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Post by madhair60 on Jul 20, 2011 18:54:23 GMT
Creepy. I was wondering just this morning what he was up to.
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Post by Baron Canier on Jul 29, 2011 20:50:32 GMT
Having a gander at James Robinson's much-acclaimed Starman series, the one that ran from '95 to '01. Just exploring the first few issues (currently on the third) to see what all the fuss is about.
I decided to consult Wikipedia for some bullet-point style information about Starman prior to reading...and wholeheartedly regretted it. There's been about eight people who've gone under the alias of "Starman". Yikes.
It's also tad odd to go back to general nineties presentation after spending so long accustomed to modern methods.
Oh, I also bought Orc Stain recently. The art is insanely good. Still waiting on my copy of Blacksad, too.
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Post by Alex on Jul 29, 2011 21:02:05 GMT
It's also tad odd to go back to general nineties presentation after spending so long accustomed to modern methods. I found that too when I picked up the original Thunderbolts, but after a few issues it was actually refreshing to go back to that style.
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Post by madhair60 on Aug 1, 2011 20:57:35 GMT
Almost done with Cosmic Marvel.
Is Civil War remotely worth reading?
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Post by Alex on Aug 2, 2011 9:05:22 GMT
It's alright. I 'acquired' it in complete and correctly ordered form and it was certainly a fascinating way to read comics (it's the only massive cross-over event I've read, really). The story concept is a pretty good one and it gives even the most C-list of Marvel's superheroes a chance to shine, but I feel it's been kind of ruined in hindsight by the fact anything of consequence that happened in it has already been reset or retconned away. Speaking of ruined, Marvel's spoiled yet another big Ultimate release by giving away who the new Ultimate Spidey is a day before Ultimate Fallout #4 comes out and does it for real. Kinda ruins the point of them polybagging the issue, really, but whatever. I've managed to avoid it thanks to some deft forum rules at CBR, and will continue to do so until tomorrow. If anyone manages to spoil it for me before tomorrow I will personally feed them their pets. I am glad, though, that there was a definite reveal. I was a bit concerned (especially by solicits for Spider-Man #2 saying "Who's behind the mask?") that they were gonna cop-out of the actual reveal and keep it going for longer, but this is good. It'll give us a chance to get used to the idea of this new guy running around in the webs before the series starts proper. And now, to avoid the whole Internet for a day and a half. Bye.
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Post by Alex on Aug 3, 2011 23:05:16 GMT
[censored]ING BBC SONS OF [censored]ESCouldn't get my comic today, so will have to wait till tomorrow, which meant another day of avoiding places on the internet where comics are typically discussed. So, I go visit the BBC News website as I usually do, and what's the top news story on THE [censored]ING BBC NEWS HOME PAGE? A GREAT BIG [censored]ING SPOILER FOR SPIDER-MAN.
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Post by madhair60 on Aug 4, 2011 8:34:08 GMT
Everyone knew already. And it's not like something this major would go without coverage. Lots of easy "PC brigade" hit-points.
But yeah, it's only a great big spoiler if you're disingenuous.
I'm so likeable sometimes.
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Post by Alex on Aug 4, 2011 12:21:39 GMT
The fact everyone knew already was why I was trying to avoid it. The BBC News website is hardly the first place you'd expect to see a big headline about a comic book.
They could also have not been dicks and not made the headline the damn spoiler.
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Post by Baron Canier on Aug 4, 2011 16:17:59 GMT
Reading "comments" about the new Ultimate Spidey. I should really stop before my disgust makes me physically ill.
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Post by Alex on Aug 4, 2011 18:00:58 GMT
So, I finally got to read it. The issue itself was pretty disappointing, especially since you need to read Marvel's spoiler release just to even know the new kid's name. Considering it was bookended by two non-reveals, the only really big part of the whole issue was the return of Reed Richards and the seeming creation of the Ultimate Future Foundation.
The move to make Spidey a 'mixed-race' character kinda reeks of editorial PCness, to be honest. When Nick Fury was made into a black man for the Ultimate Universe, it was very matter of fact. That's just who this new character was. In this case, it's been blown up and hyped so much that this new character is very specifically of these races that it feels forced. Especially since our first interaction with the character himself is just him revealing he's not white.
Could have been handled far better, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Bendis does with the character himself.
Although, I really do have to say that having a black guy behind a black spider-man costume is just [censored]ing tacky. What's next? An asian Yellow Ranger? Oh wait...
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Post by Devo DrakeFox on Aug 4, 2011 19:25:01 GMT
I bought Bruce Wayne: The Road Home last week and have just gotten around to reading it. Good stuff so far, and Brucie seems to have lightened up just a tad.
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Post by Baron Canier on Aug 9, 2011 21:08:24 GMT
Almost done with Cosmic Marvel. I've been reading parts of Annihilation and its various tie-ins. The quality is somewhat erratic. Cosmic-based Marvel sure is bonkers.
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Post by ShayMay on Sept 29, 2011 9:58:41 GMT
So I picked up the New 52 Blue Beetle yesterday. It promised a streamlined version of the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle (undoubtedly my favourite superhero), which is nice, as the original, at the start, was horribly bogged-down with its own continuity. This... isn't so much streamlined as it is dumbed down. One of my favourite bits about the Blue Beetle was that he actually revealed his identity to his family and closest friends, who formed a nice supporting cast for him. Apparently he's not going to this time, and instead has been lumped into this really awkward love-triangle with his two best friends - despite the expanded cast last time allowing him - quite literally - a magical girlfriend. Art's really nice, though. And besides one too many cock jokes, there was none of it that I hated. I'm going to keep going with it - apparently Jaime has more trouble controlling the Beetle this time, and since that was far and away the most interesting part of the original, I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes.
Oh, and I got Journey Into Mystery, too. Excellent stuff - it's setting up a larger story that I have no idea about, but it's hilarious, engaging, and of course Elson never disappoints. Arms go flying to the side and backs are arched everywhere.
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Post by Tanner / Ogilvie on Jan 30, 2012 7:29:44 GMT
I assume webcomics are valid here too.
I read STCO and Archie alike. My crates are starting to burst with printed goodness and so I will need to pursue an expansion.
Another favorite of mine is the Walking Dead, written by Robert Kirkman. It's a great series to a zombie enthusiast such as me, and is particularly shocking with regards to how there are no boundaries. In one issue, they literally killed all but two characters present. Nothing is sacred - infants and children are just as liable to die horrid deaths as adults. Kirkman is very good at attaching you to his characters, only to brutally off them a few issues down.
I follow DMFA ( missmab.com ), written and illustrated by Amber Williams. She has run it for about 12 years or so; what started as a joke strip has actually become her claim to fame. It intersperses gags and jokes with serious plot development. (A common joke is after enough serious strips, the fourth wall is broken with something such as "where's the punchline?")
I follow Evan Stanley's Ghosts of the Future, as well. An interesting take on the Sonicverse. She finds a way to re-purpose the vast cast of characters. (For example, Silver develops his powers by touching Sonic, who, being pure energy by this point, awakens Silver's latent powers) Stanley's work has clearly paid off for her - she's being professionally commissioned by Archie these days.
I followed Grand Hunter, but then Darkspeeds/Elson Wong discontinued it. I'll follow his remake, Cursed Wombat(or whatever it was called), when it comes out.
I followed Concession during it's run, right up until the epilogue. I quite liked it. Like DMFA, a mixture of serious and silly. (Albeit, darker themes are a bit more amped, what with one of the characters being an agent of death and murdering many characters as part of his grand scheme)
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Post by ShayMay on Mar 23, 2012 12:44:11 GMT
So the latest Bakuman had me giggling, clapping, and generally acting like a prepubescent little [censored]. I don't think I've ever felt so strongly for fictional characters in my life.
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Post by Robert Frazer on Apr 17, 2012 0:16:09 GMT
As I've been working abroad for a few months I'm completely and utterly out of the loop as far as entertainment media goes, so I'd like to ask - does anyone know how CLiNT is getting on? It never really interested me personally but it was good to see another comic book appear on the high-street newsagent shelf and I hope that it'll last past its serialisation of Kick-Ass 2.
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Post by Beeth on Apr 17, 2012 17:33:03 GMT
It's still going, been a while since I've seen it in any newsagents though so you'd probably have to request one in from your nearest to start getting it. Not personally interested, but it's nice to see it's still going. I reckon it'll last for a while yet, it seems to have shifted its cover publicity more towards comic content rather than interviewees. I don't think it seemed to know what it was at first, but it seems to have developed a direction at least.
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Post by ShayMay on Apr 19, 2012 20:47:25 GMT
Bakuman has just finished. Best manga I have ever read.
I cried a little.
Seriously, it's [censored]ing amazing.
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Pitt
Script Hume
Ungrateful Sonic Saxophonist
If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet!
Posts: 7,007
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Post by Pitt on Apr 19, 2012 21:58:09 GMT
I think that's an advantage manga has over American comic books. It usually has a beginning, a middle and a guaranteed end, whereas most American comics (and British comics in some cases as well, I suppose) invariably end up stuck in the middle.
I guess there are exceptions on both sides, though.
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Post by ShayMay on Apr 19, 2012 22:46:16 GMT
The manga business model (which Bakuman deals with extensively) is that if something isn't popular, it is to be cancelled. There are loads of manga (Shaman King is a famous one, off the top of my head) that are basically cut short before they can end on their own terms. Similarly, it's difficult to get a popular manga to end when the author wants it to. So in a way the manga industry is worse; but the fact that once something has ended it's done is something I prefer massively to the Western comics business. To be honest, I never want to get into the Western comics industry. It's synonymous with "superhero", and a lot of these series have been going on since the early/mid 20th-century, and are stupidly contrived: you need an encyclopaedia just to get the basic story of Spider-Man. Also, the comics industry is in a real slump just now, judging by sales and interest, and there's been talk of moving a lot of it online. Scott Kurtz has more to say on the matter, and I pretty much agree with him: but I hope the physical comics industry doesn't die out entirely.
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Pitt
Script Hume
Ungrateful Sonic Saxophonist
If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet!
Posts: 7,007
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Post by Pitt on Apr 19, 2012 23:07:12 GMT
To be honest, I never want to get into the Western comics industry. It's synonymous with "superhero" now, and a lot of these series have been going on since the early/mid 20th-century, and are stupidly contrived now: you need an encyclopaedia just to get the basic story of Spider-Man. Also, the comics industry is dying now, and I do hope it will be replaced with webcomics. Scott Kurtz of PVP has more to say on the matter, and I pretty much agree with him. That strikes me as being a problem with American comics rather than Western comics more generally, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the likes of 2000 AD or Franco-Belgian comic books to say that for certain. The only recent superhero comic I've really enjoyed has been Invincible, though even then you could argue that it's kind of manga-influenced. Ultimate Marvel was another, but I've not read it since they did the Ultimatum series and put a lot of the characters beyond use. I suppose Empowered might be one as well, but it's a straight-ahead American manga series. On the topic of Empowered, I remember reading an interview in which Adam Warren was asked about whether superhero comic fans had a problem with the manga influence in the writing and artwork for the series, and he said he actually got a lot of stick from manga fans for the series while superhero fans didn't seem to have as much of a problem with it stylistically.
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Post by Alex on Apr 19, 2012 23:18:16 GMT
This is why Ultimate Marvel remains the best example of western superhero comics. Yes, there's over 10 years of it now, but it's still condensed to the point where the entire run up to this point only fills one shelf on my bookshelf.
I disagree on both counts, really. The comic book industry isn't really dying, so much as changing. It's no longer about creating a book and selling those books month after month, it's more about creating a franchise, and then making it a multimedia success. If anything, this year proves that the comic 'industry' is more than alive and well - but it's because it has expanded into being a full on multimedia assault similar to the way Pokemon was marketed and sold upon its release. A new comic book may only make something like 30% - 40% of the sales it would have made in the 'Golden Age' during its print run at the absolute best, but it's creating brand awareness and creative backdrops for much more money spinning endeavours. Marvel's basically got this tied down to an art now. Take a look at the Ultimates, for example. It's a hugely critically acclaimed book and sold pretty well too - but not as much as it would have done decades earlier. Now a huge amount of that has been mined for a half dozen other multi-media projects and it's turning over a huge amount of money as a result.
And I sincerely hope to God that 'webcomics' are not seen as the successor to a monthly, on-going comic serial narrative. The best webcomics are the 'newspaper funnies', such as Penny Arcade, XDCD, or even the kind that Stu pumps out in his inimitable style. The ones that try to tell an on-going narrative by posting a page a week, though? God-awful uses of the medium. You basically need to just go away and wait a month for anything worthwhile to have happened to be bothered reading them anyway (and most really aren't worth that effort of remembering to bother in the first place). They'd be better off just collecting them monthly and putting them out that way.
Reading comics on the web is also fundamentally flawed in that we read using horizontally wide screens, not vertical. This is addressed somewhat with the rise of tablets - but arguably, traditional comics have that ground well and truly secured now, while there's just no real attention from the web platform to cater properly to this medium.
Comics will increasingly move towards a digital only landscape, but 'webcomics' as they are now just aren't going to be displacing anything Marvel or DC has to put out any time soon.
There are good notable examples of western comics handling something other than just superheroes (even in the mainstream Marvel and DC books), but it is fair to say it's a dominating aspect of the industry. That said, Japanese manga is basically synonymous with nubile girls in suspicious poses and levels of undress, overblown character reactions to mediocrity and long drawn out chapters of very little happening (and/or ninjas and/or samurai and/or catching cute little monsters/similar and making the things fight) and we all know there are sterling examples in that medium that don't feature any of that, either. (Personally, I'd take the superheroes any day, though).
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Pitt
Script Hume
Ungrateful Sonic Saxophonist
If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet!
Posts: 7,007
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Post by Pitt on Apr 19, 2012 23:25:12 GMT
This is why Ultimate Marvel remains the best example of western superhero comics. Yes, there's over 10 years of it now, but it's still condensed to the point where the entire run up to this point only fills one shelf on my bookshelf. How has it been post- Ultimatum? Are any of the books worth getting into again? (I admit I sort of stopped Ultimate X-Men during Robert Kirkman's run; it felt like a bit of a let-down, which was disappointing because I really like Invincible)
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Post by ShayMay on Apr 19, 2012 23:35:44 GMT
Fair play, Pitt, I am referring to the American comics when I say "Western". Should probably have noticed that.
What if 'webcomics' became the new 'comics'? They certainly couldn't exist in the current form, granted, but if people were actually willing to pay for them then the creators could do it full-time. It'd be exactly like reading a comic, except, y'know... online. With the rise of the tablet, smartphone, palmtop computers etc. there are TONS of opportunities to adapt and evolve the medium.
I don't know about the specifics of the comic book sales, really, but everyone I have asked has said that it is going downhill sales-wise. As I say, I hope physical comics don't die out, pretty much for the same reason I don't get a Kindle: I like being able to hold a physical copy of what I'm reading.
Finally, the manga being synonymous with cutesy, questionably-posed, questionably-aged girls is simply incorrect. That exists, granted, but most people think of Shonen manga when the medium is mentioned. As for the "overblown character reactions to mediocrity" and "long drawn out chapters of very little happening", true enough, that is a manga stereotype... because it is an aspect of the medium. Superheroes are a genre that has consumed the medium of comic books (seriously, besides Scott Pilgrim I cannot name one non-superhero American comic that's come out in the last two years). Manga doesn't have that defining stereotype.
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Post by Alex on Apr 19, 2012 23:41:35 GMT
Between Ultimatum and Death of Spider-Man, there were some pretty good things, I'd say. The Thor mini-series is basically a prequel to the first Ultimates Comic and is fantastic. Whole heartedly recommend it to anyone. Ultimate Armour Wars by Warren Ellis is also a shining self-contained story as well. I'm really disappointed we didn't get to see more mini-series like it. The other main mini-series', the three that make up the cross-over 'Ultimate Doom' storyline is also pretty cool for the content and the impact it has on the future of the Universe - but it's not the best writing Bendis has ever done. The Captain America mini is good, but not as as strong as Thor's - though I'd definitely recommend it for a bit more of an insight into Ultimate Cap's character. Ultimate X, also, is a nice run of stories (which is all the more amazing by the fact it's by Jeph Loeb - the same shmuck that made such a mess of Ultimatum), but doesn't really tell you that much given that the book was delayed so much that the events all take place in a short space of time and ends abruptly. The main on-goings of Ultimate Spider-Man, New Ultimates and Ultimate Avengers are all far superior to the crap in Ultimatum (even Loeb's work on New Ultimates), but none reach the same heights as the early Ultimates or Spidey runs. Post Death of Spider-Man everything has changed. There's a lot of focus on wholly new concepts and characters now, rather than just 'Ultimizing' mainstream characters or focusing heavily on characters that are still quite similar to their mainstream counterparts. Peter Parker's gone, and Miles is establishing a pretty good grounding for his character, mutants are basically gone now - and those that aren't have been locked up in camps - but two new super powered 'races' are rising in their place and the Ultimates and Fantastic Four are basically [censored]tered beyond repair at this point. As far as getting into the books again, I'd say if you're going to jump back on, get the Death of Spider-Man books (so the last few Ultimate Spider-Man books - which are amazing, Avengers vs New Ultimates and Ultimate Fallout) and then begin with the new series of Spider-Man, X-Men and Ultimates (and the Hawkeye Mini for good measure). The stuff between Ultimatum and Death of Spider-Man can be returned to at your leisure (though pretty much all of it is better than Kirkman's run on X-Men, I can assure you of that ), but things are being shaken up enough in the current books that I'd definitely recommend lapsed Ultimate fans to give them a shot.
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