Topic: Funnybooks (Read 170715 times)

Thad · « **Reply #320 on:** December 09, 2008, 03:42:08 PM »

Thanks for the list, IM.

I've been meaning to start a Comics for People Who Don't Read Comics thread. I read the first volume of Klezmer and it was pretty great.

Zaratustra · « **Reply #321 on:** December 11, 2008, 05:46:48 AM »

I'll try torrenting some of those on the weekend.

Meanwhile, Final Crisis #5 finally came out. It's not unlike trying to drink a pint of beer in a single gulp. Highlights include a homage to the original OMAC #1 cover, Mary Marvel trying to defeat Cap Marvel with her groin, and Nix Uotan IS Monitor-Man, Defender of Cyberspace.

Thad · « **Reply #322 on:** December 13, 2008, 12:44:25 PM »

Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2 is FUCKED. UP.

Arc · « **Reply #323 on:** December 13, 2008, 01:38:47 PM »

Who does this Warren Ellis character think he is? Warren Ellis?

Zach · « **Reply #324 on:** December 14, 2008, 12:12:21 AM »

Quote from: Thad on December 13, 2008, 12:44:25 PM

Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2 is FUCKED. UP.

In the good way, I think. Every time that I find myself enjoying an alternate universe more than the core universe, I start thinking, "Why don't they just build the whole series out of the alternate!"

Then I realize that not all of the alternate situations would have nearly the same impact if they weren't referencing something with a completely different tone -- maybe leprechaun universe. Maybe.

[spoiler]That sure was a lot of skeletons. Poor Beast.[/spoiler]

Thad · « **Reply #325 on:** December 22, 2008, 11:32:21 AM »

Madman #12 is dead sexy. There's something there for everyone -- Doc draws the ladies real purty in this ish, and the layout technique he uses is neat too (for most of the issue, Frank's portion of the story is told on the top half of the page and the ladies' is told on the bottom).

Aside from that, there's a whole lot going on here -- foreshadowing on Adam's return (and perhaps even Flem someday being able to grow himself a new body), the return of an old foe, and a moment of "HOLY SHIT THAT JUST HAPPENED" [spoiler]eye-plucking[/spoiler] violence.

The ending's a little

and likely to be shrugged off as a dream next issue. But the rest is gold. Those of you who haven't been buying this series should be.

(Incidentally, in keeping with the "How much are people charging for books now?" discussion -- or monologue, since I seem to be the only one talking about it -- this one's $3.50.)

Thad · « **Reply #326 on:** December 22, 2008, 09:19:51 PM »

...and for those of you who haven't been buying it, #1 in its entirety, free, on nrama.

Thad · « **Reply #327 on:** December 25, 2008, 11:28:31 PM »

Thunderbolts #127 is a textbook example of decompression.

It happens just like I said it would -- [spoiler]Swordsman saves Songbird and she gets away[/spoiler] -- but that happens on page 20 when it should have happened on page 2.

I'm not sure if the fact that Bullseye ACTUALLY POINTS OUT that the story is in exactly the same place it was 19 pages prior makes it better or worse.

Anyway, it ends up feeling like a damned waste; this story should have taken one issue instead of two.

Still, that's not to say it's BAD; I'm still looking forward to seeing the new team next month. I never got around to reading The Irredeemable Ant-Man but I heard good things and I'm interested in seeing how he fits in on the new team.

Mongrel · « **Reply #328 on:** December 26, 2008, 10:05:31 PM »

SO in the first part of our "Hey let's make up for our awful FAILPRESENTS!", my wife got me the complete Tintin boxed set (I do own all the books already, but they've been in my brother's posession for years).

Büge · « **Reply #329 on:** December 30, 2008, 06:25:38 PM »

Uh, I bought volume 1 of Empowered. It's kinda cute. I especially admire Adam Warren's ability to render reflective textures onto curved surfaces.

Thad · « **Reply #330 on:** January 03, 2009, 12:48:08 PM »

Kick-Ass has been in the midst of an identity crisis ever since Hit-Girl and Big Daddy showed up. Viz, is this a book about what superheroes would be like in the real world, or is it going to embrace the most absurd, obvious cliches the genre has to offer?

#5 still straddles the fence. On the one hand, you've got a superhero teamup with Red Mist, who turns out to be a coward and a poser who really just wants to smoke pot and drive a cool car; on the other, he and Kick-Ass do the old "run into a burning building [spoiler]to save what turns out to be a goddamn cat[/spoiler]" schtick.

Also, it entertains me that I read this comic while sitting in the waiting room to take a drug test.

Zach · « **Reply #331 on:** January 03, 2009, 03:54:35 PM »

What's the deal with all of these Madman books? I've intermittently read library copies, but picking up an issue from the store and flipping through some of the big Image trades left me feeling like I'm missing storybits somewhere.

Other than that, here's my shortlist for the next appreciable period of time:

Nil (Mentioned in this thread and it has been on my Amazon list for a while)
American Flagg!
Hotwire Comix and Capers
Wolverine (for the Old Man Logan), The Initiative, Secret Six, Booster Gold
Something with Batman in it

Thad · « **Reply #332 on:** January 03, 2009, 04:30:58 PM »

Madman DOES have a whole lot of story behind it, and the Dark Horse TPB's were named rather than numbered and as such it was tough to follow their proper order. The Image TPB's are numbered. Madman and the Atomics takes place after the original series run, and Madman: Atomic Comics is the current series -- which is probably the best place to start if you don't want to read ALL of them.

Mongrel · « **Reply #333 on:** January 03, 2009, 04:46:18 PM »

MY GOD - SURPRISE OF THE MONTH.

None of you will care, but after three and a half years or more, they finally published the final issue of The Winter Men. The fact that they were forced to cram 3-4 issues of story into one (slightly) oversized issue shows, and shows painfully.

After getting to know the characters and writers so closely in the first few issues, one can imagine how some scenes that were only given a few panels would have been handled with a proper amount of time. It's like having a great author die mid-book, so that the book is released, but ends halfway, the remainder of the text being a rough summary of the course of the remainder of the story. Some characters had never really even been introduced yet, and here they had to introduce them, display them and put them through their paces all in one go. The fact that the ways in which it deals with superheroes was only supposed to come in at the very end makes the story suffer even more for being compressed so.

But as bittersweet as it is, at least we got the ending - something I was sure would never happen. It's jarring and offensive and a failure in so many ways. But that's not the creators' fault so I don't blame them. In a way it's fitting: The story, like so many things Russian, is stillborn. A great and beautiful project lies forever half-finished. The promise of what might have been rusting away, forgotten, as brutal and practical men burn library books to keep warm.

Mongrel · « **Reply #334 on:** January 03, 2009, 08:56:06 PM »

Also got Kick-Ass 5 today. Thoughts: A wait-and-see. Some things got stupider, but it was better than issue 4 by a damn sight. After becoming irritatinig enough, #5 was the book's 'last chance', but this issue has at least earned survival by getting me thinking "okay, I'll give you another chance".

Thad · « **Reply #335 on:** January 06, 2009, 08:52:10 PM »

Marvels: Eye of the Camera #2 was a joy to read. It got a little metafiction-y -- it's about Sheldon being asked to do a sequel to Marvels, but it not being the idea he'd originally intended, and it's got a few shoutouts to Astro City: The Dark Age, in repeated references to Cap's arrest and what appear to be Charles and Royal in a cameo -- but it was a great backdrop to set Phil's story against.

Also, Busiek is one of my all-time favorite Spider-Man scribes, and this is a great Spider-Man story despite only having him in a few pages. What Kurt's so good at is writing the Parker Luck -- in this issue, Phil meets Peter at a party, hates him for being Jonah's stooge and helping to defame Spider-Man, and then storms off in a huff -- only to have Spider-Man save him from a gang of thugs a few pages later. Pete has left a party IN HIS HONOR to go keep an eye on somebody who looks like he's upset, because that's the kind of guy Pete is -- and of course the narrator doesn't even know it. It's a pretty neat trick, working that much characterization in-between the panels.

The last page made me laugh out loud and then wince, because next issue looks like the one where the other shoe drops and we enter the Bronze Age in earnest. If Kurt can keep the book at this level of quality while it takes a turn for the darker, that's great -- but again, Dark Age has largely been a disappointment.

...of course, the fucking thing IS $3.99 and festooned with ads, so I think my overall advice is going to be "wait for the trade."

Ted Belmont · « **Reply #336 on:** January 06, 2009, 10:17:29 PM »

Impossible! #1, free online comic that you can read online(for free!).

Thad · « **Reply #337 on:** January 07, 2009, 10:21:50 PM »

Anna Mercury #5 is an argument FOR decompression.

(Oh, and incidentally, at some point I'm going to split the "comic industry will eat itself" conversation off into a new thread. I'm behind on dishes and all kinds of other shit too; still adjusting to having a job.)

Anyway. Anna Mercury #5 is an argument FOR decompression.

It's an all-out action issue where nothing much happens -- but it's done in such a neat way that it doesn't matter. There's a big explosion on four of the first five pages -- yes, a single explosion; it's two panels spread across four pages.

I think that's pretty frickin' neat. Sure, those are pages that could instead be used for more sci-fi musings Warren wrote down on a scrap of paper while high, but you know what, let's play with the medium a little instead.

I'm curious as to how much of the layout stuff was Ellis and how much was Percio -- the backmatter I've seen in books like Fell and AXM: Ghost Boxes suggests Warren's pretty heavy on the panel-for-panel descriptions, but this may not be one of those occasions.

I actually thought Percio's art on this one wasn't as good as on the earlier issues, but he was doing such neat things with it that it didn't much matter.

In summary: comics is a visual medium, and there are times when it's perfectly all right, even preferable, for writing to take a backseat to art and for an issue to just show a bunch of pretty shit rather than actually develop a story any.

And of course so much of what Ellis does is look at other people's work and go "See that? I could do that better." (I think he's actually explicitly stated that he did Wolfskin and Blackgas on a bet with the publisher on whether he could pull off fantasy and zombie books.) Anna Mercury is his take on The Matrix -- some silly but semi-plausible science fiction as a jumping-off point for an action movie where a character goes to other worlds, performs physically impossible feats, and ultimately blows shit up. If it got too caught-up in self-important philosophizing, well, that wouldn't be an improvement over The Matrix, it would be what fucking killed The Matrix. Instead, we're left with a book that plays to the strengths of its premise.

All in all, a pretty good read, but if I were recommending Warren Ellis books to people, I don't think it would fall anywhere on the list. And if you're already a Warren Ellis fan, you've probably already bought it, and the eighty-three other Warren Ellis comics that came out this week.

...Which reminds me, there's one last Mark Millar book from last week that I haven't gotten into yet. Maybe later.

Thad · « **Reply #338 on:** January 08, 2009, 07:49:57 PM »

...Most of what I said about this week's Anna Mercury also holds for this week's No Hero. It's becoming clearer how Ellis has managed to crank out so many books lately -- neat but half-baked sci-fi ideas and a lot of free rein for the artist. Not really a bad thing.

Interested to see how the rest of his books this week play out.

Thad · « **Reply #339 on:** January 09, 2009, 10:32:17 PM »

War of Kings Saga shows that Marvel seems to be ironing out the flaws in its free event preview books -- the layouts are good, and while the continuity's thick, it's much less verbose than in previous preview books, and unlike the Ultimatum one, is written in coherent English sentences. The narrative's also cohesive and doesn't jump around; it goes from Inhumans Origin to Illuminati to X-Men Space Opera to Secret Invasion in a coherent and logical fashion instead of trying to intersperse bits and pieces of each.

I was disappointed by the lack of Kirby art (the Secret Invasion preview book had plenty), but all in all it's not fucking terrible like the last two free preview books. A good companion for people who were already planning to read the book but weren't up to speed on all the backstory (like maybe they read Avengers but not X-Men), but I still don't see it getting people to go "Ooh, I have to read this!"

I'm still not reading the goddamn thing. Fuck giant crossover events. But this book is a positive statement on Marvel getting its shit together on advertising.

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Author Topic: Funnybooks (Read 170715 times)