|
Now I'm just waiting for the revelation that Thomas and Martha Wayne weren't married.
|
#
¿
May 15, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 12:59 |
|
|
She was also one of the few characters to originate in Batman: The Animated Series and then get migrated over to the comics.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
She hasn't detectived anything since Alias ended, I'm pretty sure? She's put on her old superhero outfit a few times, but seems to have entirely given that up.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 15:34
|
|
|
zoux posted:They got Squirrel Girl as a nanny and Jessica kind of became a New Avenger for a couple of issues towards the end of the Bendis run. I think that probably anything interesting they were going to do with here got swallowed up by Fear Itself and she never really did anything. I just reread it, it's mostly Won't Someone Think About The Baby stuff. That being said, Bendis hinting at an interesting plot or character arc and then proceeding to drop it like a wet fart is pretty much his MO, so I don't know if I'd just blame Fear Itself. Having been rereading New Avengers, he's basically the Claremont of the oughts as far as introducing and abandoning plot threads goes.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 15:58
|
|
|
Nevermind this, quoted when I meant to edit.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 15:58
|
|
|
zoux posted:Well since the Avengers were involved in a huge company wide crossover every 2 months it seems, I don't know how you can expect him to develop storylines when Dark Asgard is crashing into Avengers tower every five minutes. Of the crossovers New Avengers bumps into (Civil War, House of M, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Fear Itself, and Avengers vs. X-Men), Bendis had a hand in five out of those seven crossovers. So while it's a fair criticism, a lot of them were his babies, with only Civil War and Fear Itself being written by others, and Avengers vs. X-Men being written by committee with Bendis on board. If anybody had the ability to plan around the crossovers being written, it should have been Bendis.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
irlZaphod posted:Millar wrote Civil War, but the two of them came up with it. It's as much Bendis' baby as it is Millar's. I think that's a stretch, but it was indeed born out of Bendis' ideas for a SHIELD vs. Avengers storyline he was going to have. But Millar decided it would be cooler for heroes to fight each other and so it went.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
Because the Phoenix... ... I'm sorry, I think that's all the explanation we have. 
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2014 03:20
|
|
|
There are several explanations that have been given for Bullseye's adamanitum treating, such as Bullseye only having Adamantium lacing or reinforcement on his bones, as opposed to Wolverine having his bones wholly coated with the stuff. At one point it was theorized that Bullseye did have a low-grade healing factor of some sort in the Bendis run, but as far as I know that idea's been discarded. In any case, it's never been satisfactorily explained.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2014 22:28
|
|
|
zoux posted:Doesn't Wolverine not have his healing factor right now? Beast gave Wolverine a medication to take for that for the foreseeable future, given that he'll never get his healing factor back ever.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2014 01:03
|
|
|
Connellingus posted:Which brings me to my question: as someone with only a passing familiarity with X-Men comics, I know there have been stories like "Deadly Genesis" (which is also somewhere on my to-read list) that deal with Charles getting into some shady dealings and messing with the team's memories, but have there been any good stories that really examined the ethics of how much the telepaths within the X-Men interfere with other people's free will? One of the things is that since Xavier was a Silver Age creation, his early appearances have him being extremely... flexible regarding the moral limitations on his powers, since it just wasn't considered as closely at the time. This, of course, has clashed with the repositioning him as a mutant MLK during the Claremont era on Uncanny X-Men, and so there has been some constant readjusting of his character of the years. The X-Men Legacy series from 2008 dealt with a premise of a brain-damaged Professor Xavier having to piece the story of his life together from the memories of others, and getting to relive all his mistakes and flaws from a more objective perspective. One of my favorite telepath bits was from the second X-Factor series which had to do with FBI agents investigating mutant cases, and there's a point in one of the final issues that one of the agents runs into Jean Grey for seemingly the first time, and then realizing she's been wiping his memories in order to take mutants to the school without interference, and is just like noooooo not again. Though the series itself wasn't particularly memorable, it was a great example of how the X-Men could come across as absolutely terrifying to normal humans.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
It's not fondly remembered largely because of the nonsensical ending where most of Earth's heroes find suicide a viable solution, and the following Heroes Reborn taking a dump on many of Marvel's major titles for about a year. If it wasn't for that it'd probably fall in line with Maximum Carnage and other overwrought but mostly just silly 90s crossovers.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2014 17:14
|
|
|
zoux posted:Also today I saw that Galactus is on the cover or Ultimate Cataclysm, so are they retconning Gah Lak Tus or what here? Nah, Galactus took over Gah Lak Tus and used it as an ersatz herald during Hunger, but Gah Lak Tus was defeated and sent to the Negative Zone prior to Galactus proper. Then the X-Men beat it up a lot when they accidentally got bounced into it.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 16:47
|
|
|
It's interesting, but more for the ideas than the story, which is muddled as other people have mentioned. It's certainly one of the better line-wide crossovers DC has had since... ... uh... ... wow. A long time. Certainly the one most worth reading of the 2000-Present era, at least.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 15:40
|
|
|
Yeah, I don't think of 52 as one since it's mostly self-contained and not line-wide, but it's a good call in any case.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 15:57
|
|
|
It's not a new development, let's put it that way.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
bobkatt013 posted:It was Chris Claremont the guy who defined Nightcrawler and made him a popular character. To be fair, Nightcrawler didn't know she was his sister at first. To be less fair, Jimaine Szardos knew perfectly well he was her brother. And to be entirely unfair, there's Nightcrawler's reaction to finding out he's been dating his sister: 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
Unmature posted:I've always wondered why comic covers are almost never drawn by the interior artist these days. Is it just a time thing or is there a lovely business part involved? I bet it's cheaper to pay a guy for 22 pages then another guy as just a cover artist who does multiple books a month. From everything I understand covers and interior pages are billed separately, so it's not necessarily cheaper. Also the cost of getting a big-name artist to do the cover is a bargain compared to having them do the interiors, and is more likely to catch a reader's attention. Not matter what you have on the interior, getting a buyer to actually pick up and look at a comic is the biggest hurdle to selling it. It's vastly more likely to sell if you can get somebody to physically hold a book in their hands. This is part of why gimmick covers became a big deal in the 90s, at least until the market became so saturated with the drat things they lost all impact. On the artist side of things, covers pay much better, generally speaking, for the amount of work involved. For artists in high demand, it's a better way to make money than doing interiors, which are a pain in the rear end comparatively. A guy like Adam Hughes can make a living just doing covers and pinups and gently caress all else. It's disappointing to see somebody like Amanda Conner focus more on cover illustrations, but it's hard to blame her given the economics of it all. There's also time considerations as well; there are artists like Art Adams that will never, ever hold down a regular book, but getting them to do a cover or single issue is more viable. Some people in the cover art biz just aren't fast (or reliable) enough to have them do interiors, and find doing covers just to be a better way to work at their own pace. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jun 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2014 14:39
|
|
|
Wolverine is laced with a special form of adamantium called "adamantium beta" that bonds directly with the bone's structure and doesn't cover it, but instead just enhances the existing structure. Apparently this process only works with mutants because *handwave* *farting sound* (Yes, this contradicts characters like Bullseye or Cyber who are human but adamantium-enhanced.) In some stories this ability to survive having laced bones is purely a property of his healing factor, and without it he starts to die since his blood cells won't replenish. It's been a bit inconsistent. In the current comics without his healing factor, he has to take medication to overcome adamantium metal poisoning (which seems weird, given I'd presume adamantium effectively is a noble metal, but...)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2014 18:05
|
|
|
If memory serves, the justification was that Magneto had essentially lost his mind on account of his powers overwhelming his sanity. This was the same crossover where he tore out Cable's cybernetics and did a worldwide EMP, after all, so he'd firmly gone off the deep end at that point. If Colossus hadn't been a member of the the Acolytes at the time (thanks to a head injury - no, really), I'm sure Magneto would have torn his skin off while he was at it. It's weird to realize that Wolverine would continue to be without his adamantium for another seven years, so it wasn't just a temporary switcheroo - it had a big impact on the character for a long time. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Sep 8, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 14:05
|
|
|
bobkatt013 posted:He did not lose just his adamantium, he also lost his nose! Comics Should Be Good did a great article on that. Mr. Maltose posted:God, was it really that long? I would have guessed 5, tops. It really stopped being a plot point for the character about five years into that period, so that's probably part of why they eventually returned him to form.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 14:26
|
|
|
Aphrodite posted:The idea that the adamantium poisoning constantly keeping his healing factor busy kept him from turning into Sabretooth always sounded really clever to me. It's clever but it'd take a lot to convince me that "Wolverine is a hero because of a chemical imbalance" is really a great place to take the character.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 15:20
|
|
|
Romulus is in jail now and hasn't cropped up in the past two years or so. Presumably he will be back when they need a character to stand around in shadows and say ambiguous nonsense that will never be resolved.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 16:09
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:What's with the 90s palette swap characters like War Machine, US Agent and Vengeance anyway? Are there even more that just didn't take? Two things, really. One, there was an attitude during the nineties that many established characters were old-fashioned and needed to be jazzed up for a new decade. Characters were often replaced by younger and / or more ruthless versions (War Machine, US Agent, Scarlet Spider). Two, Venom was really, really, popular, and so characters started to get "dark mirror" versions fairly often (Moonshade, Evilhawk, Vengeance). Even Venom got his own "dark mirror" over and over and over, though only one stuck (Carnage). It basically played to the adolescent desire to have old heroes be replaced with more "grown-up" versions that stabbed people in the mouth or flung villains down elevator shafts, where "grown-up" is defined as "what a thirteen year old thinks is edgy and grown-up". It was also driven by the collector boom to create new "first appearances" to try and drive sales along the lines of that inanity, and also try and ape some of the early hot properties of that era. Cable's popular? How about Bishop?! How about Random?! Etc.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Dr.Magnificent posted:US Agent was created to be a dark inversion of Captain America, Gru decided to have him stand in for Cap after the success of Beta Ray Bill and Rhodes. You can argue they primarily happen as a way to boost sales (either of the main book or to launch a spin-off book), but creators also enjoy doing it because it creates drama and intrigue easily. Mark Gruenwald said in a Comics Journal interview I recall around the time that people that didn't like it would just have to deal with it, because the book was headed for cancellation beforehand and doing that story ensured the comic's survival for the time being.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
Even aliens and futurefolk speak English in Silver Age comic books, so... why not the rest of Earth? Just as realistic! 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2014 17:49
|
|
|
Fritzler posted:I'm reading Squadron Supreme (the 12 issue miniseries) and really enjoying it, but I was wondering, who is Quagmire supposed to be? He is a Spectrum (Green Lantern analogue) villain, who has mucous-y dark force powers. All I can think of is maybe Sinestro? What, not Sportsmaster...? But the obvious guesses are Sinestro (he has an opposite analog to Spectrum's powers, a la green v yellow) or Black Hand (for more obvious parallels), I would guess. I don't think there's a definitive answer, however.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 04:40
|
|
|
Superman: Last Son of Earth.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2014 11:41
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:Books without pictures use the greatest artist ever: Your imagination. Counterpoint: Jack Kirby.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2014 20:42
|
|
|
Gavok posted:Coincidentally, the existence of Zoom perfectly measures when my interest in DC began and ended. There's some reason that DC always seems to be trying to shed or repudiate the previous decade of publication; right now they're trying to throw off the '00s, but before that you had the revival of old characters which seemed to be a reaction to the '90s-era disposal of classic characters. Maybe that's true at Marvel too, but it really seems more pronounced and vociferous at DC. Maybe the Crisis just opened the floodgates to create the attitude that writers are supposed to "fix" the DCU? Has there ever been any insight into what's behind DC's constant cycle of writer revolutions?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2014 12:41
|
|
|
WickedHate posted:Wolverine could be killed with a shotgun back then. Originally it was kind of like Time Lord regeneration rules. Can heal from anything as long as he doesn't die from it first, and he was about as durable as the average (albeit really fit, and possibly with superhuman agility) human. Yeah, in his classic fight with the Silver Samurai, it actually takes him two months to heal up because his wounds are so severe, but his power levels have ramped up over time. Really, he heals at the speed of plot; with the number of writers doing Wolverine stories at any given moment, you'll likely never get a true consensus on how powerful his healing factor is.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 13:05
|
|
|
Bear in mind the Hulkbuster armor used in World War Hulk was sabotaged by HYDRA before Iron Man's fight with the Hulk; he didn't have any of the power-dampening technology he was supposed to have (and had previously depowered She-Hulk, so it was even field-tested). He was stuck firing blanks, essentially.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 16:41
|
|
|
zoux posted:Was that in one of the tie ins because I don't remember that at all. It was in Avengers: the Initiative; Hardball stole some of the SPIN technology for HYDRA. If memory serves, in World War Hulk you see Iron Man try and use the tech, only to be surprised when it doesn't work.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 17:42
|
|
|
TwoPair posted:Have SHIELD teams ever worked against anything? I mean, maybe if Nick Fury is leading them personally or something, but let's be real, SHIELD and HYDRA are totally suited to be eternal enemies because both consist entirely of a few memorable characters behind an army of redshirts that do nothing but get owned in every one of their appearances. The end to Zero Tolerance, and the defeat of Bastion, boiled down to "and then SHIELD shows up, and Bastion is hosed". It happens occasionally, just not very often.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 22:33
|
|
|
House to Astonish is my hands-down favorite, but unfortunately they've been on hiatus since June. Paul O'Brien's acerbic commentary combined with Al Kennedy's enthusiasm gives an appropriately skeptical tone when it comes to comics news, but also with a genuine love of the medium to balance it out.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2014 15:01
|
|
|
I really wanted to like Wait, What? but between the genuinely cool comic discussions they'll go off on like a twenty-minute discussion of their favorite waffle house and I just ran out of patience because A) it was pretty boring and B) it kept making me hungry for waffles.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2014 17:31
|
|
|
I walked away from it, though I peeked at Avengers during Original Sin, and felt absolutely validated in walking away. It just strikes me as a terrible example of the nerd tendency to mistake worldbuilding for storytelling.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2014 16:07
|
|
|
I always wondered what went on at the CCA, since they were always so secretive about their review process. By the '00s I'm amazed at some of the stuff that had the code on it - one issue of Action Comics where there's implied murder-by-super-rape had CCA approval - so I can only imagine they were just rubber-stamping poo poo towards the end.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Yeah. The Superman animated run lives in the shadow of how much better Batman was, which ends up being unfair since it's one of the best treatments of Superman in any medium.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2014 21:56
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 12:59 |
|
|
There's always the Claremont run of Fantastic Four, speaking of which.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 10:32
|
|