I can’t wait till I pick up Livewires. Real big Adam Warren fan here.
Anyone else finish Astonishing X-Men #8 and think “Huh, I think I saw a few Star Trek: TNG episodes that had this plot”? Ah well, I’m sure Joss has something sneaky up his sleeve. Real short wait til #9 comes out too, I think it’s just a week or so. Looking forward to it.
I’m getting very sick of something that the various comics newsgroups have called “Decompressing”…it’s taking a story (Teen Titans, say) that should be, ohhh…3 issues maybe? and bloating it up to 6 or 8 issues 'cause it makes a better trade paperback that way. C’mon they introduced Dr. Light last issue and they won’t even have their first face-to-face until next issue? This is bloat and I’m getting sick of it, even though I love Jones and am excited by his fixing Dr. Light.
Remember the brilliant pacing that Stan Lee used to do in the '60s? I don’t think a single arc of Spider-Man or FF lasted more than 3 issues—but subplots would thread through, new stories would begin in the background while current stories were finishing, etc. You didn’t have this endless feel of slowly dragging stories that just go on forever.
I’d love DC or Marvel to say "Th’ hell with this–for the next year, every goddamned book will have 10 self-contained stories and 2 two-parters at most. " (Heh, if nothing else, it would make Chris “Whaddaya mean, ‘resolve’ a story?” Claremont’s head explode. :D)
Grant Morrison has been talking about that, and is doing some Superman 12 issue series trying to recapture some of the sensawonda and imagination that Supes used to have in the Weisinger days–and he’s only having one 2 parter in the 12 issue run. The rest are self contained and some will have 2 or 3 stories in a given issue! Good for him!
I agree totally with your general point (I complained about it myself just last week with JLA’s stretched-out CSA story), but I think Teen Titans is a poor example. Light was introduced last issue, true, but the story was about Robin and Luthor’s armor. This is the first issue dedicated to Light, and it’s a three issue run. This issue had plenty of meat just introducing Mia, and I enhoyed the build-up for the big fight.
Johns is better than average, I think, in having good single issue and small arcs in his comics while keeping larger storylines and development. Flash has had several noteworthy one and two shot stories in recent months.
Anyone get *Promethia * with the crazy poster thing? I bought two so I could take one apart.
I somehow missed both *Runaways * and ASM, although I think I’m dumping those for good. *Runaways * was a lot of fun, but that story was the story. Keeping the kids around is just going to be another boring “fish out of water” superhero story.
As for ASM, I’m not digging it.
I’m with you on the bloat thing, Fenris.
For the worst example of this, see Rucka’s Wonder Woman. The man has been writing the book for almost a year and almost absolutely nothing has happened. In this time, Wonder Woman has stopped, what, two villains (one of whom it took about 6 months to intruduce and two issues to kill off) and let a forest fire burn? Yeesh.
That’s the main reason why I’ve decided to mostly call it quits on buying single issues. What’s the point? If I want to read an entire story, I have to buy as many issues as would fill up a trade anyway.
I picked up GL: Rebirth the other day. It’s ok. I’m not as enamoured with it as I was in the beginning.
I don’t think Kyle’s going to die:
The May solicits for DC show him on the cover of the first issue of the Rann/Thanagar War thing.
Have I ever seen a Grant Morrison short story? Come to think of it, he may have done some stuff for 2000 AD back in the day.
Do you know if there will be a rotating art team or if Frank Quitely will be the only artist? I’m only looking forward to this because Morrison and Quitely’s frission together is phenomenal… and assessment I base on having read WE3 and JLA: Earth 2 and been blown away each time. With other artists, Morrison becomes far less interesting.
I’m dubious about Quietly. I love his stuff, but it’s too…realistic for the sort of story that Morrison’s telling. I’d love Ty Templeton to do it, but fat chance, dammit.
Morrison said that he was inspired by reading Superman…um…120? (Cover shows “SUPERMAN’S NEW POWER!” and Supes is shooting a rainbow beam out of his fingers.) Turns out that his new power is to create a tiny duplicate of himself that’s more powerful than he is. And everyone in Metropolis starts giving their love, praise and admiration to the mini-Supes. The real Supes gets all psychologically warped by this. Morrison said (paraphrased) “So, the little mini-Superman causes the Big Superman to have an inferiority complex…and you thought that THE INVISIBLES was weird?!” I can’t think of another book I’m anticipating as much.
Here’s an article on it: http://www.newsarama.com/DC/AS/AllStarSuperman_Morrison.htm
Regarding Rucka’s Wonder Woman, the biggest problem (outside of the bloat) is the “My politics are more important than the character” Denny O’Neil-esque bit that crept in. Um, Greg? Her name is “Diana”…she’s named after “Diana”, Goddess of hunting. As such. She’s an Amazon. Ergo, she is not a vegetarian. Really dude. That would be like having Batman become a member of the N.R.A.
Rucka wrote the best (non-animated) Batman of the last 25 years (since Moench was on the book in the early '80s) but his Wonder Woman just isn’t clicking with me.
From a talk that Kyle Baker, Paul Levitz and Frank Miller gave, there’s absolutely no intention of doing anything remotely resembling this. Apparently they see their biggest competitor as Manga, which is essentially trades, at least how we get them here in the US. The answer to those thick portable books are to have your own - trades. They also figured out that Watchmen and DKR sell so well for essentially no extra cost that everything will sell like that and eventually, you’ll be making a tremendous amount of cash from nothing.
The way it seems to me is that they use people who are used to/like the monthlies to buy those, get the ad numbers, pay the crew, pay for the printing of the issue *and * the trades and just assume that the trades will take care of the profit in the future.
Who will buy the trades? The people who didn’t pick up the issues because they were a) worthless reads in and of themselves and b) heard from people who consider themselves elitists/true fans because they bought the issues and then told everyone how good it was.
That, of couse, was the subtext. I wanted to call them on this but I would have gotten the beatdown by about 100 fat smelly fuckers who wet themselves every time Miller mentioned DKR.
Some general comments on some of this past week’s fare …
-
sighs I loved the half-page ads in DC Comics for the Wonder Woman season 2 DVDs, specifically just to see Lynda Carter in costume.
-
My local comics shop had a “buy two, get one free of equal of lesser value” sale on DC tpbs last week. The sale included the hardcover Archives editions, so I got some Superman and Shazam volumes.
Peter Bagge’s Apocolypse Nerd #1 – I didn’t know Bagge had anything going and here’s this b/w from Dark Horse. Without revealing too much, a guy and his pal are led to believe their hometown (Seattle) has been nuked while they were on a woodsy getaway & now must rough it in the wildnerness. There’s also some non-related colonial gag stuff [?] in the back. Bagge’s “Hate” and “Sweatshop” was a bit more to my liking, but Bagge nails the slacker-type character, so I’ll settle for this to get my Bagge fix.
Catwoman: When in Rome #4 – As this is progressing, I’m becoming more convinced that this is Tim Sale’s best artwork IMO. The last page has a WTF “shocker.”
The last page of Catwoman #40 sorta had a WTF moment for me too. One issue after we had Bats going to Selina’s place and leaving the next morning as Bruce, it looks like Slam hasn’t entirely left the picture.
Manhunter #7 – Some interesting moments as JLA’ers are giving testimony in the Shadow Thief trial. I’m liking Saiz more and more as an artist now. His pencils look understated, but convey so much – if that makes sense.
JLA Classified #4 – I was very creeped out seeing Sue Dibney running around in this light-hearted “bwah hah hah” joke stuff when IC is still kinda fresh on my mind. After adjusting my eyes for Lappan’s lettering, I got into it. No other book in recent memory had SO many different facial expressions. Nice to see Maguire working with familiar characters. I’m kinda getting rubbed the wrong way seeing Mary Marvel so milquetoasty though.
Birds of Prey #79 – Nice to see Rose/Thorn back not too long after the recent mini-series and with Gail Simone writing her (natch). Uh, was it just me did Benes do a lot of ass shots of the heroines this issue in particular?
Gotta lotta other stuff, that’s all I can comment on though.
Very cool. I just picked up a couple copies the other day - good book. If you get a chance, could you flip through them to see which issues Darwyn Cooke worked on? I’m trying to collect his work.
Off the top of my head, Cooke filled in on X-Force (predating X-Statix) #124, which is one of the better single issues. The run of X-Force #116-129 (collected in one pretty hardcover or two separate TPBs) was much better than anything that came out later in X-Statix. Then Cooke also drew Wolverine/Doop #1-2, but I can’t think of anything else he did X-Statix-related. He did do two issues of Spider-Man’s Tangled Web (with J. Bone), but I don’t know the issue numbers.
Yeah, in the last week I’ve picked up:
Wolverine/Doop #1 - can’t find #2
Spider-Man’s Tangled Web #11
X-Force #124 (Edie visits her daughter)
X-Statix #1
Catwoman #1-4
Did he do the entire X-Force 116-129 run?
No, that was Mike Allred, although Cooke did the #124 you found, and I think Chris Bachalo did #129. But Allred inked Cooke’s pencils on Catwoman #1-4, and you’d probably like his style just as much if you enjoy Cooke. Plus, they are really good friends. Now I have to assume you’ve already read Cooke’s brilliant New Frontier miniseries, or his Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score graphic novel?
New Frontier is what got me into him, and I haven’t found an affordable Selina’s Big Score on eBay yet. I’m sure they’ll come around. I did get Batman: Ego, and even the Julius Schwartz tribute Superman issue he did. I think he also did a book called “Bad Girls”, but that rarely pops up.
Bad Girls was a pretty good comic, even with the rushed ending. Showed real potential for a continuing storyline. More Marvel than DC, if you ask me, though.
PS238 #10 this week. Not the best issue ever, but still pretty funny. Fun with Silly Putty!