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Comics X: The Great Ten


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Wicked and Divine #1: Good book, though the "live fast, die young" thing seems kinda 90s or 60s/70s? Makes sense as that's Gillen's plane of existence. Love McKlevie's art as always, and I like the groupie/worshiper angle as well. The storyline could almost be about mutants cycling through rather than gods so far, which I actually like as it allows Gillen to tap into the "you gotta have faith" angle of religion.



Unwritten Apocalypse #6: Another great issue. All the stuff about metaphors and locations is coming to the fore, as our own fictions give humanity the means to save - or end - the world. Earlier aspects of the series are revealing their importance. Can't say much more without spoiling but I did love this line: "...being a vampire isn't the same as being a cunt..."


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That's exactly what I was going to call it. Although I also debated some kind of pun on "x" with men/people/factor.



From the last thread wrt to Remender's event. I'm curious to see how he does, It's a shame it's spilling out into other books from Uncanny but at the same time it's good to see the title really is at the centre of things.


I'm evented out at the moment though AvX was dumb but at least I knew exactly what the premise was. I'm still not sure what the real hook for "original sin" is and this event just feels like "Red Skull Onslaught was cool - so we expanded it". I'm not that interested in the "evil Avengers/axis" concept as I thought that's what the whole Dark Avengers was about.


I know I like to harp on about events but when Marvel's publishing calendar is a continuous string of events then by definition it can't be an event. Just like a shop can't have a "sale" on all the time.


DC with their weekly events make more sense to me as they aren't really making it a huge crossover thing (yet)



Impatiently waiting for a new issue of Lazarus to come out although I think it must be taking one of those 2 month gaps that image titles seem to love so much. Painful wait.


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I think it's good that AXIS won't be limited to Uncanny Avengers (or UA + Cap). A bit too late to give this series the centrality we expected when it was announced as the flagship title of Marvel Now, perhaps, but still satisfying. It can't be worse than the last few events. But I'll confess I'm mostly looking forward to it for UA and the Magneto feels; can't say that I care about the rest.



Original Sin has been fun, but weak. And, I dunno, I tend to think events are a lot more fun when we don't know what exactly they're supposed to be about. Original Sin is exactly what was promised: a murder mystery around who killed the Watcher where we learn the secrets of some random (aka popular because of the MCU) Marvel characters. Which is turning out to be incredibly dull. Getting tired of all of Nick Fury's secrets involving LMDs...


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I think it's good that AXIS won't be limited to Uncanny Avengers (or UA + Cap). A bit too late to give this series the centrality we expected when it was announced as the flagship title of Marvel Now, perhaps, but still satisfying. It can't be worse than the last few events. But I'll confess I'm mostly looking forward to it for UA and the Magneto feels; can't say that I care about the rest.

Original Sin has been fun, but weak. And, I dunno, I tend to think events are a lot more fun when we don't know what exactly they're supposed to be about. Original Sin is exactly what was promised: a murder mystery around who killed the Watcher where we learn the secrets of some random (aka popular because of the MCU) Marvel characters. Which is turning out to be incredibly dull. Getting tired of all of Nick Fury's secrets involving LMDs...

Sounds like Magneto's involvement in AXIS starts pretty soon.

Original Sin to me sounds like they had a name for an event (or were inspired by "trinity of sin") and just threw several random concepts together, Nothing about the event feels very cohesive more like a bunch of ideas left on the summit floor forced into an event because they have to have one. 10 years ago a mini-series called "who killed the watcher" would have been enough. Can't blame Marvel though as throwing "event" on it and tieing everything into it has probably resulted in sales being far higher than said mini would have been.

What the hell was up with that Ron Wimberley art on She-Hulk?

I only saw a preview but I was struck by how ugly it was. Could wind up being an artist who is great but I'm definitely not used to that style. The Batman eternal art was also strange but I liked that.

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Since I discovered that a tablet is a really good way to read comics (contrary to something with an e-ink display... *shudder*) I've been reading quite a bit of Marvel and DC stuff since soliciting Superman story recommendations in the last thread. Speaking of which, I don't think I said proper thanks for that, both Red Son and All Star Superman were good fun.



Brief research however showed that All Star Batman is a comic to run away from really, really fast, so I decided to go look at another part of the DC universe I know next to nothing about. Since I enjoyed Marvel's big space opera run from Annihilation to Thanos Imperative and the Green Lantern books post Rebirth are also a series of interconnected story arcs, I decided to go with that.



Overall, not a bad decision, but obviously there are some flaws.


One example is DC's decision to never explain anything to potential new readers. The Anti Monitor is Sinestro's backer in one story and plays another big part in a huge crossover event (Blackest Night), but it's not until a while after those two stories that there's a bit of an explanation who or what the hell he actually is.


Also, I get quickly bored with any story that hinges upon how Earth is the most important thing in the universe, and DC is extremely fond of this, it seems, what with Earth being the centre of the entire multiverse.


Then there's the insistence on focusing so much on Hal Jordan, blandest of the Earth Lanterns. The one bit of backstory we get explained over and over again is how he saw his father die in a plane crash when he was a kid and how he got his ring, but knowing where he comes from in this case doesn't help to make him interesting. He still comes across as emotionally detached from pretty much everyone (including his not-really-ex-girlfriend) and appears to win through mostly through luck rather than a defining character trait ("willpower" doesn't count, all Green Lanterns have that in abundance, after all). Guy Gardener is very similar, but there's a clear sense that he cares about people, while John Stewart and Kyle Rayner are haunted by past mistakes they blame themselves for, but Hal is "the greatest Green Lantern" simply by virtue of being told that repeatedly, apparently and can seem to do no wrong.


One thing where I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature is how impressively stupid the Guardians of the Universe come across, and that's before you factor in the supposed life experience of a billion years or so.



I'm getting a bit tired of the series, but I can't seem to find a good place to drop it, one arc just flows into the next. I was hoping that once I hit the New 52 reboot it would stop, but apparently the Green Lantern books are the one place where that was completely ignored, never mind that most of the Earth based characters' backstories now make no sense anymore. Well, the DC universe doesn't appear to be a place to visit if one values continuity, maybe I should honor that fact and just stop reading without caring about an ending. ;)




On the Marvel side, they have their own online store and constantly put stuff on sale, tempting me to sample various things. Almost as evil as Steam sales when it comes to getting me to part with my money.



One thing I tried picked up was a chunk of Claremont's X-Men run. Man, comics in the 70s sure where different animals. It's actually interesting to see how many of these iconic storylines take up very little space. Days of Future Past is two issues, no buildup, no aftermath.


Some of the "lesser" stories are plain weird (let's take a trip to Ireland and team up with a bunch of leprechauns to take down the Juggernaut), a lot of it is villain of the week shenanigans (take over the world, start WWIII, kill all mutants, sink Japan...), and even Magneto falls more in this category when he shows up. In his defence, he appears to want vengeance for the X-Men turning him into a toddler and then locking him up. Thinking about that, it's probably a good thing he got to go back to his villanous ways, since this kind of child abuse is really a PR disaster waiting to happen. Not that mutants have such a bad rep at this point, they seem to work with the authorities just fine, and even get called up when the Avengers are busy elsewhere.


Still, it's kind of weird when they go and recruit 13 year old Kitty Pride. Not necessarily because they're mutants, but because she leaves home and moves in with a bunch of strangers who look like they're at least 30 and subject her to training that would kill her if she ever for one second messed up the use of her power. Of course, the alternative to her was apparently Dazzler, who seems to have the power of Disco. Between that and walking through walls I know what I'd want in a fight.


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The original claremont X-men (up until sister titles started to appear) run is a genuine classic and when I went and read it from getting into comics in the 90s it explained why the x-franchise became so huge. I've no idea if other books were of this quality and style back then but I'd probably give them a shot if they were. I've heard good things about Walt Simonson's Thor not sure if that was the same era or not.



Been reading Gillen's "young Avengers" and I'm very impressed - so much so that I'd like to read more of kid loki. Does anyone know where his arcs are collected? I think it was Journey into Mystery and recall folk here loving the run?



This week. Had to give "Outcast" a go. Not instantly impressed to be honest. While the art is good at setting a horror vibe, I found it pretty confusing in places and the narration (or lack of) did not matters. Maybe I should just wait for the TV show as i get the impression it's going to take a long time for this series to get to the point. It would be like waiting 3 trades before the Zombies show up.



Another comic that was let down due to narration and art was "letter 44". The problem here was that I didn't have a clue who the characters were. I'm assuming they were part of the crew before becoming part of the crew but the lack of exposition and the fact the characters weren't drawn by the regular artist left me lost. The art is otherwise good better than usual in fact. I know comics don't like messing up trade paperbacks with captions but they could have had something on the title page saying who the characters were. I shouldn't have to dig out other issues (and didn't)

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Been reading Gillen's "young Avengers" and I'm very impressed - so much so that I'd like to read more of kid loki. Does anyone know where his arcs are collected? I think it was Journey into Mystery and recall folk here loving the run?

That's on my to-read list, too. His Journey into Mystery run starts on issue 622, 622-626 are collected as Fear Itself, so that's going to be my first stop.

If I enjoy that I'm also going take a look at his Iron Man.

ETA:

Dazzler is surprisingly powerful. She managed to hurt Galactus once, which is no mean feat. And X-treme X-Men was one of the better x-books from the last couple of years, which she starred in.

Pah, Galactus is a big purple baby as long as you feed him regularly.;)

In the issue Dazzler appeared all she did was put on a little lightshow. I'm sure she's been more impressive since or the character wouldn't be around any more.

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That's on my to-read list, too. His Journey into Mystery run starts on issue 622, 622-626 are collected as Fear Itself, so that's going to be my first stop.

If I enjoy that I'm also going take a look at his Iron Man.

I can't comment on Iron Man but I get the impression it's not as well received as his Avengers and Journey into Mystery work. He also had a run on X-men but that seemed to have the rug pulled out from it with Bendis turning up.

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I can't comment on Iron Man but I get the impression it's not as well received as his Avengers and Journey into Mystery work. He also had a run on X-men but that seemed to have the rug pulled out from it with Bendis turning up.

Well, I'll give it a shot anyway, I think. I picked up the first collection of the current (?) run of Guardians of the Galaxy (since it has the team composition from the movie plus Iron Man for marketing important plot reasons) and the bad writing and complete dismissal of any semblance of continuity with the previous run actually made me angry. I hadn't realised I had become so invested, but it also led to the conclusion that I should pay much more attention to the writer than the characters featured in any given story.

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Well, I'll give it a shot anyway, I think. I picked up the first collection of the current (?) run of Guardians of the Galaxy (since it has the team composition from the movie plus Iron Man for marketing important plot reasons) and the bad writing and complete dismissal of any semblance of continuity with the previous run actually made me angry. I hadn't realised I had become so invested, but it also led to the conclusion that I should pay much more attention to the writer than the characters featured in any given story.

Welcome to the writing talents of Brian Michael Bendis! Where apparently it's absolutely fine to ignore everything that came before as long as your character talk a lot.

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Welcome to the writing talents of Brian Michael Bendis! Where apparently it's absolutely fine to ignore everything that came before as long as your character talk a lot.

Wait, Bendis?

You mean the writer, Bendis, the writer of comic books?

Are you saying Bendis characters talk a lot? Probably in a very specific and noticeable way?

I mean I think that's what you are saying, but -is- it what you are saying?

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Wait, Bendis?

You mean the writer, Bendis, the writer of comic books?

Are you saying Bendis characters talk a lot? Probably in a very specific and noticeable way?

I mean I think that's what you are saying, but -is- it what you are saying?

LOL

That and how it takes him 6 panels to cover an actual sentence of information :)

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Welcome to the writing talents of Brian Michael Bendis! Where apparently it's absolutely fine to ignore everything that came before as long as your character talk a lot.

Right, putting Bendis on ignore...

So, is there anything comparable to All Star Superman for Wonder Woman? Something that encapsulates the character and tells a complete story?

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Right, putting Bendis on ignore...

So, is there anything comparable to All Star Superman for Wonder Woman? Something that encapsulates the character and tells a complete story?

Grant Morrison has what is essentially "all star Wonder Woman" coming out as a graphic novel at some point this year in 2015. It's probably your best bet. I can't think of any other "fun" runs of Wonder Woman from the last decade. The current run since the new 52 launched is supposed to be good but many say she's a guest star in that book,

Some folks love Bendis - they must do given how well his work sells. I haven't been a fan in a long while. His solo books are fairly good but I tend to find he's a bad match with any character that I know well. One exception to that is Ultimate Spider-man which I enjoyed the first 7 volumes out of and only stopped when the regular Spider books were interesting (and couldn't justify reading two interpretations of the same character).

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Is anyone still reading Uncanny Avengers? Those last few pages brought tears to my eyes; beautiful. But not half as great as the New Avengers Annual; I need that creative team in a Doctor Strange solo!






I can't comment on Iron Man but I get the impression it's not as well received as his Avengers and Journey into Mystery work. He also had a run on X-men but that seemed to have the rug pulled out from it with Bendis turning up.





I read his first few Iron Man issues and, wow, it sucks. I think Gillen is great writing young and/or outsiders, and Tony is neither, so it ends up a terrible match. His Uncanny X-Men runs is possibly my favorite of the decade, and I can forgive Marvel for cutting it short just to have their golden boy create a mess of the book and prove he has no idea what revolution is supposed to mean. I even enjoyed his Generation Hope, one of the few times the character wasn't extremely annoying. Plus, I really liked Zero. But it was a good thing they cancelled that book so soon.



Journey Into Mystery, though, is the best thing he wrote for Marvel. His Kid Loki is one of the most fascinating characters of the decade; a pity they had to turn him into a hot young adult. I didn't really like Young Avengers - well, I did at first, until I realized it was all over the place, it had some consent issues that were never properly addressed, and most of the characters didn't really have a personality distinctive for each other, except for Billy and Loki. Still, McKelvie's art is great, and I appreciate their effort to bring more diversity to Marvel.


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I've got a stockpile of uncanny Avengers to catch up on. Plan to get up to date before Axis.



Only read the opening arc of young avengers but was really impressed. Then again it could be the amazing art and Loki that carries it. I also like Avengers Arena and still need to try out the sequel.


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The current run since the new 52 launched is supposed to be good but many say she's a guest star in that book,

I don't think she's a guest star, really. Maybe you're thinking of Superman/Wonder Woman? I know that she's meant to be a co-star there, but at least the beginning was fairly Supes-centric.

In her own book, she's the star, but there you've got a writer who was told the new 52 was a reboot and actually took it seriously enough to revamp the character. Now she's centered much more on Greek mythology, but since she was appearing in other books the rest of the DCU's uneven about the changes outside her own book, and it will probably all be massively retconned in a few years. Now, it is good, but if dis-continuity bothers you, not sure how you'd feel about it.

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This week. Had to give "Outcast" a go. Not instantly impressed to be honest. While the art is good at setting a horror vibe, I found it pretty confusing in places and the narration (or lack of) did not matters.

I wasn't impressed either. Not sure if I'll pick up the next issue, probably not.

Picked up the first issue of "Trees", it was interesting enough, could have potential.

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