How was your comic book reading week? V. 5/09/05

[Hoss]

Hi all,
So, what comic books have you read recently?

After picking up the digest on Saturday, I read the first four issues of Amazing Fantasy yesterday. This is definitely a cases of the hype turning me off to a decent book. I was first put-off by the noise being made because Araña is a hispanic character. Expecially since the only overly hispanic things about this girl are her name and the fact that she calls her dad "Papa." And this is actually good character development - Araña is really a Newyorikan character. Her real ethnicity is Newyorker and the book does a good job of developing her as a street smart, tough kid.

The overall plot of the book is interesting enough. It centers around some of the themes started by JMS during the Eizekiel stories over in Amazing. The book is a mixture of Spider-girl and JMS's Amazing with some vaguely Bagleyeseque art. I won't read Araña in anything but cheap digest, but for about a buck an issue I rec the book.

Gail's Villains Unlimited was an interesting but flawed addition to the infinite crisis thing. My biggest complaint with the book is that it has alot of minor characters and is very tied to other story arcs and doesn't do much to acclimate the reader to the backstory. I imagine this book was much more interesting to die-hard DC readers. Honestly, if it weren't part of the larger story, I wouldn't be interested enough by this book to keep coming back. It does work just fine as a supplemental mini-series to a much larger story. Plus, OMAC, Day of Vengance and Adam Strange are all awesome. A talking detective chimp - sweet!

I finished Phoenix Endsong. First, Greg Land's pencils are stunning. I'm mad at all of you who didn't give Crossgen a chance because seeing him do Lord of the Rings meets Red Sonja type stuff in Sojourn was awesome. Second, Greg Pak is a good writer. Third - there was absolutely no need for this mini-series. I wish they'd given this team a forward looking story to work on instead of writing a pointless epilogue to Morrison's X-men that will be useless when Marvel decides to bring Jean Grey back.

Ultimate Fantastic Four 18 was somewhat disappointing. It was a good story with great characterization, but it friggin ended just like the movie Con-air. Seriously - a big ol' plane crashes on the strip in vegas and then the good guys fight the bad guys as the military/FBI shows up. But I gotta say that I love the way teen Sue, Reed, Ben and Johnny have been developed.

I finally broked down and picked up the first two issues of the Green Latern Rebirth mini. Why did I wait? I love Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver together. When van Sciver works on a special project his stuff reminds me of Bolland on the Killing Joke. And John's has a feel for the DC universe characters that is heads and shoulders above anyone else. The scene in issue one when all of the folks at the baseball game started confessing to Hal was just dead-on. Great stuff.

[Rebuilt In Error]

Sin City - The Hard Goodbye (or whatever they have named it)
Sin City - The Big Fat Kill
Outsiders - The Sum Of All Evil

Re-read my Battle Chasers collection (#1-9) which i am sure is complete.

Don't get a great deal of time to read comics lately.
Although I feel the ones i do read make up for it :D

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Haven't been out to get anything new for awhile, but I've been re-reading my CONAN THE BARBARIAN trades that were re-released by Dark Horse.
Want to get more, so I thought I'd re-read the first 3 to get me psyched for it.

They made some good stuff in the 70's.

[west3man]

Firestorm - Still good stuff. The fact that Ronnie's around helps, quite a bit. I like how they KINDA fleshed-out Ronnie's character, but I dislike how they *apparently* killed him off. I'm gonna miss him.

GLA - This was much better than I thought it would be. The idea that these jokers are so freakin' CURSED turns me off because it can be down-right dePRESSING. Somehow Slott's able to have balance, Daniel-san. This is one of those books (and there was at least one other) that I'm afraid to collect only in tpb format, because I'm not sure it'd survive long enough to make it there. Not that it's not good, it's just that it's not necessarily a sure-thing, in my estimation.

Most books I collect are going to have a similar theme (for lack of a better term).

I got some other stuff from the previous week, since I was out-of-town, but I don't remember what it was.

[fly on the wall]

I read some of those Johnsian Green Lantern books and they were second grade Johns. (First grade Johns being JSA and third grade Johns being Flash).
But the art was so good it made the books better. The story doesn't make much sense, though.

I read that comic book that was 80 pages with a really low price and it was great except the ending where someone who shouldn't be so bad did a horrible thing to someone else, and that kind of wrecked the whole book.

I kept trying to read OMAC but it kept putting me to sleep. Couldn't get by the first two pages.

[Loren]

Villains United #1 - A whole heck of a lot better than OMAC. In that, I think I might actually buy the second issue of this mini. I think some other character should've been used in the Fiddler's place, though.

Flash #something - Part 2 of Rogue War. I've been waiting for this arc a long time, but not terribly much happened this issue. The thing about this arc that makes me most curious is that Johns seemed to have it in the works a long time before "Identity Crisis" came around. And yet the story is going to lean *heavily* on the fallout of events detailed in IC. So I wonder what Johns originally had in mind.

Invincible #0 - Fun. I'm not sure if I'm compelled to buy the series, but this was certainly worth two quarters.

Manhunter #6 - I bought the first issue of the trial arc so that I could review its legal quirks too. And I finished that this morning.

Star Wars: FCBD - Eh.

Bongo Comics: FCBD - Pretty fun. Using short stories makes for good variety in a freebie.

I haven't yet read Ronin Hood or Uncle Scrooge. And I wish I'd gotten my hands on copies of Flight and Owly.

I had books from DCBS come in last week. The Supreme Power HC was great, and given the relaunch, I'm not sure if a second HC is coming. Smax was also great.

And I've been rereading Priest's "Black Panther" series. I'm on his last arc now. The Kasper Cole story was complicated, but it read a heck of a lot better at one time than spread across several months.

Loren

[Hoss]

Villains United #1 - A whole heck of a lot better than OMAC.


Loren, you're wrong. OMAC was better. Glad that's settled.

[fly on the wall]

Loren, you're wrong. OMAC was better. Glad that's settled.


OMAC is better if you can stay awake while reading it.

[Hoss]

OMAC is better if you can stay awake while reading it.

It sounds like you slept through your wife having a bad acid trip so I'm not sure anything will keep you awake now.

[Tadhg Adams]

I read the Free Wizard Book from Free Comic Book day, the Top 100 trades of all time. The Top 10 is very very safe and the rest of it makes no sense.

[Ryan K]

I read:

-The FCBD stuff. Uncle Scrooge was by far my favorite. Flight was very good as well. Betty and Veronica was terrible. The rest was medicocre.

-The Brotherhood 1-9. The ongoing series from Marvel about mutant terrorists from 2001. The first three issue were great. The second arc was decent and the third arc tried to rush to many things in order to give the readers a conclusion before the series was cancelled. Overall I thought it was a good attempt by Marvel to publish a Vertigoesque x-book. It's too bad it got cancelled so soon. A healthy 25 issues with a the plot laid out better would have been great.

-Sin City: Booze, Broads, and Bullets. Very good. Especially the Blue Eyes stuff.

Currently I'm reading DC Archives Legion of Superheroes Vol. 1 and enjoying it very much.

[west3man]

I read:

-The FCBD stuff. Uncle Scrooge was by far my favorite. Flight was very good as well. Betty and Veronica was terrible. The rest was medicocre.
Since our FCBD limited us to two books, I got Scrooge and Betty & Veronica.

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, regarding Scrooge. B&V was just b/c I'll always have a soft-spot for Archie characters... well, til now, anyway.

Scrooge was okay. It didn't knock my socks off, but it did blow my skirt up just a bit. I canNOT see myself collecting it, but *shrugs*

B&V seemed to rely pretty heavily on us knowing who the hell Katy Keene is/was. Big mistake, imo. I didn't have a clue. I agree that the issue was pretty bad. Terrible? MayBE.

[Hoss]

-The Brotherhood 1-9. The ongoing series from Marvel about mutant terrorists from 2001. The first three issue were great. The second arc was decent and the third arc tried to rush to many things in order to give the readers a conclusion before the series was cancelled. Overall I thought it was a good attempt by Marvel to publish a Vertigoesque x-book. It's too bad it got cancelled so soon. A healthy 25 issues with a the plot laid out better would have been great.


Did anyone every figure out who 'X', the writer of the Brotherhood was?

[Hoss]

I read the Free Wizard Book from Free Comic Book day, the Top 100 trades of all time. The Top 10 is very very safe and the rest of it makes no sense.


You read the free Wizard book? Masochist.

[Ryan K]

Scrooge was okay. It didn't knock my socks off, but it did blow my skirt up just a bit. I canNOT see myself collecting it, but *shrugs*

Yeah. It was a nice read for free. But I wouldn't buy it monthly.

B&V seemed to rely pretty heavily on us knowing who the hell Katy Keene is/was. Big mistake, imo. I didn't have a clue. I agree that the issue was pretty bad. Terrible? MayBE.

I just couldn't stand the smiles on every character's face on every page.

I thought it was funny how the comic reading girl won the contest in the end. Pandering to the audience maybe . . . :D

[Ryan K]

Did anyone every figure out who 'X', the writer of the Brotherhood was?

No. I believe the popular guess was Howard Mackie, but it was never revealed.

[Andy S.]

I picked up a slew of free books on Saturday. Some independent stuff that I enjoyed included, "Flight" and "Owly" and the digest with the articles on Image. I also read excerpts from "Love & Rockets" and "Eightball-(Komic Kollector's Korner)" for the first time. I'm just beginning to get into more indy stuff. I'm hoping that I'll be able to see more of these titles at HeroesCon in June.

As for regulars:

Batman: Dark Detective: I really enjoyed this, as it is a stand-alone story that has nothing to do with Identity Crisis or Infinity Crisis (Not that I hate those stories or anything, I'm just sick of almost EVERY story arc being a tie-in) but it was consistent with continuity. I'm definitley going to pick up the rest of this series.

Flash (Rogue War, part 2): I've wanted to pick up FLash for awhile, but i just can't really get into this story arc. It deals with alot of Flash history that i'm unfamilar with, and just isn't very engaging for me. But Porter's art is very good.


GLA #2: I freakin' love this book. This is the funniest thing I've read since "Y". I bout fell out of my chair at the panel where Flatman is standing at an angle where you can't see him, then all of a sudden he turns and surprises his own teammates...

Y #33: As always, B.K. Vaughan never really dissapoints. Funny, suspensful, and exciting. My favorite line was " I've seen enough Bones Spock slash for one night..." :D

[west3man]

GLA #2: I freakin' love this book. This is the funniest thing I've read since "Y". I bout fell out of my chair at the panel where Flatman is standing at an angle where you can't see him, then all of a sudden he turns and surprises his own teammates...
I'm not all that familiar with Slott's resume, but I get the impression his work would ... work well as animated features.

[fly on the wall]

It sounds like you slept through your wife having a bad acid trip so I'm not sure anything will keep you awake now.

I got new meds and now I don't have to fight to get a decent night's sleep!

I'm so happy...

Wifey flipping out on LSD, a nuclear attack, and I keep on sleeping.

[Hoss]

I got new meds and now I don't have to fight to get a decent night's sleep!

I'm so happy...

Wifey flipping out on LSD, a nuclear attack, and I keep on sleeping.

That's awesome. Lack of sleep drives me nuts.

[Loren]

Loren, you're wrong. OMAC was better. Glad that's settled.

You missed a typo. I think you meant "OMAC was bitter." A depressing story about a disillusioned ex-Batman aide. My preferred Max Lord story is being told over in "JLA: Classified."

And fly's not far off about its sleep-inducing factor. I tried reading the issue again, and got after halfway through before I just started flipping pages to get to the end.

Loren

[Andy S.]

I'm not all that familiar with Slott's resume, but I get the impression his work would ... work well as animated features.

Y'know, I could totaly picture GLA as a cartoon. Just by the way that the story is laid out, I could see it in that medium.

[JeffreyWKramer]

I didn't get much. SHINING KNIGHT #2 was pretty good. Hell, all the SEVEN SOLDIERS books are pretty good (MANHATTAN GUARDIAN has been the weakest of the bunch so far, and even it didn't suck).

I also picked up and read the first two (of four) issues of GREAT LAKES AVENGERS. Despite featuring *yet more damn character deaths*, it's hard to not like this off-beat book. It even features Squirrel Girl!! I really wish Dan Slott was writing NEW AVENGERS.

I also read some books that I've had for a couple weeks but didn't get around to reading until now.

OTHER WORLD #1 was pretty tedious - a whole bunch of characters were introduced, most not particularly likeable or memorable. I won't be continuing this book.

FANTASTIC FOUR #525 is the first part of a fill-in arc by Kesel and Grummett, before JMS and Mike McCone come on board as the ongoing team (taking over for Waid/Weiringo). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really thrilling, either. Maybe Kessel and Grummett would have put more energy into it if they were going to be the ongoing team.

DAREDEVIL #71 and 72 are the first two parts of an arc about people telling how Daredevil has impacted their lives. I really, really think Bendis ran out of things to say - or ones worth saying, at least - with DAREDEVIL several months ago, and while it isn't a bad book, it feels like it's just treading water. This arc is very much hurt by the absence of Bendis' excellent supporting/secondary characters (Foggy Nelson, Luke Cage, etc.). I, for one, am ready for a new writer on this book. Of course, with current comic trends, the new writer will probably be someone like Chuck Austen.

[west3man]

DAREDEVIL #71 and 72 are the first two parts of an arc about people telling how Daredevil has impacted their lives. I really, really think Bendis ran out of things to say - or ones worth saying, at least - with DAREDEVIL several months ago, and while it isn't a bad book, it feels like it's just treading water. This arc is very much hurt by the absence of Bendis' excellent supporting/secondary characters (Foggy Nelson, Luke Cage, etc.). I, for one, am ready for a new weriter on this book. Of course, with current comic trends, the new writer will probably be someone like Chuck Austen.
You guys are SO MUCH better at reviewing comics, than I.

[Gaz]

SHINING KNIGHT #2 - Good, if a little on the philosophizin' side. And Biachi made Justin look pretty damn feminine in the second half of the issue The Guilt monster was a well executed idea, and Justin's vow ("Not while one knight...") was touching,despite some of the prosephising jarring me somewhat. All in all, a good issue in a good maxi.

GLA #2- Living Lightning was outed! Arana turned the GLA down! Grasshopper died 5 seconds into his membership! Magnolia soundtrack! Batroc Zee Loseur! I love this mini, and yet another darkly comic tale, with a tragic ending, and nice character development, and many nice cameos, all in character (especially a certain "urban myth"). (Oh, JWK? The deaths are kind of a satire of that trend, hence the "Death in every issue!" promotion)

Spider-Girl #86 - Fun. That's the only way to describe how I feel about this title. I might ened up torn between Stinger and Ant-Girl soon, however. And quit menitoning Venom when he's barely in the issue! Those were the only bad things, imo.