What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

I'm with you on the exotic dancers front.

Using Marvel Unlimited to read the entire Ultimates run. I have a timeline somewhere recommending the order of reading and Marvel Unlimited has everything.

Just read Ultimate Marvel Team Ups #9. What a load of shit!! Bendis trying to do an entire comic of in-jokes at the expense of any serious plot AND shitty art work that belongs in a poor indie comic. I hope it got panned as much as it should have at the time.

On a more general note....too many words on a page.

Quite enjoyed Ultimate Electra/Daredevil (I don't think Bendis was involved in this).

I know you guys tend to rag on Bendis around here, but his run on Ultimate Spider-man is pretty much the gem of the Ultimate universe. If you don't enjoy that, well I am not sure it will be worth the effort.

And dammit, Kim Thompson, who co-ran Fantagraphics, died:

www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=c...-RIP.html&Itemid=113

It wasn't Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen that elevated comics, it was companies like Fantagraphics nurturing work beyond superhero bullshit. His death is a great loss to comics.

I bought several of the Fantagraphics guides back in the '80s. Avengers, Daredevil, X-Men, maybe Fantastic Four, plus a special one for Crisis on Infinite Earths. The guides listed all the issues for a given title and gave very brief synopsis of each with writer, artist, issue title, and maybe key characters that appeared. Even better, they had great interviews with creative teams on those books, plus previously unpublished artwork of those characters, sometimes including artists who didn't normally work on those characters. For example, the Daredevil Fantagraphics guide included a very nice picture of Daredevil by George Perez. The Crisis on Infinite Earths one was very useful because it listed all the myriad crossover issues and suggested a reading order.

Stormcow wrote: I know you guys tend to rag on Bendis around here, but his run on Ultimate Spider-man is pretty much the gem of the Ultimate universe. If you don't enjoy that, well I am not sure it will be worth the effort.

I didn't say I'm not enjoying the Spiderman issues, as clearly I am continuing to read them, but the issue I mentioned was absolutely terrible full of unfunny in jokes. YMMV.

Hmmmm, at least in the Legion comics I'm starting with, it's not at all hard to follow. There's a lot of soapy backstory that I'm not familiar with, but in classic Claremont & Wolfman tradition, everyone says (or thinks, in a thought balloon) exactly what they're feeling and what's going on, so I never feel lost. And yes, everyone is named ___ Lad or Lass, which makes it incredibly easy to figure out superpowers. The ones I have a hard time distinguishing between are like Cosmic Boy / Star Boy / someone else who sounds like that, where the name doesn't describe the powers at all.

Barnes liking Starman is a good sign, because one of the things I was most worried about with Starman is obnoxious pop-culture/hipster references, and since I know that bugs you too that comforts me. Like, what's shown here:
www.comicsalliance.com/2011/06/17/ask-ch...-fried-super-heroes/

PS: Ultimate Spider-Man lovers, was the "Warriors" storyline (with Moon Knight, Iron Fist, Hammerhead, etc.) just an especially low point for the series, or is the whole series like that?

Legomancer wrote: And dammit, Kim Thompson, who co-ran Fantagraphics, died:

www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=c...-RIP.html&Itemid=113

It wasn't Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen that elevated comics, it was companies like Fantagraphics nurturing work beyond superhero bullshit. His death is a great loss to comics.

The Comics Journal website last night broke the news to me, and I just sat there stunned and actually devastated, more devastated than I've been by any other comics-maker-death in the last five years or so.

This guy was a HUGE publishing force. Certainly he was *the* force behind all of Fantagraphics' foreign comics, and I believe he was the major force behind the classic comic strip reprints, moreso than Gary Groth. His death is a huge blow to the vision behind Fantagraphics, *easily* the best current comics publisher in existence. On a purely selfish level, his death makes me concerned about my ability to read the comics I want to read in the future, moreso than all but one other death I could imagine would.

It really fucking sucks. I'll miss seeing him at Comic Con every year, too.

quozl wrote: Has anyone read the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics put out by IDW?

My family got me the two Micro-Series books for Father's Day and they were really good. I'm interested in the longer ones now.

I've got the whole run so far. It takes some time finding its feet, and that first story certainly has some moments that make you want to give up entirely. I sort of stalled on reading them as I bought them, but one of the guys at the local comic shop stayed up to date on it and urged me to press on past the first couple story arcs or so. Glad I did, it does turn out to be pretty cool.

Sorry for all the posts in a row, but I also reread The Killing Joke last night, since I just sold off my DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore book (you guys were too late, Amazon won the race). I checked out the recolored version from the library to read it and then compare to the old-school version. So first of all, the comic itself: it is *the most* overrated Alan Moore comic, and it's not even remotely close. It's at or near the bottom of all the Alan Moore comics I own, and people compare it to the BEST Alan Moore comics???!? But beyond being overrated, it's just not all that good. There is not much meat on this comic's bones; it's both cruel AND shallow. Best thing about it is the art, easy; Bolland draws a great Joker.

Now, the re-coloring: goodness knows I usually get upset about re-coloring, and I think the much-praised new coloring of Simonson's Thor actually honest-to-God ruins what I like about the art. Here, I'm actually not sure which I prefer (okay, fine, I definitely prefer the original coloring, but the new one has its strengths). What matters, though, is that the coloring was by far the most interesting thing for me in this re-read: it is radically, drastically different between the two versions. The old coloring looks like an acid trip nightmare, and is intense and makes you queasy *just* through the coloring! The new coloring is incredibly cold, using more realistic colors for everything which tones down just about every color but Joker's lips, which pop out on every page. I also LOVE the new coloring of the flashbacks, which has that same "make you queasy" effect through how it foregrounds those damn crawfish in every panel, and connects the Red Hood to them. The final reveal of the Joker in flashback, probably the most frequently reprinted image of the Joker, is significantly worse in the new coloring, though. Anyway, just something to think about if you buy the book. On a more nitpicky note, there are some obviously annoying things done in the new coloring: removing the yellow around Batman's chest symbol, and, even worse, there are a lot of points where what was clearly intended to be water is now colored red and therefore changed to be blood; this is at its worst in the aforementioned Joker reveal. Also, facial expressions are changed throughout the book, most notably a couple big changes in the last 4 pages.

Okay, I've actually been reading a bunch of stuff, including good stuff, BUT: for some terrible reason I thought I'd read a little more Y The Last Man yesterday, give it more of a shot; I figured I'm two thirds of the way through, why not just finish it and at least see what the ending was. Fuck, that comic is TERRIBLE. First of all, I do not get the impression that Brian K. Vaughan cares at all about the series except as a way to hang funny things into people's mouths and to throw some plot twists in that he thought would be cool; it feels like a writer trying to impress people rather than being personal. Second of all, even given that, the writing sucks. The last issue I read last night was a kind of origin issue for Agent 355, Yorick's badass guide.

The origin is triggered by...as far as I can tell, it's triggered because Yorick runs away from cannibals, and cannibals make Agent 355 think of the end of the "origin" in which she bites into someone's throat to kill them.

Agent 355's dad spends some time early on talking about the reasons for men's & women's coats to be buttoned on opposite sides. Other than "this is about differences in gender, and hey, this series is all about gender!", there's no real reason for this at all; it reads transparently as Vaughan shoving in some factoids he learned while trawling for gender-difference factoids.

There is a training sequence, which I had to read multiple times because it was so choppy and confusing: why the hell is the mentor talking about how the jaw is such a strong muscle? Why does the mentor, a woman training a woman, transition very abruptly from the jaw to talking about how men are always armed even when unarmed? These random things are thrown out abruptly and without a context in which they make sense. By the end of the comic, it was clear why these things were clumsily shoved in there: so Agent 355 could quote them while kicking her mentor's ass at the end. Duh. The very VERY clear thought process was: "man, it'd be sweet if she made these quips in the big battle! I'll foreshadow them with a training sequence".

Finally...her mentor is shown attempting to assassinate Clinton because of "what he did to Monica Lewinsky". No, really: that's the motive. That's gotta be one of the least plausible assassination reasons supposedly from an intelligent badass I've ever heard.

The art throughout the book is incredibly consistently boring, despite using multiple artists. The fact that this is a comic book and not a TV show does not seem to have ever crossed anyone's minds, so we get a bunch of talking heads and last-page shocker splash panels.

Josh Look wrote:

quozl wrote: Has anyone read the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics put out by IDW?

My family got me the two Micro-Series books for Father's Day and they were really good. I'm interested in the longer ones now.

I've got the whole run so far. It takes some time finding its feet, and that first story certainly has some moments that make you want to give up entirely. I sort of stalled on reading them as I bought them, but one of the guys at the local comic shop stayed up to date on it and urged me to press on past the first couple story arcs or so. Glad I did, it does turn out to be pretty cool.

I got the 5 collected books for my birthday a few days ago and I totally agree with you. The first bit is slow but it really starts ramping up. I'm excited to see what's next.

quozl wrote: I got the 5 collected books for my birthday a few days ago and I totally agree with you. The first bit is slow but it really starts ramping up. I'm excited to see what's next.

I just started to get into the micro-series stuff. Really cool, definitely check those out as well.

Outside of Runaways, which plays to his fee strengths, Brian Vaughn is the worst writer in modern comics. I'm not kidding. I'd rather read some fourth string Marvel or DC writer doing a bottom of the barrel about-to-be-canceled junk book than almost any of the inane, childish bullshit that man writes. Y is all about how men and women are different. How nutty! What an astute observation! The pop culture shit, the layer upon layer of smarm applied to every single god damned word his flimsy characters speak, the silly audience-baiting pandering... Ugh. And then there's Saga, which literally makes me nauseous when I remember reading eigt issues of that trite garbage.

Runaways works because its a story about smarmy teenagers and it feels like its written by a smarmy teenager. But smarmy teenagers shouldn't write about adult topics with adult characters.

Y and Saga are easily the two most overrated comics I've read in my entire life.

I really think you had to have read The Killing Joke when it came out, it was so impactful at the time. I remember almost every single panel of that book. Moore is actually not a great Batman writer, oddly.

Barnes, I got the first trade of BKV's Saga on the cheap and man, it bugs me. The story is okay but I hate the way every single one of his characters talk. As with Warren Ellis, every character talks the same way as though there's some kind of "badass asshole" contest going on that they're all looking to win. It makes me at best lose interest in and at worst dislike the characters and not care what happens to them. I had this problem as well with Ex Machina which I think had a stellar first issue but soon did the same thing. I dumped it when the main character tells someone, "You're a cunt hair away from being shot." Who the hell says shit like that other than comic book writers trying to impress comic book readers with their edginess?

It also doesn't help in Saga when he introduces the baddest of the bad-bad bounty hunters, a bounty hunter so badass that even badass bounty hunters go, "whoa, that badass bounty hunter is badass!" and when we see her she's immediately stymied by something that shouldn't have bugged her in the slightest. On the get rid of pile.

I also picked up (I was at a comics convention) God Hates Astronauts which I guess is a webcomic or something that I'd heard a lot of praise for but didn't know much about. Sure enough it's one of those OMG SO AWESOME Internet things that bug me, the kind of thing where someone says something like, "It's got mummy dinosaurs and alcoholic sentient table lamps, WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?" and the answer is: the fact that ALL it offers is mummy dinosaurs and alcoholic sentient table lamps. Get rid of.

(I also grabbed a cheap Batman: Year One because I figured I should finally read it but I just can't deal with either Frank Miller or Batman anymore.)

On the plus side, I picked up The Legend of Ricky Thunder by Kyle Starks and it was a lot of fun. Also got Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes by Matt Kindt and it was a might good, very layered read. I now want to try out his Mind Mgmt comic.

I enjoyed Y the Last Man for about the first 1/2 of the series, and then I think that the writing lost focus, as Vaughn began to get attention from both Marvel and Hollywood. But the last few issues bring the series to a satisfying close, and the last issue in particular is one of the finest comics that I've ever read, though it relies on knowledge of the series and doesn't stand on its own. This is also the series that got my girlfriend into comics. I handed her a stack of the first 56 issues of Y, figuring that she might read it over the course of the next few days. Instead, she stayed up til 5 AM that night, reading them all in one swoop. The next day, she wanted to know where issue #57 was, and I had to tell her that it hadn't been published yet. The next few months were tough for her, as it took Vertigo six months to publish the last four issues of the series.

I can't argue taste, so if you guys didn't like Y, then you didn't like it. But it's possible that Vaughn wasn't writing that series for every comic fan, and was instead looking to really connect with the Vertigo fans, and succeeded.

Although I enjoyed most of the Ex Machina series, I hated the final trade. The story took an unexpected dark, violent turn that didn't do justice to the well-developed characters. I tried the first volume of Saga, but didn't feel any great enthusiasm for it. For traditional comic fans, the BKV comic that I would recommend is Doctor Strange: The Oath. That four-issue mini is really fun, and the artwork is an amazing tribute to Steve Ditko's foundational run in Strange Tales. There is Night Nurse, robots, and Wong going all Shaolin on some bad guys, plus an interesting connection to Strange's past.