[Abyss]

Abyss, on 12 December 2023 - 04:43 AM, said:

Abyss, on 11 December 2023 - 08:06 PM, said:

...'SAVAGE AVENGERS' (vol 1), ...
Dr Doom just showed up. Conan is going to have dinner with him. I am so here for this.

Doom and Conan sitting down to dinner... Great.
Doom, Conan, and Dr Strange teaming up to fight Kulan Gath... ALL THE EPIC. ALL OF IT.

Conan just beat a demon to death with a prostitute's prosthetic leg.
The prostitute told him to come back to bed.

Black Widow cannot get over this. The bed part, not the demon or the leg.


This may be the greatest Avengers run ever.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 12 December 2023 - 02:44 PM, said:

Abyss, on 12 December 2023 - 04:43 AM, said:

Abyss, on 11 December 2023 - 08:06 PM, said:

...'SAVAGE AVENGERS' (vol 1), ...


Dr Doom just showed up. Conan is going to have dinner with him. I am so here for this.

Doom and Conan sitting down to dinner... Great.
Doom, Conan, and Dr Strange teaming up to fight Kulan Gath... ALL THE EPIC. ALL OF IT.

Conan just beat a demon to death with a prostitute's prosthetic leg.
The prostitute told him to come back to bed.

Black Widow cannot get over this. The bed part, not the demon or the leg.


This may be the greatest Avengers run ever.

Just Finished. I stand by my conclusion: Greatest. Avengers run. Ever. Or possibly Greatest Conan Run, it's really his show, the Avengers are borderline guests, but whatever, the beauty of this run is bouncing established Marvel characters off of Conan the frikkin Barbarian. When Spider-man throws out 'with great power comes great responsibility' and Conan bursts out laughing it is priceless. When Conan meets Wolverine and wants his own set of "snikt knives" it's funny til Logan mentions he's killed everyone responsible for that. Conan hitting on Elektra, distrusting Strange, doing a 'who's got the bigger weapon' w Kang, ... it's all just such comics gold.

The good guys win, the finale is glorious. It was everything i could have wanted from Conan In The Marvel Universe except that Conan never went drinking with Thor (tho he does go drinking w Hercules, Jane Thor, Wolverine, the Punisher, and Dr Doom, so i'm good).



...in striking contrast to vol 2, which is weaker in story, art, cast, and incorporates an annoying 'tell me don't show me' narrative box thing that is just dragging the whole comic rtf down. It's okay enough to keep reading, but the contrast w vol 1 is rough. None of the vol 1 writing or art team are back for this and it shows. Conan is back but they do nothing new w him. Cloak & Dagger are wasted. The Black Knight is handled better, the writer clearly gets how to make the character work as a tech/sword guy, best the character's been in years to bad it's lost here. Weapon H and AntiVenom are just there to stab things. Elektra's ok but more plot device than character. The twist around Deathlok could have been great except that they aren't doing anything w it. It's all just ok but it's obvious why vol 1 got 30ish floppies and vol 2 got 12. I'll finish it just to see how the last arc ends.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 15 December 2023 - 05:50 PM, said:

...'SAVAGE AVENGERS' (vol 1), ...
...
...in striking contrast to vol 2, ...it's obvious why vol 1 got 30ish floppies and vol 2 got 12. I'll finish it just to see how the last arc ends.

Well.... it ends. Woo.

And now Bendis' MILLENIUM / LEGION OF SUPER HEROES run.

...wow this is bad. They redesign the Legion, ok, fine, not the first time. But then don't even bother to introduce most of the characters. Six issues in we know who maybe eight out of thirty members are, the rest just stand around looking vaguely interesting, and maybe four have had any development, and naturally it's the 03, Brainiac Five and Ultra Boy, all of whom are always the focus, every time, and are not even getting any original swerves from the usual, other than Ultra Boy who's been dumbed down and blanded out. This is the equivalent of starting a new Justice League run and only giving WW, Supes, and Bats anything to do (or Avengers v Cap/Thor/IM) and ignoring the rest of the cast.

Also if you're going to shake up the near all white cast diversity-wise, and make perpetually white Cosmic Boy Asian (or possibly Hispanic, it's hard to be sure) and Lightning Lad Black (or possibly mixed-race, again, hard to be sure) maybe give the fill-in artists a note so they can do that. Cos changes ethnicity four times in six issues. LL twice in one issue. It's visually offputting and annoying and amateurish for work on a DC title. Also the 'future-slang' just sucks. And if you're going to bother to pull in a near blank-slate ancient history character like Rose/Thorn, at least give her something more interesting to do than be the Legion's secretary.

I'll finish the run because i have finished all the runs but it's no longer any mystery to me why the Legion as a comics property has failed to find ongoing success. The pattern is obvious, it's painful, and it's silly. The worse part is if if DC had, or ever did, maged to get Hickman and given him the LoSH, i'm certain the same thing would have happened... a year, maybe two, then a creative team change and the future sucks yet again.

Meh.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 19 December 2023 - 04:32 PM, said:

...

And now Bendis' MILLENIUM / LEGION OF SUPER HEROES run.

...wow this is bad. ...Meh.

And with issue 7 Bendis turns it around. Wow. The shift from plodding and annoying to good comics happens so fast and hard i got whiplash. One two page spread launching into an avtion sequence and finally finally finally this run gives me something good and fun.
Even more amazing, floppies 7-8 were a complete mashup of various artists each doing a page and in stunning even unreal contrast to every jam issue i have ever read in the past it actually works very nicely. AND the rest of the cast finally gets some attention and most of it is pretty great AND we get a couple of huge action pieces AND ys they're still unclear about Cosmic Boy's ethnicity but the rest of it has become reasonably stable so yay for diversity or something.

[polishgenius]

Did my traditional 'when I'm home' run into London to Forbidden planet, picked up a few things before Christmas. Read the first chunk of Immortal Hulk, that was excellent. Hulk through a Hellblazer lens, real good shit. Will be reading the rest as soon as possible, which may not be all that soon.



Also got the first two volumes of Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's Nightwing run - Taylor's later Superman run was excellent so I'm looking forward to this. The first volume of Radiant Black by Hickman, which should be good. And for Christmas I got a volume (not the trade, a larger collection) of Sweet Tooth. So a bit to bite into for the next few days.

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 25 December 2023 - 10:34 PM, said:

Did my traditional 'when I'm home' run into London to Forbidden planet, picked up a few things before Christmas. Read the first chunk of Immortal Hulk, that was excellent. Hulk through a Hellblazer lens, real good shit. Will be reading the rest as soon as possible, which may not be all that soon.



Also got the first two volumes of Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's Nightwing run - Taylor's later Superman run was excellent so I'm looking forward to this. The first volume of Radiant Black by Hickman, which should be good. And for Christmas I got a volume (not the trade, a larger collection) of Sweet Tooth. So a bit to bite into for the next few days.

IMMORTAL HULK is a brilliant run. Enjoy!

Tom Taylor could write ten pages of Bruce Wayne flossing and make it interesting. I just finished his DCEASED follow ups and for comics about superheroes fighting zombies... wow. I should check those runs out.

Pretty sure RADIANT BLACK is Higgins, not Hickman.

[Abyss]

The current Marvel run of ALIEN and PREDATOR.... surprisingly good.
They did a few smart things.... the Preds remain individuals for the most part and any single one is massively dangerous. That works better than the pattern Dark Horse fell into where humans kept encountering bigger and bigger groups. They acknowledge that humans have been studying the Preds for centuries with all that suggests. They also lean in on the tropes
keeping the reader guessing which character will be the one to unleash their inner badass and not die.

On the Alien side, no surprises, Weyland Yutani, Earthgov and all other corporations are still assholes trying to exploit the Xenomorphs and Queens. That said marvel got somesolid writers and excellent art teams so it works. They're also digging more into the synths rather than just endless sacrificial colonists and marines, which is a nice touch.

Worth reading, nice chunk of books on the MU app if you're there.

[Abyss]

Back to Gillen and co's ONCE AND FUTURE for tpbs 3 and 4, both glorious in art and story. I really enjoy how Gillen acknowledges there are alternate and 'competing' Camelot myths and sets them in the story. I should have bk 5 from the library soon, looking fwd to the finale


Now Marvel's STRANGE ACADEMY, a 2020 series about students at a Marvel universe magic school.

"I'm fine. Why does no one believe me when I say I'm fine?"

"Because no one is fine after being dead."

"What makes you the expert on that?"

"My name is Dead Girl. I died and then made myself not be dead. So that's what makes me the expert on that."

....I may love this comic.

ETA

"This is Dessy... and her father S'ym."

My x-fan brain just fell out of my head. I do love this comic.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 14 January 2024 - 06:47 PM, said:

...
Now Marvel's STRANGE ACADEMY, a 2020 series about students at a Marvel universe magic school.... I do love this comic.

The run (vols 1 and 2) ends well enough. They keep the focus on the students, and specifically a small group, and within that group a couple who have a running 'chosen one' plot where one is destined to be evil and the other good and frankly the 'twist' is anything but, but the art is nice and the story moves and the action beats are well done. Brother Doctor Mister Voodoo is barely a background player, which is too bad bcs the character could use some development since his hot minute as acting soceror surpreme when Strange was dead for the second or thrid time. The rest of the faculty are similarly sidelined but it's not a major loss, the one Damian Hellstrom fan out there will survive.

Anyhoo, Just Finished STRANGE ACADEMY vols 1 and 2, good fun, all on the MU app if you're looking for a fun short self-contained read.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 14 January 2024 - 06:47 PM, said:

Back to Gillen and co's ONCE AND FUTURE for tpbs 3 and 4, both glorious in art and story. I really enjoy how Gillen acknowledges there are alternate and 'competing' Camelot myths and sets them in the story. I should have bk 5 from the library soon, looking fwd to the finale

Just Finished. Gillen and co completely stick the landing. GREAT finale.

[polishgenius]

Picked up Superman for All Seasons yesterday and read it today, and man, I do not understand how Jeph Loeb went from a guy who so deeply understood characters and their millieu in the 90s to... you know.


Also picked up the whole of the Superman Warworld Saga arc by Philip Kennedy Johnson and various artists, read the first volume. Really good fun, and I'm interested to see (1) where it goes once it actually gets to Warworld and (2) how PKJ handles the Authority, and specifically Apollo and the Midnighter (since the rest aren't really the Authority, though Manchester Black has always been a pretty fun twist on Jenny Sparks).


Also picked up another couple of volumes of Radiant Black. Sadly the little comic shop in Berlin didn't have continuations of the Nightwing and Immortal Hulk runs I started at Christmas.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 04 February 2024 - 10:18 PM

[polishgenius]

Okay, having finished the entire thing today: that rocked.

I've always tended to be a little leery of Mongul because him and Warworld always struck me as being basically Darkseid- and Apokalyps- lite, but this comic makes good use of him, and also doesn't shy away from that rather obvious comparison but uses it in small but quite clever ways. So Mongul is a very good villain here.


More importantly, PKJ clearly gets both Superman and The Midnighter, who's not just a backup dancer but a key part of the story. There is a little awkwardness in that the story totally acknowledges that Superman does not kill but Midnighter kills all the time, yet never has Superman bothered by that. But, ya know, ultimately that's a minor issue (and the extremity of the situation kind of makes it simpler to accept than if it was a regular Earth-mission).

Gonna have to read the rest of this dude's Superman run, before and after this, now. But this is legit an all-timer Superman story.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 04 February 2024 - 10:33 PM

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 04 February 2024 - 08:50 PM, said:

Also picked up another couple of volumes of Radiant Black. Sadly the little comic shop in Berlin didn't have continuations of the Nightwing and Immortal Hulk runs I started at Christmas.

Humble Bundle has a Massiveverse offer up.

[polishgenius]

Cheers, I'll probably take advantage but also why couldn't I see that three days ago ffs.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 05 February 2024 - 03:30 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 04 February 2024 - 08:50 PM, said:

Also picked up another couple of volumes of Radiant Black. Sadly the little comic shop in Berlin didn't have continuations of the Nightwing and Immortal Hulk runs I started at Christmas.

Humble Bundle has a Massiveverse offer up.

polishgenius, on 05 February 2024 - 05:55 PM, said:

Cheers, I'll probably take advantage but also why couldn't I see that three days ago ffs.

I think it only landed two days ago. The universe decided you need hard copies.

[Aptorian]

Got nostalgic for Warren Ellis comics so I borrowed the collected volumes of Global Frequency and Planetary.

I havent't gotten round to Planetary yet, but Global Frequency is still good. The fact that Global Frequency didn't turn into a long running TV-show is weird. It's such a flexible premise for any kind of crime of the week or anthology series. I could at least imagine a cheap early 00s canadian TV-show.

I don't think I read all the issues back in the day, but I remember a bunch of the stories. The most fucked up one about the surgeons that get dosed with hallucinogens and create a human horror cathedral of meat and bones is still fucked up, but perhaps not as horrifying 20 years later.

Strangely I also remember the series having more of a The Laundry'ish supernatural feel, but most of the stories are just about weird violent crimes. Very violent crimes.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 05 February 2024 - 07:42 PM, said:

Abyss, on 05 February 2024 - 03:30 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 04 February 2024 - 08:50 PM, said:

Also picked up another couple of volumes of Radiant Black. Sadly the little comic shop in Berlin didn't have continuations of the Nightwing and Immortal Hulk runs I started at Christmas.

Humble Bundle has a Massiveverse offer up.

polishgenius, on 05 February 2024 - 05:55 PM, said:

Cheers, I'll probably take advantage but also why couldn't I see that three days ago ffs.

I think it only landed two days ago. The universe decided you need hard copies.

Relatedly just finished bingeing RADIANT BLACK vols 1-4. Good comics. Not wildly original - 'young goodlooking people find alien tech, get powers' isn't exactly groundbreaking - but fun, good pace, nice art, engaging story and characters, very well done action scenes. I enjoyed, am continuing to read the rest of the Massiverse set.

[Abyss]

Aptorian, on 11 February 2024 - 09:21 AM, said:

Got nostalgic for Warren Ellis comics so I borrowed the collected volumes of Global Frequency and Planetary.

I havent't gotten round to Planetary yet, but Global Frequency is still good. The fact that Global Frequency didn't turn into a long running TV-show is weird. It's such a flexible premise for any kind of crime of the week or anthology series. I could at least imagine a cheap early 00s canadian TV-show.

I don't think I read all the issues back in the day, but I remember a bunch of the stories. The most fucked up one about the surgeons that get dosed with hallucinogens and create a human horror cathedral of meat and bones is still fucked up, but perhaps not as horrifying 20 years later.

Strangely I also remember the series having more of a The Laundry'ish supernatural feel, but most of the stories are just about weird violent crimes. Very violent crimes.

GF got full test premiere treatment in 2005ish. Michelle 'Ensign Ro' Forbes did a spectacular take on Miranda Zero. It's out there if you care to hunt for it. The cover story runs that the premiere was leaked and this caused the production house to decide there was no point in going fwd. Hints, allegations, hearsay, and brain probes suggest it was a convenient (cheaper than buy/shelve) kill by a network that already had a procedural thriller type thing coming and didn't want the competition. There were rumours a few years ago of renewed interest, then Warren Ellis became persona non grata in Hollywood and pffft, gone.

Ellis aside, too bad. It was a great concept that could have generated a lot of really good tv, somewhere between FRINGE and ALIAS.

[Aptorian]

Yeah, I can imagine there's not much interest in Ellis currently. Let's not get into that can of dirty worms.

About 20 issues into Planetary now.

This comic is much more fun than Global Frequency, yet you can see a lot of the same style and plotting between GF and Planetary. I'd forgotten how much Planetary riffs on DC and Marvel. Like I remembered the evil Fantastic Four and the stories about Hulk and Superman. But there's so much more if you know the references and stories. I'm kind of surprised Ellis didn't get sued for some of the use of the DC/Marvel heroes.

I still love the Sherlock Holmes and Dracula encounter. Can't wait until I get to the Galactus story.

I never read the final issue(s?), so I'm curious how it concludes. There's so much potential in the told and untold stories of this universe, that I wish this was a 20 book scifi book series.

[Abyss]

Aptorian, on 14 February 2024 - 07:34 AM, said:

Yeah, I can imagine there's not much interest in Ellis currently. Let's not get into that can of dirty worms.

About 20 issues into Planetary now.

This comic is much more fun than Global Frequency, yet you can see a lot of the same style and plotting between GF and Planetary. I'd forgotten how much Planetary riffs on DC and Marvel. Like I remembered the evil Fantastic Four and the stories about Hulk and Superman. But there's so much more if you know the references and stories. I'm kind of surprised Ellis didn't get sued for some of the use of the DC/Marvel heroes.

I still love the Sherlock Holmes and Dracula encounter. Can't wait until I get to the Galactus story.

I never read the final issue(s?), so I'm curious how it concludes. There's so much potential in the told and untold stories of this universe, that I wish this was a 20 book scifi book series.

The references are styled as tributes or homages or parodies, which gets him far enough that his then fame got him the rest of the way. If Grant Morrison was prepared to let it pass, no one else could say much more that 'ha ha'. It ends well. I think that the entire concept went as far as it could without devolving into something less than it was. Delay for the final issues aside, it reads really well as a complete work.