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I'm not sure if this counts since it technically isn't a real run as much as it is a part of a run, but I'd nominate Bendis's Avengers work as being real drat bad near the end. Dude ran pretty much all the Avengers stuff for years entirely through Dark Reign pretty well, then stuff kiiinda just started falling apart. I'd say the beginning of the end was the Fear Itself tie-in books where he did that godawful cut-in interview poo poo like I was watching a loving reality show, but apparently some people actually liked that, so whatever. Instead I'll cover what came immediately after and was completely godawful, Osborn's Return arc. The whole thing reads like Bendis was sitting around one night and thought up a Dark Avengers story, then thought "poo poo, I wish I could've told that back during Dark Reign..." then thought "gently caress IT, I'LL DO IT ANYWAY". This story stretched across both Avengers and New Avengers and was awful in both of them. I'll tackle Avengers in one post and New in the other. So Avengers is the side of the story where the Avengers get their poo poo wrecked by H.A.M.M.E.R... which isn't a thing anymore, it's just a group of villain organizations calling themselves that. So first things first, Norman gets broken out of the Raft, courtesy of a joint effort by Hydra, the Hand, and AIM. Then Osborn puts on his power suit and starts manipulating the media. So the Avengers are holding a press conference post-Fear Itself because Tony says it'll help build the public's morale, then suddenly:     The gently caress is this? Okay, so Osborn actually had a little mini (that was actually good!) where he got put in some underwater secret prison so the government could make sure he couldn't plead insanity or somehow lawyer up and dodge jail time any of the normal ways rich supervillains like Osborn and Lex Luthor do. So he was held without a charge. BUT the end of that mini ends with Osborn going and turning himself in and going into the Raft. Then he gets broken out at the start of this storyarc. But it doesn't really matter, because the end of Siege still involved him being caught on TV having a mental breakdown in Green Goblin facepaint as he crashed a tiny kingdom into Oklahoma! And the start of the Osborn mini has everybody agree that they could hit him for treason or like five other crimes at any time, they just wanted their case to be airtight, so why don't they just do that now? But suddenly, because he showed up in a power suit, the Marvel public goes full retard and starts turning on the Avengers. It's like the start to Grounded or something. I expected someone to ask Iron Man why he didn't cure their cancer. That's the start to issue 20, the rest of the issue has *This is the start of Bendis putting his toys back in the box and resetting the Avengers, so Vision just up and repairs himself after Tony fiddles with the pieces off-panel at the start of issue 19 Let's move on. This is the preview at the end of issue 20 for issue 21:  This is Storm's only appearance in issue 21:  Get the storm indeed. Goddamn, I've seen poo poo on Superdickery that lied less about the contents inside than that. Nothing else really happens in issue 21 except all the Avengers get their asses kicked some more and they all get taken captive by Osborn. Oh, except Vision. Issue 22 is just the Avengers being tortured by HAMMER. There's only one interesting scene where two HAMMER guys get shrunk down into Red Hulk's body to get a blood sample and we find out Rulk's immune system can eat a guy. Oh, and this happens:   First reaction is to say him catching that punch like it's a bad anime is stupid, but the story actually explains how he did that later. What is stupid is Norman somehow making him glitch out in panel 5 of the first page like he just hit Vision's ctrl-alt-delete. That is never explained. So chalk up Osborn's powers to now include magical voice computer hacking. Like I said, I don't want to make this one post like a page long , especially since I've got a bunch of images, so I'll come back with part 2: The New Avengers side (a.k.a How to ignore your own work) and the end of the Avenger side.
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Aug 15, 2013 19:52
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Osborn's Return part 2: New Avengers -or- "You take that finished story home, throw it in a pot, add some Osborn, some Dark Avengers... baby you got a lovely story going!" So, on the Avengers title, Bendis was just writing Captain America & Co. getting their asses stomped by HAMMER while Osborn smirked. Over on New Avengers though, he had another side of the story going. Osborn decided that if he was going to reform HAMMER, he needed to do everything exactly the same because that's how you're successful apparently. See, this part is why I said originally the story felt like a Dark Avengers story that just came too late, because it just starts setting everything up exactly like it was pre-Siege and rolls with it. Norman goes to a bunch of villains and recruits them. Superia from Hydra agrees to be Ms. Marvel, the Gorgon from the Hand puts on a Wolverine suit, and Hawkeye's brother Barney (a.k.a Trickshot) gets pulled in after some mini I didn't read. AIM also manages to put the Thor clone from Civil War back together (after the entirety of loving Asgard fell on it during Siege). Rounding out the team are two newcomers from the Osborn mini: Toxie Doxie (gently caress I hate that codename) and Ai Apaec. Norman convinces Doxie to be Scarlet Witch. This makes no sense since her powers are all based around her altering her body chemistry so she has stuff like paralyzing breath. (Interesting side note: Bendis didn't screw that part up, I just found the costume choice odd. No, the person who would screw up later on would be Jeff Parker in Thunderbolts, who just decided "gently caress it" and had her start doing straight up magic poo poo for no reason.). Ai Apaec is my favorite addition though. See, Ai Apec is a Central American spider god guy with a cool character design. So here's how he gets added to the team in issue 18:     Just "gently caress you, here's a magic pill, we got a Spider-Man now". Issue 19 has the NA travel to a disaster site, but Victoria Hand (who works for them) gives them the wrong coordinates (because she's a double agent for Osborn), delaying them from reaching the disaster site before the Dark Avengers save the day. So then we have a showdown and issue 20 is the mandatory superhero fight. A fight at this juncture is a bad idea, but Cage just goes for it because back when Osborn broke out of prison before this whole mess started, we got this scene:  So yeah, after Jessica tells him, Cage goes bonkers at the sight of Osborn and attacks when he probably shouldn't   I suppose that yes, it's a good idea to try to capture Osborn, but you're in the middle of a ravaged area where there are still people. As said people point out:  All it's doing is proving Norman's point that the Avengers are all psychos. They start losing, bail, and head back to NYC, where Ragnarok (the Thor clone) is waiting. Issue 21 starts, they kill Ragnarok, then head back to the mansion, where the public continues to be stupid:  Then the NA get home and the government shows up to take the mansion:    HOLD ON A SECOND! Let's take a quick commercial break and go back to the main Avengers book. Issue 23 has the whole team still captured, and Madame Hydra, with a tied-up Captain America, meets Barack Obama in the middle of the desert to chat (well, okay, Obama's on an iPad, but whatever):    Well good on you, Barry! Not giving in to terrorist demands! Waaait a minute...  This is from the same issue later on. So, given this and the scene in New Avengers, there are two possibilities.
 The NA almost get in a fight before Dr. Strange warps them back to the Sanctum Sanctorum, where Cage finds out Jessica's taken off because she doesn't feel safe (someone chucked a bottle at her and Squirrel Girl earlier when they were leaving the mansion). He leaves. The rest of the team take off and interrogate Victoria Hand and find out she's not a double agent, she's a triple agent and she was reporting Osborn's actions to Cap the whole time. So they set a trap for the Dark Avengers and we get this scene.   Yeah, Skaar's a double agent working for Cap too. Which makes sense, I mean, he's been a hero up til now so I bet pretty much everybody was wondering what the hell he was doing on this team. "BUT WAIT", you ask, "Why has Skaar waited so long to pull this?" ... I don't know, what are you asking me for? Issue 23 has Skaar beat the poo poo out of the whole team then run off to free Captain America. Concurrently, in Avengers 23, Daisy Johnson from SHIELD is freeing all the other Avengers. The New Avengers bust in to finish the job Skaar started, and oh, one more thing:  Well goddamn, Ai Apaec! If you could just turn back into your spider-monster form whenever you wanted to, why didn't you do that when you were pissed off at Osborn in the jungle in the first place? (Just like Toxie Doxie, Apaec's next appearance would be in Thunderbolts, where Jeff Parker turned him back into six-armed black Spider-Man, either because he just didn't give a poo poo, or he just forgot.) Anyway, the story finally wraps up in Avengers 24 where everybody throws down with Osborn and it turns out the reason he's been able to no-sell punches from Luke Cage and Vision so effortlessly is because he got AIM to use some crazy tech to make him into a Super-Adaptoid so he just copies powers. Rulk socks him one though before they know this, so he turns into a big purple Hulk with those trademark Osborn cornrows and it looks really silly so I'll just repost this edit Gavok made in the Ruination thread based on a Dr. McNinja strip. Here's the actual pages if you care.  The Avengers beat Osborn by overloading him with power until he melts.   Then the President tells Captain America to go do some PR work so the public will stop being so stupid  And that's the end! There are so many problems with this story it's mind-blowing.
This story is terrible. Badly planned, badly written, and I hate Mike Deodato drawing New Avengers with a passion because all the women's suits look awful. I mean, I know women in comics are oversexualized, but Deodato's women look like they might as well be wearing body paint instead of a costume. It's the worst story I've ever read... from Marvel. I'll probably do a post about Lobdell's Superman later.
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Aug 16, 2013 07:48
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muscles like this? posted:What exactly happened in The Children's Crusade anyway? All I've ever heard about it is that its terrible. A bunch of dumb poo poo. I don't know if I hate myself more for remembering a lot of this or for being curious enough to look up the rest to fill in the blanks. Okay, so the Young Avengers are fighting some random bad guy in NYC and it looks like they're gonna lose and then Teddy gets hurt so Wiccan freaks the gently caress out and just saves the day via magic explosion. The Regular Avengers show up and get kinda worried that Wiccan could turn into Scarlet Witch 2 and freak out and Disassemble everybody's rear end again so they lock him up in the Mansion until they can figure out something else to do. The YA bust him out (btw, Speed figures out how to vibrate through walls like the Flash, which is something I didn't think Marvel speedsters could do). Then Magneto pops in to help them bust out too. See, Magneto's pretty sure Speed and Wiccan are somehow related to him because they have the same names as Wanda's kids did, and they have the exact same powers as Wanda and Quicksilver, and Speed even has Quicksilver's hair. So Wiccan teleports everybody to... I forget, Germany or somewhere... to try and find Wanda because they think she's alive. They find her conveniently in the exact village they teleported to. But then Quicksilver (who is coincidentally there trying to kill Magneto) accidentally knocks her head off, and reveals she's a Doombot. So everybody goes to Latveria. They find out that Doom has Wanda, and they're gonna get married. Wanda wiped her own memory after M-Day and Doom took her in to assure she stays calm/doesn't regain her power and go nuts. Wiccan keeps pestering her to leave, but Doom won't allow it, so then Iron Lad shows back up from the timestream and warps everybody back to the time of Disassembled. Cassie ignores (I'd just like to take a timeout to mention that Wiccan has a mom. Wiccan already has a dad! Technically, even if he's a reincarnated Maximoff, he has two birth parents, both of whom love him and support his homosexuality. Do you know how rare that is in superhero comics? Do you know how rare that is in life? And he's gonna risk fooling with the timestream and further damaging reality just to confirm a theory that he could be Scarlet Witch's kid. Why do people like this character?) Beast (who popped up during all this) asks Wanda if she can undo M-Day and she says she doesn't know. They take a crack at it with Rictor from X-Factor and restore his powers. Then the Avengers and X-Men show up and poo poo gets real dumb. Captain America says she'll face justice, Cyclops keeps shouting about "Mutants deal with mutant problems!", Wolverine keeps growling about how they should just kill both Wanda and Wiccan (by the way, he's been doing this pretty much the whole story, which is a major factor in why the story is so bad. A lot of characters are way out of character). Wanda keeps mentioning she'll fix what she did, but by this point, a mini-AvX has started since everybody's too retarded in this series, so the Young Avengers + Wanda warp back to Latveria. Doom reveals that the only reason Wanda freaked out and caused Disassembled/House of M/M-Day to happen is because she came to him after her kids died and they used something called the Life Force to juice up her powers and let her try to resurrect them. It went wrong and she was overpowered by said entity. They're gonna try it again with Wiccan helping to undo M-Day. Meanwhile, Patriot is freaking out. He has been pretty much since Magneto showed up. He thinks teaming up with Magneto was a mistake, he thinks finding Scarlet Witch was a mistake, and he definitely is against allowing Doom to be near any sort of super-force, but everybody else is pretty okay with it since they think it'll work. So he takes Hawkeye's bow off her back and shoots vaguely at the spellcasters, loving up their spell and giving all the Life Force to... Doom. SMOOTH. Doom fixes his face and goes back to where the AvX fight was happening and says he's gonna fix everything. So without even listening to what that would entail, everybody attacks him, and he starts kicking their asses since he's basically a god now. The Young Avengers, who have popped in by now, join the fight. Doom kills Cassie Lang after she comes running at him. Almost immediately after that Wanda and Wiccan manage to remove Doom's new powers. He reveals in a huff that he is actually responsible for influencing Wanda to do all those bad things she did ("CHARACTER FIXED" says Allan Heinberg, hi-fiving himself) and takes off to Latveria. Iron Lad is real pissed off and says he's gonna go save her, then everybody points out how that's just the kind of irresponsible time fuckery that will lead him to become Kang the Conqueror, then he tell them to gently caress off and blows up the Vision 'cause gently caress the Vision. Scarlet Witch leaves and everybody lets her go. (Cyclops tells her that if she ever tries to gently caress with mutants again, he'll kill her. Seriously, Scott? Not even gonna try looking into that thing where she can turn back on people's powers that's proven to work? Okay, I guess some sorta flaming space-bird will come fix everything  ) The Young Avengers disband and wait for themselves to get a Marvel Now series.If you'll excuse me I'm going to drink. VVV: Disappeared. Not like, actually disappeared, he just quit the game. Apparently the mysterious villain in the new YA kinda dresses like him, but no one knows who it is. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Aug 17, 2013 |
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Aug 17, 2013 20:57
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Lurdiak posted:The issue of Avengers Academy about that Sentinel almost giving his life to stop crazy Phoenix Emma Frost from hurting Juston (but it turns out Quicksilver saved the Sentinel's CPU Seriously, that probably pissed me off more than any other death to come out of that because that Academy issue was fantastic.
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Nov 26, 2013 19:45
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) almost brought me to tears.
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redbackground posted:Did give us this, though: No, I'm pretty sure it just cycles to amazing. I've never seen that before now, but I loving love Hal Jordan as a flail. e: Or is that Rayner? e2: gently caress it, why does it matter? It's beautiful.
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Jan 2, 2014 18:27
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Waterhaul posted:Wasn't the point of the "5 years" thing that it was superheroes are public for X number of years but Batman has been around doing his poo poo for years before that anyway. Yeah, I'm pretty sure "5 years" was supposed to be Action #1 when Superman starts making his public appearances.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:06
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I'm pretty sure everybody's in agreement on that. Except for the scenes of Dr. Ultraman, the rock 'n roll supervillain. He does
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Jan 5, 2014 08:57
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:'Space Jesus? What are you talking about? Look man, I actually liked GL up until Rise of the Third Army (which is way past when a lot of people had written it off) but if you don't see Hal as Space Jesus in the GL #20 finale then I don't know what to tell you. He raises himself from the dead with a black ring which makes no loving sense, basically uses Nekron (who was previously an uncontrollable force and who literally tells Hal that he won't be controlled before backing down because Hal I don't even begrudge you for liking the story, but I don't see how you can deny that Hal is written as the uber-Lantern, totally overshadowing all others, during it. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 18:40
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bobkatt013 posted:Has their ever been a mutant who had a hideous deformity and never had the poor mes? He just accepted how he or she looked and did not give a gently caress how anyone else thought of them? Genesis (a.k.a Kid Apocalypse) is pretty cool with his appearance despite looking like Apocalypse, what with the chalk white skin and blue lips. Not sure if that quite counts. Also for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Hank McCoy's been pretty over his appearance as a blue furry man-thing for a while now.
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Jan 13, 2014 06:40
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404GoonNotFound posted:Wait, is he still Cable's Bastard Son From The Future, or is this just a similar character with the same name? Entirely different character, just took the codename. If you've read Remender's Uncanny X-Force, it's just Evan from that series with a new codename. If you haven't read Remender's Uncanny X-Force... you should do that. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 07:55
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Is Johnny relaxing in the fetal position? Panel 2: Daredevil: "poo poo, man, don't drag me into this!"
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Jan 14, 2014 16:53
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Suben posted:
You forgot one of my favorite parts. During the SHIELD Sentinels scene, SHIELD doesn't actually deploy the Sentinels or even attack, Maria Hill just yells over a loudspeaker "Hey knock it off you're kind of blowing up a military base". Then Xorn and Evil Xavier declare out loud, mind you, that they have to prove how evil the humans are and then they cut to the helicarrier where suddenly all the weapons are launched and nobody knows who's responsible, implying that Xorn & Xavier mind-controlled some sap on the helicarrier to shoot all the assembled mutants. Granted, the point of this scene is to demonstrate that "Oh man SHIELD shouldn't even have Sentinels in the first place because Sentinels are bad" but come the gently caress on, the villains announce they are framing the humans then everybody ignores this and totally gets mad at SHIELD instead of the guys who (telepathically) pulled the trigger. Sooo dumb.
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Jan 23, 2014 10:03
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Random Stranger posted:And finally he beats the rap through jury tampering by his dead, time traveling wife possessing the jury foreman. You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
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Feb 12, 2014 00:29
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While I almost want to help you out Onmi because I do think "the fridge" has become a hyper-inflated part of Kyle's character that people bring up too much, the real reason fridging became a "thing", by which I mean the term became so prevalent as it's used, is because unlike some of the other examples you listed like the Waynes and Uncle Ben, Alex wasn't Kyle's origin. Kyle already was a superhero, as opposed to those other guys' deaths leading to Batman and Spider-Man's creations. Sure he may have learned to be more serious or great responsibility or whatever, but the point is that he ultimately got a brutally murdered girlfriend for no real reason. He didn't get the Ion power after grieving or anything, he just grieved. At least his mom kicked the bucket, silly as that was (I mean sentient virus c'mon), so that Sinestro could teach him fear or whatever for the SCW. And that's a silly reason, but it's a reason. e: wrong thread for this. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 18:25
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:I thought that was because Simone made a fuss about it to get hits on her blog? While you phrased that horribly, yes, "fridging" became the term instead of some earlier example pretty much entirely thanks to Simone.
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Feb 13, 2014 19:07
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Onmi posted:First, the smite. Whoa, a breakup with a long-time girlfriend? Or maybe she's dead? Either way, no chance of happiness with a significant other? Sounds like somebody's trying to get a job at DC! 
TwoPair fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 23:49
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Onmi posted:Sega didn't care because they were getting money Really you could have shortened the post to this and described the entire Sonic franchise across all media since the Genesis. The one thing I don't get, thinking about all this stuff with Sonic comics, is why there were never any Nintendo comics. The Sonic comics were born out of that early 90s hype of "get this poo poo all over as much media as possible!" and you'd figure Nintendo would've done that too with Mario. Or if not Mario, I mean, they've only got a dozen other franchises that'd be good for comics but the only thing I can think of right off hand are the batshit insane Game Boy comics that Gavok wrote about at 4thletter. I guess Sega really does do what Nintendon't. Basically what I'm saying here is Nintendo, please license the rights for a Metroid comic to like... any publisher and I will buy all of the issues please and thank you. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 05:22
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Psychlone posted:What's more, in the main Legion title, which was also cancelled, the main Legion is the Earth-2 Legion, so what that means for the seven lost Legionnaires is very confusing. Did they hope dimensions as well as travelling through time? Were they even part of the Earth-2 Legion? Did they even exist in the New 52 universe? Does it matter? As I understand it, that was more of an asspull once somebody realized that, oh yeah, if we're gonna use Legion characters ever again, we probably shouldn't have left them completely un-rebooted and in their own little bubble where its stated they can't interact with the past! WHOOPS! So in order, for example, for Grant Morrison to have Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy fight guys to save Superman in Action Comics, they can't be stuck in the 31st century by some imaginary barrier. So then they just decided "Um yeah, this was all... another Earth, that's a way out, right?" and didn't bother explaining the Legion Lost guys because, like you said, who the gently caress cared? I... think there's been some other legionnaires that've shown up in other titles as well, but would it blow your mind if I told you that any wiki related to the Legion is a goddamned mess and I couldn't find poo poo?
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Apr 14, 2014 03:13
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Metal Loaf posted:Here's something I've just come across. Kind of a follow-up to Onmi's Ken Penders posts from a few pages back: Every thing I find out about that guy makes him seem battier. I like this sweet burn somebody dropped on him in his own forum: quote:This looks legitimate. You know its a Ken Penders script because it contains pretty much nothing but people standing around and talking about stuff instead of things actually happening.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:13
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Favorabilis Solitud posted:I never knew there was a strong following to like Sonic comics (longest running video game comic) and like GI JOE comics until these threads. I guess I always looked at these as vehicles to sell toys/games first then focus on a good story/art second. I get comics in general are always tied into pushing something. In the case of Sonic, probably not. I got roped into reading them after the Sonic comics crossed over with Mega Man (another old video game comic, I see a trend forming) but while they're quite enjoyable, they're very much written with young kids in mind as the target demographic, so unless you either are in that demographic or are a slave to your own sense of nostalgia, like I said, probably not for you. At least they're not terrible anymore like the Penders examples Onmi posted earlier.
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Apr 25, 2014 22:22
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CopywrightMMXI posted:Am I the only one who liked Geoff Johns? I thought he was fairly good in the late 90s when he was working on JSA and I felt his work didn't start to go downhill until he started on Titans and Green Lantern. I think most people liked Geoff Johns at one point or another, it's just a matter of when you just think he totally lost his touch. Everybody seems to have their own personal opinion of "[x] is when Johns lost his ability to write" (my X is right after Blackest Night)
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Apr 30, 2014 03:39
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Alhazred posted:And now you have learned a valuable lesson, Dini and Timm equals this: That's not near as bad as that borderline porn scene posted earlier. (Also those are quite funny)
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May 4, 2014 21:29
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Now that it's finally officially over, let's talk about Scott Lobdell's run on Superman, aka, "UGHHHH gently caress REALLY?" A little background will be necessary here. Lobdell was really the first writer to get his hands on Superman post-New 52. I know what you're going to say, that actually Grant Morrison was, and you'd be right, but let me explain myself. Everyone knows the New 52's initial launch was a clusterfuck. Plenty of books came out with references to pre-New 52 works (see Red Hood, Swamp Thing) or that straight up didn't reboot (see Batman, Green Lantern, Legion of Superheroes). Superman was in an awkward limbo because Grant Morrison was writing him a new origin in Action Comics, set five years prior to any other ongoings. This left the main Superman title (set in the present) in the hands of George Perez who wrote some really dull run-of-the-mill Superman stories to keep the ship afloat but also making sure that nothing really got moving while we got the origins of Superman (and his suit and his dog and etc, etc) over in Action. As for Superman (the book), it started being written by Keith Giffen who promptly started trying to tie it in to some thing with mind controlling aliens that I think was also going on in Grifter and some of the other Wildstorm books (did anyone read Grifter?), then Dan Jurgens wrote 3 issues once Giffen left. This is why I say that Lobdell was the first writer to get his hands on Superman post-New 52. Nobody else had really done much with the guy in the present, whether for fear of contradicting stuff Morrison hadn't written yet or whether out of laziness I can't say. So I guess I'll say this for the guy: It takes balls to look at a clean slate, say "Here I can build" then poo poo all over that clean slate. Anayway, Lobdell got on Superman with the first Superman Annual, but let's start looking at his work with Superman #13, which is one of the worst comics I've ever read. It's where he starts laying the groundwork for his run. Oh hey, remember when I mentioned Morrison earlier? Does THIS look familiar to you?    No? How about now?  Scott Lobdell likes to co-opt the ideas of a lot of other (better) writers for stories he'd like to write, so meet ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL Dr. Shay Veritas who is not at all Dr. Leo Quintum because she is a sexy lady and doesn't wear a rainbow coat. Later on we'll see Lobdell make up not-Uatu and not-Silver Surfer. Anyway let's cut to Clark quitting the Daily Planet. It's something that makes sense honestly. I mean, everybody's made/heard jokes about the how outdated the notion is of Clark Kent still being a newspaper reporter in the 21st century, so why not shake things up? Perez had the Daily Planet get bought out by Morgan Edge (basically a stand-in for Rupert Murdoch and other terrible controlling-the-media types) in his run and Morrison had established his Superman as being a strong upstanding social justice guy, so it makes even more sense. Lobdell put these together and got this:   OH poo poo SON. But wait, oh yeah, Clark Kent has the Superman beat because you know, he's loving Superman and so that's why he gets the exclusives about Superman. Reporters don't just get assigned positions for no reason; maybe if Clark wants to do investigative journalism so bad, he should've done some more of that instead of making a name for himself reporting on himself. He's only there so he can hear about disasters as they happen and then go out and be Superman anyway. But no, Lobdell has him pitch a fit like a sullen teenager and just quit. Anyway, then Clark flies out to let off some steam when all of a sudden a giant monster appears for literally no reason.    (Why does he get hit to Europe if the monster just shows up again seconds later? There's nobody around! It's like Dragonball Z when a fight moves into featureless plains so the artist doesn't have to draw a city!) Note that one narration box about with the overdramatic narration about how Superman's punches "could topple a small mountain". Scott Lobdell wants to be a Silver Age writer so bad and his narration reflects that but he is sooo bad at writing narration. It'll get worse. Anyway Superman kills the dragon by blowing up an oil well underneath it and then Supergirl shows up and is pissed off because apparently the dragon was actually some sort of prehistoric Kryptonian thing (a little background: N52 Supergirl got teleported to Earth by her dad instead of rocketed so she hasn't had much time to adjust to Krypton being gone)  Okay, that's issue 13. All that poo poo happens in one issue. I mean goddamn, pace yourself, Scott. Oh yeah, check out the back there! Meet Let's check out Superman 14. In addition to the usual Kryptonian power-set (only even stronger and faster because of course he is), H'El also has the power to teach Supergirl English via telepathy, super-hypnotism, and the ability to somehow telekinetically rip Superboy's DNA apart (Superboy doesn't die though). Superman 14 also features Lobdell writing Supergirl as an absolute bitch. In her series up to this point, Supergirl had been having problems acclimating due to accepting her world's death (see rather than rocketing to Earth and growing up there like Clark, she got teleported there and woke up one day with everyone she ever knew and loved dead), but she had done some heroic deeds and made a couple of friends. As soon as H'El shows up, he mentions a possibility of reviving Krypton and Supergirl is totally ready to let the world burn.   "Hey Kal you endangered some people  "After this, H'El proceeds to kick Superman out of the Fortress of Solitude so he can get access to all of Superman's kryptonian stuff, and he also changes all of Superman's lock codes and everything because H'El is the best at everything, of course. He also starts puttin' the moves on Supergirl, because Anyway, Clark and Superboy decide to have a consultation with Lex Luthor on how to break in to the Fortress of Solitude, which is when this bit of sillyness is introduced:  Yes, Luthor has a loving huge prison all to himself. Superman later smugly explains that he tricked Luthor to design it himself by challenging him to build an unescapable prison. This... actually doesn't make me too mad, it's ridiculous, but in a silly, Silver Age-y way. What's silly in a bad way is Luthor's nice burn on the side of his face. Luthor says Superman did it. Presumably, Lobdell would show this at some point right? Right? (No, the answer is no). Humorously, in an example of one writer going "this poo poo is retarded" to another writer's work, Charles Soule wrote Action Comics #23.3 during DC's whole Villains Month gimmick and the first thing he did was have Luthor get out of jail and get his face fixed. Luthor tells them how H'El actually totally can go back in time and save Krypton but the time machine will totally destroy the Earth. How does he know this when he's in prison and shouldn't even know about H'El? Oh, here's some more classic bad Lobdell narration when Superboy & Superman meet up with the Justice League before making a charge on the Fortress on Solitude.   After a couple of boring fights where H'El beats up the whole Justice League because isn't he cool, Supergirl finally gets the picture that hey maybe this guy isn't that great. Also H'El throws Superman into orbit, which leads us to the end, but first:   Oh hi Uatu. NO WAIT I MEAN THE ORACLE HE'S TOTALLY ORIGINAL BECAUSE HE'S LIKE A STATUE INSTEAD OF A DUDE IN A TOGA. Anyway it's time to get serious, so Superman rushes back to Earth to oh who am I kidding  he gets tied up in psychic rope with Superboy and Wonder Woman so Supergirl can make a heroic sacrifice. She hides a piece of kryptonite on her and fakes defection again so she can get close to him then stakes him like a Kryptonian vampire   Okay, so here's the really dumb part.  The gently caress is this? He just suddenly falls backward through the timestream? What is going on on this page? He never hit any buttons in his time machine, but he suddenly just fades into nothingness. I hate you Scott Lobdell. Oh and an epilogue guest starring Scott Lobdell's best Stan Lee impression:  You know I was going to do a full write-up about Lobdell's run on Superman and Action Comics but ugh just looking up all these panels of H'El on Earth has just made me sick of it already. Maybe I'll come back and do write-ups on the rest of his run later. But here is my big thesis and I really am not using hyperbole here: I would rather read Grounded than Lobdell's Superman. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 00:07
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Gynovore posted:And this despite him having a big jaggy stone castle with lava everywhere. Maybe he's just tired of Desaad bogarting all his beer and Hot Pockets. Darkseid's Shameful Secret: "I don't actually like living on Apokolips all that much, I just think a planet that looks like a metal album is intimidating to enemies"
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Sep 22, 2014 21:38
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Gaz-L posted:OK, just going through this thread for the first time in a while, and I haven't read Cap since Brubaker left, but seriously? Could Remender not just... not have Sharon in the book? He can't just put the toy he doesn't like back in the box for the other kids, he has to rub it in dogshit and then smash it because 'it was covered in crap'? That whole description comes off like someone who wants to get rid of the character, but doesn't even care enough to pretend it's a big deal. If it makes you feel any better, she's back now. She got a fakeout death just like Cap's son.
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Sep 23, 2014 01:04
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