[Abyss]

Just finished a MONSTRESS marathon.... reread of TPBs 1-3 then on to 4,5,6.

This is near perfect fantasy comics. All of it, the characters, the art, the story, the depth. It is maddeningly engaging, addictive even, and I will be sorely tempted to grab the floppies rather than wait for TPB 7.

[Salt-Man Z]

Abyss, on 25 April 2022 - 05:06 PM, said:

The next Bundle is an Image Comics retro bundle that includes, among other things, the entire SAVAGE DRAGON series, the three SHADOWHAWK LS', a pile of SPAWN, DARKNESS and WITCHBLADE.... (ymmv).
Am tempted for the Dragon, have always wanted to read the whole thing. The rest suffer somewhat from 90s edgy fanboy trap syndrome.

LOL, definitely not the entirety of THE SAVAGE DRAGON, it's only the first 102 issues (not counting the collected limited series, also included in the bundle as "Baptism of Fire".) Issue# 262 drops in June.

I got all of the Witchblade issues in a previous Bundle, but I'm tempted to grab this for Spawn (to fill a gap left between two previous Bundles) as well as the color versions of the Savage Dragon comics. (I got the Archives collections previously, collecting everything up to #150, but they're all in b&w...)

And yeah, a lot of it is 90s cheese, but it's also the era (or nearly) that got me into comics*, plus I can throw most of the $25 at charity, so it's a win regardless.

*(Still have those issue #1s of CyberForce and WildCATs bagged up, among others!)

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 25 April 2022 - 05:59 PM

[QuickTidal]

So no one told me, but IDW's TMNT comic is one of the best, freshest, and most enjoyable reads I've had in a long while. I'm only just through the 2nd big omnibus, only up to around Issue 24 I think so far, but it's SO fantastic. Like the newer organic way they incorporate Casey, April, and everyone else? Amazing.

And I could be wrong, but I don't recall the original Turtles being actual honest to god reincarnations of the family that Splinter had in feudal Japan? Like they never seemed to dip to hard into what the link was between mutated anthropomorphic turtles/rat to the actual ninja training and whatnot...it always felt fuzzy, aside from the OBVIOUS homage to DAREDEVIL (Splinter/Stick, Hand/Foot ect.)...the live action movie he was the pet rat of Yoshi, right?...but this notion that Yoshi's determination upon the death of his wife and sons at there hands of Saki (Shredder) allowed him to be reborn with his sons to seek vengeance? Sweet.

I will be reading this whole run (which I know is still ongoing all these years later.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 25 April 2022 - 06:16 PM

[Abyss]

In Marvel related news, after reading the Xbooks up to the mostly enjoyable 2021 Hellfire Gala - most of the stories were fun, some of it suffered from crossoveritis - I took the next step and read X-MEN: THE TRIAL OF MAGNETO.
It was crap, likely editorally mandated to redeem the Scarlett Witch ahead of Wandavision and the next Dr Strange film.
There were a couple of fun moments, notably X Factor acting as actual forensic investigators, Eye-Boy continuing to power-up, a fun return for a long dead character, and Northstar utterly beating the crap out of someone he couldn't have touched a few years ago, but otherwise meh. Contrived, forced, not what i read the xbooks for.

[Abyss]

....in blissful contrast, on the MU app am getting caught up on the Krakoa era Xbooks from the first Hellfire Gala to Inferno, MARAUDERS was a blast. I mean, sure, KittyKat and Bishop will always be fun to read, and Pyro and Iceman aren't hard to make interesting, nor is Emma Frost.... but i wasn't expecting to enjoy Sebastien Shaw, or Harry Leland, or, that they would ever, ever, bring back Lourdes and make her awesome. And finally, Iceman throwing down with Fin Fang Foom over a stash of whiskey is something i would never ever ever have expected to read and it was great. Four buckled swashes out of five.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 28 April 2022 - 01:10 AM, said:

....in blissful contrast, on the MU app am getting caught up on the Krakoa era Xbooks from the first Hellfire Gala to Inferno, MARAUDERS was a blast. I mean, sure, KittyKat and Bishop will always be fun to read, and Pyro and Iceman aren't hard to make interesting, nor is Emma Frost.... but i wasn't expecting to enjoy Sebastien Shaw, or Harry Leland, or, that they would ever, ever, bring back Lourdes and make her awesome. And finally, Iceman throwing down with Fin Fang Foom over a stash of whiskey is something i would never ever ever have expected to read and it was great. Four buckled swashes out of five.

I've gotta nab MU black to catch up on all the Krakoa era stuff. I only got through the two initial Hickman 12's (Power and Dawn) and I read a few issues of MAURADERS (it was indeed awesome), but I want to do a deeper dive on the whole thing.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 28 April 2022 - 12:35 PM, said:

Abyss, on 28 April 2022 - 01:10 AM, said:

....in blissful contrast, on the MU app am getting caught up on the Krakoa era Xbooks from the first Hellfire Gala to Inferno, MARAUDERS was a blast. I mean, sure, KittyKat and Bishop will always be fun to read, and Pyro and Iceman aren't hard to make interesting, nor is Emma Frost.... but i wasn't expecting to enjoy Sebastien Shaw, or Harry Leland, or, that they would ever, ever, bring back Lourdes and make her awesome. And finally, Iceman throwing down with Fin Fang Foom over a stash of whiskey is something i would never ever ever have expected to read and it was great. Four buckled swashes out of five.

I've gotta nab MU black to catch up on all the Krakoa era stuff. I only got through the two initial Hickman 12's (Power and Dawn) and I read a few issues of MAURADERS (it was indeed awesome), but I want to do a deeper dive on the whole thing.

Now's a good time, you've got an excellent stretch from HOX/POX all the way up thru Swords of X to the Hellfire Gala. The books are not all at the same level, but between the great - Marauders, Hellions, New Mutants - and the rest, it's a very satisfying read even with the low parts (Excalibur). It's the mostest fun the xbooks have been in years.

[Salt-Man Z]

Last December I finally got the last omnibus on sale (Comixology/Amazon) that I needed to allow me to finally sit down and read everything from HoX/PoX (for the third time) all the way through X Of Swords. I loved most of it, even if none of it quite lived up to the promise of HoX/PoX.

[Salt-Man Z]

Probably the last IDW Transformers Humble Bundles is here. IDW is losing the TF license at the end of the year, which means 17 years of Transformers comics will likely disappear from digital stores at that time. (A lot of the "Hasbroverse" crossover stuff has already vanished into the ether.)

This Bundle collects probably the most celebrated run of comics from IDW's first TFverse, specifically More Than Meets the Eye (and its sequel series, Lost Light), MTMTE's sister series Robots in Disguise (and sequel series Optimus Prime), as well as Till All Are One, and the Unicron miniseries that concluded it all. (It also handily includes Historia, a final one-shot that summarizes all 13+ years of stories, so you can fill in any gaps.)

Also included are the first couple of volumes of the 2019 reboot series by fantasy author Brian Ruckley, and the first volume of the current Beast Wars comic (both wrapping up this summer), as well as some other assorted odds and ends.

$20 is an absolute steal, even if the image quality and resolution aren't as high as I'd prefer (looks like the images themselves are only around 1700px high; the CBZ graphics are just slightly muddied from compression, but the PDFs look uncompressed.) As always with Humble comic bundles, I'd recommend grabbing the $1 tier first to see if the quality meets your satisfaction before committing to the full purchase:

https://www.humblebu...phase-idw-books

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 12 May 2022 - 10:06 PM

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 30 March 2022 - 06:56 AM, said:

Its 3am and I'm multiple hours into a marathon of the INJUSTICE series.
Great comics, bad sleep habits.

K wow this really really doesn't hold together without Tom Taylor writing.
And the decision to base an entire year, and the finale, around Harley Quinn... ummm bad. Harley is a great character in the right hands but as the focus of a massive DC alterverse with four years of other stories behind it... meh.
There are still fun moments but the overall story just lives down to its video game origin instead of exceeding it. Case in point, the story flexes to set up characters fighting themselves are just weak.
Taylor returns in '2' so we'll see how this goes and whether i stick w it or switch to something else... there's a pile of stuff on DC Infinite im looking fwd to.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 24 May 2022 - 03:08 PM, said:

.....
Taylor returns in '2' so we'll see how this goes and whether i stick w it or switch to something else... there's a pile of stuff on DC Infinite im looking fwd to.

Lobo just got a power ring, drop kicked Dexstarr, and then beat the crap out of Atrocitus with a giant green energy dong.
...so yes, it got better.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 26 May 2022 - 04:26 AM, said:

Abyss, on 24 May 2022 - 03:08 PM, said:

.....
Taylor returns in '2' so we'll see how this goes and whether i stick w it or switch to something else... there's a pile of stuff on DC Infinite im looking fwd to.

Lobo just got a power ring, drop kicked Dexstarr, and then beat the crap out of Atrocitus with a giant green energy dong.
...so yes, it got better.

...and then we get INJUSTICE: DC V THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and OH MY GODS THIS IS BAD BAD BAD AND ALSO BAD WHO TF THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA I THINK MY EYES MAY ACTUALLY BE BLEEDING FROM THE BAD BAD ART BAD STORY BAD DIALOGUE BAD

[Cyphon]

Started reading the Sandman, I really suspect I'm not getting all the literary references and missing bits, but enjoying it so far.

[polishgenius]

I've been behind on comics recently but I took a trip to London and picked up a couple things: Dark Nights: Death Metal and Superman: Son of Kal-El.


Death Metal is cool - despite me missing almost the entirety of the intervening Justice League run I found it a lot clearer, with more room for its moments to breathe, than the first Dark Nights, and in a lot of ways it reads like a more coherent version of Final Crisis, which is nice- but it have two things that kinda bothered me: first, Snyder seemed to be having some kind of contest in the last 10 years or so with Hickman over at Marvel as to who could expand the scale of their 'verse and the villainry facing it to the most absurd levels, and both have gotten kinda silly (which also feeds into the old thing of constantly doing basically the same BUT BIGGER, rather than being imaginative with it), and second, Snyder fell too in love with The Batman Who Laughs. I get he wanted to have this crazy bat-themed world-end scenario, but BWL just didn't make sense in his role in the last part of the story. Darkseid would have been a far better fit or, if he did want to avoid just totally going Final Crisis-redux, someone else (I'd have gone with Vandal Savage, since I always think he'd make a good Wonder Woman counterpart in the same way Darkseid has evolved into an opposition force to Superman, and part of the issue was it being all Batman-themed also didn't quite fit with Diana as the main character here).


Still, Snyder knows how to write this kind of thing, in general.


Son of Kal-El is just super. I think it's the first thing I've read from Tom Taylor but he's clearly a cracking righter. Just got right into proving there's absolutely no reason a Superman story can't be relevant or relatable.

[Tiste Simeon]

Is it anything to do with actual death metal?

[polishgenius]

Not really. Though I'm not sure how that would work anyway.

But they released a soundtrack which, as far as I can tell, doesn't have any actual death metal on it, so yeah.

[polishgenius]

In other news I just saw that Marvel made Miles Morales Thor, and oh holy shit what the fuck are they doing. I gather it's a what-if so not 'official' but like... every single cheap stereotype they could have it, in three images.



https://twitter.com/...874612205273089

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 21 June 2022 - 01:53 PM

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 21 June 2022 - 01:48 PM, said:

In other news I just saw that Marvel made Miles Morales Thor, and oh holy shit what the fuck are they doing. I gather it's a what-if so not 'official' but like... every single cheap stereotype they could have it, in three images.



https://twitter.com/...874612205273089

Wait, you mean 'BY ODIN'S FADE!' is not a traditional Norse warrior oath?

[Abyss]

Reading James Tynion's DETECTIVE COMICS run, it's very good, and i realized something... i'm not a Batman fan... sure i enjoy the character and have read comics, watched cartoons, movies, etc, but he's never been a character i really want to read about... UNLESS he's in the JL, bcs it's fun to read him playing off other more interesting characters. Bats arguing w Commissioner Gordon is dull, Bats arguing w Green Lantern is great. And i'm enjoying DET not because of Batman, but because it opens with him assembling a Batfam team - Batwoman, Red Robin, Spoiler, Orphan, Clayface - and playing off of all of them. I'm not even that familiar with most of them as they were when the run started, but all are more interesting because of the interplay.

Same goes for Spider-man.. the Spidey run i have utterly loved of my various reads on the MU app was Spiderverse because it played classic Peter Parker Spidey off a bunch of more interesting people.

...anyhoo, two tpbs into Tynion's DETECTIVE run and it's very very good.

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 28 June 2022 - 05:57 PM, said:

Wait, you mean 'BY ODIN'S FADE!' is not a traditional Norse warrior oath?

The cherry on top being he doesn't even have a fade in the book, he's bald. And wearing Timbalands coz of course.



I actually agree with you to some extent on Batman. I mean, I like his solo comics fine and think him playing off Gordon, in the right hands, is just as interesting as him playing off GL, but ultimately for me Batman is while not quite a blank slate, he's kind of a relatively simple archetypal insert around which good stories happen easily than a really deeply compelling character all on his own.