Weekly Comic Book Discussion 3/9/2006

I still like Morrison. Yes, some of his stuff is near incomprehensible at times, especially if it’s his created work.

I never understood the fandom behind Claremont. The dude was a hack even with God Loves, Man Kills. There, I’ve said it!

Since I never read any annuals (they rarely show up in Borders), can someone spoil the Teen Titans spoiler for me? This is in a One Year Later book, right?

Nope. Last one before the jump. I think the first OYL issue comes out next week, but I could be mistaken.

[spoiler] Kon, in internal monologue says that he and Cassie have “made love”. Which, come to think of it, is weird in and of itself. Teenage boys don’t use that expression, not in their own thoughts.

Also, Cassie’s powers have faded away, but if you read the Robin tie-in, you knew that. [/spoiler]

The rest of the haul this week :

Captain Atom : Armageddon #6; Tomorrow Stories Special #2 (of 2); Invincible #29; Powers #17; Fables #47; Bomb Queen #2.

Oh for heaven’s sake, mate. When you see this, you can bitch about it. You’ve not seen it yet, nor anything else like it I don’t think, so chill.

Given that Morrison is the only person at DC who’se made much of any effort to maintain Kirby’s legacy in the last decade, I think your position doesn’t hold water.

–Cliffy

Ultimate Spider-Man 91 - First USM I’ve read since either the first Venom arc or Hollywood, which ever came second…I got behind and wanted to catch up, but I gave up, and restarted with this story. Peter and Kitty are adorable. ‘Bonus for me.’

And…the Ringer…oh my god, the Ringer. Peter summed it up, well: ‘So he’s not from Matyland? I’m so confused.’ Gotta admit, though, girl’s got a point.

7S: Frankenstein 3 - Killer. Cows. For the win. (Also, the Bride as Kali? Sweet.)

Transformers: Infiltration 3 - I know a lot of G1 fans hate this series with a passion usually reserved for Beast Machines or Armada. But I love it. Often for the same reasons other people hate it - the fact that in issue 0, we only got brief looks at Ratchet, Runabout and Runamuck, and have been meeting new Transformers slowishly since. It fits with the secret infiltration premise of the series. It also looks like the cast is being kept smallish, which I like.

I also noticed this time something that I hadn’t before - the Transformers are redesigned somewhat, mostly their bot forms. Some of them - Ratchet, Ironhide - less than others - Bumblebee, Starscream. Bumblebee is still recognisable, sure, but the redesigns are major and obvious. His passenger cabin is on his back, for instance. I think his feet are his engine area, and his trunk is his chest and headlights on his shoulders. Though it might be the other way around without seeing him transform. And, given that his holoform is female, I’m not 100% I should be referring to him as ‘he’. Starscream (and likely the other jets, although (and, once again I’m glad of this) we don’t see their bot forms) keep the basic theme of the design, but the details are changed - in fact, there are a lot more details to begin with.

Retro Rocket 1 - Interesting story. BEAUTIFUL art, particularly Retro’s design. Retro and the piloted mechs are great echos of the general design themes of their respective genres in anime. Retro’s reaction to Sparky were brilliant.

I’ve seen what Grant writes when unsupervised.

Explain. Other folks have been writing on Kirby characters, so you don’t mean Orion and Barda’s token membership in the Justice League, surely. Darkseid pops up lots of places, too.

Writing a scene with Kirby characters isn’t a patch on what Morrison’s done in, say, Guardian, JLA, or Vinamarama which all channel the energy and Mad Ideasness of Kirby’s solo work in a way I haven’t seen since 1978.

As for this:

First, I doubt it. Second, I’ve read rather a lot of the man’s work and there’s nothing like what you describe in there. More importantly, to the extent you approach an accurate statement of Morrison’s work, there’s been nothing like that in his work with most established DCU characters, and certainly not the big guns. Hell, if Morrison were the Second Coming there’s no way DC would let him do transvestite Superman even if he wanted to.

Look, obviously I think Morrison is god’s gift to comic books, and you don’t. So be it. As I’ve said before, your solution is to stop buying his work, not to sling ill-informed bullshit that does no one any good.

–Cliffy

To be fair, it’s GENIS we’re talking about here. The superhero least likely to stay dead, and that’s saying something. He committed suicide and came back. Atlas squashed him and he came back. After a nuclear holocaust, there will be cockroaches, Cher, and Genis-Vell.

Unlike you, I’m LOVING the rebooted Thunderbolts series. The scene where Radioactive Man has to hail a cab is classic. Nicieza is one of my favorite writers, and he keeps setting up neat little plot twists. He manages to balance the good old-fashioned superheroics with plenty of moral ambiguity. The issue with Blizzard and Speed Demon captured the mix of motives perfectly – Blizzard is the not terribly talented kid trying to do right, Speed Demon is the kinda guy who robs banks at night to pay for being a superhero during the day. “Think of me as one of those ‘conflicted heroes’.” Hah, I love Speed Demon and Blizzard.

Zemo pimping out Andreas von Strucker to the Purple Man is a new level of wrong.

SONGBIRD and ZEMO?! What the crack?!

If the cover to #101 is any indication, Zemo no longer has those prejudices against Jews!

Zombie thread!

I was loving the new Thunderbolts too, until they killed Genis. So, not Unlike me.

I’m just sick and tired of the line of thought “Let’s ratchet things up a notch and kill somebody!”

Hey now, you were the one who suggested we come and chat in my recent thread about Catwoman’s new baby. So you have no one to blame but yourself.

Like I said, you can’t seriously expect Genis to stay dead. With Marvel’s new Annihilation crossover coming up, with all it’s cosmics, he’ll probably pop back better than ever. You can’t keep a well-meaning-but-mentally-unstable-phenomenally-powerful-genetically-engineered-Kree/Titan-hybrid down.

Is there any interest in a seperate Thunderbolts thread?

Well, yeah, but we change threads every week. :wink:

I think Joe Quesada answered this possibility, with regard to Annihilation, in the negative. Over on Newsarama.

Dunno, Doesn’t seem like many other folks besides you and me are reading it.