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Post by Dizzy D on Sept 23, 2015 1:58:24 GMT -5
You can't really compare the two: Sandman is 1 writer doing a brilliant run with characters he (mostly) created himself and stories that don't have to fit in any preconceived notion of what that comic should be.
Hellblazer is 300 comics written by many different teams that nevertheless keep a high level of quality throughout the series (even the worst teams still give some solid stories IMHO), but as a work it's therefore fragmented.
@mrp: I love a lot of Wildstorm in that time. You said you already have Ellis' Stormwatch/Authority and Planetary and checked out Brubaker's Sleeper/Point Blank.
Casey's Wildcats is one of my favourite comics of all time. You really don't need to read the Brandon Choi/Jim Lee issues to get the gist of it. I liked the Alan Moore/Travis Charest issues, but even that is mediocre stuff for Moore. It still has the origin of TAO, who comes back in Sleeper and some other fun characters. (Savant is one of my favourite characters and I wish she'd be used more). All you need to know about the Wildcats is that they are (mostly) descendents of an alien race (the Kherubim/Kherans) who were at war with another alien race (the Daemonites). Two ships crashed on Earth and continue their war, the Wildcats later return to Khera to find out that the war has been over for years and that the Kherans won. So the team goes back to Earth and try to figure out what now to do with their lives and that's basically the point where Volume 2/3 starts.
Casey's Majestic was fun. Abnett and Lanning's Majestic was also a good straight-up superhero series.
Adam Warren's Gen13 was fun and clever. Automatic Kafka was interesting, but try a single issue before you read the whole series because it's not for everybody.
Christos Gage's Stormwatch PHD did not live up to Ellis' Stormwatch, but had interesting new characters and some fun concept.
And if you pick non-Wildstorm universe Wildstorm titles you have Global Frequency, Ex Machina, all of ABC comics,
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2015 2:06:01 GMT -5
You can't really compare the two: Sandman is 1 writer doing a brilliant run with characters he (mostly) created himself and stories that don't have to fit in any preconceived notion of what that comic should be. Hellblazer is 300 comics written by many different teams that nevertheless keep a high level of quality throughout the series (even the worst teams still give some solid stories IMHO), but as a work it's therefore fragmented. @mrp: I love a lot of Wildstorm in that time. You said you already have Ellis' Stormwatch/Authority and Planetary and checked out Brubaker's Sleeper/Point Blank. Casey's Wildcats is one of my favourite comics of all time. You really don't need to read the Brandon Choi/Jim Lee issues to get the gist of it. I liked the Alan Moore/Travis Charest issues, but even that is mediocre stuff for Moore. It still has the origin of TAO, who comes back in Sleeper and some other fun characters. (Savant is one of my favourite characters and I wish she'd be used more). All you need to know about the Wildcats is that they are (mostly) descendents of an alien race (the Kherubim/Kherans) who were at war with another alien race (the Daemonites). Two ships crashed on Earth and continue their war, the Wildcats later return to Khera to find out that the war has been over for years and that the Kherans won. So the team goes back to Earth and try to figure out what now to do with their lives and that's basically the point where Volume 2/3 starts. Casey's Majestic was fun. Abnett and Lanning's Majestic was also a good straight-up superhero series. Adam Warren's Gen13 was fun and clever. Automatic Kafka was interesting, but try a single issue before you read the whole series because it's not for everybody. Christos Gage's Stormwatch PHD did not live up to Ellis' Stormwatch, but had interesting new characters and some fun concept. And if you pick non-Wildstorm universe Wildstorm titles you have Global Frequency, Ex Machina, all of ABC comics, I read most of the ABC stuff as it came out, I have the first 3 volumes of Ex Machina and the first volume of Global Frequency in my to read piles (been looking for GF Vol. 2 for a while). Has Casey's WildC.A.T.S. ot Mjestic been collected or still in print if it has been? -M |
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Post by Dizzy D on Sept 23, 2015 2:34:42 GMT -5
Majestic was collected (don't know if those are still in print). Wildcats 3.0 got 2 big collections not that long ago (3 years ago or so). Wildcats volume 2 I don't think was collected beyond the original TPBs that came out when the series was still in print, so 10-15 years ago.
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Sept 23, 2015 4:08:20 GMT -5
One Wildstorm comic I rarely if ever see mentioned that deserve attention is Brubaker's 12 issue maxi series Authority Revolution. It is actually there I was definitively sold on him as this series features some ideas you usually only see within an Alan Moore comic. The art is so so, but the story has some amazing turns.
One Wildstorm book I am myself eyeing at is Stormwatch Team Achilles. The book ended abruptly after its wrter was outed as a fraud regarding his military credits, but that doesn't mean the writing wasn't solid. And indeed I remember it being highly praised by the few people who read it. Any opinions here?
Oh, and even if Sandman is a near perfect series, I chose Hellblazer since the ending of Sandman isn't as strong as the debut and middle, when Hellblazer's last 50 issues are really good and end the series on a high point.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2015 4:15:22 GMT -5
I'd say the highs on Sandman were higher, and the lows on Hellblazer were lower, plus Sandman had a lot more consistency in quality during its run than Hellblazer did, so I would give the advantage to Sandman by a good bit. Not that there weren't great stories in Hellblazer, but if it's a zero sum game, and I had to choose one of the other, it would be Sandman without question.
-M
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Post by Dizzy D on Sept 23, 2015 4:23:28 GMT -5
One Wildstorm comic I rarely if ever see mentioned that deserve attention is Brubaker's 12 issue maxi series Authority Revolution. It is actually there I was definitively sold on him as this series features some ideas you usually only see within an Alan Moore comic. The art is so so, but the story has some amazing turns. One Wildstorm book I am myself eyeing at is Stormwatch Team Achilles. The book ended abruptly after its wrter was outed as a fraud regarding his military credits, but that doesn't mean the writing wasn't solid. And indeed I remember it being highly praised by the few people who read it. Any opinions here? Oh, and even if Sandman is a near perfect series, I chose Hellblazer since the ending of Sandman isn't as strong as the debut and middle, when Hellblazer's last 50 issues are really good and end the series on a high point. Stormwatch Team Achilles was pretty good. Its ending is one of the reasons I'm so annoyed with DC in the last 10-15 years. Not because they fired Wright (he repeatedly lied to them and others, so fully justified there), but that they just cancel the title on the cliffhanger instead of publishing that last issue (or get some other writer to write up an ending to the series.) |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Sept 23, 2015 4:39:09 GMT -5
He lied indeed, but I understand this was because he had a pacifist agenda and told he was a veteran to atract a certain type of readership and "subvert" them. If that's the case, then it's about activism and quite interesting, not something you often see in mainstream comics. But Maybe it's more tedious than htat  |
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Post by Dizzy D on Sept 23, 2015 5:03:45 GMT -5
He lied indeed, but I understand this was because he had a pacifist agenda and told he was a veteran to atract a certain type of readership and "subvert" them. If that's the case, then it's about activism and quite interesting, not something you often see in mainstream comics. But Maybe it's more tedious than htat The activist part had more to do with his non-comic work, I think. Nothing about Stormwatch Team Achilles seems to promote a pacifics agenda. |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Sept 23, 2015 5:12:46 GMT -5
Ah ok, I read an ITW of him that led me to believe that this was his agenda that would be revealed towards the end of the series (#25). So it was just a spy/infiltration/action series? It seemed to adress 3rd world problems, didn't it?
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Post by Dizzy D on Sept 23, 2015 7:11:04 GMT -5
It was mostly spy/action with a bit as TA being a counterpart to the Authority. Team Achilles and Authority were opposed, TA believing that their authority came from the governments that backed them and therefore by the democratic process, Authority believed that the only their authority came from their own powers and morality. A bit along the lines of a better executed Civil War, though I was generally on the Authority's side over Team Achilles (or rather I was on the Jack Marlowe (Wildcats) side, who had come to the conclusion by then that punching people in the face was a terrible way to solve actual problems, but that's beside the point.). Which made things interesting when the Authority became the rulers of the US, but sadly the series was cancelled before they could really get into that.
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Post by DE Sinclair on Sept 23, 2015 9:22:50 GMT -5
He lied indeed, but I understand this was because he had a pacifist agenda and told he was a veteran to atract a certain type of readership and "subvert" them. If that's the case, then it's about activism and quite interesting, not something you often see in mainstream comics. But Maybe it's more tedious than htat Just wanted to add that, as a Navy veteran, I think that anyone who lies about being a veteran, whether it's to get a job, a free meal on Veterans Day, impress a girl, or whatever, deserves any negative repercussions they get when the truth comes out. |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Sept 23, 2015 9:48:47 GMT -5
Yeah probably, aside people suddenly deaming him as a terrible writer for that sole reason, which is a huge paradox as well  |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Sept 23, 2015 9:55:45 GMT -5
Yeah probably, aside people suddenly deaming him as a terrible writer for that sole reason, which is a huge paradox as well I haven't read his work, so I couldn't comment. He may have been a fine writer, but it's sad that he may not have thought it was good enough without the support of lies. |
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Post by Trevor on Sept 23, 2015 10:10:14 GMT -5
If you had to choose, would you pick Hellblazer or Sandman as an overall better series? This thread has taught me how much stuff there is I don't like. Kind of distressing... But, yeah, I've read most of Hellblazer and not much of it connected with me. I like the character, I liked the spin-offs with Lady Constantine and John Constantine's friend who is a cab driver. I liked Jason Aaron's two issue run. But I was kind of "eh" about the other 200 issues or so that I read. And I love, love, love Sandman. I'm confused. Were you paid to read those 200 issues you didn't like? And yes, Sandman. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Sept 23, 2015 10:30:22 GMT -5
If you had to choose, would you pick Hellblazer or Sandman as an overall better series? . I'm one of the biggest Hellblazer fans around, but there's a lot of lulls in HB, generally in the middle of each writer's respective runs. For example, I consider Jamie Delano the best HB writer, but "The Fear Machine" completely collapses in on itself. Paul Jenkins, who had some of the finest single issues in the series, often struggled to bring his multi-issue arcs into a conclusion. Hellblazer was such a quality series for such a long time that it can really only be compared to itself-- it was certainly DC's most consistantly good continuing title in the 25 years it ran-- but not every issue is a winner. Sandman has its lulls, but since it was the vision of one creator, it holds together better overall. |
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