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Post by commond on Sept 13, 2024 17:30:40 GMT -5
I don't remember Transmetropolitan having started as a miniseries. How many issues did you read? It could just have been the first story arc. It was collected as a thin tpb. I think the book you're talking about collected the first three issues. I can understand how Transmetropolitan wouldn't appeal to everyone. I don't find Spider Jerusalem to be a particularly likeable character, and I'm not interested in a lot of the politics in the book, but I can take a detached view of it and enjoy it as a comic book series. Having met Ellis, I'd say there's as much Ellis in Spider Jerusalem as there is Hunter S. Thompson. A lot of the big name 90s writers wrote themselves as the lead character. It's a very interesting trend of Comic Book Writer Power Fantasies. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 13, 2024 18:06:14 GMT -5
It could just have been the first story arc. It was collected as a thin tpb. I think the book you're talking about collected the first three issues. I can understand how Transmetropolitan wouldn't appeal to everyone. I don't find Spider Jerusalem to be a particularly likeable character, and I'm not interested in a lot of the politics in the book, but I can take a detached view of it and enjoy it as a comic book series. Having met Ellis, I'd say there's as much Ellis in Spider Jerusalem as there is Hunter S. Thompson. A lot of the big name 90s writers wrote themselves as the lead character. It's a very interesting trend of Comic Book Writer Power Fantasies. Good point. I can't say I disliked the plot of that story. I just disliked the protagonist, like I did the main character of The Kite Runner. |
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Post by spoon on Sept 13, 2024 18:57:41 GMT -5
For Byrne, I couldn't finish Spider-Man: Chapter One. Also, I was really anticipating X-Men: The Hidden Years, but I ended up being underwhelmed.
I bought a handful of early issues of Marc Andreyko's Manhunter and found them to be really stupid.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 13, 2024 21:36:28 GMT -5
JMS wrote that Superman book, right? I didn't get what all the fuss was about. Babylon 5 was boring so I didn't watch much of it, but comics fans raved about Rising Stars and Midnight Nation, but they were really boring, especially the latter. I tried the first few issues of his Spidey run, but again, boring. Credit where it's due, Sense8 was entertaining, if odd. Did he ever write any genuinely good comics? WHA....(sputter).........dja.........(wheeze...wheeze).......faa........... Babylon 5 was awesome!  If you could hang on until the middle of the first season, ignore the next few episodes and keep hanging for the season finale, then it just chugged on, building momentum in season 4. Season 5 was more than a bit of a mess, but they stuck the landing pretty well. JMS, I find, starts well, then seems to lose his way and the finish, if it ever comes, isn't usually worth the wait. Thought that about Rising Stars, though I hated the art, until Brent Anderson was doing it. Never read Midnight Nation, as it wasn't my cup of tea. Supreme Power started well (though a lot felt like a rehash of Rising Sons) then starts wobbling, then he abandoned it and Marvel just made it worse trying to fix it, until they gave up. I'm reviewing The Twelve it's kind of all over the place...not helped by the long gap, but the pacing of it is not good and a lot of it reads like a Watchmen pastiche. Haven't read his Thor stuff, but I have never been much of a fan of the character, apart from Walt Simonson's stuff and when Roy Thomas inserted the Eternals (before he pushed them out of their own storyline). |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 13, 2024 21:38:50 GMT -5
I hated this well before I got to the final page:  You couldn't put a gun to my head and make me pick that POS up. Insane ramblings from a demented jerk, with enough steroids in his body to choke a horse and the brain to match. The man needed serious professional help and that thing was a dirty window into his madness. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2024 21:44:47 GMT -5
The Just Imagine....series, with Stan Lee re-imagining DC heroes, made me want to barf....I don't care to own any of those books after I tried to get through Batman.
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Post by berkley on Sept 14, 2024 0:58:58 GMT -5
Spider Jerusalem struck me as a wan Hunter S Thompson clone, designed to impress people who didn't know Hunter S Thompson. They also ripped off ideas from Paul Krassner, designed to impress people who didn't know Paul Krassner. Jerusalem being a Thompson homage was the point. There was no hiding the ball at all. Transmet was all about transposing "New Journalism" in to a near future setting. Again, no real hiding the ball as to any influence of Thompson, Kesey or any others. If people didn't know where the influences were coming from that's hardly Ellis' fault. I haven't read Transmetropolitan yet but I like a lot of Ellis's other stuff so I'm trying to keep an open mind about it. I'm a bit ambivalent about Thompson himself: a talented writer, but I had some problems with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although it was never not entertaining. I haven't yet tried his later, more political writing, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, etc. |
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2024 3:12:39 GMT -5
I hated this well before I got to the final page: You couldn't put a gun to my head and make me pick that POS up. Insane ramblings from a demented jerk, with enough steroids in his body to choke a horse and the brain to match. The man needed serious professional help and that thing was a dirty window into his madness. Indeed. I agree with every word. I suppose it deserves a mention, though, as the first comicbook not to have a plot - or even a semblance of a plot. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Sept 14, 2024 4:49:35 GMT -5
The other Iron Man plot that qualifies for me was when Tony was made Secretary of Defense (which was a fun change) but then they ended it by having someone take over the armor and assassinate a diplomat... such a silly an extreme way to change tack, and how does TONY STARK get hacked? makes no sense. Didn't that happen in the '80s when Tony was facing Justin Hammer? That happened in Iron Man #124, cover dated July 1979. |
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Post by kirby101 on Sept 14, 2024 6:52:11 GMT -5
Can't remember which one, but a Lobo series. Thought it was banal and gratuitously ugly in it's violence. I think it was supposed to be funny.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,197 
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Post by Confessor on Sept 14, 2024 7:37:30 GMT -5
JMS wrote that Superman book, right? I didn't get what all the fuss was about. Babylon 5 was boring so I didn't watch much of it, but comics fans raved about Rising Stars and Midnight Nation, but they were really boring, especially the latter. I tried the first few issues of his Spidey run, but again, boring. Credit where it's due, Sense8 was entertaining, if odd. Did he ever write any genuinely good comics? Personally, I think his run on Amazing Spider-Man was one of the best runs in the character's history. Definitely Top 10...and maybe even Top 5 (shame about the editorially mandated clusterf*ck ending though). Also, The Twelve limited-series, about a group of Timely Golden Age heroes awakened in our modern era, which he did with artist Chris Weston, was fantastic. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 14, 2024 8:34:01 GMT -5
I quite enjoyed Transmet, and probably read two thirds of it. I haven't looked back at it, or indeed any other Warren Ellis comic, in 20+ years. I'm curious how they've aged. Garth Ennis is still entertaining, but the vast majority of writers that popped up in the 90s are challenging to read now... (not in a positive way) Transmet's political commentary is even more relevant now I would say... almost eerily predictive. Spider is annoying, but the satire is so good its worth reading. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 14, 2024 8:37:08 GMT -5
Didn't that happen in the '80s when Tony was facing Justin Hammer? That happened in Iron Man #124, cover dated July 1979. I feel like it happened later too... like after Busiek's run, but the scene I was thinking of is that one... so either it happened twice or I'm misremembering. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 14, 2024 8:59:02 GMT -5
I quite enjoyed Transmet, and probably read two thirds of it. I haven't looked back at it, or indeed any other Warren Ellis comic, in 20+ years. I'm curious how they've aged. Garth Ennis is still entertaining, but the vast majority of writers that popped up in the 90s are challenging to read now... (not in a positive way) Transmet's political commentary is even more relevant now I would say... almost eerily predictive. In the eerily predictive political satire category, I think Miller and Gibbons' Give Me Liberty is still the champion. Luckily, that one didn't disappoint at all. But darn, is its message depressing or what? Laughing through the tears is a draining exercise! |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 14, 2024 9:30:20 GMT -5
I don't know if any comics fall into your original definition of me hating them after having high hopes for them, as I don't really have great expectations for any comic book I pick up. I do sometimes look at comics that are critically acclaimed by a lot of people, both on here and other places, which I don't find particularly compelling. But I don't hate them, I'm just not interested enough to read more than one or two issues.
What's funny is the only comics I've read, at least in recent years, that I might say I "hated" were not necessarily bad comics. They were ones that altered the characters or situations so far from what I remembered when I was a regular comics reader years ago, that I found myself saying "Such and such a character would never do this! This is ridiculous!"
But I can admit that's usually as much due to my own prejudice as a comics reader as any kind of poor execution on the part of the comic.
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