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The All New Comics Thread 2017+ Edition

Started by Small Man Big Horse, October 13, 2017, 05:58:40 PM

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Small Man Big Horse

I didn't get on with Shade The Changing Girl but it could be down to expectations, as like you I bloody loved Peter Milligan's run on the series and so was really looking forward to the comic's return, only to find it had very very little to do with Rac Shade and was an all new character, and one I didn't particularly gel with either. I only read three issues of it though, and I've heard it did get a fair bit better so I really should give it another shot at some point.

Mister Six

The protagonist becomes a lot more likeable towards the end of the first six-issue run, which is where the trade taps out. I'll definitely be picking up the second to see where it goes from here. I do wish it would go a little wilder with the Madness, and actually make it clear how much of the trippy stuff the characters are seeing and how much is in her head. Glad to hear people say it keeps improving though.

jimboslice

Recently read White Knight by Sean Murphy and don't understand all the plaudits. The concept is a little bit hack (Joker turns benevolent genius! Batman villified!) but I normally enjoy that sort of thing. This one didn't grab me though. all seemed a bit paint-by-numbers, reminded me too much of Luthor running for President. The new Harley was an interesting addition at least.

Tom King's Mister Miracle next.

Norton Canes

Quote from: Phil_A on March 16, 2019, 07:07:34 PM
Skip Tracer finally came to an end in last week's 2000AD...

Sorry, but it seems Blake [Googles] Nolan is hard to kill. An upcoming chapter is mentioned by Tharg in the latest prog's letters page. 

Phil_A

Quote from: Norton Canes on April 11, 2019, 09:39:06 AM
Sorry, but it seems Blake [Googles] Nolan is hard to kill. An upcoming chapter is mentioned by Tharg in the latest prog's letters page. 

Fuck's sake!

Small Man Big Horse

Batman 68 - The final part of the nightmares storyline sees Bruce dreaming about having a really dull bachelor party with Superman where they struggle to converse and then play chess a lot, while Catwoman and Lois Lane get pissed up in the Fortress Of Solitude and get some holographic supermen to strip for them. I know it sounds like I'm making this up but I'm genuinely not, it's quite amusing stuff and the last page works effectively, but this whole series has felt like filler and I can't wait for Bruce to finally wake up, beat the crap out of Bane and then do something more interesting again.

Doctor Who The Thirteenth Doctor Issue 6 - Still suffers from Yaz and Ryan being rubbish but it's fun overall.

D4VE, D4VE 2, D4VEOCRACY - Three mini-series about a futuristic Earth where the robots have taken over and now have lives just as shitty as the majority of humans tend to have. Quite funny in places but the ending's felt unsatisfactory, and I'm not sure I'd have stuck with it if I wasn't writing an article about it.

Glebe

I cannae find issue #5 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest anywhere... was tempted to pick up Detective #1000 but I didn't.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Glebe on April 13, 2019, 09:32:10 PM
I cannae find issue #5 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest anywhere... was tempted to pick up Detective #1000 but I didn't.

I read about 20 pages of Detective Comics #1000 but found it pretty drab so gave up on it. Also, re: the League, I've just sent you a pm now.

Mister Six

My trawl through the library haul continues!

Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl is the latest, possibly last, and definitely least annoying, of the series about music being used as magic, and acts as something of a capper for most of the cast introduced in the first volume while possibly setting up a future series about a supporting cast of younger magicians. I'm not sure that it can really sustain another volume, mind you; as writer Kieron Gillen admits through his characters (especially his arguable author insert, David Kohl, who is mercifully sidelined this time around), the problem with a magical coven based entirely around pop music is that it pretty quickly becomes irrelevant and outmoded. That's been a theme since volume one, but it really gets hammered home here. Thankfully artist Jamie McKelvie is at his absolute best, and the central gimmick - a character trapped in (and enacting) classic pop videos - works really well. It's basically all those glorious pastiche Phonogram covers come to life. Worth picking up, though you'll need to have read the first two to get the most out of it.

More lightweight, but still highly charming, Scooter Girl is a brief romcom about a privileged wanker whose crush on a new girl at his high-school threatens to destroy his life. It's done in that mid-2000s, vaguely anime-influenced cartoony style that's sort of gone out of fashion, but works really well here. It goes a bit wonky in the middle, when he decides he actually has to kill her to end the "curse", and while he doesn't succeed, the only reason he doesn't become a mass murderer is his own incompetence. It's all super lightweight and played for laughs, but leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, given how fluffy the thing is as a whole.

And completing the (completely accidental) "girl" triumvirate is Tank Girl Colour Classics: Book One, 1988-1990, which I pretty much bounced right off. I dunno, the Jamie Hewlett art is gorgeous, but Tank Girl has been aped so much since that it's lost a bit of the irreverent edge it no doubt had 30 (!) years ago. That and the strips are all too one-note to read back-to-back; probably worked better as a regular bit of jazzy fun in Deadline magazine - less so in this format. Fun to look at all those photos of Hewlett, Brendan McCarthy et al trying to look cool with their white T-shirts tucked into turned-up blue denim jeans, though. Frankie says RELAX!

Glebe

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on April 13, 2019, 10:58:46 PMI read about 20 pages of Detective Comics #1000 but found it pretty drab so gave up on it. Also, re: the League, I've just sent you a pm now.

*thumbs up*

kidsick5000

Is anyone reading Mark Millar's latest movie pitch, Prodigy?
That's a tad glib but often his comics can feel like a decent concepts with a flawed script, pushed out there just to make sure he's got the IP.

Prodigy has been pretty fun, the smartest man on earth is also the perfect physical specimen gets caught up in a very 60s spy-tinged caper. Actually it is very Avengers in tone, if Steed were hotter and even smarter.
To be honest, the hero is so near perfection I wonder if were going to get a Millar twist of it all being a coma dream of a weakling incompetent.

That said, I did like his recently collected The Magic Order. Very cool art from Olivier Coipel there

Spiteface

OK, nothing to do with the actual quality of thebook, but what the fuck is up with Bane being naked most of the time in the main Batman title?

Small Man Big Horse

I read that issue too and once I'd finished masturbating (over Thomas Wayne's naked body rather than Bane's, he's just too big for me) was confused by the decision. Still, it wasn't a bad issue for once, and at least Bats will finally be awake again next issue.

Custard

Talking of Bats, anyone read Europa?

It's a pretty good story, with him forced to team up with Joker, as both have been given death sentences due to some poison or something. It's just an excuse to have the two of them teaming up and faffing about in various big European cities together

When you find out who's behind it and why it's a bit naff, but it's fun up to that point. Joker's french is exquisite. Nice art too

Mister Six

Been poking my nose into Batman: White Knight. I've been a fan of Sean Murphy's art ever dince I first saw his stuff in Hellblazer, and he suits Gotham City to a tee. And the idea - Joker goes sane, resulting in Batman going mad and getting locked up - is great.

That said, I've found the writing a little lacking... It's an Elseworlds, of course, but I was hoping it would use the Batman and Joker we more-or-less know. Instead we have a Joker who's never actually killed anyone (except possibly Jason Todd, but we all know he's coming back at some point) and a Batman who's so crazed and careless he'll (non-fatally) knock over security guards with the Batmobile just to catch a villain. It feels like a cheat so Murphy can get the pieces in place with minimal fuss, and consequently robs the story of impact.

Plus, he keeps littering the dialogue with buzzwords about the 1% and SJWs that give the impression he doesn't really know what he's taking about. Getting flashbacks of The Dark Knight Rises' incoherent "politics"...

Small Man Big Horse

Heroes In Crisis 8 - Tom King has finally revealed who the murderer is, and I was quite relieved it wasn't Booster Gold, I'd have been enormously pissed off if he'd made the character a psychopath. And it turns out it was Wally West, who in a moment of loss of control sort of accidentally did it. And he then dashed off five days in to the future to kill himself and took his future dead body to the past so no one would suspect him. I don't really care, I've always preferred Barry Allen as The Flash and he's not a character I have that much fondness for anyhow, but the rest of the internet seems pretty pissed off.

Mister Six

God, I'm so tired of edgy DC superhero comics where all the heroes are getting killed for grim reasons. Or I was about 15 years ago, when I last read them with any regularity. I mean, it's Tom King, so it's probably well-written, but still.

(Isn't Wally supposed to be one of the lighter heroes, like Booster but less overtly comical? Or did they make him grimdark too?)

Speaking of Tom King! Just read his Vertigo miniseries (or maxiseries) The Sheriff of Babylon, which is an absolutely storming thriller/murder-mystery set in Baghdad shortly after the fall of Saddam. A Florida cop who went out there to train a new police force finds one of his cadets murdered, and calls upon a female fixer and a gnarled old Iraqi cop to help him find the killer.

But that's really just an excuse to explore the state of postwar Iraq, what decades of conflict have done to the locals, and American culpability in the whole thing. King worked for the CIA in some capacity, and the level of detail in the story really shows it. Brilliant. It'll make an Oscar-winning film in a couple of years, if they don't fuck with the plot or characters.

Quote from: Mister Six on April 23, 2019, 04:39:00 AM
Been poking my nose into Batman: White Knight. I've been a fan of Sean Murphy's art ever dince I first saw his stuff in Hellblazer, and he suits Gotham City to a tee. And the idea - Joker goes sane, resulting in Batman going mad and getting locked up - is great.

That said, I've found the writing a little lacking... It's an Elseworlds, of course, but I was hoping it would use the Batman and Joker we more-or-less know. Instead we have a Joker who's never actually killed anyone (except possibly Jason Todd, but we all know he's coming back at some point) and a Batman who's so crazed and careless he'll (non-fatally) knock over security guards with the Batmobile just to catch a villain. It feels like a cheat so Murphy can get the pieces in place with minimal fuss, and consequently robs the story of impact.

Plus, he keeps littering the dialogue with buzzwords about the 1% and SJWs that give the impression he doesn't really know what he's taking about. Getting flashbacks of The Dark Knight Rises' incoherent "politics"...

I'd have to go back to issue 1 to confirm, but I'm pretty sure the Joker has killed in this, he just emphasises that he didn't hurt anyone when he escaped from Arkham, whereas Batman caused utter havok trying to recapture him.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Mister Six on April 25, 2019, 02:45:49 PM
God, I'm so tired of edgy DC superhero comics where all the heroes are getting killed for grim reasons. Or I was about 15 years ago, when I last read them with any regularity. I mean, it's Tom King, so it's probably well-written, but still.

(Isn't Wally supposed to be one of the lighter heroes, like Booster but less overtly comical? Or did they make him grimdark too?)

Yeah, I am as well, I don't tend to read mainstream DC stuff these days unless it's by a writer I like (so Tom King and Jeff Lemire mainly, though the latter doesn't do much for DC at the moment) I'd lost track of Wally West but from comments others have made elsewhere it seems that he was killed off a few years back, and when brought back to life hardly anyone remembered him, and since then he's been a bit of a miserable sod.

QuoteSpeaking of Tom King! Just read his Vertigo miniseries (or maxiseries) The Sheriff of Babylon, which is an absolutely storming thriller/murder-mystery set in Baghdad shortly after the fall of Saddam. A Florida cop who went out there to train a new police force finds one of his cadets murdered, and calls upon a female fixer and a gnarled old Iraqi cop to help him find the killer.

But that's really just an excuse to explore the state of postwar Iraq, what decades of conflict have done to the locals, and American culpability in the whole thing. King worked for the CIA in some capacity, and the level of detail in the story really shows it. Brilliant. It'll make an Oscar-winning film in a couple of years, if they don't fuck with the plot or characters.

I haven't read that yet but keep meaning too, I shall definitely get round to it soon now after such a positive review.

Mister Six

No, part of how he gets out of Arkham is that he's robbed and thieved and generally been a wrong 'un, but that he hasn't killed anyone - or at least the police can't prove he's killed anyone. Which at least suggests he's not the mass-murdering modern Joker.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Mister Six on April 25, 2019, 02:45:49 PM
Speaking of Tom King! Just read his Vertigo miniseries (or maxiseries) The Sheriff of Babylon, which is an absolutely storming thriller/murder-mystery set in Baghdad shortly after the fall of Saddam. A Florida cop who went out there to train a new police force finds one of his cadets murdered, and calls upon a female fixer and a gnarled old Iraqi cop to help him find the killer.

But that's really just an excuse to explore the state of postwar Iraq, what decades of conflict have done to the locals, and American culpability in the whole thing. King worked for the CIA in some capacity, and the level of detail in the story really shows it. Brilliant. It'll make an Oscar-winning film in a couple of years, if they don't fuck with the plot or characters.

Wow! Thanks for this heads up. Finished the first volume last night. Brilliant stuff. Every now and then I'll read a comic, then wake up the next morning thinking 'What an awesome film that was', then remember it was a comic. This is one of those comics. Brilliantly done.

Mister Six

Glad you enjoyed it! It's a corker.

In other good times news, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden is well worth picking up. It's the old "group of kids have to save their community from evil" trope, except that the kids in question are a bunch of dogs and a sarky cat, and the evil ranges from a haunted doghouse to an invasion of zombie roadkill. It sounds whimsical, and it is, but the whimsy is offset by some grisly deaths and tragic endings. It's to the massive credit of both Dorkin and Thompson that the nastier stuff never feels out of place, even when pushed right up against jokes about dogs wanting to sniff each others' arses, nor does the humour seem overly flippant when it follows a bloody death. It's an impressive tightrope act, and definitely worth your time.

Small Man Big Horse

I read Star Wars: Vader - Dark Visions issue 3 the other day as it's causing controversy online, and wrote a ridiculously overlong review of it for my site:

Over the years there's been a lot of ridiculous Star Wars stories, and I'm not just talking about the prequels trilogy, some of the Extended Universe tales are understandably no longer canon because they were so daft and / or over the top. But this latest issue of Star Wars: Vader – Dark Visions takes the biscuit, chews it up, and then spits it back in your face leaving a heart shaped stain as it tells the story of a nurse on the Death Star who falls head over heels in love with Darth Vader.

From her perspective she thinks Vader reciprocates her feelings too, when she bursts in to the Death Star med bay while Vader is there for a check up (as even Sith Lords have the odd sick day it seems, or maybe he was just checking his face hadn't decayed completely, it's never really explained) though Darth is infuriated he takes his anger out on the doctor present and it's this act which makes our heroine think that Vader wants to get it on all hot and heavy like he once did with poor old Padmé Amidala.

Naturally she's wrong, hell, we don't even know if Vader has a working penis anymore after he fought with Obi Wan Kenobi on that lava filled volcanic planet and had his legs chopped off, but that doesn't stop her from obsessing about him, beginning a collection of mementos from his trips to the sick bay be it bits of shrapnel pulled from his armour or even samples of his blood. After the doctor discovers her beloved treasures he throws them away and that's enough to make her go crazy and rush off to confess her love to Vader, and, well, you can probably guess how well that goes.

It's a twisted little tale and a lot of humour is generated from her fantasies of being Vader's one and only, from the two of them tonguing each other's tonsils to the duo indulging in a bit of ballroom dancing, but it did leave something of a nasty taste in my mouth. The nurse is never given a name or fleshed out in any way character wise, she's just an obsessive fan of the dark lord and something of a deranged lunatic so you don't feel any sympathy towards her when she is eventually penetrated by Vader, though it's via the use of his lightsaber and not in the manner she was hoping for. Vader should be seen as a hateful bastard, it's what the first six films are based around, but this would be a far more enjoyable read if it was far more nuanced and rather than going for laughs was perhaps a chilling tale of unreciprocated affection.

Due to this it's caused a fair bit of controversy online and though it doesn't take much for the people of twitter to become enraged on this occasion I completely understand why. Vader is a figure of toxic masculinity, at least in the prequels, and by having a female character become obsessed by him it seems to be making fun out of her rather than showing just what an absolute shit Vader himself is. Writer Dennis Hallum has claimed that this wasn't his intention, that "to me it's about a person so beaten down and caged in by her fascist existence that she fantasises about the only person in her world powerful enough to free her" but that doesn't come across in the comic at all, so either he's lying or is quite a bad writer. Whatever the case, while on the surface it may be a funny and breezy read under scrutiny it's unfortunately rather unpleasant.

Mister Six

Interesting! I kind of want to read it now...

Ploughed through most of book 2 of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol today - the big chunky editions, not the slimmer, names 2000s collections. That span takes in the introduction of Danny the Street and the fake Men From NOWHERE; the introduction of Flex Mentallo; Rhea hatching from her cocoon and going into space; the Ant Farm and the weirdness under the Pentagon; The Beard Hunter; The Shadowy Mr Evans and Clankie; and the New Brotherhood of Dada.

I'd forgotten just how fucking crackers his run gets - and how funny it is. Christ only knows what it must have felt like in the 90s, cracking open these issues amid the endless Liefeld imitators with their big guns and tiny feet. Every page fizzes with at least one absurd, wonderful new idea or image and you can feel his delight as he realises he can throw in absurd non-sequiturs as he pleases and come back to them half a year later, if at all.

Joyous, wonderful stuff. Fascinated to see how much of Flex Mentallo's bonkers origin story makes it into the show. Feel like they've already pissed away the Ant Farm already, sadly.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Mister Six on May 01, 2019, 06:14:54 AM
Christ only knows what it must have felt like in the 90s, cracking open these issues amid the endless Liefeld imitators with their big guns and tiny feet. Every page fizzes with at least one absurd, wonderful new idea or image and you can feel his delight as he realises he can throw in absurd non-sequiturs as he pleases and come back to them half a year later, if at all.

It really was an amazing time for me, I was 14 when his run started and before that had only been in to mainstream DC comics (well, bar 2000AD and other British ones) and it was insanely fun and really showed just what comics could do. Plus around that time there was his run on Animal Man, Peter Milligan's Shade The Changing Man, Delano and then Ennis on Hellblazer, Gaiman's Sandman, and I was discovering things like Watchmen and V For Vendetta from Moore, as much as I love comics to this day for me personally I'm not sure there's ever been quite such an fascinating era.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Mister Six on May 01, 2019, 06:14:54 AM
Ploughed through most of book 2 of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol today

I have this in my 'to read' pile. Loved the first volume.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Mister Six on April 30, 2019, 03:02:47 PM
Glad you enjoyed it! It's a corker.

In other good times news, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden is well worth picking up. It's the old "group of kids have to save their community from evil" trope, except that the kids in question are a bunch of dogs and a sarky cat, and the evil ranges from a haunted doghouse to an invasion of zombie roadkill. It sounds whimsical, and it is, but the whimsy is offset by some grisly deaths and tragic endings. It's to the massive credit of both Dorkin and Thompson that the nastier stuff never feels out of place, even when pushed right up against jokes about dogs wanting to sniff each others' arses, nor does the humour seem overly flippant when it follows a bloody death. It's an impressive tightrope act, and definitely worth your time.

I remember reading the very first issue of this and enjoying it immensely. I never got round to reading any other issues, however.
*adds to pile*

Small Man Big Horse

Batman 70 - I was losing faith in Tom King a little as I didn't get on with Nightmares (bar the last issue) and Heroes In Crisis isn't doing it for me, but I really enjoyed this, it was a) a lot of fun, b) had Bats back on form, and c) set up the next issue nicely which should hopefully be really great too.

Ascender 1 - I loved Descender, it was one of my favourite comics of recent years and I'm a big fan of Jeff Lemire in general, and this looks like it's going to be just as good. I really like the new setting, the art once again is beautiful, and the final page made me grin an enormous amount.

The Walking Dead 191 - Just when it looked like everything was going to kick off and a bunch of much loved (liked? tolerated?) characters would be killed off, Rick pulls out one of his amazing speeches and calms everyone down. The ending was ridiculously predictable though, and could be seen from a million miles away, and I just hope Kirkman doesn't "pull a Carl" and Rick will somehow survive it. Still, either way it was an issue I vaguely enjoyed for once and they really don't come along very often.

Mister Six

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 01, 2019, 11:22:43 AM
It really was an amazing time for me, I was 14 when his run started and before that had only been in to mainstream DC comics (well, bar 2000AD and other British ones) and it was insanely fun and really showed just what comics could do. Plus around that time there was his run on Animal Man, Peter Milligan's Shade The Changing Man, Delano and then Ennis on Hellblazer, Gaiman's Sandman, and I was discovering things like Watchmen and V For Vendetta from Moore, as much as I love comics to this day for me personally I'm not sure there's ever been quite such an fascinating era.

I used to flick through the Ennis Hellblazer trades and 2000AD around that time in Waterstones (or, appropriately, Dillon's before it was bought out - back when the graphic novel section consisted of a single spinning rack with dog-eared-looking Spawn trades) but didn't start buying comics properly until I went to uni in 2000, starting with the Clerks trades, progressing through Preacher, reviving my love of Hellblazer and then going full pelt into the Vertigo canon. Really wish I'd been able to read comics before then, but the only comic shop I knew of as a young teen was a murky, creepy looking thing in a forgotten corner of the town centre and I didn't much like the look of it - nor did I have the internet so I could know where to begin!

Instead I used to pore over the big full-page ads for mail-order comics in SFX, reading synopses for The Invisibles and Delano's Animal Man, and thinking, "fuck, this stuff looks so cool", but not having a way to set up an account.

I'm sure most of it would have gone over my head anyway, but it sure would have been nice...

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on May 01, 2019, 01:07:44 PM
I have this in my 'to read' pile. Loved the first volume.

Well worth reading sooner rather than later. You can really feel Morrison getting into the swing of things and letting loose.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Mister Six on May 01, 2019, 05:12:43 PM
I used to flick through the Ennis Hellblazer trades and 2000AD around that time in Waterstones (or, appropriately, Dillon's before it was bought out - back when the graphic novel section consisted of a single spinning rack with dog-eared-looking Spawn trades) but didn't start buying comics properly until I went to uni in 2000, starting with the Clerks trades, progressing through Preacher, reviving my love of Hellblazer and then going full pelt into the Vertigo canon. Really wish I'd been able to read comics before then, but the only comic shop I knew of as a young teen was a murky, creepy looking thing in a forgotten corner of the town centre and I didn't much like the look of it - nor did I have the internet so I could know where to begin!

Instead I used to pore over the big full-page ads for mail-order comics in SFX, reading synopses for The Invisibles and Delano's Animal Man, and thinking, "fuck, this stuff looks so cool", but not having a way to set up an account.

I'm sure most of it would have gone over my head anyway, but it sure would have been nice...

I pretty much understood everything back then bar some of the stranger Morrison moments, and parts of Moore's work, but then rereading it in my twenties when I had a better understanding of politics / comics history helped a lot and made it all the more rewarding. I really do cherish the late eighties / early nineties period, me and a couple of friends would head up to Croydon most weekends and pick up all the new issues, read what the others had bought and then headed home, The Phantom Zone was a really great shop that had some cool signings too which is how I managed to get my copy of Black Orchid 1 signed by Gaiman and McKean. Sadly I had to sell it back in 2005 when I was dead broke, along with most of the rest of my collection, but now I'm working again and in a secure job for once I hope to start rebuilding it much to the horror of Mrs SMBH!

Oh, and Delano's Animal Man really wasn't that good sadly, which is odd as I liked a lot of his other work, and it wasn't like it was terrible as I did stick with it through to the bitter end, but it's something I've never reread since. I did really like Jeff Lemire's 2011 take on the series though, which was heavily indebted to Morrison's, and was really saddened when it ended back in 2014.