polishgenius, on 28 June 2022 - 10:48 PM, said:
Abyss, on 28 June 2022 - 05:57 PM, said:
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.
The frost giant had a fade. Needed some bling and a necklace with a giant 'COOL' tho'.
....gods that was such bad comics. Very 'who thought this was a good idea and why do they still work here?'.
Re Bats, historically i mostly went for team books over solo heroes... why read about one character when you can have seven? Hawkman, boring strong dude who flaps wings, hits things. Hawkman arguing w Green Arrow and throwing the Atom at baddied and going up against foes who flattened Superman, THAT i want to read.
Part of it is that Batman has been around or so very very long, and sure, the character has evolved, but not really changed. That's normal for Big 2 characters but it puts me, as a reader, off because it's all familiar - same thing that threw me out of the Xmen books and only brings me back when someone really really changes the mix. But Batwoman and Spoiler and this Clayface are all new/new'ish to me, and i'm only familiar w Red Robin and Orphan/Cass/Batgirl distantly, so when Tynion focuses on them, and Batman is part of the story but not its center, i get something new. (New'ish, some of the storylines are still familiar but thats what you get after a few decades of reading DC and Marvel).
In other pretty piccy reads a random exchange on comics twitter brought me back to Marvel's EXILES. This was a 90s xmen book about a team of alt reality Xmen (notably Age of Apocalypse Blink, Sabretooth and Morph (sort of) ) bounding around alt realities trying to 'fix' things. It started incredibly strong, had a Suicide Squad like vibe because much of the cast died or were replaced, and stayed the fnck away from mass crossovers. Around two years in Bedard, the primary writer, leaned too heavily into the humour angle for me, and then Chuck 'wrote a teen banging an adult in midair while her parents watched and also wolverine is afraid of werewolves' Austen had a run and i bailed. Thanks to the MU app i did a reread, skimmed the 'funny' arcs, skipped Austen's mess entirely and read the balance of the 100 floppy run. It's pretty great, i'm a sucker for alt realities (see upthread re Spiderverse) and Bedard (came back after Austen thank all the powers in the universe) and co made some fun ones while making the core team engaging characters. Adding not-doing-anything-at-the-time Spidey 2099 and Longshot to the mix later on was a nice touch.
And then without warning Chris Claremont takes over and OMG someone pass me the concentrate OJ i need to burn these last ten floppies from my brain and eyes. Random character shifts, important events being related in 'last issue' summaries because they sure as fnck didn't show them, atrocious dialogue... dead Spiderman ex Gwen Stacy shows up at one point but the reader wouldn't know that because she spends the first issue making out with Spidey 2099 and looks exactly like the other blond woman character, the second issue declaring her love for him but unnamed, and the third she's named, apparently has powers we never see, then... dies, or something, i'm not sure i read it twice Dr Doom was doing... something evil, i think, maybe, but dwarf Reed Richards stopped him while the main characters hid in a cave or fought w Gwen Stacy HONESTLY CLAREMONT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ??? ...anyrate aside from the Austen mess and dismal end EXILES was a great read.
It kills me that the writer who boosted the Xmen to what they are continually returns to comics and just.... meh.
Ah well, back to DETECTIVE.