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OldTennisCourt posted:I haven't been reading the Avengers/New Avengers stuff, how lost will I be if I hop on this thing by just buying Secret Wars #1? Completely, the fact it has a #1 in the cover is pretty facetious.
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May 7, 2015 20:26
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Secret Wars' first issue left me seriously cold, honestly. If it's anything like Infinity, it's going to strike me as technically competent but bloodless and dull. He strikes me like Millar, but much more clever, where he doesn't seem interested in characters save as gears and catapults in a Rube Goldberg machine, to the point where many of them have little to no agency in even their own books. It's not likely to be as dreadful as S.H.I.E.L.D., where Leonid is led around by the nose on a tour of Hickman's clever worldbuilding, but basically does practically nothing of note. When he's finally driven to action, it turns out to be a mistake with all of the supporting cast shouting at him to cut it the gently caress out. I dropped off on his Avengers books because I got weary of the Avengers basically being hapless in the face of cosmic horror, and though a lot of folks seem to be enjoying that, I just find it really a really cynical thing. I stopped in during Original Sin, to be treated to a number of issues where Captain America is, similarly to Leonid, dragged through time to serve as a impotent observer and tool of greater powers. When he tries to take action, it's even less impactful. And so I go to Secret Wars, where you have a bunch of people fighting through a variety of panels, but most of it matters dick-all before the struggle between the Beyonders and Doom. Sure, Ultimate Iron Man flirts with Penultimate Captain Marvel and you have all sorts of bits where helicarriers explode and everybody's struggling but- hey, guess what? It doesn't matter. It's a lot of narrative white noise, trying to build up the stakes with a forced, artificial conflict. I mean, if the universe is exploding, why does the battle between the two universes matter? I mean, isn't it like children fighting over a toy while a train bears down on their tiny bodies? I'm sure Hickman has built up some spinning gear that adds a justification for it all, but it mostly just strikes me as "it's important because explosions, everyone!" I'm sure Hickman has got to be building towards a final heroic rally at the end where his narrative of ultimate failure on the part of Avengers & co. finally bears fruit, but wow. It's better than Convergence so far, but that's a competition-limbo bar to clear. I realize I'm in the minority, but this makes Civil War look cheery by comparison. As mentioned, it feels like a far more intricate version of Millar, but even he isn't as hilariously nihilistic as Hickman often ends up feeling to me.
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May 9, 2015 00:51
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Deadpool posted:I think it's less that and more that Bendis is telling his own story and with the time skip it doesn't really matter if he leaves it ready to go for Secret Wars. He's probably concentrating more on his own story rather than trying to fit into the event. I think it's better to do that than to force it. Ha, I think Bendis stopped telling stories awhile back. He's like the Bizarro counterpart of Hickman, deeply interested in doing character pieces but really, really disinterested in having a plot that goes anywhere.
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May 9, 2015 01:16
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I used to read the whole line, but All-New X-Men is the last x-book standing for me because do enjoy the character pieces. But I'd be surprised if it ends with a bang rather than just kind of trailing off with a narrative ellipse.
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May 9, 2015 01:20
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In the end, it probably won't be nihilistic, but the present time, I think it feels very much so.
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May 9, 2015 21:35
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Len posted:Then Magneto master of goddamn magnetism gets his arm cut off by a metal sword. I like how he gets his arm chopped off, then mocks Valkyrie for using a metal weapon, and it's like "uh, she did take your arm off, now is probably not the best time for smugness". Of course, since it's a Loeb book, he's all just "grrr" and moving around normally rather than "ow my arm came off".
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May 10, 2015 21:04
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Ah, yes, U Decide, which ultimately ended up just being PR for Peter David's Captain Marvel.
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May 11, 2015 00:52
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So, I was really hoping the second issue would pull me into the crossover, but it really didn't happen. Maybe it was the roughly twenty pages of "Doom mediates a dispute I have zero reason to care about" that didn't help, but for something named Battleworld, it was a relatively sedate issue. Maybe it was all the "let me tell you about the world, as if you did not inhabit it" dialogue. I had a hard time putting my finger on it, but sitting back, I asked myself "Is there a single character in this book whose story would compel me to read more?" After some thought, I settled on "... Jamie Braddock?" with fairly muted enthusiasm. And when Ultimate Jamie Braddock is the only character that interests, there are real issues with the book for me. Granted, I'm sure a lot of it plays into a larger picture, but it still has to interest me on an issue-to-issue level. It's all technically competent enough, but I was hoping for something a little wilder than what amounts to Game of Thrones with a few more primary colors involved so far. I did read the Captain America and the Mighty Avengers tie-in, which dedicated itself mostly to pointing out how inane the Avengers and Illuminati have been in their own books. While I don't find hard to wholly agree with what feels like Ewing's meta-criticism, it has the bitter point of none of it ultimately mattering. Hopefully Ewing will have the space to continue this thread after the crossover closes, but right now it just feels like a vote of protest put before a speeding train. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 19:08
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Codependent Poster posted:The protagonists didn't appear in this issue. This was just to set the stage, give some background on Battleworld, and show that the Cabal is loose. I still have to be interested in what happens next within the context of the issue. The classic argument for Hickman's runs is that they hold together better as a whole, but since they're published issue by issue, they still have to hook me in based on that format.
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May 16, 2015 23:33
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Deadpool posted:Anyone that says he's not good at character must not have read any of his Fantastic Four run. Or very little of his Avengers. It's chock full of character moments. His Fantastic Four was solid for it from what I recall, mainly in regards to Mr. Fantastic. Avengers... I'm sure there had to be some in the year or so I read, but damned if I can recall any.
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May 17, 2015 01:41
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Endless Mike posted:OR you can just jump right in and see how it goes! I vote for that! Some enterprising goon should write up a full plot summary. 
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May 17, 2015 01:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Missed the "Cannonball and Sunspot go to the casino with AIM" issue, then? Yeah, that's like... issue 11? I only made it to issue 9 or 10. Go figure. I mean, that part in issue 1 where Sunspot and Cannonball are like "Yes! The Avengers!" was great!... and then they faded into the background for most of the issues I read, IIRC. SynthOrange posted:There's nothing wrong with laying down plot hooks in a long form serial though for other writers to explore or to pick up down the track yourself. Some of us are old enough to remember when very similar things were said about Claremont or Bendis. I think Hickman's better at managing the threads, but when you bounce between books like he did, there's got to be some making-it-up-as-you-go going on.
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May 17, 2015 06:18
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Neo_Reloaded posted:At least you two have each other so you're not all alone in addition to having terrible joyless opinions. There are a fair number of us that find Hickman's work flawed, don't be a jerk about it.
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May 17, 2015 17:42
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mr.capps posted:DOES IT MEAN GETTING A BURN FROM AN ALIEN ROPE, OR AN ALIEN GETTING A BURN FROM A ROPE, OR A ROPE BURN THAT IS ALIEN TO THE BODY It's understandable if you don't understand if you've only read a few of my posts in BSS. If you go back and read all my posting history you'll find it forms a much larger narrative, though the answers to your question should be a year down the line when the scope of it all becomes clear. It's more ambitious than any posting plan has done before at Something Awful but I think you'll find it quite rewarding.
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May 17, 2015 18:15
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BrianWilly posted:And sometimes that's not necessarily a good thing either. I look back on Final Crisis now and I just think: "Oof. Yeesh. Okay then." Well, where Secret Wars is reliant on your knowledge of Hickman's comics, Final Crisis was dependent on your knowledge of Grant Morrison himself, which was a different cause leading to a similar symptom (the symptom being really obtuse). But Morrison is more of a meta-commentator, where Hickman's stuff tends to be more just standard comic pulp taken to a higher degree of plot complexity than most. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty neat trick Hickman's mastered, but it feels like the only one he has to me.
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May 18, 2015 00:50
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Yeah, for all I might gripe, I'm not sure Marvel has ever hosed up an event launch and delivery as hard as DC screwed up Final Crisis. Even though I think Crisis itself holds together well enough, I don't think it ever quite met Morrison's original concept of being a franchise-changing event. On the other hand, Marvel certainly feels like they're behind Hickman and letting him do what he wants to do without getting in the way, and this really feels like it's his vision as a result.
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May 18, 2015 01:26
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SynthOrange posted:I dunno, Inhumanity was such a goddamn car crash. I had completely forgotten about Inhumanity already, which says a lot about it. It was fumbled pretty badly, but I don't think anybody would have worried so much if it hadn't been oversold by Marvel's PR. (Seriously, was "new status quo for the Inhumans" ever going to be something that's really game-changing?) Still, at least Ms. Marvel spun out of it, which hopefully will be a positive long-term legacy of the crossover..
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May 18, 2015 02:58
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I found it interesting how Ultimate End was simultaneously one of the most interesting and one of the worst books out this week. The opening sequence interested me and reminded me how strong Bagley and Bendis were once, but then descends into pure incoherence. I can only presume editorial read the script and looked at the art, shrugged, and went back to their nap. Maybe there's some secret to the plot behind it all, but gently caress, I've read Bendis books, and he can write a good book now and then. But to paraphrase, I'm inclined to never ascribe to genius that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Honestly, if you like months and months of What Ifs, this seems like the event for you, but so far I can't say much is grabbing me. I mean, some of it is perfectly competent superhero scribbling (save Deadpool)... it just feels like an exercise in novelty so far. Maybe that's the whole point, but I feel like I'm just watching writers grab toys from the toybox and mash them against each other so far. Which would make a great premise for a video game, but it makes it hard to take the stakes of series seriously, knowing most of them are going to be thrown back in the box when it's all over. Which means the stories have to be really compelling beyond that, and when we have plots like like "Who gave us this giant shark?!", it's... ooof. I have a feeling it's gonna be rough for awhile.
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May 21, 2015 05:09
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head58 posted:w/r/t A-Force: Dazzler can fly??? She can fly by projecting light energy. It's important not to think too hard about that.
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May 22, 2015 19:03
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Telex posted:Banshee flies by loving whilstling so lets just not really go suggesting the impossibilities of physics in the marvel universe. It's just one of those things where the more things are explained, the sillier they become. Dazzler's "I turn sound into light!" has always been something of an albatross for the character, since it generally just raises more questions than it solves. I'm reminded of an issue of X-Men where Magneto points out they're using ceramic missiles against them, and then disassembles them anyway, and you're like "Why did Claremont explain that only to ignore it?" After all, Banshee doesn't just fly just by screaming, he also has psionic powers that funnel the force of his scream backwards. That's right, he can make his butt scream. A Tin Of Beans posted:Is Nico the only Runaways character anyone remembers? Most of us are still trying to forget Klara Prast, at least. 
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May 23, 2015 02:23
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I had a harder time seeing all those heroes in A-Force go along with Doom's dumb-rear end shenanigans as far as character swerves go. I know, different reality and all that, but if you want to talk about having heroes feel out of character, nearly everybody feels a little out of character there for me.
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May 23, 2015 06:30
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Illegal out of bounds shark throw, go in the penalty box. This is Doom's Law.
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May 24, 2015 07:30
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I think my thing of the week would have to go to either Infinity Gauntlet or Where Monsters Dwell. I think there may be a correlation for me with how much I enjoy a book and how much it gives a poo poo about tying it into the larger Secret Wars event. The less blabber about borders and What Will Doom Think, the better. Also not resting on "what if X was Y" is also nice.Sentinel Red posted:Inferno was terrible. The original was no great shakes but this felt like the writer had spent 30 seconds on Wikipedia to get the gist and knows sweet F.A. about the actual details. N'Astirh was written as off as Bendis' Emma Forst, Colossus spends the whole thing jobbing when he should be freaking out every demon he gets his hands on... As somebody that actually started reading Marvel comics with Inferno, I find it pretty amusing you're annoyed at the characterization of N'Astirh, whose entire character consists of "treacherous and evil, not necessarily in that order". That being said, he didn't seem much different to me, just slangier.
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May 27, 2015 21:20
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Zythrst posted:So in Inferno has Colossus always been portrayed as the dumbest person alive? Yes.
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May 28, 2015 02:29
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Sentinel Red posted:That's it though, slangy just isn't him. The dude was classic old school haughty demon bollocks now he's speaking like generic Whdeondude #32 or something. He spoke like a good 70% of other Claremont villains did with crinklier word balloon. Claremont only had a few different "voices", most of them sounding like Claremont. Edge & Christian posted:I'm just saying as someone who read Inferno and all of New Mutants as a kid, N'astirh (who is/was pretty much a cipher) talking slightly differently in a comic book 20+ years later seems like an odd thing to leap out at someone. I was more distracted by how weird his horseface was, it took me a minute to figure out who it was. Yeah, I mean, it was odd to me to pick him out because he was just such a generic footnote character that existed largely just to enable the crossover. I'd think a bigger nitpick is that he's red and doesn't seem to bear the techno-organic virus, since his red coloration was caused by that transformation. I don't particularly care, but it's a bigger gaffe.
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May 28, 2015 03:44
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Deadpool posted:The Deadpool book isn't even an actual tie-in. It has the stamp on the front but it doesn't take place in Battleworld and is completely its own thing. I did like it though, mainly for lampooning the ridiculous expository dialogue from the original and from a lot of comics around that time. Yeah, that was the only thing I liked about the book, but making fun of terrible Shooter's dialogue in (the original) Secret Wars is the softest target to take aim at, partly because of Shooter, but also partly because the comic was written to hook kids into Marvel comics and toys. Not that I'm saying it's not mock-worthy - it is pretty dorky even for a kid's book - but that that all it really does it just quote Secret Wars verbatim. So the problem for me is that the funniest part is also the most  part.
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May 28, 2015 05:47
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Die Laughing posted:Too bad you skipped possibly the best thing Bendis has written, and the best tie in out of a flock of fun books. Logan shamelessly being written as mutant Clint Eastwood is so good, and the art is some top tier stuff. Didn't expect the book to be very good, never would have expected it to be THAT good. It's pretty solid, though with Bendis I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop in a future issue. Hopefully not, but I've been trained. Sorrentino's work felt pretty rough to me, it feels like the coloring was doing all the heavy lifting in the book. It was solid but I feel a little tentative about it.
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May 29, 2015 04:20
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My pick of the week would be Giant-Size Little Marvel.  I'm not sure if the big reveal of Future Imperfect was so dumb it was smart or just so dumb it was really fuckin' dumb.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:56
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To be fair, though unmentioned, Miles can turn invisible. The Thors, though, I guess they're just dumb.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:05
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Nevvy Z posted:I think it's interesting we haven't seen Doom actually DO anything with his godlike powers. Well, the only real evidence of him being a capital "G" God is the testimony of Battleworld's inhabitants. You know, the folks who have had their memories manipulated.
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Jun 5, 2015 16:33
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Little Mac posted:Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #9 was an absolutely incredible book. Ewing gets every single one of these characters and what they're about. The phone team scene was downright heartbreaking, as was the ending. Yeah, it was the only tie-in book this week I felt had impact to it, ironically. So Captain America and the Mighty Avengers was best of this crossover week, I felt. Weirdworld was also pretty good, but a good chunk of that is the art. I'd rather have a version minus the words, because they're in the way of the art and they mostly just tell you what's going on in the art. Which, you know, you can already see. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 20:30
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Ending revealed: heroes beat Doom, realize the world makes no physical sense without him, and die when they're flung off into the vastness of unspace.
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Jul 15, 2015 06:44
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Bendis on a solo title and Bendis on a team book may as well be different writers as far as his writing quality goes. It's like his writing quality is reduced in direct proportion to the number of characters on a book.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:24
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Gynovore posted:Skin was killed off-panel by the Reavers (I think it was them) and then he gets a half-page funeral where they get his name wrong. Then, Jubilee stands on his grave talking about how much she wished she had boinked him, even though there were absolutely no hints of flirtiness between them in GenX. Serious It was the Church of Humanity, not the Reavers, the same group that gave us the phrase "disintegration communion wafers". It should be pointed out that they somehow planted multiple crucified mutants on the mansion's lawn Ed: Whoops, no fire. But they did hang signs on them. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 00:43
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But Brand New Day ended up being some of the best Spidey stuff in a long, long time, aside from the former half of Strazynski's run.
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Oct 29, 2015 06:19
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At this rate the next big crossover will be starting as Secret Wars is ending.
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Dec 1, 2015 21:37
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redbackground posted:It's honestly not worth it. It really is a hot mess of a comic. "Boy, this looks good, I wish I cared about anything that happens in it!"
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Dec 2, 2015 04:40
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Using reference images isn't necessarily a bad thing. The issue with Land is what references he uses (i.e. bodybuilders, models, and porn, which is why nobody has any natural body language in his books), and that he reuses them so frequently and transparently.
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Jan 22, 2016 07:59
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Lurdiak posted:There's also a line between references and tracing. I said "transparently". 
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Jan 22, 2016 08:45
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