Sperg about comic books here

[jspit2.0]

Disagree. Morrison's Batman was a breathe of fresh air, especially Damien and the way that Damien to the brink of death Tim Drake in his introduction arc was a HUGE moment of fan service, given that Tim Drake spent the bulk of the late 90s and most of the 00s being an utterly unlikable piece of shit that thought his shit didn't stink and was untouchable. Watching him waltz in and put Tim in his place via violence and basically beat Tim so brutally that he effectively factory reset Tim's brain remains one of my favorite 00s comic moments.

Not sure whether your disagreeing that the Bat titles of that era were all pretty awesome (except Tony Daniels on the main one).

As for Morrison. Look. Batpilgrim and Final Crisis just didn't do it for me and I don't hate Tim Drake. I thought Grant had some good issues (B&R actually made me like Damien) and some pretty damn awful ones (Joker; everything Final Crisis related), and some bleh ones (three batmen and Batman and son stuff left me cold). You could give me B&R or Gothic from a decade earlier before drugs ate Grant's mind and I would be golden.

The Black Glove/Jezebel Jet stuff was great, and Batman RIP remains one of my favorite Batman stories. And if you want to know why people LOVED Dickbats, it was 100% Morrison due to the garbage Winnick/Daniels stories being so god-awful that DC had to beg Morrison to do a three issue fill in arc that launched out of Batman #700 to stop the sales bleeding caused by the two.

I mean, I'm not going to defend Daniels/Winnick Batman. But the rest? Dini Tec? Tomasi Outsiders and him and wolfman on Nightwing?

I now know you apparently hate Tim Drake? So not going to bring up Red Robin.

Not to mention that so many people were invested in Morrison's Batman run and saw Snyder's run as a piss poor bootleg version, that DC not only published the two unpublished issues of Batman Inc but also let Morrison finish the unfinished story he had to leave unfinished, but also gave him a new Batbook to wrap up his entire epic in.

I didn't really like how it ended though. Incorporated vol. 1 was okay. Well executed. But vol. 2 felt forced. Again, its another example. They didn't need to nuke continuity. It just damaged every damn thing.

Speaking of, everyone's defending their favs. What's the worst comic run you read live as it was coming out? To make it even better, it can't be something easy like some perennial bad author/artist.

I think, for me, it may be the Snyder Batman stuff. I skipped over the first year before someone insisted I had to read it because Court of Owls was so good.

I picked up the trade. The artwork was incredible; but sweet Jesus the writing. Not since Bendis had I witnessed someone abuse the medium of writing in sequential art. Walls of text vomit on every page covering some of the best Bat art in years. Then there was the pacing. Twelve issues for what only amounted to a six issue max story. Then came the ending. If you can call it that. I can believe he's Stephen Kings apprentice because for his entire decade of shit batman he's yet to write a damn ending.

I tried to stick with it because Capullo's art was something awesome. But nah. I think I broke off with Endgame. It was so legitimately, offensively terrible I couldn't be asked.

 

[Grundlejungle]

I'm about to do my yearly rereading of "Spider-Man one more day." I do it each year to remind myself why I do not purchase comics as they come out.
Please send thoughts and prayers for my liver.

 

[GoPro]

Anyone read "The Silencer"? ( DC 2018 )
It only ran 18 issues. Opinions?

View attachment 4003485

I gave it about four or five issues. It was ok but not good enough to grab my attention. I eventually forgot about it and did not keep up with new issues.

I love talking about comic lolcows and Gerry Conway is such a faggot holy shit. He's been complaining about the misogyny of manga. Scott McCloud is also incredibly pretentious because he compared his "im a le epic athiest" comics to citizen kane

Scott McCloud can write something decent but he started to buy into his own hype way too much.

I feel like I'd care about Western creators if they weren't so compartmentalized. I'm more into manga and the few Euro comics I like are all very old, generally mangakas can typically do rough sketches or draw. ONE is the biggest example of someone who is more of a writer, but still has a solid grasp of composition and paneling. When I see a mangaka rip off a scene from a horror movie, I feel like it's because they liked the composition of the shot. When a Western writer does it, it feels like they told a writer to include it because.
I don't really blame Stan Lee for this, that guy was a Salesman who captured an audience and was the best hypeman in the industry.

I'm being an East Vs West faggot, but it just feels like the West really bought into the whole "disturbed visionary/ cultured artist" bullshit rather than being skilled at their craft first and foremost. I'm actually trying to learn to draw and it feels like their is a big cultural break during the 70's. Books published in the late 70's start sacrificing this being a trade for it being an "art".

That "disturbed visionary/ cultured artist" thing is more prominent in Europe and yet they produce comics that are noticeably better on average than American titles. It's not entirely absent from Japan either with creators like Ito, Togashi, Oda, and even relative newcomers like Fujimoto.
In my eyes the key events that led to modern state of American comics are CCA, the fanboy takeover, and decades of bad business practices mainly from the Marvel-DC duopoly. The '70s is when the fanboys started to reach managerial positions and make boneheaded decisions if few oldtimers are to be believed. A lot of great creators of that era found refuge in Warren publishing's anthologies. Heavy Metal was another option for a while.

Heavy compartmentalization definitely feeds the problem of writers not understanding sequential storytelling. A lot of them come across as film, TV, and book industry rejects. Bendis is the most obvious with his reliance on TV and cinematic techniques like shot/reverse shot and "long takes" emulated by repetitive panels. Late 90s and early 2000s "cinematic" storytelling fad was horrid. Artists are not that much better and many of them have a poor grasp of storytelling. Even veterans like Cho struggle when they try to branch into long-from stories.
Then there is another issue of both writers and artists working in American comics being culturally illiterate compared to their overseas counterparts. Japanese and European comic creators reference works from different mediums, cultures, and eras. They tend to have more diverse interests that make it into their comics too. American comic creators give an impression of only consuming pop-culture going fifty years back at most and limited mainly to film and TV. That means they have smaller well of inspiration to draw from and their imagination is not exercised as much as that of people who read books or are exposed to a diverse range of media.

 

[DaBigBopper]

I gave it about four or five issues. It was ok but not good enough to grab my attention. I eventually forgot about it and did not keep up with new issues.


Scott McCloud can write something decent but he started to buy into his own hype way too much.


That "disturbed visionary/ cultured artist" thing is more prominent in Europe and yet they produce comics that are noticeably better on average than American titles. It's not entirely absent from Japan either with creators like Ito, Togashi, Oda, and even relative newcomers like Fujimoto.
In my eyes the key events that led to modern state of American comics are CCA, the fanboy takeover, and decades of bad business practices mainly from the Marvel-DC duopoly. The '70s is when the fanboys started to reach managerial positions and make boneheaded decisions if few oldtimers are to be believed. A lot of great creators of that era found refuge in Warren publishing's anthologies. Heavy Metal was another option for a while.

Heavy compartmentalization definitely feeds the problem of writers not understanding sequential storytelling. A lot of them come across as film, TV, and book industry rejects. Bendis is the most obvious with his reliance on TV and cinematic techniques like shot/reverse shot and "long takes" emulated by repetitive panels. Late 90s and early 2000s "cinematic" storytelling fad was horrid. Artists are not that much better and many of them have a poor grasp of storytelling. Even veterans like Cho struggle when they try to branch into long-from stories.
Then there is another issue of both writers and artists working in American comics being culturally illiterate compared to their overseas counterparts. Japanese and European comic creators reference works from different mediums, cultures, and eras. They tend to have more diverse interests that make it into their comics too. American comic creators give an impression of only consuming pop-culture going fifty years back at most and limited mainly to film and TV. That means they have smaller well of inspiration to draw from and their imagination is not exercised as much as that of people who read books or are exposed to a diverse range of media.

I'd argue that Ito, Togashi, and Oda honestly just seem a bit more open about how they're just more or less people with interests. Ito literally tries to dispel him being a disturbed genius in every interview I've seen from him, he's an almost dentist who's wife indulges his interests. Most mangaka, even celebrated ones, seem to be camera shy. The issue is like you said Westerners are a lot of fanboys who lack a love of the craft (although honestly I'll blame jews trying to turn the industry itself into a "suckoff me as a genuis and pay to learn how to do it my way" deal).

I'd argue that the way storytelling is taught in America is a big problem in the West. The Three Act Story is the default and you have a lack of personalities amongst editors and writers.

 

[jspit2.0]

I read the McFarlane Capullo Batman/Spawn. First new Bat book in a year I looked at except for Silvestris. I can say, it's the best Capullo work on the character. Which is depressing. McFarlane hasn't improved as a writer since the 90s. That said, unlike Scott Snyder, he let's Capullo draw what he wants and you can tell by the more creative page layouts that Capullo was enjoying freedom. The story isn't terrible, but is poorly executed, it tries to leave a cliffhanger so McFarlane can try to wring another crossover out of DC. Which I don't know why DC would do this unless it was a favor to Greg Capullo. Todd McFarlane brings nothing to the table for them. He hasn't drawn anything meaningful in close to thirty years and, as mentioned, his writing is about as mediocre as you get. If your DC, your job is to generate IP, which McFarlane doesn't do working on crossovers with Spawn, especially since his sole asset is his pencil work.

In addition to writing, McFarlane takes his 'inking' credit too. Which is laughable because Glaipion is also listed as an inker. I didn't see too much McFarlane in the artwork. this isn't new. Mcfarlane was putting himself as inker to soothe fans after the first couple of years on Spawn when he stopped drawing the book and hired Capullo.

Overall, I now have renewed respect for the original Batman/Spawn and Frank Miller. It was every bit as crass, but Batman and Spawn at least came off as more human, their interactions less forced, and their ideals better defined.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I'd argue that Ito, Togashi, and Oda honestly just seem a bit more open about how they're just more or less people with interests. Ito literally tries to dispel him being a disturbed genius in every interview I've seen from him, he's an almost dentist who's wife indulges his interests. Most mangaka, even celebrated ones, seem to be camera shy.

Isn't that also why he started doing cat books and adapting Japanese literature, to dispell the idea that he's a Lovecraft loving goth type IRL?

 

[el bandito loco]

I like the Morrison Action Comics quite a bit but the Mxyzptlk thing always felt to me like another Morrison vs Moore circlejerk moment, where Moore pulled Mxyzptlk out of his ass for the end of Superman in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Morrsion pulled him out of his ass for the beginning in AC. in any case though there was better shit in New 52 than that. I was a teenager reading New Krypton as it was coming out and I liked it quite a bit until the last few issues had no idea what to do. I'm surprised there is no omnibus of that seeing as it was basically the end of post crisis superman in that universe besides grounded and black ring. from memory you really needed to be reading the other super titles for it to really work though. it also was the start of a period that I felt like every comic with Superman was basically the same shit, it, coming of the supermen, and dark knight 3 all did a bunch of kryptonians, then superman unchained, he'l on earth, & men of tomorrow were all superman meets some sort of peer/equal with a similar backstory and then has to fight them. it felt like from 2008-2018 they just did like 2 or 3 types of superman stories that were all rehashes of the same crap. also DC's collected editions department is always fucking over Superman though it took them a decade+ to reprint all of byrne's run again, most of the 90s are uncollected, and they started releasing the 2000 era stuff by Joe Kelly and others in the City of Tomorrow trades, did two volumes and just stopped. it's bullshit. I wish they'd also reprint Kurt Buisek's underrated post infinite crisis run but instead for 15 years they just keep reprinting the mediocre Geoff John's shit from around that time that overshadowed it

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I have a question. Why do autists and Jews say that Superman is a Moses-inspired character? Beyond the orphan narrative, it’s very obvious he is a Gawain inspired character. His origin and sun powers are ripped off from Gawain directly, he even has a retarded Homunculus brother in Bizzaro.

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

I have a question. Why do autists and Jews say that Superman is a Moses-inspired character? Beyond the orphan narrative, it’s very obvious he is a Gawain inspired character. His origin and sun powers are ripped off from Gawain directly, he even has a retarded Homunculus brother in Bizzaro.

because he was created by two guys called Siegel and Schuster lol

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

because he was created by two guys called Siegel and Schuster lol

Yeah, but from what I understand the modern take is that he’s Moses or Samson when neither of those fit. It feels like Jewish cope that a Jewish creation isn’t more Jewish, and that Siegel and Schuster were more or less not overt about how Jewish they were.

 

[GoPro]

I'd argue that Ito, Togashi, and Oda honestly just seem a bit more open about how they're just more or less people with interests. Ito literally tries to dispel him being a disturbed genius in every interview I've seen from him, he's an almost dentist who's wife indulges his interests. Most mangaka, even celebrated ones, seem to be camera shy. The issue is like you said Westerners are a lot of fanboys who lack a love of the craft (although honestly I'll blame jews trying to turn the industry itself into a "suckoff me as a genuis and pay to learn how to do it my way" deal).

Thinking about it more, you are right about mangakas. Genius narratives I thought about are mainly due to fan-bases that surround creators in Japan. In spite of this, mangakas manage to keep their egos in check. So do Europeans oddly enough, even though comics are seen as more of an art and high culture in Europe than elsewhere.

I'd argue that the way storytelling is taught in America is a big problem in the West. The Three Act Story is the default and you have a lack of personalities amongst editors and writers.

All of that is definitely a problem, maybe minus the three act story since that template is very flexible.

I have a question. Why do autists and Jews say that Superman is a Moses-inspired character? Beyond the orphan narrative, it’s very obvious he is a Gawain inspired character. His origin and sun powers are ripped off from Gawain directly, he even has a retarded Homunculus brother in Bizzaro.

Kal-El's evacuation from Krypton and ending with Kents somewhat resembles the way Moses was saved from infanticide ordered by pharaoh. Aspects of dual identity are also a present in both stories although in case of Moses they are less important for Superman. Overall, Superman was influenced by a hodgepodge of ideas for different sources. Siegel and Shuster talked about being inspired by scifi of the era they grew up in, and how things like Superman's ability to leap over buildings was inspired by John Carter. Even the diseaster and evacuation from Krypton very much resembled plot points from "The Flame from Mars" far more than it did Moses' origin.

I think that the whole "Superman is Moses" narrative started due to a segment of Jews who are obsessed with claiming things as Jewish (every minority has an equivalent of this) and "pop-culture scholars" who need to justify their positions at universities. Both groups over-analyze things to fit their hypotheses. People who want comics to be taken more seriously ran with that analysis. Ditto for ones insecure about enjoying action stories about men in tights.

 

[el bandito loco]

I think that the whole "Superman is Moses" narrative started due to a segment of Jews who are obsessed with claiming things as Jewish (every minority has an equivalent of this) and "pop-culture scholars" who need to justify their positions at universities. Both groups over-analyze things to fit their hypotheses. People who want comics to be taken more seriously ran with that analysis. Ditto for ones insecure about enjoying action stories about men in tights.

this is basically what I was going to say. I think fundamentally what it comes down to is people who because Superman and the superhero represent such a cultural zeitgeist and phenomenon spending a bunch of time trying to trace origins and influences from anything they can connect the dots too. "well they were jewish OBVIOUSLY it's moses" when in reality it was just a hodgepodge of various shit they thought they could combine and make something cool out of. there are similarities of course but I doubt the influence was conscious. they weren't trying to make anything insane, deep or groundbreaking. just fun action adventure comics they could soapbox about various issues through with an unstoppable hero protagonist to tank through anything in his way. you could apply loads of allegorical stories or characters to superman and literally any other character ever but it doesn't necessarily mean there is a deliberate through line or a right read. just a lot of people wasting their time over analyzing their entertainment to connect it with other shit to prove they're either well read, or project what they think the point of the artist's original intent was.

 

[ChampFantana]

I'm reading the Strontium Dog series and overall, I like it a lot. Unfortunately, the issues without Carlos Ezquerra doing the art are ROUGH, nearly unreadable. (Especially in black and white.). Luckily, Carlos returned to art duties when the series switched to color and it's been a lot of fun.

 

[MirrorNoir]

1. Sadly post-Crisis Superman is kind of fucked in that four books with intensely convoluted continuity make it hard to collect, let alone sell given the vast amount of filler. Granted, most of the high points of the 90s were collected but they are OOP and hard to find.

2. I've never been able to get into Stronium Dogs because of the fact that it has all of the worst aspects of the sort of "fuck Thatcher" politics of the 80s on full display. Nemesis the Enforcer at least had the decency to turn a critical eye towards Nemesis and admit "he's an evil death/chaos worshipping devil creature and no better than Torquemada when you look at him without the rose colored lenses of liberalism". Especially since it also explicitly stated that hating on aliens was the only way to cure humanity of all other forms of bigotry, as far as the fact that when Torquemada was dead, his replacements all started formenting racial bigotry to keep everyone under control when they stopped the outer space expansion Torquemada began.

 

[el bandito loco]

1. Sadly post-Crisis Superman is kind of fucked in that four books with intensely convoluted continuity make it hard to collect, let alone sell given the vast amount of filler. Granted, most of the high points of the 90s were collected but they are OOP and hard to find.

I actually have all of the 90s trades besides Time & Time Again because when I was a kid and learning to read my parents bought up all of those they could find (there was a particularly funny incident I can remember involving a scramble to find return of superman because when they got me death of superman I was like 3 and horrified because the whole book was him getting his ass kicked then he dies on the last page and I thought that was it lmfao) but a lot of those trades read like shit because they have parts of issues cut out, they skip random important issues between some, etc. and they're all over the place in terms of how much they collect. Return of Superman is like 25 issues, while Bizzaro's World is 4. the main reason it SHOULD be collected is the same reason it's a hard sell which is that it essentially was a multi book weekly soap opera or tv show during those years with a huge cast of recurring characters and shit. what they're doing now with the OG Milestone imprint is how they should collect that era. $60 cheap softcovers with 60ish issues each. most people who talk about superman in comics for better or worse hold that era as the GOAT but besides Death & Return nobody who wants to get into it has any real access to any of it. actually for the majority of DC's back catalog those Compendiums are the way to go to collect anything that had a shitload of tie ins or were a highly connected family of books

 

[curbside2]

I thought I'd take a break from Manga and give some recent comic runs a shot. Holy shit. Comic books are fucking awful now. I guess this has been a thing especially for the last half decade. But I didn't realize how bad things have become. Well, I'll always have older comics I can return to.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

I don't think it'd be too hard to properly collect the post-Crisis Superman era in trades. A couple of years back some autist dedicated fan made a torrent collecting the entirety of it but put it all in 'volumes', each revolving around a specific story arc. Everything in each volume flowed together well and didn't seem to have any gaps or otherwise missing material. It's actually how I read through that era.

 

[el bandito loco]

so I just finished Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and say what you want about other DC events but yo this shit was watching paint dry. it sucks because I thought Infinite Frontier & Justice League Incarnate were dope but they are retroactively worthless because they were set up for this garbage which I can sum up by just saying, the old multiverse is back, deathstroke is off the table for a year or two, and the JLA is disbanded but will be back in an event next year led by Nightwing because every other character is going to be unsanctimoniously written as out of character complete retards to get captured by Amanda Waller in next years event which they couldn't help but set up in the last 3 pages. the only cool thing is Nightwing getting a leading role in the DCU going forward. but they play that as a reveal and... no fucking shit if status quos were allowed to change in mainstream comics he's always been the only answer as the guy to lead the next generation, taking away the fact that he's pure and a good person, he's the protoypical sidekick of course going forward it'd be him. who else would it be? aqualad? green arrow's favorite junkie speedy? captain carrot and his zoo crew? superman's best retard Bibbo? also when your cover is Nightwing in a Christ on the cross pose surrounded by blinding light, yeah I can guess he's going to be important before I open the issue. lmfao what a pile of shit

 

[MirrorNoir]

Mini-reviews

Dark Crisis #7

Spoiler

Anti-climatic ending with DC FINALLY doing what should have been done in Death Metal, resetting the multiverse to infinite earths. Dick and Dr Light reset the settings to infinite for the multiverse in anti-climatic fashion and we get Deathstroke 100% depowered and possibly killed by what looks like Terra 1. Nightwing leading a new JLA could be interesting but I shudder at the thought that DiDio's finally getting his wish for a Days of Future Past storyline with Waller hunting down people with super powers with help from Peacemaker.

Mary Jane/Black Cat #1

Spoiler

They should just give Black Cat an ongoing again instead of the constant minis. Or just bring back the Amazing Mary Jane and finish the second storyline before doing new stuff with MJ and Black Cat.

Anyhow; MJ suddenly is showing up/showing off new super powers shes' suddenly gotten without any real build-up and set up where she can produce random powers via a jackpot type image effect. MJ and Black Cat get sucked into limbo: not by Maddie Pryor, but by Belasco who needs Black Cat to steal something for him.

X-Men Annual #1

Spoiler

More Hank Pym bashing, more Miles Morales shilling, and more X-Men fighting random Marvel villains with the Savage Land mutates only getting a cameo in spite of being one of the few X-Villains not reformed by Hickman. Only good part of the issue is the brief reunion (and by reunion, them trying to kill her) between the Hellions and Firestar which gives for an interesting notion that I doubt anyone will follow up on, which is that the Hellions are still quite pissed the fuck off that they were murdered and no one seemed to care. And Firestar asking Scott why he doesn't use the resurrection process to get his powers altered so he can control them without his visor.

 

[The Feline Solution]

I haven't read US comics in quite a while and just found out Sweet Tooth did get a sequel, is it any good? Loved the initial run, great art, original story and, of course, not-Frank Castle being one of the main characters but if this is just a cashgrab like the show i'll pass.

Savage Dragon is the best comic series of all time

That fucking book is still going?! Image lets their franchises run longer than the average shonen, i swear. Spawn already suffered from going on forever and Walking Dead did, too. At least there's nothing to suffer with Savage Dragon as it was dogshit ever since its inception.