Sperg about comic books here

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I also read the first Epic Collection for Moon Knight, which collects all his original appearances. About 90% of it is written by Doug Moench (who vehemently denies that Moon Knight was influenced by Batman, even though you'd have to have never heard of Batman to not see the similarities), so it at least has a consistent quality to it. The stories get better as they go along, though Moench relies far too heavily on 'This new antagonist that will only be around for an issue has major ties to Marc's past!' as a crutch for a lot of the stories. At one point one of the baddies is even Marc's own brother who is never referenced before or after that story (although I think another writer makes use of him later).

The biggest problem with the Moon Knight character at this point is that he has no reason to be a vigilante, let alone a hero. He's not making up for past sins or trying to stop a personal tragedy from happening to someone else. He's not even someone who naturally just wants to do good. The closest they get is that he seeks vengeance against people because a god of vengeance maybe possibly revived him (that part of his origin is left ambiguous at this point). Speaking of ambiguity, Moench can't seem to decide if Moon Knight has any powers or not. During the first handful of initial stories MK's physical abilities are enhanced depending on the phase of the moon due to being scratched by a werewolf (no, really). Most of the stories ignore the goofy moon-based strength stuff only for it to then randomly pop back up later and then disappear again.

The thing Moon Knight is probably most famous for - being mentally unstable and having multiple personalities - isn't really in these early stories but the seeds of it are there. At this point he has four identities he goes between depending on what he needs to do, all of them with their own personalities and backstories he's given them to help better sell them. While he isn't yet crazy you still have Marc or a supporting character worry about his mental health and the strain of juggling the various personalities, with him occasionally forgetting to 'leave' one of the identities when he should.

I got it for around $20, which was pretty good for over 500 pages worth of content. If you're someone who likes the '70s and '80s eras of Marvel it's a decent read. The only technical problem I had with the book is that some of the stories are out of order, though continuity isn't incredibly tight at this point so it's not a major issue.

When they relaunched Moon Knight I was pretty interested to see what they did, it was decent and tweaked some of the original lore like how the now almost crippled Spector is actually faking that he is mentally unstable and slipping into his alteregos like a dementia patient while in reality he's actually mentally unstable and deranged, fooling everyone including himself in different ways.


If nothing else I recommend reading that single issue of Moon Knight that was part of "The Initiative" or whatever it was called when every super powered person had to be registered, but does Marc Spector possess superhuman powers, should he be on the registry?
 
If nothing else I recommend reading that single issue of Moon Knight that was part of "The Initiative" or whatever it was called when every super powered person had to be registered, but does Marc Spector possess superhuman powers, should he be on the registry?

The SHRA wasn't just for super powered people. Those who used magic, exotic weapons, or advanced tech also were required to reveal their secret ID to Uncle Sam and get on the government payroll.
 
So, I managed to snag the Earthworm Jim comic, the GØD-K1NG Combo Pack (I wanted the comic that kicked off Meyer v. Waid) and the Director's Cut of Englewood.
Might as well as support people I like.
If you haven't already, you can still get Englewood:
 
gotta love that boom diversity.
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I enjoy action adventure stories and I've been thinking about picking up Jawbreakers. If anyone here has read it, do you recommend it, or no?
 
gotta love that boom diversity.
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The old dude in the upper left of the photo makes this look like one of those retarded soccer teams with a normal coach just looking on proud that no one on his team shit themselves during the game.
 
Hickman's Age of X #1 has made me briefly give a shit about the Marvel universe again (less-than-coincidentally the last time I gave a fuck about Marvel was Secret Wars). Standard Hickman stuff - big sci-fi ideas, plots, some interesting politicking and (the one thing I dislike about his writing) vague grandiloquent proclamations.

Amusingly, on a leftist comics forum I read people were handwringing because Jerusalem appears and is symbolic in relation to what's happening with the mutants. Oh no, Hickman may be saying something charitable about Israel (there's no reason to think he is in saying anything nice so far), time for hand-wringing about our moral purity!

Interested to see whether Xavier is actually Xavier and not the Maker - the visual similarity is striking. I know the Maker is off being a character in Venom or something, so it may not be literally him (although there's hardly a rule in comics against a character being in more than one place at a time - Wolverine managed to be in about 8 different comics simultaneously for a good 20 years). But I'd be surprised if there's no connection. Perhaps it's just linking them thematically.
 
Hickman's Age of X #1 has made me briefly give a shit about the Marvel universe again (less-than-coincidentally the last time I gave a fuck about Marvel was Secret Wars). Standard Hickman stuff - big sci-fi ideas, plots, some interesting politicking and (the one thing I dislike about his writing) vague grandiloquent proclamations.

Amusingly, on a leftist comics forum I read people were handwringing because Jerusalem appears and is symbolic in relation to what's happening with the mutants. Oh no, Hickman may be saying something charitable about Israel (there's no reason to think he is in saying anything nice so far), time for hand-wringing about our moral purity!

Interested to see whether Xavier is actually Xavier and not the Maker - the visual similarity is striking. I know the Maker is off being a character in Venom or something, so it may not be literally him (although there's hardly a rule in comics against a character being in more than one place at a time - Wolverine managed to be in about 8 different comics simultaneously for a good 20 years). But I'd be surprised if there's no connection. Perhaps it's just linking them thematically.
Off Topic but why the seething hate for Israel? I thought the Left loved Jews.
 
Off Topic but why the seething hate for Israel? I thought the Left loved Jews.

They see Israel as an outpost of the West. Additionally, they are incapable of parsing anything other than through a simple oppressor/oppressed moral lens. Plus Jews are wealthy and influential, meaning old-fashioned anti-Semitism creeps in, too.
 
i was pretty unimpressed by Hickman's House of/Power of X so far. They honestly don't feel that different from what Hickman was doing with the Avengers, which was terminally boring. Though Secret Wars turned out great!

what you *should* be reading, even though it's written by Mark Waid, is the History of the Marvel Universe. The penciler is a lot of fun and I always love narrative retellings of long, convoluted fictional histories.

also, if you haven't read Uber yet, get on the stick already. It's an alternate world history series -- basically it's What If ... the Nazi made superheroes!? But well-researched and absolutely brutal. It's gotten very slow-to-publish as of late (while the writer focuses on his wildly popular but incredibly boring DnD-inspired book, Die) but I really love the series.

also also! If you liked Robert Kirkman's Marvel stuff or Invincible, his Die*Die*Die series has been great so far.
 
What are the best books put out by Alterna? Anyone?
 
I'm currently reading the IDW TF reboot, and it's pretty great. But dear lord are the critics annoying.
 
I've been reading the Powers of X series and HOLEE FUCK it is knocking it out of the park.

The X books needed this after the bloat of the last Uncanny series and the Age of X-man crossover
 
I usually don’t read romance comic books and I never read any LGBT-y stuff, but I really recommend Blue is the Warmest Color.
 
House of X #2 is out this week and it's retcon city. The story seems to be taking place in an alternate reality, with the narrative following Moira Mactaggert. It turns out that Moira is/has been a mutant, one that reincarnates into her same life, with all their same memories. It's kind of like Groundhog Day only she has to live life from infancy on and she's only got 10 lives for unspecified reasons (X = 10). She is now at the end. The world we've seen in House & Powers of X is apparently this new one, with Moira not dead, and everything different. I've been reading X-books for most of my life so I'm used to breakneck changes in direction and tone, storylines and characterizations. This turn is interesting, certainly not what I expected, and light years better than the Bendis years produced. I don't know how this could all fit together in the end (and Hickman's FF and Avengers didn't really end strongly, they more felt like they fed into something else) but I'll keep reading.
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Absolute Carnage #1 was great. No spoilers needed, this just hits all the right bells of being fun and drenched in continuity without being weighed down by it.

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Immortal Hulk #22 was fantastic, as always. Top notch art and writing, still scary and gross. But then the writer inserted a bit of stuff when he has Joe Fixit/Gray Hulk make a comment regarding an article about trans-rights.
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It seems a bit like bait, slightly pandering, until Joe reveals his trollish interest as well. Perfectly in-character
 
Having Moira
be a mutant actually makes sense, because she was the only "non-mutant" that was allowed on X-Factors' ship (any non-mutants would cause the ship to go into assault mode), as well as explaining why she was the only "non-mutant" to contract and die from the Legacy Virus.

It's not far-fetched to have her mutant status "hidden", since some mutants have powers that let them hide from/trick many forms of detection.
 
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