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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2015 19:53:31 GMT -5
Ec, Clowes, and L&R are some of my favorites too
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 14, 2015 19:54:50 GMT -5
I own Love and Rockets book one, and I've started it at least three times. I'm sure I'll finish it someday. I've heard that it gets better in book two. Love and Rockets is my favorite long-running comic (defined, here, as "running longer than Tales of the Beanworld") but I've only read Volume 1 maybe twice and I think that it's kinda crappy. Again, too many small panels. I did like the Dinosaur, though! I keep hoping he'll show up in, like, Frogmouth's back yard in the new series or somethin'. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 14, 2015 20:24:19 GMT -5
I own Love and Rockets book one, and I've started it at least three times. I'm sure I'll finish it someday. I've heard that it gets better in book two. Love and Rockets is my favorite long-running comic (defined, here, as "running longer than Tales of the Beanworld") but I've only read Volume 1 maybe twice and I think that it's kinda crappy. Again, too many small panels. I did like the Dinosaur, though! I keep hoping he'll show up in, like, Frogmouth's back yard in the new series or somethin'. I wouldn't say L&R Book 1 is bad, just different - but so different from the rest of the series that I agree with the recommendation of starting with Book 2 and then coming back to Book 1 later on if the mood strikes. Stuff I don't get ... some of the most highly acclaimed comics writers of recent years seem very average to me: Gaiman, Millar, Bendis, Brubaker, ... but I wouldn't say I don't get them - I can see why they're popular and the skill set they bring to their writing, but it all feels very ordinary. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 14, 2015 20:56:14 GMT -5
So, pakehafulla over in that 'what have you read' thread gave me an idea. What stories/comics just completely escape you, despite being sought after/acclaimed/revered by everyone else? To jump to mind for me, one classic, and one modern. Classic: The Celestial Madonna story. I HATE Mantis with a great passion, and Swordsman and Moondragon didn't do much for me either... the plot was OK, I guess, but with the spotlight on characters I just cringed to see it just pushes it into the 'Ugh' category for me. Modern: Anything by Jonathan Hickman: I posted this before, but I'll never forgive Hickman for ruining the Avengers, and now apparently the whole darn Marvel universe. He clearly had a LSH story (or perhaps a JLA story) in mind that he poked and twisted until it sorta fit into Marvel... then it exploded. Even his FF, while OK, went totally off the rails at the end. I'll give him credit for Valeria Richards (who I really like) but that's it. I tried East of West, and found it nonsensical, decompressed garbage. I think at this point the only way I'd read a book with his name on it would be if it was Iron Man, and even then I might skip it. As to the Celestial Madonna story, if you don't like the characters, there's not much anyone can say to redeem them for you. For what it's worth, they were all portrayed to be unlikable to a great extent. Mantis was stuck up, egotistical, and tried to jump from man to man for her own advantage. Swordsman was a love struck idiot and a former villain who failed at being a hero more often than he succeeded. Moondragon was incredibly egotistical with delusions of godhood. But these were characterizations in heroes that you didn't see often, if at all, at the time. And who would have guessed that Mantis with her trashy actions and supposed background would end up as any sort of Madonna? Plus Kang's continuing attacks finally answered the question, "If he's a time traveler why does he wait so long before attacking again? Why doesn't he spend some time in the future, then come back to right after he left the last time?"
The whole story also tied together the ancient war between the Kree & the Skrulls, the Blue Area of the Moon, the Priests of Pama, the original Human Torch, Kang/Rama-Tut/Immortus, the unexplained malfunctions that had been plaguing the Vision, as well as explained the mysterious thing that the Ant-Man had discovered in his examination of the Vision back in the Kree-Skrull War. A whole lot going on.
And it tied the Marvel Western books into the core continuity. Englehart is simply the best continuity writer in comics, ever. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 14, 2015 20:58:07 GMT -5
. Modern: Anything by Jonathan Hickman: I posted this before, but I'll never forgive Hickman for ruining the Avengers, and now apparently the whole darn Marvel universe. He clearly had a LSH story (or perhaps a JLA story) in mind that he poked and twisted until it sorta fit into Marvel... then it exploded. Even his FF, while OK, went totally off the rails at the end. I'll give him credit for Valeria Richards (who I really like) but that's it. I tried East of West, and found it nonsensical, decompressed garbage. I think at this point the only way I'd read a book with his name on it would be if it was Iron Man, and even then I might skip it. I read one trade of his stuff and it just didn't GO anywhere. No character or plot development just set-up. For five issues. I don't get why that is considered acceptable. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 14, 2015 21:09:40 GMT -5
Love and Rockets is my favorite long-running comic (defined, here, as "running longer than Tales of the Beanworld") but I've only read Volume 1 maybe twice and I think that it's kinda crappy. Again, too many small panels. I did like the Dinosaur, though! I keep hoping he'll show up in, like, Frogmouth's back yard in the new series or somethin'. I wouldn't say L&R Book 1 is bad, just different - but so different from the rest of the series that I agree with the recommendation of starting with Book 2 and then coming back to Book 1 later on if the mood strikes. Stuff I don't get ... some of the most highly acclaimed comics writers of recent years seem very average to me: Gaiman, Millar, Bendis, Brubaker, ... but I wouldn't say I don't get them - I can see why they're popular and the skill set they bring to their writing, but it all feels very ordinary. As to Gaiman...Sandman is ground-breaking. In a way that probably only Moore could touch in the last 30 years or so. Most of his comic work since has been fairly lightweight. On the other hand he's a brilliant short-story writer and a damn fine novelist. Brubaker is probably the best writer of crime comcs...ever. I haven't read a lot of his super-hero stuff because mostly I just don't care about the genre any more. But I can't think of anyone who is close to Brubaker on crime/noir comics. |
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Post by chadwilliam on Jul 14, 2015 21:50:54 GMT -5
Kingdom Come I seem to recall Waid's story being considered rather mediocre when it was first released with Alex Ross's artwork being regarded as the real attraction. Over the years however, this has changed and it's seen as a high point (the high point?) of Waid's career. I honestly don't get it. Whereas I hate the impact Dark Knight Returns had on Batman for example, I can still see why it's regarded as a masterpiece - Kingdom Come however? My mind boggles.
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? I'd be shocked to find that Alan Moore had even skimmed through a Superman comic in the 25 or so years before he wrote this.
The Killing Joke Same problem with Whatever Happened to... Intelligently written, but nothing to do with the characters purported to be depicted within. Yeah, I know a lot of people regard it as one of his lesser works, but it still makes the top of those silly 'Greatest Joker Stories Ever' polls you find online. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 14, 2015 22:09:08 GMT -5
Kingdom Come I seem to recall Waid's story being considered rather mediocre when it was first released with Alex Ross's artwork being regarded as the real attraction. Over the years however, this has changed and it's seen as a high point (the high point?) of Waid's career. I honestly don't get it. Whereas I hate the impact Dark Knight Returns had on Batman for example, I can still see why it's regarded as a masterpiece - Kingdom Come however? My mind boggles.
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? I'd be shocked to find that Alan Moore had even skimmed through a Superman comic in the 25 or so years before he wrote this.
The Killing Joke Same problem with Whatever Happened to... Intelligently written, but nothing to do with the characters purported to be depicted within. Yeah, I know a lot of people regard it as one of his lesser works, but it still makes the top of those silly 'Greatest Joker Stories Ever' polls you find online. I tend to agree with each of these. And, to be fair, Moore would agree that The Killing Joke isn't very good. I'll always have a soft spot for Kingdom Come, not because of the book, I thought it was horribly over-rated at the time it came out. But because it was responsible for the birth of CBR and all the friends I made there. |
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Post by hondobrode on Jul 14, 2015 22:17:17 GMT -5
Totally agree that Bendis is horrible on the team books I've read, but I really loved his Daredevil.
Bendis, more than any other single source, represents the most that I dislike about Marvel from about the last 10 years or so.
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Post by Pharozonk on Jul 14, 2015 22:28:27 GMT -5
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? I'd be shocked to find that Alan Moore had even skimmed through a Superman comic in the 25 or so years before he wrote this.
I'm curious as to why you don't like this story. I personally find it to be one of the best Superman tales out there and I hate most of Alan Moore's other work.  |
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Post by dupersuper on Jul 14, 2015 22:41:49 GMT -5
I love Gail Simones comedic work (Secret Six, Atom...), but her more straight-forward stuff (Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, Action...) I find solid but bland.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 15, 2015 1:05:52 GMT -5
I'm a great admirer of Alan Moore's writing, particularly Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell (his real masterpiece in my opinion) but I agree that his Superman and Batman stories are, for the most part, overrated. I think Moore understood early on that his style of writing really didn't jibe with a superhero universe and so he moved on to the types of themes that he really wanted to tackle. Hell, he admitted that ABC and 1963 were in part a refutation of his past opinions on superhero comics. Most of his followers and various imitators never seemed to learn the lesson that superheroes break down and stop working when held up to the mirror of grim and gritty reality.
Civil War would probably top my list. What makes it particularly heinous in my eyes is that it's not a thoughtful deconstruction, like Watchmen, but is instead an admission by the creators that the idealization of the heroic ideal is no longer a valid concept. Mainstream superhero's, for me at least, work better as a sort of safe-haven for those ideals. Just because that sort of thing isn't sexy for a lot of writers to deal with, doesn't mean that it should be scrapped altogether. That's lazy and not seeing idealization for the broad-stroke thought experiment that it could be. Once you suddenly have the government say "Hey, shouldn't these guys be registered?" you can't help but feel that these guys are taking the genre far more seriously that they should. We're already accepting a lot of silly (form a real-world perspective) conventional conceits with the superhero genre as is and trying to force this level of stark, real world, psychological realism into the mix, for sake of topicality, simply acts to accentuate those conceit-based absurdities, paradoxically making the genre even MORE absurd.
Stories like that should be told, but in the framework of creator-owned universes designed from the ground up to display a different psychology and philosophy. The last 30 years or so Marvel and DC seem to have been constantly trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Jul 15, 2015 1:29:27 GMT -5
Crisis on Infinite Earths. I still don't know what the hell was happening.
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Post by batlaw on Jul 15, 2015 2:09:22 GMT -5
I just don't get it... Snyders Batman... Court of Owls etc. Just completey bewildered by its praise.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 15, 2015 5:57:17 GMT -5
I just don't get it... Snyders Batman... Court of Owls etc. Just completey bewildered by its praise. I agree! Court of Owls broke my suspension of disbelief. Batman is already kinda hard to accept... but if you do, to think that a massive criminal organization not only existed, but thrived in his city without him having even a hint of it? Really silly. |
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