|
Random Stranger: reading your reviews makes me think that I would have loved the poo poo out of the books back when I was a 13 year old kid. Something about superhero teams with ill defined personalities and explodey powers being all action packed and poo poo. I feel some kind of nostalgia through the reviews even though I have never read these books. Hell, it reminds me of characters I made up as a kid as well.
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2020 19:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:55 |
|
|
Skwirl posted:I don't think Warner is going to ever sell DC. I didn't say it was *likely*.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2020 19:40
|
|
|
Batman alone is worth what Disney paid for Marvel.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2020 19:46
|
|
|
Rhyno posted:Batman alone is worth what Disney paid for Marvel. Eh... Batman is valuable, but when Disney bought Marvel they were the single biggest property on the planet. Madkal posted:Random Stranger: reading your reviews makes me think that I would have loved the poo poo out of the books back when I was a 13 year old kid. Something about superhero teams with ill defined personalities and explodey powers being all action packed and poo poo. I feel some kind of nostalgia through the reviews even though I have never read these books. Hell, it reminds me of characters I made up as a kid as well. There were a lot of thirteen-year-olds who were buying those books by the ton. They didn't stick around especially long which is why we're not currently at Youngblood issue #82 (assuming Rob stuck to his publishing "schedule"  ).I'm going on to 1995's Liefeld published books and things have now officially gone off the rails. I'm going to start with the first half of the Extreme Sacrifice story crossover, but it's tempting to skip ahead a few posts to the big punchline. There's one fun thing first, "part 0" of the crossover was published a month after the crossover was finished. It's collected that way but the reading order I have says to read it after so I'm going to hold off. We'll find out if that was a mess or not later. All of these books originally came polybagged with trading cards. The backs of the cards could be assembled into a poster as well. So get at least three copies of each comic! Extreme Sacrifice #1 - Rob Liefeld penciled the "prologue" and "epilogue" of this crossover, but you might notice that we've been dealing with this crossover for a few months now complete with cover blurbs that told me "Extreme Sacrifice Continues!" Since Liefeld penciled it there are so many unreadable sideways double page spreads; they're especially bad in the collected edition. We start in Hell. Turns out that the civilian head of the Youngblood program is a demon lord. No, this has never been hinted at before and he comes out and says it immediately with no build up or sense of revelation. Just "Oh, by the way, I'm the devil." He's telling this to Combat who you might recall appeared to die about six months ago but was actually abducted by Admiral Kirk. Meanwhile, in the center of the ocean, Roman is summoned to a meeting of tough guys because there's some kind of obligation to make him arrive. Everyone talks about things as though they're portentous but since none of it has been mentioned before and a lot of it seems to contradict previous characterization it's mainly confusing. Apparently the earth is going to be sucked into hell, something I had to infer from the text. The New Men are still in the hospital and Dash's baby is now a surly teenager who teleports himself away. And back in hell, the guy who the captions told me was a time traveler in previous issues of Prophet was actually from hell and his boss in Chapel who in the minutes since he died has become a demon lord and wants to conquer earth. So basically, Extreme Sacrifice isn't about anything that was used in the set up. It's about a whole other story that wasn't hinted at before. It's a real, "Oh come on!" moment. Supreme #23 - This issue starts with a text page that explains what I read in Extreme Sacrifice #1 and I go, "What?!" What was missing in the prologue was any mention that this story heavily involves time travel. So Lucifer traveled back in time to be Youngblood's demon boss. The guy who went after Prophet's stuff was a time traveler and a demon. It didn't take Chapel minutes to take over hell, it took him centuries. Dash's son ages to adulthood in weeks, though I don't know how that fits with the story explicitly saying it was the next day in the prologue. Supreme is hanging out at the Apollo 17 landing site when he's attacked by Crypt, the time traveling demon character who's just a tough guy with an axe. They have a conversation which I mention because it's kind of silly, though I won't pick on them too much for wanting to have the villain and hero talk. Anyway, Crypt boasts that he was there when Jesus Christ was crucified which is something every single long lived supernatural villain always brags about. After impaling Supreme on the flag the astronauts left behind they take the fight back to earth where they destroy most of Manhattan in a battle that ends with Crypt performing a Mortal Kombat fatality on Supreme and throwing him down into Spawn Alley. Before Spawn can do anything, Supreme vanishes taking the spine that was now outside of his body with him. Over at Youngblood HQ, someone has finally noticed that Combat has mysteriously returned. Knight Sabre gets into a fight with Lucifer demanding to know whose side he's on which is weird because so far it's another day at the office for Youngblood. These books are starting to lean very heavily into the gore. Last month there was Chapel's gruesome suicide, this time it's Supreme being broken in half with his spine shooting out of his body. It makes them feel even more sad than they already were. Just for fun, the comic immediately spoils the miniseries Legend of Supreme. The second of three issues wasn't even out yet but they tell you the ending. Crossovers have traditionally had this problem, but considering how often the slipping date on these books screws things up I'm surprised to have not seen it more. Bloodstrike #18 - Cabbot is hanging out with a group called The Order of the Knight on their way to The Gathering, which must be important because it's capitalized. On their way, they have to stop off to free the guy who is definitely Sabretooth because he's one of The Order. Tower, a cyborg guy who works with Bloodstrike who was so generic I never bothered to mention him before, is killed and it's very sad. Over on the Isle of Paradise, the Amazons have all disappeared leaving Glory alone and Roman picks her up to take her to The Gathering. Vanguard, a guy from Erik Larsen's side of the Image-verse, puts in a two panel cameo in this issue probably because he'll be joining one of the teams in an issue or two (at least according to the house ads I've been seeing). He doesn't do anything, but he's there. Not much to this issue beyond all the hard men with big guns gritting their teeth. And we've got the guy who is explicitly Cable now hanging out with the guy who is explicitly Sabretooth and I'm going, "Why didn't Marvel sue?" Brigade #16 - The issue starts off with Kayo dead, killed by Crypt. He's immobilized all of the members of Brigade; the cliffhanger from Bloodstrike was that Crypt was about to attack them so I guess they skipped that part. You might recall that Kayo will be killed in Brigade #25 by Battlestone, but Crypt just says time isn't absolute. With Kayo dead, Thermal breaks free and attacks and then she's immediately gutted by his sword. Crypt moves on to killing Crucible, the new woman on the team who hasn't really done anything. And then Glory and Roman arrive to try to drive off Crypt and now he has a freeze gun which he uses to stop them. Crypt blows up Cold Snap and then just leaves. That makes Seahawk the only survivor of Brigade. This is a real "what the gently caress?" issue. Villain defeats the heroes off panel between issues and then just executes all of them. And then rather than killing the people who are supposed to be the major threats to their plans (Roman and Glory), he just leaves. I guess they wanted to reset the book and decided to flush these characters, but it makes that Brigade #25 stand out since everyone was alive at that point. That's enough for tonight. My next post will cover the other half of this crossover. Will the magic diamond appear again? Will Not Darkseid have anything to do with this plot? And what about Dash's kid who got an entire two pages across these comics despite the text summaries telling me that he's very important? Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Feb 20, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 02:59
|
|
|
I think I realized why I don’t like Benjamin Marra and Tony Scioli. To me, they are the cartoonist equivalent of a “remember...” joke from family guy. They are a worse version of the styles that they are imitating (ok...homaging). Scioli is clearly Kirby (and flat colors with some silver age beats and themes to his stories) and Marra is the teenager who never grew out of his “Woah, this Faust dude rules!” phase after buying an issue and who never thought to evolve his style. This, I will admit, made them feel way more outsider and I guess is why along with others like Stokoe (who only gets better with each new thing he puts out; Graham, at the time before we all became aware of the chaser and sexual abusing piece of poo poo he was; Hanselman, who, if nothing else has stuck to his “Fantagraphics bad boy” well enough past the expiration date (like Bagge for a while) and Santoro (I remember him being named in the same sentence as those others) they became the white boys indie darlings du jour (so far In the interviews I’ve read of Hanselman he uses male pronouns, but if anyone knows if that’s no longer the case, please tell me and I’ll change that last part). Long rant over. To summarize Scioli and Marra are to me the call back joke that the vice crowd (people who are way to old to think they are young and cool) ate up and their comics are a bit of a wet fart.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 09:04
|
|
|
Vincent posted:I think I realized why I don’t like Benjamin Marra and Tony Scioli. To me, they are the cartoonist equivalent of a “remember...” joke from family guy. I liked Scioli's GI Joe and Transformers and American Barbarian, but maybe because they seemed like clever cartoons and the art worked for me. Are you saying you're meh to all the other names you list as well? Hanselman in particular I feel is doing super funny and dark stuff.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 14:51
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:and I'm going, "Why didn't Marvel sue?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 15:04
|
|
Rhyno posted:Batman alone is worth what Disney paid for Marvel. That's not what the box office returns say.
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 15:49
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:That's not what the box office returns say. I didn't specify the films, I said BATMAN. He's probably the single most valuable fictional character in the world. Next to Jesus.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 16:04
|
|
|
A Strange Aeon posted:I liked Scioli's GI Joe and Transformers and American Barbarian, but maybe because they seemed like clever cartoons and the art worked for me. I don't like the Scioli bit as much as a bunch of other people on BSS, but yeah, Hanselman is brilliant and stylistically I think even more along the lines of like, Alex Degen or Jesse Moynihan than any of the people you mentioned. I'd also make an exception for one name you didn't mention, but who often gets included under that broad umbrella of retro-formalists--- I love love love love love Michael Fiffe and I think he's one of the most careful and daring students of silver/bronze age comics alive. Copra has done some stuff that is on the surface explicit homage to Ditko or Kirby or whoever but is at the same time 100% new and fresh.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 18:06
|
|
|
I was a pretty big fan of Jose Ladronn's very clearly Kirby inspired artwork back when he was on Cable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 18:10
|
|
|
Oh hell yeah, such a neglected run. Just gorgeous all the way through. I believe that was also around the time of Bachalo on Uncanny and Steve Skroce's brief Wolverine, both of which were kind of uncharacteristically restrained but great to look at.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 21:37
|
|
|
A Strange Aeon posted:Are you saying you're meh to all the other names you list as well? Hanselman in particular I feel is doing super funny and dark stuff. I just could never get into Hanselman mainly because I’m not into mean storytelling and I found the M,M&O strips repetitive. How Wonderful is right, I totally forgot about Fife (and DeForge and Dalrymple could be on the same group), the only thing I don’t dig about him was his early decision to make Copra as hard to find as possible. I think it’s on Image now, or at least it has digital editions so I’m gonna read it after I finish Suicide Squad (I hit a wall with the Janus Directive crossover with all the spy books from the 80’s).
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 21:43
|
|
|
Vincent posted:Actively avoid rather than “meh”. Except for Stokoe. I kind of admired his early very DIY distribution model but I can also see how it could be an enormous pain in the rear end for somebody else and I'm definitely glad his work is getting a wider audience now. DeForge and Dalrymple do rule too but I'm interested in how they fit under the same umbrella as all those other people. Dalrymple in particular I think reminds me more of like, James Sturm or Guy Davis, that really fine scratchy style.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 21:55
|
|
|
How Wonderful! posted:Oh hell yeah, such a neglected run. Just gorgeous all the way through. I believe that was also around the time of Bachalo on Uncanny and Steve Skroce's brief Wolverine, both of which were kind of uncharacteristically restrained but great to look at. I'm still salty that Skroce did four issues of Wolverine and then hosed off to work in Hollywood for a while.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 22:31
|
|
|
I love Marra and Scioli. I don’t care if they’re riffing on a style that others have done (Langriff and Kirby, respectively), because their work is unique for the current era. If there were dozens of people drawing in Kirby’s blocky super expressive style I’d maybe not think so highly of Scioli, but there aren’t. If there were dozens of people drawing comics in the style of New York City Outlaws, maybe I’d be sick of Marra. But there aren’t. I really liked All Time Comics. Fiffe also rules, but man he needs to up his promotion game. Copra is way too good to be relegated to the sidelines. He’s at like 3k sales with the Image run, that’s terrible. Needs to take a page from Piskor and hire a publicist or something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
How Wonderful! posted:I kind of admired his early very DIY distribution model but I can also see how it could be an enormous pain in the rear end for somebody else and I'm definitely glad his work is getting a wider audience now. DeForge and Dalrymple do rule too but I'm interested in how they fit under the same umbrella as all those other people. Dalrymple in particular I think reminds me more of like, James Sturm or Guy Davis, that really fine scratchy style. Oh, I wasn't grouping them stylistically, more like how they came up on the scene relatively close to each other.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2020 06:14
|
|
|
posted in the DC thread, but oh my https://twitter.com/THR/status/1230965015924092929
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2020 22:25
|
|
|
Barry Convex posted:posted in the DC thread, but oh my https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIdRJlzERo
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2020 22:41
|
|
|
I definitely see DiDio as largely responsible for the missteps that drove pre-New 52 DC into the ground, and for the subsequent missteps that drove the New 52 into the ground over the next few years (for a good few years, you couldn't go a month or so without a creator quitting a previously announced/solicited book due to heavy editorial meddling), but his record since Rebirth has been a lot more mixed, I guess? looking forward to hearing more about what precipitated this, and what this means for the 5G plan
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2020 23:00
|
|
|
Barry Convex posted:posted in the DC thread, but oh my I hate to be one of those comic book nerds who reacts with malicious glee when a perceived villain gets the boot (seriously, I'm even trying to be kind to Rob Liefeld but he makes it really hard), but he shouldn't let the door hit him in the rear end on the way out. I think I've posted about this before but the one time I met Dan DiDio he physically accosted me; grabbed me from behind by the shoulders and started shaking me. It was super weird and super uncomfortable. And speaking of super weird and super uncomfortable, I'm wrapping up the Extreme Sacrifice crossover! New Men #10 - Well, if there was a book that I was looking forward to the least, this is it. There's pretty much zero chance this book does not make me angry. The New Men went, "Whelp! Nothing we can do!" after seeing Dash's adult baby teleport away and are flying back to Seattle from Washington DC. Half the team got to DC by using Exit's teleport portals but I guess they just like to use airlines. At the airport, they're attacked by Crypt who is looking for the baby and he kills generic cyborg soldier Khyber, a guy who I thought was a minor character since he hasn't been seen since the previous storyline ended. Superspeedster Dash finds a cab so she can get Youngblood's help against him. Besides having whatever weapon the artist of a given issue decides to draw, Crypt can absorb power from Rape's gem and send it back at him. The Order of the Knights show up to save the New Men and they have Exit teleport everyone to Youngblood headquarters, just to make it clear how poorly thought out the rest of the plot points in this issue were. Over in subplot land, a college student who accidentally hurt one of her classmates is being hunted for having the Nu Gene. She agrees to seek the New Men's help because "There's nothing keeping me here." Enjoy that student loan debt without a degree. Oh good, this comic is telling telling me rape is hard on the rapist. And Dash is mildly put off by having her rapist stick around her. Team Youngblood #17 - The cover tells me this is part seven of eight. The clever among you might notice that this is actually part six, and the event checklist also lists it as part six. Page one reveals what The Gathering is. What monumental event is it that The Order of the Knights are pursuing? It's... getting all of the surviving Extreme Studios "heroes" together in the same room. Yeah, that really required the definite article and people talking about it in mysterious ways. Anyway, the guy who is Literally Just Cable is Shaft's father. Also, the bionic left arm and shoulder have mysteriously vanished and been replaced with flesh and blood, so maybe Marvel's lawyers did finally take notice of the white haired guy with a bionic left arm and glowing bionic left eye who wears a blue pouched vest and no shirt while carrying an enormous gun. Crypt busts in starts fighting with the assembled heroes. He also says that he "pissed down Napoleon's throat" at Waterloo, so there's that. Dash's son interrupts the fight having picked up a spandex suit and jacket somewhere and calling himself "the Newborn". He takes Reign's gem which he says "forced [him] upon mother." And all of the twenty-two year guys staffing Extreme Studios go, "I don't see what's so wrong with this plot." The Newborn tries to fight Crypt with the gem, but we've already learned that doesn't work so Crypt takes the gem which consumes the Newborn. Crypt then goes, "After all this and he dies within seconds? Time could have been better spent, don't you think?" Sentinel's replacement blows himself up after a grand total of two appearances and the resulting explosion seems to kill all the heroes who were there. Crypt is fine, however, and now Prophet and Kirby have arrived since it's their turn to fight this guy. Prophet #10 - Panel one of this issue tells me that Crypt has impaled all of the people around the Youngblood compound and set the place on fire. All we saw of his arrive in the previous part was Crypt crashing through a wall, so that's a bit of an escalation immediately. Crypt knows all about Prophet and Kirby, has some of Kirby's equipment, and is a time traveling demon. I wonder if he could have some ties? Kirby charges Crypt instead of telling Prophet what he's worked out about the guy, and is killed instantly. This enrages Prophet so much that he takes out his lightsabre and hacks away at Crypt. But it turns out that Crypt is Prophet from the future and how can Prophet kill himself?! The answer is with Crypt's own axe. With Crypt beheaded, some of the Youngblood characters come around just in time to see Demon Lord Chapel shows up. Meanwhile, Omen has cloned Prophet so I guess it doesn't really matter that Crypt was Prophet. The double page spread as Prophet arrives is amazing in it's cliched awfulness. Though all of the Youngblood members have been defeated and are lying in a pile of rubble, across the entire two pages there's one of them that is sprawled out seductively with her clothing shredded. She's positively Land-esque in the posing and expression. There's four sideways double page spreads in this issue which really makes it peak Extreme house style. This is the final issue of Prophet. However, it immediately re-launches with a new number one. The more things change... Extreme Sacrifice Epilogue #1 - Rob Liefeld penciled this one himself, so he had the opening and closing of the crossover. The art in this one is fine. I mean, it's not good, but Liefeld really is typically the best of the artists at his studio. Think about that, won't you? This one is is an issue long fight between giant demon Chapel and everyone else. Rapist hears his kid in his head and takes the gem back so he can perform an "Extreme sacrifice", self-immolating to revive the Newborn. Youngblood's boss reveals himself to be Lucifer and gets into a hand-to-hand fight with Demon Lord Chapel. A younger, fitter looking Supreme suddenly appears out of nowhere only to get immediately blasted away again after one page. And finally the fight is resolved by the Newborn having Lucifer shoot him with fire which then hits Chapel. Rapist and Chapel come back to life and everyone lives happily ever after. There's an one page epilogue for each comic that was in the crossover to break down their new status quo. Brigade is getting a new team because it's important to keep Brigade going. Youngblood might be getting shut down. The New Men need a new headquarters and nothing will be the same. Prophet goes off on his own. Supreme is falling through time after being blasted. Bloodstrike is keeping on bloodstriking. As pointless as this comic was, it's exactly as stupid and pointless as the conclusion of 99% of other major comics crossovers. I'm reading it and going, "Man this is bad, but it's pretty much on the exact same level as any given X-book crossover in the 90's other than Age of Apocalypse." This is a comic rife with incident and none of them really matter with even the titular "Extreme Sacrifice" getting undone. It's damning with faint praise, but Extreme Sacrifice is just as good as [shuffles through piles of bad crossovers] The X-Tinction Agenda.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 01:54
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/heythisisbrian/status/1230971833995988992 My last few posts have been kinda grumpy, so I'm gonna post about something I like. The art in Dr. Strange and The Sorceress Supreme was spectacular. Even with the change in artists, every issue had something to make you go "woah".
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 02:10
|
|
|
Anyone know about AWA studios? Some new creator owned joint thing. A bunch of people I don’t care about... and two Kaare Andrews books.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 04:45
|
|
|
Wait wait wait. IMAGE was so creatively bankrupt they did "Xmen" and called them Nu Men? With a Nu gene?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 05:32
|
|
|
What I got from that DiDio article is that there's gonna be another DC universe reset? Did Doomsday clock finish yet?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 05:59
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:Wait wait wait. IMAGE was so creatively bankrupt they did "Xmen" and called them Nu Men? With a Nu gene? And the villain of the crossover where they were introduced was literally Magneto. Most of the team books put out by Image at this point were X-Men with the serial numbers filed off (the same way that 90% of team books from about 1981 on were), New Men is just the most blatant.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 06:15
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:What I got from that DiDio article is that there's gonna be another DC universe reset? Finished almost two months ago, the last issue was actually really good overall
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 06:57
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:Wait wait wait. IMAGE was so creatively bankrupt they did "Xmen" and called them Nu Men? With a Nu gene? It will never stop being hilarious to me that obvious Deathstroke ripoff Deadpool is infinitely more popular than Deadpool, and once Rob Liefeld got away with that poo poo, why do you think anyone involved in Image would stop?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 07:05
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:Did Doomsday clock finish yet? It ended up being okay as a DC event designed to tinker with their continuity (in the vein of Infinite Crisis or Zero Hour). The Watchmen stuff didn't work at all though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 09:17
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:It did. well, aside from the fact that it doesn’t really align with broader DC continuity at all, aside from using the Legion character designs from the current Bendis reboot in the last issue. though I guess we’ll see if Death Metal and the Generations one-shots change that
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 17:40
|
|
|
Started getting ads on the bottom of my screen today while browsing the forums on my phone. Has this happened with anyone else?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:07
|
|
|
Open Marriage Night posted:Started getting ads on the bottom of my screen today while browsing the forums on my phone. Has this happened with anyone else? In the awful app?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:21
|
|
|
No. Just regular safari on IPhone. Been browsing this way for years, and never had a problem.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:26
|
|
|
Open Marriage Night posted:No. Just regular safari on IPhone. Been browsing this way for years, and never had a problem. Well I can't help you with that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:28
|
|
|
There's a bad ads thread in QCS that's blowing up right now. Everyone's getting them apparently, even if you have No-Ads.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:42
|
|
|
Yeah, I started getting ads today, browsing in Chrome on my Windows laptop.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2020 22:45
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:It did.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2020 00:26
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:Also had no idea what Manhatten's powers actually were (time travel is not one of them). Him having time powers actually had been established a couple years prior to Doomsday Clock in the mini series they gave him during Before Watchmen
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2020 00:29
|
|
|
It was wrong then, too!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2020 00:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:55 |
|
|
Wait, how can Dr. Manhattan have time travel powers? That doesn't make any sense.
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2020 00:47
|
|