Topic: Funnybooks (Read 170351 times)

Thad · « **Reply #960 on:** October 20, 2010, 04:45:11 PM »

Yeah, Strange Tales is pretty wonderful. It could use an entry in that other comics thread.

Zach · « **Reply #961 on:** October 20, 2010, 07:56:36 PM »

Pretty much every story in last week's Strange Tales was worth reading. It is the mirror that reveals my weekly superheroes to be clowns.

Thad · « **Reply #962 on:** October 20, 2010, 08:04:06 PM »

Yeah, but the straight stories are great, too. The Grampa lead-in with Wolverine and Sabretooth as wrestlers was lovely. As was the Hulk Samurai story Sakai did last year.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #963 on:** October 20, 2010, 08:11:14 PM »

It's funny. Strange Tales is what Wednesday comics should have been, just in a more conventional format. Marvel asks a bunch of independent, less well known artist to contribute stories free of continuity or really much guidance and all and lets them go nuts with it. And it works so well. I hope Marvel at least continues with the series, allowing a rotating cast of artists and writers to come in and contribute these little one off stories.

Thad · « **Reply #964 on:** October 20, 2010, 08:24:06 PM »

I like both formats quite a lot TBH. I still think the Wednesday Comics format had real crossover potential -- though $4 is too much for a checkout counter impulse buy.

Speaking of, what's this I hear about the The USA Today printing Dark Horse stuff? I hear they've got Hellboy and Dr. Horrible.

Zach · « **Reply #965 on:** October 21, 2010, 12:34:07 PM »

Quote from: Thad on October 20, 2010, 08:04:06 PM

Yeah, but the straight stories are great, too. The Grampa lead-in with Wolverine and Sabretooth as wrestlers was lovely. As was the Hulk Samurai story Sakai did last year.

I'm including those in my evaluation. It's as condemning an argument against decompression as I can think of. Why bother with several weeks of middling-quality Avengers when I can get more emotional punch in four pages of Strange Tales? (The obvious answer is that I'm losing my joy for stories about men and women in flashy tights. That's not true though. I guess I'll just stick to my Morrison, Simone, and Giffen.)

Mothra · « **Reply #966 on:** October 21, 2010, 02:42:47 PM »

Speaking of Simone, I wasn't really sold on her run on Atom or Secret Six (though the latter was pretty decent), but what little I saw of Wonder Woman was pretty top-notch. What's she done recently that's worth a look?

Büge · « **Reply #967 on:** October 21, 2010, 02:46:16 PM »

Quote from: Mongrel on October 20, 2010, 09:34:13 AM

Nicholas Gurewitch does a story where Magneto becomes Galactus' herald

I still like the first one he did:

Thad · « **Reply #968 on:** October 21, 2010, 05:41:58 PM »

Quote from: Zach on October 21, 2010, 12:34:07 PM

It's as condemning an argument against decompression as I can think of.

In fairness, there are arguments FOR decompression -- I do quite like Bryan Hitch. I honestly can't tell you what happened over the course of the original Ellis/Hitch run of The Authority except they fought a bunch of aliens and exchanged witty banter and then Jenny died. Granted it is now a fucking decade since I read any of them.

Basically the best argument for decompression is you've got some really fun things for the artist to draw very big. Which is why it doesn't work as well when Bendis uses it for talky-talky.

Really Strange Tales is an argument for exactly the thing that it is: anthologies of short stories that don't look or sound like standard superhero stories.

If this thing was monthly, I would buy the hell out of it.

Anyway, next month, Jaime Hernandez.

Envy · « **Reply #969 on:** October 23, 2010, 02:42:45 AM »

Apparently Firebreather is being made into a movie. I just saw the trailer and it should be showing up next month on cartoon network.

Thad · « **Reply #970 on:** October 23, 2010, 04:12:00 PM »

Copied over from forum split:

Quote from: Thad on October 23, 2010, 07:13:59 PM

Dear Internet,

Is Grant Morrison's JLA actually any good, or have you all been lying to me for years?

Love,

T

Quote from: Mongrel on October 23, 2010, 07:16:42 PM

Try To Take This Seriously.

Quote from: TA on October 23, 2010, 07:28:46 PM

It's a 1997 story. A very well done 1997 story, but still a 1997 story. If you're gonna say that the majority of the works of Alan Moore are excused their laughable retardation because of the time when they were written, you should be extending Morrison the same courtesy.

It does get a lot more interesting than the first arc, though.

Quote from: Brent on October 23, 2010, 07:52:37 PM

Question: Was this a monomythical JLA story before or after Morrison did it?

Quote from: Büge on October 23, 2010, 09:51:53 PM

Huh. That actually seems like the kind of plot I would have expected from the Justice League cartoon. Like if they ran out of DC continuity to mine ideas from.

Responding to TA: "Very well done" my ass. The art's hideous and the story's paint-by-numbers. Calling it simply a product of its time is a copout, and the Moore comparison is flawed because Moore did plenty of great shit in the 1980's. Hell, Morrison did too; you don't see me bitching about the mullets in Animal Man.

Animal Man was deep; this really couldn't be any shallower unless the single-issue plot was stretched out across six issues instead of just four.

Dismissing it with "it was 1997" is bullshit. Sure, it was better than the Evil Hal stuff they'd just gotten past or the Onslaught nonsense Marvel was up to, but Marvel was also doing Thunderbolts. Ellis was writing Stormwatch, Kingdom Come and Sandman had just ended, and Planetary and the Priest version of Black Panther were a year off.

In short, yeah, it was better than a lot of what was being published at the time. That still doesn't make it good, even for a 1997 book from one of the Big Two.

Responding to Brent: That's actually a good question, and one I intentionally raised, albeit in an offhand manner. Were all these plot elements cliches before Morrison got ahold of them?

I acknowledge that I wasn't a DC reader at the time, but my impression is that they were. Batman always wins even when he's up against foes who could physically overpower him. Aquaman -- well, he had that ridiculous metal quarter-shirt thing and harpoon hand before Morrison got there, so the "WE ARE TRYING TO MAKE AQUAMAN A BADASS" nonsense was already well underway.

And the "why doesn't Superman just fix everything?" question has been around as long as Superman's had his current crazy power level. And the "new guy shows up, makes hero look bad, but is actually evil" is MOST DEFINITELY a cliche -- and yeah, there WAS a book out at the time that put a fresh spin on it; this wasn't it.

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #971 on:** October 23, 2010, 04:57:42 PM »

That was the comic where the Flash punched a guy into low orbit!

That was also the comic when I started to realize that super-speed is more hax than comics like to acknowledge.

Mothra · « **Reply #972 on:** October 24, 2010, 09:45:06 AM »

Ahahahaha yessss

Thad · « **Reply #973 on:** October 24, 2010, 09:55:27 AM »

Quote from: Burrito Al Pastor on October 23, 2010, 04:57:42 PM

That was the comic where the Flash punched a guy into low orbit!

That was also the comic when I started to realize that super-speed is more hax than comics like to acknowledge.

But didn't he fall back down right away?

Anyway. There were guys doing shit with Flash's powers way before Morrison -- vibrating his molecules through walls, vibrating at different frequencies to travel to parallel universes, the Cosmic Treadmill -- yeah, I guess all that's more wacky than what Grant did here.

Actually Flash probably came out of the story looking the least ridiculous, in terms of story, and certainly in art (that was the only panel I could find where he had a stupid look on his face -- though, as noted, his superpower was to generate annoying Photoshop Blur). His distrust of GL is a little irritating but rich with irony since he was the LAST new guy who took over from a dead guy. We all know where it's going but it's probably the only legitimate character relationship we see in this arc.

Zach · « **Reply #974 on:** October 27, 2010, 07:23:38 PM »

Morrison's JLA did lead to the Ultramarine Corps and Earth 2, which were fun reads.

Quote from: Mothra on October 21, 2010, 02:42:47 PM

Speaking of Simone, I wasn't really sold on her run on Atom or Secret Six (though the latter was pretty decent), but what little I saw of Wonder Woman was pretty top-notch. What's she done recently that's worth a look?

I'm primarily a fan of her for her Wonder Woman work and Villains United/Secret Six. The first few issues of the new Birds of Prey didn't grab me, but I haven't read the original series.

Thad · « **Reply #975 on:** October 27, 2010, 09:13:10 PM »

Yeah, I'll give Earth 2 a chance, at least; Morrison's always at his best when Quitely's on art duty. But I don't think I can take much more of the guy who did his main JLA run.

MEANWHILE: For anyone who isn't reading Action Comics right now, you are missing out on something legitimately AMAZING.

So okay, this week's issue -- which follows on last month's issue, where, and I cannot stress this enough, GORILLA GRODD TRIED TO CHOP LEX'S HEAD OFF WITH A GIANT SPOON AND EAT HIS BRAINS -- has Lex meeting Death. The one from Sandman. And from what Cornell's said, Gaiman wrote all her dialogue himself.

It may be the best superhero comic I've ever read where two people just stand around and debate philosophy.

Death is Death -- unflappable, wise, compassionate, and yeah she has a couple of good lines about the nature of death in the DC Universe.

And Cornell pretty much boils Lex down to his essence, and what makes him such a great damn character (at least in his modern incarnation). He's tenacious, he's brilliant, he's driven, and he's an utter egomaniac. Putting him up against Death is a brilliant study in contrasts, and shows him at his best.

And then there's a backup that starts with Jimmy Olsen's drunk alien date crashing her spaceship into the Daily Planet.

Seriously, fucking buy this comic.

Büge · « **Reply #976 on:** October 28, 2010, 06:56:24 PM »

I keep finding things about comics that make me mad. I know that the Sentry was pretty much built up into the ultimate Mary Sue. But this just downright irritates me. "The Sentry was so awesome, he banged Rogue. It just never got mentioned until Cyclops made an offhand remark at his funeral, which we're attending because he was a great guy. Even though we never really talked about him outside of books he had the spotlight in."

uuugh

Bal · « **Reply #977 on:** October 29, 2010, 12:42:41 AM »

The real tragedy is that the original Sentry limited series was actually fucking awesome, self-contained, and, most importantly, NEVER MEANT TO ENTER INTO REGULAR CANON BECAUSE THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY. However, it made money, so they obviously had to bring him back even though this was established to be an awful idea in the inception of the character.

Thad · « **Reply #978 on:** October 29, 2010, 05:51:41 AM »

I'm kinda in the "Eh, who cares, it'll never get mentioned again" mindset. But then, I could give a sideways crap about Rogue and her sex life.

Bal · « **Reply #979 on:** October 29, 2010, 06:18:43 AM »

I don't really care about the Rogue thing either, I was just raging about The Sentry existing outside of his mini. I actually don't give a shit about anything the X-Men do because all of their books are always terrible. It's not like Spider-Man where even when mired in shit like the OMD status quo a good story can pop up here and there, X-Men is just bad all the time. Even when it starts to look like it's getting good they inevitably shit the bed. I don't know what it is.

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Author Topic: Funnybooks (Read 170351 times)