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I'm teaching remotely now and it sucks, but if anything it underscores to me how necessary a lot of the face-to-face emotional labor of teachers really is. My wife is also working remotely, and I finished the first full draft of the last chapter of my dissertation in the first week of March so I'm also terror-editing and hoping there's still an academia to hand me a doctorate when this is all over. This also derailed a bunch of short-ish term plans we had, like me getting my name legally changed (suspended in limbo), buying a house, starting the adoption process, etc.. My parents are also both high-risk people who can't socially isolate (my mom is a microbiologist and it's all hands on deck at her lab, and my dad has MS and not mobile so he needs in-home caretakers) so it has been... rough! To top it all off, our dog has finally, after years of hard work, mastered the fine art of having diarrhea after eating a discarded chicken tender in the park, so we're all very impressed and amused by that too. I've been filling up the hours by catching up mostly on novels and nonfiction but I've also tackled a few long-running mangas I'd been hesitant to make the time for previously. I read through all of Vinland Saga, which was astounding, and am partway through Beastars, which is not at all what I expected tonally but still quite good. I'm also, as I've mentioned in the DC thread, reading reboot-era LoSH and really enjoying it. My wife does not read as many comics as me but I got her the first Immortal Hulk omnibus and she loved that, and we're talking about starting a discord comics book club with a few friends while we're all cooped up and lonesome. Honestly I think BSS is keeping me sane. None of my friends are as excited by the minutia of comics as a medium as I am, but I love the stupid things, and I'm grateful to have a space to talk about them with people who are largely not cretins, curs, and neo-nazis.
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Mar 23, 2020 21:29
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feel bad for following up on that note with a downer but https://twitter.com/ComicBook/status/1242174569089204227
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Mar 23, 2020 21:55
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poo poo, that's not just comics it's all products. Don't comic shops get basically everything from Diamond? What does that leave them, just manga and Gundam kits?
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Mar 23, 2020 22:11
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It's fortunate that Diamond is just one of many comic distributors, who may well make different decisions!
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Mar 23, 2020 22:11
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My comic shop is closing down for several weeks due to a stay at home order (Ohio) and I just stopped in to wish them luck while they try to keep the lights on using mail order and curbside pickup service. Over the past week they've been frantically setting up a credit card charge system for the regulars so we can get our cards charged weekly and then go pick up the books on Wednesdays. It's a real bummer to know they did all that work and it amounted to one final Wednesday, after which they'll just have to hope for the best. With no new product and no ability to open for walk-in customers, I have no idea how they'll do it, at least not for long.
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Mar 23, 2020 22:42
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Gripweed posted:poo poo, that's not just comics it's all products. Don't comic shops get basically everything from Diamond? What does that leave them, just manga and Gundam kits? I wonder if the publishers will keep digital sales going. I gotta assume they will.
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Mar 23, 2020 22:43
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That suuuuucks. But a different note: I like BSS a lot. More chat is good.  and I’ll try to do the same. How Wonderful! - I’ve read about half of The Temple of Silence. It’s pretty good. A combination of biography and art book. Crowley led a really interesting life and I found myself more into the biography portion than I expected to be. As an art book, it’s pretty great too. The comics portion of it is... it’s newspaper comics from the early 20th century. I’d say it’s interesting to look at, rather than good. I enjoy it, am glad I bought it.
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Mar 23, 2020 23:14
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I'm closing out 1995 here because something funny happened in the month of December. All of the major books in the Extreme line were part of a crossover, but the was the inevitable scheduling problem and as a result virtually everything pushed into January. There's actually more Maximum Press books this time than there are Extreme books. It means it'll be a big month next time, and it's a nine part crossover so that'll take some time to digest. There's also something important happening at Image right now: Jim Valentino is essentially dropping out and handing off his books to Extreme. Apparently Valentino shared studio space with Liefeld at the time which is likely how that close collaboration there came about, but at the same time interviews with Valentino after this is over are pretty hostile about Liefeld. The New Shadowhawk #7 and The Alliance #5 would be the first issues of those books under Extreme. The operative phrase there is "would be". New Shadowhawk ends at #7 and as far as I can tell it didn't actually transition over. As for The Alliance, #3 was the last issue of that comic. MaxiMage #1 - I thought from the house ads that this was going to be a Maximum Press book since it's definitely in their "hot warrior babe" wheelhouse, but this one is an Extreme book. It's going to stick around for a little while, too. I'm going to be reading this one until just before I wrap up the project. On Easter Island, a film crew is shooting a scene at night in a thunderstorm probably because they don't want to get anything on film or the soundtrack. One of the Moai heads explodes and there's a weird man inside. After ten thousand years he's free, and he spots a Planet Hollywood jacket on one of the crew members. That's where the chosen one is, so off he flies. To my disappointment, he's going to regular Hollywood, not Planet Hollywood. A woman is scamming a cashier out of some money there and she takes her cash to a gang hanging out in one of those alleys that have burning trashcans in them. What she brought back wasn't enough, though, so they beat her up. Weird guy shows up and changes her clothes to be one of the worst costume designs ever (the version on the cover has about five times as much fabric as the version in the book which covers her arms a bit, the sides of her legs, and not a lot else). The weird guy gives her visions of him fighting alien space gods in the distant past and then tells her that she's the MaxiMage. Then they fly up to the sky so she can see the alien space gods coming back. I don't even know what the characters' names are in this comic. I think weird guy is called "The Ancient" because there's a trademark for that name in the indica of the book (and its for someone not even credited on the comic). But I don't have details beyond that. There's an orb that the aliens want but there's no reason given for that. This book is not making a great first impression. Supreme #34 - Old Supreme is back. Maybe. It might not be the same Supreme still. And if it was the old Supreme, is that a good thing? In one of the heaviest handed openings out there, callers to a radio show comment on Supreme as Supreme saves a child from a collapsing building. Supreme doesn't get along with the police in the future city, though, and avoids them. Outside the city, there's a globe that has crashed from space and it drains life from a scientist near it. Supreme goes to a diner where he's approached by a guy who is totally John Constantine; he's got another name but it's just John Constantine so I'll use that. He says he knew Supreme and they got separated. He wants Supreme's help to get out of this world and guides Supreme to a warehouse which has future tech inside it. In the basement there is a giant robot that Supreme rushes, and then gets sucker punched by an even older Supreme. On earth, Kid Supreme is happy to have a dick again. Golden Age Kid Supreme and Kid Supreme are worried about how Probe is going to handle being changed back but she enters and is still a woman. I feel like Not Constantine is showing up here because Liefeld is getting buddy buddy with Moore. His role in the story seems to be setting him up for something like the character's role in Swamp Thing, guiding the character to truths about themselves while being an enormous rear end in a top hat to them. I'm not really sure where this book is going now. Old Supreme was a monster before, but this one seems more gruff than evil. They're probably trying to switch gears on the character again without a real plan or consideration for what came before. Vogue #3 - One more issue of this one and since it seems to be moving toward an ending I think it's not going to just cut off in the middle. But we'll find out. The Redblood have gone off to enact their evil plan: land in a random Moscow street, demand to be rulers of Russia, and go on a general rampage. After three issues we're finally told what the Redblood can do. Tank turns his hands into metal constructs, Tooth fires bones, and Nail fires iron filings. After Vogue and her brother Warhead (who's got extremely vague energy powers) arrive, they take out the Redblood effortlessly, but at least doing something more with them than taking them each out with one punch. There's an awful lot of hands getting removed for such a small group of people. Stoika also has a nuclear bomb which he has replaced a church bell with and announces it will go off in 60 seconds. Vogue and Warhead get up there to find one second left on the timer, then have a long conversation about disarming it, and then there's a big double page spread of nuclear fire. Stroika goes back to his lab to gloat but Vogue and Warhead arrive. Turns out Warhead absorbed the explosion and then released the energy as a flash (which is exactly how nuclear weapons work so I don't see how that helps). Stroika has a plan C (D?), though, as Vogue and Warhead's mother is tied to a chair behind door number three; he kidnapped her to use as leverage against Warhead between the time that Vogue met her and later than night when she went after Stroika so I guess she was there the whole time. You know, I'm not a world famous model known for their astonishing style but maybe wearing a skintight outfit where the bulk of it is colored your exact skin tone is a poor fashion choice. As a miniseries, this was pretty goddamned stupid. There's pretty much zero understanding of the USSR, Russia in the 90's, and the differences between the two even though the villain's entire motivation is that he wants things back to the way they were before. It's like they used all of their USSR cliches with 90's Russia and leaned on a vague idea that the USSR were bad guys. There's a lot of script/art discrepancies in this comic but the best is when Vogue says someone lands on their butt when they very clearly land on their face. This is highlighted by the fact that it's a normal person landing on their face after a three story fall. Asylum #1 - This is going to be an odd book. This is an anthology title that seems to have filled in the gaps for things that Maximum Press was going to publish but couldn't. It's a flip book with five features in it and right up front the weirdest choice is the first one. Larry Marder's Beanworld was already an indie darling at this point, breaking out during the B&W boom of the 80's. From what I understand, they're lightly comedic stories with very minimalistic art. I have never read any of Beanworld myself, though I always meant to try it. Maybe if I like what I read here, I'll pick up the omnibuses. I just hope that Marder remembers that he's writing to an audience that likely has never encountered his comics before when Rob Liefeld is publishing it. Now to breakdown the five stories: Beanworld - That was... weird. The bean guys fight a ring of guys (as in five things that linked themselves into a ring) to get the food they surrounded, then bring it up through the four layers of reality to soak in a pool of it. They love their chow and then a surreal thing appears in the sky and offers them a better way. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I'm not turned off but I'm not in its groove either. Perhaps four pages weren't enough for it. Avengelyne - Following up immediately after the first Avengelyne series, the demon lord has been banished to purgatory which is an angelic prison. While there, he meets Faith who despite her name is not an angel; she's a Greek demigoddess. She uses her abilities to help the demon lord escape and he leaves her locked up because he's evil. I was a bit surprised that this story features an eye getting punched out and dangling by the nerve. Pretty gross and extreme, but also in line with what these guys do. Warchild - Not the Alan Moore story mentioned before, this one is "co-plotted" by Rob Liefeld. The good news is it has art by Art Adams. Sword asks Merlyn why she's now a woman and Merlyn has a flashback rather than answering. As the old sage, she trained the Black Knight in a standard "master doesn't realize apprentice is evil until it's too late" situation. Then when the Black Knight killed her old body, she just reappeared as a woman. The end. So, another nothing story about Warchild. At least this one was over in four pages instead of four issues. Double Tap - Or "II Tap" going by the logo, but I'm assured in the table of contents that it's "double tap". Over Honduras, a transport plane opens its door to reveal a tough guy with a lot of pouches and guns. He jumps out. "Definitely not the end!" but it really is. Wow, I feel bad calling the Warchild story nothing because this is actually nothing. It might as well have been a one page pin up of a new character. Battlestar Galactica - Lucky me. I get to read three Battlestar Galactica stories this month. Adama flashes back to his time serving on board Battlestar Cerberus where he meets Tigh and becomes his wingman, gets dress down by his tough as nails commander Odysseus, and then has to fly against Cain in a wargame exercise. So basically, all the old people from the series meet each other for the first time in the space of an hour. This isn't as annoying as the other Galactica books so far mainly because it's not constantly hopping viewpoints to check in on the dozen characters it's trying to follow. So that's something. Avengelyne: Power #2 - Sisters of Mercy #1 - Seeing this title appear in my listing for upcoming books, I was worried it was going to be some kind of sexy warrior nun book, but the cover makes me think it's going to be somehow worse. The important thing to mention is that the plot, coloring, and lettering are credited to Rikki Rockett, the drummer for the band Poison. Oh holy gently caress, you have to see the artwork in this comic to believe it.  Mark Williams is the one responsible for this atrocity. As far as I can tell, the first two issues of Sisters of Mercy are the only comics work that Mark Williams has ever done. Keep in mind, that page is a highlight. I've seen a lot of bad art as I've done this but for the most part things have settled into a rut of the art being poorly structured: no sense of space or place or time or pacing. You know, the things that you need to tell a story visually. This goes beyond that. I've seen artwork this bad before, but rarely on anything more high profile than some self-published mess. This is probably the worst art I've seen in this reading project and that's saying a lot. Okay, had to get that off my chest because it hits so hard as you read this comic. Let's get to a summary. Some cybernetic(?) soldiers are poaching wolves. You know they're cybernetic because they have tubes coming out of their bodies and going to their guns. They're attacked for killing a pup by a woman who was wearing a wolf skin. How she got the wolf skin without killing a wolf herself is not addressed. She has claws and slices up the poachers. Her friend helps out by using an incredibly impractical knife. The Mercy Island Correctional Facility is a prison that has been taken over by the inmates who all have cyber-tubes. The cyber-tubes were given to them The Doctor who hacks up everyone in the prison to make them into cyborgs and has turned himself into a cyborg snake. The women took one cyber-prisoner and then decide to get completely naked (including possibly removing one of their limbs) and hang out. They don't know how they got their cyber parts and the prisoner they took won't give them an answer so they shove him on a raft out to sea. The impractical knife is worth an extra mention. First, it has a long curved blade coming out of the bottom of it. Then out of the sides of the blade, there's two other blades. Those blades are at right angles to the main blade so you can't actually cut anyone with the main blade or you'll just hit the side blades. There's an information superhighway joke in this book. I guess that Wired article had come out by that point. The worse linguistic crime in the book is that at one point they use an outdated term for African-American that had been coopted by racists by the time this book was published. Not a slur, but slur adjacent and makes you wonder who wrote that line and why. It also makes me suspect that there was something worse there originally and someone went, "We can't print that." This is an amazingly terrible book which actually makes me look forward to the next issue. I've got to see how far down the lovely rabbit hole this one goes. Battlestar Galactica: The Enemy Within #2 - I wish I didn't save these Battlestar books to the end. Now I've got to get through them and I could be doing anything else... Adam is checking out Ares ship and it seems to be an old craft but there's some things off about it. Meanwhile, Athena is showing Areas around the new colony on Earth when a building collapses. Ares rushes in to save a kid trapped beneath it. Boomer, Ares, Starbuck, and Boxx play a game of futureball before a crowd of thousands for some reason. A subplot breaks out where Starbuck doesn't want to talk about a mission where a woman died; I'm guessing it's related to the next comic I'm reading. Apollo doesn't like the idea of his wife having her own career. Ares takes time out from sabotaging the Galactica to have sex with Athena, but not sleep with because he does not sleep. Ares rigs the superengines to explode and places the only person who knows how to build one next to them. From the art, that takes out about a third of the Galactica but you'd never know it from the inside. Everyone rushes to the burning engine room where Ares helps put out the fires. Afterward, they find the remains of the engineer and he was a robot(?); the brain is intact so they'll repair him and find out who did this. Still overcrowded, still badly structured. I doubt I'm going to find a whole lot interesting to say about these books because they've all been flawed in the same way. I can't help but notice that Eve never does anything. She spoke once in the first Galactica miniseries and that's the extent of her involvement in the story. I guess she's just Adam's arm candy. Battlestar Galactica: Starbuck #1 - Oh man, I really needed another Galactica miniseries. Look at how excited I am.  Shortly after the events of Galactica 1980 (which I am aware of entirely because of how infamously bad the show is), the Galactica is on their way looking for Earth. Starbuck has found love with a medic named Cassiopeia and they're going full romance comic with lines like "Why... why did I have to fall in love with a colonial warrior?" and telegraphing their doomed love so hard Samuel Morse picked it up. They're interrupted by an attack on the Galactica from the forces of East country who they dealt with during Galactica 1980. Starbuck stops Galactica from being bombed but his ship is damaged and he crashes on a prison moon. People from West country find him and nurse him back to health. Starbuck needs the radio from his ship to call the Galactica but it's at the prison complex. The people from West country (who are called "rebels" even though they're not part of East country) help him come up with a plan to get into the prison in exchange for Starbuck getting one of their leaders out. Starbuck gets in, gets his radio, and then finds the leader. That's what East country had been waiting for since they didn't know which one of the prisoners was the leader. I was completely right, the reference in The Enemy Within was about this story. Why they'd bring it up the events of this story out of the blue twenty years later is not clear, though, unless Apollo suddenly sensed that he would need to promote another miniseries. This one is more readable since it's Starbuck in a new situation so I don't need to know anything about him. Of course, I already know how it's going to end since they told me in the other comic... Open Marriage Night posted:Sounds like Michigan and Mass are shutting down for three weeks. I’m a single guy with no kids, so I’m going to have a lot of time to read comics. Maybe some of us can share our reading projects. I’m currently fairly early into the Claremont run of X-Men, but I can’t hold a candle to Jay and Miles. Maybe I’ll get started with Simonson’s Thor. I am in a state that's in complete denial of reality and even if they do decide to start trying to control the spread of COVID-19, my work is going to get shifted around. That said, I am reading things other than Rob Liefeld published books, but I've got a big post I'm going to make about some of them later so I'll save that. I think I'm finally going to get around to reading Contract With God sometime soon along with its psuedo-sequels; I know I should have read it a long time ago but for some reason I never got around to it.
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Mar 24, 2020 03:11
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Gripweed posted:poo poo, that's not just comics it's all products. Don't comic shops get basically everything from Diamond? What does that leave them, just manga and Gundam kits? Not to be rude but "how will comic shops stay in business" is extremely low on my list of worries. Everything should've been shut down at least 2 weeks ago. I'm completely on the "angry Italian mayors screaming at people for walking their dog" level of pandemic measures. https://twitter.com/protectheflames/status/1241403715036291072
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Mar 24, 2020 06:26
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This is a comic book subforum so I think it's totally reasonable to talk about the comic book industry specifically. Obviously nobody is saying they want to prioritize the tenuous well-being of the comic book direct market over anything else, but like, it's also not not germane to what we're all doing here.
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Mar 24, 2020 09:08
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https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1242382488393199617?s=20
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Mar 24, 2020 10:34
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My brother used to love Asterix and he is getting my five year old niece into them now. She is an Obelix fan apparently.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:04
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I grew up reading them in both English and French versions (mostly French), and a couple years ago I managed to buy a nearly full collection of English versions off of Kijiji for 100$. My son loves Asterix and Obelix, and has read and re-read them every night for basically the last year. End of an era. 
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Mar 24, 2020 16:13
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Lurdiak posted:Not to be rude but "how will comic shops stay in business" is extremely low on my list of worries. Everything should've been shut down at least 2 weeks ago. i extremely dont care about irl comic businesses being hurt by the global pandemic, i say as i sit here perusing the comic book forum on the internet if you dont care log the gently caress off and shut up
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Mar 24, 2020 19:33
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https://twitter.com/mathieusicard/status/1242375503102775296 Asterix and Obelix was the first comic I ever read
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Mar 24, 2020 19:47
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Alhazred posted:https://twitter.com/mathieusicard/status/1242375503102775296 Oh no. He had a long life, but it's still a tragic loss. I read so many Asterix comics as a kid, and I watched the cartoons so many times. The post-Goscinny books were never quite as good, but the charm of the artwork never diminished for a second.How Wonderful! posted:This is a comic book subforum so I think it's totally reasonable to talk about the comic book industry specifically. Obviously nobody is saying they want to prioritize the tenuous well-being of the comic book direct market over anything else, but like, it's also not not germane to what we're all doing here. I agree, I'm not saying not to talk about it, I'm just stressed out because I think a lot of people are still underestimating the scope of this crisis, including those in power. I think there's a real chance we're going to be facing food distribution breakdowns depending how things go, and many corporations are prioritizing profits over lives, pushing us towards the worst case scenario. I'd much rather hobby shop owners stay home and safe and petition local governments for rent freezes than try to push through on selling magic cards and risk actual death. site posted:i extremely dont care about irl comic businesses being hurt by the global pandemic, i say as i sit here perusing the comic book forum on the internet You log off, jerk. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 21:04
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Lurdiak posted:I agree, I'm not saying not to talk about it, I'm just stressed out because I think a lot of people are still underestimating the scope of this crisis, including those in power. I don't think anyone's going "but my pull list!!!" here.
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Mar 24, 2020 22:14
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Let's cool off and step back for a little. With stay-at-home mandates so ubiquitous right now I'm sure a lot of us are cut off from our usual coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety-- I know not being able to walk down to a coffee shop or go for a long walk downtown has been hell for my anxiety-- so let's make an effort to be patient with each other. Furthermore, Lurdiak, I get what you're saying and I agree with you but for general COVID-19 discussion and predictions there are threads elsewhere on the forums, and I think it's fine if this specific tangent in this specific thread doesn't follow the trajectory of those other threads or even the trajectory of other conversations about COVID-19 that many of us are probably having. I do know that a lot of subforums here have set up dedicated COVID threads to talk about how the current crisis is impacting their given subject and to give regulars a place to vent and commiserate. If anybody wants to make one of those for BSS please go ahead. As for me I'm treating BSS as a space to specifically not think about the world outside right now, but I can see how that kind of thread might be useful and productive.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:08
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Somehow I forgot to do one book in December 1995 yesterday. So now I have to do it instead of just going off to play video games and reading Legion of Superheroes for the rest of the evening. Avengelyne: Power #2 - Continuing Avengelyne's adventures in LA, the first issue was pretty bad. Now it's going to ramp up. Carter Clark, transparently evil televangelist, is giving a television interview where he gives some generic religious right platitudes. The Catholic priests hanging out with Avengelyne think he's pretty cool. Carrie, the woman Avengelyne rescued the night before, provides the standard sex worker backstory: she ran away from her abusive father and fell into prostitution. Evitz the demonic agent is plotting the media blitz for Clark's presidential campaign including appearing with Jesse Jackson because Jackson will definitely be happy to help the candidacy of a conservative. Avengelyne has decided to go for the photoshoot so she can give the money to Carrie, but Peter thinks it's a monstrous act. This isn't even posing topless, just glamour shots, so his objection is pretty creepy. Avengelyne is shocked that the photographer wants her to pose in a bikini. Demons attack and Avengelyne fights back by punching their hearts out Mortal Kombat style. Evitz shows up and gives the standard "Join me or die" speech. I don't know if the heart punching was a "she still has angelic powers" beat or just goofy. Avengelyne doesn't go, "Where did that power come from?" or anything like that and takes punching through a monster's ribcage and out his spine in stride. So who knows. Someone better than me could write an enormous book on the sexual politics of 90's comics. There's something that's especially egregious this time, though. This comic treats posing for suggestive photos in a bathing suit to be something objectionable. The priest as the moral character makes some arguments against it. They're absolutely terrible arguments that don't address anything about the actual act and instead says that Avengelyne shouldn't want to get money to help people with and that the ends don't justify the means, which indicates that he (and the writer since I don't think they're clever enough to understand the arguments here) is starting from a position that being a model is wrong. However, Avengelyne isn't just a comic book character: she's based on Cathy Christian who is a model. A model that posed as Avengelyne in a bikini for the Avengelyne Swimsuit Special (which this comic says that the images in the special came from the photo shoot in the comic). So what we have is Rob Liefeld calling out these images as immoral while simultaneously commissioning and profiting from them himself, and attacking the woman he based his angelic character on for doing things that he hired her for. Maybe they'll turn that around in issue three, but if they do I'm sure it'll be awful.
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Mar 25, 2020 00:03
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https://twitter.com/aanand/status/1242809917137981441
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Mar 26, 2020 00:48
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 (From Asterix and the Chariot Race released in 2017)
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Mar 26, 2020 14:19
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https://twitter.com/GWillowWilson/status/1243184567265026049
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Mar 26, 2020 18:22
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Oh poo poo, so not even digital can sustain the industry?
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Mar 26, 2020 18:26
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Where you at gripweed. Come out coward
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Mar 26, 2020 18:45
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Alhazred posted:
"Coronavirus" is like saying "mammal" (I'm actually not sure how virus taxonomy works past being aware of a few of the major types so watch it be more like calling saying "whale"); there's lots of coronaviruses and this particular virus is COVID-19. So there's going to be references to it around that predate the current pandemic and seem weirdly prescient.
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Mar 26, 2020 18:50
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Mr Hootington posted:Where you at gripweed. Come out coward what?
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Mar 26, 2020 18:51
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Gripweed posted:what? I demand zenescope soon and am making sure you have not fled.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:46
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Rhyno posted:Oh poo poo, so not even digital can sustain the industry? I don’t think this has anything to do with the immediate physical distribution challenge. Digital would probably be fine if everything were otherwise the same as two or three months ago. Digital luxury goods in a 30% unemployment scenario are a very different proposition. I wouldn’t be investing in producing items that come six months - a year from now and depend on consumers having discretionary spending.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:50
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Mr Hootington posted:I demand zenescope soon and am making sure you have not fled. They aren't out of business yet! I have faith that Zenescope can weather this storm.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:52
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I've crossed the threshhold to 1996, the big year. Image comics in its original form does not survive the year and you can laid most of the blame at the feet of Rob Liefeld. He's been causing friction with the rest of the partners for a while with his total lack of work ethic and... well... lack of other ethic. Liefeld spent most of the past two years trying to get the real money out of comics by licensing his properties to movie studios and ignoring the needs of Image. Sisters of Mercy #2 - The first issue was amazingly awful. I'm hoping this one is just as spectacularly bad. The woman with the completely unworkable sword is fighting a tiger. The tiger disarms her but then licks her face. We finally get a name for one of the characters, eyepatch woman is Malina. They live in a house filled with wild animals. The weird guy at the prison goes outside to feed cybercats and finds the raft with the soldier from the last issue on it. Malina can breathe underwater and catches fish in her mouth as her sister(?) lounges naked at the waterside. She chomps down on the fish and bad knife woman is horrified because they don't eat living creatures. Mariah might be the name of the other woman as a hippie pulls up in a boat begging for their help because they've been raided. The women don't want him there because he might be infected. Malina thinks its the people who attacked them last issue so she dives into the water to go swimming after them. Yep, this comic is still unbelievably bad. I don't know how this mess got published. Asylum #2 - MaxiMage's reign at the top of the list of the worst costumes in comics lasted a whole month because the cover this month features Death Kiss who wears as little electrical tape as possible. Death Kiss - This is a total mess of eight pages where I don't even know what's going on with it or could tell what was happening. Keep in mind, all of this happens in just eight pages. There's a guy and woman at a strip club waiting for someone named Angel. A wall gets smashed in and RamThar, a giant guy with a spike ball, comes through and is fighting Death Kiss (only identified because she's on the cover). The couple cower as the fight smashes out another wall and goes into the street. RamThar has a bondage gun what ties up Death Kiss. Meanwhile in an interstitial panel the couple is reading a newspaper article about yakuza. Death Kiss slides down a lamp post like a stripper pole and this somehow gets the cable hooked over the top and around RamThar's throat. At the door next to a giant pile of rubble no one knows where Angel went. As the captions describe how the guy met Angel at another strip club, a woman takes a shower and loads a bag up with weapons. The woman might be Death Kiss or might not be because there's no context or linearity. A cutaway panel has the couple at the strip club where the show must go on. At a yakuza penthouse, the woman who showered strips to go through security. She meets the boss and kisses him which drains his life away as the captions have the couple from the beginning complaining about Angel not showing up. Death Kiss (since that who she must be) jumps out a window and kills a few thugs. Some cyber-geisha watch her get away. Back at the strip club, the couple are still waiting as Death Kiss starts her shift dancing on the main stage. I wonder if Mike Deodata hopes that nobody looks this one up. I really hope this doesn't come back; I'm not joking when I say that it took me twenty minutes to try to parse this story. Avengelyne - Avengelyne writhes on her bed tormented by the calls of the angels in purgatory where the demon lord escaped from last issue. Her spirit is drawn to the prison where Belial the demon lord is still in the process of killing all the angels between him and the exit. Avengelyne chops off one of his horns and then the woman who helped Belial escape last issue makes a force field to prevent Avengelyne from stopping him. Then Avengelyne wakes up and the story ends. It says to read Avengelyne/Glory and Glory/Avengelyne for the rest of the story though it really didn't continue there. Warchild - Stone delivers a terrible monologue that doesn't make any sense over scenes of a ruined city. Then he's turned into a cyborg. The end. I'll be okay if I don't get any more Warchild. These non-stories are just awful. Beanworld - The beans deal with the weird invader as he makes strange threats and then they decide to fight. Yeah, I'm thinking that my last issue impression that four pages don't do this any favors. The story and structure is minimalist, intentionally freeform and drifty. It need to play out over a longer period. Battlestar Galactica - Cain uses a dirty trick against Adama in the training exercise and the two of them start a rivalry. Eventually they're sent off on a mission together. Again, the smaller focus works better for these stories. It's still not great, but it's readable. Avengelyne: Power #3 - One more issue of this miniseries. Considering how long Avengelyne goes on for I'm pretty confident that they actually finish this one. I suspect that the extremely dubious ethics will continue from the last issue, though. It's time for the giant I'm wondering how Avengelyne gets away with murdering a presidential candidate on stage. The flee "before the police arrive", but it's a giant rally; the police are already there. Not to mention the fact that a presidential candidate turns into a demon on stage and identified themselves as being from hell. I mean, in 2020 we know that won't affect his chances at all ("He's just telling it like it is!"), but having proof of the supernatural appear like that might get some attention. That's assuming that the world isn't really aware of the supernatural; considering Avengelyne may or may not be in the Extreme universe it's confusing. Battlestar Galactica: Starbuck #2 - There's no issue of The Enemy Within this month so it's all kinda passable but not very good Battlestar Galactica comics for me. Apollo has been captured by East country and they demand that he give them the location of the West country base. Starbuck gets the carrot and stick persuasion methods as they torture captured West leader Joseph. Outside the prison, Justine is worried that Starbuck was captured on his rescue mission but her brother Joseph might help him. Since the "Joseph" we've seen is an old man and Justine is a young woman, it's a safe bet that the guy being tortured isn't the real Joseph. Another prisoner named "Hicks" brings Starbuck food in his cell, then immediately identifies himself as the real Joseph on the page that he was introduced, nipping that potential plot line in the bud. Meanwhile, the Galactica is wrapping up the battle and is getting ready to leave the system. Joseph has a plan to help Starbuck escape: drug the guards and then zipline out of the prison. I'd think that would cause trouble for him, but I'm told that the drugs make the guards forget. That's something that definitely won't cause further problems. Starbuck gets out of the compound with information from Joseph that can end the war while Joseph remains behind because he's not leaving without everyone. The plan to end the war is a mass breakout at the prison tomorrow, which will free the best soldiers and spies the West has. Spies who have all be thoroughly compromised and soldiers who have been idle in a POW camp. I'm assured, though, that these guys will end the war all on their own once they're out. Starbuck doesn't want to go back though because he doesn't like the warden. Jump ahead to the next day to a captured Starbuck being brought before the warden. It's all a trick, of course, and Joseph arranges another escape for Starbuck immediately. Starbuck finds the transmitter from his ship and calls the the Galactica back to get him. But the evil general of East country picks up the signal as well and is sending his own forces to the prison. I swear this prison camp might as well be Hogan's Heroes for how easily everything is suborned and no one in authority does anything about it. As much as I complain about the cliche plot elements here, it's worse to introduce them and then abandon them instantly. You have both the problem of setting up a lovely cliche and then using it in the most off-handed way possible. Immediately resolving plot elements is pretty boring storytelling and these cliches are pretty boring so that's a double dose of boring. Next time, I'm doing Extreme Destroyer, the final line wide crossover for Extreme Studios. Unfortunately, it's a nine part story so that'll be a bit of a post...
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Mar 27, 2020 02:38
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I think the Beanworld comics are really singular and worthwhile but no, I cannot imagine that reading it in four page chunks would be doing the material any favors whatsoever. What a weird decision.
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Mar 27, 2020 02:52
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Beanworld is very interesting and worth reading as a whole! I'm glad I snagged them when they were on sale somewhere. I am going to see if I can find anywhere offering free, legal, completed comics somewhere for download (or at least read online) and try to start a group read thread since it seems like lots of us have lots of time available.
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Mar 27, 2020 03:51
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So I restarted my Marvel reading project since I hadn't gotten very far the first time anyways, and am currently just finished Amazing Fantasy #15, and something I've realized more thoroughly this time around is how important it was to the development of what would become the Marvel Universe that Marvel had been mostly doing non superhero stuff for the last decade(well besides the ill fated attempt at reviving Cap, Torch, and Namor in the mid 50's and brief experiments like Marvel Boy or Venus), cause there was very heavy horror and sci-fi/fantasy influences upon this first wave of heroes, and I think that definitely had a major impact on their reception, as it definitely makes them standout compared to the heroes that DC had(Gold Key, Charlton, Archie and other companies would often try this approach too in this era after seeing Marvel's success but never really hit the mark either) Honestly the only reason I'm not writing a much longer post about this(or reviewing individual issues) is because I don't have a working computer right now and it sucks writing long posts through the app
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Mar 27, 2020 11:16
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drrockso20 posted:So I restarted my Marvel reading project since I hadn't gotten very far the first time anyways, and am currently just finished Amazing Fantasy #15, and something I've realized more thoroughly this time around is how important it was to the development of what would become the Marvel Universe that Marvel had been mostly doing non superhero stuff for the last decade(well besides the ill fated attempt at reviving Cap, Torch, and Namor in the mid 50's and brief experiments like Marvel Boy or Venus), cause there was very heavy horror and sci-fi/fantasy influences upon this first wave of heroes, and I think that definitely had a major impact on their reception, as it definitely makes them standout compared to the heroes that DC had(Gold Key, Charlton, Archie and other companies would often try this approach too in this era after seeing Marvel's success but never really hit the mark either) One neat thing is that Amazing Fantasy had been turned into an all Steve Ditko book for the last six months of its existence. If Jack Kirby had drawn Spider-Man like the original plan, we might be taking about the significance of that month's Journey Into Mystery 83.
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Mar 27, 2020 12:16
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How Wonderful! posted:I think the Beanworld comics are really singular and worthwhile but no, I cannot imagine that reading it in four page chunks would be doing the material any favors whatsoever. What a weird decision. I could swear it was in BSS, a while ago, but someone did a Let's Read of "Total Eclipse," a sort of Crisis on Infinite Eclipse-Published Properties, and Beanworld was somehow involved right alongside the more traditional adventure / superhero stories, including, uh, Miracleman.
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Mar 27, 2020 14:11
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Random Stranger posted:One neat thing is that Amazing Fantasy had been turned into an all Steve Ditko book for the last six months of its existence. If Jack Kirby had drawn Spider-Man like the original plan, we might be taking about the significance of that month's Journey Into Mystery 83. I thought the reason Spidey debuted in Amazing Fantasy was because it was getting cancelled anyway, as a kind of Hail Mary.
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Mar 27, 2020 23:35
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Yvonmukluk posted:I thought the reason Spidey debuted in Amazing Fantasy was because it was getting cancelled anyway, as a kind of Hail Mary. Stan Lee has often said that, going back to the 1970s, but that's not the case. If you had a copy of the actual Amaxing Fantasy 15 in your hands, you'd find an editorial page talking about future plans for the comic. If anything, I'd guess that the success of Spider-Man killed the comic. Marvel's printing schedule in 1963 was still severely restricted and to launch a Spider-Man comic, something had to go. One thing to check out is the format of that first issue of Amazing Spider-Man. It's definitely multiple stories that were intended for separate issues of Amazing Fantasy that were bundled for a single issue of the new series.
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Mar 28, 2020 04:49
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So on my Marvel reading project I'm now at Strange Tales #101, the first solo story for Johnny Storm, and man they are jumping through a bunch of ridiculous hoops to justify their claims that in spite of the rest of the Fantastic Four having public identities, that Johnny's as the Human Torch is somehow a secret and that he'd actually care about hiding it, also it's funny how the Torch's powers are at this point, he's apparently got a very limited amount of time he can stay ablaze, and this story introduces an ability that I've never seen him use in any modern story, apparently he can control any source of fire within a short distance of himself(which here he uses to cause a cigarette lighter to generate a smokescreen so he can Flame On without revealing his identity) Not the best story, though they do have him do some creative tricks with his powers, so wasn't a complete waste of time
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Mar 28, 2020 09:03
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There is an amazing reveal coming up about his secret identity. It doesn’t quite make the terrible Johnny stories worth it, but it’s funny. A number of classic gimmick villains are introduced in that strange tales series, but man those stories are dire. You’re in probably the toughest part of the marvel reading project right now.
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Mar 28, 2020 14:48
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drrockso20 posted:So on my Marvel reading project I'm now at Strange Tales #101, the first solo story for Johnny Storm, and man they are jumping through a bunch of ridiculous hoops to justify their claims that in spite of the rest of the Fantastic Four having public identities, that Johnny's as the Human Torch is somehow a secret and that he'd actually care about hiding it, also it's funny how the Torch's powers are at this point, he's apparently got a very limited amount of time he can stay ablaze, and this story introduces an ability that I've never seen him use in any modern story, apparently he can control any source of fire within a short distance of himself(which here he uses to cause a cigarette lighter to generate a smokescreen so he can Flame On without revealing his identity) 09876Strange Tales +-* Edit: So that's what happens when you're about to compose a reply, then the cat walks across the laptop while you're out of the room. I was going to say, Lee was certain initially that the Human Torch was the breakout star of his comics. That's why there's so many issues all about him in the early FF and he gets the solo slot in Strange Tales. Of course, the actual star turned out to be the Thing which is why after about a year of Human Torch stories, Strange Tales becomes a Human Torch/Thing team-up book. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 16:10
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