The All New Comics Thread 2017+ Edition

[frajer]

Count me as another who enjoyed the pervasive dread of Outcast, and someone who also stopped reading entirely (after book 4 I think.)

I don't mind a slow-burn but this broke my patience and made me resent paying a tenner per trade for a drip-fed story that was intentionally not advancing. As an experiment in mood and character over narrative it was interesting, but it didn't work for me.

Gorgeous Azaceta artwork, though.

[Artie Fufkin]

I read the first thirty issues (ish) and remember liking elements of it, and the dread you mentioned was definitely an aspect of that, but I stopped reading it at some point and never finished it off. I see it's now ended so may return to it, but I doubt I'll buy it so may rely on my local library now that it's apparently finally reopened.

Have first 2 volumes of this to read at some point. Read the very first issue back in the day and thoroughly enjoyed it.

[willbo]

currently reading - star wars high republic comics, Benjamin Percy's Wolverine (have but not started yet), and a Batman graphic novel called White Knight Dark City or something? I'm really not up to date on the current scene, they were all just ones I grabbed randomly due to amazon recs.

[bgmnts]

Ohhh is that any good? I love Old Republic era series of Star Wars so is it like that?

[willbo]

Ohhh is that any good? I love Old Republic era series of Star Wars so is it like that?

Haven't really read any OR themed stuff, but my impression of the HR comics so far is just pure 80s style action adventure fantasy, like the Marvel Conan comic my uncle used to read.  The first story/trade is about a knight and padawan dealing with a Lovecraftian horror on a farm world. It has a shared universe thing with the High R novels too.

[Oh, Nobody]

and the art is very, very average

Agreed the writing on Fire Power is typical Kirkman level (we've all seen Avatar, Robert), but that is an insane take on Chris Samnee.

[Magnum Valentino]

I haven't even heard of the series, and therefore haven't seen the art, but if the art is by Samnee then aye it's exceptional.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I guess it comes down to individual taste, but this kind of very simplistic comics art isn't my cup of tea:



It's a personal thing but I find it annoying when artists don't even bother putting in facial details, as in the first panel, I know it takes longer but I really like more stylised art in general too.

[willbo]

I actually really like that. I love cartoony, simplistic art.

[Mister Six]

That one doesn't bother me, because there's still some good body language in there.

DMZ has the worst of both worlds - backgrounds that are full of scratchy little lines that distract the eye and mean details are lost in the noise, but also distant characters that are only a couple of notches up from faceless stick men, even when those figures are supposed to be the focus of the panel.

[bgmnts]

Just finished Lost Girls SPOILERS and thought it was quite good. There was a lot going on there, and I liked every girl's stories and the perversion (wrong word really but can't think of another) of their classic tales. There was something about the girls all just fucking each other in this isolated hotel and becoming less and better equipped to deal with their traumas as a result. A lot of it, like most porn, was a bit silly and maybe too over the top, but it's porn eh?

Genuinely found the looming threat of World War 1, toward the ending, and the idea that all that energy that is wasted into warring could be instead put into fucking and creating and that just made me sad.

But then, as a person who knows how difficult receiving and giving those pleasures is, I understand the notion that sex is free flowing and all lovely and stuff is quite utopian, and it made me think instead perhaps warring and violende is a response to that hole in us, because there will always be lots who miss out and become angry or sad. That made me even sadder I think.

I dont think Moore has written anything I don't like except maybe Jerusalem. He is so good.

[Mister Six]

Moore has described war as being a load of jealous, impotent old men sending horny young lads off to slaughter. Can't remember if it's mentioned in Lost Girls.

[bgmnts]

I think I remember him saying that in some interview or other but yeah I dont remember there being much of that beyond the old fella who is impotent towards Wendy and mostly just reads porn and wanks, and ends up shagging the young Austrian soldier.

He is oblivious to sex and really uptight and is obsessed with battleships and the like but it isn't hinted he's resentful of the young man to my knowledge.

[bgmnts]

Okay so X-Men first 66!

#1: Very standard old school shite, all characters explaining exactly what they are doing and it's stupid (but there's a certain charm to it). Poor Jean Grey is victim to 60s misogyny, Magneto is a bit of a dumb moustache twirler and Xavier is genuinely a bit of a creepy, horrid, authoritarian bastard.

#2 Vanisher is silly but I like him and want him to return. One panel of interesting team dynamic and individual personalities after getting spanked by Vanisher: Iceman and Angle rowing, Beast guilty and stunned, Cyclops all business and Jean Grey pensive. X-Men go from nobodies to famous heroes and then laughing stocks in about 30 pages. Team already goes nuclear by wheeling out Professor X to mindful Vanisher into oblivion because the team isn't good enough. Yay?

Oh and interestingly, baldy doesn't need Cerebro to locate mutants, at least in the states.

Another thing, in the first issue Iceman's reaction to Jean Grey's arrival is indifference whilst the rest of the boys stare out the windows like the groovy incels they are, yet in the next issue he is racing out to escort her. I wonder if they toyed with the idea of making Bobby gay but didnt get the nod from whoever was running the company?

[bgmnts]

#3 A baffling issue. The team essentially kidnap The Blob from his home in the circus and force him to become an X Men or else. When he refuses Professor X instantly decided to mind rape him. There are no discussions or even hints towards the ethics of this. Blob escapes the clutches of these bastards and comes back with his circus troupe and these normal humans wreck the X Men, until Prof X saves them then mind rapes the whole circus and yay X Men win.

Christ knows what they were thinking in this one, the X Men look like absolute chumps. Almost villainous actually. One panel has Blob bald when in the previous and subsequent panels he has the same nerdy haircut. Bit of a mess really.

Oh yeah and Xavier is in love with Jean Grey, lovely stuff.

[willbo]

you reading the actual original 60s x-men? I have a TPB of the first 10 or so issues somewhere. They went back to the Xavier loving Jean thing in the 90s when his psyche became a monster or something

[bgmnts]

you reading the actual original 60s x-men? I have a TPB of the first 10 or so issues somewhere. They went back to the Xavier loving Jean thing in the 90s when his psyche became a monster or something

Yes, I'm on #5 atm and need a break.

Some incredible stuff in there to be fair, as I've said issue 3 is stunning.

[willbo]

the only other 60's Marvel I've read is the original Fantastic Four which I still really love. Ahead of its time in the humour and sci fi really.

[bgmnts]

Well I think Stan Lee wanted to try and ape the success of the Fantastic Four as on the first page of issue 4 he does mention something like a new Fantastic Four.

I think after reading mostly modern or 70s and beyond comic books, I have to realise that this is all quite foundational and it has it's place and even it's shitness has it's charm.

I'm unsure if I can call Stan Lee a good writer though, a very imaginative and creative person I suppose but a lot of it just feels a bit one dimensional and naff.

[Dayraven]

I wonder if they toyed with the idea of making Bobby gay but didnt get the nod from whoever was running the company?

Seeing as Marvel wouldn't have a confirmed gay character till 1992, doesn't seem so likely to me. More probably playing to the part of the target audience that was still in the 'girls are icky' phase, even though the character's several years too old for that.

Oh yeah and Xavier is in love with Jean Grey

It a bad idea, but I don't think Xavier was actually intended to be an old man at that point. Early on, his father's stated to be a nuclear physicist who died in a bomb test when Xavier was young, which in a 1960s setting puts a limit on how old he could be.

Obviously, there's still the teacher/student thing.

[bgmnts]

Seeing as Marvel wouldn't have a confirmed gay character till 1992, doesn't seem so likely to me. More probably playing to the part of the target audience that was still in the 'girls are icky' phase, even though the character's several years too old for that.

It a bad idea, but I don't think Xavier was actually intended to be an old man at that point. Early on, his father's stated to be a nuclear physicist who died in a bomb test when Xavier was young, which in a 1960s setting puts a limit on how old he could be.

Obviously, there's still the teacher/student thing.

Fair enough to both of those. I didn't even assume Xavier to be elderly, I assumed 40s maybe. But still yeah, one older bloke alone in a mansion with unsupervised care over 4 vulnerable young lads and a young girl, all in their teens, looks dodgy as fuck nowadays. As I say, it's of its time.

Plus, I'm assuming almost all of this is going to retconned to fuck anyway.

[letsgobrian]

Another thing, in the first issue Iceman's reaction to Jean Grey's arrival is indifference whilst the rest of the boys stare out the windows like the groovy incels they are, yet in the next issue he is racing out to escort her. I wonder if they toyed with the idea of making Bobby gay but didnt get the nod from whoever was running the company?

It's to characterise him as the youngest of the team.

That being said, reading Bobby as being unsure of his sexuality is a thing readers were doing, as by the time of Peter B Gillis's Defenders and DeMatteis's Iceman mini-series in 1984 it's part of the subtext of the character.

[bgmnts]

It's to characterise him as the youngest of the team.

That's fair. But then he is a teenager and yeah literally a few pages later he's horny for Jean as well.

Issue #5 sees Xavier broken after a hilariously stupid explosion to the face from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (already established as regular villains) and out for the count. Toad (one of my favourite characters dont care) is used as a ploy by Magneto by posing as a track and field athlete about to be lynched by the crowd for being too good at hopping.

The ruse fails and it just descends into a big fight and rescue mission for the rest of the issue. They rescue Angel from Asteroid M and Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are shown to not really into being evil mutants but owe Magneto a favour. The end of the issue shows OH MY GOD Xavier the bastard was just pretending to be fucked to see if they had the ability to pass the end of year exam. I guess they're no longer students now.


First letters page at the end, one hilariously applauds the transcendence beyond mere "good guys vs bad guys" and Lee's response is "Like we always say: In OUR mags, you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard".
This despite the fact that the card carrying group of stupidly bad moustache twirling villains are called the Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants. Shades of grey.

Another funny letter opens with "I really think you are the greatest ever! You may be conceited but..."

[bgmnts]

Next issue has Namor the Sub Mariner OMG! Apparently reeling from a knock back by Sue Storm in FF, he's having a bit of a sulk and Magneto wants them to join forces. Magneto can do like mental projection shit as well Xavier. We really are in a what the fuck lets try everything stage at the moment. Namor wants none of Magneto really and so everyone fights again. Magneto runs away again and Namor dives into the sea, cursing all air breathers forever na-more.

The letters are overwhelmingly in favour of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch becoming goodies or having their new book. You can tell the readers are much cleverer than presumably comics creators think as the only two characters who are somewhat greyish they love. I'm expecting a face turn from them within the next couple of issues.

Oh fuck, spoilers by the way!

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Well I think Stan Lee wanted to try and ape the success of the Fantastic Four as on the first page of issue 4 he does mention something like a new Fantastic Four.

I think after reading mostly modern or 70s and beyond comic books, I have to realise that this is all quite foundational and it has it's place and even it's shitness has it's charm.

I'm unsure if I can call Stan Lee a good writer though, a very imaginative and creative person I suppose but a lot of it just feels a bit one dimensional and naff.

Yeah, that's fair...Lee was definitely more of an ideas man rather than what you'd call a great writer, and always dependant on the talent of his collaborators like Kirby and Ditko (who were justifiably resentful about Lee's habit of claiming credit for characters they'd created). His authorial voice can feel very repetitive when read at length, and you definitely get the sense from some of his flowerier prose that he was a frustrated novelist who never quite had the talent to make it as a "serious" writer.

Arguably 1963-66 Spider-Man run is his best sustained work, but that's as much down to Ditko's storytelling as Lee's quippy dialogue (which he famously would write in after the pages were finished). Similarly the psychedelic Lovecraftian madness of the original Dr Strange (Ditko again)

When I read the early X-Men issues a few years back (actually just checked, it was TWELVE YEARS AGO! Could've sworn it was four or five at most), I got the impression that first run was a bit of a dud, with a strong concept of lots of typically wild sixties Marvel ideas, but weakly plotted and it felt Lee and Kirby burnt out on it fairly quickly.

[madhair60]

bgmnts not because I'm thread policing/backseat moderating or anything but could you do a new thread for your X-Men readthrough? It would be cool to have a separate place to discuss the X-Men in general as I'm a big fan, and more people would see it

[bgmnts]

Yeah thought about but didnt think there'd be much interest.

If Barry wants to delete my X related ramblings here I'd be okay with that as started a thread.

[Small Man Big Horse]

A bit of a round up of the last couple of weeks:

Bloody Mary by Garth Ennis - This collects together both four issue mini-series starring the mass murdering soldier Mary Malone, the first allows Ennis to give right wing Europeans a good old kicking, the second attacks American religious cults. It's fine as this sort of thing goes, Mary and her mad sidekick The Major are amusing enough, though there's the odd racist bit which made me wince, even if Ennis could claim it's the characters who believe such things and not himself. Can't say I'm upset it never carried on either, it passed the time in a mostly amiable manner but that's about it. 2.75/5

Ampney Crucis Investigates by Ian Edginton- Supernatural mystery solver Ampney and his faithful manservant Cromwell investigate strange goings on in the 1920s, and yeah, it's pretty great, it's perhaps nothing that original but the dialogue is really strong and the plots intrigued. Indeed my only complaint is that I wish this wasn't such a slim volume as it only collects two of his stories, Vile Bodies and The End of the Pier Show, and not the other three appearance the duo made in 2000AD. 4/5

Rat Queens Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 by Kurtis J. Wiebe - More tongue in cheek and very knowing fantasy shenanigans with the four female assassins for hire, except the art changes in vol.3 as it turns out the guy who painted the first two volumes was arrested for beating his wife up, which was bleak to find out. I'm glad he was replaced of course but the art's more cartoonish in the third volume, and for a pro-feminism comic there's one piece of full frontal nudity which made me feel really uncomfortable and I don't think there was any need for it. Still, ignoring those aspects this is still a fun, fast read, and it's surprising how quickly writer Kurtis J. Wiebe got me to really care about these characters. 3.75/5

Zero Vol. 1 - 4 - by Ales Kot - I wrote a short review of this after I'd read the first three issues, and was intrigued by what appeared to be a slightly fantastical assassin based story, with the timeline flitting between Edward Zero being trained when very young along with other children, his present day assignments which involve futuristic technology, and finally the year 2038 where the world is a very different place indeed. But none of that prepared me for the directions the series took, the first twelve issues are what you perhaps could describe as mostly conventional, but then the final four are just packed with... Well, I don't want to get in to spoiler territory, but author Ales Kot (and all of the different artists, as every issue was drawn or painted by someone different) play around with a lot of ideas and themes and sometimes it seems utterly baffling and then sometimes a bit obvious, but overall it's fascinating and is a comic that left a big impression on me, the crazy bastard that it is. 4.75/5

Casanova Vol. 3 by Matt Fraction - I have such mixed feelings about this series, it's almost bizarre as to how some moments make me love it enormously but others piss me off a bit, and though Gabriel Bá's art can be stunning, sometimes it's a little confusing, though I get the feeling that this is a very deliberate decision. As for the plot, well, it once again lurches all over the place, and the first three issues are really strong, but I'm not convinced the fourth issue is completely successful, even though parts of it I enjoyed a hell of a lot. So, yeah, not sure how to rate this one, but, er, I don't know, 3.999899989999?

Glory Vol.1, Vol. 2 by Joe Keatinge - The return of an old Rob Liefield character (that Alan Moore also had a very brief involvement with), I really loved this, it's very different from what came before, an extremely ultra violent comic that also has a very emotive central theme about relationships with loved ones and those who admire you, even if that's plausibly misplaced. As a whole I found it really affecting, even if the ending led to a whole mixture of feelings, though ultimately it's very satisfying. 4.25/5

Fear Agent Vol. 1 by Rick Remender - I'm only three issues in to this, but eh, I'm not grabbed by it in the way I was with Black Science, and the lead character in this seems a bit average and there's little that makes me want to find out what'll happen to him next. I'll definitely finish the first volume, but it'll have to improve a fair bit over the next two issues if I'm to buy the second. 2.5/5

Edit: I keep on feeling a bit guilty for saying something's only by the writer, and not listing the artists, but I'm a very, very lazy man and it's too late now (er, possibly). Plus with Zero, it would mean listing all eighteen!

[willbo]

I'm reading the Batman series White Knight by Sean Murphy ...and saying this as someone who didn't believe I'd ever pick up a Batman comic again in the past decade, I'm absolutely loving it and totally recommend it to anyone with any slight or past interest in any version of Batman or is interested in a subversive, thought provokingly twisted look at the Bat mythos.

not sure how to describe it but its set in a slightly different version of the Bat universe where Batman is more of an unapologetic loose cannon (kind of like Frank Miller's version but worse) and the Joker has become sane and is running as a left leaning anti Batman politician, pointing out a lot of the real flaws he brings to the city.

Honestly every page has a new funny, quirky situation or ethical dilemma which makes you look at the whole bat lore a different way, I don't want this to end so far, and I had no interest in any post 80s Batman comic before randomly seeing this and being drawn to it.

edit - here's a past CAB reaction from someone less impressed  -- link

[Mister Six]

Yeah - as I said in that thread, I agree with those criticisms. If you have to make The Joker not a killer and The Batman a reckless idiot to make the story work, you're not actually writing about The Joker and Batman any more, are you? So the whole point of the thing is lost.