Sperg about comic books here

[CrazyRandomZyn]

I recently bought The Fix #5
and uhh... this was it's most striking spread:

Bottom yellow text reads: FUCKING MILLENIALS.
The Kincaid political banner is obviously based on Obama's second banner, though Kincaid's a gamer mayor lol. And he literally SWATS a kid for trolling him.

And I bought JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood Volume 2.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Honestly I don't think I'd pick up either. Tom King writing a book is as much of a red flag as the Dangerhair Crowd and all the other trash in this industry. As someone who doesn't have the best mental health at times, a lot of Tom King's recent work has been pretty fucking offensive to me. Besides just the terrible writing and character assassination, his work paints people who deal with mental illness in a pretty bad light. The Dangerhairs go too far in the other direction and try to be so inclusive that they just write pandering garbage that wants to preach at me about how shitty I am for being white, male AND straight. Lets just say that there's a reason I only buy trades.

You're right though, they do tend to put pretty decent artists on King's books.

I think King may have a fetish for trauma.

 

[Lucifer's Rectum]

King's early work was good till he went full "muh trauma", dangehairs never wrote anything good.

I haven't read it myself, but I hear really good things about that Vision book he wrote a few years back. That book was why everyone was so excited about him writing Batman right? That turned out well.

 

[Cletus Kasady]

View attachment 1968426
Maybe I’m biased, but this was a really good start!

Not sure how I feel about power rings name change but yeah I liked it alot.

 

[GranDuke]

I haven't read it myself, but I hear really good things about that Vision book he wrote a few years back. That book was why everyone was so excited about him writing Batman right? That turned out well.

I liked Vision, Omega Men and Sheriff of Babylon. Sheriff is funny to me in a sense that it takes place in Iraq so it sounds like an obvious work to go full trauma, yet it probably has least amounts of it.

 

[Cletus Kasady]

I liked Vision, Omega Men and Sheriff of Babylon. Sheriff is funny to me in a sense that it takes place in Iraq so it sounds like an obvious work to go full trauma, yet it probably has least amounts of it.

I've heard good things about vision.

 

[Flaming Carrot]

I haven't read it myself, but I hear really good things about that Vision book he wrote a few years back. That book was why everyone was so excited about him writing Batman right? That turned out well.

His Vision series is really good. He also wrote a really good comic where Batman meets Elmer Fudd. I know that sound idiotic, but it's fantastic. I think he just needs a editor who's willing to tell him no, because sometimes he can do great work.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

His Vision series is really good. He also wrote a really good comic where Batman meets Elmer Fudd. I know that sound idiotic, but it's fantastic. I think he just needs a editor who's willing to tell him no, because sometimes he can do great work.

needing an editor to tard wrangle him sounds like something a lot of these modern comics writers need.

 

[Lucifer's Rectum]

needing an editor to tard wrangle him sounds like something a lot of these modern comics writers need.

Agreed. Idk if you read the first issue of Bendis's Justice League book that just came out, but there's a lot less Bendisisms than I normally see in his work, and the issue is better for it. You can kind of tell his editor said "no, that's retarded, cut it the fuck back".

 

[jspit2.0]

I have yet to read the last issue, but The Green Lantern might be seriously one of the most underrated books to have come out in the last decade. Since they want to put Hal on the shelf, this is the last ride he deserves, his own All-Star Green Lantern.

I can't wait for Sharp's Batman book, He is the perfect fit for the character and the magazine sized book is exactly what his art deserves.

I feel like it's kindof dipped after that first arc. Blackstars was really good. Then they got to Season Two and it kindof was more miss than hit.

i hate to say it, but

between Tom King and the Dangerhair Crowd. I'd pick up a Tom King book because he often gets decent artists.


I pirate in minecraft.

Friends don't let friends read Tom King.

Honestly I don't think I'd pick up either. Tom King writing a book is as much of a red flag as the Dangerhair Crowd and all the other trash in this industry. As someone who doesn't have the best mental health at times, a lot of Tom King's recent work has been pretty fucking offensive to me. Besides just the terrible writing and character assassination, his work paints people who deal with mental illness in a pretty bad light. The Dangerhairs go too far in the other direction and try to be so inclusive that they just write pandering garbage that wants to preach at me about how shitty I am for being white, male AND straight. Lets just say that there's a reason I only buy trades.

You're right though, they do tend to put pretty decent artists on King's books.

Just like Scott Snyder, Tom King has wasted years of some truly great artists' lives.

King's early work was good till he went full "muh trauma", dangehairs never wrote anything good.

No they weren't. I'm sorry but his autistic dialogue? His boring ass, decompressed stories? All date back to fucking Grayson. His best stories were middling (GL Darkseid war; Vision). He's Bendis. Some creative ideas muddled by a complete lack of writing talent and a horrible inability to adapt to genre.

In Comic news,

Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's 3rd volume of Batman Earth One is coming out. Considering Frank is a slow ass artist who has been working on this thing for years, it's likely this is a legacy project.

With the revelation that Geoff and Frank are working on a project at image, that Fabok is not working on a followup to 3 J's at present, and what we know about the state of DC. My impression is Frank got spooked by the rumors and might have made sure to push this in to get it done and out. Considering that Johns and Frank's books sell well, this should be the big DC book coming out this quarter.

In reprints...

Marvel and DC continue to play catch up. Epic Collection, Omnibus, and others are all starting to drop again.

Indie wise, the big news is legendary Conan artist Barry Windsor Smith is set to drop his Monster, a decade long project.

Originally a Hulk story, much like LifeDeath, Monster has sprawled to become its own thing.

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

I had no idea Barry Windsor Smith was still alive. Something to keep an eye open for.

I haven't read any of the new DC stuff besides Suicide Squad last week, which I enjoyed. For those of you that have been picking up more of the new books though, what are your early thoughts?

I started reading Man-Bat on Yaboi Zack's recommendation he's still good for something and it's decent. It's got a kind of a Jekyll and Hyde, devil-on-the-shoulder thing going, and I'm enjoying the art. The biggest problem is that it's bouncing around between villains of the week a little too quickly, and the next one is - urgh - Harley Quinn.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

i like barry windsor-smith's work. it's always consistently good.

 

[sKr0n]

I feel like it's kindof dipped after that first arc. Blackstars was really good. Then they got to Season Two and it kindof was more miss than hit.

I can see how people feel that, personally I liked all the Hyperman/ other cosmic non-sense in the second half quite a bit, I know quite a lot of people hate the bird issue, but outside of that I thought it was pretty solid, some of it definitely feels a little disjointed going from issue to issue but that's no surprise considering editorial played with the final issue count like a fucking accordion.

i like barry windsor-smith's work. it's always consistently good.

I recently had the pleasure of picking up Weapon X and Machine Man 2020 BWS nails it out of the park every time, it's the subtle visual story telling in his art that really pushes it forward.

Due to the recent Hellblazer talk I was thinking about picking up the complete collection TPBs but:
1) The covers are ugly. They have all this wonderful cover art from the issues the trades collect but instead go with new, cartoon-y looking art.

I recently bought the first half of Hellblazer in part because of this thread and in part to actually own it before the show comes out and you could not be more right about the covers, I don't know what happened but all the Pre-Vertigo covers were super expressionistic and surreal and very much art pieces on their own, the post Vertigo Launch while not bad is very much the style of Fabry and Dillon, certainly a shake up to say the least. But those TBP covers are something else, zero imagination and sucks all the personality out of life out of the cover and story.

Thought I would post my favourite and least favouite to give people a general idea.

Bonus points to the tentacles that never even appear in the story and are just space filler because they had no ideas to make a interesting cover. John standing on a pack of cigarettes does not give the same feeling of existential dread that the originals had, with seeing death everywhere and feeling like you are burning alive. FFS just swipe that shit.

 

[jspit2.0]

I can see how people feel that, personally I liked all the Hyperman/ other cosmic non-sense in the second half quite a bit, I know quite a lot of people hate the bird issue, but outside of that I thought it was pretty solid, some of it definitely feels a little disjointed going from issue to issue but that's no surprise considering editorial played with the final issue count like a fucking accordion.

I was thinking more the Earth Gender Swap. The character designs were atrocious and the concept was cringe as executed.

And the bird issue too.

I recently had the pleasure of picking up Weapon X and Machine Man 2020 BWS nails it out of the park every time, it's the subtle visual story telling in his art that really pushes it forward.

He really did. He did the pivotal Iron Man 232

He came along way from the Jack Kirby clone he started as in 70s

He hacked away drawing Avengers, Uncanny X-men, and Nick Fury before his work on some horror titles caught Roy Thomas' eye. Thomas picked him up to work on the newly acquired Conan License. Over the course of two years his artwork progressed quite a bit.

However, BWS real strength isn't in excelling at one thing. He's not great at faces, his linework isn't on that next. What he really gets is how the art comes together.

He left Marvel in the 70s to return a decade later. He'd do about twenty projects for marvel, mostly with Chris Claremont.

Then he left, helping establish Valiant. He drew Jim Shooter's Solar Man of the Atom origin, helped design the character line, drew X-O Manowars first issue, drew the book ends of Unity, drew threw issues of Eternal Warrior, and ended his tenure as chief art guru with a section of the Deathmate crossover where Jim Lee inked him.

His line is that he was disenchanted with how Valiant was treating creators, I think it was that and they were planning to replace him with Joe Quesada. He can be prickly.

He wound up doing all the covers for Jim Lee's Wildstorm rising and pencilling the first bookend written by James Robinson. He'd later go on to express his utter contempt for Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld in an interview.

He took another stab at a company collab, this time with Malibu. He created, drew, and wrote Rune. Six issues, a prologue, an annual, and a doublesized crossover with Conan. The Marvel buyout left him jaded and he jumped ship. He went to Dark Horse and did a series called freebooters, which enabled him to recycle some of his old stories Marvel had stopped, such as LifeDeath III.

he briefly returned to Marvel in the early 00s for some very spartan covers and a brief sequence as well as attempting to secure a project at the Big two for a time, despite all of his trash talk. After that fell through, he's spent the last twenty years on Monsters.

 

[Giga_Nigga_28]

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Why do they have to do this to my Supergirl!???!

Unpopular opinion but nothing King has done for DC was ever 'that' good. Grayson was okay but was co-written, only the absolute first arc of his Batman run is consistently good everything after that was just Bat-manchild reiterating how much he needs Catwoman in his life while completely ignoring the non-thot family that he actually has, and the less said about Mr. Miracle and the Omega Men the better.

Morisson's The Green Lantern was so good, I'm actually pretty bummed that it's over. You can tell he was pretty pissed off with the management at DC in those last few issues though, so I don't know how many stories like that we'll be seeing. At least Sharp is coming back with Ennis this summer, so that's somehting to look forward to.

It was refreshing to see a Lantern comic which wasn't just the Green Lanterns fighting a bunch of recolours. There's so much potential for creativity in a Lantern story, with all the crazy aliens and the literal unlimited power to create any construct imaginable, but 90% of the time it seems to boil down to 'make a speech about willpower and then hit the bad guy with a giant green fist/baseball bat/plane'.

Seeing Hal on his own as a sort of detatched figure was really effective, I thought. Since he's distanced himself from the corps and doesn't really fit in on earth anymore, it'll be interesting to see where he goes next. There definitely an oppoutunity there for some wacky space adventures without having to deal with lantern nonsense.

The fact that it didn't get more attention shows how shit the comic book industry is, it's literally All-Star GL. Morrison shitting on Dc for replacing Hal with the new diverse Oc's was also pretty funny. My only criticism is drop in art quality when Sharp stated doing his own colours since in some places it really didn't work. And did anyone get the feeling that Grant wanted Hal to end up with his ring? the whole will+love direction seemed a tad bit...strange.

 

[admiral]

The fact that it didn't get more attention shows how shit the comic book industry is, it's literally All-Star GL. Morrison shitting on Dc for replacing Hal with the new diverse Oc's was also pretty funny. My only criticism is drop in art quality when Sharp stated doing his own colours since in some places it really didn't work. And did anyone get the feeling that Grant wanted Hal to end up with his ring? the whole will+love direction seemed a tad bit...strange.

The ring is Hal's Cortana: a hot A.I. waifu that's obligated to do what he says and go where he goes with none of that 'I have my own career and life actually' stuff that he had with Carol. It's interesting how pathetic he seemed when he was trying to get her to come with him.

I was wondering if the last few issues would be the guardians trying to take the ring and him refusing, but I guess since he made it himself out of his own will they can't really tell him to do shit.

 

[Moguro Fukuzou]

Recently got around to finishing up the first volume of Morrison's Doom Patrol that I bought awhile ago, ended up enjoying it a lot even if it was really weird at times. Very much felt the phrase "How many drugs was Morrison on when he wrote this? YES." popping into my head at several moments. I ended up really enjoy the main cast and how they bounced off each other or even their interactions with villains/other heroes. Like there was a part where they briefly meant some other heroes and there was a clear awkwardness between the two groups with the other heroes not really "getting" the Doom Patrol and Doom Patrol seemingly wary of those outside their group.

Will look into picking up the later volumes at some point. Reading the little blurb he did at the beginning of the book he discussed trying to bring the weirdness back from the original series in the 60s and I'm just wondering if anyone knows if that holds true about the original. If it's anything like the weirdness of Morrison's run then I'd love to check out the original at some point. There's also the later runs I might look into if they keep up the weird.

Still not sure who I'd consider my favorite comic writer, but I've been enjoying Morrison's works simply for how apologetically weird they always are. I've also found I vastly enjoy reading physically for comics over online since it helps keep my focus a lot better, weird since I don't really have this probably while reading manga online.

 

[kaien]

He really did. He did the pivotal Iron Man 232

Reading this when I was younger I totally failed to pick up that the armor/bartender there is a riff on The Shining.

I remember Larry Hama paid BWS kind of the ultimate backhanded compliment, in that Weapon X was pretty much the only Wolverine story Hama would acknowledge as part of continuity that he didn't write himself.

 

[Giga_Nigga_28]

The ring is Hal's Cortana: a hot A.I. waifu that's obligated to do what he says and go where he goes with none of that 'I have my own career and life actually' stuff that he had with Carol. It's interesting how pathetic he seemed when he was trying to get her to come with him.

I thought it was a pretty humanizing moment for Hal to be torn between the love of his life and his obligations as a lantern, it's just that it's difficult to empathize with Carol when Hal is saving the world on the daily especially when she spent so much of the nu52 as Star Sapphire. One would think she'd be less materially focused after going into space a few times. I just wish writers would do something with their relationship instead of constantly breaking them up but I guess Morrison thought a ring gf was superior (and she kinda is). If anything instead of the gender-swap world an issue with the bird alien and Ultramans meth addiction would've been interesting.

 

[admiral]

I thought it was a pretty humanizing moment for Hal to be torn between the love of his life and his obligations as a lantern, it's just that it's difficult to empathize with Carol when Hal is saving the world on the daily especially when she spent so much of the nu52 as Star Sapphire. One would think she'd be less materially focused after going into space a few times. I just wish writers would do something with their relationship instead of constantly breaking them up but I guess Morrison thought a ring gf was superior (and she kinda is). If anything instead of the gender-swap world an issue with the bird alien and Ultramans meth addiction would've been interesting.

Oh yeah, I liked that Hal was made to choose. I guess their relationship's been strung out so long though that if a writer got them together for good then the excitement would probably be lost, and if Morisson's Hal is anything to go by then he would probably stop going on so many adventures if he had a proper full time gf. The rejection worked with Morisson since he was showing how disconnected Hal had become from earth, but sometimes their constant break ups can got boring. You sometimes wonder why he even bothers when he clearly sleeps with other girls/girl-like-things on the side.

Is it just me, or has Kyle sort of vanished? He was in the 80 year anniversary, but I don't remember seeing him around recently. It's a shame, I think he's the most likeable of the original 4. Given the way he's drawn they could probably retcon him as Asian, and I soubt anyone would really notice.