrison is taking that dare and running with it maniacally. In this particular issue, his playground is Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, its strangeness rendered with casual conviction by Quitely (think Moebius). Here’s a place where Morrison’s ideas fit perfectly, and alongside Lois, we get the grand tour. Gone is the old, giant key (though it is referenced), replaced by a standard-sized key…that just happens to be constructed of the super-dense innards of a dwarf star, weighing in at half a million tons. Robots, of course, are everywhere, along with the classic mixture of souvenirs and even a space shuttle (poignantly, one might note that it’s the Columbia). There’s also a baby Sun-Eater Superman found prowling around Jupiter – this scene’s so good I won’t even think of spoiling it with a description.
And there’s a bit of mystery. As Superman plays the gracious host, not quite able to confess to Lois that he’s dying, Lois begins to suspect more than just a prank is going on. Why is one room in the fortress off limits to her? Is there some sinister warning to be had in the garbled message from the future she sees in Superman’s “Time Telescope”? Underlying it all is a framework of genuine emotion between Superman and Lois. The eerie harbingers she sees in the Fortress seem to mirror more personal relationship fears. If Superman is telling the truth, would a serious relationship really be what she wants? And could even a man like Superman be harboring some dark secrets? Without any self-consciousness the story leaves some nice metaphors lying around, like the door to the off-limits room as a metaphor for secrets in a relationship.
But it never gets too weighty or overwrought – I think that’s what I like best, that “pop” approach that Grant Morrison so clearly treasures. It’s there throughout, right down to the giddily cool last page surprise, but I think I loved it best in the scene where it most confounded expectations. Lois is asking Superman about a team-up with Batman, and in a beautiful subversion of the character’s perpetually angsty characterization, we get this…
Lois: How is he?
Superman: Batman? Great. You know Batman.
Lois: Robin?
Superman: Great kid. I always wondered if I should have taken a partner.
Now that’s havin’ some fun!
So, okay, I can’t say that Morrison’s perfect, that he never does anything I don’t like, but just at the moment…is he the man with the plan or what? He’s managed to work up a melding of modernist and Silver Age sensibilities where the Silver Age wonder for once comes out on top.
That does my heart good.
Because I am busy dividing my time between saving the world and reviewing comics, I just can’t read everything I get on a weekly basis. Pretty soon, numerous issues of the same series stack up. As the size of my comics stack on my nightstand grows more monumental, the need for the Comics Catch-up is more and more evident. This week I sat down to catch up with NIGHTWING.
NIGHTWING #112-116
Writer: Devin Grayson
Artists: Cliff Chiang, Phil Hester, Ande Parks
Publisher: DC Comics
Reviewer: Ambush Bug
Dick Grayson AKA Nightwing is one of those heroes who, although he may not be one of the most iconic heroes of the DCU, he’s definitely one of the big guns. Nightwing was the first to don the Robin costume and act as sidekick to the World’s Greatest Detective. After graduating from the Batcave, Dick ventured out on his own, led the Teen Titans and the New Outsiders, and firmly removed himself from under the shadow of the Bat. Chuck Dixon gave Nightwing purpose years ago, establishing a new home base of operations in Bludhaven, a harbor town that made Gotham look like Wallyworld. Since then, Nightwing has made it his personal mission to clean up Bludhaven and prove himself to his scrutinous mentor. It has been acknowledged many times recently that Dick Grayson is liked by virtually everyone in the DCU.
Although Judd Winick portrayed him as the carrier of a permanent stick up his @$$ in his OUTSIDERS run, everywhere else, anywhere you go, everyone loves Dick…
*ahem*
NIGHWING was once one of my favorite comics. Chuck Dixon’s mix of spandex and noir was evenly peppered and his story of the former sidekick finding his place in the world was pretty intriguing. Because Batman was such a strict mentor, Dick constantly felt the need to prove himself. Dixon established a complex character in his Dick Grayson. When Chuck left the title and Devin Grayson came onboard, I wasn’t too thrilled. It was one of those shifts in creative teams that I hated. A writer who was able to write almost 100 successful and interesting issues leaves. I was used to Chuck on NIGHTWING. I liked his stories. For someone else to come along and try to substitute that didn’t sit well with me. Although I wasn’t a fan of her writing in the past, I knew that Devin Grayson loved the character of Nightwing, so I figured I’d give her a chance. And at first, I was glad I did. Like many writers today, Devin Grayson seemed to have a good time destroying Nightwing’s life. She seemed to have a hell of a good time kicking down the intricate sandcastle that Chuck spent a whole lot of time establishing.
In one arc, Devin killed half of Dick Grayson’s cast, destroyed his career on the police force, killed his main villain Blockbuster, had him raped on a rooftop by a female vigilante, and basically cut all ties the hero had with the city he had sworn to protect. As much as I hated to see this utter decimation to what Chuck Dixon did, I have to admit that this arc entertained me in that I just wanted to see how far Devin would go to destroy Nightwing. And she went pretty far. It was a ballsy move filled with much emotion and understanding of the character and it wasn’t that badly written either. I was feeling pretty good about Grayson’s run after that arc ended.
But the true challenge was ahead of Devin Grayson. Now that she destroyed Nightwing’s life, she had to put it back together. With all of the Disassembling and Identity Crisis-ing, there has been a lot of sandcastle kicking these days. It’s easy to destroy something, but it’s pretty hard to build something back up. Just try taking apart your computer monitor and putting it back together. With the damage done, Chuck Dixon returned to the title with a Nightwing: Year One story. I found this arc to be interesting, but not as powerful as Dixon’s previous work with the character. With the Year One arc over with, Grayson stepped back in on the writing chores and tossing Nightwing into one of those “bold new directions” that we all hear so much about. And that, my friends, is where the problems started.
For the last year Devin has been trying to build her hero back up from the ashes after destroying his life. She’s been putting him into one offbeat and completely different situation after the next. The problem is that these situations have not been that imaginative and at their core go against everything that Nightwing is all about.
After “Year One”, Nightwing left Bludhaven and moved to New York where he took up as an enforcer with a mob family. Grayson tried hard to make this decision make sense to Nightwing’s character. Grayson’s honorable and loyal characteristics came into play greatly in this arc, but putting Nightwing on the other side of the line between good and bad just didn’t sit well with me. Especially after Devin Grayson illustrated this wire walk so elegantly when she paired Nightwing and Tarantula in a previous arc. Putting Nightwing in this type of situation again shows that he basically learned nothing from his disastrous pairing with Tarantula and really took a lot away from the character.
This leads us to the story arc at hand. The “Deathwing” story arc, if you will, where Nightwing dons a new red costume and is blackmailed by Deathstroke to teach his daughter, Rose Wilson, how to be a more honorable warrior. Apparently, Deathstroke is too busy with all of the Society business and can’t teach her these things himself. For the last few issues, Nightwing (or “Renegade” as he wants to be called these days) has been taking Rose with him on patrol, teaching her non-lethal ways of disposing of the opposition and helping her develop into a more honorable warrior.
All the time, Deathstroke is holding the daughter of Nightwing’s previous mob boss employer as hostage and leverage over the misguided hero. Nightwing and Rose run into Superman, Arsenal, and a bunch of baddies throughout her training. The two constantly are at odds and Rose doesn’t know why she can’t just kill her opponents like her pop does. It all leads up to a big stand-off between Nightwing and Deathstroke (to be resolved in the next issue *#117* before a new creative team comes on board for One Year Later).
My problem with the NIGHTWING series as a whole is the fact that the rest of the DCU treats Nightwing with respect. They see him as the one thing Batman did right. He is a hero that is well liked, respected, and looked up to. But in his own series, Nightwing isn’t like this at all. He’s a constantly defeated man. Always conflicted. Never understanding his purpose or place. Making mistakes that he shouldn’t and acting in an utterly ineffectual manner. This isn’t the Nightwing that DC is trying to promote in the rest of his books. I understand that solo series help flesh out a character, but when all that flesh is morose, indecisive, and unappealing, you have to rethink your strategies. In trying to rebuild Nightwing back to something heroic, Devin Grayson has gone the opposite way and made him more unappealing by depicting him as things that he obviously is not. Nightwing is no mob enforcer. He’s no lackey to Deathstroke. He’s a strong hero. One of the best. An icon that stood his own as the only sidekick in the Justice League. Devin Grayson isn’t writing him in this way.
Art-wise there’s no complaints.
Former HUMAN TARGET artist Cliff Chiang and GREEN ARROW artist Phil Hester both share a clean kinetic style that is necessary for a fast-mover like the Nightwing. Both artists are fully capable of illustrating the bounding and bouncing the character does from one rooftop to the next. Both are strong storytellers, making the best out of the material they have here. I prefer Hester’s more conceptual images to Chiang’s, but as these two artists alternated from one issue to the next, I had trouble picking out the one I liked better. The fact that both artists were inked by Ande Parks didn’t help distinguishing between the two. All in all, a great looking set of books.
I’m looking forward to the change in creative team on NIGHTWING. Devin Grayson kicked the sandcastle down pretty damn well, but really, anyone can do that. The building is the hard part and these last two arcs proved that Devin Grayson wasn’t the one able to do that. Bruce Jones takes over the reigns for “One Year Later.” Those of you old timers who’ve been reading the column for a while know that I’m not a big fan of his HULK work. This will be my first experience with a non-Marvelized Bruce Jones. Here’s hoping he can do a better job with one of DC’s brightest stars than Devin Grayson has in the last few arcs.
SAMURAI EXECUTIONER
Writer: Kazuo Koike
Artist: Goseki Kojima
Publisher: Dark Horse
Reviewer: Dan Grendell
"Hoping the day will come when history curses me, I cut off heads. Praying that my acts today will make it end tomorrow, I cut off heads. ...Thus I, too, am a demon, now and forever.
- Yamada Asaemon
SAMURAI EXECUTIONER is an odd book, in that it is as much about philosophy as anything else. The main character, Yamada Asaemon, is o-tameshiyaku, the official sword tester for the Shogun, and often that testing is done on the necks of live criminals. Much of the story centers on his actions and morality, and the decisions he makes. Just as important, if not more so, however, are the people around Asaemon, often the people he is to execute, and how he affects them.
Asaemon is a proper samurai, trained from birth to replace his father as sword tester. He has been performing those tests since the age of ten, slicing through dead bodies over and over. That's got to screw you up, right? And it did, for a time - but now, it has given him a unique view on the world. He sees how people hurt each other, how they hurt themselves, and does his best within the constraints of his life to help everyone he can. Killing is wrong, he thinks, and he is condemned for doing it - but he hopes that someday he will be condemned enough that his job is made obsolete. In the meantime, he does it with compassion and honor.
Each volume has several self-contained stories in it, and recurring characters do develop, some just as interesting as Asaemon. Here's a short breakdown of each volume, spotlighting a few stories in each:
1- When the Demon Knife Weeps: In the title story of this book, we meet Asaemon and (briefly) his father and learn how tough his life has been. The others reveal his skill and you begin to see his strength of character.
2- Two Bodies, Two Minds: The title story showcases his compassion as he rescues a nun from assault and ensures her attackers face their proper end, even in the face of political pressure. A Takadaimono for an Irezomotsu, the final tale of the book, involves Asaemon's discovery that he has executed an innocent man and what he does to help ensure that it does not happen again.
3- The Hell Stick: To stop a plot against a clan's daimyo, Asaemon's skill is needed by a desperate woman in the title story. Catcher Kasajiro introduces the policeman Sakane Kasajiro, an admirer of Asaemon's who cares as much about people as the executioner and who learns from him how to put that compassion into practice.
4- Portrait of Death: A bloodthirsty artist tries to get permission to draw executions in the title story, while Asaemon makes a condemned prostitute feel beautiful one last time in The Season of New Straw. In The Set-up, a halt on executions by the government to save money leads to a prison riot of huge proportions.
5- Ten Fingers, One Life: In Matta, Asaemon investigates the final cry of an executed man. "Catcher" Kasajiro returns in Spark Umbrella, learning to think outside the box.
6- Shinko the Kappa: Two powerful organizations conspire to stop an execution in Gobari Sandosu, and the ending is real surprise. In the title story and A Couple Of Umbrellas, "Catcher" Kasajiro hunts the thief Shinko the Kappa, who embarrasses the police in an effort to save her father from death. Once she is caught, though, what will they do with her? The answer is surprising...
7- The Bamboo Splitter: In Heading To a Festival, Asaemon's deprived childhood allows him to empathize with a criminal. The title story stars "Catcher" Kasajiro as he tries to catch a clever killer and burglar, but in the end, he needs a little help from family.
8- The Death Sign of Spring: An overzealous policeman tries to stop crime with faceless fear in Demon Kageyu, a condemned criminal compares life to a series of winds in the philosophical A Death in Spring, and Asaemon helps Kasajiro's wife leave the past behind and enjoy the now in Okashiratsuki.
Goseki Kojima's art is incredible. I've always thought so, since I first saw it in LONE WOLF AND CUB, and I'm not changing my mind now. His attention to detail is amazing, and his use of lines and hatchwork to give clothing different looks is really incredible. Action flows smoothly from panel to panel, and facial expressions are always perfect. It takes a master to really sell what Koike is writing, and Kojima does it on page after page.
SAMURAI EXECUTIONER certainly isn't for kids, but it is for anyone with an interest in feudal Japan (it's quite informative) as well as anyone who just wants to read something great. It may not be light-hearted fun, but it is good, solid reading, the kind that finds a home on my bookshelf.
ANNE FREAKS V.1
Creator: Kotegawa Yua
Publisher: ADV
Reviewer: Dan Grendell
Young murderers doin' it for the shorties!
Teenager Yuri Kitagawa has problems just like everyone else. His position as student council secretary is stressful, his classical dance classes are boring, his dad ran out on him when he was young, and though he finally got his mom off his back by killing her, burying her is just turning out to be a huge pain. Okay, so maybe not all of his problems are normal. Luckily, Anna comes along to help him out and show how to do it right - and a partnership is born. He agrees to help kill her father, and off they go,
happy as can be...
But wait. What about Mitsuba Maezono, tough teenager from Kyoto? Why are all those strange masked guys trying to kill him and his parents? Once again, Anna is there, this time with Yuri in tow, and Mitsuba is saved. Turns out the attackers were from a strange terrorist organization that Anna and Mitsuba were connected to as children, and they want the kids dead. The pair becomes a trio, and they set out to murder Anna's father, the head of that terrorist organization, and if they feel like it, protect some people along the way...
Wow. When I got this manga in the mail, it included a note that among other things compared it to BATTLE ROYALE and LONE WOLF AND CUB in quality and coolness. I laughed quietly to myself, thought "unlikely", and moved on. After reading it, I gotta change that to, "Good call." And I don't say things like that lightly. I just name-checked two of my favorite manga ever. Now, ANNE FREAKS is a different beast from those manga, but it is of the same level of quality. The artwork is almost entirely realistic, with very occasional one-panel trips into absurdity that serve to make the rest of the art look more sobering by comparison and add a little levity to what is, really, a disturbing story.
And I gotta tell ya, this is great art. These people look dead on good, and they look right. I felt like these could be real teenagers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Kotegawa Yua doesn't have her own style. She does. Her style just involves drawing people that feel like they belong in the real world. And for a story like this, that rules. It's pretty creepy to think that the pretty girl or mild guy walking next to you could have disposed of a corpse without a second thought before school that day.
So I guess I'm not pro-murder, but I am pro-murder-based manga. Or at least this one.
Note: This manga has not yet been released. It is slated for release in March of 2006.
HOLY SHIT OR…PAT ROBERTSON IS THE ANTI-CHRIST
By Mike Luoma
Reviewer: Ambush Bug
HOLY SHIT OR…PAT ROBERTSON IS THE ANTI-CHRIST. Well, with a name like that, you have to stand up and take notice. When I first laid my eyes on this book, I thought it was going to be one of those political/religious commentaries with bite. Kind of in the same vein as Al Franken’s RUSH LIMBAUGH IS A BIG FAT IDIOT. Turns out I was wrong.
You see, Original @$$hole and all around great gal, Lizzybeth, started this here Indie Jones column quite a while ago. Through many emails, Lizzy talked to my fellow @$$Holes and myself about what she believed the Indie Jones section should be about. It shouldn’t be about ripping into independent books. These guys are fighting an uphill battle as it is. Small press publishers are the true warriors of the modern comic book age. Against great odds, these guys are printing out books from their computers and waiting in line at Kinko’s, spending their hard earned money on an idea that they firmly believe in. Lizzy wanted this section of the column to be more of a spotlight on smaller books that usually don’t get that type of attention in this world of WIZARD-hyped events and crossovers. This was a section for those selling their books from the corner of the comic store or from the internet or from the artist
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It better be,,,I miss David...the man knew how to write the Hulk
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It better be,,,I miss David...the man knew how to write the Hulk
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I am sorry for the mishap
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Last week was amazing for DC. Infinite Crisis, All-Star SUperman, and Sgt.Rock were all high quality reads.
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Man issue 4 rocked!!! Without spoiling too much I'll just say seeing that side of Batman was great, and Superboy Prime vs the Flashes. OH MY FREAKING LORD!!!!!!!!! This has been a great series so far with so much going on. Alex Luthor's plan revealed, oh man it was all so great. If you haven't read this series find the first four issues catch up and get into it. I know I sound like a some geeky love sick fanboy that had DC tattoed on my arse but this is the first series I've bought and kept up with in years just because comics have gotten so gosh-awful, but this, man this is a classic and if you see the preview for issue 5 all I can say is Superman vs Superman? Batman vs Brother Eye. Take the $3.99 out of my flesh already because I'm there.
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storywise over the Dreamwave stuff. Unlike Dave, I was not bothered by the lack of robot action in the issue and I thought it was used VERY effectively at the end. The action zinged, although it's not as pretty as the Lee TF's - who cares? Unforunately, the drawback is that writer just doesn't know how to write hip young characters. So, he should really just stop trying. In fact, everyone should stop trying to inject "kids" into the Transformers concept as anything other than supporting cast.
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Were there 2 covers to #24? On all the online reviews I am seeing Elijah's hand but all I saw in the shop was the book cover cover. The hell?
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I am convinced that Slott is invincible. He managed to take that horrible Austen Avengers story and turned it into a touching story about forgiveness and overcoming your mistakes. Slott gets it, and I agree with Dave that he added something to Jen's character with her thoughts on the nobility of her cousin, whether or not it is the case. Also the the "Green" Cross concept was just a wonderfully inventive addition to the Marvel U.
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Alternately bored/annoyed by Morrison whackiness with issue #1, issue #2 delivers the goods and now I'm hooked. Superman's matter-of-fact personality among all the weirdness and Lois' paranoia were incredible fun and a different take for today, although somewhat familar from the older stories.
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Geoff Johns writing the whole thing with sufficient lead time given so it could ship bi-monthly, and each of the 6 issue miniseries should have been double-sized one-shots leading into it. I like some of it but I hate some of it as well, as despite Johns' talent it can be a convoluted mess. On the subject of the Walking Dead, most of the timesit is fantastic, even during the quiet moments, but Kirkman's dialogue can become so hackneyed is would make (no not Stan lee) George Lucas blush. One thing I don't get is complaining about it being a soap opera with zombies, if that isn't the book you want to read then don't read it, but it is the book Kirkman wants to write.
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Jan 25, 2006 2:27:46 PM CST
Did HULK ever really Smash! the way the "Hulk killed people" cam
by jonquixote
I am by no means a Hulk-expert, but I seem to recall most of the Hulk I've read had him tear through deserts, army divisions, and the heavily technological lairs of evil masterminds. I don't recall a lot of Marvel Universe stories akin to the one in ULTIMATES. And even when Hulk was smashing up a place with civilians around, I never really saw the Hulk as a wanton, completely irrational ball of murderous rage - even savage Hulk was smarter than he's usually given credit for. That even at his angriest, he wouldn't have picked up a full school bus and hurled it at Zzzax. I liked the scene in the HULK movie where he jumped on the attacking plane in order to divert it and prevent a crash - to me, that's very much in line with how the Hulk has traditionally been depicted in comics. *** Maybe Slott's use of 'Never' is a bit of a stretch, but if we have to expect some collateral damage from the Hulk's destructive battles over the last 45 years, we'd also have to expect something similar from Thor punching the Wrecker through four buildings, Spidey's destructive battle with Firelord, and all similar scenes.
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Am I the only one who thought the computer inking destroyed the normal flow of Quietly's linework?
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I like your article
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And a Cog shout out for Lady C. too! Can't wait for her to post.
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Jan 25, 2006 3:40:52 PM CST
"I also know that every issue so far in this series has been bet
by 3 bag enema
You do know that means they've been declining in quality.
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I can. He's eclipsed Moore in my estimation, and I believe his best work is ahead of him.
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And you do have a point.. Although alot of my problem was with how things came before. As a tie-up to an arc, it stunk because last issue we were told how Deathstroke was going in purely to slaughter the Birds because Calc didn't get an answer from Oracle about getting Luthor's satellites released (and come to think of it, the satellites never even got mentioned this issue, did they?). I never considered it as a single issue and I'm sure that with everything that happened in it, it would rock the socks off the reader. There's a rather large "but.." on my end, but I already pretty much listed my reasons in the old TB. Poor Noah... May you get a better writer next time out.. *** Aside from that though, a great bunch of reviews as always guys! Cool beans!
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I like my Batman uber too. I'd like uber-Deathstroke to fight uber-Batman sometime. Deathstroke The Terminator has always been the best DC baddie this side of The Joker.
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If some super-person stares at you the wrong way, this is "Heat Vision" which means that you should either melt or catch on fire. However, much of the time, you either get heat vision used like Cyclops "Blast vision" to clear an area of super-heroes, or as "Laser vision" which cuts you in half like a laser. This was rampant during the Superboy vs. everyone fight. Everyone should have simply burned up.
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I've always like the character, however I dropped off after the Year One thing awhile back. Nice to see I didn't miss anything. I saw the costume change and knew things couldn't be good as far as the writing's concerned. Can't knock the art, Phil & Ande are clutch, I loved their work on Green Arrow. I'm not too sure about this One Year Later crap that has Jason Todd in for Nightwing *allegedly*. I'll give Jones a shot. I thought his run on the Hulk was okay (that's going to make me a pariah around here), but would have been better if it would have been more condensed IMHO. Have a good one, I'm out.
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Jones' run on HULK was initially praised and enjoyed by at least three or four of us, maybe more. In time, though, we started to realize that each 6-issue arc needed no more than two or three issues, and everything was dragging on for far too long. The condensing you referred to would have helped greatly. I also thought some of the later developments were pretty lame, but I can see where others might disagree. The condensing thing woulda gone a long way towards improving things, though.
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But after a while its deficiencies overran what wasn't a bad take on the title. Primarily among them was a) Jones is a terrible writer, almost Chuck Austen inept when it came to consistency of character, dialogue, structure, coherency of plot, etc. and b) While the concept at least appeared to have potential, it quickly became clear that the creative team had no idea what to do with a Hulkless Hulk title. The plot would stall simply because it seemed that they ran out of things to happen by issue #2 or #3 of the arc, but "conceptual convention" demanded that Hulk not appear 'til #5 or #6. Bruce Banner was a limp, passive main character who basically stood dormant for issues at a time while the limited action and plot movement in the title was being executed by dull secondary or tertiary characters. *** Good idea, horrid execution.
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Look, I love Johns, and I love the work he's been doing in this series- but what I really, really hoped for was that he would bring some justice to Flash after the way Barry was treated in the C on Infinite Earths. Barry Allen, such a great hero, dies in like, two pages??? What the f? And now...although we arent really sure about what really ahppened with Wally, although it has been hinted at for months with his sweats and sandy vagina that he was going bye bye, we get, yet again, two pages, where a major character in the dcu is dealt with. Freakin Sue Dibney got a miniseries for christ sakes!!! IS One Year Later gonna be about Bart? Cause if so, they lost me.
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check the last tb in case you missed the posts. : )
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Jan 25, 2006 6:22:59 PM CST
It's like you didn't even read the second to last and th
by iamnicksaicnsn
He had won. He righted everything he had wronged during the Tarantula and break-down times. He got Deathstroke's daughter questioning villainy. He had almost every possible scenario worked out: He had control of the Mafia; he had a deal to keep out any metahumans, good or bad; he had great influence over the police. He could be a new hero. In a different, non-Infinite Crisis time, Nightwing would have had the ultimate scenario, a scenario even Batman never attained: He had basically complete control over everything. And then suddenly, BAM, something bigger than anything anyone could have every imagined, something of an incalculable (unless you're a super-Lex) magnitude came and destroyed everything he had built up. But you really can't blame anyone for it, you can't blame Nightwing, you can't blame Devin Grayson, you can't even blame Deathstroke or the Society. Nightwing just happened to triumph in the wrong place at the wrong time. And even while the buildings are the buildings are crumbling and people are being all chemicaled and nuked and whatnot, he still tried to go around doing what heroes do best - saving people. And then there was the little kid, the kid who summed up everything: "Are you a hero? A superhero? For us? For our city? Like Nightwing. Do you believe in Nightwing?" Yeah kid, yeah i friggin' do.
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well, at least for a few day's. The All Week Cogs know that I have an eloping to get to tomorrow and I'd like to wish everyone some great tb moments throughout this week. In case you need some topics for debate, these are alway's good: Anything with Bendis (need of proper editing, Daredevil: good or bad?, 3 issue arcs that take 6 issues), Ellis and Cassaday's tardiness, Buzz's belief that comic geeks only have imaginary girlfriends, Dan Slott being the man, Heystanthemans! secret identity, delays from Marvel, rape in comics, dead being dead, Rob Liefeld and anatomy,
Schleppy on Carla Gugino's pooper, the horror of All Star Batman, the delight of All Star Superman, and the ass kickery of Infinite Crisis. *** Oh, and what did you think of IC #4 Dave? Later lady and gents. -
I like the Silver Age approach, but also Byrne's approach. Not been a fan of the last two decades, basically I like retro. But I like All-Star. I like the over-the-top "how does that work? who cares...it's awesome!" feel of it. Mark Millar is kind of doing the same thing over in Ultimate FF, but there's more joy in All-Star Supes. I think most writers feel like their readers are beyond having a sense of wonder, so they don't even try to tickle it. Morrison apparently still has a sense of wonder himself, so he's just keeping himself amused. Why even make comic books without a sense of wonder, I ponder, as I look through the racks and racks of books without it...
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Those were great reviews. But She-Hulk, while better than the story it referenced, continues to be mildly disappointing to me. ASSuperman was again the bomb, but not like #1. The whole secret identity has always bugged, even while handled well here. I like IC, but still worry what the fallout will be. I prefer to ignore the question of Hulk killing because I mean, if one stops to think about it, he must--but then, how could the others overlook it. Anyway, are Storm and Black Panther getting married. It seems so, but geez--
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I dismiss those who whine for realism because exposure to an atomic bomb doesn't turn you into an all powerful monster. It poisons you, gives you cancer, or reduces you to a stain. Fans who want realism in HULK comics are the ones who have it lacking in their own lives, ya know? It's a green monster...who's a superhero. Also, killer Hulk fans are the guys who think their tough if they read about tough funny book characters. To me, the Hulk is about righteous anger and is a better metaphor for the alienated adolescent male than anything we've ever seen in an X-MEN comic. The Hulk is the guy we all know or are who means well but creates his own problems. But he's the internal power that protects Bruce Banner, too. As crappy as Ang Lee's movie was, there was one scene that really captured the character for me. Hulk is on the Golden Gate Bridge. A fighter is about to crash into the bridge full of commuters. Clearly to save the people, the Hulk jumps onto plane, diverting it from collision. Anger can be a great force for good, prompting major change. We don't understand that these days becacuse "they" are turning us into chicks, who don't want to change anything except the arrangement of the living room furniture.
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Though you remembered it better and with greater detail. I, alas, could not. Possibly because everytime I sit down to rewatch that movie I never make it that far before passing out. Sometimes it's the movie, sometimes it's the bourbon. *** But I don't have much of a problem with those people who think the Hulk could have some pulped civilians in his past, or that he's ambivalent about them. Sure, you could spin the character that way. But I think you do a good job describing the ones that say Hulk *has* to be written that way. *** I don't know if I'd consider the Hulk to be about righteous anger. I don't really consider him to be about anger. But I like the way you put that about anger being a force for good and how it's something that has kind of been disavowed, resulting in an impression that an Angry Hulk must also be Dangerously Murderous.
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Seriously, tons of great reviews and good reading. I know i tend to give the @$$holes a lot of shit but today...i applaud you. Did Dave really review 4 books this week? He could do half that every week and keep me happy.
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It'd be prudent to assume IC will be available for download once it's completed, and i was wondering...if i start reading it without knowing shit about the DCU, or having read the minis that preceded it, will i be completely lost, or can i still enjoy the story for what it is?
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http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern/ReviewsM.html#mindhunters I'm seriously thinking of starting a religion based around Vern.
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Not sure really - Geoff Johns really is pulling threads from pretty much 20 (or more) years of comics here. I've been reading DC that long and I think I would've been lost if I hadn't recently bought the reprint of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I mean there are some plot points that take up just 1 or 2 pages of the latest book that have been set up extensively. For Example, the new Spectre's host body - that has bought together all the Day of Vengence books and cross-overs and mixed them with a previously seemingly unrelated event from another. For the record and without prejudice - I FUCKING LOVED THAT!!! - don't won't to spoil it for those who haven't read it, but I gotta say that I didn't see it coming and loved it when it did. Oh what the hell *****SPOILER ALERT***** Have been loving GCPD long time now - and was genuinely shocked to see Cris killed. Excellent bit of work by the editors of these books (who must all be heart-attacking hourly at the moment) to fit that all together. But does it mean that Cris is gonna be white now? :) ****END OF SPOILER TYPE STUFF!!!*****
But El Vale - read it anyway - it's pretty cool -
According to everything I've read comics and online, Deathlok (one of my favs) was created by Doug Moench and Rich Buckler.
Dick Grayson was raped??? why? what is up with the raping over at DC?
While I like to think that the Hulk never INTENTIONALLY killed anyone, come on.... All those battles, cars tanks and everything thrown around and destroyed and buildings demolished (another Deathlok reference...) and he's never killed? Maybe that's why Thor's never taken him down or Captain America's allowed the US Governement to snipe him with a gamma bullet. I just find it far to hard to (pardon the term) "logically" believe. Not so much back in the Lee/Kirby days of Marvel but in the image fad of the 90's or in the bendis crap of today...
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Jan 26, 2006 8:30:53 AM CST
Check it out - Transformers footage.... http://www.wimp.com/tran
by bendersshinyass
http://www.wimp.com/transformer/
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El Vale: No, you will not be able to follow Infinity Crisis if you are not already steeped in DCU lore. I'm fairly knowledgable, but I still don't know what's going on some of the time. As for the Hulk, I'm with those of you that say 616 Hulk never killed anyone. That's why I had such a hard time accepting the actions of Ultimate Hulk at first, before I made the logic leap that he's an entirely different character with the same name and powers.
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I loved these guys! Lame-o toys, but they did star in one issue of the Marvel Transformers series back in the mid-eighties. They were taggers. Once they learned how to write in english they spray-painted "Humans are wimps" across the Statue of Liberty. Not sure how they can top that.
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Jan 26, 2006 10:29:12 AM CST
Well, at least they reviewed INFINITE CRISIS and SUPERMAN
by jar jar 4 prez
...even if they didn't get to the other 2 great comics of the week X-STATIX PRESENTS: DEAD GIRL and MISTER MIRACLE. In short: The return of X-Statix was great and has made many people think that Milligan should write Dr. Strange. Mister Miracle was not only the best of the Mister Miracles so far, but was also a very pivotal issue for the entire Seven Soldiers series. Most importantly, all 4 of these comics had something that most comics lack--actual emotional impact. They feel substantial... Like actual works of art, not just a grab for some cash. Many thanks to the creators for actually seeming to care about the artistic merit of their product.
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Ultimate comics suck! Deal with it.
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I've never really had the jones to check out LONE WOLF & CUB - for some strange reason, my geekhood doesn't really draw me to straight-up samurai stories. But the bizarre premise of spotlighting a royal exectioner trying to carry out his bloody work with honor? That's pretty different. That could be up my alley. And I *know* I like the artist. Whenever I flip through LONE WOLF, once I get past my initial reaction of "Damn, that's printed in a tiny-ass format!", I'm always left stunned by Kojima's art. He's the East's Caniff or Toth, he's so good.
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If you're looking for comics that're "works of art" and not just commercial enterprises, I've gotta ask: are you looking outside the Big Two? You only mention superhero books in your post, and I'm thinkin' "maybe not the most fertile genre for artistic merit." That's not a slam on superhero books, either - they just tend to have escapism at the forefront of their qualities...
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I specifically remember the Hulk killing a deer during Byrne's run by snapping it's neck like a twig. Of course, this was the Hulk after he had been seperated from Banner so I dunno if he can actually be considered the "complete" Hulk. Maybe he'd be the pure personification of the Hulk persona? I guess that'd make it worse then wouldn't it?
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Jan 26, 2006 11:28:08 AM CST
Wow Dave you and I must have really similar tastes 'cause I
by superhero
Movies is another matter...although BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL was pretty neat. At least the first two volumes anyway...wasn't so great that I was fanatic about picking it up, though. SAMURAI CHAMPLOO, the anime, kicks all kinds of ass however...
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Jan 26, 2006 11:30:01 AM CST
Yeah, I was wondering if you were following any of the TRANSFORM
by dave_f
Glad you're diggin' it too. And you know I'm wary of all things nostalgia-related, but having grown up with ROM, MICRONAUTS, and G.I. JOE comics - toy-based books that matched the quality of the superhero titles they rubbed shoulders with (falling only short of the peaks) - I try to keep an open mind. I do think Furman's got the right approach overall, but to quote the wisdom of Buzz's brother: "Get to the devil shit!" I really wanted to use that in the review, but I try not to get too Dennis Miller - don't wanna confuse any newbie readers. What's interesting is that, while the TRANSFORMERS artist's car designs aren't so hot, his robots on that last page actually looked pretty great. Might really add a spark once we start seeing them more often. ****** Decepticon "taggers", eh, Nyjet? Actually, that IS pretty awesome. I remember when I was a kid, and there might be some action figure I thought was lame. Then they'd use the character in some cool way on the cartoon or in the comics and the toy would instantly become ten times more appealing. Pure, genius manipulation. Case in point: G.I. Joe parachutist Ripcord. Had a decent toy that came with parachute gear, but overall I thought it was kind of uninspired with its straight-up camo pattern and lack of ammo belts, gear pouches, canteens, and knives. In the comics, though, Larry Hama made Ripcord a front-and-center character, culminating in his unauthorized insertion into Cobra Island to rescue his girlfriend. Had a bad-ass duel with Zartan on the beach, Ripcord's tricked-out assault rifle versus Zartan's tricked-out compound bow. And even though Ripcord lost, he couldn't have come across cooler. Suddenly I was like, "Less Snake-Eyes, more crappy uniform Ripcord!" Damn, sly marketeers.
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Other than the mythical, chopped out part of the original Dark Knight Returns?
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After his apartment was blown up, half his cast was killed, he was outed by his police sergeant and forced to quit the police force, and witness and semi-accomplice in Blockbuster's murder by Tarantula (he didn't stop her from doing it), Nightwing collapses on a rooftop. Tarantula noticing an opportunity, climbs on top of him and (in shadow) rides him like a bronco. Nightwing says "Wait...no..." but that spicy dich Tarantula doesn't listen. Nightwing gives in and for the next few issues he and Tarantula travel around and walk the fine line between the light and the dark. When Tarantula tries to kill another thug again, Nightwing can't take anymore and stops her. This all happened in the issues leading up to the Nightwing Year One are that happened around Nightwing #100.
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And who cares about a deer anyway? Probably had it comin'. ***** Seriously, though, like JQ said, part of why I buy the Hulk never having killed is because he doesn't usually go nuts in the middle of major population centers. Beautiful Zzzax example, JQ - you can never go wrong using Zzzax to make a point. And indeed, the Hulk is usually depicted as having an instinctive knowledge of right and wrong, even in his more unruly states. One of my favorite "savage" Hulk stories opens with Hulk wandering around through the woods, and the funny thing is that the narration describes him as being in a rare "happy" mood, so I don't know why he doesn't turn back into Banner. Maybe some quirk of the transformation process in those days? Anyway, this squadron of fighter jets sights him and starts circling him. Hulk gets pissed, uproots a tree, and pitches it right through the wing of one of them. The guy pulls an emergency ejection and the other planes scatter before they get downed too. As the guy's parachuting to safety, he radios to the base that he's okay, adding something along the lines of, "And if I didn't know better, I could've sworn the Hulk was *aiming* that tree just to clip me!" How would he've known from so high up, you ask? Well, if memory serves, he has the plane's camera on and so was actually watching Hulk in close-up as the Hulk pitched the tree. That's the Hulk I like. Property damage? Doesn't give a hoot. But, yes, he'd actually aim a thrown tree to avoid killing a soldier. Brian Azzarello took the polar opposite approach in his BANNER miniseries, which was a passable Elseworlds type effort, but really only kept me hooked for Rich Corben's freaky art.
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Jan 26, 2006 11:47:27 AM CST
Sweet Jesus...DC should just change its name to Rape and Dismemb
by superhero
Seriously...:OO
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I would suggest to anyone that has even the slightest passing interest in Japan and/or Comic Books to get their hands on Lone Wolf & Cub. I only have read the first 6 or 7 volumes but it is nothing short of magnificent. And I hear it only gets better with later volumes all the way up through the end. I have the first Samurai Executioner volume and while great, it's not as good as Lone Wolf. I have no problem saying Lone Wolf & Cub is one of the finest masterpieces in Comics. And yeah the digest format is small but after 10 or so pages you get used to it.
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I mean, the way I've always seen it is Savage Hulk, in the overwhelming majority of his incarnations is more of a "pet the deer" type beast and would freak out on any hunters that took a shot at it.
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...but it was a highly-placed Marvel hero: http://tinyurl.com/9h2aw
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Will she hulk ever get a film, thats what I want to know.
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mostly because Dave F was handling a lot of the reviews. It'd be great if Gregory Scott\Village Idiot came back too.
Huge Lone Wolf and Cub fan but Samurai Executioner didn't do it for me. The quality of the stories isn't as high and too many of the ones in the first volume centred around sex crimes, which I find somewhat distasteful to read. -
If done as a comedy that would kick all sorts of ass! You could even have some goofy Marvel villain in a stupid outfit to fight. And you could use a photo version of that cover with the jumprope as the poster.
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Riiiight...."oh please hot dangerous lady, don't have sex with me!" Nightwing contributed a boner to that equation, people.
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I really liked that mini, i thought it had some really great moments and Corben's always a joy. The part when they throw him out of a plane? Scary stuff. And the ending? Fantastic use of comic book language to create tension. Good stuff all around.
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Jan 26, 2006 3:00:55 PM CST
This talkback is showing a disturbing amount of praise and agree
by jonquixote
This creates a dangerous imbalance to the order of the Universe. So...*sigh...BENDIS IS TEH SUCK!!
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i don't care if we're in disagreement over Bendis, you're my friend and i love you *hug*
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What have you been smoking?
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And where can I get some?
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I am also on a hint of "cubicle"
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But jeez, we wait months to get a new planetary issue and we get this? A recap of the last 23 issues? C'mon. I don't mind this kind of thing when it comes to massive company wide crossovers that span 23 issues in a matter of weeks. There are only 27 damn issues left. Planetary issues are a precious commodity, and this one was completely wasted. The fact that the next one MIGHT come within 6 weeks doesn't change that. BTW, IC4: good issue, good review.
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Then I'm already on it. hmm... Tastes like pumpkin spice..
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I'm gonna have to side with Fantomex on this one. Although I did *like* Planetary #24, I don't think we needed a review session. The people that bought that book are fans who have stuck it out for the long haul, and we don't need a recap with the same ending as issue 6. ESPECIALLY with only, what, 3 issues left? Fine, Warren, explain some of the things that have been going on, but DO SOMETHING while you're at it. Sigh.
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same ending as issue 12, not 6.
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Seriously, great set of reviews. I even think the Bug was right on in much of his critique of my "Pat Robertson" book. It isn't laid out like a traditonal panel book. I was actually going for a different sort of look, one in keeping with the two column approach of most Bibles (sometimes it works). It seems to work best with those who aren't regular comic book readers. I want to thank you for taking the time to give it a read and a fair review. I wasn't even sure if you'd review it, as it doesn't fit traditional genre definitions, and it was never meant to be a story, or fiction. I wasn't sure if it even fit the definition of "comic book" to be honest.
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Anyone else think it's funny how he's praising IC after bashing Bendis's DD for years? By that I mean, Johns is writing that book like an 8-year-old who just drank 8 cups of coffee. Basically, it's the polar opposite of DD's dialogue-heavy, nuanced, careful work. Myself, I'm closer to the DD end of the spectrum, and thought the 1st two IC issues were a phenomenally, comically bad punchfest that wouldn't have made less sense to me if I turned it upside-down. (Didn't read #3 or #4). But to each his own. Basically, I am now totally convinced that what Bug needs is a strong ridilin prescription.
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I'm lovin' this talkback. And sideshow? Right on, man, right the fuck on. Blackthought? Bendis good.
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Like it's predecessor, INFINITE CRISIS is meant to not only tell a broad story, but tie into the events that are going on in virtually every book in the DCU. This story is meant to spark interest in all of the other corners of the DCU and jot around and tease the reader with great little comic book moments. The original CRISIS did the same. . Johns is jotting around to these corners and letting the book's creative team take it from there. This IS a well thought out, nuanced, and careful work and I don't know how Johns coordinated it all so well. The main difference between a Johns book and a Bendis book is that when you're reading a Johns book you can bet that he doesn't seem ashamed to be writing about guys in spandex who use their powers for good and evil. Bendis takes every opportunity to avoid action and keeps the heroes out of their comic book conventions at all costs, no matter how far away from the original inception of the character he goes. Johns embraces the genre, while Bendis stubbornly tries to mold it into his own limited writing skills and ashamedly tries to hide that which is important to heroic graphic storytelling. It's comparing apples to oranges and to, for no reason, bring up Bendis simply because I give praise to another book is pretty petty, sideshow. Why not wait till next week when Vroom and I square off against each other in a two-in-one review of the last Bendis issue? On top of that, try reading the book in question first before disagreeing with me, it'll make your arguments stand up a bit better.
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Jan 26, 2006 5:19:05 PM CST
"You do know that means they've been declining in quality."3
by reelheed
lmao. Otherwise a fair review of the current crisis methinks :)
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Typical Bendis hater talking out of his ass. What a fucking load of shit...give a reason why you like Bendis and you'll be called an apologist, like you're sitting in front of your weekly comics stack trying hard to like Bendis and defend him at all costs. Guess JonQixote got his wish.
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I want to echo Jar Jar that Dead Girl and Mister Miracle were the bomb, although I am a bit confused by MM and waiting for the conclusion to pull it all together for me. I hated the moment in Hulk movie when he threw a helicopter and then we heard the pilot radioing that he was ok. Not that I wanted him declared dead, but it was too hard to swallow that "I'm ok," and like I said I prefer it to be that he has never intentionally killed and as far as accidentally, that's murky (BTW, Wolverine has intentionally killed and Captain America has no trouble being on a team with him, so there you go). The latest New Avengers was perfect BMB to me: Great dialogue, but beyond that...not so great, and he even had his column like in Powers (which I used to love) in there with typos and everything. But what about Black Panther and Storm getting married? Is that really going to happen? And if so, am I alone in thinking that it is a ridiculous and borderline racist thing to do? I picked up the new Hellblazer, too, from the Cheap Shot I read, and it was a'ight. Finally, IC: Does look like Bruce might die and be replaced by Dick, which is cool. He'd be a fresh Batman but he's already cool as Nightwing.
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Jan 26, 2006 6:00:52 PM CST
All right screw it, I'll take the bait. This is why Bendis&#
by superhero
I was gonna wait until next week for this but here goes...OK, I've already gone on record as saying that I actually liked most of Bendis's run on DD. Sure there were some missteps but for the most part I liked lots of what he did. That being said...
I gotta say this last issue left me a bit cold. I mean it has "cop-out" written all over it. Look, he didn't bail on the whole Matt Murdock being outed and stuff but what he DID bail out on (and I think this is cheap to the Nth degree) are the reprecusssions of it all.
SPOILERS
I mean if Matt is going to finally be revealed to the world as DD and he's actually going to go to jail for that it just seems ultimately lame for Bendis to leave the book now when the REAL drama of how the hell this is all going to pan out is just beginning. I mean for the past couple of years it's been, "What if Matt gets caught and everyone really does find out he's Daredevil? " but the real question has ALWAYS been, "If he DOES get found out, well, what happens then?" That's what I always thought about when reading this title and now that it's happened, now that it's here, Bendis just leaves the book?
It just seems so lame to leave a book when the actual story hasn't even been finished yet when he claims in his letter at the end of the book that this is how he envisioned it all. Bendis has left another writer to get him out of the corner he wrote himself into! If I was a more cynical person I'd say that he never even thought about how this situation would be resolved. That he always just intended it to be left hanging becuase he really didn't actually know how to resolve it himself in the first place! -
That's more like it, that's how you present an argument. Now it's time for couterpoint: Bendis stated in a recent interview for CBR that this is the way he wanted to end his run but he felt he'd look like an asshole for doing that to the next writer. And then Brubaker told him to end it like that and he'd take the fallout. I kinda like the idea of Bendis' run being about Matt being outed and trying to deal with it. Thematically, i mean...i like that. As soon as he goes to prison, it becoes another story, and another writer comes onboard to handle it. A fresh vision. So yeah i have no problem with it but i can see how you would.
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Did y'all notice the Titanic sitting there in his Fortress of Solitude? You can see its tail propeller only on the big double-page splash, and then a few pages later Quitely does a cool perspective shot where you can see most of it and get a better sense of its scale.
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He's standing between The Question and Steel. http://tinyurl.com/agfb7 And speaking of Steel, what the hell? Isn't he, like, the Black Racer or whatever the DC character who collects the souls of the dead is called? It happened in the ultra-shitty "Our Worlds At War" miniseries, but I wasn't aware of him being retconned back to life. Anybody know what the deal is?
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...the dead giveaway is when Clark tells Lois that what they're eating (in the dining room on the ship, mind you) is the actual menu served the night the Big T ran into a little problem called a big iceberg.
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Deathstroke was originally supposed to KILL the Birds, not just extract the Calc's other agents? Yikes, that *is* a bit of a retcon, if so. You really gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater, though? Sell Gail's whole run over one stumbled wrap-up? I'm trying to decide if I want to do the same with Bendis's DD right now, but ultimately my reasons go beyond the finale. I've liked the series quite a bit here and there, but the entire last year, maybe *two* years, has been weak. And because it's all essentially one big story and ended on a completely lackluster note...even the early stuff I liked is partially tainted. Bendis raised many a theme about trust and friendship, but there was never any resolution - at least, none to my satisfaction. I wanted Matt, Foggy, and Milla to have some final heart-to-heart, or for Daredevil to come to terms with how fucked up it was to sue that newspaper editor over printing nothing more than the truth - something BIG and DRAMATIC, even if the execution was quiet. And he could've approached the themes he's brought up in a thousand different ways, but instead, the finale felt like a rehash of early storylines of various criminals and media-typed paper-chasing after DD's identity...yet again. And what was with the D-Man sidestory? Irrelevant and forgettable. So, yeah, I think I see eBay future...
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...just didn't make the connection to the actual ship being stuffed in the Fortress! Hey, I'm slow sometimes.
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I'm done with New Avengers after the issue that came out yesterday. So after he leaves Daredevil I'll officially be reading zero Bendis books. Save for DD, which I love, I really just don't like his stuff. I was just trying to stir up a stagnant talkback. *** I need to read the books I talk about? I admitted to reading the first two of them. Anyone sends me a check for $8 I'll read the next two. For what's it's worth, with issues #3 and 4, I skimmed most of them and then read the last 3 pages of each. I found I got exactly the same enjoyment out of them that way as I did when I read them cover to cover. Kind of funny how big crossovers read like that. *** As for Johns himself, admittedly, I've never been a fan. Frankly, the next good Johns issue I read will be the first. I respect him for how far he's gone with his career, but every book of his reads (to me) like: "Punch. Punch. Whine. Punch. Punch. Punch. Whine. Punch. Whine. Punch. Punch. Punch. Whine." Except without so much rhyme or reason as that. *** In conclusion, Marvel and DC need to give BMB and Johns the heave-ho pronto, and prop up Dan Slott and Grant Morrison in their places. Or better yet, not give ANY writer that much influence over their whole universes.
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Jan 26, 2006 6:52:14 PM CST
I Liked BANNER For BANNER But I Don't Consider It THE HULK.
by buzz maverik
Corben of course is fantastic. As my fellow founding @$$hole Jon Quixote once said about Brian Azzarello, tho', "He's an incredibly talented writer whose work I don't like." If BANNER wasn't motivated by nothing but a paycheck and resume line from Marvel, I don't know what was. BANNER exemplified current Marvel's misunderstanding of the Hulk, anger, etc. Oddly, Bruce Jones seemed to understand the character, it's just what he did and didn't do that was the problem. FOUR ISSUES TO BREAK THE ABOMINATION OUT OF JAIL? SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONE PANEL! The Hulk will fight when attacked. He's fought the Army. Remember, the Hulk was created in the 60s. Talk about your proto-typical anti-establishment hero. He sure as hell isn't Superman! One of the writers of the Hulk movie said he modeled the Hulk's behavior after his 3 year old son. As a father myself, I understood exactly what he meant. Most 3 year olds are good little people, but an angry 3 year old can be hell on wheels. So imagine an angry 3 year old that can lift over a 100 tons. I like the 60s analogy for the Hulk though. He just wants to do his own thing, man, but the Man in the form of the Army and supervillains won't let him.
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Well, I know non-uber Deathstroke has fought non-uber Batman before: http://tinyurl.com/djsbk If memory serves, Deathstroke roundly whupped Batman's bat-ass in their first dust-up. I think there were mitigating circumstance, though - like Batman hadn't slept for 48 hours or somesuch. And later, I think Batman delivered some payback, winning round 2. Can anyone provide specifics? I read DEATHSTROKE for awhile and it was a pretty rockin' action book, but it's been a long time.
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Jan 26, 2006 7:01:59 PM CST
Sideshow, rest assured that subsequent issues of IC were no supe
by dave_f
...and I can't imagine why Heathen wants me to comment on the series. I'm nice-to-superheroes guy this week - do you really want me to go into playa-hater mode? Do you really want to hear me griping about the no-impact destruction of Bludhaven (two pages, millions dead!)? Or the typical event-comic stupidity of Superboy going on a kill-crazy rampage but somehow *only* killing B and C-listers? Or how Phil Jiminez's art is so cramped it gives me claustrophobia? Nah, nobody wants that.
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I mean he's great on the build up but he's more often than not had his stories just peter out at the end, right. The greatest example of this beign his work in POWERS. Great, great build up but most of the time the story arcs end up just fizziling out. He just doesn't seem to know how to write a good ending, period. It's like he comes up with this unique idea but just doesn't know hoe to make it pay off. Don't get me wrong. For the most part I do enjoy the ride but most of the time it's like a rollercoaster that just doesn't have those last three loops along with the gut wrenching drop that makes the trip unforgettable.
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A few writers have fucked it up, but most of the time they don't. As for the heroes that DO use heat blasts, I figure if they have any control, a wide-angle, diffuse blast makes stuff catch fire, while a focused beam pretty much creates a laser effect. In other words, I can see 'em being able to do both - certainly Superman, anyway. Something I kinda dug from Byrne's Superman run was that Superman's heat-vision was usually invisible - Supes' just got glowy eyes when he used it. But if he was REALLY pissed, really using intense blasts...you could see 'em, like lasers. So if you could see his blasts, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
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I dunno, man--I think "packed" is more like it. And I feel I should point out the panels are no more packed than, say, the panels in the original CRISIS mini. Perez squeezed an awful lot in there, too, and there were definitely times it could've used the space to stretch a little. I think the art's been pretty solid so far in IC, really.
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...was actually pretty cool. I mean, the decision to do it can be questioned, as can whether it was given enough screen time, but man did I like seeing that guy tumbling in slo-mo through the air, then giving a sort of "uh oh" seconds beore he hit the ground. It reminded me of that "oh, man--I'm fucked" look that Jeff Daniels gets in "Speed" right before he gets blown the fuck up. I suspect, though, that the Bludhaven sitch will be revisited a few times over the next three issues, though, so I'm not ready to write it off as being a missed opportunity yet.
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...will that be the incontrovertable sign that DC is no longer courting new readers, having committed exclusively to tweaking the familiar for the entrenched audience? I wonder. Because it's hard for me to imagine new readers having any particular interest in a Batman who's Dick Grayson or any other schmuck who's NOT the Bruce Wayne they know from movies and TV. The original CRISIS had some funky relaunches too, (Wally West as FLASH, fer inst, and the renumbering of some books but not others), but at least the Big Three were the same Big Three they'd always been.
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Vale good, Vale love Dave, Vale love comics, Vale love Bendis DD! Ok no, that's low, you can make money selling those comics on ebay. But still, you know...maybe i ain't too proud to beg! Nope, definitely not. Is your heart big enough? (This post made no sense)
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Jan 26, 2006 7:25:42 PM CST
"Packed", "cramped", whatever...the overall effect felt straitja
by dave_f
...and yeah, I feel the same way about Perez's stuff at times. In fact, I'm the last guy you'll find defending the original CRISIS, which I've never been able to plow through. As draftsmen, I think Perez and Jiminez are both excellent, but one of the flaws in their storytelling is that they just try to squeeze too much stuff in. I've come to look at variation in panel size not just as a means of pacing, but as comicdom's equivalent of music in movies. That is, not vital to the bare-bones of the story, but a tool to be used to control impact. I think it was an issue or two back when Jimenez drew some scenes from the Rann/Thanagar brouhaha and I remember thinking, "This space battle looks frickin' PUNY." He'd crammed about a hundred ships into one little baby panel, and there was just no majesty to the scene at all. Which there should've been. And that one scene is, I think, indicative of an overall approach I just don't like. Perez is better than Jimenez in this department, but it's still an issue.
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Define "Tainted" Dave. I've heard some people say the original Star Wars trilogy had been "tainted" because of the prequels, which sounds, to me, like the most idiotic thing ever.
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Jan 26, 2006 7:38:10 PM CST
Dick Grayson as Batman is something I'd really want to read.
by jonquixote
The problem being that I don't want to read it if it's just a temporary gimmick. And - naturally - I don't want to see Bruce Wayne permanently replaced in the DCU. So where does that leave us? Maybe a MC2 type line for DC, 20 years in the future and following the disappearance of some of the heavy hitters? Have I mentioned how completely apathetic I am to all the "upheaval" going on in the DCU right now?
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Like if one were watching Fat Man and Little Boy plummet down on their targets, and they suddenly grew Disney mouths and eyes and said, "Holy crap, we're fallin'!" **** And, y'know, it's just one more instance of a fun villain going grim. I used to like Chemo. Sure, it was based on the whopping two appearances I had by him (one, I think, from an old METAL MEN that was in the ART OF WALT SIMONSON collection, the other from a Byrne issue of ACTION featuring...you guessed it, the Metal Men!), but I liked him. And now this old Metal Men foe is the supervillain who's probably killed more innocents than any supervillain ever. Fuckin' GREAT. Oh, and the cool old Doom Patrol/Teen Titans baddies, The Brotherhood of Evil, are tainted too. They've gone from being a memorable troupe of rogues to "the mass-murderers who destroyed a city of millions." And here's one more for ya: it just seemed, well, *obnoxious* for DC to so unceremoniously off a fictional city that Chuck Dixon had put years of his life into creating. I don't even follow NIGHTWING and I think it's a jerk move. Yes, even if Chuck IS a big ol', jack-ass homophobe. ***** Now see what you've done, Sleazy? You've lured out Hater-Dave.
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Jan 26, 2006 7:43:52 PM CST
Thing is, Vale, the original STAR WARS trilogy functions as a co
by dave_f
The prequels are unnecessary to the story of Luke, Han, Leia, and the destruction of the Empire, and so fans can take 'em or leave 'em. But Bendis's DAREDEVIL run? More than just about any other comic run I can think of, they really were ONE BIG STORY. It's like watching a movie that goes south in the last half and has a distinctly bad ending - you might still like parts of it, but are you gonna buy that movie on DVD or are you just gonna watch cable for the good parts? Now I just need to figure out what the comic book equivalent of cable is. Illegal downloading?
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All I can say in defense of Chemo is he didn't really intentionally kill anybody. I mean, the rest of the villains make it pretty clear he doesn't even really know what's going on, so lay the slaughter at their feet, not his. Plus, the story isn't really over--there's no guarantee things won't be at least partially fixed at some point. I mean, you'll still hate it and all, I'm just saying we're not really sure yet how it's gonna work out.
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Jan 26, 2006 7:50:38 PM CST
Yeah, JQ, I think an MC2-type situation could be a fun playgroun
by dave_f
I'm mostly a status-quo guy when it comes to the Marvel/DC heroes, but ELSEWORLDS and WHAT IF outings have shown the fun to be had when you can really change things up, even bring stories to finales. John Byrne's dabbled specifically with the aging/legacy stuff in his GENERATIONS outings, launching from the concept of Batman and Superman aging in real time, 1939 being the start of their adventuring careers. The first mini was good, the second okay, and I never got around to the third, but overall it's an interesting primer in how such a thing might be done.
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Jan 26, 2006 7:52:21 PM CST
I'd say that the prequels "tainted" the original Star Wars m
by jonquixote
Two words, baby: Darth Vader. Now, bear in mind that I'm about as apathetic towards Star Wars as a guy can get so this isn't coming from the "George Lucas raped my childhood" camp. But as mediocre as I consider the original movies, they did have some things going for them, and first and foremost was this bad, jet-black mysterious killin' machine called DARTH VADER. Even a total Star Wars hater has to credit him as one of the all-time classic movie characters of all time, and certainly one of the baddest. But watch any of the Star Wars movies now, featuring any incarnation of Vader, and I defy you not to think, "Hey, remember Jake Lloyd? Didn't you want to just shake that little punk until you heard a snap?" Darth Vader now has a fleshed-out backstory - a whiny, petulant, poorly acted and even more poorly scripted backstory. Le mystery and le power, they are gone. And they ain't coming back. So unless you're able to go into STAR WARS or EMPIRE or JEDI with *no knowledge whatsoever* of the prequels, Darth Vader is a weaker, less mysterious character. And the original trilogy is lesser for it.
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Was I the only one who enjoyed Buzz's Essential Avengers review this week? Buzz's acid flashbacks to the 70s can be hit or miss for me but good stuff...especially the bit about the DD issue. I am not a Roy Thomas fan. I respect the man for essentially "placeholding" some of my favorite titles in between brilliant runs (is that a backhanded compliment or what?), and he was not without talent, but he always leaves me cold. Englalhart, on the other hand, I am not so familiar with but I know people talk about his Cap run with hushed reverence. Is there a good Marvel Essential place to start? I can't plow through these Essential books, unfortunately. *** Also, I'm a massive grouch when it comes to Geoff Johns, the rape-n-death DCU, and big crossovers in general, but I like Jimenez' art quite a bit. I just wish he was on a more joyful book.
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I don't know, man...i haven't had a problem with Bendis' endings. I don't think endings that aren't HUGE AND FUCKING EPIC are intrinsically bad. I think i like a quiet ending better than a shocking one. I think, obviously, people tend to be moved easily by melodramatic storytelling and you can certainly forgive a few shortcomings in the storytelling if the ending is loud enough. Bendis' Powers endings strike me as very "real world" (man am i gonna get shit for saying that) and believable. Not every story ends with a shocking revelation or event, sometimes they just fizzle out. That said, there's a Powers storyline (the one with the Superman analogue [is that the word i'm looking for?] going crazy and melting everyone) that builds and builds and builds to a pretty spectacular ending (if a little low key by YOU'RE RUINING ME *tears people appart* standards) with Deena naked in space. So i don't know what i'm saying anymore because i'm multitasking so much my brain is about to fizzle out like a Bendis ending, but Bendis endings aren't so bad is my point. I think. Hello, i'm Vale
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What I meant was I can't plow through them in a week or two. It takes me like 6 months to get through one of them suckers.
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I'm just sayin', even if they bring him back, the heroes will be all, "We've got to stop him fast! After all, we don't want another...BLUDHAVEN!" You know it's true. Just like everything for the last year has been, "We've got to stop them fast! After all, we don't want another...SUE DIBNY!" What, you think Chemo can go back to being just a cute bag of walking chemicals again, now that he's Mr. Holocaust? And on a more important note, do you pronounce his name KEE-mo, or KEM-o? The first sounds more natural, because we're used to the word 'chemotherapy', but the later is probably what his Silver Age creators were thinking of, right? Like the word 'chemical', but with an "o" stuck on the end? Same approach that gave us Starro and Metamorpho and Titano and Despero and Darkseid-O?
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Jan 26, 2006 8:09:26 PM CST
The first POWERS arc ("Retro Girl") had a great ending, with the
by dave_f
...but it didn't happen. And I forget all the other POWERS endings - I stopped reading the book a few years back.
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...is from the ALIAS arc where Jessica's tracking the missing guy who may or may not be Rick Jones. The story wraps on the sub-plot with the guy who's cheating on his wife in a gay love affair, and it's definitely a quiet scene, but it brings together the entire arc's themes about how we hide who we are. I don't think Bendis is particularly good at endings, but he's on occasion really come through. Since DD was one of his longest runs, I sure wish he'd been able to pull it off there.
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Jan 26, 2006 8:26:37 PM CST
I would hope, that the urgency demonstrated by DC Superheroes du
by jonquixote
...would be in line with urgency shown during their many past battles with Chemo. "Hurry, Chemo's rampaging through Central City. We have to stop him." "Relax, what's the worst that could happen? He's just a 10 story tall bag of toxic waste and acid. It'll be fine." Whoops. "We had no prior indication that a sentient bag of toxic chemicals could do so much damage to an urban center." "Supie, you're doin' a heck of a job."
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That's like letting the little fucker win.
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And that retcon happened based on info we were provided just the issue prior. Extracting Calc's agents was never the point of Deathstroke's mission. Calc apparently couldn't care less when Black Spider was thrown out a 10th story window to his (apparent at the time) death. It kind of goes to my big problem with Gail's writing on the book overall. The characters tend to get all big with braggadoccio and they always back down before anything status quo-changing happens (like it honestly would in a Big Two book, but..); Canary's couple of fights with Rabbit in #82 and #85 come to mind. If anything, that pattern of build up and letdown just makes the read that much more disappointing because it's so obvious that nothing negative of consequence will happen. You get hyped for the ride when you think there's a real threat and something could happen, but then it stops short and the ride doesn't go anywhere. I guess I prefer my stories to flow more and thrive on logical consequences, with less of this clunk. I feel cheated instead of thinking "how're they going to get out of this one?" And this arc in particular really showed Gail's flaws because with the Calculator you've got this fascinating character (as written by Meltzer) who, ideally as his name would suggest, should be one of the most sane and rational of villains (barring a purple costume, of course), and thus a real threat with all the knowledge at his fingetips. Instead, it looks like they might ship him off to Arkham and it speaks to his character that Gail has him just simply give up when Deathstroke fails to follow through on the threat he made to Oracle. It's irrational on his part and it's horrible that his first serious jaunt out as a rebooted villain establishes him like this. So yeah, eBay, except #87 because Joe Bennett does great art and Noah makes the cover.
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will you sell that #87 thayla if in the next like few issues they killed off noah?
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I was enough of a mess after #87 came out with the characterization he got.
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It looks to me like the now non-powered Ralph Dibny.
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Jan 27, 2006 12:00:36 AM CST
Hater-Dave only goes back into his hole when people TalkBack abo
by dave_f
And since I didn't review any non-mainstream books, may I suggest a taser?
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Jan 27, 2006 12:06:44 AM CST
hate to interrupt this scintillating discussion, but HOLY SHIT E
by mrboinfoint
Hotter than even her 90's prime. Yowza. I now return you to your comic bullshit.
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Please elabora on this, and fear not, i've never read a Chuck Dixon comic.
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...which actually makes him far, far more restrained than most liberal writers. Funny, huh? As for his homophobia, the best specifics I could find came from a Rich Johnston column that quotes a now-taken-down message board post from Dixon. The deal was, rumors were circulating that Dixon-created character Conner Hawk (the Buddhist Green Arrow kid) was going to be revealed to be gay. Wrote Dixon: "I don't want to expect to be able to shield my kids from the subject of homosexuality as the media seems intent on bringing into my home and nothing short of cutting the electricity and boarding the windows will stop it. But I DON'T want my kids reading about it in comics. I don't want Judd Winnick or Grant Morrison or the nimrod who wrote this 'Rawhide Kid' comic informing my kids about the many facets and lifestyle choices out there in the world. I'd like to be the one to talk to them about it when they're older and I feel the time is right. I especially object to them using characters familiar to my kids to present this worldview. Could you please leave the Beast and Green Lantern alone?"
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Jan 27, 2006 7:52:35 AM CST
The population of Bludhaven didn't really die, you know.
by rev_skarekroe
They don't really exist. It's a comic book. Also, by mid-2007 all the sweeping changes stemming from Crisis and One Year Later will be overturned and everything will be back to the status-quo.
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It's true. He nuked Bludhaven to get back at Dixon for being a homophobe. Or something. And Dave, I don't see anything really homophobic in that quote. And I'm a liberal minded independent. But we don't want to turn this TB into THAT TB do we?
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Especially if he thinks he can 'shield' his children from 'lifestyle choices' until he sees fit, when you all know you had your first "Superman is teh ghey! No! @qu@f@g is teh ghey!" playground argument in like 3rd grade. He should watch more South Park and see how kids really act.
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I think the quote - and as a libruhl myself, I don't mind it - is problematic in its description of homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice". Unless he's talking about how some gay people choose to be cowboys or cops or construction workers or Republican governors.
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Bruce Wayne won't be the next host of the Spectre. Dammit!
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I think IC is turning out to be not as easy to predict as most thought... maybe the big 3 will "go away" for a while (52 weeks?) once IC is done? Hurm.
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Sorry, but for me the SW prequels have really, really destroyed my ability to watch the original series again with any sort of wimsy or enjoyment whatsoever. The prequels have pretty much destroyed evreything Star Wars related for me for a long, long time. I just can't get over the fact that Darth Vader (inside the armor) is now a spoiled little crybaby wanna-be Melrose Place type who slaughtered the Jedi because he couldn't get some on the side. Seriously, how can I take a villain with that type of backstory seriously? The answer: I can't. And I'm surprized that anyone else can. But not to worry, Star Wars was never the most influential movie of my childhood anyway. That was Superman...whose majesty I now fully expect to be destroyed by Superman Returns. "Sigh" :O(
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That's what I'm thinking too, if the cover to 52 is any indication. It would be nice, to at least give all the non-first tier characters a chance to shine. But where was Black Adam on the cover?
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I ain't conna say Chuck Dixon is homophobic. That's a confusing and over-used term anyway. And I must give him respect for never bringing his politics into the many comics he's written that I have enjoyed. However, he is anti-gay. I mean, Rawhide Kid (a mini I actually loved though it's a Zimmerman) doesn't even say anything, ever, explicitly stating he's gay. And Morrison? Why would his kid be reading a Morrison book anyway, and of everything GM puts in his books, Dixon mentions homosexuality? I'll give him Winick, since Judd does love to "make statements" in his work. But none of these comics really have Homo-sexuality in it. They have gay characters, yes, and a pro-gay-acceptance pov, but outside of Apollo and Midnighter, no one ever goes to bed. Of course, as a homo I am more sensitive (Must Ultimate X-Men hook up Colossus and Northstar just because they're both gay?) but he's totally going on about the "Gay Agenda" and he's a hater. I never knew and I don't think I can separate this info from his work. He doesn't have to let his kids read anything by the "pro-gay agenda" writers he thinks are going to make his progeny switch teams. And I don't have to read anything by him since I can't use my dollars to support someone who hates who I am. Sad for me, sad for his kids. Oh well.
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I thought he was involved with Kitty.
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Metzer's characterization of Noah is but ONE recent example and I think you're actually reading a bit into it at that. You REALLY need to see some of Calculator's appearances prior to Identity Crisis. You'll see that Gail is not mis-using a premise of Metzer's, she's just including the entire canon of Noah's appearances. Seriously babe, Metzer gave what was a total joke some respectability. That Calc is saddled with OCD is NOT out of character at all. He's been shown to be a bit of a nutjob after all.
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is like monk gone bad.
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And which appearances might you be talking about, Psy? You've got Detective Comics #463-468, Action Comics (I forget which three issues had a backup story with him, Atom, and Airwave), Hero Hotline #6, Blue Beetle #8, Justice League: America #43, JSA #30, The Flash #183, Young Justice #51, I could go on.. You can be a nutjob without that, furthermore. I think it's rather ingenious of the character to take an apparent flaw of his (the guy's clearly not a fighter and is in most cases bound to lose whenever he goes up against a cape) and twists it to his advantage by factoring it in as a necessity to beating said capes. The guy clearly thrives on knowing his opponents and what makes them tick. Imagine the kinds of stories you could tell with him as a villain. *** blackthought: Cage. Now. Or no banana bread for you!
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Ok, Colossus tradicional de los hombres x no es homosexual. El era novio de Kitty, etc. Pero el Ultimate Colossus dijo, en el ultimo comic de Brian Vaughan, que si es homosexual y que iba a ir al baile de homecoming con Northstar. Lo dijo al Nightcrawler y ahora Kurt esta molesto con la comparacion que Peter hizo entre su sexualidad y la apariencia de Nightcrawler, como que los dos son raros. Well, I hope I said that correctly
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plus...my mother just realized that i was still living and sent me some banana bread...bless her soul...so i can't fear your threat at the moment...give me a week though i'll be in pain due to withdrawal...sort of the same pain dave gets when he touches a comic book from a major publisher...just touching!
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Dammit I'm acutally having to work at work! Who fucking invented this abortion called employment anyway?!? But c'mon T, his big schtick was calculator that analyzed a hero's powers so they wouldn't work on him a 2nd time ignoring the fact that all they had to do was ask another hero for help to take him out each and every time (which they did)....BUT I think you are on to something regarding DC, creativity and the apparent limit to the size of ideaspace. I'll post my thoughts on it when my boss gets out of my crack....
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Cool man, thanks for the info. That said, you don't have to speak spanish to me...i mean it's nice and all but it can imagine it's sort of a stretch and you don't have to go through all that trouble. And please please please never again utter the words "los hombres x" cause i hate that shit! It's like calling Bruce Wayne "Bruno Dias" man.
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Okay am I the only one starting to see a pattern? Whenever I see something occur in 3's I start to see pattern forming. IC is FREAKING GREAT in my book. IC#4 is the best comic I have read in YEARS. However.....The latest issue of Teen Titans was a TOTAL mis-fire. I mean what was the point of the goddamn Captain Carrot pages can someone please tell me? (Seriously, if you have any idea why those pages were in those 2 issues PLEASE tell me because I have no fucking clue AT ALL) Don't even get me started on the dialog fuck ups in this latest issue as well. Then we have Thalya's take on the latest BoP (which, other than her slightly fannish devotion to Calculator's character I cannot dispute). And then there's LSH #13 which I read this week and was utterly disappointed with. The storyline resolution lacked any real emotional punch or depth and the art was crap in quite a few places (credit show 'layouts' by Kitson and finishes by Mick Gray) not the least of which was the lazy-assed silhouetted group cover. Again, LOVING IC, totally. BUT I begin to wonder that if ideaspace is plausible ( and it is) perhaps the supply is finite? I dunno, it just seems that while DC is knocking it out of the park with IC and most of the associated minis (DoV & VU ROCKED motherfucker) many of their regular monthlies are sliding in quality at the same time. Dan Didio's cheap ass comment about time anomolies notwithstanding things like the 7 deadly sins being 'dealt with' in so many different fashions is REALLY stretching the credulity of the situation. Keep in mind, I am the DC equivalent of a Marvel Zombie, and I am feeling short-changed on the monthlies I read of late. Thoughts anyone?
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With respect to beer from south of the border. And as far as Chuck Dixon goes, I don't consider him a homophobe. I've never picked up a book of his and said, "dang, this guy hates gay people". The guy doesn't pontificate in his book and he is entitled to his opinions. Ergo, he's cool with me, even if I don't support his opinions. One more thing and I'm off my soapbox. Is it homophobic to want your son to grow up straight? If any of you have a son, odds are you want that for them. While it would be cool as hell to have my son grow up to be the next Freddie Mercury, I would hope that he's straight. When it comes to raising a kid it's a tough call. Who the hell are we to pile on Dixon for how he chooses to raise his kids? After all, this is the guy who gave us THE definitive run on Nightwing. And finally, Bendis' Daredevil was great. Not Frank Miller. But pretty damn good. Respeck.
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That was just me trying to be elitist, show off and practice all at the same time. Of course Dixon is entitled to his opinion, but if straight guys really think seeing a gay superhero will make little Charlie turn over, ....well, I can't believe straight guys really think that.
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It's more just a balancing thing: there can never be total quality at one time, there's always got to be mediocrity. And frankly, if BoP and Teen Titans had more directly tied into Crisis, they'd be good, that's just how it works. But the Rock of frickin Eternity explodes right over Gotham, Calc's got a front row seat for it up in his glass-topped tower, and nary a rattle of rock on the windows or a remark? Gah! But anyway, dude, you didn't like BoP either? (and Calculator-related: 1) Slightly fannish? You can say Slightly Stalkerish and I won't mind. 2) Yeah, that _was_ his big shtick, but he had enough sense and sanity in him to change his approach (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, right?). Now he monitors everything and can produce psych profiles on request for any major player, plus I bet he could mix and match villains as his agents rather easily. I think it would be awesome if he wound up being an underlying Big Bad for the upcoming Brave and the Bold: supposedly random hero and villain team-ups, but with an underlying purpose..
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Jeez, Thayla. Last week's rant was at least unintentionally hilarious. After that, the outrage and tears this week aren't nearly as fun, dangit.
I always figure if you have to make stuff up to be sufficiently outraged, you probably don't need anyone else to join in the debate, but...what the heck, let's take a shot.
First, I think it's pretty obvious once Deathstroke showed up, he didn't really want to kill Canary and Huntress. I don't know how much more obvious I could have made it, aside from him saying it repeatedly. If you've followed BOP during Chuck's run, Deathstroke actually enjoys Dinah's company, and for me to ignore that would be cheating.
Second, yikes, again, at the end of this issue, Calculator isn't really 'beaten' by Oracle. He quit self-medicating. You object to my read on the characters' history, that's fine. I think you skewed the facts considerably to match your adorable outrage, though.
I disagree pretty wildly that there haven't been consequences to each arc, but that's nitpicking and a matter of opinion, anyway. So, fair enough, but I think you're mistaken.
That's it, I'm sure I can expect endless bitching about this for ages to come, and more discussion of your doubtlessly brilliant fanfic, of course. I still have a lunatic mad at me for an issue of Agent X, for Pete's sake. You do get used to it. :)
And thanks to the League for the kind words...I promise to get right back to ruining characters as soon as I sign off here.
Best to all, and have a great night,
Gail
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"Metzer's characterization of Noah is but ONE recent example and I think you're actually reading a bit into it at that. You REALLY need to see some of Calculator's appearances prior to Identity Crisis. You'll see that Gail is not mis-using a premise of Metzer's, she's just including the entire canon of Noah's appearances. Seriously babe, Metzer gave what was a total joke some respectability. That Calc is saddled with OCD is NOT out of character at all. He's been shown to be a bit of a nutjob after all. "
Actually, I'm not saying that Thayla's completely wrong. I'd say there definitely is a new element to Calculator's story here, but if she believes I invented it in a vacuum, that would be a mistake. It does tie into upcoming books.
Ah, never mind. I got no beef with Thayla, I just get a bit annoyed when I feel the stories are misrepresented.
It's fine, I ruined Calculator, I apologize. :)
Gail -
What happened to the paragraph breaks? It looks like I'm on crack!
Cool!
Gail
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Jan 28, 2006 3:17:00 AM CST
The Prequels Would Have Been Okay If George Would Have Handed Ov
by buzz maverik
For a paltry million, a custom made Purdy shotgun, an H2 packed solid with Cuban cigars per script, I'd have rewritten his story for him. I've heard Lucas didn't really even have scripts until each movie was finished. Of course, Lucas would have hated my rewrites and fired my @$$. His first 45 minutes reduced to a line in the opening crawl. Queen Naboo of Tatooine fleeing a mysterious droid army in service of the Huts. Her Jedi bodyguard slain, his young apprentice Skywalker overtaking her ship in a stolen fighter, able to rescue only her and the two droids before they're all captured by Darth Maul. But it's A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA style kidnapping, with a bond forming between Jedi and Sith as the two warriors must face a common, monstrous menace aboard an abandoned cloner ship. Anakin and Amidala are rescued by Obi Wan Kenobi, who will become Anakin's new master. Yet, when the meet up with Darth Maul in the end, Anakin must slay a warrior he admires to save the life of one he doesn't respect that much. In AOTC, should have been Anakin, far exceeding his authority, who activated the mysterious clone army to "save" the Jedi, by the mid-point. Lucas couldn't have pulled off the sneaking around and knocking it out, but that's what those two gorgeous kids should have been doing in CLONES. A pregnant Padme lured to Mustaphar. Palpatine sending Anakin on a quest to save her, with Skywalker finding Obi Wan opposing him. Anakin should have gone into the volcano at the end of Episode II, to arise in the armor and be told he failed in his quest. That way, in Episode III, we mirror EMPIRE, everyone's favorite, with Vader hunting down everyone. Padme should die at midpoint so that no one walks out of the theater depressed like I did. Vader pursuing rumors of his offspring while the surviving Jedi, Obi Wan and Yoda, race the babies to safety. Oh, and a few younglings would escape for a fee in a spaceship flown by a white kid, a black kid and their pet monkey. We'd at least have had some positive victory with the Jedi saving the babies and Vader thwarted. See, you put him in the armor earlier and the terrible things he does aren't so sickening. What I really wanna do is direct.
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Well, ya see, AICN's TalkBack coding is perfectly up to date...for 1997. Place has never had working paragraph breaks, HTML coding, avatars, or any of the other luxuries you might find on, say, a high-tech message board for owners of dachshunds. There's always rumors and hints of upgrades, though. And I know I *hear* lots of hammering when I put my ear to the door of AICN HQ, but that may just be the elven cobblers Harry employs as slave labor. Anyway, always nice ta see ya in the TalkBacks. Be cool with Thalya - she don't mean nothin' personal, she's just in love and feels like you're mackin' on her guy. I know exactly how she feels, too, for I once loved a toxic man-mountain named Chemo...until that bitch Geoff Johns stole him from me.
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Jan 28, 2006 3:41:49 AM CST
The Essentials Are Just Starting To Reach The Engelhart Era, Sid
by buzz maverik
ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL. 1. ESSENTIAL LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN VOL. 1. This Avengers. He's had some good trades. AVENGERS: CELESTIAL MADONNA. AVENGERS: THE SERPENT CROWN....AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR.I recently review CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON: SECRET EMPIRE. The thing with Engelhart is that now some of his Cap stuff doesn't seem so stunning (Steve Rogers in another identity, someone else in the flag suit) because Engelhart did it for the first time.
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Keep in mind, homophobia doesn't require someone to be a gaybasher or a skinhead or generally eeeeevil. Straight from the dictionary, it just means "Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men." And when Dixon talks about keeping homosexuality out of his house, away from his kids, and out of comics theoretically meant to reflect reality...how can you characterize that as anything but fear and/or contempt? I'm not saying we ride him out of town on a rail, and I actually do respect that it doesn't enter into his stories (I wouldn't have mentioned it before if I didn't), but gimme a break - dude's a homophobe. We can argue the definition, or get into stupid semantic debates about whether he has to be physically afraid of gays for homophobia to apply, but for me he definitely fulfills the dictionary definition. I wonder if he'd even be willing to write a pre-existing gay character into his storylines? You know, Maggie Sawyer into a Nightwing story, for instance? Because when he writes that he doesn't want gays in comics at all, that sounds like a big ol' NO to me. Again: homophobia. Not violent or particularly hateful homophobia, but homophobia nonetheless. ***** I occasionally struggle over whether I'm willing to support such creators' work. Of course, I'm sure we've all unknowingly read hundreds of stories written by writers with personal beliefs or practices we might find offensive, but if we DO know about them and we really find them distasteful, isn't a boycott the best, most American way to protest? Sure, sure, there's also the ideal of completely separating the artist from the art, but there's gotta be a breaking point. For some, it's Roman Polanski's charges of rape, and if Dixon has ever said anything so egregious as, "That Matthew Sheppard got what he deserved" (and to be clear, he has NEVER said this), that would be my breaking point with him. But Dixon's known comments fall into a gray area for me, and so I'm generally okay with picking up his stuff. He doesn't write a lot that I'm drawn to, but for instance, he did some rock-solid and occasionally inspired work throughout the first few years of BIRDS OF PREY. He definitely got the ball rolling, definitely deserves props for creating a female-driven superteam that didn't rely on T&A. My take on Dixon is similar to my take on Mike Miller, founder of small press publisher Alias and the artist on THE HEDGE KNIGHT, which I actually picked for "Best Miniseries" in last year's @$$ie Awards. I haven't done a ton of poking around about Miller, but there's enough I've read to determine that at the very least he's got *some* homophobia in him. I'm not thrilled about it, but I don't see it as being anything so egregious I'd turn away from his work over it.
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I remeber Dixon using the "Spoiler pregnancy" arc of ROBIN to tear Planned Parenthood a new one. He played it like the councellers there practically force abortions on women. So yeah, he's the kind of guy who makes our own Superninja look like a liberal. That doesn't stop him from being one hell of a crime writer.
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Jan 28, 2006 4:57:42 AM CST
The only time I can recall Chuck sneaking in an overtly conserva
by dave_f
...was in a BIRDS O' PREY where Oracle needs to take control of some batteship's missile-firing system to save the day, but is either prevented or has a bitch of a time because of military budget cuts or somesuch. I think she says something to the ship's commander to the tune of, "What idiot politician ordered the cuts?" I think the captain basically said it was the guy in the White House, who of course was Clinton in those days. Based on that scene and what Vroom noted, he's probably worked in various other jabs on the down-low, but the fact that so few people know of his politics suggests he's relatively subtle. Certainly compared to a Judd Winick or a Mark Millar...
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how come we couldn't get johns instead?
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Your review was pretty on target. I'm probably on the side of fence that says Hulk killed though...all those buildings smashed over the last 40 years and there wasn't one janitor in any of them? But, I also think issue #4 is a bit too early in a series for a stand-alone tale that's an epilogue to a storyline from a different book years ago.
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thayla i did take that as a threat...i take everything as a threat...i'm the brooding paranoid one with the cage you know.
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That's one of those weird quirks of these characters' perpetual adventures: 40 years+ of stories, clearly more than anyone could've truly experienced in the span of their lifetime the series is supposed to represent. And I'd put the span at ten years, tops - it's not like most Marvel/DC characters do a lot of aging, 'cept for the kids and teens since that's an age group where that thrives on maturation stories. Anyway, my point is that after 40 years+ of adventures - you've got to kind of accept that these stories can't truly be cumulative. Got to start imagining that instead of the Hulk having rampaged through the 300 cities and towns that you can match to stories, he probably isn't meant to've hit more than...what, a few dozen? Your mileage may vary, but I'm sure you get where I'm coming from.
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"Be cool with Thalya - she don't mean nothin' personal, she's just in love and feels like you're mackin' on her guy."
Yeah, since she opened with "Fuck Gail Simone, fuck her in her stupid ass," I figure she's both classy AND the greatest wit since Oscar Wilde.
Honestly, it's no big deal, I just felt she padded her case considerably. No biggie.
And Chemo? Really?
I expect you to hate me in about...oh...two more issues of JLA: Classified, in that case. ;)
Gail -
Jan 28, 2006 12:40:08 PM CST
Well, one thing worth remembering about the AICN TalkBacks...
by dave_f
...is that they're sort of the equivalent of locker room talk or guys jawin' at a poker game. Always awesome to have you here - sincerely - but as Kevin Smith has probably picked up on over the years, we're not the best place for creators to hang out. It's no-holds-barred and shoot-from-the-hip at AICN; hell, there's even a *tradition* of crazy-ass, hyperbolic reactions (and we're one of the more *civilized* TalkBacks on the site). I'm not saying we don't make asses of ourselves here sometimes, but...would ya believe "fuck so-and-so up their stupid ass" is actually a longstanding, almost jokey insult here? It's like the AICN in-joke cliche, same as that other golden oldie, "George Lucas raped my childhood." I can't get in Thalya's head to figure how steamed she really was...I just know it's wise to take these kind of reactions with something of a grain of salt. ***** On a less locker-room-talk note, I laughed out loud at Lady Blackhawk's reaction to the news about Creote. One of my favorite lines of the last few months.
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can you get johns to come on here and tell me everything about crisis and 52?...i'll share a slice of banana bread if you do.
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I'm fine with that concept. In fact in a recent Captain America issue Falcon says something like "why did that Russian dude wait 10 years after you came out of the ice to attack you?" and I can dig it. In that very issue we had Rick Jones' buddy as an adult, maybe 10-20 years older than he was as a teen. So Hulk only tore through 12 towns or so. Still would have killed *someone*...that's the equivalent of a dozen 8.0 earthquakes, right? Maybe he didn't know about the deaths though and that's the catch.
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Pretty much all of Marvel's popular characters come out of topics from the 1960s, be it fear of the nuclear, the space race, the cold war, race relations, the emergence of teen culture, etc. And now we're supposed to believe it's all 10 years old? I know these comics characters exist in a strange vacuum, but it's too bad people don't trust new characters to get into anything that's actually relevant to our times. Livewires was close, and we'll never see it again. The Athiest was close, but...well, I guess there is a new issue next month, but what the hell happened? Global Frequency was close, and to this day I have no idea why Ellis tied that one off when it was his best concept by far and all his books read exactly the same anyway. *** Although I guess I shouldn't complain, as I'm a card-carrying member of the generation of fanboys who's about 30 yet hasn't emotionally matured much beyond 10 years!
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...I'm not made of China. I like the League and I enjoy the talkback when I have a chance to read it. I always figure it's wrong to accept the good reviews if you can't handle the bad ones. Honestly, no harm no foul.
Gail -
Blackthought, Geoff mostly stays off of message boards, but can I have the banana bread anyways?
Gail -
Seriously, VU showed me just how clever you really can be with character and dialogue. Regardless of how anyone feels about a plot point incidentally, we ALL have massive amounts or respect and admiration for the power and quality of your work. (Hell, my mom's name is Gayle so you had 50 cool points coming outta the gate)
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I know someone on some site said something to the effect that the Marvel U was ten years old, but it simply doesn't jibe with continuity, escpecially since the first five years of Fantastic Four et al took place in real time, with the characters pointedly mentioning that a month had gone by between issues, or with the X-Men celebrating their graduation. Beast turned 30 in the mid-90's, so at least 13 years had to have passed since his introduction. Then again, Kitty Pryde was a teenager for two decades, and Franklin Richards has yet to hit puberty. The DC '52' series is a good way to judge time, actually, just considering that each issue is approximately one week out of a given year. Of course, that means that Spider-Man has some pretty busy weeks, and doesn't take into account the Annuals or Giant Sizes or Summer Specials or the 224 second Grey Family Massacre and completely falls apart when you consider the 1800 freaking Batman and Superman related titles...
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AND your stupid ass, Psynapse! :)
Nothing to see here, honestly, Thayla has every right to say what she thinks, and I feel sorta dumb for responding when 95% of the stuff here has been so positive. My mistake, sorry Thayla.
Gail -
when are we getting the blake and norton road show? or series at least? and i'll think about the banana bread...i'm seriously addicted...so it would be a grand sacrifice.
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Especially when dealing with such subjective matter as fiction and comics, but I repeat myself(see last week's column). Although Gail, you could ignore just about anything in a Chuck Austen run on a book and I don't think anyone would really mind. This is the dipshit (my opinion, sticking by it) that decided to make Nightcrawler of the X-Men an actual demon utterly crapping on the uniqueness of the character. Comics fans don't easily forgive or forget a screw-up like that.
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So I'm probably WORSE than those who read her stuff and hate some issues.
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I read a couple of her Superman issues with Byrne and thought it was grand fun, but I didn't keep reading because I didn't think they'd be on it long. *** It's no offense to Gail, the DCU is just not my bag.
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And fuck you and your little dog too if you don't like it. >:)
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First, let me say, in all honesty, it is an honor to be set straight by Gail herself. ...I had a rather long response I was going to post, but I lost it in the process of posting, so, something shorter and sweeter. Second, thanks to your clarification, Gail, I've realized that the solicits had me fooled. Calc's story was clearly a B- or C-plot in the story you were telling and I was hyped for an A-plot, and that's why things didn't make much sense to me. I should've known better about that, solicits being what they are. Third, in my defense, quite clearly I get all irrational about anything to do with Noah Kuttler. Dave_F said it best already, I'm in love with the guy; past, present, and future; for better or worse, as absurd as it might seem. That was the source of all my vitriol, so you can imagine how freaked I might've been when the last line is Dr. Psycho (even if no one really listens to him) saying "Let's kill him." (As if Noah wasn't already in a sacrificial lamb position for being the greenest power player in the Society's inner circle). That, and I just generally worry how the OCD will affect his stories in the long term, especially since I think he has so much potential. Also in my defense, my opening salvo was purely meant as an AICN-ism (borrowed from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, no less); that, and, "has a beer and CHEETS on his wife" wouldn't quite apply to Jim Gordon in this issue. I am aware of how crude it is out of this context. Also, I only started reading BoP with your run, so I was unaware of Slade's and Dinah's prior relationship; it's definitely fair that he acted like that, then, totally aside from the hints in other books that he has some ulterior goals forthcoming. "It does tie into upcoming books." I may not have much faith in DC's solicits, but I'll take yours for whatever they're worth. Do I sense Calc might be a Mockingbird-in-the-making? And honestly, outside of the OCD issue, I don't think you ruined him necessarily; I like how you wrote him, taking Meltzer's costumeless, more human and vulnerable (for a villain) redefinition and running with it while keeping him evil-licious. Like I said over on the DC boards after #87, you made him "sympathetic, scary, and sexy". Again, thanks for taking the time to set me straight on that, Gail. Just so long as I know Noah's gonna survive Infinite Crisis and OYL, I'm a happy camper. (and as a sidenote, my fanfic'll probably only be so-so. If I had a better sense of panel layout language, it could be ok, but..)
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Well, you see, I may have omitted that in the cage I've got these khakis with suspenders, a white workshirt with roll-up cuffs, and a pair of half-moon-shaped spectacles for you to wear. Do you want your banana bread or not?
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Get over here, Chemo, don't be shy!
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well banana bread is one of my weaknesses...as long as the khakis w/suspenders, the white workshit with roll-up cuffs come in my size then i'm fair game...especially with the damn bread...oh and i need those spectactles in my perscription...so yes, i want the banana bread...just as long as i don't have to hug chemo.
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well banana bread is one of my weaknesses...as long as the khakis w/suspenders, the white workshit with roll-up cuffs come in my size then i'm fair game...especially with the damn bread...oh and i need those spectactles in my perscription...so yes, i want the banana bread...just as long as i don't have to hug chemo.
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You leave the boarf for a couple hours and suddenly Gail Simone herself sets Thalya straight? this is gonna blow Darth away, just wait for it.
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Jan 29, 2006 1:44:57 PM CST
Buzz Maverik Sums Up "What We've All Learned In This Talkbac
by buzz maverik
We've learned something this week. Never riff off Kevin Smith. Sure, he's a little funny, but he's funny like that guy you work with, not funny like someone who should actually be paid for being funny. He sort of stopped being amusing when he reached the point where his films should have stopped looking film film school projects but didn't. No, I'm not jealous. I'm jealous of, oh, I don't know, somebody good like Tarantino or Shamalyan, whom you'll notice I'm not knocking. No, I don't want to bang Kevin's wife. I'm sure Mrs. Smith is a lovely woman, but if you go to any Southern California mall or college campus, you'll see women just as fine. No, I'm not jealous of Kevin's comic book writing because I don't want to write comics. I'm jealous of Gail's writing, John's writing, Morrison's writing...you know, good writing. We've also learned that the internet is a bad thing for comic book pros. Some goofy kid (I say it with love, Thalya) makes a remark today, Comic Pro A is all over it. In the '60s, somebody at Marvel would have said, "Hey, Stan, there's a kid kvetching about how Baron Zemo kidnapped Karen Page in this months DD, but that Zemo was killed in TALES TO ASTONISH last year." And Stan would have said, "Give that messhugenneh a no-prize, tell Colan to figure out how Zemo survived and quit bothering me. I'm takin' Joanie to the Catskills this weekend." That's what we learned.
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Jan 29, 2006 3:15:04 PM CST
Does anybody really know what Marvel-Time it is? Does anybody re
by dave_f
MrBoinFoint wrote: >>I know someone on some site said something to the effect that the Marvel U was ten years old, but it simply doesn't jibe with continuity, escpecially since the first five years of Fantastic Four et al took place in real time, with the characters pointedly mentioning that a month had gone by between issues, or with the X-Men celebrating their graduation.<< "Doesn't jibe with continuity"? Man, continuity has never jibed with *ITSELF*! The early Marvel heroes showed some aging because Stan was flying by the seat of his pants and there were no rules at all. As soon as the heroes started becoming entrenched icons, they mostly stopped aging. Except for when they didn't. Like I mentioned earlier, kids and teens nearly always seem to age because they represent those years when change is the norm and writers can't resist coming-of-age stories. Somehow Franklin Richards has remained a kid, but I'm sure there've been efforts or at least proposals to age him - probably just ignored because the FF is one of the more staid concepts in the Marvel U. And just every once in a while, characters notably age for no reason other than trendiness. Frank Miller got everyone thinking about aging heroes in DARK KNIGHT, and suddenly Green Arrow and Green Lantern become over-the-hill heroes and start getting white in their temples (coincidentally giving the aging writer base a venue to air their grievances against their own entropy - gee, how convenient!). But there's no rhyme or reason to it, certainly no overriding plan. I've heard the term "Marvel Time", dunno who came up with it, and Roger Stern and John Byrne even did a miniseries called LOST GENERATION that tried to work with it. In essence, it asked: If the Fantastic Four first appeared "ten years ago", then who fought evil in the Marvel Universe in the 1950s through the 1980s? After all, we know there were superheroes in the 40s - the Invaders and all the rest - and, what, the heroes just disappeared for a few decades afterwards, up till the apprearance of the FF? Byrne and Stern plugged the gaps with a legion of newly created superheroes, specific to those intervening decades, only to have their efforts wholly ignored. And perhaps rightly so, because dealing with "superhero time" with any level of complexity is a losing game. Too many different writers, too many different approaches. There's not a frickin' *chance* of consistancy in aging, so for me, it seems best to go with a generic "heroes have been around ten years or so - give or take a few years" and let the individual titles work things out as best they can. Ten years allows for the longstanding concept of vet superheroes, helps out with suspension of disbelief (Spidey's had tons of battles, but maybe they could *kinda sorta* fit into ten years...), and yet stops short of pushing superheroes into their 40s. And really, imagine if your introduction to Spidey was the character as a middle-aged superhero and family man. Y'think *you*, some 12-year-old who hates his parents, would think Yuppie Spidey was cool? Fuck no, you wouldn't! Ten years is a nice, workable time frame...just as long as you don't think about it too hard. Luckily, we fans never think too intensely hard about continuity. So, yeah.
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Sideshow Bob writes >>I know these comics characters exist in a strange vacuum, but it's too bad people don't trust new characters to get into anything that's actually relevant to our times.<< I dunno, are heroes today really so far removed from heroes of the 60s as regards relevancy? Those heroes had Cold War villains, modern heroes have terrorist villains and clearcut Mid-East analog countries like "Qurac." They had race-relation stories, we have stories dealing with homosexuality. They had the space race, we have nanotechnology and viral warfare. I'm not seeing a huge difference. The idiom's changed to reflect an adult readership, but most of the relevancy stuff is still pretty superficial, still just trappings for adventure stories. I mean, d'ya think Smilin' Stan's treatment of the space race was really *that* incisive? I've seen Captain America moping around about his country in Guantanamo Bay and I don't think Marvel was the better for it. But I get what you're saying about books like LIVEWIRES, Sideshow - they're legitimately cutting edge. My sense is that fans mostly don't care about such stuff, though. They want the characters they love and they want high drama. Relevancy's a garnish, sometimes cool (I guess you might say ULTIMATES is relevant), but most of the time a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
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52 issues works well for single books, but with Spidey having four separate books at times, plus Graphic Novels, team-ups, and what have you, it stretches plausibility. The best bet is just to ignore what you don't like (say, the whole Spider-Clone bullshit nonsense, or the gwen and Gobby hook-up) and make up your own sense of continuity. Mine's at 15, years, yours is at 10, and most of today's writers pretend like nothing of consequence happened before they took over the book. (Ms. Simone excepted, por supuesto.)
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Jan 29, 2006 3:50:29 PM CST
"So Hulk only tore through 12 towns or so. Still would have kill
by dave_f
I think Jon Quixote brought up an interesting point on this matter. How many towns has Hulk *actually* torn through? As in, can you name some specific stories where he just kicked the shit out of a city for an extended period of time? Most of his in-city fights are against villains and not especially more destructive than the FF's battles - do we assume that they've killed as well? And really, as JQ noted, a lot of his fights seem to be in villain lairs and deserts and whatnot. Outside of books like BANNER and those rare occasions when Banner's mind has been separated from the Hulk, Hulk simply doesn't go on Godzilla-style tears through cities. In fact, the savage Hulk was usually trying to get *away* from population centers because he wanted to be left alone. This ain't a guy who seeks out crowds and attention - he just tends to knock over walls when he's bounding away from the army. I won't deny it's a stretch that Hulk hasn't inadvertently crushed a few kids (or accidentally landed on 'em when he's doing his miles-long jumps), but not that much more so than the same logic as applied to Spidey and the FF. Basically, my suspension of disbelief allows for what I presume to be Stan Lee's original intent with the character: he's not a killer, by design or by accident.
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HULK RAPED MY CHILDHOOD!
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I tuned out on Way's HULK run when the second issue revealed the Hydra satellite was a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite. In the same way I see Cap as the idealized American soldier, I've always liked S.H.I.E.L.D. as an idealized spy agency. I'm a bit tired of them crossing lines and being the bad guys. So here's my question: what exactly does Fury do to launch Hulk off into space? And what's his intent as the book portrays it? Is Fury actually hoping to kill the Hulk or maroon him forever in space? 'Cause if so, that ain't the Fury I know.
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...that was a hologram of the Hulk created by Dr. Light. Yeah, he gets around.
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Yeah, I'm sick of Fury and SHIELD being portrayed in this way too. Basically, Hulk and the satellite that went sentient battle it out in space while Fury watches. The sentient satellite tries to absorb Hulk's gamma radiation. Fury reveals that many have tried to replicate the gamma explosion that created the Hulk, but the project has always failed. He says that the Banner aspect of the Hulk is what contains the gamma radiation and keeps it from going all meltdown like. Since the satellite doesn't have that human factor, it overloads on the gamma radiation. Basically, Banner is the lid to the Hulk's temper and without that lid, the gamma radiation cannot be contained. Having pissed off the satellite to the point where it uses so much energy that it explodes, Hulk returns to the SHIELD space shuttle, but as soon as he gets in, the boosters fire and the Hulk goes streaking into space screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" A SHIELD tech asks what's going to happen if he comes back. Fury says "Then we'll deal with it, that's our job." He then goes to his desk, sips a cup of joe, and tells his superior "Mission accomplished." as the Hulk streaks through space. I understand that the Hulk is a threat and the Hulkbusters were SHIELD funded back in the day, so SHIELD has always been after the Hulk in one way or another. In order for Hulk to get into space, Way made Fury out to be cruel and duplicitous and Banner to be a complete idiot to trust the people who've been trying to detain him for years.
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Fuck them up their stupid asses.
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That's about what I expected. The easy write-off is that it's just a reflection of Americans being legitimately nervous about our own intelligence services these days, but it's still a bullshit take on Fury, a guy who's long been established as a friend to superheroes. The real Fury would've pulled some kind of triple-cross where he'd have his superiors believing he'd done away with Banner, only for the last page to show him shaking hands with Banner on some lonely country road. "Nice job, Doc. The satellite's kaput, but now I'm afraid I'm gonna have ta ask ya ta lay low for a few months. The boys in the Pentagon got a mad-on for ol' Green Jeans right now, but priorities'll shift after an election or two. 'Sides, even *they* know ya can't keep the good heroes down. Seeya 'round, Doc." Fury hands Bruce a wad of cash and a fake ID, Banner gives him a half-smile, and we cue up the "Lonely Man" theme as Banner stalks off down the road...
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Jan 30, 2006 12:32:17 AM CST
It's Great To Know That Relevant Comics Are As 2 Dimensional
by buzz maverik
Nick Fury is a spy. Spies must be all bad. James Ellroy once said an interesting thing about his brutal, racist cop heroes. To most of our good liberal friends, if a character is INSERT UNDESIRABLE CHARACTERISTIC, then that is all they should be. Bud White is a thug, Ed Exeley is a vicous opportunist and Dave Kline was a slimey killer for hire, yet they were much more. Buzz Meeks worked over anyone Howard Hughes or Mickey Cohen told him to, but when he was unable to avenge Danny Upshaw's destruction or bring about any real justice, he simply took the most self destructive course possible and turned on his bosses. Comic book writers still aren't that subtle. Nick Fury is now a jerk and will remain a jerk until he is completely not a jerk. Hulk launched into space? Reminds me of one of my favorite DEFENDERS stories. Nebulon the Celestial Man is starting a mind control cult, sort of to save mankind from itself. The problem is that in collecting Earth specimens to learn what makes us tick, his alien flunkies took a fawn that the Hulk had recently adopted. Ever the calculating, Machievellian hero, the Hulk smashed a cult rally to pieces. Nebulon realized that disposing of the Hulk in public would demonstrate the potentials that his cult had to offer while winning public favor by ridding the planet of an irradiated freak. He encased the Hulk in a bubble of power. Fortunately, our hero broke free on the edge of space, fell to Earth creating a huge crater and went to rally the Defenders for a deer rescue. Dr. Strange and Valkyrie weren't that concerned about Bambi, of course, but they wanted to see what Nebulon was up to. You'll be relieved to know that Bambi was saved, but not before he became possessed by Chondu the Mystic, one of the Headmen who were also out to destroy the Defenders.
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nick fury white or black?
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Oh and I also loved Valkyrie...in a creepy Thalya loves Noah way.
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Jan 30, 2006 9:25:13 AM CST
It may not be the most politically correct term, Blackthought, b
by dave_f
He's mulatto. Always has been, always will be.
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Coffee with cream.
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I don't like that word mulatto, reminds me of this friend i hate. Her messenger nickname's Mulata, and she's a stupid idiot. That's all.
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i'm mulatto too...so maybe i get to play nick fury in a movie?
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*pouts*
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I discovered Val in the Defenders right around the time I hit pooberty and...oh...yeh....Something about that blond hair coverin' up that one eye all the time and all that...mmmmm :)
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just since dave pointed out that fury is also mullato..if that means i'm up for the part...but i can still wear the suspenders miss :)
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I'm a sucker for pigtails. Yeah and that side swept hair was awesome too. *** On another note, BATMAN BEGINS was nominated for best cinematography. Cool.
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as it should be, it was a very pretty film.
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..or outside the realm of comics, there hasn't been much in the way of the inspiring in the past year? (especially as evidenced by the Oscar nods and JLU cancellation among other things) What on earth would be inspiring right about now?
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Jan 31, 2006 12:24:09 PM CST
I have just been told 2 of the most tasteless jokes I have EVER
by psynapse
So...should I post 'em? Consider this fair warning should the answer be yes.
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Go for it!, I say. BTW, Psy, do you have my Yahoo! e-mail addie? If so, drop me a line, 'cause I lost alot of old addresses lately and I'd like to have yours.
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We need you man!
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but maybe you knew that. *** Thalya babe I gotta disagree. There was a fairly big slew of films that I loved this year. And while I loved more records from the first half of 05 then the second I can't complain. Personally I also produced some stuff that I'm proud of... And then y'know...I asked a girl to get married and she said yes. And then we did. All in oh five. JLU being cancelled isn't really on my radar.
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There, Vale, I said it, 'k? :)
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Bravisimo!
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Was the year i saw Lady Vengeance before any of you. I'll always have that. I also moved to the city and ended my crappy relationship. And read a LOT of comics. Things finally started moving forward career-wise. The Leage of Cogs was founded. Started eating vegetables and healthier food. All in all a very interesting year.
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1) A child killer and a 10 year old are walking through the woods. The 10 year old looks up and says "Gee I'm scared!". The child killer says "How do you think I feel? I have to walk back alone!"
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Question: What's red and crawls up a woman's leg? Answer: A homesick abortion.
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But shouldn't that be Bravisima? ** And Shigeru, well, there you go. Personally I just wish there was something out there in the storytelling arena that bit into my soul and shook it like a rabid dog. First InuYasha goes off Saturday nights, then JLU, a real lack of movies, imo, and now I'm getting metaphysically blah-ed out.. Thank goodness for Crisis.
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Didn't get numero dos tho' *shame*
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I don't speak italian but bravisimo is the way to go if you're speaking spanish. Obviously it's like Bravo, but better. Bravo also means, here in Colombia at least, Angry. Estar bravo, to be angry. Estar bravisimo, to be very angry, estar bravisima, to be very angry (female). So yeah. What's your fave movie Thalya?
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Fave movie? This year: eh.. ooh, Kung Fu Hustle. All time: can't pick..
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Sorry now I REALLY can't sympathize. Anyways.
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And the end of JLU is for the saddest motherfucking reason EVER. The show is ending because the folks who have the MOVIE rights to these characters are bitching about an infringement. That's why we no longer see Joker on there. FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD, FUCK YOU UP YOUR STUPID ASSES!! Personally, I have always preferred animation to live action so this is just bending me over the prison sink with no lube as far as I'm concerned. I say we storm Hollywood and kill everyone starting with Tom Cruise and that ignorant reactionary fuckwit Alan Cumming.
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Well, at least we got JLU: The Zeppo out of it.. And if anything, I say blame WB for cannibalizing itself. I thought all these mergers was supposed to bring about _synergy_ and there'd be less territorialism then.. >:P Wait, what'd Nightcrawler do wrong?
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Jan 31, 2006 5:05:48 PM CST
Kill that fag or why Alan Cumming needs to shut the fuck up and
by psynapse
I was watching an episode of 'Dinner for five', that show where Jon Favreau tapes himself having dinner with 4 other celebrities and himself and they talk about whatever right? So the subject, of Brazilian waxes comes up (you know, when ladies have their pubes waxed so that they don't look like a sasquatch in a bikini). The female actress (I forget her name at the moment) even says she has them done. THEN Mr. Cumming (in me) opens his noise tube and weighs in. He says that he finds them completely disgusting because he sees it as an example of men wanting women to look more child-like and thus an example of pedophilia in the heterosexual male attitude that is enforced on women. Apparently Captain Swishy never thought to actually ask a woman why they do it. If he had he would have found out that women are doing it as much for THEMSELVES as a matter of personal grooming than anything else. I probably would have just thought it another example of a person's ignorance had he not said it in EXACTLY the same manner that I have seen from SO MANY smarmy, self-assured faggots that I have encountered personally. The ole queercog cannot STAND his smarmy homo brethren (Hell, I can't stand smarmy people of ANY social strata but my fellow pillow-biters irk me more so than others).
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and anyone have any thoughts on alex proyas (the crow, dark city...2 movies i love! and i robot wasn't shite either) apparently directing iron man?
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At least it won't suck.
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Is there a god? Maybe, maybe. I didn't like I, Robot though, but I don't think that was Proyas' fault. Dark City is brilliant.
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Jan 31, 2006 7:08:10 PM CST
Bludhaven was de-toxified in the last Adventures of Superman so
by superhero
Bludhaven was made toxin free after Superman fought Chemo and it sucked up all of the toxins it had unleashed to regain its power. Very stupid in a comic-book sort of way. Wonder why they didn't get Chemo to clean up the mess at Chernobyl? Kinda reduses the impact of Chemo being used as an atom bomb if its long lasting effects can just be wiped out the very next minute, eh?
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KEM-o or KEE-mo?
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Sounds cooler. Chemistry chemicals.
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"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the
grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter while the octopus mooched off his
girlfriend and watched tv. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died,
and the octopus ate all his acorns! And also, he got a race car! Is any of this
getting through to you?"-fry
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...are you honestly telling me that Chemo didn't pop open and die after he was pushed out of a plane/copter/whatever and then burst and covered a city in chemical waste? And then he stood up and sucked all the ick back in to himself and magically restored the city (But not its residents)? Cuz that's really goddamned stupid. Seriously. I knew there was a reason I didn't buy any SUPERMAN titles...
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...and I had to admit, it actually sounded cool. First off, I have no problem with the notion that Chemo didn't die in the drop, and not because I think he's so cool (that was mostly me fuckin' around), but because he's just a bag of quasi-sentient chemicals. There's a long tradition of chemical/energy guys like Metamorpho, the Sandman, Klaw, Clayface and the like being dispersed and reforming through a sort of hive-mind instinct to reintegrate, so why not Chemo? As for the clean-up, as I understood it, little mini-Chemos were starting to pop up in Bludhaven as the reintegration instinct began to kick in. Superman figures out that their defense instinct will draw them together *even faster* if they're under duress, so he starts fighting 'em, and sure enough, more and more mini-Chemos rush from throughout Bludhaven to reintegrate. It's a nasty battle for Supes as he gets some serious toxic bombardment, but in the end, it works. I forget exactly how Chemo is ultimately contained when he reforms, but I thought it was a neat idea to use his own body's physiology against the effects of his devastation. I *always* like when Supes shows his brains a bit, and I also like the weirdness of the idea. For those infatuated with death, rest assured that Bludhaven's still apparently in a bad way, still saddled with thousands of dead folks, but the *added* danger of Chemo-toxicity is out of the equation. Yes, I'm sorry...the heroes managed a Pyrrhic victory. Wah! For me, it's one of the few cool ideas to emerge from all the Creesus crap.
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http://tinyurl.com/bwh3s *** more, here: http://cheston.com/pbf/archive.html
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I wouldn't blame Julie Schwartz for the fantastic nature of Superman stories in the Bronze Age. He inherited the model from Mort Weisinger, and after his own attempts to make Superman more realistic failed in the late 60's, he pretty much just captained the proven vessel into the 80's. I'm sure Juile was also inclined to keep giving guys like Curt Swan and Elliot S! Maggin work as other avenues dried up in the Marvel Age of comics. Julie is best known for his background as a pioneer of science fiction in the 30's and THE editor for DC's major sci-fi properties like Green Lantern and Adam Strange.
Part of the reason people are so excited about the elevation of Deathstroke as a major baddass of note in the DCU is because it restores the character to his original mode. The Terminator was essentially the evil version of the Silver Age Captain America: a determined, intelligent acrobatic figure who could tackle whole superteams on his lonesome. Admittedly, his super-team was the Teen Titans, but they were in their prime, y'know? Further, Deathstroke has taken out JLAers like Hal Jordan, Aquaman, Batman, and the Flash in his time, and even given Superman the occasional hassle. Deathstroke became a watered down antihero in the 90's, which explains his lowered profile and esteem, but folks seem to be happy the bastard is back in form.
Even though Nightwing was one of my favorite characters in the 90's, I couldn't bring myself to follow the book much after the first year. The series seemed lightweight and misguided about what to do with the character. In fact, I too often felt Chuck Dixon sabotaged Nightwing's effectiveness to make Batman and his newer Robin look better by comparison. I think, in hindsite, Devin Grayson did alright by Nightwing. I didn't care for her unintentional "Born Again" riff, but her work on making the character a "bad guy" only reenforced why Dick could never be a cold, calculating avenger of the night. Early indications are that Bruce Jones plans on going a very different way, and I have no intention of paying to see that route.
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