Comics VI: Sinister Six

[red snow]

A guy over at Bleeding cool seems to have read a different comic to you, Nephrite. The guy is GUSHING over how fucking incredible it is. Maybe he's been mindwiped by Snyder-hype and expects it to be the best thing Snyder has ever done? He seems to think the lack of a plan was a genius move although your description seems more reasonable.

[Nephrite]

A guy over at Bleeding cool seems to have read a different comic to you, Nephrite. The guy is GUSHING over how fucking incredible it is. Maybe he's been mindwiped by Snyder-hype and expects it to be the best thing Snyder has ever done? He seems to think the lack of a plan was a genius move although your description seems more reasonable.

Yeah, that guy has been on a real "deep & symbolic" spiritual high for the whole arc.

Well, I say the emperor is naked. There's nothing there we haven't seen before and just checking the boxes on what a usual Batman vs Joker story should be doesn't deserve praise. Especially, when it's not even that well written.

[Sci-2]

Regarding xmen I think Bendix is running on vapors. The time traveling kids, the poor execution of AvX that he now has to retroactively justify. Seems like he ran out of ideas and is now scrambling. If he sat down and developed some organic storylines it would work better.

[polishgenius]

Regarding xmen I think Bendix is running on vapors.

Henry Bendix is writing X-Men? :shocked:

[Sci-2]

Hehe. damn phone.

[red snow]

Yeah, that guy has been on a real "deep & symbolic" spiritual high for the whole arc.

Well, I say the emperor is naked. There's nothing there we haven't seen before and just checking the boxes on what a usual Batman vs Joker story should be doesn't deserve praise. Especially, when it's not even that well written.

I agree that the reviewer is seeing things that aren't there and he's definitely turning a blind eye to the nonsense of being joker gassed twice. Plus it's akin to those Gaiman and Morrison metareviews where the authors can throw anything down on paper and someone will ascribe the super meaning behind it all.

Regarding xmen I think Bendix is running on vapors. The time traveling kids, the poor execution of AvX that he now has to retroactively justify. Seems like he ran out of ideas and is now scrambling. If he sat down and developed some organic storylines it would work better.

Yeah, Bendis is capable of good stories but they have him writing so much material so fast that something has to give and that's usually coherent story and character behaviour. ANX and uncanny are probably on twice monthly schedules and I have no idea how often GOTG is going to ship. That's roughly 5 comics a month and then there's his tv stuff and film think tank duties. No wonder he doesn't have time to do background research.

[Sci-2]

I don't care too much about the Unus mistake or errors in continuity, it's just the plausibility and characterization are taking huge dips. Bendis's Emma is just awful, gone from the hilarious version penned by GM and Whedon.

Civil War did a better job of making both sides seem morally right, Bendis is too busy playing catch up. He now has to retroactively mischaracterize Cyclops as careless and desperate so AvX makes sense.

[GallowKnight]

Thank god Death of the Family is finally over. And what a way to end it, on such a disappointing note. Now I never want to read about the Joker ever again.

[Winterfell is Burning]

UXM spoilers.

After reading the issue, I'm thinking Magneto is a double agent, and what he's doing is part of Cyclops' plan

[Lady Octarina]

Uncanny X-Men #1:

okay, first, bald Magneto is disgusting. And Magik sounding like a happy teenager? I won't even say anything about Emma. I must say I expected more from this, even if it was Bachalo and Bendis. So, horrible art, everyone is OOC, and all the dialogues are nothing but a didactic way to tell us what they're up to since AvX. And even though I still think Magneto is the only one that could be the traitor in a reasonable way, I just don't see why he would put everything else aside just for the sake of a petty revenge, exposing his own vulnerable circumstances to SHIELD, of all things, in the process. Unless it is later revealed this is all some part of a master plan to get credibility to put his own goals into action, I don't see how the first thing Magneto would do after learning his powers aren't working properly would be telling that to a potential enemy. This is the man who almost killed himself trying to get his powers back with the High Evolutionary's help, and aren't mutants supposed to come first for him? Not to mention I still don't see why he had to be bald, here, other than to make a ridiculous allusion to Xavier.

Anyway, one can always hope that in a few months Bendis will have gotten the hang of these characters and write these books to their full potential.

...

Who am I kidding, that won't happen. Still, who knows?

Wolverine and the X-Men #25: it would be perfect, if no for Wolverine's brother. Seriously, they should ban family members who want to kill him from comics, always the dullest stories. Jason Aaron does write the kids better than any of the adult cast.

X-Men #41: it sucks, simple as that. With any luck, next series will be better and at least have some consistency.

Cable and X-Force #4: good, solid issue, and left me wondering about what happens next.

Avengers Arena #4: this makes me want to find the time to read those Runaways trades waiting for me on the shelf...

Secret Avengers #1: one of those rare first issues that actually manages to get your attention and leave you excited for more.

UXM spoilers.

After reading the issue, I'm thinking Magneto is a double agent, and what he's doing is part of Cyclops' plan

You could very well be right on that one, but again, everything is so OOC with Bendis that it's hard to tell.

[Winterfell is Burning]

UXM #1- Not a completely solid start, but nothing too bad; this isn't something incredibly dull and extremely slow-paced that makes me want to cut my eyes out and shove a grenade into the writer's ass.

F4#4- On the other hand, THIS IS something incredibly dull and extremely slow-paced that makes me want to cut my eyes out and shove a grenade into the writer's ass. Reed is a jerk that decides to make a civilization worship them for some reason, but then decides to not be a jerk anymore, and that's the whole issue. I'm out.

Also, Fraction completely ignores the Richards' back-story, so badly he makes Reed lusting after a 12-13 year old girl.

The Walking Dead #107- Negan is this book Hellfire Brats. The book ends with a decent cliffhanger at least, but there's nothing much of value here.

Cable and X-Force #4- Explains well the mess of issue #1. Nothing fancy, but far from being a complete disaster.

Manhattan Projects #9- Butts are kicked in imaginative ways, Catholic Presidents are made fools of, Freemason Presidents are eaten alive, what's not to like?

[Sci-2]

Heh, someone just pointed out to me that Avengers #1 probably starts right after the ending of NAv #3.

Makes Tony come off as a bit sociopathic.

eta: removed a spoiler

[red snow]

Thank god Death of the Family is finally over. And what a way to end it, on such a disappointing note. Now I never want to read about the Joker ever again.

I think Snyder said in an interview that after his amazing story no-one would want to do a Joker story for a long time. Guess he was half right.

I think it's funny how with some characters their allegiances switch so often we don't even know what the status quo is anymore. Someone make a move starring said multi-turncoats so that Marvel can settle on whether they are good or bad.

Bad day at the comic shop yesterday. Browsed and eventually walked out empty-handed. It probably helps that I'm skint but there wasn't anything I was interested in (was kind of hoping Saga might be there). Secret Avengers almost won me over but thanks to the brainwash promotion of everything MArvel NOW! the fact I didn't even know it was being released made me think there must be something wrong with it, Maybe Marvel publicity was trying to be meta by not letting me know about it :P

I did however almost pick up "Chew" volume one but decided to do an online search for it to save a few quid.

[Nephrite]

Heh, someone just pointed out to me that Avengers #1 probably starts right after the ending of NAv #3.

Makes Tony come off as a bit sociopathic.

Well, he did promise to find a way to make it right. Why wait? Just get Steve 30 new friends. Rich people.

Anyway, one can always hope that in a few months Bendis will have gotten the hang of these characters and write these books to their full potential.

Yeah, I won't hold my breath. My favorite bit was when Cyclops destroyed that Sentinel and everybody was amazed like it was the first time he did something like that.

Which confirms that Bendis didn't even read Whedon's Astonishing. That was only 25 issues.

I think Snyder said in an interview that after his amazing story no-one would want to do a Joker story for a long time. Guess he was half right.

Snyder is kind of like Bendis or JMS in that he thinks that he wrote something that no one thought of before. Even if it's a staple of the character.

Batman #17 got five stars on CBR. They have to be bought off. No one can be this impressed by an exercise in mediocre. Truth be told their average grade is 4.5 stars, it seems the industry is doing great. Big 2 just keep churning out classic after classic.

Wolverine and the X-Men #25 - Meh.

Morning Glories #24 - It was a double sized issue and it concentrated on the best character: Ike so it was pretty great. The whole timeline with his dad is confusing as hell. Did he help him fake his death. Did he kill him? Did he kill his clone/twin/whatever? Was it more time-travel? He seemed pretty angry when he did it, but in the spotlight issue when his dad showed up behind him while at the same time lying dead on the floor he wasn't really fazed.

One or two issues till the end of the season. Then I'm gonna start reading it in chunks.

[Lady Octarina]

Interesting, I had completely forgotten about The Walking Dead #107... As unremarkable as the previous issues, and only confirms all the previous conclusions on Negan. Nice cliffhanger, though I wonder why all those mysterious characters needed biblical names...

I've just finished the first volume of 20th Century Boys, which I had bought and forgotten about months ago. And it is brilliant, so much better than I expected! The art is fascinatingly gorgeous, and the story... how would I not like something where Le Petit Nicolas meets Mystic River, kinda? I hadn't noticed how much I missed reading manga, and since my experience in this was limited to fantasy and Suehiro Maruo this was a nice surprise. I have to figure a way to buy the following volumes, though, I hope Panini still sells them at their website.

[red snow]

This is just too funny. Snyder interview on Batman and what's next

"So I can promise you that the one coming up is definitely, in my opinion, our most ambitious and definitely our boldest. And it's going to go into areas that I've been a little reluctant to go toward. But I really feel like it's time. And that the story we have is going to earn, hopefully, people's trust in that regard."

[Sci-2]

To be fair to Snyder, Grant Morrison does that kind of hyping of upcoming stuff as well. Though IIRC he usually talks about how excited he is about particular experiments in form or planner character arcs which is a bit different than continually telling people he is going to blow their minds.

Oh, I don't know if this counts as a spoiler since it's in Marvel's May soilicitations:

Thanks to Ultron they have to rewrite reality. So even more extreme than time travel, with even bigger chances for retcons. I still call Hank and Janet being happily married or at least no more domestic violence in their past.

eta: Link to solicits

[red snow]

so not only are they undoing the events (which is expected) but they are using this as an opportunity to essentially restart Marvel or give it a clean slate. Pretty audacious less than a year after Marvel NOW! (which is still occurring).

we should list other good retcons

Cyclops being responsible for most evil things to have ever happened.

Beast was always that ugly frankenchimp thing we have now.

Uncle Ben never died

Neither did Gwen Stacey

Tony Stark was never an alcoholic

Great opportunity to make some characters gay too.

[Sci-2]

Cyclops being responsible for most evil things to have ever happened.

What I want is Cyclops to fire a beam at the beginning of time that will travel through the centuries to kill Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and MLK Jr.

Then finally, finally Cyke'll be the villain Bendis knows him to be.

edit: In all seriousness I can see some rational to clean up some characters, most notably Hank Pym, before they show up in movies. Scarlett Witch might also get a bit of break here.

[red snow]

What I want is Cyclops to fire a beam at the beginning of time that will travel through the centuries to kill Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and MLK Jr.

Then finally, finally Cyke'll be the villain Bendis knows him to be.

edit: In all seriousness I can see some rational to clean up some characters, most notably Hank Pym, before they show up in movies. Scarlett Witch might also get a bit of break here.

I just remembered another one. That dude that Jeph Loeb created as Wolverine's ultimate bad guy, His own retcon wasn't enough it needs to be erased along with that multi-clawed freak.

I agree if they are going to rewrite reality then they all need to sit down and make the most of the opportunity. I just fear they'll do it and Bendis will go ahead and do something a month later that contradicts it all again.