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Author Topic: Marvel NOW!  (Read 72013 times)
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #70 on: May 08, 2013, 02:49:24 PM

I hope to get out to the comics shop (if it's still there) in the next couple days (rain!). What's a quick run down of current marvel awesomeness, with a focus on art rather than story. I like good stories, but mostly need good inspiration for painting. Both is a bonus!
Khaldun
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Reply #71 on: May 09, 2013, 04:06:11 AM

Captain Marvel has a very interesting, exaggerated art style that has been very polarizing--you love it or hate it, no in-between.

Mike Allredd on FF is doing some great stuff with his style if you like his work.

Jerome Opena on the first three issues of the current main Avengers title was very good, I thought. I think he's done most of the issues since as well.

Lotta people like David Aja on Hawkeye, I think it's a bit following on Mazzucchelli circa Batman: Year One, but that's a good thing.

I thought Stuart Immonen's arc on Journey into Mystery (featuring Sif) was so fantastic--and the story was great fun too. Might want to wait for the trade.

Young Avengers is a fun book artistically and characterization-wise.

In non-Marvel books, Fiona Staples work on Saga is really really great.

Darwyn Cooke's Parker book last year was amazing.

Lots of people like Manapul on Flash but I just can't deal with DC books any more. Amanda Conner was doing something for DC too and I would otherwise probably have read that as I love her art.

Sky
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Reply #72 on: May 10, 2013, 08:26:45 PM

Of course I completely forgot to jot that list down. Just looking over what was on the new books stand, I nabbed:

Fearless Defenders 1, 3 (Valkyrie, lots of nmm)
Guardians of the Galaxy
Savage Wolverine 2, 3 (they didn't have 1) - About to paint a Shanna and she's guesting in it
Iron Man 8, 9 (more nmm -non-metallic metal)
Thanos Rising 2
Avengers 1, 3 (didn't have 2 and I didn't want to buy their 1-6 bundle for the first 3)

No real art fans at the comic shop (eh what?) but they did point me to Witchblade 147-9 and they didn't have a full run of Alex Ross Marvels, so I'm nabbing that (and probably an art book of his) off Amazon. Then nostalgia took hold; when I was telling them my favorite comic from when I was collecting I mentioned Walt Simonson's Havok & Wolverine series and they had all 4...had to grab them. I was trying to find the Sif stuff, they didn't have it.

Still not sure what I'd sub to. Marvel looks schizophrenic with stories all over the place, multiple books per team, artists switching in and out every couple issues. What the hell? When I was younger, I had subs to FF, X-Men, Alpha Flight, Avengers and Defenders. Now who the heck knows.

And they ain't cheap no more!
Khaldun
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Reply #73 on: May 11, 2013, 04:30:46 AM

They're silly expensive. It's why a lot of people are switching to trades.

I like Fearless Defenders.

Guardians of the Galaxy really frosts my tits because Bendis is just ignoring all the fantastic work that Abnett and Lanning did with the characters in order to get the title into compliance with the movie treatment.

Iron Man I should take a look at because Greg Land isn't doing the art any more. I cannot stand that guy (he traces almost all of his stuff from porn actors and actresses)

Thanos Rising has been better than I expected.
Lantyssa
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Reply #74 on: May 11, 2013, 05:24:41 AM

I want to like Fearless Defenders, but there's just so many blatant little annoying things that I have trouble looking past them.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
HaemishM
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Reply #75 on: May 11, 2013, 10:05:40 AM

Guardians of the Galaxy really frosts my tits because Bendis is just ignoring all the fantastic work that Abnett and Lanning did with the characters

So pretty much everything he's written since Daredevil then?

Sky
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Reply #76 on: May 11, 2013, 12:27:09 PM

They're silly expensive. It's why a lot of people are switching to trades.
Done. Just ordered a few trades and pre-ordered a couple others. Nabbed Alex Ross Marvels and another of his art collections.

Mostly hard bound, lower price and prime shipping? Okeedoke.
palmer_eldritch
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Reply #77 on: July 15, 2013, 04:27:28 PM

Hope featured in a bunch of dumb X-Men crossover stuff before AvX. She started as a continuity mess and got even messier. Basically she's the first mutant born after the Scarlet Witch magicked mutants out of existence except for all the popular ones. Cable took her into the future and gave her the surname Summers, just so he'd have someone as stupidly complicated in backstory as he is. Then she came back to her time, the "present" of the Marvel Universe, and mutants started to be born again slowly and there was a bunch of stuff about the new characters she finds. And then AvX, more or less. The whole X-Men continuity is hopelessly borked in any event and she's a symptom of that.

Sorry to raise this again after so long but I`ve just been rereading some of these books and I'm sure I must have missed something. Why did a new mutant get born after the Scarlet Witch stopped new mutants being born? How come her powers handily involved creating more mutants? How come she looked like a young Jean Grey? Did the Phoenix force magic her up maybe?

Perhaps the answer is just that it doesn't actually make sense. But I'm still wondering if it's me being dumb.
Lantyssa
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Reply #78 on: July 15, 2013, 04:38:49 PM

I think it's because everything involving that storyline was idiotic.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
MediumHigh
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Reply #79 on: July 15, 2013, 04:46:34 PM

No one knows what the hell Hope was suppose to be. Is she scott summers surrogate daughter? Jean Grey 2.0? Whats her powers again? Meh lets just write angsty teenager, creepy Scott Summers, and general wankery and see how far it gets us. At some point this was actually wondered, "Well she is the only legit mutant after the scarlet witch fiasco, maybe we should run a train on her so she can have all our mutant babies and jump start the mutant race. I mean she is like only 14 right?"
Sir T
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Reply #80 on: July 15, 2013, 05:22:46 PM

Here, knock yourself out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Summers_%28comics%29

After you have passed your san roll and unscrambeled your brains after trying to make that crap make sense you can tell us.

Hic sunt dracones.
Sky
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Reply #81 on: July 16, 2013, 08:39:08 AM

My enjoyment of comics is enhanced by my ability to just ignore most of that kind of nonsense.
palmer_eldritch
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Reply #82 on: July 16, 2013, 11:58:30 AM

My enjoyment of comics is enhanced by my ability to just ignore most of that kind of nonsense.

Same here usually. In this case they actually built up a really nice long running mystery which looked like it was going to lead up to a conclusion but maybe not  Head scratch
Wasted
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Reply #83 on: August 13, 2013, 08:12:53 AM

I haven't been a big comic book reader but have decided to give Marvel Unlimited a go for bit and give them a try.  Any recommendations for some good stand alone stuff?

I started Joss Whedon's X-men stuff but it was clearly written with the assumption you had read earlier stuff.  I had to stop reading when the danger room became sentient though  swamp poop

I then went right back to the Stan Lee X-men start but couldn't stand traveling to the 60's.

I don't think I can handle too much of the superhero silliness.  I think I will The Punisher a try next.  What I am really hoping for though are some good stand-alone stuff.
Sky
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Reply #84 on: August 13, 2013, 12:52:07 PM

Not sure what's available. My favorite Marvel stuff off the top of my head: Simonson's Havok and Wolverine (4-part series) and more recently (for me) Alex Ross's Marvels (tpb).
Wasted
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Reply #85 on: August 14, 2013, 04:57:05 PM

Thanks Sky, the Havok and Wolverine series was really good.  The art style was really cool too.
Sky
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Reply #86 on: August 15, 2013, 08:41:06 AM

There are two panels that are my iconic wolverine.



And the other is when he's in a bar fight, but I can't find it quickly online.

Can't say enough about that set of books, it's by far my favorite and I've always had a copy around (and just bought another set because it was reasonably priced and in good condition).
HaemishM
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Reply #87 on: December 18, 2013, 09:55:03 AM

Figured I'd update this thread with my latest Marvel reading since it's all about Marvel Now.

I reached the point of having to stop with the Avengers/X-Men titles because the ongoing stories weren't fully available on Unlimited yet, so I went back and caught up with Daredevil. I liked Brubaker's run though holy shit was it incredibly depressing. And then came Shadowland.

What... the... fucking... fuck?

I was ok with Matt deciding to take leadership of the Hand in order to prevent The Kingpin from getting it. I was even ok with Daredevil killing Bullseye because I could stretch it that far. But then it got stupid. Daredevil is possessed by the Beast of the Hand demon thing and goes full metal villain. The Shadowland: Moon Knight series was fucking awful. And finally we have Daredevil being killed and of course Elektra bringing him back to life. He leaves town and is wanted by the law and the series ends.

Then it starts again and quite literally handwaves away almost everything that happened to make Matt Murdock's return to New York impossible.

If it weren't being written by a writer with the chops that Mark Waid has, it would be fucking awful.

Thankfully, Mark Waid is writing it now and it is FANTASTIC. Better than all the Brubaker and Bendis stuff combined. I liked the Bendis/Brubaker gritty street crime drama stuff - but after awhile, it got oppressively dark and depressing. Waid has taken a much more super-hero-ey 4-color approach and it is just spectacular. The editors have also chosen artists who totally fit that tone, with very clean lines and an art palette that is full of bright primary colors and it all just fits so cohesively. I recommend every issue of the new series - it's the tits.

I've also started reading the Guardians of the Galaxy series by Abnett and Lanning and I can't wait for the movie now. Just the right mix of humor and action and cosmic shit. Groot is just fucking awesome. I shudder to imagine how Bendis will fuck this up in the new series.

Khaldun
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Reply #88 on: December 18, 2013, 07:39:41 PM

Shadowland was seriously bad. I gave up right away.

And then Waid pretty much said, "Hey, forget about that, let's make the character fun again while still making him a bit broody and complex." It's been a great, great run, one of my favorite superhero books in the last decade. Fun, interesting, thoughtful--and true to the medium and its history.
HaemishM
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Reply #89 on: June 02, 2014, 09:20:38 AM

So they finally updated Marvel Unlimited with the Infinity series and crossovers, and I just finished it yesteday.

 Facepalm

What should have been a lot of really cool moments (Cannoball dating Smasher, lots of galactic fight scenes, Hulk and Thor vs. Thanos) gets lost in a fucking mess of a storyline. Sometimes, a story is just... TOO... BIG. It's immense. Hickman can't seem to decide who he wants the big bad to be and he just keeps escalating the amount of actual GODS involved in the story. The Builders start assaulting every race in the universe (all the big players - Shi'ar, Kree, Brood, Skrull, Spartax) all because they are driving through the universe in a straight line to destroy Earth. And killing entire worlds along the way... because. So most of the Avengers leave Earth to go fight a galactic war and as a result, we get very llittle characterization, or really a good minute-to-minute viewpoint of what's actually happening. We don't get long battle scenes, we don't get long character scenes, it's just rush rush rush from one scene to the next. And because fighting a galactic war against the race that supposedly created fucking life in this universe anyway wasn't big enough, Thanos packs up his five most powerful generals and attacks Earth because the Avengers are away and... he wants to kill his last remaining son (apparently, the guy in love with death is a complete pussy hound and a deadbeat dad - I'm not making that up). The son has been hidden by the Inhuman king Black Bolt in an Inhuman enclave that is separated from Attilan. Oh and he and his mad brother Maximus the Mad want to set off a Terrigen bomb (the Terrigen Mists give Inhumans their powers) because that creates more Inhumans all over Earth among regular looking humans who happen to have some Inhuman DNA. Which will kick off the next big event... INHUMANITY!!!! And Thanos discovers that the New Avengers/Illuminati have anti-matter bombs.

Oh and just for good measure, the New Avengers/Illuminati who have been almost murdering entire parallel earths to keep their own earth from being destroyed also have to deal with that - and according to the Black Swan, the Builders (world killers and life creators of the universe remember) aren't the real threat behind the Incursions and there's all this other stuff coming to kill Earth through the Incursions and they are so much worse, mmmmhhmmmm you better beware because you can't stop them.

It's too much. At some point, you can't make the villains THIS UNSTOPPABLE. Hickman's shit in Fantastic Four was already bad enough with the Mad Celestials and now we're upping the ante on that? What the fuck ever happened to stopping Doctor Doom from taking over the world? Why wasn't that an interesting enough story? No, we have to have the Marvel Universe fighting ACTUAL FUCKING DEITIES and I don't mean goddamn Norse Mythology, I mean some kind of scienc-fiction-y conceptual being that can destroy planets by fucking blinking but somehow the goddamn BLACK PANTHER is going to stop him with the Panther Spirit and an anti-matter bomb.

For something so smart, comics have gotten REALLY GODDAMN DUMB.

Raguel
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Reply #90 on: June 02, 2014, 03:42:26 PM

yeah. Can't say I like Hickman.

Now see if you can read Avengers World and not laugh at the big bad in that.  why so serious?

Having said that, I like Avengers World more than I like Hickman anywhere else (I've only read his recent stuff).
palmer_eldritch
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Reply #91 on: June 02, 2014, 04:49:18 PM

Once again I feel like I'm too dumb to follow the plot, which I'm sure shouldn't be an issue with superhero comics.

Why did the Builders want to destroy or conquer all life anyway? What was their relationship with Thanos, or was it just a coincidence that both things happened at once? How come they were unstoppable for so long but then suddenly collapsed? Ok, I get that the answer to the final question is partly because Thor killed one, giving their opponents a big morale boost, but it still seemed strange.

But I did enjoy the series overall, and certainly enjoyed the early issues. They set up the big epic space war well and it had a sense of immense scale with so many of the Marvel Universe alien races getting involved.
HaemishM
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Reply #92 on: June 03, 2014, 09:56:31 AM

What was their relationship with Thanos, or was it just a coincidence that both things happened at once?

Thanos found out the Avengers had left Earth to fight the Builders, so he chose to attack Earth when it was vulnerable. Yeah, it's not a very good justifcation, considering there were only 18 Avengers off-world.  But THANOS IS MAD!!!!!!! The Mad Titan... or some shit. Also... reasons.

That was the problem. Thanos alone is a big enough threat to make a decent story. The Builders thing didn't have to be scrunched in there. It was two invasions stories for the price of 1 and both suffered for it. The Builders shit could have been left off completely (including the whole Ex Nihilo/Abyss characters - totally fucking geek smart stupid they were) and the Thanos invasion would have been more than enough for a big summer crossover event. Plus, those were better story beats anyway despite the silliness of "I just want to kill my last remaining son but I'm going to leave my daughter, Gamora, alive."

Quote
How come they were unstoppable for so long but then suddenly collapsed?

Because... reasons. It was a cool scene watching Thor toss his hammer around the fucking sun and through one of those squidgy fuckers but the rest didn't make sense. "We killed all their world killing ships, surely they don't have or can't make more." Really?

Raguel
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Reply #93 on: June 03, 2014, 01:11:43 PM


I wonder how pissed Starlin was to learn Thanos had children.  why so serious?

He essentially retconned that away in Infinity Guantlet: Nebula claimed to be his (grand)daughter, and Thanos said something like "As if I'd have progeny."
Khaldun
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Reply #94 on: June 12, 2014, 10:22:17 AM

Hickman just misses the point of Kirby/Lee cosmic, that it only works if the amazing big crazy shit is at one scale and Our Heroes, even Reed Richards or Thor, are at the other. Jason Aaron's Thor recently gets this: his Thor deals with stuff like "all the gods in the universe are being murdered" but in the midst of that is brawling, drinking, putting the moves on a sexy SHIELD agent, and so on. Hickman loses that scale of things altogether, so all of his characters are almost the same--modular chess pieces being moved around on a story that is really just about the idea that everything is so BIG AND COSMIC but that there is even MORE BIGGERER AND COSMICER stuff right around the corner.
HaemishM
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Reply #95 on: June 12, 2014, 11:08:24 AM

Jason Aaron is a really good writer. He's made a concept I thought would be utterly terrible (Wolverine running the X-Men school) and made it one of the better books in the Marvel stable right now.

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