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8one6 posted:Is there not a current Atomic Robo thread? I just finished The Nicodemus Job and it was great! The thread closed down forever ago. Maybe I can make a new one. I am behind on Real Science Adventures.
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Mar 8, 2020 15:05
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I think July 1995 might be the biggest month that Extreme/Maximum ever have. Even without the extra comic that had to get inserted because there was a data problem, there's sixteen books for the month. (Why are there seventeen listed in this post then? I'll get there.) There's two new series from Maximum, the end of four series, plus four more that never actually get off the ground, so that's a net gain for me. The house ads keep giving me heart attacks, though, with their advertising for later issues in series I haven't been reading, then I go and check and the series doesn't start for months. Nice to know the delays are still happening even now. I have to mention this because it's absurd. My searches that I'm using to keep track of which books got released ran into an issue where the comics.org database didn't have correct information for a few months. So I started writing this post with a list of nine comics to talk about. Then I discovered one by one that there were holes in the database. Team Youngblood #20 - The early 20's must be an unlucky time for Extreme studios books because the only one of them to survive past them is Supreme. The letter page this time told me that the next issue would be the last. Wait for the punchline in a minute. Shaft finds out from Youngblood's government man that they're shutting down the Youngblood training program, the one that gives people powers and then sets them up as a paramilitary force. Then the government guy is called into a meeting with Battlestone and Future Badrock who was on the detected spaceship from last issue. The Youngblood members who were sent into space, however, were all captured by Combat's people. Shaft walks in on Battlestone apparently killing one of the Youngblood trainies and attacks; Battlestone easily beats him and then tells Shaft that everything is going according to his plan. Future Badrock takes off to rescue the captured Youngblood members and that's where things end with to be concluded. The weirdest thing in this comic to me is that there were two pages that used a nine panel grid. I think the average number of panels per page in these books is around three when you account for all the sideways double page splashes, so seeing a dense layout is already weird. But a regular layout like that with consistent panel sizes laid out in neat rows and columns is out of fashion in 1995. It was actually a good use of that structure as Roger Cruz used some nice viewpoints and pacing in it. Now for the big twist: the next issue of Team Youngblood is in March 1996 and it's a middle part of a crossover. It's not even the last issue: Team Youngblood goes to unlucky issue #22 which is where Brigade, Bloodstrike, and New Men all cut off. As far as I know, this storyline is never picked up, something that seems to be happening a lot with these books lately. If one were inclined to read between the lines, you might suspect that things were falling back into chaos at the totally separate and distinct entities Extreme Studios and Maximum Press. Operation: Knightstrike #3 - The cover tells me "Enter: Bloodstrike" and I'm going, "This is set in 1986. Cabbot wasn't brainwashed into being Bloodstrike until last year." Different Bloodstrike or just another case of Extreme not really caring about their own characters? It could go either way, really. The team is slinking through the alleys of Kabul and there's twenty Soviets on the roofs above them. Chapel fires off a flare to distract them, then the Soviets fill the alley with bullets. The smoke clears and "The shattered rooftop tells the Soviets all they need to know." And I'm glad it told someone what they needed to know because it doesn't make any sense that soldiers in an alley would somehow destroy a rooftop. I have no idea what happened in this sequence, it's just "Oh, they somehow got half the guys when you weren't looking. Don't worry about how, it just happened." Then the "heroes" burst in a door to the building with the roof removed and open fire on the soldiers that they couldn't see from that position, and then teleport back to the streets. It's an absurdly confusing sequence for something that should be straightforward. Then five Soviet super soldiers drop in on them. After two of the Soviets are killed, the Soviet commander says that they've all died and gasses the American soldiers. They're captured where Battlestone sees that the captured soldier was Cabbot and we have a cliffhanger. Cabbot's not dressed as Bloodstrike, so I guess the cover was a lie. I don't know why the Soviets are so desperate to get the NuGene from this one American soldier. Don't they have their own NuGene positive citizens? Where is Not Colossus and Not Magick? This is the last issue of Operation: Knightstrike that was published. Yes, it ends on a cliffhanger and as far as I can tell it's never resolved. There is another Knightstrike comic published by Extreme Studios in 1996, but that's set in the present. We'll put this one down as another abandoned Extreme Studios plot. Knightmare #5 - The miniseries finally comes to an end. Will all the plot threads be resolved and brought to a satisfying conclusion? The only way you could think that would be if you haven't been paying attention. Thrillkill, the crazy guy that was shot in the back last issue, gets up because getting shot in the back doesn't stop him. He has a healing factor. So this is an issue long fight between Knightmare and Thrillkill. Thrillkill can heal, has superfast reflexes, is crazy, and has stabbed the mafia boss that Knightmare wants to kill. Somewhere between issues, Knightmare has decided he's saving the mafia boss, or at least trying to help him. When Knightmare can't beat Thrillkill with short blades due to his speed, he pulls out an even shorter blade and just cuts his vocal cords out. And I go, "What?" That doesn't stop the jagged toothed mime so Knightmare uses a lightpost to electrocute Thrillkill and that stops him ending the miniseries right there. So, Knightmare doesn't kill his boss. Doesn't kill the guy who led the attack on his family. The plot line with the boss's daughter and the yakuza trying to kill the boss just disappears. Nothing is resolved and as far as I can tell Knightmare never gets another series. And good riddance. It's an amateurish problem to set up a plotline for a limited series and then keep wandering off from it. I feels like this was intended to be an ongoing series that got cut short, but I recall the advertisements saying it was a limited series. Warcry #1 - But flip Knightmare #5 over and you have Warcry #1. Do we have another hit from Extreme Studios? In a South American temple, a guy is looting some relics for a mysterious person. He finds what he was looking for and is heading back to the plane, but that's when a mysterious man in armor attacks. Mystery man is carrying a sword and cuts through the guards. The guy with the artifacts reaches the plane where someone with a bazooka tries to take out the armored man. Armored guy emerges from the explosion as a jaguar, however the plane has already left leaving this to be continued. This is the one and only appearance of this character who I have to assume was named Warcry, though I can't be certain. He's a creation of Danny Miki who's done barely anything in comics though he did have about a dozen issues of Ultimate X-Men. I can't say that there's anything here that makes me go, "I need to see more of this Warcry fellow!" Badrock Annual #1 - "Hey, Random Stranger," you say, "Where's that Badrock ongoing series that Rob Liefeld started months ago? Surely he wouldn't draw one issue of a new ongoing and then abandon it." And to that I tell you, "Wait and see." But to tide you over, how about an annual? The annual is a team-up between Badrock and Freak Force, a group from Erik Larsen's side of the Image-verse who I know nothing about. Badrock got knocked across the country during a villain fight and Freak Force goes out to get the villain for the bounty on him. There's some grumpy feelings so Badrock and large strong guy Barbaric go to a convenient condemned neighborhood to flex their muscles and try to knock over buildings. After collapsing one, it's revealed that there's a lot of people around in those condemned buildings so maybe just tearing them down was a bad idea. A villain makes them run wild and hit each other a lot with things laying around the area before they come to their senses and go, "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this." The two find families huddled in the condemned structures and Badrock goes, "They look so sick and poor, like ghosts!" The villain who makes people aggressive sets them off again and this time their fight makes the news. A bunch of other Erik Larsen characters show up to stop the fight and all get the whammy put on them as well. One of them sneaks off though and finds the plot: the villains force the poor people to make them work in a sweatshop. With the villains identified, the one that has mind control is knocked out and everything wraps up. So this was a pretty standard "bunch of heroes fight each other" comic. There's a goofy tone to the whole thing that doesn't really land because it tries to mix in being serious about the exploitation of undocumented immigrants (and not really having a clue how that works, anyway) with stupid guys hitting each other. The reason Barbaric and Badrock want to flex in the first place is that they're both trying to impress a girl, and she winds up being impressed. There was one good bit in this comic. Barbaric hits Badrock with a car, then suddenly realizes that the car belonged to somebody. So the two of them stop their fight as Barbaric leaves a note on the wrecked car. The notepad and pen were in one of the 90's character's many pouches marking one of the few times anyone has ever actually taken anything out of one of those pouches. Newmen #15-16 - The database on comics.org had improperly formatted information for the date on these issues so I missed issue 15 the previous month. Unfortunately that means I have to do a two parter here. At least they're part of the same story arc. On board the Newmen's orbiting space fortress, we learn that Proctor's power is healing. He has to heal himself to keep moving as Khyber, cyborg assassin, hunts him down. Meanwhile in the future, the abducted Newmen are still looking for Kodiak. A guy with Yoda's head says, "I know Kodiak, let me take you to him!" and it's not even a trap; the bear guy is hanging out in a bar/Newmen museum with Pasttime, a guy who appeared in a few early issues of the series. Pasttime got to the future the long way. The Newmen finally get some clothes so they're not running around in their underwear. One of the villains explains to his underlings what the actual plot of the entire series is, and is definitely not another retcon when they realized that subplots haven't been going anywhere. Subplots that have been going on for a full year and been so incidental that I haven't bothered mentioning them. Dominion, the evil Newman from the future, had pods with bodies in them that they transfered themselves into new bodies. The demon guy from much earlier in the series stole all these pods and went back in time. The guy with elemental powers from the first issue was hired by a different evil former Newman to get the pods and he screwed it up and a researcher recovered them. The pods are spawning monsters that are killing people which the police are investigating, previously thinking Rapist was behind it but now going, "Hey, these slimy pods might have something to do with the slimy corpses we keep finding." What any of this has to do with anything, I don't know. Turns out that Dominion also time traveled to his past before he abducted the Newmen from further in his past to this point in his past. I guess because the writer suddenly realized he couldn't have a thousand year old Newman as a villain and have characters who aged normally still be around. Dominion is going back in time to get his pods. The distant future that the Newmen wound up in is the terrifying year of 2012 and there was an alien invasion in between. A deus ex machina suddenly appears and offers to send the NewMen back to their correct time. That ends issue #15. In 1995, Dominion is at the Newmen's cabin and has already captured the time traveling group. Dominion's plan is to take over the body of their past self and I'm wondering if they can just do a body snatch and the timeline isn't going to get hosed up by doing this, why not just pick one and go with it? In space and in between issues, Khyber has destroyed the robot Proctor and taken the mind control gem. Khyber got away in between issues but now returns to finish off the space group. On earth, the vampire that's been lurking around the Newmen's house knows Dominion. He also saved Rapist rather than eat him despite failing to save him the last time we saw that plotline. The vampire flips the circuit breaker and we find out that Dominion's thugs who "thoroughly searched the house" apparently didn't bother checking the basement where two people were just sitting around in the open. The Newmen escape and defeat Dominion. Kodiak wants to kill the villain but the rest won't let him. On the space station, the mind control gem overwhelms Khyber and the two explode in an anticlimax. More subplots occur: Dr. Strange has kidnapped a woman and is exposing her to one of the weird pods. Aliens are watching a missile hit them. Back in the future, Dominion winds up in a glass case and is unhappy about it. For those trying to work out Dominion's identity, Dominion in this comic comes to the conclusion that he was never a woman, already knows he wasn't Kodiak, so that just leaves Byrd. Unless he's Rapist. Or Exit. Or one of the old Newmen. Or a Newman who hasn't joined yet. Also, he has black energy blasts but that's not really a tell when he's jumped bodies that many times. I am wondering why if he has the ability to body snatch and just taking a body and killing the rest isn't going to gently caress up the timeline, why Dominion isn't just picking one and going with it. He's stolen a lot of bodies over the centuries so at this point one has to be as good as any other to him. Violator vs. Badrock #3 - I was kind of lukewarm on the first two issues of this miniseries. They were fine but nothing that got me excited. Now that the characters are all in hell, do things improve? Hell, yeah they do.  With the laboratory in hell, Badrock has to fend off the inhabitants while also preventing the scientists who wanted to go to hell and exploit some resources from getting into trouble. They just have to hold out until the dying angel who powered the hell teleporter runs out of energy. Violator is still hiding in the building as the rest of his family shows up. They get into a sibling argument and then Badrock makes the mistake of getting into it which turns all of them against him. The issue ends with the head scientist running off and the angel almost out of power. With this issue, Alan Moore leans into the absurdity of his story and just goes nuts. This is a very silly book with the weird family arguments from the demons whose names all start with V and scientists both fascinated with being in hell and not really sure what to do. I feel like this was what Moore wanted to get to and he had to trudge through the first two issues of setup to get here. Now that things have really stepped up I want to get to that last issue. There's an incest joke from one of Violator's siblings and I went, "Oh yeah, Moore is doing Lost Girls at the same time." Bloodstrike: Assassin #2 - Solomon, the new head of the government assassination bureau thinks that his predecessor was taken down because he made Bloodstrike's own identity a mystery even to himself. I don't remember that actually making a different myself, Gunter got taken down by some guys showing up and giving him a brain zap. But why start keeping a story consistent now? Bloodstrike smashes into the bridge of the evil helicarrier and runs out of bullets in a couple of seconds. He switches over to lightsabres and the rest of the generic armored thugs oblige him by doing the same. Rather than kill the guy he's there to kill, Bloodstrike lets him run around a bit. That gives Solomon an opportunity to hire more super-mercs: a trio named Murder, Death, and Kill. While they're doing a number on Bloodstrike off panel, his handlers get worried that he's going to die and ram this ship into the helicarrier. There isn't a whole lot to say about this comic. This is like the early Extreme books where it's one long, contextless fight scene that doesn't actually matter. Bloodstrike pulls out laser swords because that's cool. Then he abandons laser swords for a big rifle because that's cool. Then he fights jetpacks around because that's cool. Okay, none of it is actually cool, but if you're fourteen year old who wants pictures of tough guys being tough then you might think it's cool. Prophet Annual #1 - Supreme Apocalypse, the storyline where we get the Extreme version of Kirby's Fourth World, continues in this stand-in for the Prophet series that has yet to launch. The cover doesn't tell you that it's part of the crossover because why would anything be simple. And holy poo poo, Rob Liefeld actually penciled some pages. He didn't do the whole book, but eleven pages of it are his, comprising the beginning and end of the story. Shannon Denton and Joe Bennett penciled the rest of the issue so it seems very likely that someone went, "Oh poo poo, we need to have part two of this crossover out now!" Prophet is just going crazy on top of a pile of faceless, featureless bodies when a couple of the Berzerkers arrive: strong stone guy Grey and psionic woman Psistorm. Psistorm brings him around and they head off to On earth, the guy who was organizing all the cults in Brigade is contacted by the guy who was sacrificing people for Darkthorn to start mass sacrifices and charge up Darkthorn's invasion portal. The cult organizer guy agrees to it after a bit of posturing about how the guy who was from a different book's subplots doesn't know the forces at work. Then they attack New York City where the attack is actually pretty incompetent with the powered armor guys being overwhelmed a lot. Two gang members with horrifyingly stereotypical accents even steal their equipment. Darkthorn's monologuing has given Prophet enough time to start a data transfer and this gives him enough strength fight Supreme. It probably doesn't hurt that Supreme is extremely weakened, though Supreme is still certain of his supremacy. Kid Supreme gets an assist helping free the imprisoned Berzerkers and the group flees back to earth for help. Prophet, on the other hand, gets cut off from his power source and Supreme puts him down. This is Prophet's big return to comics and it's not really great for him. Even in a line full of uninteresting characters, Prophet is especially boring. He's effectively a murder robot that has bible verse captions and that's the sum total of his personality. And in this comic he starts out crazy, does a lot of standing around in one location until it's time to fight, and then gets beaten up. I appreciate that he was allowed to fail, but at the same time his entire plan was to scream loudly and rush at Supreme. If there was something that told me that Prophet was trying to overcome his challenges in any other way than slamming into them face first over and over again, he might actually start having something interesting about him. Glory #5 - I'm not sure Jo Duffy and Mike Deodato actually know what's going on with Supreme. This issue opens with a recap of the events in the first part of the crossover and they depict Supreme carrying mjollnir and talk about how he's acting as a symbol of heroism for people. This would be the same Supreme who as the new version murdered two dozen people in Tokyo less than a week ago. While wrapping things up with the police from the last adventure, Glory finds out that people are being killed at the Washington Monument by cultists. She thought the mass killings which are ongoing across the country at that moment were just a hoax because she's a terrible superhero. Twelve hours later when she arrives at the monument (I'm going by the fact that it was early morning at the police station and late night when she got to the monument), Glory decides that she can't handle everyone without losing some of the sacrificial victims so she calls in Brigade. Brigade has been standing around watching people getting murdered on television because they're terrible superheroes. There's a big brawl at the monument where all the cultists get beaten. The cult leader has a baby, though, and he's going to stab it so Glory grabs a nearby cop and throws it into the cult leader. The baby is caught and saved, of course. Meanwhile on D'Khay, Prophet is exposed to the Is it really that hard to find reference pictures? I know it was more complicated in 1995 than it is today, but Deodato draws the national mall as being in the middle of a vast woodlands stretching out to the horizon. No Potomac River or roads or tidal basin or anything else that's right there and should be in the image. I don't demand accuracy but the most identifiable location in Washington DC should not be this off. Brigade #22 - Yes, the final issue. No more of the comic that has no reason to exist. Let's get this over with. The battle at the National Mall rages as Brigade tries to stop the army from coming through the portal. We get an explation of Darkthorn's plan: he wants to be worshiped by the people of earth and to eat a bunch of souls. Roman takes a shot that was intended for Glory as she fights Prophet. Supreme smashes up the dem--- wait, what? Supreme was stabbed in the chest in the last part of the crossover. Even if he wasn't, he was mind controlled by Darkthorn. And even if he wasn't, he was on the wrong planet. No, there is no explanation for why Supreme is with Brigade in this comic. Anyway, the giant portal powered by all of Supreme's power and a bunch of human sacrifices gets closed because Troll and Glory throw an electric cable into it. That takes out most of the army, but the On what I think has to be D'khay, a member of the Berzerkers rescues Dr. Wells from a prison and they get Prophet's I had the start to a paragraph about some weird typos I found in this issue but you know what? gently caress it. This comic was completely off the rails. I don't want to think about it any more. I give up. Supreme #30 - We get a totally different version of Darkthorn's plans on page one of this comic: he's not going to be worshiped or harvest souls, he's just going to destroy the planet. Also, the baby from the issue of Glory is Supreme gave Prophet his black box in Brigade #22 (no, he definitely did not) and it's making Prophet super powerful. Supreme has his own black box that he got in that issue (no, he definitely did not) to charge him up so he can fight Darkthorn himself. They shut down the portal by draining it's power into Supreme, then go back to fight. Turns out Darkthorn is the next generation of Supreme and can use Supreme's black box. Wells reverses the polarity and it drains him. The building explodes and only Supreme emerges from the rubble. Meanwhile on earth, everyone is hanging out. The baby shoots the We got more of Dr. Wells's name this issue. He's H. Garnett Wells. You know, just in case it wasn't obvious enough already. On one page they explicitly call Darkthorn's minions "parademons". It's like that panel of Dr. Octopus calling Spider-Man "Superman" except less funny. For what started out as a promising crossover, this thing collapsed fast and hard. It's pretty clear there was little coordination between creators or editorial oversight to keep things on track. It's a total mess by the time the Glory part is over, the Brigade part actively hurts, and the conclusion is addressing plotlines that didn't exist before. That was everything Extreme for July 1995, so now it's time to go over to everything Maximum for that month. Avengelyne #3 - This brings the first Avengelyne series to a close. However, as the most popular character out of Maximum Press, she doesn't even skip a month. There's at least one Avengelyne book a month until I reach my planned ending for this project. Peter, the hot priest sidekick for Avengelyne, has come up with a way of dealing with the demon buying up churches. He's going to perform an exorcism, but it requires painting a cross with Jesus's blood. Then once the right bible verse is read near it, the blood cross will come to life to attack the demon. And I'm really wishing William Blatty had used that insane version in his book and movies. They don't have any of Jesus's blood lying around (and are surprisingly unfamiliar with the miracle of transubstantiation despite being a catholic priest though I don't know if they think it gets transubstatiated back to wine if you puke up Jesus's blood), so they plan to use Avengelyne's since she's God's daughter. At this point I'm pretty sure the theology of this book is messed up. Avengelyne and Peter head to Belial's headquarters and locate a passage to his underground throne room which is actually kind of dull as far as demonic throne rooms go. He's got a flaming chair in the middle of a big cave and a chasm and that's it. They're attacked by Gabriel who fell and became a demon. Avengelyne dispatches him in an especially ambiguous way that I can't figure out. The demon woman who attacked them last issue also turns up and gets beheaded in the fight. Finally Belial comes back saying that Avengelyne and Peter should have been excommunicated by the demon woman by that point and I'm going, "I didn't know she was the pope!" Someone, it's not clear who, puppets the demon woman's head because they want to prank Belial for some reason. Belial demands she renounce God and Avengelyne fakes it for a few moments to set up the exorcism. And then when the magic words have been said, she grabs her sword and just stabs Belial, making the whole exorcism thing completely pointless. The day is saved and Avengelyne settles in at the church. The whole climax was confusing with an exorcism that did nothing and had the characters talk about some power that was coming. If there was some power, it had no visible effect. But that also meant that there wasn't a proper fight. If Belial was getting pulled into hell and dragging someone with him, then the stabbing would make a kind of dramatic sense. The splash page is one of the most ridiculous butt and boob shots I think I've seen in comics. Avengelyne could easily occupy half the spots in the top ten most ridiculous list and this one outdoes itself.  Black Flag #4 - This is the issue that brings an end to the Black Flag storyline which I'm positive will wrap everything up nicely. There was a kickstarter to revive the book, I haven't bothered checking to see how it did because I know I wouldn't read it. The big purple gorilla is fighting Not Abomination in the sewer as Sniper is dying after being gutted by the creature. The captions inform me that the monster is a vampire Atlantean, something I'd never know from context since he hasn't done anything vampire-like. The vampire fish-man uses his paralytic scorpion tail to stop the gorilla. Then a perfectly fine Sniper shoots the monster with his plasma rifle and kills it with the well known vampire weakness. The perfectly fine gorilla and the perfectly fine Sniper go off to deal with the hostage crisis mentioned last issue. At the hostage crisis, Geisha approaches one of the terrorists. She's wearing lingerie, of course. That also gives me some captions that I absolutely have to share. Each caption is in a separate box on this double page sideways spread of Geisha doing a boobs and butt pose (don't look too closely at how those body parts connect, of course). quote:He doesn't remember her from the employee round-up. Geisha then shoots the guy in the head and turns off her "holodisguide". So she didn't need to do that whole thing to begin with, she could have just shot him. At the vault, the terrorist has the eyeball stabbed through with a knife and uses it on a retina scanner. This doesn't work because the knife blocks the view of the retina. Sorry, I have that wrong, it works perfectly because the writer didn't know what a retina is. The magician member of Black Flag is already in the vault and the terrorist turns into a demon for the fight. Elsewhere, Rascal who apparently has a tail and the power to open portals is shoving terrorists through to other universes so that wraps them up. The demon magician fight goes outside where Sniper has an attack helicopter waiting. He shoots up the demon that teleports away taking the MacGuffin with him. The end. The last page tells me to join them in July for Maximum Zero month. Well, this is obviously July and Black Flag #0 also has a July cover date so look slightly downward for that. Feel free to count how many other zero issues came out this month, though. Annoyingly, the whole book is printed sideways. I want to know how Liefeld got this fetish for sideways comics and why he's spreading it to the people under him. The kids who were a big part of the first two issues have completely vanished from the comic. Also, the kid was special because he could teleport to other realities. Rascal also has this power. So why are there two people with such significance in the book and then nothing is done with them? There was a subplot about Sniper being concerned about his rival killing him that never went anywhere. At least Geisha actually did something, though given that text I kind of wish she hadn't. Black Flag #0 - We had the end of the story, so now we're back the beginning. This is something that Extreme is doing quite a bit at the moment with issue zeroes coming for several books, including ones where the series ends and then we get issue zero. I find out who Rascal is right at the start. He's an alien with shapeshifting powers who stole a portal gun. Rather than use the portal gun to escape, the pacifist uses his big swords to cut someone's head off. He also never shapeshifts because that would be too expensive to put in a comic. Geisha is rescuing people from a toy factory where the giant robot toys software has infected military prototypes and the toys are going wild. Somehow I think that was supposed to be the other way around. Geisha finally does something in the series as she pulls out a lightsabre and chops up robots. Her father is introducing shapeshifting clothes as a new toy when he's attacked by the training hall mountain mobsters, aka the "dojo yama yakuza". Geisha arrives just in time to see the army of ninjas kill her father. Later, she sees an ad for Black Flag as a military organization, so I guess she isn't the founder/owner of it. Sniper is being trained by a western shaolin monk (seriously, the comic explicitly calls the character out as such). He had been a soldier fighting a future war in robot armor when he found that his dead comrade's bodies were being used to smuggle drugs. Sniper went after the people who were doing it and was nearly killed. Found by this monk, he's getting trained in the same techniques. And that's the end. Nothing resolved or ever will be. Cybrid #1 - Hey, remember Cybrid? The answer to that is no because he appeared in a couple of those Extreme Studios preview books that are at this point almost two years old. Well, the guy who was in a graveyard and beat up a couple of ninjas is back. He's moved over to Maximum Press because a comic about a cyborg soldier that kills a bunch of people is way too weird for those stuffed suits at Image Comics. The credits page tell me that this is the comic that Rob Liefeld worked on this month, providing "plot". It also features a Buddha and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this comic doesn't reflect Buddhist principles. At a rundown temple in woods of Malibu, California, a bunch of ninjas attack a man meditating before what an enormous Buddha statue would look like to someone who knows absolutely nothing about Buddhism. Jonah, the meditating man, is a cool cyborg with a claw hand, guns, and ninja training. The ninjas want him to come back and he kills all of them except one which he lets go. There's also some unidentified guy not associated with either of them on the roof. The ninjas have tattoo than when they're all placed together make a picture, well except the one that Jonah let go, I guess, since the picture is complete. Meanwhile, an evil CEO is taking a meeting as he's free climbing. He wants Jonah back, too, and is mad at the ninjas for not doing a great job. The ninjas say they're manipulating evil CEO, though. And that's the end of the series. The letter page tells me this is a one-shot, but it very clearly is not since it's spinning up a bunch of plotlines with unidentified characters. Okay, there's an issue zero that's published in either 1996 or 1997. I don't know for sure since I'm having trouble finding information on it. It ties into a comic published mid-1996 but the dates I'm finding online put it in 1997. I'm going to have to get that sorted out eventually (and I wonder why it takes me so long to write these posts). Even without his own series, Cybrid will return as he becomes part of an anthology series that Maximum Press starts up soon. Hilariously, evil CEO is planning to blackmail Vladimir Putin with scandals over women to get him to agree to an arms deal. I'm sure that's going to work. The only distinguishing thing in this comic is that there's a bunch of ninjas in it. And they're not very good ninjas, too, which makes this pretty boring. Battlestar Galactica #1 - I have to confess, I barely remember the original Battlestar Galactica. I remember the great theme music, the launch sequences for the fighters was really cool, and the Cylons had a pretty great design with that swinging eye. Ask me to describe the plot of a single episode of the show and I wouldn't have a chance. Even as a kid, the show felt underwhelming to me. But here's Rob Liefeld turning a show he liked when he was ten years old into a new comic. Five years (I'm not using their time words) after the fleet set off. Commander Adama is dying of a neurological disease and on his deathbed is waiting for news of Apollo. Apollo returns with something significant: super powerful aliens have given the fleet better engines so that they'll be able to complete their trip to earth. Adama promotes Apollo and gives him control of the fleet, which seems kind of odd given the military structure and Apollo is Adama's son. Fifteen years later, the fleet is still on their way because the new engines are too stressful. The Cylons have gotten those same new engines and have conquered a lot of the galaxy with them. The fleet is being devastated by a Cylon attack so Apollo makes the decision to jump all the way to earth. Everybody makes it but they aren't certain that it's earth or that the people they were following ever got there so survey missions are sent out. The group with Starbuck and Apollo's son detect energy in central Africa where they find an ancient structure with writing they understand on it. There aren't any people, though. Then they're attacked by a tyrannosaurus and Apollo's son gets eaten. Meanwhile some evil guy gets in touch with the Cylons for the big cliffhanger. I think I'm running into the problem I have with a lot of licensed books: if I'm not familiar with the property going in, they have no desire to reach out to me. I get the impression that there's a lot of references to the television show here that I'm just not picking up. On the other hand, this series feels a bit ahead of its time as a continuation of a property outside of comics. I feel like it was the mid-2000's when licensed comics went from being other adventures of familiar characters to an expansion of the property. The Star Wars comics, to use a very direct parallel, weren't allowed to wander very far from what existed in the movies. This book starts with the premise, "Galactica gets where they wanted to go. Now what?" and I can see that working for fans.
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Mar 9, 2020 00:09
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How do you contact the people who make Batman? I have a million-dollar Batman idea. It could save the DC Cinematic Universe. Bruce Wayne vs Bertie Wooster
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Mar 9, 2020 14:52
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Gripweed posted:How do you contact the people who make Batman? I have a million-dollar Batman idea. It could save the DC Cinematic Universe. Bruce Wayne vs Bertie Wooster Not gonna lie, I'd read it.
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Mar 9, 2020 18:40
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Try tweeting at them I hear this is a good way to get hired
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Mar 9, 2020 18:41
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Gripweed posted:How do you contact the people who make Batman? I have a million-dollar Batman idea. It could save the DC Cinematic Universe. Bruce Wayne vs Bertie Wooster Does it start with "Fourth" and end with "Joker"? If not they're not interested. So that's a no.
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Mar 9, 2020 20:05
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Gripweed posted:How do you contact the people who make Batman? I have a million-dollar Batman idea. It could save the DC Cinematic Universe. Bruce Wayne vs Bertie Wooster Start a kickstarter for a product featuring Batman. They’ll find you.
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Mar 9, 2020 20:14
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Endless Mike posted:Try tweeting at them I hear this is a good way to get hired works for chip
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Mar 9, 2020 20:20
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X-O posted:Does it start with "Fourth" and end with "Joker"? If not they're not interested. So that's a no. I do have a pitch for a Forth programming Joker who uses his knowledge of obsolete programming languages to plan his crimes. Is that close enough?
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Mar 9, 2020 23:24
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Random Stranger posted:I do have a pitch for a Forth programming Joker who uses his knowledge of obsolete programming languages to plan his crimes. Is that close enough? It's an extra joker and a pun. You're hired.
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Mar 9, 2020 23:30
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Skwirl posted:It's an extra joker and a pun. You're hired. Bonus point if it's actually Bruce Wayne who is the Joker this time!
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Mar 10, 2020 01:29
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X-O posted:Bonus point if it's actually Bruce Wayne who is the Joker this time! We're already publishing a book where Bruce Wayne is the Joker. And it's a huge hit, so we clearly need another one, you're hired.
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Mar 10, 2020 01:33
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What if bruce had a twin but it was stolen by the Court of Jesters and he went mad and became the Joker. The 3 Jokers is going to lean i to that supersanity thing and just be like "every time he's reborn he's effectively a new person" right?
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Mar 10, 2020 01:43
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FilthyImp posted:What if bruce had a twin but it was stolen by the Court of Jesters and he went mad and became the Joker. I'm seriously hoping it's actually three people and they have annual meetings about how to "grow the brand." I'm also probably not going to read it and my entire opinion of it will be based on what other people here say about it.
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Mar 10, 2020 01:47
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FilthyImp posted:What if bruce had a twin but it was stolen by the Court of Jesters and he went mad and became the Joker. They actually already did "Batman and Joker are secretly brothers" over in some Elseworlds book with Lobo back in the 90's
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Mar 10, 2020 05:38
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I was reading PAD's "Genis-Vell" run on Captain Marvel yesterday and as god is my witness, I only just now got the pun in Marlo Chandler's name, and I read his entire Hulk run 
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Mar 10, 2020 17:24
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Pastry of the Year posted:I was reading PAD's "Genis-Vell" run on Captain Marvel yesterday and as god is my witness, I only just now got the pun in Marlo Chandler's name, and I read his entire Hulk run I should think it'd be more obvious if she was in or near any kind of detective story. As it is, it's basically an Easter egg for anyone who happens to know that David's into them.
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Mar 10, 2020 19:30
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Son of a BI--
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Mar 10, 2020 23:26
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Don't really want to get into details but if you have a dad who you love very much call him up and tell him so. It will probably make his day.
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Mar 11, 2020 00:44
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Just when I thought that things were coming to an end, Extreme Studios launches a pile of new books in August 1995 with seven number one issues. I'm just going to have to take it slow as I go through these. Bloodpool #1 - This is the Youngblood spinoff which is coming out of the incomplete storyline over at Team Youngblood. The trainees of Youngblood have been let go so this is supposed to be their adventures. Rubble is an orange rock guy with an irregular stone pattern covering his body and a pronounced forehead. Didelphis is a possum man. Fusion is a guy who can merge people with other materials. There's four others but they're not given names or demonstrate any abilities. They were the Bloodpool and they've been fired. They're not happy about it but on the way out the door, Shaft lets them take some equipment and they set up a superhero team of their own because they're characters in a comic book. On the way out the door with their technically stolen car, they crash into guys kidnapping a rich person. After taking them out, they don't call the police because there will be a scandal despite the fact that a bunch of people just beat up a bunch of gunmen around a traffic accident that has blocked up rush hour traffic. They do take a check from the millionaire and that's enough to resolve everything. Patrick Lee's art is impressively bad. It's in the "Draw as many lines as possible" style and every panel is so busy it's impossible to understand. The proportions of the figures are disturbing and inconsistent. The panel structure in incoherent and there's some amazing poor choices in it. I have to point out that all of the Bloodpool members are minors, so Youngblood is definitely recruiting child soldiers for the US government. Avengelyne Swimsuit Special #1 - Remember when comic book companies did swimsuit specials? There's no plot to this one but I wanted to mention it but it's very on brand for Extreme/Maximum. About a third of the very generic pin up style pictures in this book are photos of the model Avengelyne is based on. There's nothing fun or goofy or charming here, it's just Avengelyne in "sexy" poses while wearing swimsuits. Even in 1995 there were better options for teens looking for something. Bloodwulf Summer Special #1 - Oh man, the cover has Bloodwulf and Supreme shouting "Great taste!" and "Less filling!" at each other. Those ads were five years old at this point just in case you wanted to know how cutting edge the humor is going to be. Kieth Giffen plotted this but he didn't do the script, so I'm going to guess that he isn't responsible for the cover dialog. Some space bad guys have kidnapped Bloodwulf's nephew and they try to negotiate with his aunt to get him to back off. Bloodwulf sneaks up on them in her hair and starts searching vehicles in the space bar parking lot. The Old Supreme is just hanging out in space and heads through a customs checkpoint to the deja vu sector with predictable jokes. Bloodwulf blows up all the cars killing everyone and getting his aunt murderously angry at him. Supreme kills his aunt and then Bloodwulf starts fighting with him. Eventually the fight ends. It could be this evening, but none of the jokes in this comic landed for me. There's a reoccurring bit with space crickets adding sound effects to panels, for example, but they're not there at moments when it should just be a funny lack of response. The deju vu sector jokes are painful. The deju vu sector jokes are painful. That's literally how they do it throughout the book. This really is the last appearance of Bloodwulf and I couldn't be happier. Warmed over Lobo is just the worst.
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Mar 11, 2020 02:04
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Random Stranger posted:Bloodpool #1 I hope this series ends with them all being struck by lightning and a voice from on high saying "fightin's done."
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Mar 11, 2020 03:21
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I'm going to see how many books from Extreme Studios August 1995 line up I can get through tonight. I'm probably not going to finish it out, but I want to get enough done that I have a chance of finishing it tomorrow. Crypt #1 - Remember Crypt? Probably not because he was stupid. He's the version of Prophet from the future where Demon Lord Chapel took over the world. This was after the future where the terminators that Prophet was created to fight took over the world and definitely not part of the terminators being from another dimension which was last month's crossover. Anyway, he gets his own limited series which definitely will not contradict the already extremely contradictory backstory of this character. Judas, bird woman from the terminator future who came back in time to kill Prophet, was working with Crypt despite the fact that he is also Prophet. So when Crypt died she brought a vessel to the ruins of Youngblood headquarters to collect his essence. Then she goes to the place where they're developing terminators who back to not being from another dimension; the bad guys have a Prophet clone there that has all of the original's abilities which is strange since Prophet is a One Man Army Corps and his abilities come from a satellite beaming power into him. Judas releases the essence around the clone and Crypt lives again. But there's another Prophet who is from the future, has his own cult, and wants to kill them both. Judas's backstory gets changed so now she wasn't held in a prison camp in the future and that's why she hates the terminators and Omen, the guy who built them. Instead, she was brainwashed by Omen either after she came back in time or before she went back in time. The events are badly jumbled here and not even because time travel is involved. There's so many figures standing in white voids in this comic. It's actually a bit distracting how often that's used and it doesn't look good here. I guess it's a step above having panel borders and filling it in with a gradient like they usually do, but I'm not really sure about that. I'm glad this one is only two issues because I'm positive it would make my head explode if I had to try to unscramble the plot longer than that. I am wondering if this actually is a two issue miniseries or if this is a case of only two issues being published. Prophet #1 - I might as well jump right over to this one with the relaunch of the Prophet series. The house ads that were appearing ten months ago announced that Prophet would have his first ongoing series after Extreme Sacrifice, but there was never any sign that the first series was supposed to be limited. Ten issues would be a weird count for that anyway. This "ongoing" doesn't even last as long as the previous series... The story in this comic is by noted white supremacist and Q-Anon promoter Chuck Dixon. Still, I'm sure there won't be anything horrible on the very first page. That would just be silly. quote:2029. Whelp. Setting aside the questionable use of an archaic term (which has implications with the Japanese fascist movement, too) and "yankee samurai", what the hell does "elevate the moon's wealth" mean? Meanwhile in 1995, Prophet is wandering a frozen mountain pass while carrying a broadsword. He's bothered by all the memories he absorbed from Crypt. I honestly don't remember that happening since I think Prophet just beheaded him and went on his way but that was around 80 disjointed comics ago so I'm willing to let it pass. Prophet is attacked by a robot and remembers dozens of lives which makes him pass out. When Prophet comes to, he's in a base built by Dr. Wells approximately 600 million years before. A hologram of Prophet's buddy Kirby appears to tell him that everything he knows is wrong and then sends Prophet back in time to meet Dr. Wells in that same base when it was new. Over at the terminator design facility, Omen is monitoring the timestream and detects a version of himself traveling through time to kill him. Omen takes it out pretty easily because apparently he's like Hitler where he's become extremely good at killing time travelers. I have to say, just going "gently caress it, it's time travel and nothing is right" sure is away to explain the fact that there's no consistent story. Berzerkers #1 - But if Prophet is saying everything is time travel, then what about the Extreme Fourth World? That's being covered in this book which I don't know anything about. Dan Fraga abandoned his own book Blag Flag to do this one. Black Flag was a hot mess so I don't know if that's a net good or not. The book opens with a double page spread of the characters and full profiles on each of them. These profiles are so unintentionally goofy I'm tempted to post them but it's a lot of text to transcribe. I'm going to assume that it was intended to be the back of their trading cards. The characters are Greylore, the large stone guy; Psi-Storm, a woman with mind powers; Hatchet, a woman with an axe; Cross, generic tough guy who uses guns and is the leader; and Wildmane who is just Wolverine. The actual story starts with the Berzerkers captured and in Blackrot prison where they're being tortured to death. Tyrus who has Princess Leia (in slave bikini, of course), Princess Jasmine, and another woman who must be a princess from something waiting on him. Tyrus wants to find a dimensional portal on the prison planet which will let him rule things and he's sending his underling Mowabb, who is just Lobo, out to find it. Tyrus has the ability to make his own clothes disappear between panels for no good reason. In the cells with the Berzerkers is Dio and he has a map to the portal. So all the Berzerkers break out of prison in the most perfunctory prison break ever. Good god, this comic is overwritten. A real "Why use one word when you can use ten?" situation. That would be bad but it's also the laziest scifi I've seen in a while. It reminds me of the worst excesses of pulp SF of the early 20th century before better writers started getting shaken out of the genre. The breakout scene takes all of three pages because the rest of the book was filled with needless set up. It's effectively a montage of breaking everyone out of the enormous prison and then killing dozens of guards. Of course, a proper montage would be better structured than this was... By the way, if you guessed that an Extreme Studio book that has female characters being held prisoner and tortured has some creepy sexual overtones to those sequences, then you've definitely been paying attention. Psi-Storm in particular gets a sleazy scene with a guard leering at her and trying to make her "more compliant". A few more people being drawn into this book that definitely should have gotten a nice cease-and-desist letter: Cobra Commander, Snake Eyes, and Cable. These aren't slightly off model versions of these characters that Fraga drew into the comic, they are explicitly those characters. Cobra Commander even has the Cobra logo on his outfit. Chapel #1 - Hey, you know what other Image comic number one issue was released in August 1995? Astro City. But it wasn't an Extreme Studio book so I just have to stare longingly at one of the best issues of one of the best series while I read another comic about a tough guy with guns. Check out this cover so you know what I'm getting into:  It's like "K. J." has had perspective explained to them, but never actually seen it. Nobody is sure who "K. J." is, by the way. Chapel is having a therapy session when his voicemail watch tells him that one of his old army buddies needs his help with the disappearance of his daughter. So naturally Chapel leaves immediately for New Orleans. Just outside the city, he arrives at two burning cars that were in an accident and a woman who was in one of them asks him for a ride to the gas station. It was trick to ambush people passing by and I guess to practice some kind of amateur theater while waiting since they have a long talk about their car accident when no one's around. Maybe they're method hijackers. Anyway, Chapel executes all of them. Then he gets to the crumbling gothic cathedral where his friend lives and move goons show up. These are also mowed down. Chapel's buddy is about to shoot him in the back but can't and so his friend gets shot in the back instead. Chapel doesn't know what's going on, but he keeps seeing Demon Lord Chapel in his mind's eye. The art in this comic is such an ugly mess. It's Calvin Irving who seems to think that you can just fill a page up with bullet casings and that's enough to define an action scene. The people who keep attacking Chapel might be undead monsters but I can't be sure because everyone is drawn like undead monsters (well, everyone except the two women in the comic). That's the end of the issue one's for the month, but I've got time for a couple more books. Bloodstrike: Assassin #3 - This is where the Bloodstrike: Assassin storyline ends though I've still got a zero issue to talk about. That's going to be a common refrain for a while. Apparently crashing a jet into the engine room of the Not Helicarrier that the evil government agency uses isn't enough to actually damage the Not Helicarrier since no one is too concerned about damage after last issue's cliffhanger. They're dealing with Bloodstrike's handlers coming out of the wreck shooting everybody. Of the trio of assassins Bloodstrike is fighting, Death dies immediately. Then the handlers catch up with Bloodstrike. Meanwhile, his old boss is sneaking on board with a plan to take over everything. And that was literally everything that happened in this comic. Extreme suckered me again. I have lost count of how many series they've had end prematurely in the past couple of months. Sure, they can launch seven new series, but actually finishing the ones that they start is impossible. Violator vs. Badrock #4 - I swear to god if this issue ends on a cliffhanger when no issue 5 exists I will scream. So the angel powering the machine that's keeping the laboratory building in hell is about to crumble away, the head scientist has wandered off, and Badrock decides to go change into his new costume which is a blue tank top with giant shoulder pads and a belt of pouches. I don't know if this is Alan Moore taking the piss or another example of the creative bankruptcy of the art coming out of Extreme. He takes the guidance system that would get the lab back to earth when the power runs out and goes off to find the missing scientist. Violator follows Badrock since he needs that system so he isn't stuck in hell and Violator's brothers follow both of them. Everyone runs into each other, there's a fight, Badrock and the scientist get back in time and Violator gets stuck in hell again. After the step up in energy last issue, this one was a let down. There's a few good bits, particularly involving Violator's family who were the high point of the last issue as well. But overall, it felt like this was just moving things to the needed ending with nothing interesting in between. It hits the exact story beats you'd expect it to hit. It's disappointingly boring. In conclusion, I'm pretty sure a teenager like Badrock wouldn't make a Heironymous Bosch reference.
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Mar 13, 2020 03:00
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Wow. Image really took that whole "I don't need a writer, MY ART sells million" poo poo to heart with these. Dare I ask if an EC was in charge of any semblance of continuity at all?
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Mar 13, 2020 03:45
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FilthyImp posted:Wow. Image really took that whole "I don't need a writer, MY ART sells million" poo poo to heart with these. The editor for all Extreme Studios and Maximum Press books was Eric Stephenson who also scripted nearly every comic for the first two years and still does a lot of them. But the comics are definitely made with an attitude that the plot and script are unnecessary distractions to having a splash pages of a tough guy shooting guns.
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Mar 13, 2020 04:03
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Let me finish up August 1995 Extreme books so that I can finally say that I am one year out from my planned conclusion of this reading project. But there's a lot of comics between this point and August 1996. Supreme #0 - I don't know why Rob leapt onto issue zeroes as a gimmick in the summer of 1995, but we're getting a shitton of them starting this month. Jack Simon is a short, cigar chomping former comic book artist who found the secret facility in the desert where Supreme was created in the 1930's. He takes Young Supreme there to learn about the Old Supreme and convince Young Supreme that he shouldn't be like the original. Simon was hired to make the Supreme comic in the 40's based on Supreme's actions during WW2 and saw what a monster Supreme was. Apparently Supreme didn't drop the atomic bombs and it was just propaganda that Simon spread, despite Kid Supreme being at Nagasaki and shooting the film of Supreme dropping the bomb. Also, in trying to sort out the mess of their timeline, Dr. Wells worked on the Captain America-esque project that made Supreme for the US government, then moved to Nazi Germany so he could make Prophet which makes Wells the shittiest time traveler in this history of fiction. Anyway, Simon came to the conclusion that Supreme's backstory was too contradictory (no, really? I hadn't noticed!) and thinks that the Supreme who returned to Earth in Supreme #1 wasn't the real Supreme either. The fact that the New Supreme is doubting himself was enough evidence for Simon that he wasn't the real Supreme. And the issue ends with an unconscious Supreme being placed in a capsule and rocketed from a distant planet. I feel like three years into the comic's run might be a bit late to try to straighten out the snarls that the lack of concern about continuity has resulted in. Alan Moore will eventually just flush the whole thing away when he takes over the book and abandon everything and that kind of reboot might be the best solution. I am getting the impression from this comic that they didn't have an answer when they introduced the mystery of the new Supreme which is the absolute worst approach to plotting. So this makes two Jack Kirby analogues in the Extreme-verse. If he gets two more, then he'll have as many analogues as Wolverine, but still not as many as Cable. Knightmare #0 - They gave Knightmare a chromium cover for his final appearance. There's actually been a few chromium covers in the past couple of months (Avengelyne #1, Prophet #1) which makes me wonder if Liefeld thought cover gimmicks would still work in 1995. In the series, Knightmare trained the hitman who led the attack on his family. Right off the bat in this comic, they're both being trained at the same time by a different hitman. Because nobody is paying attention to even the basics of their characters. Turns out this isn't really an issue 0 kind of story. It picks up after issue 5 of the series. Knightmare's wife is still alive and she's expected to come out of her coma. So the guy who attacked her originally, and got his hand cut off in the series, goes after her. She comes out of her year long coma just in time to start running away and fighting back from the now cybernetically armed hitman. Knightmare bursts into the hospital and there's a fight which ends with the hitman decapitated. The police have shown up, so Knightmare runs leaving his wife behind. A pretty generic ending to the series, but one that might have been thematically appropriate if they had actually plotted the series out in advance. Perhaps mention that his wife was still alive and make that part of the story. Structure it so this is the climax of the themes rather than just an ending that lies there. This issue actually comes across worse because the rest of the series didn't do anything to build up to it. Supreme #31 - Supreme is mopping up the last of the invading parademons when he gets an eye socket full of super acid. Evil CEO that's been hanging around in subplots for the past few issues helps fix the eye and then laughs because New Supreme doesn't know he's not the real Supreme. That just tells me that Evil CEO hasn't been paying attention since New Supreme has been going around saying they don't think they're the Old Supreme. Supreme needs a bit of R&R as his eye heals, though, so he goes with the Old Kid Supreme to a cabin in the woods. Supreme sleeps under the stars where he dreams of Glory, Old Kid Supreme finds The Gospel of Ethan Crane, the Old Supreme's version of his life story where he presents his divinity on a computer there. When he goes to show Supreme, however, there's a Deer Woman mounting him. And that's pretty much the last place I expected this comic to go when I started reading it. Old Kid Supreme gets his gun and shoots the Deer Woman. That makes nature attack him and New Supreme because her father is some kind of druid creature. Supreme is about to break him when Deer Woman stops him; she healed herself with magic. She was just feeling sorry for Supreme so she used magic to look like his girlfriend and then tried to gently caress him. Because there isn't enough rape in these comics. Deer Woman invites Supreme to stay with them and learn the ways of nature so he can become like a god, but he's already Supreme. The only thing I can say about this issue is "What the gently caress?!" The nicest thing about it was a cute bit where the druid de-aged a tree Supreme threw at him into an acorn. Beyond that, though, this comic cant even maintain it's own plot points. Supreme isn't supposed to use his heat vision, so he burns things during the fight. The nature message comes in after the Supreme needs to get laid stuff (which seems to have dropped the stuff about Old Kid Supreme being gay and waiting for Supreme). The Evil CEO plot just spun for a bit for no good reason. The story bounces around and doesn't actually do anything. NewMen #17 - "Oh man, I hate these characters. There's absolutely nothing that they could do to make me hate them more." First scene in the comic: Byrd is a racist in one of the worst strawman racism discussions I've seen. Also, women sure do love to shop. "Well, that was something I wasn't expecting. But it can't get any worse." Second scene in the comic: Rapist confronts his victim in her bedroom angry that she doesn't seem to like him anymore. She never thought about how hard raping her was on him, so she feels sorry about it. "gently caress. This. loving. Comic." Third scene: Exit is back, but he's now a weird guy with a hole for a face and weird speech balloons. Because of the way the story was structured, I didn't know the fact that he was missing was a plot point. There's even an editor's note that says, "This all happened behind the scenes last issue," because everyone knows the first rule of writing is "Tell, don't show." Dash and Byrd go out on a date where they start fighting because Byrd thinks she likes her rapist better than she likes him. Then they're attacked by Girth, the guy who totally not the Blob. Byrd goes nuts in the fight and grows some talons. Kodiak and Bootleg turn up just because and then the police show up and arrest everybody. Just when I thought this comic couldn't dig its hole any deeper... Battlestar Galactica #2 - I'm wondering if I would be upset with the direction Liefeld is going with his version of Battlestar Galactica if I was fan of the show. The comic is upending everything so maybe I'd be complaining about how much it contradicts everything if I cared at all about Galactica. Starbuck saves Apollo's son Box from the tyrannosaurus at the last second by shooting it up from his Viper, but they can't get into the pyramid that had symbols indicating ties to a lost tribe. Over at the Cylon home base, Baltar finds out that Count Iblis rules the Cylons because Iblis was there when the Cylons fell originally. Seraphs attack the Cylon base and Iblis destroys them all by casting a magic spell. President Tigh and the civilian council from the fleet want to settle on the surface of the planet even though Apollo isn't sure that it is Earth (the fact that the continents are in their modern shape despite it being 70 million years ago would be a good sign that it isn't ). Everybody is worried and mopes for the rest of the issue until it's time and they awake Commander Adama from cryosleep.I know the show had a lot of religious overtones even back in the 70's version, but this comic seems to be really going over the top with them. Between the devil ruling the Cylons and blowing up an attacking angelic fleet to the next issue being titled "War in Eden", it feels like someone took that aspect of the show and blew it up a hundred times. Did they say "Frak" on the original Galactica series? That really felt like it was an invention of the new series where they said it all the frakking time but it turns up here. I don't think I'd credit Liefeld or scripter Robert Napton with coming up with anything original so it must have been there. Warchild #4 - Finally I've got the conclusion to Maximum Press's premier series. Will it be as thrilling as previous issues? Probably, since it would be difficult for a comic to be less thrilling than those. Sword is in the Black Knight's castle and the Black Knight has Sword's sword. He caught the blade at the end of the last issue but somehow that's become him taking Sword's sword away from Sword between issues. The Black Knight also captured cyborg guy Stone and Merlyn between issues. Sword's dead girlfriend lives in his sword, though, and she flies out of the Black Knight's hand and into Sword's. Sword then frees his buddies and also his childhood bully who was also there for exactly one panel and an offhand mention in dialog. Rather than actually fighting with the sword, Sword just generally points it in a direction and has his girlfriend do all the work by flying out of his hand and killing people. In the fight, the Black Knight smashes the gem on the sword releasing the dead girlfriend and then she makes Death appear. While the Black Knight is facing Death, Sword heroically stabs him in the back. Then Death puts dead girlfriend back in the sword in the second to last panel. The end. Ugh. What a pack of unlikable, uninteresting characters. It occurred to me during this issue, I don't even know what the Black Knight wanted. He killed Merlyn's old body in the first issue and arranged a coup of a generic fantasy kingdom. But then what? He builds a giant tower on earth for some reason. He keeps chasing down Sword for some reason. He postures as a big villain for some reason. There's nothing that the heroes are trying to stop, not even revenge that they're trying to take. It's just "Here's a villain by default, now go fight him". Sword is pretty impressive as a completely useless protagonist. Despite telling me all the time in dialog what a badass warrior he is, in battle his girlfriend has death beams shoot out of his sword, his girlfriend flies the sword she inhabits around the room, and he stabs someone in the back. Just as the Black Knight is the villain by default, he's the hero by default.
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Mar 14, 2020 05:39
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This may be the wrong thread but I figured you guys may have good opinions--was that show Heroes any good? Like, there's been tons of official comic book hero TV shows since, from both DC and Marvel and stuff like Locke and Key, but as far as original stuff went, was Heroes decent? Even if 'original' probably means highly derivative from Big 2 ideas.
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Mar 14, 2020 17:13
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A Strange Aeon posted:This may be the wrong thread but I figured you guys may have good opinions--was that show Heroes any good? Like, there's been tons of official comic book hero TV shows since, from both DC and Marvel and stuff like Locke and Key, but as far as original stuff went, was Heroes decent? Even if 'original' probably means highly derivative from Big 2 ideas. No just no. The first season had some good ideas but the paid off with a closed door and the second season was so so bad. Then the show just got worse and worse
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Mar 14, 2020 17:24
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My favorite fact about Heroes was that the original idea was that every season would follow a different group of people, with only the doctor guy being a main character throughout the whole show. But then all the characters except the doctor guy became really popular and everyone agreed that the doctor guy was by far the absolute worst part of the show. So they had to scrap the whole plan and figure out what the gently caress they were going to with all the characters they had planned to abandon. If you ever wonder why amnesia became such a common occurrence in the later seasons, that's why
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Mar 14, 2020 17:29
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iirc heroes was good for about the first half of the season and then things kinda fell apart at the end and then the next two seasons were absolutely garbage. actually i do recall there being an arc in s2 i think where they temporarily did something interesting with the serial killer guy before having him regress into being boring serial killer guy again, but the fakeout is probably part of why i have memories of s2 being bad site fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Mar 14, 2020 |
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Mar 14, 2020 17:32
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site posted:iirc heroes was good for about the first half of the season and then things kinda fell apart at the end and then the next to seasons were absolutely garbage. That was also the season of Claire’s flying boyfriend and peter dropping his girlfriend off in the hellscape future.
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Mar 14, 2020 17:42
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Yeah, the first season was solid but had a disappointing payoff, the second was a nightmare that, I admit, I might have been kinder on if they went with the original ending rather than the very rushed one the writer's strike caused (an original plan was going to be that a virus chunked a portion of the cast and left others uncertain going into S3, forcing that fresh lineup/anthology idea), and nothing afterwards is worth it for anything but the sheer comedy of how they kept loving it up To this day I still remember the behind the scenes disasters more fondly than the actual show. HOW MANY TIMES did they kill off a good character because Ali Larter somehow had a producer's ear? The answer might shock you.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:00
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I liked the first season though it did suffer from heavy padding due to making it 20 whatever episodes. From what I heard season 2 was right around the writers strike so it had that going against it, and it never recovered.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:00
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END ME SCOOB posted:To this day I still remember the behind the scenes disasters more fondly than the actual show. HOW MANY TIMES did they kill off a good character because Ali Larter somehow had a producer's ear? The answer might shock you. mind expanding on this?
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Mar 14, 2020 18:01
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Heroes is so bad past the middle of season 1 that it retroactively destroys and and all good will they'd built in those first 11 episodes.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:10
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site posted:mind expanding on this? The gossip at the time was the reason that many characters she was paired with got iced mid-plotline and she kept coming back as twins-turned-triplets because a producer was incredibly fond of her. Her husband on the show basically said this was why he was killed off unceremoniously despite all the ways they had to write out that would let him live through "a bullet" (dude had Kitty Pride's powers) and the completely rushed editing of "he is shot > next is his funeral and we never mention him again". Meanwhile, before the budget collapsed, they'd legitimately changed Larter's role to an entirely new backstory and powerset that had one of the more extensive effects (she became Iceman), and written in a never-used "and there's a THIRD!" plot hook, and a second character in one of her story arcs just vanished from the show in a similar "we don't talk about Bob" move. Thinking back on the nature of who said gossipmongers were when Heroes was airing is making me a little more suspect on this now, but I'm also still not sure why the gently caress anyone wanted the most forgettable actress in the series to be there at all times in the Poochy role. I had entirely forgotten that she just became the First Lady in one of the alternate timelines because why the gently caress not, that's how that goes.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:23
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Hey, I like Ali Larter.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:29
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I legitimately don't think I've seen her in anything that wasn't Heroes. A quick IMDB scan confirms this. She a good actress with better material?
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Mar 14, 2020 18:35
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END ME SCOOB posted:I legitimately don't think I've seen her in anything that wasn't Heroes. A quick IMDB scan confirms this. She a good actress with better material? She got a little famous for a scene in Varsity Blues. And uh, Final Destination? Has she even worked since Heroes?
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Mar 14, 2020 18:39
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Rhyno posted:She got a little famous for a scene in Varsity Blues. And uh, Final Destination? Has she even worked since Heroes? Among other things, she was Claire Redfield in the only RE movie I didn't watch.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:40
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END ME SCOOB posted:I legitimately don't think I've seen her in anything that wasn't Heroes. A quick IMDB scan confirms this. She a good actress with better material? She's great in Varsity Blues.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:41
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