[RodeoRanch]

That bad, huh? I've never read any Ultimate stuff before.

[polishgenius]

RodeoRanch, on 07 March 2010 - 09:38 PM, said:

Amazon.com was having some ridiculous sales today due to a pricing glitch. Picked up Marvel's "The Ultimates Omnibus" for 9 bucks. A 65 dollar book for 9 bucks. Hells yes.

Dunno how it goes with the volume and the 'processing' thing and that, but Play.com have made similar mistakes in the past (a hundred quid Bond boxset for a fiver for example) and I've never heard of them letting it go. And Amazon have a more ruthless reputation than Play do.

We'll see, I suppose... good luck to ya.

[RodeoRanch]

Fingers crossed!

[Illuyankas]

RodeoRanch, on 07 March 2010 - 09:50 PM, said:

That bad, huh? I've never read any Ultimate stuff before.

Ultimates 1 and 2 are excellent. 3 is appalling. Ultimatum is an abortion.

[stone monkey]

Ultimates 3 is just plain wrong, avoid it like the plague. Jeph Loeb should not have been let near any of those characters. He's back writing them too, the first issue of The New Ultimates came out last week (it's truly awful btw especially in comparison to Millar's Ultimate Avengers, the latest issue of which also came out last week and which uses some of the same characters...); which just goes to show that Marvel really don't know what's good for them...

Planetary is simply a work of gorgeous genius. Some of those issues are among the best comics ever made imo (the introduction of The Four in issue #6, for instance...) And it's finally finished now; I saw the final collection in my local comic shop over the weekend, so if you like it, and you should, you can get the whole story... And if you enjoy that, you should have a look at what Ellis did with Stormwatch and The Authority

[RodeoRanch]

So no surprise. Amazon ran out of stock and couldn't fill my order. They did, however, give me a $25 gift certificate instead. So I tried to sneak a deal through a glitch and they give me 25 bucks for it. Nice.

Now I need suggestions of what comic(s) I should spend said 25 bucks on.

Suggestions?

Stone monkey, I'm looking at you!

[wolf_2099]

RodeoRanch, on 11 March 2010 - 01:24 AM, said:

So no surprise. Amazon ran out of stock and couldn't fill my order. They did, however, give me a $25 gift certificate instead. So I tried to sneak a deal through a glitch and they give me 25 bucks for it. Nice.

Now I need suggestions of what comic(s) I should spend said 25 bucks on.

Suggestions?

Stone monkey, I'm looking at you!

What have you read and enjoyed so far?

[stone monkey]

RodeoRanch, on 11 March 2010 - 01:24 AM, said:

Now I need suggestions of what comic(s) I should spend said 25 bucks on.

Suggestions?

Stone monkey, I'm looking at you!

Aw jeez, no pressure then...

Okay then, for big stoopid superhero stuff read Grant Morrison's JLA run. It's totally epic stuff.
For a really interesting, clever and truly grim read try Alan Moore's From Hell; imo it's probably the single best graphic novel ever published by quite a long way.

There's also the usual suspects Sandman, Preacher, Hellblazer etc.

You might also want to look at some of Frank Miller's work The Dark Knight Returns is a classic, and also Batman: Year One. His work on Daredevil, particularly Born Again and the later The Man Without Fear, was also very good, as were the Elektra stories that spin off from it; I'd recommend Elektra: Assassin for the amazing Bill Sienkewicz artwork

The new run of The Invincible Iron Man is really cool, especially if you liked the movie. Warren Ellis' Iron Man: Extremis kind of led into this reinvention and Adi Granov's artwork is truly spectacular.

Is that enough for you?

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 14 March 2010 - 10:01 PM

[polishgenius]

So. I finally got Planetary volume 4. Didn't bother to wait for the paperback.


Well, you can tell it was meant to be a lot longer, what with the

Spoiler

rush job on the flower when compared to the long building of the snowflake, he obviously intended more time for that, and the fact that you never see Dowling work his powers

but all in all, I'm wholly satisfied by that.

[Aptorian]

Nice article looking at the Joker and comparing the Dark Knights Joker (starring Heath Ledger) with the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series (voiced by Mark Hamill).

http://littlebobeep....h-ledger-joker/

[wolf_2099]

stone monkey, on 14 March 2010 - 09:53 PM, said:

RodeoRanch, on 11 March 2010 - 01:24 AM, said:

Now I need suggestions of what comic(s) I should spend said 25 bucks on.

Suggestions?

Stone monkey, I'm looking at you!

Aw jeez, no pressure then...

Okay then, for big stoopid superhero stuff read Grant Morrison's JLA run. It's totally epic stuff.
For a really interesting, clever and truly grim read try Alan Moore's From Hell; imo it's probably the single best graphic novel ever published by quite a long way.

There's also the usual suspects Sandman, Preacher, Hellblazer etc.

You might also want to look at some of Frank Miller's work The Dark Knight Returns is a classic, and also Batman: Year One. His work on Daredevil, particularly Born Again and the later The Man Without Fear, was also very good, as were the Elektra stories that spin off from it; I'd recommend Elektra: Assassin for the amazing Bill Sienkewicz artwork

The new run of The Invincible Iron Man is really cool, especially if you liked the movie. Warren Ellis' Iron Man: Extremis kind of led into this reinvention and Adi Granov's artwork is truly spectacular.

Is that enough for you?

The new Invincible Iron is good, but I feel like you need quite a bit of current background Marvel info for it to be enjoyable.

I'll second Dark Knights Returns and Year One, and then Born Again. I did not think the Man Without Fear was very good, though.

Jeph Leobs Batman: Long Halloween, Batman: Dark Victory are both excellent Batman noir stories



The first volumes of the Ultimate lines, Ultimate X-Men, Spider-Man, and Ultimates and awesome, but all fell to shit as the series ended, but they all have at least 4-6 good traes.


Irredeemable and Incorruptible and 2 very good current series done by Boom! studios written by Mark Waid about a super hero of Superman porportions going evil, and then his arch villain going good to try and balance the scales.

[Abyss]

Been on a bit of a borrow/library supplied DC binge lately... this is astounding: IDENTITY CRISIS - brilliant. INFINITE CRISIS - decent enough. FINAL CRISIS - wow that was bad.
Seriously, the negative quality turn those massive crossovers took was just painful.

Illuyankas, on 07 March 2010 - 09:56 PM, said:

Ultimates 1 and 2 are excellent. 3 is appalling. Ultimatum is an abortion.

stone monkey, on 08 March 2010 - 06:45 PM, said:

Ultimates 3 is just plain wrong, avoid it like the plague.

Agreed. 1 and 2 and pure comic book big boom goodness. Mad crazy at its best. Things 'splode, dudes get their faces kicked off.
3 never happened.

Quote

... And if you enjoy that, you should have a look at what Ellis did with Stormwatch and The Authority

Ellis' AUTHORITY 12 issue run rewrote the book on how comics work.

RodeoRanch, on 11 March 2010 - 01:24 AM, said:

So no surprise. Amazon ran out of stock and couldn't fill my order. They did, however, give me a $25 gift certificate instead. So I tried to sneak a deal through a glitch and they give me 25 bucks for it. Nice.

Now I need suggestions of what comic(s) I should spend said 25 bucks on.

Suggestions?
...

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD - it's a talking animal story that will make and break your heart.
WE3 - it's a cybernetic talking animal story that will rip your heart out and crush it before your still functioning eyes.
SANDMAN (tho start w book 2 then go back and get 1) - there is a reason Gaiman got so much praise for this series. Also, it features talking animals.
WOLVERINE: ENEMY OF THE STATE - does not feature talking animals but Wolverine kills people a lot.
WOLVERINE: THE GEHENNA STONE AFFAIR- "My name is Wolverine. And I'm heading towards the palace of the prince of Madripoor to warn him about the danger of the deadly Gehenna Stone... when suddenly, I'm jumped by ravenous pseudo-vampires. I hate when that happens." One of my fave Wolverine stories. The tpb is a little hard to find but if you can, totally worthwhile. Possibly the closest the world will ever come to a Wolverine/Indiana Jones team up.



- Abyss, has the first two HATTER M tpbs sitting in the TRP - haven't opened them yet but they looked promising.

[Illuyankas]

I wouldn't call Identity Crisis brilliant, so much as I'd call it bad.

Spoiler

I mean, the twist ending is retarded and so far out of character I was expecting to read the killer speaking whole parts from Shakespeare; being a part of the ongoing character assassination of Tim Drake wasn't helpful at all, as one of the characters that were in well-liked and comedic series like Young Justice and JLI, he, along with the Dibneys, Blue Beetle, Maxwell Lord etc have been screwed over and completely shafted by editorial for daring to be SHOCK HORROR funny; speaking of the Dibneys, RAPE AS A PLOT DEVICE/METHOD TO MAKE 'DEEP' CHARACTERS IS BAD. STOP DOING IT; however making Doctor Light into a credible villain (sexual assault aside) was interesting right up until every single writer decided his only personality trait was as Doctor Rape; and the Deathstroke fight. Oh, the Deathstroke fight.

Imagine the Flash for a moment. Imagine a character who can move and react multiple times the speed of light. A character who can outrun instantaneous teleportation. A character who can travel through solid objects and either leave them unharmed or make them explode afterwards. A character who, while standing still in 'speaking to normal people' mode, has felt a sniper's bullet touch his neck, and been able to get out of the way before the bullet could do more than impact a nerve.

Now imagine this character running directly at a villain, taking enough time that the villain can move his fingers and activate explosives set into the ground everywhere around him except behind him, diverting around the explosives and taking enough time for the bad guy to hold a sword pointfirst behind him, and then running onto that sword. It's fucking stupid, that's what it is. Sure, the Flash is overpowered and has to be written as if he didn't know what he could do, but being written as if he had a stroke is not good writing.

But what about Green Lantern? You know, the guy who has a Power Ring, making constructs out of green energy with a thought? The one who can make himself intangible, fly faster than the speed of light, or cover himself in a protective force field at will? The one who can canonically keep up with, fight and kill Superman? That guy? He flies in (at normal speed, mind you) and attempts to punch the bad guy. No force field, no construct. Just bare fist to ridiculous close combat dude. Cause, you know, hand to hand with someone who beats up Batman casually is easy, no need to use your magic ring at all.

I don't have high standards when it comes to superhero comic logic, all I want is a little internal consistancy to go with the bright flashing colours and explosions, you know, Character A can do Ability B in Situation C, so could do Ability B in Situation D. BUT THIS WENT TOO FAR AND TOO DUMB

Still, it's better than Cry for Justice.

[Abyss]

Illuyankas, on 04 April 2010 - 03:04 PM, said:

I wouldn't call Identity Crisis brilliant, so much as I'd call it bad.

Spoiler

...Oh, the Deathstroke fight....

I don't have high standards when it comes to superhero comic logic, all I want is a little internal consistancy to go with the bright flashing colours and explosions, ...

The notion of consistency in ongoing comics about people who have superpowers, written by multiple teams over decades, is pretty much a lost cause. Face it, there are no rules. It's all well and good that you can point at FLASH, vol. 3, issue #101, in 2003 and note that hey, Wally used the speed force to bring the entire Plutonian army to spontaneous orgasm thus giving him the opportunity to take away their sharp stabby thingies so logically he should have made an ice cream float and changed his underwear before shaving 'monkeydick' on Grodd's back in 2009... but functionally it's story first, consistency second. And the fight you refer to was a damn cool part of the story. I could as easily explain why it made sense as you could explain why it doesn't.

Re Identity Crisis generally I just enjoyed the deconstruction of the Silver Age JLA and the way the broader DC universe was used in the story. It has its (at times gaping) flaws but arguing about the flaws in a DC or Marvel comic is like arguing about how many times Jean Grey has come back from the dead. All that matters is that she shagged Wolverine each time and thus, he wins.

- Abyss, ...because it always comes back to Wolverine...

[Abyss]

And by the way.... HATTER M = beautiful art, cool story. And i haven't read the related LOOKING GLASS WARS books and don't feel any need to. I might anyways, because the concept is so well done, but the GNs stand utterly on their own and are SO pretty to look at.

[Illuyankas]

Abyss, on 06 April 2010 - 04:29 PM, said:

The notion of consistency in ongoing comics about people who have superpowers, written by multiple teams over decades, is pretty much a lost cause. Face it, there are no rules. It's all well and good that you can point at FLASH, vol. 3, issue #101, in 2003 and note that hey, Wally used the speed force to bring the entire Plutonian army to spontaneous orgasm thus giving him the opportunity to take away their sharp stabby thingies so logically he should have made an ice cream float and changed his underwear before shaving 'monkeydick' on Grodd's back in 2009... but functionally it's story first, consistency second.

Yes, but when ignoring consistency for the purpose of fucking characters in the ass comes first, this is deterimental to the comic in question. When you read a comic about superpowered people trained to work as a team, you expect them to work as a team and use their powers, not run one at a time at a weak character and use nothing but their baseline strength.

(also everyone forgets v.3 #101)

Quote

And the fight you refer to was a damn cool part of the story. I could as easily explain why it made sense as you could explain why it doesn't.

Cool = minor stroke victims now? And do so, I would like to see that.

Quote

Re Identity Crisis generally I just enjoyed the deconstruction of the Silver Age JLA and the way the broader DC universe was used in the story. It has its (at times gaping) flaws but arguing about the flaws in a DC or Marvel comic is like arguing about how many times Jean Grey has come back from the dead.

Well, since Johns is bringing the Silver Age back NO MATTER WHAT EVERYONE ELSE THINKS I guess we're due another similar story. Yay.

And I want the current Jean revival character to stay how she is, I liked the recent Cable series. Bye, Hope.

[RodeoRanch]

Just read the last issue of "Blackest Night." What a confused mess of a series. But I suppose that's true of any mega-event in the DC or Marvel universes. Mostly incomprehensible to casual fans.

[Use Of Weapons]

I would just like to say that, as a Marvel fanboy, never having read a DC comic or knowing anything about the characters' comic history apart from the few Marvel-DC crossovers, I was tempted to read Identity Crisis. And I enjoyed it immensely. It's a great story. The characters may have been shoe-horned into it, and some of the roles may be an uncomfortable fit. But it was still a great story.

[Abyss]

Illuyankas, on 06 April 2010 - 05:01 PM, said:

Abyss, on 06 April 2010 - 04:29 PM, said:

And the fight you refer to was a damn cool part of the story. I could as easily explain why it made sense as you could explain why it doesn't.

Cool = minor stroke victims now? And do so, I would like to see that.
...

Simple. A pissed off, shaken up set of Leaguers who haven't worked together as a team in years if at all (and a few of whom died and got better since then) go looking for the usually inept Dr. Light and find Deathstroke instead. So they screw up.

Or just replay the entire fight in your head (except for the absolute last bit) but pretend it was a pissed off Batman instead of Deathstroke. Suddenly it's brilliant.

- Abyss, ...notes it works even better with Wolverine...

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 28 April 2010 - 07:12 PM, said:

Simple. A pissed off, shaken up set of Leaguers who haven't worked together as a team in years if at all (and a few of whom died and got better since then) go looking for the usually inept Dr. Light and find Deathstroke instead. So they screw up.

This was how I read it and I quite like the fight overall as a piece of action writing, but no amount of explanation will convince me that the Flash thing was a good idea. He should have found a reason for Flash simply not to be there.