Sperg about comic books here

[ChampFantana]

I recently read Neonomicon by Alan Moore with art by Jacen Burrows. Could have done without the pornographic aspects of the story, but I may have missed the point that Moore was going for in the first place. Overall it was ok, but I don't see myself going for a re-read anytime soon.

I also read A Walk Through Hell by Ennis, and can confidently say that it is utter shit from start to finish. The story is an incoherent, disjointed mess coupled with shitty art and retard-tier political sperging. I guess Ennis finally lost his touch, which was bound to happen eventually. But I still appreciate his earlier work.

The Old Man Logan story arc written by Mark Millar was pretty good, but once Brian Micheal Bendis took over it became unreadable. The change in artists doesn't help either.

 

[admiral]

My personal gripe is that I think that any lantern colour other that Yellow, Green, or Pink is a waste of time and dumb. The powerranger-ification of Green Lanterns (already a pretty silly concept, to be honest) is corny, having them constantly switching colours/factions and getting placed depending on personality like sci-fi hgogwarts houses is gimicky, and I'm sick of storylines that are just a bunch of palette swapped dudes flying around blasting light at each other in space. Disclaimer- the orange lantern storyline was pretty good, tho, but then it's pretty similar to the yellows in concept so really it could have just been a yellow lantern storyline...

Having all the different colours detracts from the original point (space cops) and from the core of Green Lantern, which should be about justice and bravery vs cowardice and greed.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

My personal gripe is that I think that any lantern colour other that Yellow, Green, or Pink is a waste of time and dumb. The powerranger-ification of Green Lanterns (already a pretty silly concept, to be honest) is corny, having them constantly switching colours/factions and getting placed depending on personality like sci-fi hgogwarts houses is gimicky, and I'm sick of storylines that are just a bunch of palette swapped dudes flying around blasting light at each other in space. Disclaimer- the orange lantern storyline was pretty good, tho, but then it's pretty similar to the yellows in concept so really it could have just been a yellow lantern storyline...

Having all the different colours detracts from the original point (space cops) and from the core of Green Lantern, which should be about justice and bravery vs cowardice and greed.

I hold to this day that the Emotional Spectrum is the one of the most retarded concepts ever introduced in comics. And Geoff Johns is a hack.

 

[admiral]

I hold to this day that the Emotional Spectrum is the one of the most retarded concepts ever introduced in comics. And Geoff Johns is a hack.

Ugh don't even get me started on Geoff Johns. Rebirth was bad, what came after was bad, and it's pretty telling that the best lantern runs of the past 10 years or so have done a complete 180 tonally and artistically from the style that was dominant when Johns was at the helm.

Every emotional spectrum-related storyline always end up with a bunch of differently coloured but generally interchangeable guys flying around in space punching each other with cartoonishly oversized glowing fists and whatnot until Hal shows up and does a speech about willpower before making a big green jet and flinging it at someone. It's gotten very predictable.

The Morrisson/Sharp run was such a breath of fresh air, but the current lantern stories are pretty lacklustre. You barely ever even see hal anymore- I wish he had stuck around longer in DC vs Vampires. Imo he's the most interesting lantern.

 

[el bandito loco]

Did Chuck Dixon have any good Marvel runs? I love all his DC stuff that I've read, so I know he isn't a bad writer, but right now I'm reading his Marvel Knights series (the one with Daredevi's unnamed team of himself, Widow, Punisher, Shang-Chi, and Cloak & Dagger) and it's... really bland. I know Doug Moench fucking loathes Dixon's Moon Knight run and has no problem bad mouthing it, though I've always wondered if it's due to Dixon's politics given that Moench is a hardcore leftist.

I think a lot of people consider his punisher, war zone, and journal some of, if not the definitive pre ennis punisher. I read all of it as a teenager and I remember liking it well enough as fun albeit very of it's time typical anti-hero but code approved shit. as for anything else the only other Marvel work of his I've read was a dr doom story I remember nothing about.

 

[Godchu]

I recently read Neonomicon by Alan Moore with art by Jacen Burrows. Could have done without the pornographic aspects of the story, but I may have missed the point that Moore was going for in the first place. Overall it was ok, but I don't see myself going for a re-read anytime soon.

Ehhh I wouldn't call it pornographic. The whole point was to make you as uncomfortable with the sex and violence shown in the comic, as Lovecraft himself felt about such things (with a bunch of meta discussion sprinkled throughout). And for that I think they did a pretty good job. Though I do agree with you it's really hard to get back into it when literally half the comic is one big rape / sex scene.

Spoiler: Moore sperging

While we're on the topic, I highly recommend checking out Alan Moore's other Lovecraft works: The Courtyard and Providence.

The Courtyard is the first in this series, pre-dating Neonomicon by almost a decade, and in many ways reflects that. Still, it's a nice, simple Lovecraftian tale, a pseudo-adaptation of The Horror at Red Hook (really only taking the broad premise and themes from the original) brought into our modern world. Plus it's only 2 issues long, so it's not too much of a burden.

Providence is likely up there among the best Lovecraft comics of all time (whatever that list might include), and is certainly one of the best comics I've ever read. Though it may not (prominently) feature big flashy monsters beyond our comprehension, exotic landscapes, overwrought prose, or thrilling action, you have to appreciate Moore and Burrows and everyone else's effort in realizing Lovecraft's stories and the world they were written in and, as is typical with Alan Moore, breaking them down in ways I don't believe had been done before. It's a real testament to what American comics are capable of.

Providence is a culmination of what had been set-up previously in Neonomicon and The Courtyard. The story is set in 1919. Robert Black, following a tip from Cool Air's doctor, leaves New York for New England, in search of something called Hali's Booke of the Wisdom of the Stars (what would be the inspiration for Lovecraft's Necronomicon). In his travels, meeting various Lovecraft characters, he soon learns of a sort of religious organization dedicated to Hali's Booke, made up of other prominent Lovecraft Characters, and who are also obsessed with dreams for whatever reason. And as the story goes on it becomes increasingly clear (to many except Black) that there's something more going on here, beneath the surface so to speak. Something big -- monstrous, maddening, indescribable perhaps -- that our protagonist is somehow at the center of.

I'll leave it at that. It's well worth a read, though it does take a lot of knowledge on Lovecraft and other things, or reading the extensive annotations, to fully appreciate the sheer depth of this comic.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Did Chuck Dixon have any good Marvel runs? I love all his DC stuff that I've read, so I know he isn't a bad writer, but right now I'm reading his Marvel Knights series (the one with Daredevi's unnamed team of himself, Widow, Punisher, Shang-Chi, and Cloak & Dagger) and it's... really bland. I know Doug Moench fucking loathes Dixon's Moon Knight run and has no problem bad mouthing it, though I've always wondered if it's due to Dixon's politics given that Moench is a hardcore leftist.

Dixon's Moon Knight run is decent but hampered by the fact that the book had shit artwork (Moon Knight's always been a weak character propped up by good artwork). Also, he left the book with several plotlines unresolved and Al Milgrom, even the autist when he found out Dixon's replacement had no intention on resolving those plot threads, had Michelinie taken off of Amazing Spider-Man for six issues (during the annual biweekly stunt summer storyline) so he could wrap those threads up in ASM.

At the very least, you can make the case that Dixon knew Moon Knight is a Batman rip-off and leaned into it, and that Moench hates Dixon and his run, because Moench has fart sniffing pretensions that his run was high art and not a poor man's Batman propped up by Bill S's artwork. Along with butt-hurt/resentment towards Dixon regarding other Robins existing (as Moench infamously tried to force DC to regress Dick Grayson back to age 13 even though he was around 19 years old by that point in the early 80s, let alone pretend Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans didn't exist when he came onboard Batman in the early 1980s, resulting in DC being forced to create Jason Todd so Moench could have his young boy Robin to do the Nocturne storyline he demanded he be allowed to do).

His Punisher run meanwhile is considered by many to be the definitive Punisher run, even better than Ennis's run due to Dixon not doing the sort of "wink-wink" black comedy lampshade hanging that Ennis's Punisher had where he took the piss out on the character.

Ugh don't even get me started on Geoff Johns. Rebirth was bad, what came after was bad, and it's pretty telling that the best lantern runs of the past 10 years or so have done a complete 180 tonally and artistically from the style that was dominant when Johns was at the helm.

Every emotional spectrum-related storyline always end up with a bunch of differently coloured but generally interchangeable guys flying around in space punching each other with cartoonishly oversized glowing fists and whatnot until Hal shows up and does a speech about willpower before making a big green jet and flinging it at someone. It's gotten very predictable.

The Morrisson/Sharp run was such a breath of fresh air, but the current lantern stories are pretty lacklustre. You barely ever even see hal anymore- I wish he had stuck around longer in DC vs Vampires. Imo he's the most interesting lantern.

Morrison's run was a hot mess but largely tied together by the fact that DC AND Morrison were up front that his GL run was purely to give DC another evergreen run of Green Lantern books after the post-Johns writers raped and killed the franchise and drove away all of the people who made the Geoff Johns run a huge big titted hit and one if not THE top selling DC book during the mid 00s through the early 10s.

It's biggest grace was that Grant kept his GL run isolated from a lot of the bullshit going on in DC at the time, as far as the equivalent of pulling Hal from circulation solely to keep him from getting raped by hack writers running rampant at the time. It's also a big culture shock of sorts, as Grant effectively was regressing the title to 1960s pre-O'Neill/Adams run status quo with weird aliens and crazy as fuck sci-fi stories. Along with Grant passive aggressively pooping on DC editorial for Metal/Death Metal and Grant whining about how DC finally stopped giving a shit about Grant's desire/goal to keep the Multiverse as something only HE could fuck around with, resulting in Grant being forced to give DC and fans what it wanted in terms of doing multiverse stories in Green Lantern that at the same time, ignored all of the cliffhanger shit from Multiversity that he had no intention on following up on anytime soon and wouldn't let anyone else touch.

 

[CowPox]

Reading Hitman by Ennis, very cheesy and you can really tell he was caught up in the Reservoir Dogs Pulp Fiction fad and just wanted to apply it to superhero's. This is probably his most straightforward superhero type book i've read from him and the dialogs is kinda cringy and bad, i like the art but without the freedom to explicitly shock the audience the weakness of Garth's story telling is put on display.

Also in the early to mid 90's did it seem like nearly every story he wrote had to shoehorn demons into it?

 

[admiral]

Morrison's run was a hot mess but largely tied together by the fact that DC AND Morrison were up front that his GL run was purely to give DC another evergreen run of Green Lantern books after the post-Johns writers raped and killed the franchise and drove away all of the people who made the Geoff Johns run a huge big titted hit and one if not THE top selling DC book during the mid 00s through the early 10s.

It's biggest grace was that Grant kept his GL run isolated from a lot of the bullshit going on in DC at the time, as far as the equivalent of pulling Hal from circulation solely to keep him from getting raped by hack writers running rampant at the time. It's also a big culture shock of sorts, as Grant effectively was regressing the title to 1960s pre-O'Neill/Adams run status quo with weird aliens and crazy as fuck sci-fi stories. Along with Grant passive aggressively pooping on DC editorial for Metal/Death Metal and Grant whining about how DC finally stopped giving a shit about Grant's desire/goal to keep the Multiverse as something only HE could fuck around with, resulting in Grant being forced to give DC and fans what it wanted in terms of doing multiverse stories in Green Lantern that at the same time, ignored all of the cliffhanger shit from Multiversity that he had no intention on following up on anytime soon and wouldn't let anyone else touch.

I liked Morrison's run, it reminded me a lot of older British comics and I enjoyed how weird it was. The artwork complemented the writing really well, too. Artistically it's just a very fun thing to read. Morrison was pretty spot on with his characterisation of Hal, I thought. Hal should be the kind of character who's always in danger of misusing his power or overstepping out of a sense of responsibility, and I think Morrison explored that pretty well. You can tell that he had a lot of respect for the pre-Johns GL writers and storylines. There's a prescedent for slightly bizarre GL Hal-centred stories with things like Willworld, and the crossover between Oa and the Sandman. This angle doesn't get explored very often in favour of the more mainstream DC content, so it's a good that Morrison brought it back.

Pooping on DC editorial was pretty funny, tbh. And pertinent, since the things he was moaning about did actually happen- when was the last time you saw Hal as anything but a side character to some GL diversity hire? John and Jessica are fine but the lady cop with the steven universe glasses is pretty bad.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Hitman was a spin-off of "The Demon", debuting in the book's Bloodlines crossover. So Ennis was carrying over stuff from that in a by the by sort of way.

Also, Ennis stealth attempted to create his own little pocket universe of sorts with his demon/supernatural stuff at the time. Preacher for instance, is loosely based off of a Hellblazer storyline about a similar "Demon and an Angel have a baby" situation. To the point that Wizard, when they saw this and began claiming those issues were the first appearance of the angel/demon baby in Preacher, forced Ennis to have to publicly state that was not the case and were two completely separate characters, due to Preacher being 100% creator owned and Ennis realizing that DC might sue him/try and steal ownership of Preacher if they found out that it featured a character who DC owned.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Reading Hitman by Ennis, very cheesy and you can really tell he was caught up in the Reservoir Dogs Pulp Fiction fad and just wanted to apply it to superhero's. This is probably his most straightforward superhero type book i've read from him and the dialogs is kinda cringy and bad, i like the art but without the freedom to explicitly shock the audience the weakness of Garth's story telling is put on display.

Also in the early to mid 90's did it seem like nearly every story he wrote had to shoehorn demons into it?

He was pretty repetitive in the 90s, recycling a lot of ideas and even characters. Hell, every protagonist he wrote was basically a more obnoxious version of his version of John Constantine. If you took dialogue from each of them and swapped it around, it'd still fit. You notice it more in his longer runs, like Hellblazer, Preacher and Hitman, they all hit the same beats, similar stories happen, and the same characters just with different art designs show up again and again.

Hell, even when he went over to Marvel, he still borrowed from his old works, but at least he was branching out by sticking to more grounded stories... at least when he did Punisher MAX.

 

[CowPox]

Some random pick ups today from the flea market, quite proud to have found tbat Sandman mystery theater 1 in the wild.

 

[skykiii]

So does anyone know where I can find a download or torrent of the graphic novel Darkwing Duck: The Definitely Dangerous Edition? Physical copies are stupid expensive but apparently the graphic novel contained major rewrites for basically every issue, so the content is actually massively different from the individual issues you can find online.

 

[The Feline Solution]

Reading Hitman by Ennis, very cheesy and you can really tell he was caught up in the Reservoir Dogs Pulp Fiction fad and just wanted to apply it to superhero's. This is probably his most straightforward superhero type book i've read from him and the dialogs is kinda cringy and bad, i like the art but without the freedom to explicitly shock the audience the weakness of Garth's story telling is put on display.

Also in the early to mid 90's did it seem like nearly every story he wrote had to shoehorn demons into it?

I said it before but Hitman is his best work next to his Punisher MAX run. Learn to enjoy the cheese and motherloving dialogue, these were simpler times, shit is pure 90's goodness. That issue with Ringo and Tommy reminicising about how they met Death on a job and the ending of the whole story is great, the appearances of Section 8 are solid gold, too. I love that comic to pieces.

He was pretty repetitive in the 90s, recycling a lot of ideas and even characters. Hell, every protagonist he wrote was basically a more obnoxious version of his version of John Constantine. If you took dialogue from each of them and swapped it around, it'd still fit. You notice it more in his longer runs, like Hellblazer, Preacher and Hitman, they all hit the same beats, similar stories happen, and the same characters just with different art designs show up again and again.

Hell, even when he went over to Marvel, he still borrowed from his old works, but at least he was branching out by sticking to more grounded stories... at least when he did Punisher MAX.

Gotta love his more-irish-than-Guinness character/s in every single fucking work of his. I say this as a huge fanboy but he sure is some cunt of the highest order.

 

[Nick Obre]

So does anyone know where I can find a download or torrent of the graphic novel Darkwing Duck: The Definitely Dangerous Edition? Physical copies are stupid expensive but apparently the graphic novel contained major rewrites for basically every issue, so the content is actually massively different from the individual issues you can find online.

Sorry, checked my sources (which I believe cover all that's available) and it's not there. There's individual TPBs but not that edition, which I understand is an omnibus of sorts.

 

[skykiii]

Sorry, checked my sources (which I believe cover all that's available) and it's not there. There's individual TPBs but not that edition, which I understand is an omnibus of sorts.

Yeah from what I understand, Definitely Dangerous Edition collects the entire run of (I think it was Boom Studio's) Darkwing Duck comic, omitting only the final few issues--which IIRC were a crossover with Ducktales called Dangerous Currency.

I could be remembering this info wrong though.

 

[jspit2.0]

Ugh don't even get me started on Geoff Johns. Rebirth was bad,

Agreed.

what came after was bad

The pre IC stuff was bland to bad, Sinestro War was good with a crap ending, the blackest night was worse, brightest day was a nothing burger, and Hal got sidelined for Osama Lantern in the big finale that was just like the last five finales.

The Morrisson/Sharp run was such a breath of fresh air, but the current lantern stories are pretty lacklustre. You barely ever even see hal anymore- I wish he had stuck around longer in DC vs Vampires. Imo he's the most interesting lantern.

Hal is a straight white guy, he was destined to be side lined, especially with his movie flop.

He was pretty repetitive in the 90s, recycling a lot of ideas and even characters. Hell, every protagonist he wrote was basically a more obnoxious version of his version of John Constantine. If you took dialogue from each of them and swapped it around, it'd still fit. You notice it more in his longer runs, like Hellblazer, Preacher and Hitman, they all hit the same beats, similar stories happen, and the same characters just with different art designs show up again and again.

Hell, even when he went over to Marvel, he still borrowed from his old works, but at least he was branching out by sticking to more grounded stories... at least when he did Punisher MAX.

Ennis is and was a pretentious edge lord. He was at his best when he wasn't forced out of his narrow box of interest. Demon is actually pretty damn good about that with him staying more away from Capes and I actually like it better than Hitman. Same with Punisher. There is allot of real cringe looking back from his writing Frank interacting with heroes like he's Batman.

 

[admiral]

Ennis is and was a pretentious edge lord. He was at his best when he wasn't forced out of his narrow box of interest. Demon is actually pretty damn good about that with him staying more away from Capes and I actually like it better than Hitman. Same with Punisher. There is allot of real cringe looking back from his writing Frank interacting with heroes like he's Batman

Ennis is good when he's not taking himself too seriously. He's edgy and immature and he has this really weird contrarian attitude to superheroes which gets old fast, but then he's a huge superman fanboy who obviously has this very lofty idea of what the perfect superhero should look like (superman), and as such is openly disdainful of pretty much every other major character. There's only so many times you can ask 'what if superheroes... were assholes?'
That said, I liked Hitman and the Section 8 stories he did. They're gross and silly and ridiculous but it worked for the subject matter and I think the way that real superheroes were just cameos in brief 'lol what if [whacky thing] happened to [usually serious character]' storylines ensured that the writing stayed tight and snappy and didn't get preachy or overly indulgent. The Section 8 followup with Constantine wasn't as good as All Star Section 8, though, but it was still fun.

There's this one storyline which I think is from Ennis' Punisher run about some sicko mutilating gang members into garden gnomes and it genuinely grossed me out so much that it still bothers me and I sometimes wonder if I just imagined it in a nightmare.

 

[Commander X]

Came across a copy of a Chuck Dixon project I picked up a while back, a 48-pager published by Marvel's Epic line; working with the Argentinian artist Jorge Zaffino who he'd collabed with on the mini-eries Winter World they came up with Seven Block. Inmates John Tanner and Jilly Martinez are both faced with situations where signing up to be subjects for medical experiments to get them out of general population seems to be the best option. Just simple medical experiments, no surgery involved. Nevermind the other, previous subject, Dwayne who is kept in his cell all day now. Occasionally, he's heard giggling "hee hee hee hee" which isn't creepy at all.

Anyways, nothing bad could result from this!



IDW re-relased the GN in black and white back in 2004 and copies can be a bit pricey, which is a shame on account of Zaffino's art for this book looking better in stark B&W - the only posted examples I've been able to find over the years are of Spanish translations.

 

[Dean Pentel]

He was pretty repetitive in the 90s, recycling a lot of ideas and even characters. Hell, every protagonist he wrote was basically a more obnoxious version of his version of John Constantine. If you took dialogue from each of them and swapped it around, it'd still fit. You notice it more in his longer runs, like Hellblazer, Preacher and Hitman, they all hit the same beats, similar stories happen, and the same characters just with different art designs show up again and again.

Hell, even when he went over to Marvel, he still borrowed from his old works, but at least he was branching out by sticking to more grounded stories... at least when he did Punisher MAX.

I liked most of what he did for Punisher MAX. I think Punisher is most interesting when he's facing "normal" antagonists, or the superhumans in his stories are less fantastic (Daredevil, for example).

I thought the guy was a genius when I read Preacher back in the 90s. Same with The Boys (I was salty as fuck over some of the changes the show made). Reading these years later, I gotta agree with you. He's not bad, per se, just he has a clearly defined niche he prefers.