Useless comics news, discussions, and recommendations

[Velorath]

Clearly there's not much going on in comics that deserves it's own thread. We kinda more or less have threads that are currently acting as catchalls for Marvel and DC, but for random bits of news or reviews/recommendations of whatever you happen to be reading lately, feel free to dump it here.

To get things rolling, I just read through the first two issues of East of West by Hickman and Dragotta, and published by Image. It's a Western/Sci-Fi featuring the Four Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as Death has kinda fucked off on his own agenda. There's some interesting setup here. You've got end of the world prophecies, the U.S. divided up into 7 or 8 kingdoms, and three of the Horsemen have recently been reborn as kids while Death is an adult with a couple mysterious sidekicks. The problem is that so many plot elements are deliberately being kept mysterious for now that it makes the book a bit hard to follow sometimes, and it also means we don't really know the motivations of any of the main characters. I haven't read much of Jonathan Hickman's work, so I have no idea if I should expect a decent payoff for all the setup, and I have a feeling that this will read much better when collected in a trade. For now though I'm keeping an eye on it because I like the setting, and because it shows some promise. It could very well just end up being a jumbled mess though.

[CmdrSlack]

I currently have this on my pull list because I like the style so far. Agreed on the obfuscated plot bits.

[Khaldun]

Sounds an awful lot like a new series that Fox is doing, curiously enough. (Featuring Ichabod Crane in the far future fighting the Horsemen of the Apocalypse...seriously.)

Hickman makes me feel so weird. I so so so so much want to like his work, it is in a creative space that I like with themes that really excite me, he's very cerebral in a very good way, and yet time and again I'm left sort of cold by his stuff. I read it dutifully but not with great affection. I can't decide if it's me or him.

Kind of the same way I feel about Vaughn's Saga. Best art in a zillion years, good concept and yet there's just something about it. Maybe the cold open of the whole series--the jumping into the middle of things. Maybe I'm too conditioned to want "origin stories" early on.

[Velorath]

Saga was one of the next things I was planning on checking out, along with Mark Millar's Jupiter's Legacy.

[CmdrSlack]

Saga is really good. There are trades now, so you win by jumping in now. The individual books are a nice set though.

I am not yet sold on Jupiter.

[Sky]

Good idea for a thread. I just bought a slew of trades to catch up and figure out what I like, and I pre-ordered a few based on the comics I bought last week (Fearless Defenders, Savage Wolverine).

Advance warning: I'm not very picky about plots but I do like good art.

I'm starting with AvX to catch up on the state of the universe as available through trades. Decent hardbound edition slightly marred by the glued binding and crappy gutter. Art is initially decent, some shades of Kirby's legacy visible in the metalwork, I hope to lift that for painting at some point. Had a laugh reading through the rosters and going 'No, Valkyrie should be a Defender...Beast, maybe a Defender or X-Man but not and Avenger! Travesty!' Also, a lot of 'who the hell is that' and 'oh, I vaguely remember that New Mutant'.

Really looking forward to Ross' Marvels. The art is fantastic in that.

[Velorath]

Less of an art person myself, but maybe check out the first four issues of Uncanny Avengers since John Cassaday did the art there. The work he did on his and Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run years back was really good.

[Velorath]

Jupiter's Legacy feels like a combination of a bunch of other comics.  You've got the "shouldn't we be using our powers to change the world" stuff from Authority (not surprising since it's Millar), the superhero as cynical celebrity stuff pulled from Milligan's X-Force/X-Statix, and some of the generational conflict of Kingdom Come although it this situation it's more that the kids seem apathetic rather than excessively violent. Like much of Millar's work, there's nothing particularly original here, but it's put together in a decent way at least and is fairly well written. I could do without ever seeing another Superman analogue in comics though.

I'm 3 issues into Saga and quite liking it, except for a sci-fi/fantasy story that takes place on other planets with no human characters, it's got this odd modern day real world feel to the dialogue. There's even a comment at one point about downloading an app. That aside, I'm liking a lot of the characters so far, and the narration presenting the story as essentially a flashback from the child of main characters Marko and Alana is a nice touch. Looking forward to reading some more of this.

[Sky]

Just finished the first Hawkeye trade. I never liked the character. I do now. Great book, read it in one sitting. The tacked on Young Avengers story was a bit confusing.

Uncanny Avengers was ok. The only thing that bugged me was Logan recruiting Sunfire (a character I've enjoyed in the past). There's so much to each character it could've been an amazing scene, and it wasn't horrible. But then Shiro is all background, like 'box checked, he's an Avenger now'. Waste of an interesting character. Oh, and the first four books had atrocious art but the guy who stepped in for book 5 was decent.

I'll be following the trade versions, so I'll be a bit behind on things. I did read through AvX to get up to speed with the setup arc. It did have some pretty nice artwork.

[Khaldun]

Uncanny Avengers is essentially the direct sequel to Remender's X-Force--you almost have to read that to see what he's up to.

[CmdrSlack]

Just finished the first Hawkeye trade. I never liked the character. I do now. Great book, read it in one sitting. The tacked on Young Avengers story was a bit confusing.

The stuff with Kate gets better. As the main story progresses, she makes more sense as a source of stability. Kinda. At any rate, it is a great series so far.

[Sky]

Finished the Fantastic Four collection, I think it's Fantastic Four 1-3 and FF 1-3.

The art in the Four is mediocre to bad, though oddly the issue colored and inked by a different guy was much better. The FF is total garbage.

[Khaldun]

Are we talking the current FF? The one with art by Allred, with Ant-Man and all that? It's not my cup of tea but I really like that they're doing stuff that's out there. Marvel is so the opposite of DC right now: thousand flowers bloom, lots of different styles, characters that contradict across books. I really like them taking chances.

Just decided to do X-Men Legacy in one gulp, featuring Charles Xavier's son Legion. I'm stunned: it's amazingly good--funny, poignant, and some smart metatextual digs at the history of the X-Men as characters. Not at all what I expected when I heard about the title.

[Sky]

Yeah the Allred stuff. The art is so bad. There were a few pretty humorous scenes, but meh. The Fantastic Four 1-3 had better humor for the most part, and better art. Still, I'll be skipping anything more.

I nabbed a few things to check out where different things are going. Hawkeye is the one I'm looking forward to teh second compilation from a reader standpoint. I've got some on pre-order, the Sif anf Thor stuff because Thor is my copilot.

On the table now: Avengers.

[HaemishM]

I love Mike Allred's art, but yes, he's not for everybody or every book. I can't imagine his Fantastic Four would be a good fit unless he was doing a retelling of the origin. His stuff just reminds me of Ditko so much.

[Khaldun]

Allred's FF is a kind of side book--while the main Fantastic Four are out having dimension-hopping experiences, there's some second-stringers holding up the fort back in the Baxter Building, working with the weird kids of the Future Foundation.

I'm not wild about Fraction's Fantastic Four--I don't think he writes cosmic-level or 'big' stuff well at all. His Thor was so decompressed it was practically inert.

The Sif stories in Journey Into Mystery have been really, really great.

Thor continues to be about the best Marvel's producing right now, up there with Hawkeye and a few other books.

[palmer_eldritch]

Just decided to do X-Men Legacy in one gulp, featuring Charles Xavier's son Legion. I'm stunned: it's amazingly good--funny, poignant, and some smart metatextual digs at the history of the X-Men as characters. Not at all what I expected when I heard about the title.

Sounds interesting .Where would I start with that - this book? http://www.amazon.co.uk/X-Men-Legacy-Prodigal-Marvel-Now/dp/0785162496

[CmdrSlack]

Yep, that'd start you at issue 1.

[Velorath]

Read the first four issues of Five Weapons, which I believe has only 1 issue left. Nothing stellar, but it's a fun story about a kid sent to a school for assassins. Each kid is expected to join one of the 5 clubs the school is divided into, each one focusing on one weapon (knives, bows, staves, exotic, and guns), but the main character proceeds to go though the school year without ever using a weapon.

At this point there's nothing particularly original about using a school as a setting for something beyond the ordinary (Harry Potter, probably a ton of anime, etc...), but at least if it's treading familiar ground, the five clubs each specializing in a weapon thing is an interesting variation of the recipe. Good lite reading, but you don't need to go out of your way to check it out.

Also checked out the first few issues of Clone and The Private Eye, but I'll write about those later.

Edit: 

I love Mike Allred's art, but yes, he's not for everybody or every book.

Agreed. I absolutely love his style.

[Sky]

Avengers 1-6. Art is really fantastic, especially the first few. Some good ideas in there, but pretty hasty resolutions. The concept of the larger team to save the world is solid, but then they squander it with poorly laid out and timed mini events. Savage Wolverine still has my favorite two-page spread where Logan and Shanna are battling a horde of savages, an epic picture that's lacking in a supposedly epic book. A lot of it seems rather disjointed, too. In both this book and the Uncanny Avengers, I'm surprised by the amount of one-dimensional backing cast in the team, maybe I've just been away from comics too long. Seems things have changed for the ADHD generation.

If the art quality stays as good, I'll probably snag the next volume, but it won't be for the story...

[Khaldun]

Hickman really just has a kind of distractedness--he's throwing cosmic stuff at the screen all the time but it feels a bit desperate. He doesn't have the twinge of nostalgic joy that Morrison has when he does similar things--Hickman's approach is cold and cerebral. But I'm sticking with his Avengers for now--there are interesting things going on, even if the pacing is crazy uneven.

[Sky]

Thunderbolts was a bit loose in spots, and Deadpool's writing could've been snappier, but overall I was surprised. Pretty good book and interested in where they go with it.

Cable's X-Force was pretty darn entertaining. Might be the strongest characterization thus far. Definitely grabbing the next one.

[Sky]

Just read Iron Man #1, such nice art direction. Someone finally made an AIM grunt look cool! More on this one when I finish the TPB (THB?).

Also got notification my next shipment...er...shipped. Looking forward to this one: Thor, Sif, Deadpool and Superior Spidey.

[CmdrSlack]

Deadpool #11. Be there.

The banter between Deadpool and Daredevil is worth it.

[Lantyssa]

The latest A+X was pretty funny.  Kitty + Spider Woman made me laugh (though I'm a huge Shadowcat fan), but Deadpool + Hawkeye was a riot.

[Sky]

It's odd being so out of sync with the issue releases.

[Lantyssa]

I only know because my friend is going crazy for comics right now.  She brings them over every Friday or so.

[Velorath]

It's odd being so out of sync with the issue releases.

You're better off. I'm currently waiting through a two month gap right now between the last issue of Hawkeye which shipped in early May, and the scheduled release of the next issue which is due in early July. Of course that isn't nearly as bad as Saga going on break from April -August between issues 12 and 13. At least with trades you tend to expect large gaps of time between them.

[Sky]

Journey Into Mystery featuring Sif - awesome. Love the badassery of Sif anyway, nice to see her featured like that.

Deadpool vs the Dead Presidents - Posehn should be the official writer for Deadpool forever. So twisted and awesome. I've been a fan of Brian's work for along time, he's in a certain strata of really funny dudes that just can't seem to get much respect.

[Sir T]

Speaking of Deadpool, I ran across this live action Deadpool movie on youtube. Its just a silly fan made movie with a budget of a piece of chewing gum and a packet of biscuits, but its still amusing and they pretty much have the character of Deadpool down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDpXu4j7ibM

[Velorath]

I read through the first few issues of Age of Ultron a little while back and was surprised to find that it was merely dull and tedious rather than horribly bad like most of Bendis' stuff. Having read the spoilers for the final issue since I couldn't slog though all 10 issues, apparently I was just lucky enough to stop reading before the shit was piled on. I'll put a spoiler warning on her but the real spoiler is that nobody should be paying money for Marvel event books anyway:

[HaemishM]

I... REALLY?

Is this like a "go back in time and kill Hitler" kind of stupidity?

[Khaldun]

It was a dull series up to that point at which it became a stupid series, not the least of which because it sounds like a prelude to something like the nu52, which is ultra-stupid, given that Marvel Now books are creatively vastly better than DC at the moment and DC's sales are declining steadily with each passing month. Plus the 'big deal' at the end is a mediocre character from a wretchedly 90s series coming to the Marvel universe as the result of a IP tussle? Who the fuck cares? Also looks like they're getting ready to just fold the Ultimate Universe into the standard-MU, probably to get as many characters aligned with the film MU as possible, also a dumb strategy.

[Velorath]

I... REALLY?

Is this like a "go back in time and kill Hitler" kind of stupidity?

If you replace Hitler with "guy who accidentally created a supervillain robot that's had over a dozen largely ineffectual incarnations". And then after going back and killing him, going back again and telling yourself not to kill him. And then he ends up saving the day, but space-time breaks.

[HaemishM]

I need an emoticon for "stroke-inducing skullfucking stupidity."