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Suben posted:Did it get good writing because I couldn't even make it through the first arc. It was trying to be some kind of superhero slice of life thing except nothing about it was entertaining or interesting enough to make that concept work. All I know is that this comes from Young Avengers, so I need to read it. CapnAndy posted:Young Avengers 004. Noh-Varr is your new favorite character now:
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Aug 17, 2013 23:09
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Suben posted:Did it get good writing because I couldn't even make it through the first arc. It was trying to be some kind of superhero slice of life thing except nothing about it was entertaining or interesting enough to make that concept work. I thought it was great.  Also it really isn't slice of life so much as insane adventures.
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Aug 17, 2013 23:09
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Prepare yourselves for a grand adventure, into the Age of Ultron!  The event the Age of Ultron was teased a good while ago in Bendis's Heroic Age adjective-less Avengers, where Kang the Conqueror brings the Avengers to a dark future where Ultron has taken over the earth. It was teased again in #12.1 where the team and the Intelligencia witness Ultron's escape from earth to prepare his assault on Earth. The event was also teased in Bendis's brilliant Moon Knight run. It was announced in November 2012, and went through its own drama of delays and let downs.  Nonetheless, we were teased with an event that was SO SIGNIFICANT SO IMPACTFUL and with EVERLASTING CONSEQUENCES. I'll admit it, I was excited. There was a splash page in a Point One issue with awesome Hitch art in a huge wasteland. This seemed like it was going to be a really epic battle featuring a real and dangerous threat. The first issue came out and Bendis made the decision to not show anything of the initial Ultron invasion, and instead cut to a few days after the invasion. The first issue is somewhat cool. Hawkeye, one of the year's most popular characters, is trying to infiltrate some random house in the middle of dystopia New York. The thugs inside are armed with strange weaponry and talking about injecting mutant growth hormone to survive in this world even though (later seen from Spidey's perspective) Ultron seems to have only taken over for a short time.  Hawkeye doesn't do anything particularly clever to take out the thugs in front of the house, instead he just shoots them in the loving throats with arrows. This sure would be cool if it was the Ultimate universe but I guess this was to show "The world has become a bad place!". Regardless, the issue is still pretty strong and Clint saves Spiderman from this house who reveals that the thugs were going to "sell" him to Ultron. Is it ever explained why Ultron is buying superheroes? Of course not! We also get treated to one of the most unoriginal Marvel "This is the End" tropes; Captain America's shield is broken! Oh no the unbreakable shield! That's only happened six times before! So now we know that this is a really bad situation.  The next few issues we get treated to some random scattered heroes like Moon Knight, Taskmaster, and Black Panther. What follows is the worst death in recent comic history.  crack Yes, the Black Panther, master of agility and acrobatics, who is also equipped with a suit developed with the most advanced tech in the world, trips and hits his neck and dies. We also find out that Ultron, the villain, is doing this from the FUTURE using former Avenger Vision as a conduit. Now if you think that that was interesting in the slightest, you may be correct but we'll never know, because the plot point was ignored almost as fast as it was put in.  After She Hulk gets a wet willy from an Ultron, a nuke hits Luke Cage, which he survives because Bendis. All the heroes make their way to the Savage Land where Luke Cage was able to get to by stealing a quint-jet and flying there (???). Luke Cage then dies in the most undramatic way where all the heroes are standing outside the village he is in and Wolverine just says "He ded". Not before Emma Frost found out through Cage's mind that Ultron is attacking from the future. The heroes decide they are going to take to the future with a crack team to take out Ultron at his home and stop this once and for all. This provided a possible redemption for the event and was fairly exciting. So do we see this come to any resolution? Nope. Instead of showing several great characters go into the future and fight in a possibly engaging battle, instead they blow Captain America's head off. We never see this group of characters again. Instead Wolverine and Sue Storm go back in time to kill Hank Pym because Wolverine hates nerds. So they go back in time, kill Hank Pym, and hope everything will be chill when they get back. This is issue #6 of a 10 issue event. In a book called Age of Ultron, any evidence of Ultron existing is literally gone for the next three issues. We are brought to a world without Hank Pym, which like the aforementioned character, is the most boring thing you can imagine. Have you ever wondered how things would be if Scott Summers was called Cable? If Janet van Dyne became Captain Marvel? If Morgana le Fey had taken over the majority of Europe? If Star-Lord joined the Defenders? Neither has anyone else! From issues 7-9 we see the most boring and unnecessary world building that only serves a purpose to show that the world needs Hank Pym I guess. That's right, absolutely no Ultron. Wolverine goes back in time again to where he killed Hank Pym, so that means including the fake Age of Morgana le Bleh there are three different Wolverines in this story. It is at this point that Age of Ultron shows its true face as an elaborate satirization of modern Marvel Comics.  Or at least I wish it was. Wolvie goes back in time and stops a different Wolvie, who suggests that Pym make Ultron so that it doesn't do the Age of Ultron this time around. I also lost my soul at this moment. It works and we get to see Avengers #12.1 again. Almost 4 pages of recycled stuff from that book. So now all is fine and Ultron is no longer a threat but then Things Start Happening, and the time continuum is ripped! Or something. Now Galactus is in the Ultimate universe and some character nobody has ever cared about is a small part of the new Guardians of the Galaxy. gently caress you Bendis. I love you, but gently caress you. There are a lot of dumb things I left out, and I am sure a lot of you will fill that in. I know this event was recent so I may be jumping the gun by posting this but I was just so excited for this book. I mentally divide comic stories into two categories: stories that want to be sold, and stories that want to be told. The final confrontation between Ultron and the Avengers is a story that was dying to be told, and he did it in the worst way possible. Age of Ultron ended up reading like a bad What if?, but had some great tie ins (especially the Avengers Assemble that took place in Britain, which is one of my favorite single Marvel issues ever), and gave Mark Waid the chance to write AoU #10 AI, which is also one of my favorite books. prezbuluskey fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 18, 2013 |
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Aug 18, 2013 04:15
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Why does Cyclops have a gun? He has eyebeams!
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Aug 18, 2013 04:24
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WickedHate posted:Why does Cyclops have a gun? He has eyebeams! That's not Cyclops, that's Cable! Who is still Scott Summers. So let's just say that Nathan died and Scott got a metal arm and gun and name change to honor him.
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Aug 18, 2013 04:40
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WickedHate posted:Why does Cyclops have a gun? He has eyebeams! A better question is how is he holding it?
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Aug 18, 2013 04:58
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Just something to add to the Children's Crusade hate: So Allan Heinberg wrote the big 13 issues that introduced the Young Avengers and then went off to do TV and stuff. Marvel was so happy with his work and couldn't wait for him to do the third chapter in his Young Avengers trilogy of stories that they made them HANDS OFF to other Marvel writers. Sure, the writers could use the Young Avengers, but they weren't allowed to do anything with them. This is the same line of thinking that turned helped turn Prometheus into the shittiest of characters because DC Comics didn't want anyone touching Kevin Smith's precious Onomatopoeia. They did a handful of Young Avengers minis during that very lengthy window. They had two Runaways crossovers and one that was a series of spotlight one-shots (including the important-in-retrospect issue by Fraction where Hawkeye and Hawkeye first meet up). But the most memorable moment of HANDS OFF was when they did a Dark Reign miniseries that introduced a darker team of Young Avengers. A big pile of nothing happened, as the core concepts of the team couldn't be messed with, so none of the Dark Young Avengers could join the main team. In fact, it ended on the biggest anti-climax where one of the main characters, Coat-of-Arms has a dream about her and a chibi Green Goblin dance together in some kind of reference that went over my head. The Dark Young Avengers then went on to appear in Avengers Academy and that's pretty much it.
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Aug 18, 2013 05:07
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Jerusalem posted:Goddammit I hate this type of thing, like when they retconned Hal Jordan going crazy into being infected by an alien fear monster since apparently good people never do bad things/have a bad day. I dunno, both Hal's and Wanda's heel turns were, in retrospect, really stupid. Hal was an editor wanting to replace him and wanting so hard to make it stick that killing him wasn't enough, he had to become a bad guy. And in three issues. Tops. Wanda's... was a combination of John Byrne being overly literal and thinking "The Vision can't have kids! He's a toaster!" and that old sexist trope of how Women Can't Handle Power (ditto Jean Grey, Carol Ferris, Jean Loring.) So Bendis uses Wanda's crazy woman hormones as an excuse for Disassembled and the character is, for years, unusable as a hero. Sloppy retcon or no, it was better than leaving them as they were.
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Aug 18, 2013 05:52
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Gavok posted:This is the same line of thinking that turned helped turn Prometheus into the shittiest of characters because DC Comics didn't want anyone touching Kevin Smith's precious Onomatopoeia. And then James Robinson somehow made him even worse.
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Aug 18, 2013 06:24
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My favourite part of Age of Ultron is the Taskmaster/Red Hulk/ Black Panther plotline is set up that they are operating on a desperate mission that seems suicidal but if it can be pulled off it will potentially turn the tide. This I'm fine with, that's a perfect story hook. So Taskmaster, BP and Red Hulk wait for the right moment and when they spot an isolated drone, Red Hulk does a death from above attack to rip off it's head. But he's not fast enough and drones start converging on their location Red Hulk gets back, throws the drone to Black Panther and Taskmaster and tells them to get out of here, he'll hold off the drones. And we get the Black Panther death which is dumb, but hey the point stands. He could have been killed by a errant laser blast, or the building partially collapsing, I'm fine with that. From a story telling point of view it makes sense. What is monumentally dumb is Taskmaster picks up the drone head to continue the mission. People have died, but if he gets the helmet back to base, it'll all be okay. The next issue Taskmaster runs into Red Hulk who has survived. Rulk flips out that Taskmaster left him behind, he doesn't trust him and then he kills him. Seriously that's just....nonsensical. The whole thing doesn't matter anyway. At the end of the issue Rulk, Black Widow and Moonknight show up from the B and C plots to join up with the A plot (some how) and announce the macguffin that Nick Fury had a store house so they can fix everything. All I will say about Age of Ultron is it had some good spin off books.
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Aug 18, 2013 14:02
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I'm a huge fan of Doctor Strange as a team leader so I can appreciate the three or so issues of Age of Ultron where that happened (even though they had nothing to do with Ultron) at least.
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Aug 18, 2013 15:51
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Based on the story description and the title, I assume Age Of Ultron is trying to be the Avengers version of Age Of Apocalypse. As with the YA story discussed above, it's a trifle disappointing to hear that it didn't go so well, because one of my favourite Avengers stories was an Ultron story.
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Aug 18, 2013 16:18
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The best/worst part of Age of Ultron was when Bendis decides to show the plight of a family in Austin smack dab in the middle of the story, which is never mentioned again and was never mentioned until they showed up. "We have to leave Texas!" "Oh no Ultron is attacking!" Yeah, we got all that. We had that hammered into our heads for three issues.
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Aug 18, 2013 16:41
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Re: AoU, I get the feeling that Bendis and his editors had no idea what to do with the story after it slipped out of its originally intended 2012 publishing/continuity window, but they couldn't bring themselves to cancel it because, y'know, five completed issues of Hitch pencils. I'm pretty sure there was an interview where Bendis mentioned that the entire Wolverine/Sue Storm plot wasn't conceived until the Hitch issues were in the can. That's not to say that AoU would ever have been particularly good - it's a Bendis event, and most of the Hitch half is still decompressed to the point of self-parody - but if it had shipped on time, I don't think it would have been as odd and disjointed a read as it was.
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Aug 18, 2013 16:45
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Age of Ultron was a worthless mess but it was kind of worth it just for the interview with Hitch where he said that Marvel told him so little that he didn't know whether he was writing an alternative universe story or what was going to happen in the next issue even when they increased the issue size. Also in regards to Children's Crusade my favorite part is that Hawkeye hosed a Doombot.
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Aug 18, 2013 16:48
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My favorite part of Age of Ultron is the scene where everyone stands around listening to Emma Frost describe some stuff that happened off screen, that happened to Luke Cage, who is over there, in that cabin, but we're not going to show him.
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Aug 18, 2013 16:53
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Waterhaul posted:Age of Ultron was a worthless mess but it was kind of worth it just for the interview with Hitch where he said that Marvel told him so little that he didn't know whether he was writing an alternative universe story or what was going to happen in the next issue even when they increased the issue size. Yeah, I read that Hawkeye's current costume is from Hitch designing it as an alternate universe costume for AoU but Marvel decided they liked it and brought it into the main universe months ahead of time because AoU was delayed so long. Also he had to redraw the first issues to include Emma Frost because originally it was Prof. X and it was supposed to be released before AvsX
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Aug 18, 2013 20:38
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Dacap posted:Yeah, I read that Hawkeye's current costume is from Hitch designing it as an alternate universe costume for AoU but Marvel decided they liked it and brought it into the main universe months ahead of time because AoU was delayed so long. Also he had to redraw the first issues to include Emma Frost because originally it was Prof. X and it was supposed to be released before AvsX It also has old WW2 Nick Fury in it instead of Nick "could you call me Landfill?" Fury Jr. And it also had not one but TWO different tie ins, solely designed to explain why heroes were around. (Namely a Superior Tie in to explain why Spider-Man who was acting like Peter was really Otto, and a Fantastic Four tie in to explain why they weren't lost in time/space.) Funnily enough it probably would have been cheaper to just say "this series was drawn before these books came out, that's why."
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Aug 18, 2013 20:53
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muscles like this? posted:My favorite part of Age of Ultron is the scene where everyone stands around listening to Emma Frost describe some stuff that happened off screen, that happened to Luke Cage, who is over there, in that cabin, but we're not going to show him. E the Shaggy posted:The best/worst part of Age of Ultron was when Bendis decides to show the plight of a family in Austin smack dab in the middle of the story, which is never mentioned again and was never mentioned until they showed up. These are the two worst scenes in comics that I read this year, and the fact they were in the same story is incredible.
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Aug 19, 2013 04:52
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That Austin scene had to have been important in the original draft before they had to refuckulate everything due to being delayed so long, and the fact that it wasn't completely cut a total accident, right? That's the only thing that makes any sense. If they wanted to assure us that yes, the whole continent was hosed, not just NYC, they could have done that with a single speech balloon from pretty much anyone.
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Aug 19, 2013 21:22
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Yeah and they chose Austin. Austin. I get its a cool city and all but why can't they show like Australia or Japan or something. It's not like anyone was like oh, its happening in New York and DC and also.....AUSTIN! What will the world do now. Whose hands are whose? Who's using who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute.
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Aug 20, 2013 04:31
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prezbuluskey posted:Whose hands are whose? Who's using who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute. I suppose you can if it's some kind of sexual MLM.
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Aug 20, 2013 05:14
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Waterhaul posted:Also in regards to Children's Crusade my favorite part is that Hawkeye hosed a Doombot. What. I never read it but, what.
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Aug 20, 2013 05:41
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SynthOrange posted:What. I never read it but, what. In a Bendis New Avenger issue its revealed that Hawkeye banged Scarlet Witch. In Children Crusade it was revealed that was not Wanda, but a Doombot.
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Aug 20, 2013 05:45
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bobkatt013 posted:In a Bendis New Avenger issue its revealed that Hawkeye banged Scarlet Witch. In Children Crusade it was revealed that was not Wanda, but a Doombot. Clint: You mean.... Doom: Yes you fool! For who else but DOOM could bring you to such heights of pleasure!?! 
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Aug 20, 2013 05:59
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bobkatt013 posted:In a Bendis New Avenger issue its revealed that Hawkeye banged Scarlet Witch. In Children Crusade it was revealed that was not Wanda, but a Doombot. It wasn't just something from the Ruin the Moment thread?  In retrospect, that edit makes much more sense now.
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Aug 20, 2013 21:04
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Waterhaul posted:
I've seen people write that "Hawkeye is written like Archer these days" but I didn't realize how true that was 
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Aug 20, 2013 23:40
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TwoPair posted:Get the storm indeed. Goddamn, I've seen poo poo on Superdickery that lied less about the contents inside than that. My favorite misleading cover is the All New X-Men where Havok and Young Cyclops are blasting each other. Not only do they not fight in the issue,but their powers don't work on each other to begin with.
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Aug 21, 2013 03:51
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The Question IRL posted:and a Fantastic Four tie in to explain why they weren't lost in time/space.) Stupidity of the whole event and even the book aside, it has a wonderful scene between Reed and Val/Franklin, which alone nearly makes the whole mess of an event worth it.
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Aug 21, 2013 13:52
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Decius posted:Stupidity of the whole event and even the book aside, it has a wonderful scene between Reed and Val/Franklin, which alone nearly makes the whole mess of an event worth it. Is that the one where Reed tells his kids there is no Afterlife. Despite the fact that he's been there on multiple occasions?
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Aug 21, 2013 19:17
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The Question IRL posted:Is that the one where Reed tells his kids there is no Afterlife. Despite the fact that he's been there on multiple occasions? "I am a man of science, there is no eternal soul, when we die that's the end of existence." "Heya Stretcho, remember that time ya literally went ta Heaven 'n' brought my soul back?" "Be quiet, Ben, I'm making an overwrought maudlin point about living life to the fullest here."
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Aug 23, 2013 00:57
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McSpanky posted:"I am a man of science, there is no eternal soul, when we die that's the end of existence."  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 23, 2013 01:38
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They literally went to hell once and fought Mephisto for Franklin's soul. 
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Aug 23, 2013 01:59
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SynthOrange posted:They literally went to hell once and fought Mephisto for Franklin's soul. A soul he has mathematically proven exists more then once. Reed Richards can literally measure your soul, with science. Ben brought it up once and I think Reed's response was "I don't believe in souls Ben. I can prove they exist and therefore belief is unnecessary" SirDan3k fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 02:41
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I don't normally like to indulge in thread necromancy, but I've been thinking about this topic and I believe I've come up with one. It's the Jane Espenson story arc from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight ("Retreat"). Obviously, you can take advantage of the medium to try things that just wouldn't be feasible for television, and some of the earlier arcs had tried that. Unfortunately, it was a bit hard to take it seriously when you have the Slayers (who have suppressed their supernatural abilities for plot reasons) digging trenches, wearing helmets and and fighting the US army with machine guns and rocket launchers (especially while the previous main story arc was Buffy transported to the far future to fight evil future Willow, which seems like something the TV show actually would've done). Season 8 was never a perfect series (I'd say the first half was good, not great, with the Brian K. Vaughan story arc as the highlight) but the whole thing seemed to lose the plot a bit after that run. That's how it seemed to me.
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Oct 10, 2013 22:41
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Is that the one that ends up with herself and Angel getting ultimate superpowers and having sex so powerful that they cause earthquakes and are flying into mountains naked and other dumb poo poo that makes the Wonder Woman/Superman stuff from Dark Knight Strikes Again to shame?
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Oct 11, 2013 13:00
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I'm afraid so. I was going to mention that, but I couldn't come up with a description that adequately conveyed how supremely bizarre the whole thing is.
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Oct 11, 2013 13:08
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Metal Loaf posted:I'm afraid so. That was when I checked out of the series.
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Oct 11, 2013 18:31
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Waterhaul posted:Is that the one that ends up with herself and Angel getting ultimate superpowers and having sex so powerful that they cause earthquakes and are flying into mountains naked and other dumb poo poo that makes the Wonder Woman/Superman stuff from Dark Knight Strikes Again to shame? They also boned a new universe into existence in the form of a lion with a sun halo-thing.
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Oct 11, 2013 18:35
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SirDan3k posted:They also boned a new universe into existence in the form of a lion with a sun halo-thing. ...Narnia?
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