[QuickTidal]

DC's new BATMAN SUPERMAN title by Greg Pak and Jae Lee.

Wow.

Lee's pencil's are drop dead gorgeous to begin with...the opening scene's happen in a park in Gotham, and it just looks so surreal and dark.

Anyways, Pak tells a really solid first outing with the two heroes...and then in the final pages throws an insane twist at you that will make you wonder what the effing HELL is going on.

Great stuff.

VERY impressed so far.

[QuickTidal]

Okay wow.

VIA DC's adult imprint Vertigo (BATMAN and SUPERMAN scribe) Scott Snyder and artist Sean Murphy have begun a new original tale called THE WAKE...and it is REALLY excellent, and well worth a read. Two issues out so far (of a total ten). Looking forward to see where this goes.

[Studlock]

Waid's Daredevil is perfect. SO glad I saved up to buy in bulk. Now if only someone would write a comic like that for Spider-man I could die happy.

[QuickTidal]

Studlock, on 28 June 2013 - 12:21 PM, said:

Waid's Daredevil is perfect. SO glad I saved up to buy in bulk. Now if only someone would write a comic like that for Spider-man I could die happy.

I quite enjoy Waid's writing.

It's just a shame he can be such a raging asshat to fans. It kind of recently put me off him.

Though if you like his stuff I recommend both SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT and IREDEEMABLE.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 June 2013 - 01:04 PM

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 27 June 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

DC's new BATMAN SUPERMAN title by Greg Pak and Jae Lee.

Wow.

Lee's pencil's are drop dead gorgeous to begin with...

Lee has always been one of my favorite comics artists, going way way back and he's only gotten better with time.
Met him at a con once, nice guy too.

[QuickTidal]

Francis Manapul and Brian Buccelleto's FLASH is still the very finest comic that DC is doing. I read a lot of other comics that I sing the praises about now and again...but it's FLASH that is consistently entertaining. It's humorous, clever, interesting, emotional, and action-packed.

It is pretty much a perfect example of why I read comics.

LOVE.

[QuickTidal]

So the comic we were mocking a little while ago, DC's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE...is going to have an arc written by Dan Abnett this fall.

Yeah.

Looks like I'm going to be buying me some MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

LOL

[QuickTidal]

Fuck me...New52 GREEN ARROW....a title that was VERY nearly cancelled when its initial run and creative team nearly drove it into the ground for the first bunch of issues...got a new creative team beginning with issue #17 (and we are now up to issue #22 with them) consisting of Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino and jeebus ballsack hell it's fucking phenomenal. Like one of the finest titles in the DCNu quality. The editors are really giving Lemire breathing room to tell a unique and compelling story in the title. I never thought that GA (who is essentially a Batman clone-ish) could be this compelling....and here's some sacrilege for you....it's leaps and bounds better than Snyder and Capullo's BATMAN title (which has been sort of flagging of late).

Wow. Check it out if you can...anything from issue #17 forwards, solid solid stuff!

[polishgenius]

I haven't read it and probably won't for the near future while funds are low but Jeff Lemire is a fucking boss. Read his Animal Man?

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 20 July 2013 - 10:42 PM, said:

I haven't read it and probably won't for the near future while funds are low but Jeff Lemire is a fucking boss. Read his Animal Man?

I have indeed. Great stuff. And he's a local Toronto boy, so you gotta support.

With Francis Manapul writing and drawing FLASH and Lemire on GREEN ARROW, that's two locals writing two major DC league members!

[QuickTidal]

Jeebus hell.

Issue #2 of BATMAN SUPERMAN is literally Greg Pak and Jae Lee firing on every cylinder they have and then some.

What's really excellent about the partnership is that Pak seems to work with Lee to allow Lee's art and panels to do some of the heavy lifting so that he doesn't have to waste time with any superfluous exposition. The result is a fluid, and exacting book.

Beyond that the story is riveting! Mysterious, at times brutal and at others so emotional that I got glossy-eyed.

As per usual Lee's panels with their stark backgrounds, gorgeous flowing curls, and lovely shading the mood seems almost melancholy when it's Batman and his life that's being shown, but when it's Clark or Superman those pencil's actually turn into something quite heartfelt and rises above the melancholy nature of it. It's hard to explain, but Lee is kind of out of his own comfort zone drawing something as uplifting as Clark Kent and Supes....so the juxtaposition between the two stars of the book is palpable.

Just REALLY impressed. And we are only at issue #2!

I also took a chance on the newest X-MEN title (the one where the team is all the girls, lead by Storm)...and found it really good as well. I don't read a lot of Marvel, but this I might keep an eye on.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 25 July 2013 - 11:58 AM

[Studlock]

The entire x-line is pretty solid at the moment. All-new x-men, uncanny x-men, x-men: legacy, wolverine and the x-men, xx-men, and x-factor are all pretty great. I've read cable and x-force ands it's pretty average while uncanny x-force is down right terrible. It's also highly diverse which I guess shouldn't surprise me, it being the x-men, but sadly it does. Not much diversity at either of the big two.

[Abyss]

I was working my way through some of the major storyline X-books backlog...

MESSIAH COMPLEX.... messy, could have been better but did have a few parts that were verging on great.
SECOND COMING... surprisingly good, even when the art stank. Great choice of villains and the characters were near perfect.
SCHISM... wow was this weak. There were a few glimmers of neat ideas there, particularly when the x-folks were picking temas, but overall... feh. Hamhanded, poorly plotted, at times outright silly.

[Studlock]

Yeah, Second Coming is probably the best of the lot. A lot of events at marvel have 'big deaths' but in Second Coming I felt actually sadness for said deaths...that said I'm pretty much pumped up for Battle of the Atom.

[QuickTidal]

On the back of a $1 reprint of the first issue, I bought the first trade of Brian Wood's THE MASSIVE (art by Kristian Donaldson) which covers the first 6 issues.


And it's really quite interesting, while not being especially ABOUT something yet. There is a mystery or two, unsolved of course...but Wood (like with his other big creator series DMZ) basically makes you care about the characters first and foremost. A lot of time is spent on back stories, and such...and I find that such writing always finds footing when telling a long, slowly unraveling overarcing tale.

Here's the synopsis:

Set in a post-war, post-crash, post-disaster, post-everything world - the environmental action trawler Kapital scours the earth’s oceans for its missing sister ship The Massive, while struggling to redefine its core mission. What does it mean to be an activist after the world’s already ended?

The missing sister ship is one of the mysteries, the other is the fact that over the course of ten or so years, the earth suffered one environmental catastrophe after the other in a somewhat systematic fashion...and the pattern of it all happening in such close proximity is strange and probably was the result of something...thus that is the other soft mystery here.

It's good stuff. I'm not going to go out of my way to collect floppies mind you, as I found it worked really well as a trade....so I'll be slowly picking up the trades as they get released (the 2nd trade drops around Christmas time)

But it's worth a look.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 30 July 2013 - 12:58 PM

[QuickTidal]

I can't believe you people aren't listenig to me and reading Snyder and Murphy's THE WAKE. Issue 3 was gold baby!

Anyways, I'm up to the 3rd issue of X-MEN....which is basically a totally gender female team led by Storm and Kitty...and it's PHENOMENAL. I've already said I don't read a lot of Marvel titles, but X-MEN may just make my pull list.

[Studlock]

It seems like you, QuickTidal, and I have basically the opposite of reading habits. I pretty much stay away from DC and read exclusively Marvel (and Image trades). But I also recently picked up an issue from DC I really enjoyed. Batman/Superman, I really like the dichotomy of the cynical Bats compared to the optimistic Supes. I generally don't like either character all that much, enjoying their supporting cast and mythology built up around them in the world they inhabit (Gotham Central is tops) much more, but I think having them young is a nice change of pace for me.

The art though is on a whole another level. Sometimes I wish I could get a instrumental version of comics just because the art is so good.

One nitpick though is the focus on fathers, and not mention of mothers. It's a nitpick, one I find in a lot of superheros: the focus on father figures while putting mother figures on the back burner if there's any mention parents at all. But that's just a minor detail for me.

[QuickTidal]

Ah cool. It's good we come at these things from totally different corners. This way we cover the gamut for the rest of the folks!

[QuickTidal]

I continue to be 150% in love with Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples SAGA. It just returned after another short hiatus (they seem to do these every 6-8 issues or so to give Staples the chance to catch up the art, and such) of two months and as I read it I realized that I wanted to make sweet, sweet love to the pages.

I really think that this may be my fave comic of all time when all is said and done.

Big words. But truth.

The style of storytelling, the gorgeous art, the quirky characters, and the totally unique worldbuilding....it's all just so amazing.

There are two trades out now for those who wish to read it that way.

But I must say that the floppy covers are simply GORGEOUS from month to month. So much so that I might one day display them together.

[Abyss]

I was going to buy the first two collections the other day but Chapters was all sold out of bk 1.
I will totally grab these at some point.


In other news, AvX was way better than i expected.