Weekly Comic Book Discussion 7/27

[Selkie]

Thor: Vikings 1 - 5. Boyohboyohboy, did I need this comic. Is it a great miniseries? Not by a longshot. It is, however, exactly what I needed right now, so any strange plotting decisions are easily brushed aside in favor of lingering over Glen Fabry’s renditions of hacked up corpses and zombie Vikings in a flying longship. Mmm… gooey goodness …

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. If the tale of a sulky alienated teenager trying to find her way in an alien land (including her own homeland) is slightly less enthralling than the story of a little girl adapting to bewildering and dangerous changes of life during the Iranian cultural revolution, that’s just because the former was so outstanding. Both volumes remain highly recommended reading.

I decided I hadn’t had quite enough of Marjane Satrapi’s work, so I followed Persepolis with Embroideries. Imagine one of the breakfast scenes in Sex and the City reset to feature a group of real Persian women discussing sex, love, and men over tea. It’s on the lightweight side, but good fun nevertheless.

I’m also most of the way through the first four issues of Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier, which is surprisingly enjoyable for even someone like me with relatively little grounding in the DCU. As always, Cooke’s artwork is a treat.

There’s a lot to like about the Deadshot: Urban Renewal miniseries, but wish there’d been a few more issues to flesh out some of the character developments, which felt a little too rushed to be believable.

[Menocchio]

@WonK

[ I hope the Maximum’s survive the arc. I’d like to see them go against the Authority or the WildCATs sometime.

Um… Why not just send the Ultimates? Or the Avengers, even. It’s the same bloody team. I like pastiche characters when they are there for a joke or to make a point, but I’m not a fan of using copies while someone else has their hands on the originals. This story remains close enough to “Joke” that I’m still enjoying it, but once it ends, I hope to never see the Maximums again.

[Cliffy]

Gosh, Fenris, if those Inf-Crisis rumors are true, that sounds extraordinarily lame.

–Cliffy

[WonK]

@Wolfian

I’m on a tight budget lately so last week’s Birds of Prey and this week’s Legion and Outsiders will have to wait. Actually, I’m not hot on the topic of Outsiders, plus Winnick isn’t writing it. I might just skip it all together.

If you’ve been following Birds of Prey closely I wouldn’t skip last weeks issue. One of Simone’s virtues as a writer is the way ‘compresses’ a lot of incident in every issue of this title, with the upshot that missing one would leave a reader terribly confused when they picked up the next issue following.

@Selkie

Thor: Vikings 1 - 5. Boyohboyohboy, did I need this comic. Is it a great miniseries? Not by a longshot. It is, however, exactly what I needed right now, so any strange plotting decisions are easily brushed aside in favor of lingering over Glen Fabry’s renditions of hacked up corpses and zombie Vikings in a flying longship. Mmm… gooey goodness …

If you liked that, I strongly suggest trying the recent Loki miniseries, a short sweet dramatic tale from Lok’s P.o.V. beautifully illustrated by Esad Ribic’s fully painted pages.

I’m also most of the way through the first four issues of Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier, which is surprisingly enjoyable for even someone like me with relatively little grounding in the DCU. As always, Cooke’s artwork is a treat.

I was a bit disastisfied with the ending of that story, I must say… but if youare enjoying it, I suggest looking up the most recent issue of DC’s Solo, an anthology of Cooke’s short stories. It was, without question, the best issue of Solo to date.

There’s a lot to like about the Deadshot: Urban Renewal miniseries, but wish there’d been a few more issues to flesh out some of the character developments, which felt a little too rushed to be believable.

I agree. I wish the art had been a bit better too.

[WonK]

@Menocchio

Um… Why not just send the Ultimates? Or the Avengers, even. It’s the same bloody team. I like pastiche characters when they are there for a joke or to make a point, but I’m not a fan of using copies while someone else has their hands on the originals. This story remains close enough to “Joke” that I’m still enjoying it, but once it ends, I hope to never see the Maximums again.

Personally I don’t mind the use of clones, analogues or pastiche characters, so long as the resulting story holds my interest. Do you like Supreme Power? That’s been an intriguing (if a bit slow moving at points) take on the big guns of the JLA, reimagined for darker sensibilities. If you haven’t already, take a look. It’s pretty dramatic, and generally doesn’t insult the readers intelligence.

[Menocchio]

Well, at least Rucka has apologized:

“I want to say, before anything else that we tried very hard to build OMAC so that you weren’t obligated to buy anything else, and we failed,” Rucka said. “We really did. I’ll cop to it – I won’t lie about it. And we did it by playing dirty pool too – if you were buying The OMAC Project, you really need the Superman and Wonder Woman books to know what’s happening in issue #4 of the miniseries. If you don’t read them, it’s possible to understand them, but you don’t get the emotional resonance. That was a little bit of dirty pool, but we didn’t plan it out that way – we weren’t looking to spring this on people, but that’s the way it happened, and again, we’re sorry. So instead of a six issue miniseries, you get a ten issue miniseries, and I won’t fault any reader for not picking it up. I’d still suggest them though, because they’re a good story and worth reading, but I’d suggest, if nothing else, you pick up Wonder Woman #219 at the very least – call it issue OMAC #3.5 if you must, because it sets up the events of OMAC #4.”

[ouryL]

@Fenris

[spoiler]
I thought that in a later issue of Impulse, Melonie had super-speed which, IIRC she got through the Thwane connection.

Can’t be Iris: the only time she was in the future as an adult was after she became Mrs. Flash. She would have known who Boomerang was.

Dawn and XS shoulda known (via Iris) who Boomer was as well. But Meloni, pre meeting Don, wouldn’t have had any idea. Plus, a quickie affair with Boomer would be right in character for her. She’s a vaguely shallow airhead after all.

I’m wondering if Geoff messed up? Could he have thought that Bart’s mom was Dawn? But even then: given that Cold doesn’t have any special hatred for Barry (he’s got an “It’s a job” attitude, IMO) so why the hate, even if we go with the Dawn Allen thing and Boomer Jr. is Barry’s grandkid? On the other hand, Boomer’s never been the sharpest knife in the drawer and being a zombie can’t help that…maybe Zombie-Boomer just assumed that Cold would hate Boomer Jr if he was related to Flash, while Cold would just be amused by the irony[/spoiler]

Iris was born in the future. She was teleported into the past to save her life as a baby.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Fenris

Dammit, all that typing and I missed pasting in a paragraph. This continues the rumored spoilers for INFINITE CRISIS and beyond.

Anyway, the big reboot would (allegedly) bring back the multiverse (which explains the Earth-3 (ok, Earth-1) villains reappearing, all the weirdness in Superman/Batman, the Legion reboot, etc. Per the rumor, the current post-Crisis, post Zero-Hour would remain, but either an “Ultimate” line would be started afresh or the books would all focus on a new, fresh universe while leaving the post-Crisis, post-ZH universe around for cross-over purposes.

[spoiler]Bringing back the multiverse could be good, as could bringing in a secondary continuity and line - depending how it’s handled. Consigning the current continuity to ‘Pre-Crisis Earth-2’ status seems like a very bad idea. I wouldn’t like it - although I admit it wouldn’t mean DC lost me as a reader - I’ve stuck with Legion through 2 reboots, and my adjustment time going from pre-Crisis (60s and 70s) to post-Crisis (90s) books was pretty quick - but I wouldn’t be happy with the loss of the characters/history I’ve become invested in. Again. And I know there are a lot of people who would stop reading if they did that - and I’m sure DC knows it, too. The way DC’s big guns are talking about the post-InfCris DCU doesn’t seem to suggest that, though, so…

One good thing that could come of the creation of a secondary continuity line - LoSH could be shunted over to the new continuity, and the post-ZH Legion could be brought back into continuity. (As much as I love LoSH, I MISS the post-ZH version.)[/spoiler]

The other speculation matches what they’ve been saying, and could really work, too.

OK, thoughts on my reading this week…

OMAC 4:

I’ll be the dissenting voice - I think this is the best issue of OMAC yet. Things are heating up, everything’s falling into place, and the depths of Max’s plotting are clear. I do wish that Sacrifice hadn’t been quite so essential to reading it, since I don’t read the Superman titles or Wonder Woman normally, though. (I liked Sacrifice, on the other hand…is it a good indicator how those titles are normally written?)

Outsiders 26:

Well…a nice cool down after last issue. Shift’s recovered awful fast from the events of 25, though. I don’t know that I get what Jeff and Rex did that they don’t want Batman knowing about, either, but I’ll wait until more is revealed before assuming I really missed something.

LoSH 8:

Good issue. The Legion’s in pretty shabby shape and getting shabbier by the issue. Brainy is a prick - but since he’s Coluan (and a Dox), that mostly goes without saying. I feel sorry for poor Cos, with his 9002 pins to juggle. I notice, though…Element Lad’s powers seem to have been limited compared to previous versions (I assume this version of Trom wasn’t destroyed, since the motives for the destruction of Trom in the previous continuities wouldn’t hold), while Cos’s were cranked up. Colossal Boy’s were reversed, the nature of Triplicate Girl’s changed almost entirely. I’m having a bit of a hard time reconciling the 3 versions of the Legion building out of the same 20th/21st century. Which is another reason to hope for the comment I made on it in the response to the speculation Fenris posted…

Flash 224:

I haven’t been keeping up with Flash, but I want to try to get back into it. Was a pretty good issue… And that does look like Ms Thawne-Allen, doesn’t it? Not sure that really means she’s Owen’s mum, though.

[Fenris]

@ouryL

Iris was born in the future. She was teleported into the past to save her life as a baby.

I know–Flash (vol 1) #203 was one of the first back-issues I ever bought (great cover!) That’s why I used the phrase “the only time she was in the future as an adult”

Tengu
I’m eh on the Post-Zero LSH. I want the pre-“Five Years Later” Legion back, dammit. (Yeah, I know. Not a hope in hell. But still)

[Scott_Plaid]

In the new Megoville feature in Toy Fair magazine, they review the new Avengers. That joke with [del]Marvelman/Miracleman[/del] Sentry cracks me up.

Kimota!

[Kamino_Neko]

I’m currently rereading the old Legion books - I’m up to the February 1975 issue of Superboy - and they hold up really well, for the most part (in fact, I’m enjoying most of them better than I did when I was reading them as a kid) - particularly Shooter and Bates’s stories.

But of the 3 versions, I like the post-ZH best. Two of my favourite characters - Kinetix and XS - were created for the post ZH version (and several other characters - like Mano - were reimagined in ways I really liked), and when they were retelling the old stories, it always felt like they had a better idea of where they fit into the overall tapestry they were building then when the stories were originally told. Not that there weren’t glitches, of course - IK talking about knowing of the Fatal Five from when he was working with Earthgov, when Mano didn’t appear until after IK was drafted into the Legion, is the example that comes to mind immediately. But everything did fit together much more easily.

And they didn’t play Musical Costumes near as much. shudder