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Random Stranger posted:DC Universe has the couple of revival books from about a decade ago and the Static cartoon, but none of the Milestone comics. I won't be surprised if there's licensing hang ups there. didnt mcduffies wife sue dc over milestone a year or two back? i seem to have avgue recollections about something like that
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Mar 4, 2020 15:28
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Pastry of the Year posted:I have always loved the designs of the X-O suits, so I was eager to actually read the source material, and man, Aric is nearly impossible to like as a protagonist. Phew. Yeah, I found the actual X-O comics super off-putting as a kid just because the protagonist was so aggressively unpleasant. I loved the art though and I remember trying to figure out how to just like, take in the art without reading the bubbles. quote:After it came out that Gerard Jones was actually guilty - something I did not want to believe, as I'd liked a lot of his writing, and several people in the business who knew him came forward to defend him (until he admitted guilt) - I went back and re-read Prime with the specific intention of looking for red flags and oh man, once you know they're there, it is occasionally a troubling read. I think a smarter observer and better writer could do a fascinating dive into that run through that lens but I can also see no one actually wanting to subject themselves to it, too. I think that would descend into wallowing pretty quickly-- a lot of what's really disturbing about the run in retrospect is apparent from the get-go and I feel like a thorough combing over of the series would very quickly become depressing. I'd sort of be interested in reading such an essay but I'd never ever want to volunteer to steep myself in the series long enough to write it.
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Mar 4, 2020 16:32
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Pastry of the Year posted:I used this order (like a modern recipe blog, you have to scroll through a ton of nonsense to get to the content you're actually looking for) very recently, since all I'd read of early Valiant was, like, the first five or six issues of Archer & Armstrong (which I remembered liking a lot) and, like, an issue of Rai and the Future Force that I honestly have no idea how I came to have in my collection. Honestly with Aric I always just figured him to have had some rather severe mental handicaps(possibly from bonding with an Alien suit of armor that was never meant to be used with a human physiology), cause he was written more like a caveman than someone from the late Iron Age, even accounting for cultural differences between his native time period and the present day Though that is probably why the New Valiant version is overall written in a much more antagonistic role from what little I've seen of that version(honestly them not having the Gold Key characters anymore has always completely neutered my interest in that company's output)
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Mar 4, 2020 18:38
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Valiant just bailed out of ECCC and it sounds like the con is going to be a ghost town in general. I think they're all realizing that there's a certain type of nerd who doesn't give a poo poo about getting other people sick.
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Mar 4, 2020 20:32
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Not comics per se but AWP, the major annual small-press conference for fiction and especially poetry which was supposed to be held this week in San Antonio, is by all accounts a wasteland this year, with many of the more notable presses withdrawing entirely. Edit: I don't know why I said "not comics per se." It's not comics at all, but it is printed media, so I don't know.
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Mar 4, 2020 20:44
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This poo poo isn't going away any time soon. I wonder what the con circuit will look like as it spreads.
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Mar 4, 2020 20:47
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Rhyno posted:Valiant just bailed out of ECCC and it sounds like the con is going to be a ghost town in general. I think they're all realizing that there's a certain type of nerd who doesn't give a poo poo about getting other people sick. DC pulled out too.
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Mar 4, 2020 21:22
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I've been looking for word of cases in Chicago as c2e2 was this last weekend and that place is usually a nuts crowd.
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Mar 4, 2020 21:26
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Rhyno posted:Valiant just bailed out of ECCC and it sounds like the con is going to be a ghost town in general. I think they're all realizing that there's a certain type of nerd who doesn't give a poo poo about getting other people sick. https://www.emeraldcitycomiccon.com/RNA/RNA_EmeraldCityComiccon/2020/docs/ECCC-2020-Fan-Refund.pdf ECCC seems to be real reluctant to just let this go.
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Mar 4, 2020 22:06
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Rhyno posted:This poo poo isn't going away any time soon. I wonder what the con circuit will look like as it spreads. Orlando MegaCon is in mid-April, with a great list of guest creators, including John Ostrander's first Florida con appearance. I'm out of town for my big work conference, but get home that Saturday night and was planning to go on the Sunday. Now I'm wondering if either thing will happen. And I was expecting Florida Supercon in Miami Beach would get better since ReedPop took it over, but it's in early May (two months away), and they haven't announced a single comic creator guest yet. That seems really... disorganized? Unprofessional? Then again, it might not matter. Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Mar 4, 2020 |
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Mar 4, 2020 22:10
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I'm almost tempted to go if I can get cheap tickets and there's anyone left I wanna see. Tini Howard and Donnie Cates were advertised as going in the most recent issue of Black Cat and I have all of their Excalibur and Thor if they're actually gonna be there. If it's really a ghost town then it's probably safer than grocery shopping and they'd be happy for the company. I promise not to ask for handshakes.
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Mar 4, 2020 22:14
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id check their twitter first cuz ive seen a lot of creators announcing they are cancelling their appearances as well
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Mar 4, 2020 22:31
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site posted:id check their twitter first cuz ive seen a lot of creators announcing they are cancelling their appearances as well I think I follow them both. I'll look at tickets tomorrow since ECC just announced the refund thing and then double check that they're actually gonna be there. Double check the full list of guests and check their twitters. I also have Kate Leth's first issue of Hellcat, but she was recently complaining about how much of a bath she took canceling her flight on Twitter.
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Mar 4, 2020 22:43
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This dude's keeping a spreadsheet of everyone/thing that's cancelled: https://twitter.com/hypercasey/status/1235022698352263170
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Mar 4, 2020 23:11
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I've got more May 1995 Extreme/Maximum books here. I don't think I'm wrapping up the month with this post just because I want to read something different. Supreme Annual #1 - "Might as well start with the big one. Who did this annual anyway... Plot and pencils by Kieth Giffen?! I'm in!" Giffen may be popping in and out of the Extreme orbit, but he's the best creator to regularly work on the books. He hasn't provided pencils for any of them yet, presumably dedicating that time to his Trencher series under a different Image studio. His Legend of Supreme series that redefined the character and made it clear that Supreme was a monster just wrapped up and I'm okay with this annual being more of that even if it's not the most original idea. Holy poo poo. This was actually a good comic. It was exactly what I wanted to see as a continuation from Giffen's earlier work on Supreme and then stepped up. Plus, it had an artist with storytelling chops, something that's often lacking in these comics. If this was my first Supreme comic I'd run out and pick up the series. And then be really disappointed when they didn't live up to it. Sometime during his wandering among the stars, Supreme comes across a planet sized mining station that's strip mining a world. When Supreme finds an intelligent mineral life on that world, he takes it upon himself to destroy the machine. The machine's owner hires the ultimate killer to extract retribution: an effectively mystical shape shifter who adapts to his enemies and travels the universe as pure thought. Oh, and he's a Nazi that had his body burned apart by Supreme. So cue a big fight between the two as the Nazi thinks he can intimidate Supreme by threatening civilians and Supreme not really caring as he's caught up in self-worshiping religious zealotry. Eventually the Nazi uses his thought form to learn the only thing that can defeat Supreme and turn into that. That ends the fight because the only thing that can stop Supreme (at least in his own mind) is nothing. This is the continuation of the Supreme that thinks he's the god of the Abrahamic religions and spins religious text into his own justifications. He might step in to save those rock people at the beginning but when someone challenges his divinity he doesn't care how many people die. He's a bastard that I want to know what horrible thing he does next. While Superman gone bad is a pretty common trope, leaning into the religious aspects could have given Supreme a distinct flavor. Unfortunately, I suspect I'm at the end of Giffen's version of the character. There's a back up story written by Len Wein and pencils by Shannon Denton. Denton is another minor comics figure who definitely wrote their own Wikipedia entry. It tells the story of Supreme being recruited into the World War II era team The Allies with Super Patriot and Glory. They have a mission to retake a town and cut off the Nazi supply lines and invite Supreme along for the fight. The other heroes do their fighting on the ground and try to get civilians out of the line of fire. Supreme flies up to a passing Nazi bomber, takes its ordinance, and spikes it into the town. He then forces a kiss onto Glory as she's yelling at him for being a war criminal. Supreme flies away and the other heroes decide they're better off without him. This is definitely the same Supreme as Giffen's version. He's not spouting bible verses but the callous indifference to human life is there. The same cruelty. It's a contrast to how the other writers have handled him which was basically "version of Superman who would go out of his way to get taggers spray painting the Hoover dam". Supreme #28 - Time for a compare and contrast with the regular Supreme series. This features a different version of Supreme, though. The Golden Age Kid Supreme is dying after being changed back at the end of the last issue and Supreme has rushed him to a hospital. Supreme has no time for insurance paperwork or anything else, and rushes him into an operating room. The doctor there gives a very measured speech about how ethically he can't prioritize one life over another and he has a patient that's in the middle of having a tumor removed. So Supreme turns on his heat vision and burns the tumors out. The doctors operate and don't know if GAKS will survive which sends actual Supreme out to look for the current Kid Supreme in order to lend out his powers. That kid Supreme is a bit upset about the GAKS trying to drain his life away last issue. Glory comes by to check in and she and Supreme are kicked out by the doctors. Turns out the doctors are cultists who summoned that Blackheart villain from last issue and he's there to take GAKS's heart. The current Kid Supreme has had his own change of heart (heh) and interrupts them leading to a big fight between fire demons, weird cultist doctor, Supreme, and Glory. Kid Supreme's tactic of handing over his power at the last minute saves the day and everybody's happy. Even though it doesn't live up to the high water mark of the annual, I think Supreme has become the best ongoing book in the Extreme Studios line again. It's just a solid superhero book with a little bit of that Extreme edge. The ongoing plot of "Who is this Supreme guy?" is something that works, especially since old Supreme was such a shithead. Is this kinder and gentler Supreme going to go down that same dark path? I don't know but I kind of want to find out. Glory #3 - This seems like a good point to pick up Glory since she's the other hero in the line that's explicitly an homage. I'm hoping this issue has this series find its footing because the first two issues have been weirdly off. Glory and her sidekicks have returned to her apartment where they find a dead cosmetics executive in her bed with one Glory's high heels sticking out of his chest and an arcane symbol scrawled on the wall in his blood. The police arrive moments later and the trio go on the run for the issue. The chase ends when the police suddenly stop being angry and start being passionate. After escaping, they settle in as Rumble, a smart guy who becomes stupid as he grows which I think is the third Image character to have that exact same power set, researches the ancient book and medallion they found with the same symbol. Glory says the magic words that lets her mother talk to her and the goddess Demeter mentions that symbol is how the king of the underworld got her into bed, so that's two Extreme Studios books with mind control rape in them. The revelation comes a moment too late as Rumble accidentally triggers the symbol to open a portal and Glory's father comes through. I'm getting kind of frustrated with Glory because I feel like it should be a better book than it is. The murder that opens the issue is rife with symbolism but the comic just lets it sit there. Glory's sidekicks are unnecessary and don't add anything to the book; you can get the plot to the same place without them and have a better story. I also feel like Glory has been a very reactive character. So far the single thing that she's done without being forced to by circumstance is gone for pizza. She didn't even go to her mother for help on her own, she just muttered, "I wish someone would tell me what's going on," and that let Demeter talk. This kind of reactivity is a pitfall for superhero books since villains are the ones who get to put a plot in motion, but that's usually offset by the hero eventually being proactive to resolve the overarching problem. Three issues in and Glory is a character that's adrift and that's not interesting to read. Okay, that's enough for now. There's three more issues for May and June brings with it another crossover so there's that to look forward to.
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Mar 5, 2020 02:54
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Did they have a Batman equivalent the way they had Supreme for Superman and Glory for Wonder Woman?
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Mar 5, 2020 03:31
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Shadowhawk is like Batman Wolverine. So him?
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Mar 5, 2020 03:55
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FilthyImp posted:Shadowhawk is like Batman Wolverine. So him? That would make Shadowhawk their Dark Claw equivalent 
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Mar 5, 2020 04:24
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FilthyImp posted:Shadowhawk is like Batman Wolverine. So him? If you asked me what early Image character was their Batman it would definitely be Shadowhawk, but in terms of a character who is explicitly a Batman stand-in there isn't anybody. It might be because all of the Extreme Studios versions of characters are more extreme. They've already got a small army of grim avengers running around their team books killing criminals non-stop and another one would be redundant.
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Mar 5, 2020 04:45
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You should totally do a read through of Impact! Comics at some point. It's less than 90 total books I believe.
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Mar 5, 2020 04:52
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In terms of "normalish guy" that hurts people I'd probably say Grifter but I suppose he's like a more Xtreme The Question. Honestly surprised there wasn't some BloodKnight or ShadowBlack or Crusader that was MADE OF SHADOWS AND ANGST AND NEGATIVITY AND FED ON THE FEAAAAARSSSSSS OF VILLAINS Gripweed posted:That would make Shadowhawk their Dark Claw equivalent
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Mar 5, 2020 05:01
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Rhyno posted:You should totally do a read through of Impact! Comics at some point. It's less than 90 total books I believe. I second this. I loved those comics as a young kid. The Comet was awesome and I thought Black Hood was a cool concept.
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Mar 5, 2020 05:18
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I own a complete run of Impact, even the Who's Who series. Totally cheesy stuff these days but I loved it when i was a kid.
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Mar 5, 2020 05:43
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What's a summary of Impact? It doesn't ring a bell for me at all.
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Mar 5, 2020 14:33
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A Strange Aeon posted:What's a summary of Impact? It doesn't ring a bell for me at all. DC licensed the Archie Comics super heroes in 1991. The Shield, Comet, Fly, Jaguar, Black Hood and the WEB. Lasted about a year and a half before all the books were canceled. They tossed together a six issue mini series that was announced as a relaunch but it ended up as a finale.
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Mar 5, 2020 14:45
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I remember the art being very "house style" but the comics were just pure comicy booky fun. A few years back I tried to get all the Comet issues and except for about 5 I mostly did.
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Mar 5, 2020 17:35
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Huh, that sounds like it could be fun. I'm assuming they never made it into trades and now the licensing is an issue?
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Mar 5, 2020 17:42
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A Strange Aeon posted:Huh, that sounds like it could be fun. I'm assuming they never made it into trades and now the licensing is an issue? Yeah, no trades sadly. I hung onto them when I sold off my collection a few years ago. I'd been planning on having them bound but that's not really on the agenda anymore.
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Mar 5, 2020 17:50
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I had a few stray issues of The Fly as a kid and have fond memories of them.
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Mar 5, 2020 21:31
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How Wonderful! posted:I had a few stray issues of The Fly as a kid and have fond memories of them. I'm sure the wonderful Mike Parobeck artwork had a lot to do with that.
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Mar 5, 2020 21:34
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Rhyno posted:I'm sure the wonderful Mike Parobeck artwork had a lot to do with that. You know I had no idea he'd been involved with them until right this second, but that makes so much sense. My strongest memory of them is how bright and solid everything felt, how everything had that wonderful sense of presence he was so great at.
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Mar 5, 2020 21:42
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Rhyno posted:DC licensed the Archie Comics super heroes in 1991. The Shield, Comet, Fly, Jaguar, Black Hood and the WEB. It's always interesting how every couple of years someone tries to revive the Archie Comics superheroes and it basically never goes anywhere every time
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Mar 5, 2020 22:12
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Whatever happened to Mike Diana? Do people remember that case?
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Mar 5, 2020 22:12
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Some of Joe Quesada's earliest work was on Impact Comics. The late Tom Lyle also drew The Comet, plus Parobeck's beautiful art on The Fly.
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Mar 6, 2020 01:01
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Time to finish off May 1995's Extreme books. Brigade #20 - I am so ready for Brigade to be over with. Even this Marv Wolfman retooling has been rough. The first arc of the new Brigade wraps up and nothing interesting happens. We left off with Supreme, Vanguard, Glory, and Shadowhawk having their powers (or lack thereof for Shadowhawk) drained to make Atlantis fly over New York City. So that seems like the perfect time to attack the flying city and remove the power source. The remaining free heroes in the book do just that and then the whole group beats up the identically faced goons to save the day. But the guy who was uniting all the cults on earth is an alien and he's still out there plotting. The group of superheroes decide to stay together and be the new Brigade. I'm wondering if this would be a better comic if it didn't have an absolutely enormous cast. The best bit in the book is Shadowhawk fighting a remote controlled Roman and that has to go for two pages because there's just no room when they have eight heroes hanging around. The lack of an interesting villain doesn't help either. We get a lot of "I sure am going to do something evil!" and not a lot of information on that. The plan was to raise Atlantis and then... well, there is no "and then". They just made Atlantis fly. There's two more issues left and they're both crossovers. So the comic doesn't even get to end on its own terms... Knightmare #4 - Last issue Knightmare went from being a tougher, grimmer Punisher to being a wacky comedy in the middle of the issue. I have no idea what this issue is going to be like. The yakuza people are making their next plan to try to kill the mafia boss and the boss's daughter unleashes Thrillkill, a terrifying threat greater than any that anyone can possibly image. A horror so terrible it's compared to the atomic bomb and Pandora's box. An unstoppable force that will lay waste to the world if they dare release it. Thrillkill turns out to be a guy with a knife who talks in painfully long run on sentences about how much he likes gore. Knightmare has to get a pep talk to pull him out of his funk from getting kicked off a semi roof last issue. He's convinced to go back into action by his cornerman (lots of boxing metaphors here). The mafia boss is getting released from the hospital after treatment and Thrillkill is waiting outside the hospital. Knightmare shows up as well and Thrillkill kicks his rear end. And then Thrillkill goes down by being shot in the back and I'm wondering why I had to get four pages telling me how dangerous he was. That leaves Knightmare to face down the man who killed his family as he goes into his final issue. I guess this issue makes Knightmare into Extreme Studio's Batman mainly because he has a Joker. He's leaning way more into Daredevil at the start of this issue and the first two issues were just the Punisher. Maybe Knightmare is their version of Azrael-Batman... Thrillkill's monologue (he'd have to talk to someone for it to be dialog  ) is awful. It's thirty to forty words in a balloon, four or five balloons per page, and none of it matters or means anything. I don't care if it is an anticlimax, I'm hoping he's dead so I don't have to read any more of that poo poo. New Men #14 - Once more into the poisoned book. Let's see if they continue their streak of rape apologia. The New Men that were kidnapped to the future while dressed only in their underwear are falling to their doom from a flying citadel above a desert. As they all cling to Byrd on the way down, Kodiak rips Bootleg's bra off leading to "comedy" that Bootleg should definitely talk to HR about. On the ground, they're attacked by Groot who is a guy with acid breathe and not the Monster from Planet X. In the fight Groot rips Bootleg's top off just to continue the theme. They're suddenly assisted by Wildstar, a hero from a different group of Image books and I've never read any of his comics. Wildstar confirms for them that they're in an apocalyptic future and he doesn't know anything about time travel. Kodiak has gone missing during this and the other three head off to find him, leaving the corpses of Tom Server and Crow T. Robot behind them. Meanwhile in the present, Rapist and Pilot suddenly realize that the Khyber who has been helping them deal with the evil gem that definitely made Rapist do bad things is a fake. That Khyber steals the evil gem. And on earth another version of Rapist is dying on the floor of the New Men's cabin and the vampire who has been hanging around in the background tries to help for about three seconds before deciding to have a snack. The time traveling guys who snatched the New Men say, "Yeah, the whole women's lib thing carried on into this decade," when Dash is fighting against them. Now I know they're villains and you shouldn't attribute lovely things the bad guys do to the writer's personal opinions, but given how misogynistic this book has been and the frat house attitude of Extreme Studios in general that's an awfully fishy line. The comic actually opens with a flashback to the New Men getting kidnapped which just raises more questions since Dash is on the phone talking with her family for the first time since she joined the team. They apparently have no idea she's on a superhero team or any knowledge of the things that have happened to her. And she tells her parents that "they help people", something that the New Men have pretty explicitly not been doing as every storyline has been about them getting attacked.
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Mar 6, 2020 03:10
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Is there not a current Atomic Robo thread? I just finished The Nicodemus Job and it was great!
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Mar 6, 2020 16:02
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Emerald City Comic Con postponed until summer https://twitter.com/katiecandraw/status/1235999085179604992?s=19
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Mar 6, 2020 19:46
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El Gallinero Gros posted:Whatever happened to Mike Diana? Do people remember that case? He just got off probation this year.
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Mar 6, 2020 22:36
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Signal boosting: if you know someone who shipped items ahead of themselves in anticipation of setting up a booth at ECCC next weekend, there are a number of local efforts that are designed to help independent creators recover their gear and/or financial losses. So far, it looks like this is the person who'd be your best, first port of call: https://twitter.com/RowanRowden/status/1236000636199530496
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Mar 6, 2020 22:50
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This is everything to the Maximum Extreme from June 1995. Brigade #21 - The cover of this issue has the team mourning Shadowhawk who seems to have died of AIDS in his own book. I didn't read that comic even back in the day, so I don't have a connection there. It's similar to Brigade where most of the characters met him briefly once at the end of the previous issue and some of them hadn't met him at all. It makes putting a dying character in the book a strange choice since it results in everyone talking about how great he was and how deep their friendship was despite none of them knowing him. A villain named Haunt is after Seahawk for an event that occurred twenty years ago; Seahawk would have been about three years old at that time. Haunt attacks an oil rig that Seahawk owns with a xenomorph and it kills everyone there. Then Haunt attacks Troll and Glory on their way to a wake for Shadowhawk. At the wake, everyone got drunk and so aren't ready when the alien attacks but they drive it off anyway. Four members of Brigade have the powers of flight, super strength, and invulnerability. Three of those four also don't need air when they're underwater. Of the remaining members, one is super strong and tough, the other can fly. And I'm wondering why would you even set up a team of superheroes this way. I don't drink at all and I strongly suspect that Marv Wolfman doesn't either. He has Supreme get roaring drunk in fifteen minutes and characters get hangovers an hour after they start drinking. Obviously my experience here is minimal, but I'm pretty sure a guy as large as Supreme would have a tough time getting that drunk that quickly and I know it takes longer than that for alcohol to break down. One more issue of Brigade to go and I'll be glad when it's dead and buried. This has been one of the consistently worst books in the line and it hasn't helped that it's been pretty close to monthly. Glory #4 - So I have no idea what happened in this story. There's some contradictory things, some bits that seem to be missing, and I just don't know what it's supposed to have been. I thought the guy coming through the portal at the end of last issue was Glory's dad, but it was just a big demon guy. Big demon guy just grabs Glory's sidekicks and goes back through the portal and Glory throws the book, which she knows is "The Book of Love" despite it never getting mentioned as that before, through after them. Glory heads back to her apartment to get her supernatural fighting equipment and arrives back in the city to find it in the throws of a giant "orgy": this orgy consisting of people kind of milling around and a traffic jam. In the other dimension, the sidekicks are attacked by monsters until the big one uses the book to open a portal back to Glory's apartment. The catguy stays behind while the big guy goes through. Glory is confronted in her apartment by the perfume company exec and he's been possessed. Possession is something that's fixed with Glory's sword which kills monsters with no effort on her part. Big guy and Glory open another portal and go back to catguy. The monsters there merge together to form the big demon guy, Glory zaps them with the sword, and that fixed everything forever. So the book was causing all the problems? But they still have the magic book with them so won't the problems continue? And they haven't done anything to actually stop the problems that exist. And who was the giant demon guy because he wasn't sent by Glory's dad, he was just there. Why didn't Glory take her superhero equipment with her when she had already been attacked by supernatural forces that night? Why does anything in this comic happen? Operation: Knightstrike #2 - Time for some pro-Taliban, definitely culturally sensitive comics! Arriving at the Pakistani border, our team of extremely generic mercenary types are met by the guides, a sexy woman and her son, who will help them figure out where Kabul is. Chapel doesn't take to having a woman around. They're attacked by some stereotype bandits what they kill effortlessly. Then the Soviets attack with helicopters that they take down. Chapel's life is saved by the woman and he decides that maybe dames aren't so bad after all. Finally, they arrive at Kabul to save a captured American soldier. All of these characters are so generic that I cannot tell them apart. Occasionally there's a few panels of one of them doing something and I'm going, "Wait, which one is that again?" I can tell Chapel apart since he has the stupid skull face paint thing and Battlestone is the one with powers, the rest of them might as well not even be there. The action is just as uninteresting as the characters. It's a problem that occurs through the entire line where characters are not allowed to be challenged. They can't be hurt or have difficulty, they just effortlessly beat down their foes in a few "dramatic" panels. As a reader I'm supposed to be reveling in how badass these guys are and instead it comes across like they're murder machines. There are exceptions to this and they've become more common over time. But I still see it in the majority of the comics that I'm reading. Bloodstrike: Assassin #1 - I thought I'd have a bigger gap than this between the last issue of Bloodstrike and the relaunch. But here we go again. Bloodstrike's former boss has been hiding out in Hong Kong next to a building with a giant "Akira" sign on top of it since all places in Asia are the same. The new head of the assassination group of the US government tries to take him out by blowing up the top several floors of the building he's in with a missile strike. They also attack Cabbot who has become a pool hustler in the wake of the events of the missing issues of Bloodstrike. And Cabbot's operators, one of whom has suddenly picked up an over the top southern accent, are also attacked by the government. The attacks bring them all back together. The assassin reboot of Bloodstrike was the least interesting part of that book and it looks like this comic is continuing that. Bloodstrike beats up thugs and there's nothing more to it. I often wonder in media about these covert teams do something publicly that would kill dozens of people and would cause a decade worth of investigations. There should be some pretty extreme real world consequences that never occur. The missile attack that opened the book should have the government of the UK and Hong Kong up in arms and calling for blood. This isn't something that can be covered up because the villains are powerful: the top of a skyscraper exploded in the middle of one of the most populous cities on earth. Everyone would be demanding answers. Avengelyn #2 - Avengelyn showers the demon blood off of her and gets some new clothes. The basement of the church also happens to have a crusader's sword so that's where she'll pick up a new weapon . She makes a date with the priest who found her and at dinner he's kidnapped by a demon. Avengelyn goes to rescue him and gets soundly beaten, but demon gets called back by Belial since it wasn't supposed to kill her. The evil plan is revealed as the churches Belial has been buying form a pentagram (you know, like any five points where there aren't three on a line do) so they can be used to open a gate to hell. This series isn't thrilling me but I thought I would be completely repulsed and it's not doing that either. They've dispensed with the secret identity plot pretty much immediately as the priest gets to see the demon/angel fight; I had been concerned that there would be some "I can't tell him my dreadful secret" melodrama running through the book. This is the only book that has a Liefeld credit for the month and it's a story credit. I'm not sure he's even providing covers for books any more... Warchild #3 - Page two of this comic had me go, "What the gently caress are you doing?" In panels drawn as long shots, Merlyn is standing as normally. Well, as normally as a woman can stand in these books. In the medium group shot between those panels, however, she's suddenly down on her hands and knees sticking her rear end out. It makes me wonder if Chip Yaep, penciler of this issue, was an early adopter of the same art techniques that Greg Land would make prominent. The fight has finally moved out of the museum and up onto the roof where the robot knight, the wizard, and the swordsman named Sword get knocked off and hang on the ledge. Sword has a flashback to the wizard when Sword was a baby and the wizard was an old man arranging to have him raised by a king. The flashback gives Sword the emotional strength to keep hanging on. Then they're all knocked off the ledge and the robot knight flies which he couldn't do before because [handwave]. Sword wakes up in a featureless void with a giant rock monster that he kills by telling his sword take its soul and then Sword boasts about how awesome he was to do that. Sword falls off another ledge and lands in the throne room of the black knight who catches the sword (the object, not guy) and gives a monologue that makes absolutely no sense. quote:I know your thoughts, young Sword -- your puny mind is a whirlpool of confusion! Everything you thought you knew -- wrong. Everyone you believed you could trust -- gone. I don't know why everything he thought he knew could be wrong, he went through a portal and wound up someplace else which is something that he had done before. There was no betrayal of trust, he just doesn't know where his friends are. There's no sudden amazing revelation that rocks his world, the bad guy is just a tough bad guy. It's writing in the Extreme/Maximum style where that's the kind of thing that's a big villain moment so they put it in even though it doesn't make any sense in the context of their story. There's a caption that reads "Time passes" that is at the start of a flashback. So, time literally passed in the opposite direction for that caption which gave me a bit of a headache trying to figure out what was happening. There's one more issue of this boring, meandering comic. It'll have to wait for the August post, though. Maximum Hero #1 - This was a give away that was packed in with Wizard competitor Hero Illustrated #25. Hero Illustrated lasted twenty-six issues so feel free to read into that what you want. This is one of those give away books that has material in it intended to introduce characters and get people to pick up those books. Before anyone asks, the Maximum Press content of that issue of Hero Illustrated is just a puff piece that describes the comics that Maximum intends to publish. It does contain the hilarious line that Liefeld had to create a second company to publish things because Image was "too corporate" and that the Maximum Press books, which are indistinguishable for any of the other mostly generic books that Image was putting out at the time, were "too quirky" for them. The magazine also gave Avengelyn a bad review for being too religious (I don't think there was any actual religious content) and really liked the just starting Astro City. Turns out this just contains ads, not short stories like the earlier give aways. There were a few reprinted pages from earlier books, too. The most interesting thing in it is the characters who will never appear again ("Mud"?). One more thing from flipping through this issue of Hero Illustrated: if anyone wanted a forgotten comic book line for a deep dive that would also torment them, Tekno Comics was a thing that existed that nobody has thought about in twenty years... Team Youngblood #19 - Dutch is on the run after apparently killing the hostage Youngblood went in to rescue last issue. Battlestone as the new head of Youngblood demands asnwer that Shaft can't give him. Cougar and Vogue go to check out Dutch's cabin where they find the threats he had been receiving in a subplot that was completely abandoned and then discover a mysterious something in his back yard that is not revealed. Dutch himself is breaking into a skyscraper where he dramatically finds a woman that we've never seen before. Meanwhile, the aliens are after Combat again. A footnote tells me he was freed in Team Youngblood #13, but you can't fool me. I read that book, he just mysteriously appeared again with a footnote that promised an explanation eventually. There's another alien arriving, as well. Youngblood picks that one up and Battlestone sends a team up to intercept thinking they're Combat's people who are trying to get him back. So the guy who was running an illegal superhero team to take down the US government is now the chief government stooge. I'd complain harder about that except Battlestone has been brainwashed. I still don't think I'd put him in charge of the team, though. Is it weird that this is becoming one of the better comics in the line? That issue had a lot of forward momentum in the plotting and it feels like some of the events are on a collision course. It's not a great book, and I still don't get half the characters (like who Vogue is supposed to be). And the Admiral Kh'rrk stuff which started in early issues of Youngblood is still hanging around unresolved. Maybe I'm just happy that the plotting doesn't make me want to hurt myself. Supreme #29 - This issue kicks off the Supreme Apocalypse cross over as it's part one of five. Now I've been trying to keep the crossover stuff together, but I've placed this book at the end of the post. Why would that be? Well this one gets messy. Darkthorn, the Not Darkseid who was the villain of a Youngblood comic a couple of years ago and then popped up a while back to say that he was enacting his evil plan and then completely vanished again, is being tortured to death by the even evilled D'arcangel. Yes, that's really the name they went with and yes he does have giant metalic wings that are drawn like they were designed by Walt Simonson. Turns out they were doing this because Darkthorn is trying to charge up a machine that's powered by torture and the cults on Earth he had been using were going too slow. On earth, Supreme and Kid Supreme burst in on one of those cults as they sacrifice a woman. As they're beating up the guys in robes, the victim gets up off the alter, takes the knife out of her chest, and sticks Supreme in the back with it. That starts supercharging Darkthorn's machine and Kid Supreme can't get the knife out. A Supreme continues to be the best of the line at the moment and this might be the best crossover set up they've had so far. It's basic, but in a way that works. They've got a problem to deal with (Supreme's life is getting sucked out to power up an invasion of earth, and he's gone bad as part of the process), understandable stakes, and a reasonable way to pull the characters in so they don't just show up and go "I'm here now too!" I'm not expecting greatness here, but considering other Extreme crossovers have been on about the level of lower tier X-book crossover having something that's just a decent adventure story will be an improvement. This storyline seems to be retconing Prophet's storyline again. You might remember that the first time Prophet and the Berzerkers appeared, they were time travelers. Then in the next issue they were from another dimension where Darkthorn and his disciples came from. Then the disciples were terminators being invented right that second on earth and would time travel from the future. Then they were being built for Darkthorn by the guy who would rule earth in the future at least until the time traveling demons took over. And now it's all back to being other dimensional again including the Dr. Wells that made Supreme and Prophet. I wouldn't mind abandoning this stuff so much except that every single time these characters appear the story changes entirely. Supreme Apocalypse continues in Prophet #5 according to the last page of this comic. "But RS," you say, "You haven't mentioned Prophet in months. Not since the previous series ended in that last crossover." And you're right. House ads in the months leading up to that crossover told me that a new Prophet ongoing was coming and it sure seems like it was supposed to have started right then which would mean issue five would be coming out right at this time. That sent me on a bit of a search. Was I somehow missing Prophet when I did my checks for what books were published in a given month? Would I have to do a Prophet catch up post? Nope! Turns out that the new Prophet series doesn't start until August 1995. Assuming that they keep a monthly schedule (big assumption) then that continuation won't show up until January. However, Extreme has a solution for that. The Prophet part of the crossover was published in Prophet Annual #1. So that's where I have to go for the next part... except Prophet Annual #1 is a September book and the rest of the crossover parts are July books. Now for a bit of a reveal on my methods and a quick lesson on magazine distribution. I had trouble finding exact ship dates on these comics. I'm sure that if I wanted to dedicate way more time than I already am I could work out exactly which shipment these books went out with and place everything in the exact right order. I'm already doing too much work with this, though, so I take the lazy person's way out and just use cover dates. The thing is, cover dates aren't there for people to know when a given comic shipped, they tell retailers when they can return unsold magazines for full credit. In the days of newsstand distribution, a comic or magazine with an October cover date might arrive in August and then on October first the retailer could return whatever they had leftover. By the nineties with comics this is a bit of a holdover. Cover dates had been allowed to shift closer to the actual ship date but were still often a month off. Marvel winds up just syncing up the dates eventually in the late 90's and dates go away for a lot of comics as newsstand distribution is no longer a factor. For annuals, they were often sent out with a cover date even further out since they could be there for a few months. So just for that comic I did a little bit of research and confirmed that it shipped in the same month as the other July 1995 crossover parts. That was needlessly confusing. (BTW, the best selling comics of that month according to Diamond are a list of "Seriously? You're kidding, right?" with Dawn and justifiably forgotten Sovereign Seven placing close to the top. Marvel books are missing because this was that brief period where Marvel decided to do their own distribution, but Marvel was in the dumpster at that point so I don't think it would have affected much.) Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Mar 7, 2020 |
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Mar 7, 2020 19:18
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