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Since we've all remembered that Warren Ellis really only had one good superhero satire in him, how about something a bit lighter? Like Imaginary stories. Those silly what if tales from DC back in the Silver Age. Like the one where Superman feels inadequate and splits himself into two guys and removes humanity's free will and marries both his hangers on. What the hell was with that one? And why did we feel the need to change Superman's powers in the 90's so we could eventually homage it? Anyone know any interesting ones? Good bad, written on drugs it's no matter.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:36
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Weren't a lot of the more whacked out Superman Imaginary Tales from the Silver Age a result of one of the writers undergoing psychoanalysis and just shoving poo poo that came up into the stories?
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Sep 10, 2013 16:46
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It's likely, I lent my coipy of Supergods to my brother so I can't check. At least Carmine Infantino and Gardner Fox also had a bit of a one-upmanship going where Infantino would draw a cover of e.g. Barry Allen AND Jay Garrick racing to save a man, and then chuckle as he watched Fox try to write his way out of it.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:05
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There was this amazingly ridiculous issue of What If that I think was "What if Gambit betrayed the Xmen?" Gambit leaves the Xmen to steal some box for Sinister. Rogue accidentally kills Gambit then kills Sinister. She then takes the opportunity to look in the secret box that Sinister wanted so badly and is shocked to find: COMIC BOOKS. MARVEL COMIC BOOKS. In fact, that very issue is the first one to spill out. I have no idea what the gently caress was going on in that issue.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:58
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Since this now the thread to talk about Injustice, I wasn't expecting THAT 
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Sep 10, 2013 18:07
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Mind Loving Owl posted:Since we've all remembered that Warren Ellis really only had one good superhero satire in him, how about something a bit lighter? Like Imaginary stories. Those silly what if tales from DC back in the Silver Age. Like the one where Superman feels inadequate and splits himself into two guys and removes humanity's free will and marries both his hangers on. What the hell was with that one? And why did we feel the need to change Superman's powers in the 90's so we could eventually homage it? My dad gave me a huge - huge - collection of Silver Age comics from the 60s that my grandparents inexplicably saved in their attic for all those years, and all of the Superman Imaginary stories are pure gold just for the sheer insanity and/or superdickery. Superman's Secret Family! Superman's Genius Baby (who is kind of a jerk)! Superman's Jerk Father Makes Him Fight His Jerk Brother!   
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Sep 10, 2013 19:01
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Looking at that list of What If? stories, it's kinda amazing how many of the same stories were turned into actual story lines (thematically if not directly).
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Sep 10, 2013 23:53
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Is he lying? Everything in it is basically a dead baby joke. It's just the kind of thing he wrote back then. '90s Ellis was a loving punk.
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Sep 11, 2013 02:07
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catlord posted:Looking at that list of What If? stories, it's kinda amazing how many of the same stories were turned into actual story lines (thematically if not directly). When you start to run out of ideas always look towards what ifs and steal from their! Nobody will ever know that ross was already a hulk before!
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Sep 11, 2013 02:16
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Pixeltendo posted:When you start to run out of ideas always look towards what ifs and steal from their! Or that Spiderman's clone lived, or that the Hulk became a barbarian, or that Wolverine was an agent of SHIELD (an Avenger counts, right? I actually don't read too much Marvel).
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Sep 11, 2013 02:49
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Lurdiak posted:Why didn't he reach out and tell someone to dig him out? I don't think that would have done any good. Especially because he was hella buried. It took him decades to get out of there and he had top level strength. catlord posted:Looking at that list of What If? stories, it's kinda amazing how many of the same stories were turned into actual story lines (thematically if not directly). I have an article going up at Den of Geek any day now about that. I did a list of What If stories that came true, only I made it challenging by not using anything that's spelled out in the title. Not only are the Ultimate versions of Wolverine and Punisher based on What If stories, but you get a lot of interesting prototype stories in there. That one about Xavier as Juggernaut is practically Onslaught meets House of M. There's an issue where Wolverine puts together a kill squad that includes Psylocke and Archangel to go exterminate any threats to the X-Men. The one where Storm becomes Phoenix has her take over the world in a way that's very similar to the latter half of AvX. There's a story based on the idea of Cannonball's brother having an Iron Giant relationship with a Sentinel before the Sentinel series even happened (unfortunately, I forgot about this one when writing the list). Plus What If the Avengers Fought the Kree-Skrull War Without Rick Jones is really the first gigantic company-wide crossover.  I highly recommend the issue, especially because it's kind of fascinating. It reads like a summer event, only told in a double-sized issue.
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Sep 11, 2013 03:48
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:Since this now the thread to talk about Injustice, I wasn't expecting THAT The cover gave it away. Just didn't think the issue would END on it.
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Sep 11, 2013 03:59
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That page, it looks like Doom has just stepped outside of his lab and is really admiring the sunset. "Well done, Mother Nature. This sunrise pleases Doom, and as a reward I shall not deploy my Hyper-cane machine today. Prepare tomorrow's daybreak with the same enthusiasm and the situation shall remain as is."
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Sep 11, 2013 09:59
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The Question IRL posted:"Well done, Mother Nature. This sunrise pleases Doom, and as a reward I shall not deploy my Hyper-cane machine today. Never has anyone on the Internet succeeded at imituting Doom so exultly! It took me way to long to figure what what a Hyper-came would mean. I was picturing a super-tech version of a cane an old man waves at kids on his lawn. Roark posted:Superman's Secret Family! Superman's Genius Baby (who is kind of a jerk)! Superman's Jerk Father Makes Him Fight His Jerk Brother! I'm imagining Jor-El is making the brothers fight right as the quakes start. Also don't forget the one where Lex time travels to Krypton (somehow not liquefying from the immense gravity on arrival) to try and father Kal-El. And the baby gets it from his dad. And another elseworld (Batman/Superman Generations to be precise) had a thing where Superman had a powered kid and a non super child. That ended badly, tugged at the heart strings you might say. Did this one involve gold Kryptonite as well? And since those are always fun, anyone know any fun (or anti-fun) superheroes having kids stories? Of course the really famous good one is Spider-Girl, which oddly enough Joe Quesada called the natural progression of Spider-Man's story. Yes he said that about a world where Spider-Man marries and has a daughter....
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Sep 11, 2013 16:51
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I don't know why it is hard for people to accept Ruins as the comedy - it is a spot-on parody (and the logical endgame) of the early 90s DC-Vertigo "mature reimaginings" of classic heroes, down to the terrible prose and dark, scratchy, Dave McKean-like art. The cancer thing is derived from the Stan Lee's obsession with radiation as the prime source of superpowers ("Children of the Atom", anyone?) As someone who can't stand the Norman Rockwell-ish nostalgia of Marvels, I prefer this series of violent banana slips. Ellis later reused some parts from Ruins: Kree concentration camp in Ignition City, cancerhulk and Invisible Woman that cannot see in Planetary. Nobody gets offended by Tarzan practising bestiality or drugged Lone Ranger murdering people with mercury bullets though 
fatherboxx fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 17:27
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fatherboxx posted:I don't know why it is hard for people to accept Ruins as the comedy - it is a spot-on parody (and the logical endgame) of the early 90s DC-Vertigo "mature reimaginings" of classic heroes, down to the terrible prose and dark, scratchy, Dave McKean-like art. The cancer thing is derived from the Stan Lee's obsession with radiation as the prime source of superpowers ("Children of the Atom", anyone?) As someone who can't stand the Norman Rockwell-ish nostalgia of Marvels, I prefer this series of violent banana slips. Okay the problem with Ruins is as a parody it fails. It apes its subject so perfectly it becomes indistinguishable from it, and lacks room to comment on what it's satirising. Of course not all satire has to be funny but it has to make some kind of point or draw attention to a flaw of the work it's based of. And yeah the cancer thing is obviously making fun of how radiation was used in older comics. You'd have to have never even seen anything that ever even mentioned comics to miss that. But it gets receptive, yes you should probably point out how dumb that was in a satire of comics. But for every other character in practically the same way every time? Radiation in real life can hurt you in other ways, and why were the Kree made cancer victims as well? They're aliens, they don't have much to do with radiation. Why not make fun of how they look just like humans or hell go into the real horrors that go on in any concentration camp? You would get way scarier and more interesting ideas from that than just cancer. And why do people complain less about Planetary. Well for one thing that had things like story, creativity, character and something resembling a point, yes it had dark and twisted stuff but there was substance. And its premise wasn't lol cancer and general horror, it was what happens when Wold Newton writers get really drunk.
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Sep 11, 2013 17:47
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Because it's lazy. It's not a parody of anything but a comic book version of a Dead Baby Joke.
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Sep 11, 2013 17:48
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Mind Loving Owl posted:I'm imagining Jor-El is making the brothers fight right as the quakes start. Also don't forget the one where Lex time travels to Krypton (somehow not liquefying from the immense gravity on arrival) to try and father Kal-El. And the baby gets it from his dad. And another elseworld (Batman/Superman Generations to be precise) had a thing where Superman had a powered kid and a non super child. That ended badly, tugged at the heart strings you might say. Did this one involve gold Kryptonite as well? The imaginary version is even wackier than the Generations version. Jor-El II has the standard Superman powerset, but Kal-El II has no powers. Superman takes Kal to a world where humans get superpowers due to the "cosmic radiation" of the planet's sun (an orange sun or something like that) and leaves him there. Kal has fun as the planet's Superboy, but realizes that it's Christmas and he's alone, so gets Superman to come back and pick him up. Then, for some reason, Superman and his two sons go to Kandor, where a Kryptonian scientist turned criminal has ended up after escaping the Phantom Zone - and, again, for some reason, Kal II travels back in time to Krypton to meet his grandfather and learn "super science" to help stop the criminal's "enlarging gun" and menagerie of tiny Kryptonian super monsters that he enlarges. It's the height of Silver Age insanity, and I love it. The story about Superman's brother is even more insane, and it ends with his older brother as America's Superman and Clark as Canada's Hyperman. I can't do it justice, but here's a summary.
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Sep 11, 2013 18:35
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One of things you described should have seemed really weird to me, and something did.., but it's that Superman has two sons, can't think of new names and yet doesen't name one Jonathan. Silver Age Supermen never seemed to care much about his human family did he?
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Sep 11, 2013 18:58
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Mind Loving Owl posted:One of things you described should have seemed really weird to me, and something did.., but it's that Superman has two sons, can't think of new names and yet doesen't name one Jonathan. Silver Age Supermen never seemed to care much about his human family did he? Considering that he traveled back in time to Krypton/journeyed to parallel Krypton's/met long-lost Kryptonian relatives on Kryptonian colonies every 6 months or so, you really get that impression. Also, Jonathan and Martha Kent died right after Clark's high school graduation for both the Golden and Silver Age versions of Superman. Writers used them much less than they were used post-Man of Steel/pre-New 52. Roark fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 19:12
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Mind Loving Owl posted:One of things you described should have seemed really weird to me, and something did.., but it's that Superman has two sons, can't think of new names and yet doesen't name one Jonathan. Silver Age Supermen never seemed to care much about his human family did he? You know that famous monologue from the end of Kill Bill? That's pretty accurate for Silver Age Superman. A lot of the time he was written as Superman, first and foremost and didn't really care about Clark Kent as an individual person. It probably didn't help that pre-Crisis he always had powers, unlike now where he's written as being mostly human as a child and not gaining his abilities until around puberty.
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Sep 11, 2013 20:50
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The big issue with Ruins is that, by its own admission, it's supposed to be the grim and gritty counterpoint to Marvels. Marvels is a series where Phil Sheldon loses an eye in the first book, is sucked into an anti-mutant riot in the second (which ends with a little girl possibly dying and we will never know for sure,) everyone descends into apocalyptic panic in the third then, once it's over, they go back to blaming the superheroes for everything, and the fourth ends with Phil Sheldon bearing witness to Spider-Man's greatest moment of failure. I've never understood people who insist that Marvels is all bright and shiny and happy. There are bright moments and the whole thing has gorgeous artwork, but they're counterbalanced by a lot of dark moments. (Nowhere is this clearer than in issue #2, where the dichotomy of the public's love of the Fantastic Four is contrasted explicitly with the public's fear of mutants.) Ruins is the counterpoint to a version of Marvels that doesn't actually exist.
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Sep 11, 2013 22:31
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Well, it's a joke, not point-counterpoint.
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Sep 11, 2013 22:45
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Mind Loving Owl posted:Never has anyone on the Internet succeeded at imituting Doom so exultly! It took me way to long to figure what what a Hyper-came would mean. I was picturing a super-tech version of a cane an old man waves at kids on his lawn. A Hyper-cane is like a Hurricane. Only bigger somehow. And more dangerous. Possibly, it's a hurricane that shoots lasers and copies the Hypertime story arc in Superboy at people. Dr. Doom loved himself the 1990's Superboy series.
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Sep 11, 2013 23:33
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I really dig the hell out of Injustice, this weeks was particularly good with Superman and Batman facing off. It has it's weak points for sure but it's nice that it comes out on a weekly schedule and at least tries to explore some new ground.
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Sep 12, 2013 01:33
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It really is the best DC comic currently being published.
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Sep 12, 2013 01:37
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The art could be better but it is being released on a weekly schedule with I think rotating artists, so I mean there's that.
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Sep 12, 2013 01:48
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It really seems to be the colorists and/or inkers that are messing up the art, if the print edition fixes of that one issue are any indication.
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Sep 12, 2013 01:53
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Mr Wind Up Bird posted:What was really weird about Scissors Paper Stone was when they showed up in one of the Teen Titans cartoon shorts. So thaaaaat's what that was
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Sep 12, 2013 02:22
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To be fair, Scissor Paper Stone was apparently a big influence on the first Teen Titan cartoon, and there were apparently plans to adapt it to an episode/TV Movie.
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Sep 12, 2013 02:27
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muscles like this? posted:You know that famous monologue from the end of Kill Bill? That's pretty accurate for Silver Age Superman. A lot of the time he was written as Superman, first and foremost and didn't really care about Clark Kent as an individual person. It probably didn't help that pre-Crisis he always had powers, unlike now where he's written as being mostly human as a child and not gaining his abilities until around puberty. Probably does not help that Clark for some reason kept calling the Kents his foster parents.
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Sep 12, 2013 03:25
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Hollis posted:I really dig the hell out of Injustice, this weeks was particularly good with Superman and Batman facing off. It has it's weak points for sure but it's nice that it comes out on a weekly schedule and at least tries to explore some new ground. I really loved Injustice's version of Superman vs. Batman, mainly because it isn't in love without badass Batman is. Batman has a couple tricks up his sleeve and he's able to hurt him psychologically, but Superman is still Superman. I especially love Batman's little copout. "I don't think I can beat you without killing you. And I'm not like you."
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Sep 12, 2013 06:12
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I really liked the way that Injustice plays the heros against each other, their not in direct conflict they have their fights etc.. but most of the time they don't actually want to fight each other and Batman doesn't want to go head to head with Superman and Superman doesn't want to go head to head with Batman. You know because both sides believe themselves to be morally right. Superman's initial reaction to Batman opposing him isn't to just destroy him from orbit with his god powers. Batman's way is to not confront Superman at all under any circumstance in a straight up fight. The series really impresses on how much just absolutely powerful Superman is than everyone else and everyone is currently poo poo scared of him but also don't want to just straight up kill him because its Superman. It's actually a better view than Civil War for Marvel was.
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Sep 12, 2013 07:00
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Injustice is basically a Marvel Now book with horrific art.
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Sep 12, 2013 14:37
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Injustice is basically a Marvel Now book with horrific art. It's decent enough in the hardcopy but whoever they have hammering out the digital coloring and inking got hired for speed not talent.
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Sep 12, 2013 14:44
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I don't follow, are they retouching/redrawing the art for the trade or something? And I really can't blame them since it's a weekly series.
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Sep 12, 2013 14:51
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The physical floppies and the digital issues have different colorists or something because they often look completely different. The actual factual books have art that just plain looks better.
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Sep 12, 2013 14:55
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Strange, it's generally the opposite with the similarly digital first Batman '66 series, it just looks so much better on a tablet than on paper.
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Sep 12, 2013 16:52
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Mr. Maltose posted:The physical floppies and the digital issues have different colorists or something because they often look completely different. The actual factual books have art that just plain looks better. I think it was Lurdiak who posted a really interesting comparison picture of the horrific BATFACE image and how it looks kind of okay in the printed version.
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Sep 12, 2013 18:10
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 Whether you like the art or not, it's obviously a lot less muddled and lovely in the print version. Things like "lighting being where it's supposed to instead of making the shapes look lumpy" make a world of difference. And obviously it seems the colorist tried to draw eyes were there wasn't supposed to be any. I haven't been picking up the print issues so I can't say for sure if the difference is that stark in every print vs digital comparison. It might be that this particular issue was just so bad that DC ordered a redo. Nevertheless, I've seen other questionable art in Injustice that really seemed to be a bad coloring/inking job on some nice pencils. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 21:49
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