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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 31, 2024 20:36:27 GMT -5
The Flash #763-#784 and the 2021 annual
Read some of this when it first came out and was on a bit of Flash lately and decided to pick it back up. This is probably the most fun that I've had with a book in a very long time that feels like a total breath of fresh air. Don't know where Adams came from exactly, but he's a wonderful writer and I wish him nothing but success
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Post by Jasoomian on Aug 1, 2024 21:47:46 GMT -5
Hello I'm logging on for the first time in forever and right now I'm reading last week's BRZRKR special from Jason Aaron and Salvador Larocca!
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Post by supercat on Aug 4, 2024 17:16:09 GMT -5
Just read the Death of Doctor Strange trade, probably my favorite modern read in awhile. It's basically structured as a classic style murder mystery, and I won't go into too many details because it would be a shame to share any spoilers for anyone who hasn't read it yet (some good twists for sure). But I'll say this much, it finds a clever way to incorporate a key Silver Age component into a still very modern story context. Clea is very central to this as well, and the story in fact nicely tees up her taking a lead role in a subsequent series that I also bought the trade for but haven't read yet. Oh, and a charming little ghost puppy steals a few scenes as well.
Add in some very solid artwork, this book still gives me hope with mainstream superhero storytelling in modern times.
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Post by supercat on Aug 5, 2024 5:51:47 GMT -5
I also just read the trade collection of the X-Men Days of Future Past Doomsday mini. It revisits the world of the classic Days of Future Past by covering a few decades of events (labeling each year as the story moves forward) leading up to the original storyline.
If you miss a more classic X-Men world (Hickman's modern run on X-Men has really left me cold, much as I liked him on FF), this will definitely take you back to a more recognizable set of characters. While it's horribly sad event after sad event, the characters actually seem heroic to me. Kitty Pryde really shines in this, best Kitty in a long time, and Colossus, Storm, Wolverine, Rachel, and Magneto get a lot of storyline in particular here as well among others, I feel like these are the versions I've missed so much.
This will also appeal to those who appreciate events after the Bronze Age, characters like Bishop get nice roles as well, so if you are/were a longer term X-Men reader I think it's particularly enjoyable seeing such a wide cast. Again though, even though one would expect a generally darker story given the dystopian setting, it's serious tragedy left and right.
And that's probably a bit of the weakness to me, it doesn't really have a compelling storyline beyond year-by-year vignettes of stuff that goes wrong. I say vignettes because it doesn't really flow like a coherent story, I think it just assumes the reader knows Days of Future Past already and lots of classic X-Men characters. Which works fine for me, but doesn't really make it critical reading either, again more like just revisiting an old friend. I found the interior art to be just ok as well (nice cover on the trade though).
But I'll take my classic X-Men where I can get them, and again, really nice seeing them "in character" again.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 17, 2024 10:05:53 GMT -5
So I read Green Lantern: War Journal (the trade) this morning. I've very torn...
One the one hand, teaming John Stewart with Steel is fun, and I like Shepard.. he definitely feels right as someone Kyle would pick as a protege.
On the other hand.. I hate zombies. REALLY hate them. And I don't love John quitting for take care of him mom, that doesn't feel right. He's a save everyone guy, I can't see him leaving the Corps to bad guys to take care of his mom.
More importantly though, they print a trade and it stops mid story? what the heck? I like Phillip Kennedy Johnson, but he is like the master of modern comics pacing in a bad way... the trade (Which had the three back ups from the main GL series and 6 issues) took me like 45 minutes to read... I really glad this was on hoopla and I didn't pay $4x 6 issues.
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Post by Dizzy D on Aug 18, 2024 15:55:43 GMT -5
Apart from X-Factor, (see the weekly review thread), I bought and read Houses of the Unholy (the new Brubaker/Phillips), which was not my favourite of their works. I'll read it again, but maybe because the Satanic Panic never was a thing over here, that I just don't have any connection to this story.
I also bought volume 1 of Home Sick Pilots (by Watters and Wijngaard), mostly because I was liking Wijngaard's so much on The Power Fantasy (see previous weeks review thread) and I really liked the first trade. The Home Sick Pilots and their rivals The Nuclear Bastards are two teenage punk bands. Ami, one of the Pilots, disappears when checking out a alleged haunted house as a venue for their next performance. Described on the back as The Shining meets Power Rangers, which odd as that sounds, is not a bad description for it.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 20, 2024 15:13:04 GMT -5
My Favorite Thing is Monsters, v1Emil Ferris, 2017 This one has already been reviewed in this thread by MRP a few years ago, and he summed up the plot and the main aspects of the book pretty well. Personally, I really liked the unique way the story is presented, as the notes and drawings of a young girl in a standard spiral notebook (so every page has those ubiquitous horizontal lines. And the art is often quite stunningly detailed and lush. However, I have to admit that even though I like so many aspects of this book (from the art through the actual, often troubling story), I found reading it quite a slog – I often found myself losing interest and wanting to put it aside. The second volume (which, I assume, concludes the story and ties up the many loose threads/mysteries) has been released in the meantime, but I’m not really in any hurry to read it.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 25, 2024 7:34:08 GMT -5
MonstersBarry Windsor Smith, 2021 So, it seems like monsters are a recurring theme in my recent comics reading. Just read this, and all I can say is wow, very impressive, Mr. Smith. A brief rundown of the story: a confused young man named Bobby Bailey, who apparently has some kind of serious learning disability and/or psychological disorder, wanders into an army recruiting office in LA. The recruiter, named Elias McDonald, realizes that he has no close family ties and would be a perfect fit for some kind of hush-hush military project called Prometheus, so he contacts the relevant officer, albeit with some trepidation (and he immediately regrets it, which has takes a serious toll on his mental health). Bobby is subjected to some, well, monstrous experimentation that turns him into a hulking, misshapen giant. He eventually escapes from the laboratory with some belated help from Elias, and the story then goes mainly into flashbacks as we learn about the pasts of Bobby, his father Tom, mother Janet and other key characters in the story which all led to this outcome. It should be noted that despite his eventual appearance, Bobby Bailey is *not* one of the monsters from the book’s title. I can see why pretty much everyone, both previous posters in this thread and throughout the internet, have been so effusive in their praise of this book. It is truly an amazing piece of graphic storytelling. However, my own impressions aren’t quite as uncritical as most of the reviews I’ve seen. One of the main things that bothered me throughout is how many coincidences there were – upon which the story hinged. First, there is the fact that Bobby just happened to wander into the recruitment office where Elias was posted, as we later learn that Elias had also grown up in Ohio close to where Bobby did and had in fact bumped into his mother once on the street. Also, it turns out that his father was one of the soldiers who found a secret Nazi laboratory at the end of the war along with Bobby’s father, an army interpreter, where the latter essentially went insane. And that Nazi experimentation was in fact the basis for the later army project that took in Bobby. There is also the fact that Elias – a character I really liked, by the way – ends up being something of a ‘Magical Negro.’ So I can’t give this one an unqualified 5 out of 5 stars or whatever, but I’ll still say that it’s very much worth reading. It’s a gut-wrenching, tragic story, and the art, needless to say, is gorgeous. All together, this is probably Smith’s magnum opus. (By the way, I should note that except for the cover, which is a scan of my own book, the other two images here were borrowed from a review of the book by Greg Burgas at the Atomic Junk Shop.)
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Post by Batflunkie on Sept 10, 2024 13:25:59 GMT -5
Avengers (2018) #684, Immortal Hulk #1-#12, Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense (2018) #1, and Defenders: The Best Defense (2018) #1 from The Immortal Hulk Omnibus
Had been itching to read this in full for years after reading issue 1 and just got lost in a sea of other books. Al Ewing has always been one of my favorite writers, taking unlikely c-list characters and creating fun and unique reads. I'm going to be honest, I've never read much in the way of a Hulk comic prior to Immortal. The character just never interested me (how many times have I said that before about Thor, Flash, and hundreds of others I wonder?), but again, leading into my desire for "fun and engaging stories told in interesting ways", I turned a blind eye to my preconceived notions. The book is a nightmare, and I mean that in the best possible way. It's full of darkness and body horror and is about a man, thanks in part to getting blasted by gamma radiation, who cannot die. When Bruce first got hit by radiation, he opened "The Green Door", this fissure to another dimension that's linked to other gamma radiated beings (hopefully it'll get explored more in detail).
If you haven't read Immortal Hulk yet, I can't recommend it enough
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80sChild
Junior Member
I can usually be found hanging out somewhere between 1980-1989.
Posts: 25
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Post by 80sChild on Sept 14, 2024 13:08:18 GMT -5
After putting it off for so long I finally read and finished House Of X/Powers Of X by Jonathan Hickman the other day. It was a pretty good read, and I have considered continuing with the stories that have taken place after but I don't know yet. I have so much stuff on my to read list as it is. However I do have some down time coming up so I may give it a shot then. I have already printed out a list of the branching titles, issues, and storylines that have come after... so maybe I have already committed to it without even realizing it.
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Post by jtrw2024 on Sept 17, 2024 11:32:30 GMT -5
I had a TPB collecting the recent limited series Superman: Lost 1-10 which I finally got around to reading. I haven't followed Superman titles for a long while, but he's still one of my top superheroes, so I'm always on the lookout for good stories to read. There's plenty of older stuff I haven't read, but I like it when I find modern comics that I can enjoy, since it gives me hope for the future of the medium and my favourite characters! I didn't really know what to expect and I'm not sure why I bought this in the first place, but I'm glad I did. Something about the description must have caught my interest, or maybe the price was just right. I don't really know enough about current DC continuity, but I assume this is just its own standalone story, and the characters were familiar enough to their classic iconic depictions. I enjoyed the story, and read through it pretty quickly one or two issues at a time over several intervals between yesterday and today.
I like that it wasn't really an Elseworld story, since I prefer stuff that seems like it could fit into any continuity, even if it doesn't. I know there are a lot of mini-series, or original graphic novels where creators just tell their own stories about the classic superheroes, without being beholden to any particular version, so I'm always looking out for stuff like that. I wish there was more of this sort of thing in the regular monthly comics, rather than everything having to tie into a dozen other series, or next big event
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