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Evian Les Rutabaga said:
DC's trying to resuscitate their Vertigo line by holding a pillow firmly across the patient's face.

Of course Hermeticorp's symbol is some game map wankery superimposed on the symbol for amalgamation all on a pentacle conjoined with an annulet: "We're secretly working on magitech to immanentize the eschaton! It has nothing to do with Lovecraftian horrors from outside our comprehension, honest. See? It's 'Azoth' not 'Azathoth'!"

But we're all white male game designers, whose corporate culture has no room for female people of ambiguous brownness except to use their genius and toss them aside after the gig. Too bad we're all lacking in Goddess energy so it's all crashing and burning around us. Oops. If only there were someone who could see where this is all going, an Oracle of feminine wisdom that we'd ignore because that's worked so well. We could call her Cassandra! Cue the transformation scene cribbed from Promethea.

The best I can say about the art is that Stjepan Šejić's alternate cover reminds me of Dan Brereton's work. I get that the team may have wanted to get away from 90s muted palettes, but 80s dayglo colors over black isn't working for me. If they could have paid Šejić or Brereton for the entire book, the art might have made up for the clunky narration.


tl,dr: There are some YA ideas that have potential, but more effort is going into looking cool than developing the ideas.
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They should have received Wildstorm to put the she shit in there instead of Vertigo, now we only have to wait until Quinn comic is cancelled because no one buys it
 
Doomsday Clock #8

Superman is a moron. Here you have a superhero committing mass murder in a foreign country at a time when said country is growing suspicious of all superheroes. Superman's brilliant plan to ease tensions? Give a flowery speech and then bring the mass murderer to an angry mob gathered to memorialize the victims of his attack. It is hard to imagine a dumber fucking plan. It would be like bringing Osama bin Laden to Ground Zero on September 12th and being all "Hey guys, he didn't mean it. Give him a chance to explain himself."

This is a frequent problem that occurs when bad writers write "good" characters: they end up writing them dumb and preachy. Superman should be an intelligent character. He should have enough common sense to be like "Hmmm, maybe there are ways to approach this situation with more delicacy." NOPE! He goes full retard.

Doomsday Clock is a great series, but holy shit this issue was a trainwreck. 29 pages of utter stupidity so that we can set up a twist in the very last panel. Pathetic.
 
Poison Ivy Death on the Cover of Heroes In Crisis #7
Bleeding Cool, so nothing but archive.
http://archive.fo/RpGLx

Poison Ivy Death on the Cover of Heroes In Crisis #7
Posted by Rich Johnston December 13, 2018 47 Comments
450
It was teased in the suggestion that Harley Quinn would be suffering a major trauma during the series, and the comic showed her in mourning.

On the wall of death in Heroes In Crisis #3.

And now we have that cover for Heroes In Crisis #7 ahead of the release of DC Comics solicitations for March next week.

It is also notable that the symbol she is writing with her own blood on the floor resembles the Flash logo. You may have read rumours about Wally West’s involvement in the whole thing – could his death in Heroes In Crisis #1 have been a feint?
Poison Ivy was created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff in 1966 in Batman #181 as a botanist-turned-supervillain. In recent years she has been reinterpreted by some as an anti-hero, and most recently made part of the Gotham hero set in Batgirl & The Birds Of Prey. Portrayed as a love interest for Batman and Harley Quinn, that latter relationship as a non-monogamous girlfriend of Harley, has seen her one of the most popular DC Comics cosplay characters. Her fanbase has been annoyed of late at the inconsistent way the character has been used in DC Comics titles, a villain in one, a hero in another, a genocidal madwoman in another, but getting killed off in Heroes In Crisis was what many feared.
From the cover above, their fears have been realised.
We’ll find out more on Monday, I guess.
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...will not be used...

https://twitter.com/TomKingTK/status/1073706142365298689
http://archive.is/MUybj

tomking.PNG

What was so awful about it, though? Seemed pretty standard comic book cover fare. :\

harley-dead.jpg
 
Elwood P. Dowd said:
What was so awful about it, though? Seemed pretty standard comic book cover fare. :\
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It could actually contain some sort of spoiler. IMO, the art does look a little weird. Ivy seems less like a dead body and someone who decided to lay down in a weird position and draw something on the floor with blood.

*Edit* Seen a few places say King wanted it change cause it was degrading to women or something along the lines, but there's no actual quote supporting that. At most, there's the tweet where he mentions it was changed with no explanation for why. He also followed it up with a tweet clarifying he has no problems with the artist and posted some upcoming pages from the next issue praising the quality of the art and how happy he is to work with them.

It certainly isn't impossible by any stretch of the imagination, but usually comic types aren't shy about virtue signalling making changes for those reasons.
 
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Elwood P. Dowd said:
Poison Ivy Death on the Cover of Heroes In Crisis #7
Bleeding Cool, so nothing but archive.
http://archive.fo/RpGLx



...will not be used...

https://twitter.com/TomKingTK/status/1073706142365298689
http://archive.is/MUybj

View attachment 614947

What was so awful about it, though? Seemed pretty standard comic book cover fare. :\

View attachment 614948
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This is the same DC that had a giant shit fit when they had Batgirl being accosted by the Joker on the cover of one of her books a few years back.

I may be speaking out of my ass as I have nothing to back this up, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say in the last... let's say two or three years, with both Marvel and DC, if there is a female on the cover of any funnybook book, 99.9% of the time she's either posing heroically, trying to look badass, and/or there is no sense of immediate danger to them. If they ARE being shown in conflict, then its either by another female, or by some kind of non-humanoid, non-male entity.

Remember kids- your female character may be able to rip apart tanks, take apart armies with their bare fists, and shoot energy beams from their eyesockets powerful enough to blow up stars, but show them taking a fist to the face, well that's crossing the line there, buster!

So tl;dr - having a powerful cover showing Poison Ivy on the ground, looking like she was just brutally assaulted, heavens no, can't have anything that provocative and striking! We might give some people the shakes!

EDIT: Yup. Less than 24 hours after I made this post....

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/15/dc-responds-with-new-art-following-poison-ivy-controversy

THA'S SEXIST!!
 
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Has anyone had read or at least heard of this book ? I am reading it right now and thought its alright just want to see what anyone thoughts on it along with the other 2 books he made to go with it .
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_blank_ said:
This is the same DC that had a giant shit fit when they had Batgirl being accosted by the Joker on the cover of one of her books a few years back.

I may be speaking out of my ass as I have nothing to back this up, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say in the last... let's say two or three years, with both Marvel and DC, if there is a female on the cover of any funnybook book, 99.9% of the time she's either posing heroically, trying to look badass, and/or there is no sense of immediate danger to them. If they ARE being shown in conflict, then its either by another female, or by some kind of non-humanoid, non-male entity.

Remember kids- your female character may be able to rip apart tanks, take apart armies with their bare fists, and shoot energy beams from their eyesockets powerful enough to blow up stars, but show them taking a fist to the face, well that's crossing the line there, buster!

So tl;dr - having a powerful cover showing Poison Ivy on the ground, looking like she was just brutally assaulted, heavens no, can't have anything that provocative and striking! We might give some people the shakes!

EDIT: Yup. Less than 24 hours after I made this post....

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/15/dc-responds-with-new-art-following-poison-ivy-controversy

THA'S SEXIST!!
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I always notice that there is an double standard when it comes to female characters where they can't be shown having bad conflict like with the poison ivy and batgirl covers but not with male characters.
 
Rebis said:
This article continues to forward the whole “Joker sexually assaulted/raped Barbara Gordon” thing, which has always been really questionable to me. I feel like these comic book journalists haven’t actually read the Killing Joke, just been told what was in it.
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My thoughts on that is that Joker most likely wouldn't do anything like that, he'd deem it gross. Making Gordon think he did though? Fuckin' Hilarious.
 
Rebis said:
This article continues to forward the whole “Joker sexually assaulted/raped Barbara Gordon” thing, which has always been really questionable to me. I feel like these comic book journalists haven’t actually read the Killing Joke, just been told what was in it.
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I never really got why people thought that either as it doesn't fit the Joker's shtick. He mostly commits crimes that he finds to be hilarious or to mock Batman. I doubt sexual thoughts ever enter his mind outside dirty jokes.

It could be that way if a lot of people push for it but it'd be really out of character. Crazies still have their own patterns of behavior as I'm sure anyone here could tell you.
 
RockVolnutt said:
I never really got why people thought that either as it doesn't fit the Joker's shtick. He mostly commits crimes that he finds to be hilarious or to mock Batman. I doubt sexual thoughts ever enter his mind outside dirty jokes.
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He screwed Harley every now and again when they were a thing, but it's pretty ambiguous if he was doing it because he wanted to get his rocks off or if it was just another way to keep Harley committed to him.
Either way, he didn't rape Barbara. She wasn't even the target of his scheme in TKJ: he went after her because he wanted to prove that if you subjected a perfectly moral person to the extremes of suffering in a short period of time, they'd snap and become as twisted as he is.
 
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RockVolnutt said:
I never really got why people thought that either as it doesn't fit the Joker's shtick. He mostly commits crimes that he finds to be hilarious or to mock Batman. I doubt sexual thoughts ever enter his mind outside dirty jokes.

It could be that way if a lot of people push for it but it'd be really out of character. Crazies still have their own patterns of behavior as I'm sure anyone here could tell you.
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While I also never thought Barbara was raped, I do not believe in the interpretation that the Joker is asexual. There's plenty of stories, notable and non-notable, where he is written with strong connotations of having romantic and/or sexual feelings for Batman.

Just read The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth, or Death of the Family and you'll see what I mean. And there's many other examples as well.
 
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Hank Salagna said:
While I also never thought Barbara was raped, I do not believe in the interpretation that the Joker is asexual. There's plenty of stories, notable and non-notable, where he is written with strong connotations of having romantic and/or sexual feelings for Batman.

Just read The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth, or Death of the Family and you'll see what I mean. And there's many other examples as well.
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I think his obsession with Batman has a strong psychosexual component, but Joker honestly seems so mentally twisted that I doubt he has anything approaching "normal" sexual desire. Like many serial killers, his crimes likely double as a form of sexual release.
 
Hank Salagna said:
While I also never thought Barbara was raped, I do not believe in the interpretation that the Joker is asexual. There's plenty of stories, notable and non-notable, where he is written with strong connotations of having romantic and/or sexual feelings for Batman.

Just read The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth, or Death of the Family and you'll see what I mean. And there's many other examples as well.
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While I certainly agree with you, I think the idea of the Joker having some sort of sexual/ romantic fixation on Batman has only really flourished in recent times. DKR came out in 1986 and A Serious House came out in 1989 with Killing Joke falling squarely in-between in 1988. So while the idea was around when Moore wrote the Killing Joke, it certainly hadn’t taken hold to the degree we see today, with stuff like Death of the Family, White Knight, and the Lego Batman movie. So I think it’s inaccurate to take those stories (or even Harley, who first appeared in 1992) into account when trying to analyze what was originally intended to have happened in the Killing Joke. I think around that time there just weren’t many stories that considered what the Joker wanted to put his dick in. Thank god we fixed that problem.

As Moore himself has pointed out, by the way, Jim Gordon went through far more prolonged torture that seemed far more sexualized than anything that happened to his daughter, yet nobody ever assumes he was raped.
 
Rebis said:
While I certainly agree with you, I think the idea of the Joker having some sort of sexual/ romantic fixation on Batman has only really flourished in recent times.
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It's because of sexually repressed tumblrina fuckups who can't see two people in the same room together without assuming they're fucking.
 

This opinion of D&C's one that I'm on the fence about. I think capeshit families only turn bad if it's all they interact with, you end up with this feeling of them being some high and mighty club like a bunch of Marvel characters are going through right now. IMO the sour taste in his mouth probably is more an Arrowverse thing since that's where his dislike comes from. I never watched them so if anyone wants to explain how they handle it, please go ahead.

DC capes having proteges who later set off on their own is a pretty established thing and removing that removes their legacy. They usually aren't clustered together, most of the Bat-family isn't even in Gotham anymore for example. The Captain Marvel family is pretty silly but they also have the weakness of their powers being divided the more of them transform so it is possible to write them without any of them overpowering the narrative.

He's right about a hypothetical "Daredevil and the Sonar Squad" being a stupid idea but only because it doesn't fit the Marvel Universe where the aliases are tied to individuals rather than being larger than life icons. I'm terrible at explaining this but Captain America is the only notable Marvel cape who shares that quality and it's debatable as Steve Rogers' most successful successor is.....Steve Rogers.
 
I just got a chance to read Thanos: Infinity Conflict and I gotta say its hands down the best Marvel comic I've read in years. Its the middle part of a trilogy and nothing much happens, but the story that's there is so well told and so engaging I couldn't put it down.

The plot is simple: Thanos, under the control of his future self, is absorbing the fundamental aspects of the universe into himself in order to become the universe. Standing against him are Adam Warlock, Pip the Troll and his brother Eros.

Story and dialogue by Jim Starlin, art by Alan Davis.

Spoiler images.
Thanos rides a fucking asteroid.

RCO034.jpg


Lady Death gets a few cool scenes.

RCO038.jpg


Thanos beats the fuck out of Eternity and Infinity.

RCO084.jpg


Thanos reaches his full power.

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Its incredible to see these two masters at work again. The story flows beautifully. There are no 9-panel pages. The dialogue is tight, with very few word dumps. Starlin knows how to write for these characters; he gives them all their own voices. Davis knows how to craft an engaging narrative on the page. There's never a point where you get fatigue from trying to figure out what the fuck's going on because the art is cluttered and disorganized like in so many modern comics. I can't praise this book enough.

If I had one complaint its that the colorist drops the ball a bit. They switched colorists between this book and the last, and the colors feel a little flatter this go around. Besides that though, its as good as a comic released in 2018 is going to get.
 
My friend got me Watchmen for Christmas, so I'm currently re-reading it. I've gotten through Chapter 1, and so far I'm enjoying the excerpts from Hollis Mason's book the most, which are fantastic world-building (seriously, I'd say Watchmen has some of the best world-building I've seen in any piece of media).
 
I got for Christmas the rest of the first trilogy of Blake and Mortimer.

In bad news i just found out DC did something that surprised me badly because it's something i would expect from Marvel instead and it just doesn't fall into the sort of humor i find funny: A comic mocking Christ.
 
So from what I gather the Dan Slott Spider-Man books have bad writing but mostly passable art, but the Nick Spencer run has some absolutely shit art but better writing. That sounds extremely poor for such a flagship title that they can't throw money for some decent artists at it.
 
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