Comic Books

[Nephrite]

I agree. Really enjoyed his X-force run ad how it's doing its own thing. I'm probably 6 issues behind now as i haven't read anything since the end of the dark angel storyline but looking forward to catching up.

Brace yourself for some shitty art. Like... like they just took prelims and painted over them.

I've only read Hickman's "Shield" series which i was very impressed with. He seems to write in a dense style which is a breath of fresh air these days. I'd like to check his FF run and some of his creator owned stuff. He could possibly bring me back to the Avengers although i don't know what his handle is on Marvel characters yet.

You should definitely check out his FF run. Characters cross over between these two. You can enjoy them separately, obviously, but it's rewarding. And his Secret Warriors is amazing.

That vanished along with the novel the Listener when his computer died entirely and completely. He says he'll be completing Fell soon (but not The Listener, seems he moved onto another novel instead). One hopes he also learned a lesson about keeping backups of his writing on more than just one computer hard drive.

I think he did have back-ups, but it was a really shitty time to be Warren Ellis. I seem to remember he gave his computer for repairs, but the shop went under and they sold everything.

We lost Desolation Jones because of this.

As far as Ellis-Morrison goes... I'm gonna say Morrison. He has better emotional pay-off in his stories. Hell, Superman Beyond is like the best tie-in ever and one of the best Superman stories ever.

Ellis is great with ideas and tech-stuff, but the most emotional thing of his that I read was the text piece before Orbiter. For a second he didn't seem like a red-bull guzzling jerk.

As far as Millar goes. The nicest thing I could say is that he's a wannabe-Ennis. At worst a shameless self-promoting suck-up that stopped writing stories 10 years ago and started playing to the worst basic instincts his readership has and concentrated on making movie pitches and getting Marvel to print them on glossy paper.

[Sci-2]

This might be the right place to ask this - for those more soaked in literature, how heavily is Moore's drawing of tropes and perhaps even plot lines?

On the other hand, one really can't argue the man's range. Top 10 is not League is not Watchmen is not From Hell is not Promethea.

The guy manages to write so many kinds of characters when I go back to his stuff it's hard not to begrudgingly hand him the crown.

[Sci-2]

"And now there were two healthy universes living and growing inside our own. The DC universe was a series of islands separated for years, suddenly discovering one another and setting up trade routes. And there was Marvel’s beautifully orchestrated growth and development. Two living virtual worlds had been grown and nurtured inside conventional space-time. These were not like closed continua with beginnings, middles, and ends; the fictional “universe” ran on certain repeating rules but could essentially change and develop beyond the intention of its creators.

It was an evolving, learning, cybernetic system that could reproduce itself into the future using new generations of creators who would be attracted like worker bees to serve and renew the universe. Just as generations of aboriginal artists have taken it upon themselves to repaint the totems, so too does the enchanted environment of the comic-book dreamtime replicate itself through time. A superhero universe will change in order to remain viable and stay alive. As long as the signs stay constant—the trademark S shields and spiderweb patterns, and the copyrighted hero names—everything else can bend and adapt to the tune of the times. These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music..."

---Grant Morrison, Supergods

[Galleymac]

Does (or did) anybody here ever follow the DC/Vertigo series "The Books of Magic," and is there any way of finding out if the concluding issues of the series will ever be collected into graphic-novel format? Everything is available *except* the actual conclusion (issues 51 - 75).

Can there... can there be a campaign?

[haLobEnder]

Does (or did) anybody here ever follow the DC/Vertigo series "The Books of Magic," and is there any way of finding out if the concluding issues of the series will ever be collected into graphic-novel format? Everything is available *except* the actual conclusion (issues 51 - 75).

Can there... can there be a campaign?

I've only read the original mini-series and the 'Life During Wartime' follow-up (which I didn't particularly care for) but I'd love to see DC reprint the full series in trade form (or better yet, deluxe editions). It's pretty disappointing to see how many good series from the 90's/early 00's are now out of print with little to no chance at being collected. The Dreaming -- which imo had some of the best covers Dave McKean has ever done-- also springs to mind.

[Sci-2]

Anybody read Peter Milligan? I'm beginning to wonder if his stuff isn't actually some of the most underrated and original work.

[Papirolle]

Yes, Peter Milligan is pretty good. I've read some of his earlier Vertigo stuff. Enigma, Egypt and Human Target are good, but then he has written some weaker stuff for Vertigo too, like The Minx.

[Nephrite]

Milligan is great... when he wants to be. When he doesn't, he can phone it in with the best of them.

But, just for his work on Shade, the Changing Man I'm willing to forgive him just about anything.

[Galleymac]

I would have liked to see where "The Minx" might have wound up, storywise. I don't remember it well -- it seemed to meander, a bit, but touch on some interesting things. I liked the premise, but the conflict was a bit ill defined. (I remember missing it when "American Virgin" turned out not to be as interesting or as edgy as it promised -- for some reason the two series remind me of each other, in pacing, I suppose.)

[Sci-2]

What was the one with the S&M murders?

[Sci-2]

Bought the Black Dossier years back, finally gave it an honest go. Good stuff. Will have to reread Century stuff as well now, as well as the text parts I skipped.

[Sci-2]

"For a comics fan scorned, it seemed, the measure of evil lay not in genocide or child abuse but in continuity details deliberately overlooked by self-important writers, of plot points insufficiently telegraphed, and themes made opaque or ambiguous. If only one-tenth of the righteous, sputtering wrath of these anonymous zealots could be mustered against the horrors of bigotry or poverty, we might find ourselves overnight in a finer world..."

- Grant Morrison, Supergods

[Little Valkyrie]

Now that's an obnoxious and facile argument from Morrison.

[red snow]

Milligan is great... when he wants to be. When he doesn't, he can phone it in with the best of them.

But, just for his work on Shade, the Changing Man I'm willing to forgive him just about anything.

I completely agree with you. It's not even like it's creator owned vs company comics in terms of quality. His X-force/X-statix run was sublime and then he had a run on X-men and it was completely forgettable.

[Sci-2]

Now that's an obnoxious and facile argument from Morrison.

Really, having worked at a comic shop I thought it was spot on. Couldn't stand the sheer whiny entitlement of some people in fandom.

[Little Valkyrie]

Oh, fandom is entitled and often obnoxious, sure. But the "why don't you go do something that ~matters~" argument is one that can be leveled against anyone and anything.

[Sci-2]

Oh, in context that comment came after someone said GM would one day have to pay for the "evil" he did by writing Final Crisis.

eta: Also, I think there's a difference between "why don't you do something that matters" and GM's observation "why don't these people give a fuck about something real."

It's amazing how much "morality" and "justice" plays a part in fandoms, even looking at the outrage over HBO's GoT show. Meanwhile these same people seemingly have no problem with sweatshops and the like.

[Ran]

... seemingly ...

There's the rub. Which is why the observation is not particularly useful. None of us knows anyone as well as we'd like to think, and we know people even less when they are, essentially, strangers -- people we communicate with on the internet about narrow, special interests and little else. That's not the sum total of anyone, even the people who seem most deeply involved.

[Sci-2]

I think you can judge someone on the language they use. If a person says they didn't like Book X then that's fine. To say Book X sucks would work, but ideally there's some elaboration.

But there are people talking about how some comic is "evil", not because it furthers rape culture or racism or homophobia, but because it portrays Batman/Superman/whoever in a light they don't appreciate is pathetic and requires a check in with reality.

Hell, I've been there, you get caught up in this dumb shit as an excuse for not fixing your own life and furthering your own goals. Eventually you have to wake up and not froth at the mouth over every little thing done in your little niche interests.

eta: And it's not just comics, I've seen people carry on like this about bastardization of the classics and other such nonsense.

[Grack21]

This all reminds me of the Karen Travis shit storm that happened over Star Wars. Or when R.A. Salvatore got all those death threats. Hell, I think he still does.