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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 20, 2019 12:38:27 GMT -5
I remember that when I still ate at McDonald's from time to time, I'd eventually wonder "why do I dislike the McChicken already?" I'd then get one, and conclude "ah, yes, that's why".
The same thing happened this morning with Hellstorm: prince of lies #1.
Ugh.
The story is pretty confusing, it's hard to tell characters from each other, the early '90s grunge look is omnipresent and it was no fun at all. Male characters all seem to have long hair, tight pants, walk around bare chested and smoke. They are also all nihilistic in their attitude... or is that supposed to be a case of "sophisticated cynicism"? Anyway.
Saripha Thames from the original series (now spelled Seripha) is no longer an albino (someone deopped the continuity ball!), and she has apparently been married for years to a double of Daimon Hellstrom... A double that nobody mentioned before, even when the Son of Satan was a mainstay of the Defenders. (EDIT : chaykinstevens corrected me: that double was indeed featured in an issue of Defenders. It would have to be one of the few I haven’t read!).
This doppelgänger was an O.K. guy to begin with, being a refugee from Hell and on the run from Satan, but then Old Nick made him an offer he couldn't refuse... he would give him Daimon's powers to go with his looks, on the condition that the demon become eeeeevil again. So the demon starts sacrificing homeless people and stuff, and is stopped by a nihilistic and cynical Gabriel (the devil-hunter) down on his luck, and a nihilistic and cynical Daimon Hellstrom (the real one, who seems to come back from the dead at the start of the issue. Was he dead at the time? It's hard to keep track).
How does the real Daimon beat the fake demon who wants to steal his power? He just gives it to him. That causes things to go ka-boom, and apparently foils Satan's plans somehow. (I fail to see how... Satan's sole interest in the whole ordeal seemed to be the recovery of his rebel demon, which he does at the end since the poor fellow ends up in Hell).
Saripha slaps Daimon for killing her husband (hey, what had the guy done apart indulging in repeated human sacrifice, right?) and our hero prepares to open a consultancy office with a plaque on which his name has accidentally been misspelled "Hellstorm". Because of course, "HellSTORM" sounds so much more gnarly.
The Son of Satan was an intriguing concept when it began; the character went through a few interesting phases all the way through his marriage to Patsy Walker, but after that he seems to have suffered from a bad case of "let's ruin this character for good" syndrome, from which even a partial reboot is not enough to recover. I took a look at his wikipedia entry and... argh. He stopped being Satan's son to become the son of some loser demon, then became the son of Satannish who was himself revealed to be Dormammu's son (because they both got a smoldering head! Yeah! Clear connection! Can we make Ghost rider Satannish’s brother, too, please? And Blazing Skull from the Golden Age? Ugh).
So... that was pretty much my McChicken comic of the day.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2019 16:46:02 GMT -5
Marvel Masterworks
Marvel Two-in-One: Vol. 1-2, read this yesterday Marvel Two-in-One: Vol. 3-4, read this today
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Post by Graphic Autist on Jul 20, 2019 18:21:30 GMT -5
Over the last week, I read Avengers 98-114 and Daredevil 99, via the Avengers V4 Omnibus.
Glad to see Hawkeye go back to his original costume! Art was pretty good, but while reading this I realized Don Heck is not my favorite artist.
Classic Marvel, for the most part.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jul 20, 2019 18:50:04 GMT -5
Saripha Thames from the original series is no longer an albino for no reason whatsoever except that even back then editors didn't do their homework when they didn't feel like it, and she has apparently been married for years to a double of Daimon Hellstrom... A double that nobody ever mentioned before, even when the Son of Satan was a mainstay of the Defenders. According to the Marvel Chronology Project, Hellstrom's doppleganger had previously appeared in Defenders #118.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 20, 2019 19:56:31 GMT -5
Saripha Thames from the original series is no longer an albino for no reason whatsoever except that even back then editors didn't do their homework when they didn't feel like it, and she has apparently been married for years to a double of Daimon Hellstrom... A double that nobody ever mentioned before, even when the Son of Satan was a mainstay of the Defenders. According to the Marvel Chronology Project, Hellstrom's doppleganger had previously appeared in Defenders #118. I stand corrected.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2019 9:12:11 GMT -5
DC Archives
Justice League of America: Vol. 7 yesterday
Justice League of America: Vol. 8 to 10 rest of the week
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2019 5:51:17 GMT -5
I've been reading the first two volumes of Grant Morrison's 90s JLA.
I like the writing. The colours are very overwhelming. Every character (or almost every character) has that steroid look. It's bombastic.
But I'm enjoying it. The "Rock of Ages" storyline (Lex Luthor forms a new Injustice Gang to covertly take out the JLA) is a top-notch story. Darkseid also makes an appearance. Last night, I read the Prometheus story where Prometheus had studied the League's weaknesses - and then attacked them on the Watchtower.
What's the best tribute I can pay to these books? Well, the fact that I want the third volume RIGHT NOW! There are trades I can read which I can be ambivalent about, e.g. "I'll pick up the third volume when I feel like it." With the first two JLA trades, I so want the third one now. I'll take a detour next time I'm dropping a passenger off - and pick one up from my LCS.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Jul 26, 2019 15:48:16 GMT -5
This week I read Volume 2 of Batman The Golden Age Omnibus, which collects Detective Comics #57-74, Batman #8-15 and World's Finest Comics #4-9.
Batman doesn't kill anyone in the entire book! Robin seems to get hit over the head and knocked out by a villain in nearly every story. The art gets stronger towards the end of the book, and there are many beautiful splash pages. I was afraid these Golden Age stories would be tough to get through, but I enjoyed reading them and they flowed nicely for me since they are only 13 pages per story. I'm hoping to read volumes 3-7 before the end of Summer.
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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 27, 2019 9:12:38 GMT -5
I finished The Great Darkness Saga from my Legion of Super-Heroes back issues. I'm now a couple of issues past that, up to #297. I can't wait for #300! I've been reading the Claremont issue of Marvel Team-Up. I've read #57-67 so far. I'm reading through the New Teen Titans and am up to #19 now.
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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 27, 2019 9:17:39 GMT -5
I read Ka-zar #2 and 3 from the 1970 series, which only lasted 3 issues. What an odd series. It's call Ka-zar, but the only Ka-zar stories are reprints from Daredevil and Spider-Man comics. The only new story in either issue is starring the Angel, and he's not even mentioned at all on the cover! So someone who's a fan of the X-Men or Angel wouldn't even know that he's got an all new story in this comic! The Ka-zar Spider-Man story is pretty good, but the Daredevil story, which dominates these two issue, is pretty nonsensical. No wonder this comic only last 3 issues. The reason I was reading these in the first place is because I have decided to read all X-Men appearances between when their title stopped telling new stories (after #66) and when the all-new, all-different team started with GS #1.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2019 12:38:19 GMT -5
DC Archives
Justice League of America: Vol. 8 to 10.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 27, 2019 12:44:12 GMT -5
A seven part series averaging eight pages per issue in 1982 Doctor Who Monthly; The Tides Of Time by Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons. At least as good as any Peter Davison tv story but the idea of a maestro at an organ keyboard determining temporal causality and being pushed aside by a demon/alien that want to pit medieval knights vs. panzer tanks among other combinations is a lot to accept. In the letter's page a reader says Gibbons does a better Davison than. This is the longest in terms of pages of any of the Gibbons Doctor Who comics, even longer if you include a single set-up Tom Baker era story that leads into this one. Two pages appear in full colour as well which is another anomaly. No regular companions featured (apparently at this time it was a separate negotiation and price to include a human tv companion character, and even K9 wasn't seen since a Baker era comic a dozen issues back).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 27, 2019 13:50:42 GMT -5
Cerebus #201-202
Those issues are the start of a new cycle of the Cerebus saga, one that is far, far less plot-oriented and much more of a character study... and a social commentary. Artwise, it is also spectacular. Heck, even the lettering is out of this world.
The long storyline that saw Cerebus rise to power and clash with Cirin, the leader of a strict matriarchal political regime, is over. Cirin has won, fair and square. As will become clear in subsequent issues (though never actually explained in detail), every aspect of daily life is now controlled by mothers, and most men seem to be spending their time in a series of taverns where alcohol is free and in available in unlimited quantity. The state’s attitude seems to be that as long as men are secluded in specific places and kept idle, they will cause no trouble.
The first few pages reveal a lot without saying a word: a retreating shot shows us what our theatre of action looks like: it is the tavern where Cerebus will be for the next two volumes (titled “Guys” and “Rick’s story”). We also see that the tavern is surrounded by farmland, and that even a nearby plowshare-unfriendly slope is being cultivated as a series of steps, quietly showing us how the Cirinist regime is optimizing food production wherever it is possible (something that evokes many totalitarian regimes like soviet Russia and Mao’s China).
Our main character, after meeting his creator in the last few issues, has apparently decided to try and amend himself (after realizing he was a terrible person, and that there would be a price to pay for that). That will not last, however, as Cerebus reverts to an insufferable d$&k when he’s drunk, and in an environment where booze is free he’s drunk a lot of the time. (As Harrison the bartender says in a pretty convincing Liverpool accent, Saraboos is the kind of fellow who’s drunk two days and suffering for the next two before starting over). This tendency to get drunk, drinking buckets of whisky at a time, is made worse by the jibes Cerebus is victim of for looking different.
Dave Sim introduces to a game called Five Bar Gate, which really looks like something someone would play in real life... I wonder if Sim didn’t play it as a kid. It resembles street hockey, and will be the focus of a few issues a few years down the line. It’s actually interesting enough that we readers can follow a match, as in Jack Vance’s novel Trullion: Alastor 2262 where a football-like sport was an important part of the plot.
In the tavern we also encounter Bear, a mercenary who used to work for Cerebus when he was pope; we’ll get to learn more about his old friendship with the aardvark who will even express some homoerotic feelings for him. The matter of Cerebus’ surprisingly ambiguous sexuality might come from his being a hermaphrodite, or be Dave’s comment of some aspects of deep male bonding, I don’t know. In any case, it’s interesting.
Sim still excels at caricature, and we get a barman who looks like Ringo Starr, Prince Mick who looks like Mick Jagger, Ms. Thatcher, Marty Feldman, with more recognizable characters to come.
”Guys” is also a cycle where we’ll come across a lot of characters from other independent comics (these issues came out at about the same time as the Spirits of Independents Tour 96). I admit I was a bit lost at the time since I didn’t know much about the comics referred to, but at least I recognized Bacchus... and since then, the internet allowed be to get an education on more obscure indie characters.
It was a change of pace, sure, and not one I relished back then (I wanted a return to the Cerebus vs Cirin shenanigans)... but those comics are still extremely good and aged very well indeed.
The male-female dynamic is also an interesting aspect of the mag. It does not represent society as a whole (something I’m not sure Sim is aware of, himself), but I have seen plenty of real-world men and women behave in exactly that kind of way, engaging in a haphazard dance of dependence, rejection, objectification, idealization and denial. It’s too bad we have to witness these make-believe people destroy themselves when we would gladly tell them where they’re erring in their choices! But as the fruit of their creator’s imagination, it is interesting to see them evolve and to wonder how they reflect Sim’s own experiences.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2019 13:10:35 GMT -5
DC Archives
The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives 1 and 2
Metal Men Archives 2 (next week) contains Metal Men #6–20 and those were my favorites.
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Post by Farrar on Jul 29, 2019 17:39:24 GMT -5
Here's something I just obtained. I love Ogden Whitney's work and I love classic 1950s-1960s romance comics, so when I came across a trade collection of some of Whitney's romance work I snapped it up. The book is Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney and it contains reprints of some of his 1960-1963 work from the ACG series My Romantic Adventures (though at least one of the stories "Beat Romance" may be from a different series; in the book's table of contents it's misidentified as being from MRA #110). Despite the title, these love stories are not overtly "strange"; the settings and characters are of the everyday variety (instead of say, the prisoners in jails or aliens from outer space that are found in other ACG and/or Whitney series). What struck me most about these particular early '60s stories is the presence of upward mobility for both women and men, and not just through marrying up (though there is that too, but usually not for the protagonists). Rather, in most of these stories the characters--in addition to finding that perfect romantic partner (these are love comics, after all)--also strive to fulfill themselves by becoming financially solvent, professionally accomplished, etc. In these stories we get characters who are doctoral students/professors, business-people, business owners, secretaries (yes, a male secretary), and other jobs/careers. And in most of these stories, the jobs aren't just a "wait until marriage" placeholders. Whitney's art is pared down--often the panels include only one or two characters with no backgrounds and there are a lot of close-ups--but this type of presentation effectively moves these stories along. The spare artwork is also accommodating to voluminous dialogue/though bubbles; these characters talk and think a lot! Also I have always loved Whitney's inking, here's a prime example of his textures (how did Lichtenstein miss this last panel? )
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