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Nessus posted:Preacher rules but certainly has some low points, and also it seems like Garth Ennis keeps doing Preacher. Every so often, yeah, he tries to mine that particular vein again. He did a romantic comedy book at Dynamite, A Train Called Love, last year, and it's a truly weird read. Archyduke posted:I guess it's hard not to read these scenes today in light of his first arc of Crossed (which I believe is the last Ennis I read): he seems to think that the world is a hard and cruel place, but that's a good thing, and that people too sensitive or not "masculine" enough are destined to be humiliated and punished by it, and that's hysterically funny because everyone around them secretly hates them anyway. I mean, look-- The Boys prominently featured a dog that raped people and this was all generally framed as an instrument of karmic and comedic justice. That's just not a world-view I can play along with. Maybe I'm just bitter because I know I'd last two pages in a Garth Ennis comic before a grizzled man in a black trenchchoat knee-capped me for vague reasons. I didn't get that out of the first arc at all. It's a shorter version of an arc he's done before: a character begins in a situation where the answer seems to be to "toughen up," to lose his emotions and become jaded, but in the end, decides that it's bullshit and that doing so would make him inhuman. That's the point of the last couple of issues, more or less, that survival isn't worth much if you lose what makes you human along the way. A lot of people who read the first series of Crossed put way too much narrative weight on and read too much into the nerd who gets himself killed in issue #2 (and the nerd himself is eventually vindicated in a roundabout way, because Stan's big moment in the final issue is the realization that yeah, we should have been fighting back). Basically, to paraphrase someone else, Ennis finds a lot of stories in characters from a certain background--military-trained, veterans, cynical due to experience--but he's consistently made it clear that those characters also have to overcome that to progress and mature. It's more or less spelled out in Butcher's deathbed speech in The Boys: all that stuff may look fun, but in the end, it's self-defeating. Frank Castle has forsaken any semblance of happiness to become what he is, and will never be any better than this ("the long, cold dark that I've made of my life"); Butcher betrays his wife's memory and wishes; even Jesse Custer has to consciously ditch his previous vision of masculinity, which is something he had to stitch together on his own from John Wayne movies and what little his father could teach him, in order to get his happy ending with Tulip. His protagonists often start a story in a place like you've described, but if they find a happy ending at all, it's because they have the courage to leave that place. And yeah, there's a lot of facile humor along the way, which often makes a critical reading harder than it has to be. The Boys is at once a hamfisted superhero satire; an extremely black comedy; an alternate-history drama about the legacy of the Cold War; an allegorical discussion of the oversized role that copyrighted characters play in modern pop culture; and a bizarre series of detective stories. It's also a story that features a bulldog that's been trained to gently caress things on command. It's vast; it contains multitudes; some of those multitudes probably shouldn't be there, but that's Ennis for you.
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Apr 5, 2017 04:41
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Lurdiak posted:I find that harder to believe the more Ennis writes, because that's all he writes, and those characters always win and are established to be morally superior to others within their own world. Like I won't say that Ennis genuinely wishes The Punisher was real or anything, but it's hard to look at his work and say "Punisher is broken" when everyone Punisher fights is like 3x more hosed up than he is and the normal people that disagree with him get humiliated and brutalized. That's not actually true. Off the top of my head, that general description--a protagonist who's depicted as morally just, who's a trained military operative and/or veteran, in a particularly dark setting--fits Frank Castle, Billy Butcher, and arguably Mellinger in Red Team. Castle is repeatedly shown as not being moral in the least; he's certainly effective, but the characters who come into his orbit are typically used to show off how hollow his life actually is. He starts Punisher MAX by shooting his only real friend in the face; "Kitchen Irish" is primarily a story about the cycle of revenge and how it solves precisely nothing, which is all but spelled out on the last pages; Jen Cooke in "The Slavers" is repeatedly shown and stated to be doing more actual good than Castle could ever do, via her social work; "Widowmaker" is a story about a woman who's basically Frank's mirror, and how broken she is. Frank is occasionally funny in a very bleak, dry way; and the book in general runs into the old war-movie problem, where you can't really do an anti-war story that shows an actual war scene because war scenes tend to look cool despite themselves, but there's no way to read the run and come away with it with the idea that Frank is anything to aspire to. Butcher isn't the protagonist of The Boys; Hughie is. Arcs that focus on Butcher, in whole or in part, show his moral decay and cheerful amorality, which is explained and understandable but never justified, and which eventually brings him to the collision point that ends the series. Butcher is an amiable monster from the word "go" in The Boys, and the book sets up a conflict between him and Hughie--cynicism vs. idealism, with Hughie very much shown to be in the right--almost from the first issue. If you expand the remit to Jesse Custer, one of the continuing threads throughout Preacher, which reaches its conclusion in the last issue, is that Jesse spends most of his relationship with Tulip tripping over his own dick. He's put an idea of what a man should be together from movies, old TV, and what little he remembers of his father. It's only when he's able to admit that to himself that he's able to reconcile with Tulip and walk into the sunset. Ennis does himself a rampant disservice by dressing most of his manuscripts up with a lot of shock comedy, but in a lot of his work--by no means all, but a lot--there's quite a bit to unpack. Hellbunny posted:That's because it's rather nuanced. It would be easy to just straight up write Frank as a complete monster (and Jason Aaron's great run on Punisher Max had a version of that) but that's not what Ennis wants. Ennis writes him as a straight up war-hero with a ton of good qualities. He likes kids. He defends women and loses his poo poo when they are mistreated. He tries to help or at least stay out of the way of the cops etc etc. The "broken" part is that this dude has somehow gotten the crazy idea in his head that the best way to help people is to endlessly murder criminals. That clearly confuses a lot of people. That's why Frank keeps running into situations and characters who make it clear that he's a monster, and that the only vague saving grace he has is that he's laser-focused on other monsters. It's pretty much the entire point of "Long, Cold Dark," for example.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:28
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NorgLyle posted:So basically what you're saying is we need an OH GARTH ENIS NO meme. Not really, unless you want to start it in reaction to the sheer number of times he ends up using sodomy as a punchline. It's more that a lot of people online seem to think Ennis writes certain characters in an attempt to make you root for or empathize with them, when the aim in the text is often anything but. It's like how people took a surprisingly long time to get around to the reading of Preacher where, yeah, Jesse is a tremendous rear end in a top hat and Tulip probably shouldn't have gotten back with him in the end.
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Apr 6, 2017 08:49
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Android Blues posted:My problem is not that these characters are eventually morally justified (they aren't), but that the narrative and framing seems to consistently think they're cool. That's just it, though. The narrative might give them moments of excellence from time to time, but they then consistently proceed to undercut those moments with their flaws. Butcher beats the Homelander, but the last page of the issue in which he does it is him facing the sky and acknowledging that Rebecca, the person he's ostensibly avenging, would have hated it. Jesse can kick any rear end in the world, but he's weirdly naive in a couple of key areas and his inability to trust Tulip almost drives them apart; there's a thread in Preacher's main cast (except for Tulip) about the dangers of buying too heavily into your own personal narrative, which also plays into The Boys with the Hughie/Starlight pairing. Frank Castle may look cool while he's shooting dudes and there's a certain cold satisfaction in watching him gently caress up people who are worse than himself, but the book is built heavily around the costs of such a life and the cycle of revenge. Frank is loving miserable. Even in his current book, the sequel to Red Team, the two protagonists have a couple of badass moments between them and they're interesting characters to spend some time with, but the book also never shies away from reminding you that they're both multiple murderers, vigilantes, and as of a couple of issues ago, an adulterous couple. The best thing you can say about Mellinger and Trudy is that they're self-aware. There's a James Ellroy quote that ends one of the volumes of The Boys that fits a lot of Ennis's work like a glove: "It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time." You're not meant to like these characters. They aren't good people and they often aren't doing good things; they might be necessary or important or amusing or interesting, but they aren't supposed to be laudable and every time you might think they are, there's usually something in the narrative that's there specifically to remind you otherwise. There's craft here that a lot of readers don't realize is there, because they're mistaking the narrative's intentions or they got distracted by the gross-out.
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Apr 6, 2017 10:11
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Soonmot posted:What the gently caress was even happening in that scene, she was travelling through devices, but only in short jumps? She's traveling through mixed media, to the point where when she reappears in the "real" world, she still has a can of soda she picked up in a commercial. Ellis might be picking up on the Jenny arc that Millar and Brubaker were playing with, where a given century's "Jenny" has powers that specifically relate to the abiding concern of the era. She's Jenny Information Traffic.
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Apr 26, 2017 00:10
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One of the few flaws in the Injustice comic, at least while Tim Taylor was writing it, was that Harley earned her forgiveness surprisingly easily. I reread the first volume recently and in the issue where Green Arrow recaptures her, she kills two cops as she's escaping, and nobody ever brings that up again.
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May 24, 2017 02:05
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X-O posted:The Toolman never wrote any of that book as far as I know. I wonder how often that happens to Tom Taylor.
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May 24, 2017 03:08
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zoux posted:No, just constantly surprised by how awkward and forced he can do exposition. I just can't take that poo poo. To be fair, it's not Claremont in specific so much as it's the '80s. It was a golden age for "as you know, Bob."
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May 30, 2017 18:17
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Push El Burrito posted:
I remember that one. He was trying to come up with the worst possible things to say to Johnny to get him mad enough to break out of hypnosis or mind control or something.
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Jun 9, 2017 04:01
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"Kirby Meets Kirby": http://katewillaert.com/KirbyMeetsKirby.png
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Aug 29, 2017 23:04
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Alan Davis as a writer is weird. There's something about his dialogue flow that seems somehow off, all the time. The cadence is neither realistic nor smooth. Also, he's as allergic to exclamation points as Silver Age authors were fond of them.
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Sep 30, 2017 20:47
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Also, Dr. Stockman originally worked out of the "Rextab" building.
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Aug 29, 2018 04:56
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Gavok posted:Nah, the meanest one of all is the What If for Atlantis Attacks which instead of being caused by one moment is caused by three separate things failing, followed by 40 pages of every Marvel character being killed one at a time. I remember not buying that in the store because it was so murder-happy. It wasn't until I was older and rereading it digitally that I realized just how much contrivance is required in the first few pages before the writer can get to his full-universe murder spree. That and "the X-Men Lost Inferno" really do go way out of their way to justify the ensuing slaughter.
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Oct 12, 2018 01:39
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Say Nothing posted:
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/columns/136227-on-the-other-hand-6-matter-eater-lad.html Looks like relatively recent Legion.
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Oct 26, 2018 07:01
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X-O posted:As it was posted above it was in Spider-Men, the crossover between Miles and Peter well before Secret Wars. But also to note, the Ultimate Universe still exists and was show recently in Al Ewing's Ultimates I believe. The Ultimate universe, or a version thereof, does still exist; that was the whole plan in Bendis's Spider-Men II, that somebody in 616 wanted to cross back over there. Ewing's Ultimates featured the Maker recreating 1610 Cap, Tony, Janet, Hank, and Hulk to fight on his behalf.
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Oct 26, 2018 21:41
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prefect posted:I remember a comic storyline that involved an empty/destroyed universe that was being used as a hideout by somebody. Maybe it was the guy with the CD-ROM drive in his hat? Also, that's a story beat in Planetary, that the Four depopulated an alternate world so they could use it for extradimensional storage space.
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Oct 26, 2018 22:27
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ruddiger posted:Has Luther ever been accused of being Batman? Patton Oswalt wrote a pretty good one-shot a while back, JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, which is mostly narrated by a guy from Portland who runs a superhero 'zine. At one point, he airs the theory that given Batman's level of funding and tech, he's obviously working for Luthor.
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Oct 16, 2019 04:43
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good day for a bris posted:Magic claw wolverine daughter is from our universe, I thought? She kind of can't be, because that whole story was set up as if "comic book time" wasn't a thing. It wouldn't be that hard to bring her in if someone has an idea for her, of course, but she fairly explicitly wasn't in the 616. Also, her name's Rien D'arqueness, which is horrible.
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Oct 21, 2019 00:15
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CzarChasm posted:Was that the daughter he had with Mystique? No, this is from a story in the recent volume of Marvel Comics Presents. During WWII, Logan happens to be on hand when the Nazis attack a French mystic. She defends herself by summoning a demon called the Truth, which mortally wounds her as she banishes it, and which will reappear every ten years thereafter in "the worst place in the world." Logan ends up having to team up with her daughter Sylvie to oppose and banish the Truth again every decade. In the '70s, Sylvie quietly seduces Logan after the Truth's attack. She subsequently dies in the '80s. Logan tries to oppose the Truth in the '90s with the X-Men, but without any magic-user on their side, the Truth kills Cyclops and Storm. Logan's daughter with Sylvie shows up to banish it again, and refuses to talk to Logan until later. Her given name is Rien, the French word for "nothing."
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Oct 21, 2019 01:32
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El Gallinero Gros posted:In a just world, Kurt Busiek is a bigger deal Wasn't the problem that Busiek had to drop out of the world for a while because he ended up with mercury poisoning?
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Oct 23, 2019 13:58
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...I mean, yeah, Batroc has a silly accent and his win-loss record's not great, but considering who he's usually fighting, he's a legitimate badass. It actually makes sense that he'd be able to keep somebody like Batman tied up for a while.
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Oct 24, 2019 00:37
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Doc Hawkins posted:so uh this written before the whole genosha thing, right? Something like 11 years beforehand, yeah.
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Oct 25, 2019 23:34
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Skwirl posted:Don't forget hot Garth Ennis villain, The Thousand. Which is literally a thousand spiders that can wear people like a skin suit. You know, that story is undeniably gross, and is too dark by half for a 21st-century Spider-Man story, but it really does have a surprisingly good bit for Peter. "All I want is to do a little bit of good. Let's go."
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Nov 26, 2019 02:37
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Ugly In The Morning posted:He's theoretically like a thermodynamic version of Magneto but that only gets explored rarely. Has he had any good what-ifs where they just go nuts with his powers? There's that Marjorie Liu arc in Astonishing X-Men where he goes world-conquering nuts for a hot minute. I remember he has to be talked down, rather than fought; at one point, he beats Thor clean in a one-on-one.
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Feb 22, 2020 02:01
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There was also a relatively early Jubilee bit in the Acts of Vengeance issues for Uncanny X-Men, where she thinks Wolverine's died and lets rip with an explosion that tears the guts out of most of the building she's in.
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Feb 24, 2020 20:18
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Wouldn’t it make more sense to psychic English into Illyana’s brain so she can talk to everyone there? He does that eventually, after her trip to Belasco's lair and the subsequent age-up. I remember there's a Claremont/Cockrum issue at some point where she's having lunch with Xavier and says, "So, weird thing, I speak English now?" and he says he beamed it into her brain while she was asleep. Before she spent all that time in Limbo, Illyana was a really little kid, so that might have had something to do with it. No joke, Xavier's psychic instant-expert language courses are one of the major super-powers I would absolutely want to have.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:28
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Reginald Hudlin also introduced her paternal grandparents and cousin, who I don't think have appeared at all outside of his Black Panther. Her grandparents are actually kinda cool; they're introduced beating the poo poo out of a HYDRA goon squad with a frying pan and rifle.
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Sep 2, 2020 00:29
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Skwirl posted:And Uatu had a kid and wife who theoretically still lived there. If you go by the handful of Mark Gruenwald comics where Watchers actually got into something like a fight, they're more dangerous to any demon than it would be to them.
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Sep 11, 2020 05:13
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Dog_Meat posted:Seconding the "dragon seemed to be reasonable and just wanted some peace and quiet" sentiment. Can anyone shed light on why he has to die? Does it matter when it's Conan? Conan and company are specifically there because Dr. Strange needs an amulet in the dragon's possession. However, the dragon has also settled down in the middle of Bruges, in Belgium, and demanded absolute silence so he can get a few weeks' sleep. The issue opens with a drunk guy accidentally dropping a bottle on the pavement and immediately getting burned to ash by dragon's flame.
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Nov 15, 2020 00:02
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It's weird to me that after I read a solid two dozen fantasy novels in the '90s where some dude from Earth went to a fantasy setting, from Thomas Covenant on down, only now is there a specific term for it.
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Feb 15, 2021 00:58
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Rigged Death Trap posted:The other hot question is At least one's in her ponytail. I got the impression reading that comic that about 90% of the reason she switched to her current full-coverage bodysuit is that it gives her more places to keep hidden knives.
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Oct 2, 2021 19:04
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Nilbop posted:Wait aren’t Galvatron and Megatron the same robot? Only in the old '80s TV show and Marvel continuities. In the first IDW series, they're separate characters.
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Dec 8, 2021 21:42
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The first IDW run is absolutely the best that Transformers has ever been, with some genuinely interesting sci-fi thrown into the mix. It also absolutely demands that you find a fan-created reading order and follow it, because it's split up among what's got to be close to four dozen series, miniseries, one-shots, and relaunches.
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Dec 10, 2021 00:23
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ImpAtom posted:The funniest thing was it being painted like Fuddy Duddy Captain America isn't down with the modern day incest. In retrospect, what strikes me as the funniest part is that Loeb is now in the position of having been less subtle than Mark Millar about something. Yes, every time we saw Pietro and Wanda in Millar's Ultimates, they were sharing a sumptuous Tuscan retreat or boating together on a Venetian canal, but maybe they're just mutual fans of travel. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Aug 23, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 16:56
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funtax posted:It's like Mignola and Liefeld got Brundlefly-ed as a result of X-Force #8. I kind of love it. Who's the artist? I was curious too, so I looked it up. This is Tom Grindberg, also known as the guy who drew the 1996 Doom comic.
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Aug 10, 2022 05:57
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Opopanax posted:I remember reading IG before I knew who he was and being confused as hell when he has one line about how noone must know he isn't the real Thor and then it's never brought up again It's kind of funny how Starlin clearly had no idea about Masterson as Thor until around issue #3 of Infinity Gauntlet. There's a letter balloon in one panel in #2 that was visibly thrown in by editorial at the last minute where Eric's thinking, "better not tell anybody I'm not the real Thor."
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Aug 23, 2022 01:16
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There's been at least one depiction of Doctor Octopus where he himself was in a long coat and was usually in shadow, whereas the tentacles were always lit like they were in full sunlight, that I thought was pretty creepy.
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Jan 11, 2023 23:13
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