comic book nerds UNITE!

[Red Raven]

I didn't see one elsewhere so I decided to start one. Anyway what books are ppl reading these days? I'm loving Green Lantern so far.

 

[Oirish]

Life long Marvelite here. I picked up Dark Avengers #1 last week and it was excellent! The way Bendis has steered the Marvel Universe is awe inspiring to say the least. His stories have more heart and complexity than nearly any other mainstream titles out. I'm especially impressed with his ability to keep a true continuity going over the span of many years. Who here wasn't impressed by how he has linked everything from the start of New Avengers through House of M, to Civil War, World War Hulk, and through the Secret Invasion to get to Dark Reign.
These stories have heart and are structured so that the tales are complete and realistic (all things considered). I wish I could say the same for Final Crisis.
Another title I've been following since it began is Star Wars Legacy. Quite good so far. I highly recommend it.

 

[disconnectedsmile]

i posted a thread about DC's Final Crisis ( http://dimensionsmagazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53743 ) and it failed miserably.

anyway, i didn't get into comics until this past summer. but i'm a total Batman fanboy. i picked a hell of a time to get into Batman comics though, seeing as they recently "killed off" Bruce Wayne. thanks a lot DC!

 

[chicken legs]

I was checking out photography books and got sidetracked by DC's Superman Confidential..#7. All i need now is a comic book cover. It the first one i bought since i was a kid. Usually i bought Marvel comics back then. I would have loved to get the more graphic novels but Moms did not approve...lol.

I want to check out the Watchmen series before i see the movie...anyone read that one.

 

[Maxx Awesome]

I was checking out photography books and got sidetracked by DC's Superman Confidential..#7. All i need now is a comic book cover. It the first one i bought since i was a kid. Usually i bought Marvel comics back then. I would have loved to get the more graphic novels but Moms did not approve...lol.

I want to check out the Watchmen series before i see the movie...anyone read that one.

READ! WATCHMEN! NOW! It is quite possibly the best thing ever written (take that Hamlet!). Honestly, the movie will not nearly do it justice. Not saying it will suck, but it can't possibly compare to what was originally written/drawn. Watchmen is the type of book that really lends itself to multiple readings. My own paperback copy is nearly falling apart because of how often I've read it & I'm still discovering new things in it, lol!

And if you enjoy Watchmen I would also recommend Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (but steer clear of The Dark Knight Strikes Again), Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme (& it's modern counterpart), Miller's run on Daredevil is also excellent (I highly recommend the Born Again storyline, in particular).

I pick up nearly everything Daredevil related. For some reason he's the only hero I can stand these days. Bendis' run on DD was great, certainly better than his New Avengers stuff, IMO. In writing that, Bendis made me hate Spider-Man. I know he's supposed to be a guy that quips alot to throw villains off-guard & all that, but in this he was just SOOOOO annoying I often felt like tearing up the damn books!

 

[Admiral_Snackbar]

See, I thought I would start a good comic book thread here, but it's also been done here and here.

I am actually in the process of winding down from the "crises" of 2008 (Final Crisis, Secret Invasion) and am trying to cull my pull lists down to something more economically viable. I shudder to think what I spent on those books last year, and really at the end of things only found about 40% of it worth my trouble.

I will say the book that got me back into it a few years ago was the Superman/Batman run of Jeph Loeb and the Amazing Spider-Man run of J. Michael Straczynski. Supes/Bats is still good, although the writing has suffered since Jeph went on to bigger and better things, and Marvel absolutely killed Spidey with their horrific "Brand New Day" reboot. I could go on for days about this, but in the end, I would just sound like an angry fanboy who gets up in arms because Han shot FIRST.

Two books I am going through and filling in the holes are the Green Lantern and Deadpool runs. GL did an excellent series last year with their Sinestro Corps run, and with all they've done this year it's setting up for a nice new crisis (the "Blackest Day" saga) for 2009. Deadpool was a fan fave for years, and he now has a new series tied in with the Secret Invasion saga, which forces me to go back and get his run with Wolverine and Cable.

Todd McFarlane came back to writing Spawn, and the jury is out right now in terms of whether it will be a hit. I kept away from Batman for the most part with their RIP series, but Kevin Smith did well with his new book "Batman - Cacaphony" which I hope stands up with his runs on Green Arrow and Daredevil which were excellent.

Now I'm off to check eBay for a Michael Turner signed litho that I hope to get without having to forefit my firstborn son.

 

[marlowegarp]

GL is indeed awesome. I still disagree with the need to bring Hal Jordan back and maintain that he will always be an interstellar murderer but the character arc is great to see. I've been reading the trades and just finished the second one. Can't wait to read the Sinestro Corps War.

Bendis is an albatross around the neck of the Marvel Universe. He has written 5 or 6 great issues of New Avengers, yes, but out of fifty that is not nearly enough. The Sentry issue during Civil War was quite good, as was #26 (Hawkeye/ Scarlet witch), but he generally has no idea how to write Spider-Man or really any character that isn't Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. Dr. Doom and Dr. Strange are especially painful. I understand the need for a shift to slightly less ridiculous stories in Marvel and to kick something like that off, he wasn't a bad choice, but enough is enough. Just like JMS overstayed his welcome on Spider-Man, (and is now writing a MAGNIFICENT Thor) Bendis just needs to stop and stick with Powers.The naturalistic, David Mamet style dialogue works in certain specific instances, but not when you're writing a story about aliens taking over the Earth. I actually enjoyed his Daredevil run, though.

The nice thing about the turn toward realism is that writers with actual talent have come to Marvel as well. Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and Warren Ellis have all done great things. I'm really hoping Greg Rucka does some more stories on Daredevil.

I am functionally addicted to comics and after rent, they're my biggest expense, but the ones I am most excited about right now are:

Anything Jonathan Hickman does, Thor, Scalped, 100 Bullets (for 1 more month), Paul Dini Batman, Marvel's cosmic titles, Queen and Country (once a year), Runaways, Eternals, Captain Britain, Top 10, Fell and The Killer.

 

[Melian]

Back in the day, it was all about the Marvel Universe...

These days, the only comics I still follow are Gunnm: Last Order and Zombie Loan. Also, the somewhat random works of Roman Dirge.

 

[Admiral_Snackbar]

GL is indeed awesome. I still disagree with the need to bring Hal Jordan back and maintain that he will always be an interstellar murderer but the character arc is great to see. I've been reading the trades and just finished the second one. Can't wait to read the Sinestro Corps War.

Yeah, after reading the whole "I killed your mom and farked your dad, Love Hal Jordan" saga with Parallax I am not too keen...some things you just can't forgive with a wave of "oh, he wasn't in control of his actions". It may have worked for Hal and Jean Luc Picard, but that shit doesn't sell in the real world (yes, I know they're fic-shun-ull characters but still).

Just like JMS overstayed his welcome on Spider-Man, (and is now writing a MAGNIFICENT Thor)

I have to disagree, although you can say that an adult Peter Parker with adult-style problems made Spidey somehow boring. The Other intermission saga, with Peter coming back from the dead with even more-better powers was up and down, but then the whole "I'm giving it all up to save Aunt May" excuse just SUCKED. Ironically, Marvel did a recent What If? on that to the tune of "What if the hitman's bullet had killed Mary Jane?" and it was a much darker outcome than I would have envisioned. It was all revisionist crap to make Brand New Day more palatable, like putting cheese on broccoli so you can choke it down easier, but I get what they're saying and I do understand that no, they can't go back to The Way Things Used To Be.

The nice thing about the turn toward realism is that writers with actual talent have come to Marvel as well. Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and Warren Ellis have all done great things. I'm really hoping Greg Rucka does some more stories on Daredevil.

I'm oddly a Geoff Johns fan, mainly since he's been doing excellent work on the Superman series, not to mention his work with JLA, JSA and Green Lantern.

I am functionally addicted to comics and after rent, they're my biggest expense, but the ones I am most excited about right now are:

Anything Jonathan Hickman does, Thor, Scalped, 100 Bullets (for 1 more month), Paul Dini Batman, Marvel's cosmic titles, Queen and Country (once a year), Runaways, Eternals, Captain Britain, Top 10, Fell and The Killer.

OK, can tell I'm not as deep as I would like to be; I stick to Image, DC and Marvel regulars. Mark Millar is my current rogue writer, mainly because with Wanted, Marvel 1985 and Kick-Ass he's making comics for adults.

 

[chicken legs]

ok, now i'm going to pick up Watchmen series TODAY....lol

I just love how far special effects has come in regards to the adaptations of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, the Hulk, etc. With that said, i cannot wait to see Wolverine.

 

[chicken legs]

I found a "GEM" of a superhero/erotica short story...


The Dryad Ch. 1

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=330811



The Dryad Ch. 2

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=331092



The Dryad ch 3

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=332827


The Dryad Ch 4

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=352761

 

[Honey Parker]

Oh fabulous! Yet another corner of the net I can slip into with like minded souls, who do not cast the finger of "geek" upon me. . okay, fair enough I do proclaim to be Queen Geek, but hey, only geeks can call a geek a geek, right?

I've never been able to divide my allegiance between Marvel and DC, my first loves in the comic world were Batman and the Xmen, something that stick with me to this day. . .despite the horrors each title has undergone. (What exactly was Josh Weldon snorting when he decided to return Colossus from the dead? I mean the guy sacrificed his life for the most noble of causes and went out like a true hero. So dude from Buffy resurrects him in skimpy undies so Kitty Pryde isn't lonely anymore? I mean I love Kitty and Peter as much as the next person, but seriously?)

Since moving back to Canada, my comicbook buying has eventually weened out into an occasional treat of a tasty one shot, in favour of finally having the green to start buying everything I have lovingly preserved in mylar bags backed with acid free, museum quality board, plus the stuff i was either too young or too broke to pick up when it first came out.

Anything touched by the hands of Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Mike Mignola, Warren Ellis and Robert Kirkman is slowly being bought, one graphic at a time and if available, in glorious glossy hardback editions.

I recently bought "The Killing Joke", well technically rebought it was my original was looking a rather over loved. I don't know if anyone else has glanced at the sumptuous "redux" in all it's hardbacked glory? Bolland completely recoloured each panel and added some tasty little treats. I was somewhat suspicious before I opened the book and was bedazzled by the contents. It looks nothing short of glorious and no big surprise, that Alan Moore's script stands the test of time and is still on of the THE best Bat capers EVER.

 

[chicken legs]

mmmmmmmmm

I'm getting all hot and bothered with your descriptions of "occasional treat of a tasty one shot","mylar bags backed with acid free, museum quality board", etc...lol

 

[Tad]

A friend started picking up the X-men just before the original Dark Pheonix storyline started back around 1980 or so. He later got a few of us to read them and get hooked. We were all young and of limited pocket money at the time, so another friend got assigned to Daredevil, during the Frank Miller run. I got one of the Spider Men titles, which was pretty bland in comparison. After a few years I gave up on the Spider man and started buying my own X-Men.

For quite a few years thereafter I followed the X-Men and some of their spin offs, New Mutants in particular (any other FA have mixed feelings when Karma ended up hugely fat, then lost it all shortly afterward?). I did get into a few other titles for a while, most particularly The New Defenders which for a while had some really creative and fascinating storylines, before they were canceled to free up some characters for X-Factor (I never did forgive X-Factor!). Actually aside from the X-Men, most of the titles I liked didn't last for too long (I forget some of the titles, but a couple of others that I think I recall are Power Pack and Black Canary).

Eventually I finished university and had nobody around me interested in comics, but did have a girlfriend, and concluded that comics were just getting too expensive when I could be spending the money on her. That was over 15 years ago, but I still have fond memories of Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, and many others.

I kept a couple of boxes of comics for many years, all stored in their bags and so forth. Eventually just didn't have the space to keep them any more, by which time the market had tanked and I got almost nothing for them. It was a shame I hadn't the space to keep them, as my son is reaching the age to appreciate them now, would have liked to have passed them on to him.

So I guess I'm something of a retired comic book nerd?

 

[Admiral_Snackbar]

Since moving back to Canada, my comicbook buying has eventually weened out into an occasional treat of a tasty one shot, in favour of finally having the green to start buying everything I have lovingly preserved in mylar bags backed with acid free, museum quality board, plus the stuff i was either too young or too broke to pick up when it first came out.

If you're looking for a tasty "one shot," there was one that I read lastmonth as a "Wolverine - The Christmas Special" (it was actually entitled "Flies to a Spider") which has our favorite Canuck opening up a keg of ball stomp on a bunch of local sleazeballs.

 

[marlowegarp]

I have to disagree, although you can say that an adult Peter Parker with adult-style problems made Spidey somehow boring. The Other intermission saga, with Peter coming back from the dead with even more-better powers was up and down, but then the whole "I'm giving it all up to save Aunt May" excuse just SUCKED. Ironically, Marvel did a recent What If? on that to the tune of "What if the hitman's bullet had killed Mary Jane?" and it was a much darker outcome than I would have envisioned. It was all revisionist crap to make Brand New Day more palatable, like putting cheese on broccoli so you can choke it down easier, but I get what they're saying and I do understand that no, they can't go back to The Way Things Used To Be.


OK, can tell I'm not as deep as I would like to be; I stick to Image, DC and Marvel regulars. Mark Millar is my current rogue writer, mainly because with Wanted, Marvel 1985 and Kick-Ass he's making comics for adults.

I loved JMS all through the "Book of Ezekiel" story (508?) but JRJR left and that would have been the perfect time for a new writer. I had mixed feelings about The Other as well. I thought it was a couple issues longer than it needed to be and it really bothered me that he killed Morlun, but it was actually an organic direction for him to go. One More Day was the real cock-up, though. Quesada's art was not worth waiting for and the logic was inscrutable. The tying-up of the Dr. Strange angle was about the only good thing.

Definitely agree about Millar. One thing he does very well is know when to stop. 8 issues here, 12 there and he's gone. His first run on Wolverine was really the model of that. He's a great writer as well, but his discretion is really admirable as well. Can't wait for the rest of Old Man Logan.

 

[Admiral_Snackbar]

I loved JMS all through the "Book of Ezekiel" story (508?) but JRJR left and that would have been the perfect time for a new writer. I had mixed feelings about The Other as well. I thought it was a couple issues longer than it needed to be and it really bothered me that he killed Morlun, but it was actually an organic direction for him to go. One More Day was the real cock-up, though. Quesada's art was not worth waiting for and the logic was inscrutable. The tying-up of the Dr. Strange angle was about the only good thing.

I never figured out how the new BND continuity gelled with the Civil War saga, because he was still a masked unlicensed superhero in the new series. To me Peter's 'coming out' was what made the CW saga so good, and made all the resulting storylines that more poignant in a "see, I told you so" sort of way. It would have made the whole Tony Stark as Skrull theory that much more plausible, since Stark was taking a lot of liberties with everyone's life all for the sake of national security.

I'm finding J.G. Jones to be better for Spider-Man than Quesada Jr.. His stuff seems so forced and Jones is much more organic. That being said I'm a huge Ed McGuiness fan, and his are about as distanced from reality (esp. his Superman/Batman) as anything else.

 

[marlowegarp]

I recently bought "The Killing Joke", well technically rebought it was my original was looking a rather over loved. I don't know if anyone else has glanced at the sumptuous "redux" in all it's hardbacked glory? Bolland completely recoloured each panel and added some tasty little treats. I was somewhat suspicious before I opened the book and was bedazzled by the contents. It looks nothing short of glorious and no big surprise, that Alan Moore's script stands the test of time and is still on of the THE best Bat capers EVER.

Good to know about Killing Joke. I have read my original copy a couple dozen times and I'm still amazed by how good it is. Sometimes the recoloring works (Crisis) and sometimes not, but if Bolland did it himself I would love to see that. Have you read the Batman Black and White he did?

 

[Oirish]

i posted a thread about DC's Final Crisis ( http://dimensionsmagazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53743 ) and it failed miserably.

anyway, i didn't get into comics until this past summer. but i'm a total Batman fanboy. i picked a hell of a time to get into Batman comics though, seeing as they recently "killed off" Bruce Wayne. thanks a lot DC!

Read issue 7 of Final Crisis. Bruce is in some cave in some other time/dimension/god knows what and is drawing bats on the wall with charcoal while sporting a beard. DC has to pull a copy-cat stunt to counter the death of Captain America and can't even pull it off for more than an issue. Final Crisis was a HUGE let down. A great idea and some really quite brilliant moments but it lacked continuity and did not explain how a lot of things happened. A big one being how Wonder Woman overcame Darkseid's influence and the virus she was infected with. There wasn't ANY half-assed explanation, she just pulled off the mask and was better. LAME.

 

[Oirish]

See, I thought I would start a good comic book thread here, but it's also been done here and here.

I am actually in the process of winding down from the "crises" of 2008 (Final Crisis, Secret Invasion) and am trying to cull my pull lists down to something more economically viable. I shudder to think what I spent on those books last year, and really at the end of things only found about 40% of it worth my trouble.

I will say the book that got me back into it a few years ago was the Superman/Batman run of Jeph Loeb and the Amazing Spider-Man run of J. Michael Straczynski. Supes/Bats is still good, although the writing has suffered since Jeph went on to bigger and better things, and Marvel absolutely killed Spidey with their horrific "Brand New Day" reboot. I could go on for days about this, but in the end, I would just sound like an angry fanboy who gets up in arms because Han shot FIRST.

Two books I am going through and filling in the holes are the Green Lantern and Deadpool runs. GL did an excellent series last year with their Sinestro Corps run, and with all they've done this year it's setting up for a nice new crisis (the "Blackest Day" saga) for 2009. Deadpool was a fan fave for years, and he now has a new series tied in with the Secret Invasion saga, which forces me to go back and get his run with Wolverine and Cable.

Todd McFarlane came back to writing Spawn, and the jury is out right now in terms of whether it will be a hit. I kept away from Batman for the most part with their RIP series, but Kevin Smith did well with his new book "Batman - Cacaphony" which I hope stands up with his runs on Green Arrow and Daredevil which were excellent.

Now I'm off to check eBay for a Michael Turner signed litho that I hope to get without having to forefit my firstborn son.

Deadpool is awesome! Other than Spidey he is the only character that makes me laugh out loud. I hope the film incarnation is as enjoyable. I absolutely agree that "Brand New Day" was awful, despite the quality of art. I do want to point out that JMS most certainly did not overstay his welcome as was said by someone else. Brand New Day was entirely Quesada's idea and JMS wanted to have his name taken off the credits for it because it pissed on all of his hard and brilliant work on AMS. His run was the best thing to happen to Spidey since Gwen. With how the MU is situated post-invasion with Norman running the show and Spidey still in the New Avengers I think it would have been incredible to still have his identity public knowledge. There was just such amazing character growth in the JMS run. Its sad to see it washed away. There's my Han shot first rant.