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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 23, 2014 15:08:27 GMT -5
I've never read Civil War but I may get to it eventually.
The last year or so, I've been using the library to get caught up on big-deal stuff I've missed over the years. Some of it I missed because I wasn't reading comics at all, but sometimes I just shrugged my shoulders and just wasn't interested when it came out. (I read Crisis on Infinite Earths for the first six issues when it first came out but I didn't read the rest of it until six months ago when I got it from the library.)
I thought The Long Halloween was incredibly over-rated but it's not hard to read.
Identity Crisis is as bad as its detractors say it is.
All-Star Superman is pretty awesome in just about every way.
Hush is dumber than hell but I love the art and it has some nice sequences. I may buy my own copy eventually.
Dark Knight Strikes Again is a heckuva lot of fun. I was very glad I read it.
So it's a mixed bag. I'm afraid Civil War is going to be like Identity Crisis and I just haven't felt like checking it out of the library yet.
So my advice is: If you must read it, see if you can get it from the library before you sink any cash into it.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 23, 2014 15:49:32 GMT -5
Well if Starlin isn't writing much anymore, and Abnett & Lanning are separated, Marvel's cosmic characters are f___d in the hands of anyone else. Is it just me that think Starlin just retreads the same one story over and over and over and over and over again? Yeah, and I guess that's fine with my as I like the structure of the type he uses even if it's repeated with different characters. If you don't, then it might be more of a roadblock. |
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Civil War
Oct 23, 2014 16:03:47 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2014 16:03:47 GMT -5
I love The Long Halloween and will probably read it again soon. I get all the knocks on it, but don't care. I've read it multiple times and my love hasn't waned.
Hush I liked well enough, but the second time I'm not sure I finished it.
All-Star Superman is indeed top-notch.
Never read DKSA and didn't like IC.
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Post by coke & comics on Oct 23, 2014 23:03:56 GMT -5
Identity Crisis is as bad as its detractors say it is. So it's a mixed bag. I'm afraid Civil War is going to be like Identity Crisis and I just haven't felt like checking it out of the library yet. So my advice is: If you must read it, see if you can get it from the library before you sink any cash into it. I think Identity Crisis and Civil War have plenty in common. I didn't hate Identity Crisis (but I don't care about DC characters the way I do Marvel) and there were things I enjoyed about it. But the mystery was so stupidly written and the tone was so off, that it's hard to like. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Oct 23, 2014 23:34:06 GMT -5
Is it just me that think Starlin just retreads the same one story over and over and over and over and over again? Yeah, and I guess that's fine with my as I like the structure of the type he uses even if it's repeated with different characters. If you don't, then it might be more of a roadblock. I think with me that it's more of a visionary stuck in a rut. Starlin was a profoundly inventive creator, but now he collects a paycheck. I can't blame him because he deserves a few victory laps, but consider what Steve Gerber was doing before his death (Hard Time, Dr Fate revamp). Don McGregor starts a Kickstarter to work on new projects; Starlin runs through the motions doing interchangable projects for Marvel and DC. It's slightly embarassing at this point.
I wouldn't feel so strongly about this if I didn't respect Jim so much. He's one of comics true visionaries, but he's been phoning it in for 20 years.
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Post by fanboystranger on Oct 23, 2014 23:38:56 GMT -5
I'm glad that someone else on the Classics board likes DKSA. It's a completely logical follow-up to DKR, and it really is a ton of fun. I think the problem is that readers take Batman so seriously and Miller never really has. Even Year One has its moments where you should think that Batman is bonkers. Those are writ large in DKSA. |
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Post by berkley on Oct 24, 2014 0:41:43 GMT -5
Looking at it one way, I didn't think Civil War was a bad idea, though from what I could tell through reading about it online the details of execution didn't look too good.
But looking at it in another way, I agree with Trebor: it's a mistake to try to bring real-world geo-political realism to the MU because it doesn't work unless you're willing to take it all the way, as Ennis did in The Boys.
Marvel has always tried to be a little more "real-world" about its superheroes, often in some rather arbitrary, ways, but it seems to have been Shooter who first came up with the idea of tying the Avengers to the US government.
I could have this wrong, BTW, as I wasn't reading the Avengers at the time, and this is but once again from reading online accounts, but I'm thinking of the Henry Gyrich storyline in the 190s or early 200s of the Avengers.
Anyway, I think it was one of those things that seems like a smart idea at the time but really isn't once you look at it a little more closely. I don't even think it's as "realistic" as it might appear at first glance, given the nature of the MU and characters like Thor as they had been established previously.
However, you could argue that Civil War was an inevitable story once Shooter started the Avengers (and the MU as a whole?) down that road.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 24, 2014 1:35:24 GMT -5
Yeah, the thing that often bores me at this point is how quickly writers want to get to their ham-fisted allegories, while the interesting question, for me at least, is why the psychology of the common citizens is so different. I think this is why certain people can't enjoy The Lord of the Rings and complain about the relative psychological simplicity of the characters, never taking into account that the framework itself is intentionally different to better illustrate the ideals of the author. I think this is just as valid as social commentary and vastly underrated as a story telling method.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 24, 2014 1:38:38 GMT -5
Yeah, and I guess that's fine with my as I like the structure of the type he uses even if it's repeated with different characters. If you don't, then it might be more of a roadblock. I think with me that it's more of a visionary stuck in a rut. Starlin was a profoundly inventive creator, but now he collects a paycheck. I can't blame him because he deserves a few victory laps, but consider what Steve Gerber was doing before his death (Hard Time, Dr Fate revamp). Don McGregor starts a Kickstarter to work on new projects; Starlin runs through the motions doing interchangable projects for Marvel and DC. It's slightly embarassing at this point.
I wouldn't feel so strongly about this if I didn't respect Jim so much. He's one of comics true visionaries, but he's been phoning it in for 20 years.
I have to wonder if Starlin is limited by Marvel and DC in terms of what he's allowed to do. I believe Marvel wanted Byrne to return about a decade ago, but only if he'd do an X-Men project with Claremont. I think ageism is at play with these creators and Marvel and DC only see them as being commercially viable if they're returning to what made them famous in the first place. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Oct 24, 2014 10:49:13 GMT -5
I think with me that it's more of a visionary stuck in a rut. Starlin was a profoundly inventive creator, but now he collects a paycheck. I can't blame him because he deserves a few victory laps, but consider what Steve Gerber was doing before his death (Hard Time, Dr Fate revamp). Don McGregor starts a Kickstarter to work on new projects; Starlin runs through the motions doing interchangable projects for Marvel and DC. It's slightly embarassing at this point.
I wouldn't feel so strongly about this if I didn't respect Jim so much. He's one of comics true visionaries, but he's been phoning it in for 20 years.
I have to wonder if Starlin is limited by Marvel and DC in terms of what he's allowed to do. I believe Marvel wanted Byrne to return about a decade ago, but only if he'd do an X-Men project with Claremont. I think ageism is at play with these creators and Marvel and DC only see them as being commercially viable if they're returning to what made them famous in the first place. That may be the case, but Starlin's post '90s creator-owned work largely tells the same story over and over again, too. Kid Kosmos, for example, or even Breed. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 24, 2014 11:27:40 GMT -5
Ah, okay. I haven't read his creator owned stuff beyond Dreadstar. Maybe Starlin is intentionally limiting himself? This is a guy who used to have a HUGE range; he wrote great runs on Batman and the Silver Surfer in span of something like two years?
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Post by fanboystranger on Oct 24, 2014 13:30:30 GMT -5
Ah, okay. I haven't read his creator owned stuff beyond Dreadstar. Maybe Starlin is intentionally limiting himself? This is a guy who used to have a HUGE range; he wrote great runs on Batman and the Silver Surfer in span of something like two years? Yeah, I agree. That's why I've found so much of his recent work disappointing. He's been on auto-pilot, and for someone as innovative as Jim has been in the past, that's a shame. |
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ironchimp
Full Member
Simian Overlord
Posts: 456 
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Post by ironchimp on Oct 24, 2014 13:36:49 GMT -5
The first time i read Annihilation I loved it, but when I re-read it, it didnt seem to make any sense
what was the point in the girl?
and how was Drax able to plough into the heart of that huge fleet and board Annihilus's ship when he wasn't able to do anything like that before? (or did i miss something?)
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 24, 2014 13:50:08 GMT -5
The first time i read Annihilation I loved it, but when I re-read it, it didnt seem to make any sense what was the point in the girl? and how was Drax able to plough into the heart of that huge fleet and board Annihilus's ship when he wasn't able to do anything like that before? (or did i miss something?) Annihilation, like most of these big event stories, did stick to a formula in which we apparently need a big bad guy and a "resistance", and a situation that can be resolved with big explosions or by killing one individual. I enjoyed the series, but it wasn't that original. It also dealt with space in a very traditional but irrational way, requiring people to just accept things without thinking too much about them. Cammi, I think, was just a fun character in the Drax miniseries and later was reused because she was cool, and because we needed to give Drax a little something to consider beside his desire to kill Thanos. But yeah, she didn't have much to do against Annihilus. As for Drax's suddenly increased abilities, I chalk it up to the writer's enthusiasm and the usual stretching of plausibility that often comes with the territory. Perhaps he's like the Hulk, and his powers increase in proportion to his nearness to Thanos? (I'm just making stuff up here; I don't think much thinking went into it. It's a bit like Wolverine's healing factor that some days require weeks for him to heal from a stab wound, and that some other day regrow his entire body from a skeleton in seconds). |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 24, 2014 14:12:48 GMT -5
The first time i read Annihilation I loved it, but when I re-read it, it didnt seem to make any sense what was the point in the girl? and how was Drax able to plough into the heart of that huge fleet and board Annihilus's ship when he wasn't able to do anything like that before? (or did i miss something?) I always though of Cammi as Drax's anchor. If you haven't read the mini series, they meet in a plausible (as in if they were all just humans, the events would be fairly similar) scenario, where she befriends Drax out of an ulterior motive, and Drax allows her along because he won't admit an ulterior motive, other than "for her own safety". She seems to be the human conscience for Drax, as I see it. |
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