Have you read that 'fan' comic Byrne did a couple of years back?
This board is almost a meme sometimes. Between the Ennis stanning and and hellblazer.
Sperg about comic books here
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This board is almost a meme sometimes. Between the Ennis stanning and and hellblazer.
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- Aug 11, 2020
Or maybe you're just wrong about most things
Nothing to be wrong about. The discussion is just starting to fit a stereotype I've seen play out in recent years.
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- Oct 5, 2020
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- Dec 17, 2019
I did, actually. Certainly works better as an Uncanny throwback than whatever the fuck X-Men Forever was supposed to be. That one comic convinced me that Chris Claremont isn't fit to write X-books anymore...not unless he has an army of editors or someone like Byrne to push back against his autism.
It's funny, actually, because the counter-aide I've been using to withstand the current era of X-Dreck is reading some of the lines/series that I skipped out on the first time around--most notably, the series centered around younger generations of mutants, like New Mutants, Generation X, early X-Force, etc. What proved to be the nicest unexpected surprise, however, was the ongoing storyline that started with the DeFilippis/Weir run on New Mutants, that continued into the 2004 New X-Men series. Both runs are clearly focused on teen drama, relationships, angsty drama and other Disney Channel shit that, on paper, should be awful...but honestly? It made for an engaging read. The characters were all fun, and the balance of super-powered antics juxtaposed with adolescent dilemmas read more like old-school Spider-Man issues, rather than contemporary Marvel cringe. And then when the Decimation Era stuff starts and these bright and starry-eyed teen characters start dying off brutally or coping with the horrors of war, it has all the emotional weight missing from modern crossover garbage like Fall of X.
It's crazy to me how even the teeny-bopper books of the older X-Men books, even the non-Claremont ones, have all the character and heart that's been vacant in the current books since Hickman rolled in with his Inhuman Island Saga.
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- Aug 7, 2018
DeFilippis/Weir is one of those things where it was panned when it first came out but once Kyle/Yost blew the series up and then some after House of M, you had a lot of people retroactively complaining about how Marvel did DeFilippis/Weir wrong (which is true given how they were kicked off and how that had a trickle down effect given that they were planning on unfucking Magma prior to being forced off.
It reads way better in trade format and in a lot of ways, knowing the hell awaiting them does add a level of pathos to those early low stake stories.
Arthur Morgan
kiwifarms.net
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- Sep 5, 2019
They re-did the collections, doing the entire comic run in twenty-something collections, including the run Jenkins and Sean Phillips did. I liked it fine, a throwback to the Jamie Delano run. And Phillips' art gave it a gritty feel that worked.
Then again I'm one of the retards that thought the hate for Azzarello's run was overblown and it was actually solid, even if he did move it to America. Con Job in prison made sense, I'm actually surprised no one else did a prison arc before that.
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- Dec 17, 2019
@MirrorNoir
As for Kyle/Yost, I found their contributions fine for the most part--especially when it came to depicting the characters cracking under the survival scenario they were in, and the interactions between the likes of Hellion and X-23. My bigger issue is that they barely set up any real drama or emotion to the lead-up to certain events, like Wallflower's death, or Wind Dancer's departure from the school. I get what emotional response they were going for with those, but I feel like the previous authors would've paved a better narrative trajectory to those tentpole moments to make them count for more.
And then there's that entire arc with Magik which made zero fucking sense...but that's been everything with Magik since Claremont introduced that Limbo/Ballasco fever dream of his.
Even in collected trade form, I couldn't fucking tell you what's going on with any of the characters, because it's not a character-driven story. They're just strong-armed into reactionary roles to whatever eye-rolling event Marvel Editorial needs them to be apart of.
I mean, I'm not surprised something like the DeFillippis/Weir New Mutants would get panned back in the day, considering a lot of these same people were probably showering nonstop praise on a turd like Morrison's New X-Men that was being published at the exact same time...and inversely to New Mutants, has managed to age terribly in the two decades since. It was basically the original version of what we got under Hickman, just high concept cerebral diarrhea coming before character or continuity.
As for Kyle/Yost, I found their contributions fine for the most part--especially when it came to depicting the characters cracking under the survival scenario they were in, and the interactions between the likes of Hellion and X-23. My bigger issue is that they barely set up any real drama or emotion to the lead-up to certain events, like Wallflower's death, or Wind Dancer's departure from the school. I get what emotional response they were going for with those, but I feel like the previous authors would've paved a better narrative trajectory to those tentpole moments to make them count for more.
And then there's that entire arc with Magik which made zero fucking sense...but that's been everything with Magik since Claremont introduced that Limbo/Ballasco fever dream of his.
I do all my reading in trades exclusively. Call me a heretic in comic reader circles, but I like to binge a complete story rather than endure month-to-month waits. It's one of the reason a lot of the Krakoan Era stuff comes off as directionless, incoherent tripe: it already felt like random nonsense in single issue form, but it reads even worse when collected, and really goes to show how little of the issues or events were strung together with any plotting outside of "muh world-building" and "muh gay mutant council".
Even in collected trade form, I couldn't fucking tell you what's going on with any of the characters, because it's not a character-driven story. They're just strong-armed into reactionary roles to whatever eye-rolling event Marvel Editorial needs them to be apart of.
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- Aug 7, 2018
The general complaint against Jenkins run is how boring it is and how Jenkins clearly had no love for the character and was churning out crap for the sake of a paycheck. Again, it was a dork age supreme and why for years it was memoryholed and uncollected.
As for Azarello, the complaints against his run didn't pop up until the final arc; the prison arc and subsequent stuff resurrected interest in the book which had started to slowly recover after Ellis took over/got fired for writing a school shooting storyline where the main character was a a detective who's idea of easy listening was listening to Jim Jones meth fueled fire and brimstone sermons and the punchline was that all the kids in the school shootings were secretly in league with the shooter and that the whole thing was an elaborate murder suicide pact where the kids who yelled "shoot!" were the ones that convinced the school shooter to kill them since they didn't have the balls to kill themselves.
The reveal that the big bad of the run was a Bruce Wayne expy pissy that Constantine bullied him growing up and Constantine fucking him as part of an elaborate scheme to bring him down, was too much even for 2000 standards and many felt it was too edgy for it's own good.
Adding to this, Azzarello brought in a LOT of new fans to the book; even Ennis failed to do this, as most of the dick sucking worship of Ennis's Hellblazer run didn't start until AFTER he left and started work on Preacher. So there was a lot of angry Constantine fans dealing with newbies who's only experience reading Hellblazer in real time was the Azzarello run and the ending didn't win him any favors.
The people who hated DeFillippis/Weir New Mutants were actually the same people who were shitting all over the Morrison New X-Men run and screeching autistically about how it was "NOT MAH X-MEN!!!!" non-stop.
The DeFillippis New Mutants run was REVILED because people wanted a proper New Mutants/X-Force follow-up with those characters.
Instead, they got a bunch of new OCs Don't Steal characters who at the time NO ONE gave a fuck about and didn't give a shit about until Kyle/Yost launched their X-Force title. And the only New Mutants in the book were Mirage, Wolfsbane, and Karma and they were just background characters collecting new young mutants for Xavier (or in the case of Wolfsbane, FUCKING the new young mutants she was suposed to be recruiting for Xavier).
It failed so badly they rebranded it New X-Men to try cash in on the Morrison run when he left. And had additional problems when the only young mutant characters Morrison created they were allowed to use was Glob Herman and Dusk and had to create Hellion as a replacement goldfish for Quentin Quires since he was declared off-limits from being permanently brought back until Aaron came along.
And the Magik arc made sense in so far as they finally brought her back and did so only way they could by turning her into a magic doppleganger xerox copy of the real Magik to avoid shamelessly bringing her back and undoing UXM #303.
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- Dec 17, 2019
@MirrorNoir
For my money, the only X-Titles worth a shit from that early outset were X-Treme and New Mutants. As a whole, I don't think the X-Men transitioned into the early 00's particularly well, and this is coming from someone who pretty much yawns at the offerings of the preceding decade, and harbors little nostalgia for the Lee and Liefeld Era of mutant storytelling.
What were those critical voices rallying around as the good X-Title at the time, then? Because if New X-Men and New Mutants were both reviled, that only leaves Claremont's X-Treme series, and Chuck Austen's Uncanny.
For my money, the only X-Titles worth a shit from that early outset were X-Treme and New Mutants. As a whole, I don't think the X-Men transitioned into the early 00's particularly well, and this is coming from someone who pretty much yawns at the offerings of the preceding decade, and harbors little nostalgia for the Lee and Liefeld Era of mutant storytelling.
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- Sep 3, 2018
Picked up the Stargirl: The Lost Children trade this week. I'm not typically a DC guy, but this a was a fun self-contained little story. Stargirl teams up with Red Arrow to rescue a bunch of golden age sidekicks who were kidnapped by Mother Goose. Aside from Geoff Johns engaging in a little too much golden age wankery, it had solid art and a solid story. I honestly wish we'd see more comics like this than the new adventures of sodomyboy (or whatever the fuck DC is cranking out nowadays).
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- Aug 7, 2018
New X-Men was the "good" X-Book.......
Xtreme was a dumpster fire with what good elements it had being drowned by Claremont not giving a shit, especially after the big X-Over he pitched got shot down due to Austen and Morrison refusing to play ball. Uncanny X-Men was a worse dumpster fire with Austen having Havok getting mindraped into leaving Lorna at the altar, the god-awful shilling of the Angel/Husk affair, and Austen's general hackery outside the Sammy/Juggernaut friendship....
While there was a lot of hardcore fans (the kind who say "the X-Men ended with Uncanny X-Men #201") who hated New X-Men, it was still light years better than the other X-Books at the time and basically the best book out of the lot. There's a fucking reason WHY Marvel fired Quitely from the book and why Morrison was told point blank "we will NOT delay publication for your slow as fuck artists, you WILL get the book out on time for us". It was the only X-Book that anyone talked positively about, even with the "Not Mah X-Men" crowd complaining.
Been re-reading Hellboy and finally got into the whole BPRD series, which in a weird kind of way is better and more focused, less whimsy nd more structure. Been a great ride but I don't think I'll read the Abe Sapien series, kind of feels like an afterthought.
I think Frusin's artwork helped a lot with that, it made Constantine look sleeker, less squareheaded than Steve Dillon's work.
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- Dec 17, 2019
If by "best book", you mean characters being written cartoonishly out-of-character to service Morrison's dumpster fire ideas, dialogue where everyone talks in the same snarky Britbong voice, the single worst depictions of Jean, Beast and Magneto in existence, the introduction of balls-out terrible characters like Angel, Cassandra Nova and Fantomex, art work where all the women have rancid prune faces, and plot points so incompatible with the mainline X-Men continuity that they were all retconned within the span of a few years, then sure, it's a masterpiece.
I never have and never will understand the hype around New X-Men. The book has aged like Cher's boot-leather face, and the only solace is that Marvel editorial had the good taste to cleanse the continuity of most of the weapons-grade cringe Morrison introduced the second his bald hipster ass left the building.
It would be a sweeter moment in retrospect without the knowledge that he'd depart just to run DC and Heavy Metal Magazine into the ground, but that's neither here nor there.
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- Jan 30, 2018
Paul Jenkins' Hellblazer run was great.
Brian fagarello's run was god awful.
Brian fagarello's run was god awful.
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- Aug 11, 2020
I want to click "Agree" for the Jenkins bit
But "Disagree" for the Azzarello bit.
But the more I think of it, like @Begemot says, I think most of whatever fondness I may have for it is thanks to Frusin. I do love artists who work with a bold, high contrast shadow style.
So I'll just click "Thunk-Provoking" because it made me thunk.
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- Aug 7, 2018
The X-books were THAT dire, at the time before Morrison took over, Casey turned out to be a worthless hack who was more concerned with getting high and being pissy that he couldn't do his own all freak X-Men with Jean and Logan fucking when they weren't leading said all freak X-Men team and Claremont was still doing the shit that got him kicked off the main X-Books, and Chuck Austen is fucking Chuck Austen.
Once Morrison accepted he wouldn't be allowed to throw Jean under the bus and ruin her character, character-wise everything was acceptable and you can even make a case Morrison was the first writer who basically A. acknowledged that Scott was a shit human being and B. Magneto needs to be a mass murdering super-villain for the basic premise of the X-Men to work.
Was it perfect? No as Cassandra Nova is a lame villain, Beast's revamp looked sucked, his rape of Polaris's backstory because he couldn't be bothered to read her full introduction arc only the issues of it drawn by Steranko was super lazy and insulting, and the fact that he tossed out all of Emma's character development because he wanted to write a cunty X-Men member ruined the character since it became her default version going forward.
And the fact that Marvel undid most of the stuff fans liked about his run (while keeping the three things fans disliked, Beast's new look, Emma's new characteristics, and the Scott/Emma pairing) is one of the chief reasons why Marvel had to blow everything sky high and start the Decimation era.
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- Dec 17, 2019
@MirrorNoir
It's funny, I hear this defense all the time: "Yeah, Morrison's run isn't very good in retrospect, but think about what the state of X-Men was before he was hired!" It's like...sorry? Is that supposed to make his pretentious horeshit any less unreadable? I can at least forgive the prior writers for simply having bad ideas. Morrison has horrendous ideas, but was also possessed by such colossal narrative aspirations that when he fails, his failures dwarf any of his predecessors.
I can forgive an idiotic comic. I can't forgive an idiotic comic trying to smart, only for the end result to be more retarded than even something Rob Liefeld would write.
His terrorist revolutionary screeds in New X-Men are even more farcical when you realize that he shared a building with Cassandra Nova in the basement for God knows how long, and despite her literally causing the kind of genocide he's dedicated his life to stopping only a few weeks prior, he doesn't even attempt to get revenge. A literal Mutant Holocaust happens on Genosha, and Magneto doesn't do a fucking thing about it.
Remember how I said Morrison's an undiagnosed retard? Shit like this is why.
That's where X-Treme X-Men definitely comes out on top. For whatever faults it had, it had the decency to treat Rogue with respect, and shield her from Morrison's autistic narrative urges ruining her character. Of course, Peter Milligan would do that and more with Rogue in his shitty run on Uncanny during the Reload Era, by introducing that "Holy-shit-what-the-fuck" love triangle between Rogue, Gambit and fucking Mystique of all people.
I'm starting to think there needs to be some kind of restraining order in place to keep talentless British Hacks far the fuck away from X-Men. They seem to have all the worst ideas...at least the worst ones outside of Jason Aaron's.
Gonna be honest, Morrison's stuff wasn't an improvement at all. As clinically stupid as stuff like X-Men: the Twelve could be, it wasn't painful to read. Morrison's run was like pulling teeth. Everything about it sucked--even the art, at least when Quietly was on board.
It's funny, I hear this defense all the time: "Yeah, Morrison's run isn't very good in retrospect, but think about what the state of X-Men was before he was hired!" It's like...sorry? Is that supposed to make his pretentious horeshit any less unreadable? I can at least forgive the prior writers for simply having bad ideas. Morrison has horrendous ideas, but was also possessed by such colossal narrative aspirations that when he fails, his failures dwarf any of his predecessors.
I can forgive an idiotic comic. I can't forgive an idiotic comic trying to smart, only for the end result to be more retarded than even something Rob Liefeld would write.
What are you talking about? He did that anyway. Jean not only makes out with Wolverine at the literal start of the run--thus undercutting ANYTHING in that Emma Frost Affair Subplot--but then has her spewing things the real Jean Grey would never say, like "humans want to be more like mutants so they can feel more oppressed". And let's not forget her heroic "ownage" of Emma Frost by making her relive all of her past trauma. If any other writer pulled this shit, they'd be labeled an Austen-level Pariah and hounded out with pitchforks. But because it's Morrison, he gets a free pass.
That wasn't the point of Cyclops's character during this run, even by Morrison's admission. The idea was that Cyclops was acting well outside of his usual boundaries because he'd been recently possessed by Apocalypse. Morrison admitted as much in a recent interview celebrating New X-Men's anniversary.
And just like all of Magento's murderous antics since the start of the 90s, that doesn't align with the character's history during Trial of Magneto or his tenure as a teacher in New Mutants. If you're going to start the character back up again on his warpath, you'd need better justification than what Magneto provided.
His terrorist revolutionary screeds in New X-Men are even more farcical when you realize that he shared a building with Cassandra Nova in the basement for God knows how long, and despite her literally causing the kind of genocide he's dedicated his life to stopping only a few weeks prior, he doesn't even attempt to get revenge. A literal Mutant Holocaust happens on Genosha, and Magneto doesn't do a fucking thing about it.
Remember how I said Morrison's an undiagnosed retard? Shit like this is why.
If Morrison's pitch to Mark Powers is any indication, New X-Men actually could have been a LOT worse. He actually wanted to use Rogue in his initial version of the story--but because he believed that no woman with Rogue's superpowers would have any self-confidence (real progressive world-view of the opposite sex there, Grant), he wanted there to be some kind of timeline shenanigans where the Southern Belle we all know and love gets killed off, and replaced with a Goth, depressed, PTSD-ridden Rogue to be the new, permanent status quo version of the character. But since editorial denied his request, he projected all of the narrative intentions he had for Rogue onto Angel--and if her toxic, unlikeable, gratingly irritating characterization is any indication, we were spared quite possibly the most unlikeable version of Rogue ever written.
That's where X-Treme X-Men definitely comes out on top. For whatever faults it had, it had the decency to treat Rogue with respect, and shield her from Morrison's autistic narrative urges ruining her character. Of course, Peter Milligan would do that and more with Rogue in his shitty run on Uncanny during the Reload Era, by introducing that "Holy-shit-what-the-fuck" love triangle between Rogue, Gambit and fucking Mystique of all people.
I'm starting to think there needs to be some kind of restraining order in place to keep talentless British Hacks far the fuck away from X-Men. They seem to have all the worst ideas...at least the worst ones outside of Jason Aaron's.
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- Jan 30, 2018
Azzarello has a story about redneck trailer-trash pornographers that drug John and tape him having sex with dogs. Then there's another issue with John randomly deciding to terrorize an old folks home with a prostitute. Then there's an issue dedicated completely to the backstory of some random magic book that goes nowhere and ties into nothing. Then there's all the stuff with the FBI which, again, I think goes nowhere. Admittedly I haven't read his stuff since the early '00s, so I might be misremembering. But, yeah, I hated his run. I think maybe I liked one of his early story arcs with John stuck at a diner in blizzard but even that had John gleefully watching someone commit suicide and ultimately acting like Spawn, dishing out judgment from the shadows.
I liked how Mike Carey began his run basically with, "lol forget about that shit, it doesn't matter, I'll be ignoring it"
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- Jun 3, 2021
I like Morrison's X-Men in a vacuum. like if that was essentially what ultimate X-Men was or it was just some other out of continuity whatever I liked the majority of the broad strokes of the ideas. however in context literally nobody in the whole run is really in character. As someone who tends to love Morrison he's always just been a bad fit for anything Marvel because he didn't grow up reading it, and barely understood any of what he did before he ended up there. There's a lot of Marvel characters I would have liked to see him do but literally none of it in continuity.
does anyone know if that Batman Adventures Continue DCAU series is any good? Or if it even fits into DCAU really? I read the one they put out a year or two ago that's a sequel to Justice League Unlimited and it was fine, I liked it but the way it ends really makes no sense knowing where Batman Beyond goes and I was wondering if this is a similar deal or if they fagged it up by retconning DCAU Tim Drake into a homo like his current year comic counterpart or anything wild like that.
I used to keep up with anything they were doing with the Batman Beyond IP in comics but the last series was horrible and I tried to read its currently running sequel and its even worse lol I've just been on a DCAU kick lately
does anyone know if that Batman Adventures Continue DCAU series is any good? Or if it even fits into DCAU really? I read the one they put out a year or two ago that's a sequel to Justice League Unlimited and it was fine, I liked it but the way it ends really makes no sense knowing where Batman Beyond goes and I was wondering if this is a similar deal or if they fagged it up by retconning DCAU Tim Drake into a homo like his current year comic counterpart or anything wild like that.
I used to keep up with anything they were doing with the Batman Beyond IP in comics but the last series was horrible and I tried to read its currently running sequel and its even worse lol I've just been on a DCAU kick lately