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Woop, another issue of The Wild Storm and welp, the dominos really are all in place now so get your flicking finger ready, everything's about to go bananas. Sucks to be Miles Craven I guess. So good to see Jenny, Jack, Angie and Shen all together again.
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Nov 1, 2018 02:56
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I heard good things about the Omega Men and I really liked Vision but geez it sounds like either those were flukes and King is awful or he is just really making GBS threads the bed in a big way here
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Nov 1, 2018 05:40
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Codependent Poster posted:Did they show who the dead Green Lantern is? It will be Guy by process of elimination. Everyone else is showing up in something besides Baz who I think is slated to be in something soonish? I guess it could be him, too.
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Nov 1, 2018 05:47
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The confessional stuff feels like King but the rest could be written by anybody. It's all loving terrible though. I think a comparison to Identity Crisis is wrong with respect to a lot of specific details (or it's too early to tell in some cases) but I can't see this series having the defenders that that did either.
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Nov 1, 2018 05:50
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TwoPair posted:I heard good things about the Omega Men and I really liked Vision but geez it sounds like either those were flukes and King is awful or he is just really making GBS threads the bed in a big way here A lot of promising writers turn out to be not very good at event books, and I think more broadly an unfortunate kind of funneling that happens in big two comics is that you can make your name on quirky, idiosyncratic books about B-listers, but as you get assigned more and more high-profile titles your ability to rock the boat is curtailed and you wind up reiterating the same big event-y tropes that readers first flocked to your writing to avoid. It's hard to remember but Brian Michael Bendis used to be a gritty indie darling, and the idea of him writing Avengers would have been laughable. Or something like Fear Itself which was nearly the opposite of the kind of writing that first attracted people to Matt Fraction's writing. Do you remember Death of X? I don't, because it was extraordinarily boring and aggressively inconsequential, despite Jeff Lemire and Charles Soule generally being excellent writers when they're allowed to tinker around in their own wheelhouses/ With Heroes in Crisis I don't think it's just that the story doesn't play to Tom King's strengths-- it's that it makes his strengths look asinine and magnifies his flaws. The story is on such a marquee scale that the intimate character moments that made people like Vision and Mister Miracle feel like maudlin Identity Crisis schlock (not that MM is totally free of sin there, and at points his Batman is pretty cringey too) and his general inability to plot an interesting fight scene has contributed a lot to the woefully uneven pace so far. I think part of this is just, that, with a few exceptions the event formula does not encourage or facilitate good writing. There are exceptions-- Mark Millar and Jonathan Hickman, neither of whom I like very much, are well-suited to the operatic spectacle of the form. Morrison and Waid aren't too shabby at it either, and neither is Ed Brubaker, because they're good at making a whole explosion of moving parts fit together elegantly. Even looking back on bad events by BMB, Fraction, Jason Aaron, etc., who saw their writerly strengths smothered under the weight of the form, King is just woefully unsuited for this kind of thing, sending it spiraling, so far, from the bloated nonsense that many event books are, to bloated nonsense that's also boring and bathetic.
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Nov 1, 2018 06:12
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The shame of HiC is that DC has been doing relatively well with bloated events that are excuses for heroes to team up and look cool. Night of the Monster Men, Metal, The Witching Hour (haven't finished it yet, can't wait to see how problematic it ends up, or not, for me), Drowned Earth, No Justice, Batman/TMNT I & II, Milk Wars... they're not masterpieces, but they build up DC's various corners and make the settings and characters more interesting for having been there. "Remember that time we turned the Wayne towers into functional mechs to fight giant monsters, what a time to be alive huh," Bat-understudies can tell each other. HiC, by contrast, throws out its central conceit before the story's even started. What if there was a PTSD clinic for super-- aw gently caress it, deaths everywhere in the first issue. Snail's pace second issue, with no significant advancement. Where is Sanctuary? What's it like to be there? How do we know the place had any value to its clients? Confession cam? Why didn't this concept start with Mark Russell writing a heartfelt Sanctuary maxi-series and tweaking how we think of hero/villain archetypes, instead of Tom King dangling an IOU for a carrot in front of readers? Space Fish fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Nov 1, 2018 06:44
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Heroes in Crisis is good and y'all just can't handle that it's making your favorites look bad.
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Nov 1, 2018 06:55
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It made my favorite look dead for shock value so sure, I'm not super high on it.
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Nov 1, 2018 06:59
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ElNarez posted:Heroes in Crisis is good and y'all just can't handle that it's making your favorites look bad. If I hated my favorites looking bad I wouldn't be a fan of half the comic characters I am.
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Nov 1, 2018 07:01
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ElNarez posted:Heroes in Crisis is good and y'all just can't handle that it's making your favorites look bad. True, it does make Tom King look bad.
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Nov 1, 2018 07:04
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TwoPair posted:I heard good things about the Omega Men and I really liked Vision but geez it sounds like either those were flukes and King is awful or he is just really making GBS threads the bed in a big way here Grayson, Omega Men, Sheriff of Babylon and Mister Miracle all deserve his good reputation. He might end up with the most derided and acclaimed comics of the year for two different titles.
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Nov 1, 2018 08:35
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ElNarez posted:Heroes in Crisis is good and y'all just can't handle that it's making your favorites look bad.
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Nov 1, 2018 09:06
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I have also seen Kill Bill Vol. 2.
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Nov 1, 2018 10:01
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Edge & Christian posted:Theory #3: The whole steel worker thing is a misdirect and puddler is just talking about someone who pisses themselves. *Tom King tears his clothes to reveal gigantic jorts and a hockey jersey underneath* aw son of a bitch!
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Nov 1, 2018 10:08
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BrianWilly posted:What did you like about it I mean for one, Mann and Morey make a very good looking book, that's just as deft in the big moments as it is in the small details (those 9-grid pages show a level of confidence from a creative team that you usually only see in long-time collaborations, like Morrison and Quitely, Fraction and Aja or Bendis and anyone in his stable of collaborators). But for another, I think it gets the characters right and it puts those in a complicated situation that raises interesting questions both about them and about our relationship as readers to them. We can talk about specifics (for instance I think the fight scene in #2 works because it has Harley Quinn exploiting Wonder Woman's compassion to catch the trinity off-guard, and exploting Batman's denial about being a total control freak to make her getaway), but that's the thrust of my argument. (So as to paint a full picture: I also think it's being true to Booster Gold to return him to his characterization as a well-meaning jock getting in way over his head.)
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Nov 1, 2018 10:09
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I haven't read it but I have a hard time imagining it's a weaker fight than the Deathstroke one in Identity Crisis solely because Green Lantern isn't there to wield the most powerful ranged weapon in the universe and then try to fight Deathstroke by punching him. Does Flash run into anyone's swords because, even though he can move at the speed of light, they're "quicker where it counts"? 
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Nov 1, 2018 10:11
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It's not as bad as the Deathstroke fight. Harley pretends to be contrite, hugs Wonder Woman, then grabs her lasso and goes for Batman. Batman tells Superman and Wonder Woman to stay out of it because he's kind of a proud dickhead and he doesn't want people with real superpowers causing collateral damage in ~his city~. Harley gets the advantage on Batman and catches his neck in the lasso, then uses him as a hostage to stop the other two from pulping her. She uses the lasso to make him admit he has some kryptonite in his utility belt, uses that to dazzle Superman, and makes her escape. It's kind of dumb for multiple reasons (okay, kryptonite would work on Superman, but why isn't Wonder Woman immediately catching her once she lets go of Bruce?), chief among them being the fact that as mentioned, Harley could just use the lasso to prove her own innocence but instead she decides to fight three superheroes while singing nonsense. King's characterisation of Harley is not great, much as in the first issue. That said, it's nowhere close to Deathstroke taking on like seven Justice League members one by one and being faster than the Flash etc. etc. Here it's pretty clear that the fight would have been over in an instant if not for Batman being arrogant and proud enough to tell his more powerful teammates to stay out of it, then underestimating Harley and winding up as her hostage. Plus, Harley doesn't win per se, she just gets away.
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Nov 1, 2018 11:51
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Android Blues posted:It's kind of dumb for multiple reasons (okay, kryptonite would work on Superman, but why isn't Wonder Woman immediately catching her once she lets go of Bruce?), chief among them being the fact that as mentioned, Harley could just use the lasso to prove her own innocence but instead she decides to fight three superheroes while singing nonsense. King's characterisation of Harley is not great, much as in the first issue. I mean, all she wanted was to put them on the trail of Booster Gold and bounce to go mourn in peace.
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Nov 1, 2018 12:37
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Sentinel Red posted:Woop, another issue of The Wild Storm and welp, the dominos really are all in place now so get your flicking finger ready, everything's about to go bananas. Sucks to be Miles Craven I guess. Who were those khera drinking at the end? I need to do another reread to piece together the alien factions.
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Nov 1, 2018 12:48
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Android Blues posted:That said, it's nowhere close to Deathstroke taking on like seven Justice League members one by one and being faster than the Flash etc. etc. Here it's pretty clear that the fight would have been over in an instant if not for Batman being arrogant and proud enough to tell his more powerful teammates to stay out of it, then underestimating Harley and winding up as her hostage. Plus, Harley doesn't win per se, she just gets away. Honestly it's difficult for any fight to top (or "top") the one where Black Canary is subdued when someone puts a bag over her head.
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Nov 1, 2018 12:49
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ElNarez posted:I mean for one, Mann and Morey make a very good looking book, that's just as deft in the big moments as it is in the small details (those 9-grid pages show a level of confidence from a creative team that you usually only see in long-time collaborations, like Morrison and Quitely, Fraction and Aja or Bendis and anyone in his stable of collaborators). But for another, I think it gets the characters right and it puts those in a complicated situation that raises interesting questions both about them and about our relationship as readers to them. We can talk about specifics (for instance I think the fight scene in #2 works because it has Harley Quinn exploiting Wonder Woman's compassion to catch the trinity off-guard, and exploting Batman's denial about being a total control freak to make her getaway), but that's the thrust of my argument. So far, as far as any questions that are brought up about living characters like Superman or Wonder Woman, King hasn't asked any interesting questions or brought up any new relationship to the readers. "AM I CLARK OR SUPERMAN" is not just the most trite psychological questions you could introduce to Superman, it is the most overused and hackneyed question. It was the worst part of the Kill Bill franchise put on a nine panel grid, pretending to be deep like it was back then. If that the standard for complicated and interesting then I guess Lobdell's Superman was great because even his stupid rear end was capable of bringing up that grade school question. This swings back around to the same thing with Batman's confessional: Going "BATMAN TRAINS HIS OWN CHILD SOLDIERS AND THAT IS BAD AND HE FEELS BAD ABOUT IT" is where Batman was at for years after Jason's death and there's nowhere left to go with that character beat. His Wonder Woman confessional reads like someone who has never bothered to read a Wonder Woman comic in his life, too. Which makes sense given his previous Wonder Woman writing. I feel like the only actual good, unique take in the whole confessional gimmick so far has been Blue Jay and Hot Spot. Both of which who are dead so whatever psychological or character building facets I might be interested in is wasted on the event style mass killing. Hooray for that. Two Tone Shoes fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Nov 1, 2018 13:24
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Two Tone Shoes posted:So far, as far as any questions that are brought up about living characters like Superman or Wonder Woman, King hasn't asked any interesting questions or brought up any new relationship to the readers. "AM I CLARK OR SUPERMAN" is not just the most trite psychological questions you could introduce to Superman, it is the most overused and hackneyed question. It was the worst part of the Kill Bill franchise put on a nine panel grid, pretending to be deep like it was back then. If that the standard for complicated and interesting then I guess Lobdell's Superman was great because even his stupid rear end was capable of bringing up that grade school question. This swings back around to the same thing with Batman's confessional: Going "BATMAN TRAINS HIS OWN CHILD SOLDIERS AND THAT IS BAD AND HE FEELS BAD ABOUT IT" is where Batman was at for years after Jason's death and there's nowhere left to go with that character beat. I feel like that's missing the forest for the trees. You're right in saying that the questions you bring up are nothing new, even if I would argue that there's a difference between Kill Bill's "Clark Kent is actually the mask" thesis and Heroes In Crisis saying "Both Clark Kent and Superman are masks". However, there's a bigger question there of "What happens when someone/the world/readers find out and have to deal with their heroes asking themselves those kinds of questions because they're just people, just as hosed up and just as lost as anyone else out there, but worse because they punch evil in the jaw on the regular?", which I think is, if not interesting, at the very least novel. And that's not even going into the mystery aspect of it, which I think is fun because mysteries are fun, and trying to guess where things are going is fun. At the risk of sounding bugfuck insane, I also see this as Tom King self-reflecting and examining what it means to make books where super-heroes are sad and hosed up, and as a fan of his it's interesting to see him going in this direction.
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Nov 1, 2018 13:54
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I actually liked that Superman page because you can see he has an issue with the very idea of therapy, not out of closed-mindedness, but just because he always has to be on and if he lets his guard down and questions himself, he risks shirking his role as a symbol to the world. Also yeah, the issue of him not knowing which "identity" he really identifies more with, and how both of them are slightly exaggerated to meet other people's needs, I thought that was good. Superman is a people-pleaser and a giving person, and he's self-sacrificing to the point where he risks losing sight of himself at times. I think that's a pretty good take. The rest of the issue I didn't like as much, but it wasn't without its high points.
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Nov 1, 2018 14:01
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Android Blues posted:I actually liked that Superman page because you can see he has an issue with the very idea of therapy, not out of closed-mindedness, but just because he always has to be on and if he lets his guard down and questions himself, he risks shirking his role as a symbol to the world. god I love how that's communicated by the fact the page ends just as he's about to do the standard Superman reveal
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Nov 1, 2018 14:29
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Tom King writes a good Superman. His story in Action 1,000, and the first part of his Walmart story are worth a look.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:06
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Space Fish posted:HiC, by contrast, throws out its central concert before the story's even started. What if there was a PTSD clinic for super-- aw gently caress it, deaths everywhere in the first issue. Snail's pace second issue, with no significant advancement. Where is Sanctuary? What's it like to be there? How do we know the place had any value to its clients? Confession cam? Why didn't this concept start with Mark Russell writing a heartfelt Sanctuary maxi-series and tweaking how we think of hero/villain archetypes, instead of Tom King dangling an IOU for a carrot in front of readers? . . . ok, where did you find the monkey's paw? Heroes In Crisis #3 Changes to Reveal Origin of the Sanctuary
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Nov 1, 2018 17:14
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Not to drag this poo poo out, but the whole "Clark Kent is actually the mask" thing comes from the actual text of Superman. I haven't read the original Siegel and Schuster issues, but at least in the iconic Fleischer cartoons it started with "disguised as the mild mannered Clark Kent." And that was used in a gently caress ton of later comics too. Busiek even talks about it in some of the back matter in his great opening arc for the One Year Later soft reboot.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:32
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"Clark Kent is the mask" was very common in the Silver Age, as was Superman's narration always remind the reader how the Kents were "only" his adoptive parents and Jor-El and Lara would always be his real mother and father. I don't think the pendulum really swung the other way until either the Richard Donner movie or that last page of Man of Steel 6 where he's musing about how Krypton made him a superman but Earth made him human.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:40
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In some of the bronze age the "both are masks" version was there, but the 'real person' was better defined: Kal-el, his identity as a Kryptonian that he carefully reconstructed with the help of time travel and Kandor. His real friends called him 'Kal' then, which has the bonus of being better opsec than the current idea.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:57
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ElNarez posted:I mean, all she wanted was to put them on the trail of Booster Gold and bounce to go mourn in peace. You know what would have been an easier way to do that? Putting on the drat lasso and then just walking the hell away! It's pants on head loving stupid. So glad I didn't fall for Identity Crisis's "spiritual" successor.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:00
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Man of Steel firmly laid it out that Clark was the person and Superman was the disguise and even though it was by John Byrne it's a great take on the character.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:07
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The entire point of the Superman bit in Kill Bill is that Bill is totally wrong, too. So doing it in a comic with Superman himself saying it is double dumb.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:37
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Vince MechMahon posted:The entire point of the Superman bit in Kill Bill is that Bill is totally wrong, too. So doing it in a comic with Superman himself saying it is double dumb. There is a recurring issue where someone says something incorrect with such conviction and false-intellectualism that people will become convinced of it being legitimate critique, not an example of an incorrect character saying something wrong.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:25
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Onmi posted:There is a recurring issue where someone says something incorrect with such conviction and false-intellectualism that people will become convinced of it being legitimate critique, not an example of an incorrect character saying something wrong. Ahh, Gordon Gekko disease, also known as the Tyler Durden syndrome.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:33
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Space Fish posted:HiC, by contrast, throws out its central conceit before the story's even started. What if there was a PTSD clinic for super-- aw gently caress it, deaths everywhere in the first issue. Snail's pace second issue, with no significant advancement. Where is Sanctuary? What's it like to be there? How do we know the place had any value to its clients? Confession cam? Why didn't this concept start with Mark Russell writing a heartfelt Sanctuary maxi-series and tweaking how we think of hero/villain archetypes, instead of Tom King dangling an IOU for a carrot in front of readers? This this this. Seriously, if Sanctuary was one of those things that had been around for a few years, we'd be going into it with a completely different mindset. I mean, drat, I care more about The Bar with No Name in Marvel than I do about a place for Superhero PTSD (which is a legitimately good idea!). I know what it is, I understand why it works and what its place is in the universe. I've seen fights and trivia nights there. Sanctuary is one of those things that we should all care about if it had time to breathe. An attack on Sanctuary even that DIDN'T kill people would feel like a sucker punch in a world where we knew of it as a legitimate place for heroes to go get help, because we'd seen them go, get the help we need, and come out better on the other side.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:36
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Speak posted:This this this. Yeah, I was legitimately pissed at the concept of cops raiding Night Nurse's hospital at the end of Bendis' Daredevil even though no one was even hurt, because I'd seen it and heard of it before.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:40
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Speak posted:This this this. When the magic bar got attacked in Metal, it was actually a bit saddening despite not having shown up much, if at all, since before the New 52. But it had existed for a time and while it was not in use, it was a place everyone more or less remembers and has enough of an idea about such that it feels significant when it did get attacked. Sanctuary? No. King or whoever concocted the idea of making it dropped the ball there hard.
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Nov 1, 2018 21:32
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So just fyi In the last couple years of Wonder Woman's life and comics, she has -Found out that her origin was a lie -Found out that her Amazon sisters were in fact barbaric manslayers who murder men -Found, at minimum, three long-lost siblings -Seen at least one long-lost sibling die, and directly killed another -Become the god of war -Found out that all of the above was actually a lie, except for the part where she is Zeus' daughter, and that she's been living in a fantasy concocted for her from her gods... ...in order to prevent her from ever seeing her home and family again, because if she does she risks the actual god of war being unleashed -Lost her best friend to an evil curse which turned her into a furry (the friend, not WW) -twice -Actually that might count three times because it happened yet again to another friend recently -Found one more long-lost brother, except it's forreals her actual brother this time no seriously no takebacks -...Lost this brother too, after he decided to go [somewhere] with some dark gods to prevent them from destroying the Earth And the riveting trauma that this book, HiC, ended up illustrating for her is that well one time she walked in on her mom hurt? And then just didn't wanna bother anyone about it.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:19
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How do your define "The last couple years"? Because a chunk of that from the Brian Azzarello New 52 reboot which I think has since been retconned.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:05
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And boy am I glad of that! But yea I'm just defining it as "the last couple years" of Diana's own life and perspective. Azzarello's stories have been revealed as lies, yes, but Diana herself would still remember experiencing them. Heck, the very fact that a huge chunk of her life turned out to be fantasy was traumatic enough to land her in a psych ward during the run where it was revealed. Point being, there is so much material you could pull from when talking about WW's mental health, so making up some random childhood stiff-upper-lippiness that has no relevance or connection to anything from her actual stories or character just feels like the laziest option you could've gone with.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:25
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