Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202 
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Post by Confessor on Jun 29, 2016 4:39:55 GMT -5
As long as you don't mind not getting any resolution to various plot strands that are introduced, then Hickman's great.  Actually, I haven't read this particular thing, but I still get annoyed when I think of his run on Fantastic Four. What plotlines weren't wrapped up in his FF run? I thought all of it ended up neatly at the end? It may've done in the end...I didn't hang on that long.  I was buying his run for 18 months or so, I guess, and as I remember, there were some interesting plot elements brought into the series, but many of them were just left dangling. I've said it before on this forum, but the impression I got from his run on FF was that Hickman was brainstorming ideas and throwing them all at the wall without any real idea of how they would resolve satisfactorily. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 29, 2016 6:16:17 GMT -5
A big hardcover of this storyline is coming out in July, with a very affordable price tag (less than 10 cents a page). Is it worth getting? I heard that Jonathan Hickman was pretty ambitious with his cosmic plots. I like Cosmic, I like Moorcockesque situations in which reality hangs in the balance... but I don't much care for just 500 pages of stuff exploding (which is what " Crisis on Infinite Earths" felt like most of the time). As long as you don't mind not getting any resolution to various plot strands that are introduced, then Hickman's great. Actually, I haven't read this particular thing, but I still get annoyed when I think of his run on Fantastic Four. Thanks, Confessor. I didn't read Hickman's FF... but a preview showing a Celestial with a thought bubble was a big turn off for me. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 29, 2016 6:20:03 GMT -5
I haven't read his Avengers, but based on the two early Hickman books I've read, it may be flawed, but it won't be just a lot of big explosions. I see him as part of the next wave of American writers who have been influenced by what Brits like Ellis and Morrison (and of course Alan Moore before them) were doing with superhero comics in the 90s and early 2000s. Having said that, I don't think he really has the chops to handle some of the big ideas he introduces into his stories, at least in the two books I've read. However, those were his first two efforts, so I don't want to dismiss him yet. I plan to try one of his later solo series next, probably Manhattan Projects, and then his Avengers. Does this Time Runs Out collection start from the beginning of his Avengers run or somewhere in the middle? I doubt it's right from the beginning; I believe it collects something like the last year or so (probably a little less) of Avengers and New Avengers before the Marvel universe goes into Secret Wars. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 29, 2016 6:26:50 GMT -5
A big hardcover of this storyline is coming out in July, with a very affordable price tag (less than 10 cents a page). Is it worth getting? I heard that Jonathan Hickman was pretty ambitious with his cosmic plots. I like Cosmic, I like Moorcockesque situations in which reality hangs in the balance... but I don't much care for just 500 pages of stuff exploding (which is what " Crisis on Infinite Earths" felt like most of the time). As long as you don't mind not getting any resolution to various plot strands that are introduced, then Hickman's great. Actually, I haven't read this particular thing, but I still get annoyed when I think of his run on Fantastic Four. As you write this, It makes me compare what happened to Marvel as like what Happened in Dc with the original Crisis. Maybe nothing got resolved because the higher ups decided to reboot the whole universe using the incursion storyline. This new line of comics is set up in a new universe , after all. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 29, 2016 10:44:56 GMT -5
What plotlines weren't wrapped up in his FF run? I thought all of it ended up neatly at the end? It may've done in the end...I didn't hang on that long. I was buying his run for 18 months or so, I guess, and as I remember, there were some interesting plot elements brought into the series, but many of them were just left dangling. I've said it before on this forum, but the impression I got from his run on FF was that Hickman was brainstorming ideas and throwing them all at the wall without any real idea of how they would resolve satisfactorily. I had a somewhat similar experience with Hickman's FF. I really dug the first trade. But I enjoyed each succeeding one less and less. By the time I got to the fourth or fifth it just felt like nothing was ever really going to pay off and I gave up because it wasn't interesting any more. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202
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Post by Confessor on Jun 29, 2016 11:31:01 GMT -5
It may've done in the end...I didn't hang on that long. I was buying his run for 18 months or so, I guess, and as I remember, there were some interesting plot elements brought into the series, but many of them were just left dangling. I've said it before on this forum, but the impression I got from his run on FF was that Hickman was brainstorming ideas and throwing them all at the wall without any real idea of how they would resolve satisfactorily. I had a somewhat similar experience with Hickman's FF. I really dug the first trade. But I enjoyed each succeeding one less and less. By the time I got to the fourth or fifth it just felt like nothing was ever really going to pay off and I gave up because it wasn't interesting any more. Exactly! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 29, 2016 14:42:11 GMT -5
"Start with the ending". Isn't that what they yeach in writer school?
(As a kid I would only write the ending of any story; I couldn't be bothered with the boring setting up!!!)
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Post by hondobrode on Jun 29, 2016 15:13:43 GMT -5
More and more I see this with comics and movies : great idea or kernal of an idea, build up the conflict, and then it falls apart more often than not  |
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Post by String on Jun 29, 2016 20:14:33 GMT -5
I haven't read his Avengers, but based on the two early Hickman books I've read, it may be flawed, but it won't be just a lot of big explosions. I see him as part of the next wave of American writers who have been influenced by what Brits like Ellis and Morrison (and of course Alan Moore before them) were doing with superhero comics in the 90s and early 2000s. Having said that, I don't think he really has the chops to handle some of the big ideas he introduces into his stories, at least in the two books I've read. However, those were his first two efforts, so I don't want to dismiss him yet. I plan to try one of his later solo series next, probably Manhattan Projects, and then his Avengers. Does this Time Runs Out collection start from the beginning of his Avengers run or somewhere in the middle? I doubt it's right from the beginning; I believe it collects something like the last year or so (probably a little less) of Avengers and New Avengers before the Marvel universe goes into Secret Wars. Yes, it's the latter half of his run and leads directly into Secret Wars. This also highlights another problem I had with his overall run. From the beginning, in interviews, Hickman said that a reader didn't necessarily have to read both Avengers and New Avengers but for the full comprehensive story, it would be beneficially. Okay at least he was upfront about it. I mainly read Avengers but there were instances where events (or their consequences) from New Avengers would bleed over into Avengers (and vice versa). This would annoy me because frankly, I have little interest in the Illuminati. I think the concept is silly and redundant and yes, while Hickman handled the concept better than Bendis, I shouldn't be coerced into reading a title I have no interest in to get a complete story. It happened infrequently but just enough to where I would have to read reviews of certain NA issues online to get an idea of what happened to give some context for what I had read in the concurrent Avengers issue. |
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I was buying his run for 18 months or so, I guess, and as I remember, there were some interesting plot elements brought into the series, but many of them were just left dangling. I've said it before on this forum, but the impression I got from his run on FF was that Hickman was brainstorming ideas and throwing them all at the wall without any real idea of how they would resolve satisfactorily. 
