The All New Comics Thread 2023 + Edition

[13 schoolyards]

Aw, and I was <this close> to buying a copy of the Hip Hop Family Tree collection (it's currently cheap on Amazon). But that was mostly because of my interest in the subject matter - he's not anything special as far as art or writing goes, and Red Room was a slightly interesting idea with extremely uninteresting execution.

None of which really matters, as he seems to be yet another member of comics ever-growing list of creeps. Guess this is the end of Cartoonist Kayfabe too - hopefully Jim Rugg will get a statement out there sooner rather than later

[Small Man Big Horse]

House Of M by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel - The Scarlet Witch went mad and killed Hawkeye and some other less interesting characters, and now Xavier has brought everyone together to try and decide what to do with her. Except that before they get the chance to pass judgment Charlies disappears and reality is completely altered so that everyone is living amazing lives. Of course it can't last

Spoiler alert

and Wolverine suddenly gets his memories back, spoils the party for  everyone else,

[close]

and then something else happens but it's not an ending. It's a shame as I didn't know that and thought it was going to be one and done, like Original Sin or Infinity, but if I want to find out what happens next I need to buy five other trade paperbacks and I'm not sure if I ever will, especially as none of them are written by Benedis. So due to that this only gets 3.25/5

[letsgobrian]

It's not worth reading the follow ups to House of M as clearly the X-Men writers didn't have much of a hand in the event because they have no clue what to do with the shitty hand Bendis left them.

Peter David's X-Factor which launched post-HoM is the exception, managing to turn Bendis's plot device Layla Miller into an actual character.

[Oh, Nobody]

hopefully Jim Rugg will get a statement out there sooner rather than later

Had a "beat it kid, ya bother me" type moment with Rugg at SPX a few years ago, was less interested in me effusing over Supermag than the teen girls in attendance. COULD BE NOTHING, COULD BE NOTHING.

[13 schoolyards]

Had a "beat it kid, ya bother me" type moment with Rugg at SPX a few years ago, was less interested in me effusing over Supermag than the teen girls in attendance. COULD BE NOTHING, COULD BE NOTHING.

I'm more surprised when anyone related to comics (including readers) isn't a creep in real life these days. But I guess there's different levels of creepiness - I met Simon Hanselmann years ago and he came across pretty much like he does everywhere else*.

_{*an ok guy who talks shit occasionally and knows how to handle himself around dodgy types}

[Small Man Big Horse]

It's not worth reading the follow ups to House of M as clearly the X-Men writers didn't have much of a hand in the event because they have no clue what to do with the shitty hand Bendis left them.

Peter David's X-Factor which launched post-HoM is the exception, managing to turn Bendis's plot device Layla Miller into an actual character.

I kind of feel like it wasn't the worst idea in the world if Bendis had, I don't know, maybe another eight issues that could explore not only how the characters would react as they're no longer mutants but also cover humanity's response to this. But any more than that and yeah, it's not a great premise to have to deal with in monthly books and I do feel for the writers involved.

[Dayraven]

From this article, while a lot of the pitch was Bendis', he also says "as Joe [Quesada] made clear, he'd wanted to do what was done to the mutant population forever".

So I think it was an editorial interest in reducing the population of mutants to a small, mostly-known group, rather than the mass population that Morrison in particular had moved towards, and the trouble was that this idea didn't particularly inspire anyone actually writing the X-Men.

[Small Man Big Horse]

That's an interesting interview, and I do like how passionate about the idea Bendis seems to be, even if it didn't pan out well in the end.

Dan Dare - He Who Dares by Peter Milligan and Alberto Foche - The Mekon is finally imprisoned after being found guilty of election fraud (no, honestly, I swear) and after Dan persuades the authorities not to execute him he's held in a new prison on the moon and given therapy, yoga and some light gardening to do in the hope that he'll soon be an all round lovely guy. And it works!

Or at least that's the premise of this four part mini-series, where Dan finds himself struggling to get by now that the world is peaceful and his arch enemy is up on the moon planting marrows seemingly happily.

Spoiler alert

Fortunately a Treen megaship turns up and so Dan gets the old team together to fight it, along with a new blue alien who hates the Treens even more than Dan, but they only survive the battle thanks to Dan phoning up the Mekon and asking for advice all the time (no, honestly, I swear!).

The Mekon's solution to defeating the Treens is to come up with a computer virus that also effects your green aliens, except Dan and co come down with it and nearly die, only for the Mekon to save them again! And a short while later the blue alien tries to kill the Mekon, Dan attempts to prevent her, only for the Mekon to save Dan's life again at the expense of his own!

But is he really dead? Yes, yes he is, and everyone celebrates and a couple of people plan to steal his corpse so that they can clone parts of him, but the Mekon wakes up! And saves Dan's life again! Woah! And with the final few pages Dan wanders around smiling thinking "Aw, the Mekon's truly changed, I bloody love him I do, I wish I was cradling him in my arms right now". But then the Mekon escapes! And Dan is very upset!

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And then it's "End of Book One" except that was seven years ago now and it's clearly never going to happen!

I paid £1.99 for this in the Forbidden Planet sale (and as of Saturday copies were still available), and that feels about right. It's very unsubtle stuff, what with its obvious jibes at Trump and Brexit and how similar events showed how racist and sexist humanity is, and though the art is okay there was something I didn't particularly like about the way Dan was drawn. But there was some pleasure to be had from the Mekon fucking around on the moon with his vegetable garden, and the conversations between Dan and the Mekon were fairly amusing. I didn't hate the action scenes, and um, well yeah, this isn't very good but I certainly didn't hate it as much as this guy - https://www.tcj.com/man-out-of-time/ - though I kind of agree with a lot of the criticisms he makes. I do wonder if this had been continued it would have explored different themes, or just concentrated on what we got here, but unless it was really cheap I doubt I'd have read it. A very generous 2.75/5 due to the low, low cost? Yeah, why not.

[madhair60]

at least the mekon doesn't anally rape Dan Dare in this one, i suppose.

[Small Man Big Horse]

at least the mekon doesn't anally rape Dan Dare in this one, i suppose.

Yeah, I fucking hate that Morrison did that, I was furious about it when I read it in Revolver and haven't changed my opinion since. I do own it as it's in the Rian Hughes collection Yesterday's Tomorrow but that's the only reason why.

[samadriel]

I'm currently reading Alan Moore's Supreme, and after reading that first issue, I feel like I know where Grant Morrison got a bunch of his All-Star Superman ideas from. It's not a complete rip-off, Morrison has their own take on that universe and a few of his own ideas, but a lot of stuff that felt fresh to me in ASSM was coming at the reader at a million miles an hour in Supreme. I'm only four issues in, but I'm loving Supreme, check it out if you can.

[13 schoolyards]

Supreme is so good, it's a massive shame it's never got a proper collection (especially now that all of the second year has finally made it to print).

Whenever the usual whinging starts up online about how Moore clearly loathes superheroes and is just some fan-hating edgelord, Supreme is all the rebuttal needed - it's so obviously a labour of love from someone who was a massive Superman fan and who wants to restore a lot of what people (including him, with his earlier approach to superheroes) took away from the character.

[Mister Six]

Is Morrison lifting from Supreme, or are they both just doing the platonic Superman? Genuine question - I haven't read Supreme yet.

[samadriel]

They're both revelling in Silver Age craziness, so it's fair that they share a tone, but I think specifically the way that Superman has to deal with heaps of one-line-pitch future and parallel versions of himself is a LOT like Moore's first issue of Supreme. It's hard to resist chucking in crazy versions of characters when you're doing a Silver Age pastiche, but it's not the only way to do it.

[13 schoolyards]

I'm more on the "they're both drawing a lot from the Silver Age" side of things - kinda ironically, this time it's Morrison who's taking things a little more seriously and playing them a little more like "what if these characters and situations were real" with ASS while Moore is just having fun being weird (while still keeping the characters grounded in the Might Moore Manner).

Plus Moore has a bit of a swipe at Morrison's pretensions with the comic book writer that Supreme (who's an artist in his secret identity) works alongside

[holdover]

Word doing the round that Ed Piskor (Red Room/Cartoonist Kayfabe/Hip Hop Family Tree) has been grooming teenagers. Link 1, link 2.

Word doing the round that Ed Piskor has killed himself.

[bgmnts]

Word doing the round that Ed Piskor has killed himself.

He's left a bit of a weird suicide note thing on Facebook that the kind people of reddit Google doc'd.

[madhair60]

you must never, ever criticise anyone because they might kill themselves. it's a harsh lesson we will all have to learn.

[Oh, Nobody]

Classic Evan Dorkin, getting called out in a suicide note.

[13 schoolyards]

"Wreak vengeance on my haters" does seem somewhat in character from the creator of Red Room

[Small Man Big Horse]

Charley's War The Definitive Edition Volume Two by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun - This kicks off with Charlie agreeing to listen to the tale of a deserter before deciding whether or not he should be handed over to the dreaded Grab Man, and it works really well as Blue's story shows another side of the war while also giving Charlie a much needed rest from the horrors of combat. The rest of the book is a little more episodic though, so it didn't have quite the same impact as the first volume. There's still some astonishing sequences, but there were a few occasions where I wasn't particularly grabbed by a story, or wished it could have been expanded upon as it was over with too quickly. It's still a stone cold classic, don't get me wrong, and Joe Colquhoun's art continued to astonish, especially on the covers where he included a quite frankly crazy level of detail, but it just wasn't as compelling as the first volume. 4.5/5

Also, not that this is in any way related to my rating of it, but Mills' commentary at the end of the book does come across as a little egotistical and Partridge-esque in places. In the first collection it was mostly Mills expanding on incidents in the story or providing sources for atrocities that occurred, but a lot of the time here he goes on and on about how no one else has ever written anything quite like Charlie's War, and he's surprised that there aren't other war comics which feature an anti-authoritarian stance / pacifist characters, etc, etc, and it gets a little annoying after a bit as I'm not convinced it's actually true.

[letsgobrian]

In a world where you've got 1973's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths from Shigeru Mizuki, Mills is being a bit ridiculous.

Craig Yoe has curated a book UNKNOWN ANTI-WAR COMICS that collects cold war era anti-war comics, which would also counter Mills position.

[Small Man Big Horse]

In a world where you've got 1973's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths from Shigeru Mizuki, Mills is being a bit ridiculous.

Craig Yoe has curated a book UNKNOWN ANTI-WAR COMICS that collects cold war era anti-war comics, which would also counter Mills position.

Thanks for that, I was all but certain he was though I wasn't aware of the above examples. The other day I was reading some old reviews of his autobiography on the 2000AD forums and it appears he has a bit of a reputation for that sort of behaviour, which has put me off buying it as though some parts of it are apparently fascinating, others are quite irritating.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Needless to say, he had the last laugh.

[madhair60]

i really enjoyed reading it, he definitely has an ego but i think that comes part and parcel with making good work to some extent.

[13 schoolyards]

I think those Charley's War commentaries suffer a little because they were originally written for the ten volume Titan Books collection, so reading them in three big clumps makes them a bit repetitive. Plus I suspect when he started he hadn't quite figured out his sales pitch for the reprints so he was focusing on the stories themselves, but once he stumbled on "I was doing this first! Why hasn't anyone followed me?" he's happy to stick to that line. I think he has occasionally mentioned other western anti-war comics, but I don't think he's the biggest expert on US comics, let alone manga.

Mills has always been his own best hype man, but he's usually open enough to new facts and perspectives that he's not as painful as (say) Mark Millar. Who I think recently interviewed Mills for his youtube channel?

[AngryGazelle]

I finally finished Gotham Central and whilst It's not going to be an all time favourite of mine, it was a fantastic read.

It not often a book surprises me but I was

Spoiler alert

Genuinely quite shocked and upset by Crispus' death.

[close]

The artwork wasn't particularly to my liking but it was never bad.

Highly recommended giving it a read 4.25/5

[Mister Six]

Post-Gotham Central spoiler

Crispus then came back as The Spectre in a storyline and standalone comic that I can only describe as "ebola-tier insulting dogshit".

[close]

[Small Man Big Horse]

Nemo: Heart of Ice, Nemo: The Roses of Berlin and Nemo: River of Ghosts by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill - Absolutely loved this trilogy of tales about Janni Dakkar's antics over a period of fifty years, it's now my favourite aspect of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This features O'Neill's best artwork from the entire series, some of the double page splashes all but took my breath away, and I really wish they'd bowed out with something like this for the other characters in the series rather than the bitter and often surprisingly unpleasant The Tempest. 4.75/5

[Glebe]

Actually wasn't crazy about the Nemo run to be honest.