I can’t decide how I think it bodes for Captain America 3 that Marvel chose to use Civil War as the story line. I’m sure there are people who like Civil War, but never mind. Marvel hasn’t even bothered setting it up when they easily could have (what’s the flimsy case? “Uh, Extremis was really bad. Maybe talk about some of the shit the Avengers have fought? Wait, the only thing that wasn’t an alien is the fault of the guy who is our mouth piece? Ok, let’s downplay that aspect. Just say Hulk’s name a lot. What do you mean he’s not in the movie? FFS”).
Frankly, from my perspective as someone who doesn’t religiously read every single Marvel comic and certainly wasn’t back then, the comic Civil War felt pretty flimsily set up and nonsensical already. I personally wouldn’t have brought it into the movies, but it is pretty foundational for a whole lot of what’s happened in Marvel comics since (one reason I stopped reading them for a while) and it’s definitely important to the whole “death of Cap” arc they did, which I assume is why it’s being done in Captain America 3.
New Phonogram!
New Phonogram!
What?
Ah, gotcha. A comic book published by Image. For the life of me, I cannot find anything about what it’s actually about? Music=Magic is the most I can find, under overview. There are some sample chapters though, maybe I’ll check it out after I get off work.
Remember Kieron Gillen? Long ago PC Gamer UK editor, one of the founders of Rock Paper Shotgun, used to post here some, Phonogram is his (and artist Jamie McKelvie) comic. It was one of their first forays into comics, I think. They started it back in 2006 and did two volumes, and then continued to work on other projects in comics, some for the big publishers (Kieron is the man that got Uncanny X-Men cancelled twice!), some creator-owned (the recent Wicked and Divine), and now they’re returning to Phonogram for the first time in a while. So for their fans, its cool to see them going back to it.
I liked the first two volumes, but could barely hang on. The musical background you’d need to understand every reference is daunting, but they’re still worth a read even if a lot of it is flying over your head.
It’s less daunting if you’re British, but I suppose it helps that Kieron has very similar tastes to me. I almost died and went to heaven when the second run was based around the Pipettes and the Long Blondes, who were pretty much my two favourite bands at the time.
By the way, BleedTheFreak, I definitely wouldn’t just jump in to the new one. Start at the beginning (Rue Britannia). Handily, it’s also the most musically accessible for an American.
Also, I should add, KG does provide a glossary at the back of the book so if the references do go over your head you can look them up later (and then go listen to them).
Speaking of Phonogram and The Wicked + The Divine, I just stumbled across a link to this in, of all places, the FT.
I somehow missed Warren Ellis’s Trees when it first started, and it’s great. One of those low-key, take-an-intriguing-premise-and-run-with-it stories, like if JJ Abrams were better, with great art by Jason Howard.
I was curious if it was me or if the new direction Marvel and DC is taking (specifically the DC reboot and Marvel handing of Cap and Spidey) just bouncing off holding your interest? Maybe I’m just to old and they are writing it for a younger generation…
Marvel: A great jumping-on point is also a great jumping-off point, as some Marvel writer quipped and was qucikly silenced.
I’ll admit to being underwhelmed by Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers storyline that led up to the current Secret Wars event. He started out obscure and never tried to get the new reader on board. Even a long-time Marvel reader like myself had a hard time figuring out what the hell was going on. The first issue of his New Avengers run felt like the fifth issue, characters being introduced for the first time are in the middle of their arc. I thought I had missed something significant and spent a lot of time trying to figure out when the first appearance of Ex Nihilo occurred, until I realized that it was the book I had started reading and Hickman just couldn’t be bothered to put him in any context. Over the course of this run, Hickman created new factions with obscure agendas, and then punished us for wondering what the point was by blowing it all up at the end with no real payoff. See the spoilers below if you want the plot elements.
Pre Secret Wars Storyline
[spoiler]So…
In the Age of Ultron event, Wolverine jumped all over the place, time-travelling and assisinating and un-assassinating Hank Pym and I think some other folks. This caused the fabric of time to weaken, and the borders between worlds to weaken. (see Pak’s Amazing X-Men run for some expansion of this idea)
Incursions started happening, with two universes trying to occupy the same space, centered on Earth. The Illuminati got together and started to defend Earth 616, but this required that the other universe cease to exist. Moral dilemmas ensued, with Namor having the least problem with defending his universe, and Steve Rogers having the most problem with the idea. In the process, they break the Infinity gems, and Rogers’ memory keeps getting wiped to keep him from nobly self-sacrificing the Marvel universe.
In the parallel Avengers book, Stark comes up with the idea of basically making everybody an avenger, either active or reserve, and using complicated algorithms to craft teams to defend the Earth.
Then, they start running across new universal factions. The Builders made the universe what it is, and they want to un-make it. The Black Swans are out to do something something . . . the Great Destroyer. The Black Priests are running around attacking the Swans. The Mapmakers are running around watching universes go exinct, or making them go exinct. There doesn’t seem to be a hell of a lot of differences between the factions, they are all just running around doing cosmic stuff.
Ex Nihilo worked for the Builders, but is persuaded to work with the Avengers, and remakes Mars for the hell of it. In the Infinity event, the Avengers go have a space fight with the Builders, involving almost all of the cosmic Marvel spacefaring races. Yes, Spaceknights too. While they are gone, Thanos attacks Earth looking for his son, and Black Bolt blows up Attilan (which had been hovering near New York after coming back from the Kree homeworld), releasing the mutagen mists to the world and activiating lots of people who had Inhuman bloodlines (including the new Ms Marvel). Isn’t this what they got super-pissed at Quicksilver for doing on a smaller scale a few years ago? Anyway, Inhumans are the new mutants that Fox doesn’t have movie rights to.
Meanwhile the incursions keep happening and a schism occurs between the protect the world faction and the death with dignity faction. Nomor starts his own group of world-killers, the Cabal, to do the dirty work. Thanos, an alt-version of Terrax, and the previously confined Black Swan sign up. They are having an inappropriate amount of fun killing off universes. In the Original Sin event (seeing a trend here?) Rogers gets his memories back and goes after the Illuminati, giving us a great excuse for some hero-on-hero action, and also some ultimately pointless forward-jumping time travel happens, which is later completely negated by the second issue of Secret Wars.
In desperation, super beings try to find the causes. Hank Pym goes out exploring, as does Dr Strange and Doom and formerly-Thor and Hyperion. Doom runs across the Molecule Man and realizes he’s the key to everything, and runs back in time to start working on a solution. Surprise, he’s the one the Black Swans were created to serve. Surprise, the Mapmakers were evolved versions of Ultrons that Pym sent out. Dr Strange runs across Doom right as he’s about to take the fight to the Builders.
Meanwhile we are down to 2 universes, 616 and Ultimate. This is the first issue of Secret Wars which I won’t spoil.[/spoiler]
Given all of that, Secret Wars is an OK story for an event book, but it’s also something done with full knowledge that the reset button is gonna get hit Real Soon Now. You knew that when they started killing off big-time characters. All of the ancillary SW series are not much more than nostalgic-remix fan service (although the retcon of Deadpool into the original 80’s SW is pretty amusing). So, Marvel wanks for a while before a reboot that they swear is not a reboot, and we are expected to pay for stories that matter about as much as all of those Flashpoint series. Oh, and a lot of Marvel’s first-tier writers are moving on after this, if not already. How many times can we trot out the All New All Different line before it stops being new and different?
Secret Wars: Interesting for what it is, a transitory event book.
Overall line: Bleah for now, it’s just placeholder stuff.
DC: Stop rebooting the DCU. Just stop it.
After the Flashpoint event (complete with months of dead-end continuity mash-ups for fans to buy), DC rebooted again with the New 52 books. As DC has done over the years, they incorporate more and more acquired comics characters into the DCU, this time it was all of Wildstorm and bits of Vertigo. One big happy universe, right? Except it was a rush job done to implement a half-assed idea by Dan Didio mostly done by unproven talent, and contrary to representations it wasn’t a complete reboot, just the books that weren’t doing that well. Also, the idea that the N52 universe was only 5 years post-emergence of superheroes was a bad idea that forced a lot of awkwardness.
Rebooted with top-level creators
Aquaman (Johns)
Justice League (Johns, Lee)
Wonder Woman (Azzarello)
Action Comics (Morrison)
Batgirl (Simone, now with no wheelchair!)
Just Rebooted
The Flash (the Barry Allen version)
Batwoman
Birds of Prey
Catwoman
Teen Titans
Blue Beetle (the Jaime Reyes version)
A Few New Ideas
Batwing (Batman in Africa!)
Red Hood and The Outlaws (now with slutty Starfire – I didn’t say they were good new ideas)
Frankenstien Agent of SHADE (picking up on the Seven Soldiers version)
Demon Knights (lets team up the DCU characters that were alive in the Middle Ages)
Voodoo & Grifter (minor Wildstorm team characters from the '90s, now in a parallel storyline)
All-Star Western (Jonah Hex goes to old Gotham City, it worked pretty well)
Rebooted and Botched
Green Arrow (taken in a new, incomprehensible direction by Ann Nocenti after 6 issues, needed to be re-rebooted)
Superman (George Perez quickly off the book with complaints about editorial interference)
OMAC (Dan Didio’s vanity book, with Giffen indulging his Kirby worship, dead after 6 issues)
Deathstroke (you f-ed up BAD when you get re-rebooted by Leifield after 8 issues)
Static Shock (maimed, then cancelled after 6 issues)
Recycled Old Characters
The Savage Hawkman (most recent version cancelled in '06)
The Fury of Firestorm (most recent version cancelled in '07)
Superboy (the clone version, but NOT the one that was being published the month before)
Supergirl (a reboot of the cousin)
Nightwing (Grayson’s not Batman anymore like he was in Morrison’s B&R)
Justice League Dark (maybe JL branding will help the DCU magic users sell)
Swamp Thing (most recent version cancelled in '06)
Animal Man (cancelled in the '90s)
Resurrection Man (cancelled in the '90s)
I, Vampire (last seen in the '80s as a feature in House of Mystery)
Stormwatch (cancelled by Wildstorm in the '90s, may contain recycled bits of The Authority)
Suicide Squad (most recent, and much better, version cancelled in '08)
Hawk and Dove (most recent version cancelled in the late '90s)
Space Fillers
DC Universe Presents
Blackhawks
Men of War (every decade or so, a book has to be published to maintain the trademark, even Strange Sports Stories got a miniseries lately)
Mister Terrific (even more of a Mary Sue than the Johns version of him in JSA)
Basically unchanged storylines and characters
Batman, Batman The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin, Batman Incorporated
Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Red Lanterns, Green Lantern New Guardians
Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion Lost
Did it pay off? I don’t think so, the reboot lacked cohesion and consistency. Waves of cancellations occurred, and books that didn’t feature a member of the JL didn’t really do well. None of the Wildstorm transplants flourished. Superman meandered after Morrison was done with him, and had to be re-rebooted by Johns and Romita. Wonder Woman wandered off on its own (interestingly, mind you) and had to appear in the N52 universe in team books. The intertwined storylines in books like Swamp Thing/Animal Man and Voodoo/Grifter did not create interest and in cost readers for ST & AM. None of the “new ideas” books I listed above made it all the way to the end.
There were some good books, but Batman was always going to sell, and Snyder ignored a lot of the “only 5-years existence” of the DCU that supposedly occurred, even as he did a Year Zero storyline. Johns finished his GL run satisfactorily, started a good JL run and made Aquaman interesting for the first time in a long time. Beyond that, a reboot with not much purpose other than “look at us.” Then at the end, no less than 3 simultaneous weekly series (Batman Eternal, Future’s End, Earth 2 World’s End). Exhausting.
Re-re-re-rebooted in Convergence to be EXACTLY WHAT THE DCU WAS BEFORE THE ORIGINAL CRISIS. Shit you not. A great big “never mind” from DC.
The state of DC now? The arbitrary editorial edicts are loosened and the “house style” is no longer mandatory. Bizarro and Bat-Mite are stylistically different and lighter in tone, which are good things. I expect the Batman & JL books to continue undisturbed. I also expect less crap to get thrown up against the wall to see what sticks, and a bit more respect for established creators. Conner and Plamiotti on Starfire is a good idea. Hopefully they can rebuild credibility for new books.
At this point I can’t really be arsed to worry too much about the global status of either Marvel or DC’s universes. Frankly, superhero comics have been so riddled with bad writers in the past that I’m more excited about modern Marvel and DC both than I ever was about the olden days strictly because they’ve given so many great writers a chance to play with these characters. I mean, jesus, at no point in the 90s would I ever have expected Grant Morrison to be writing Batman, Superman, and at least two major DC universe level crossovers. This is the guy that wrote The Filth! Oh, you can quibble about whether it ended up being a good idea, but it’s a reason for me to read those books. (And Final Crisis made Darkseid so much more terrifying than I’ve ever, ever seen him portrayed before. Mostly, he’s just been this big gray guy that gets in fistfights with Superman. I mean, I guess his homing death laser eyebeams are kind of a thing, but…)
I’ve been a little more wide-ranging with Marvel because between the MCU and Marvel Heroes I’m curious about a lot of characters I never really followed as a kid (I read X-Men, X-Men spinoffs, and a little Spider-man now and then), although it’s been a mixed bag for sure.
In general I hate the big crossover things both of them keep doing (though sometimes they’re cool) because it’s a nightmare to try to keep track of.
I’m most generally impressed with Image right now, though. It’s weird, because back in the 90s they were the home of gratuitously edgy stuff like Spawn and various Rob Liefield properties, and although I think they still do that stuff now, they’re also the home of this incredible array of brilliant creator-owned titles. I swear, all I have to do is see the Image logo on a comic and I can safely expect it to be worth reading.
It’s stuff like this that means I’ll never be a regular superhero book reader even if I enjoy things like All Star Superman or Year One. The imprints seem to expect you to care about this expanding cast of heroes and villains with ever more arcane lore, but then they don’t treat their own characters or plots with even a modicum of respect. So why should I bother investing that time, let alone money, when there are loads of fantastically written and drawn self-contained stories to read elsewhere? If there’s a truly remarkable run in an established franchise I’ll give it a shot, but I’m not going to attempt to keep up with either Marvel or DC. I’ve already got 20 or so books on my pull list as it is, and most of them respect my time (maybe not TWD).
Here’s a huge list of comic recommendations from a reviewer I trust.
http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2...ations-20.html
I also have some recommendations of my own.
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
This story was written by Alan Moore as what was to be the “last Superman story” before DC rebooted their universe in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” All of Superman’s villains get dangerous, with Superman’s loved ones being killed and even his identity being revealed to everyone at the Daily Planet. I admit it’s slightly off putting since it’s not very stand alone like All Star Superman, but if you know enough of Superman’s general mythos you’ll get through it very easily, and the villain behind everything and the confrontation that follows makes for an excellent climax
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Second verse, similar to the first. Written by Neil Gaiman, this tells the story of how Batman finally died in his one man war on crime, leading to his friends and villains talking about the impact Batman had on their lives. If no more Batman comics were written again, this comic would make that okay
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Supergirl, and Super/Bat
This is a series where Superman and Batman star, giving a unique look to the two’s relationship by having both of them give narration. In Public Enemies, President Luthor (I know, just go with it) manages to make both heroes public enemy number 1, Supergirl has Superman try to let his newly arrived cousin live life against the wishes of Batman and Wonder Woman, and Super/Bat has Superman lose his powers only to have them transferred to Batman. Out of the three stories, Super/Bat is the only one that does not have a collector’s edition, so you’ll have to buy issues 53-56 on your own.
Spider-Man & Batman
Yeah, there are two stories where these two team up. First one involves Carnage and the Joker breaking out of prison, second involves Ra’s Al Ghul acquiring The Kingpin’s help in bringing about the end of the world. The crossover idea is great because Spider-Man simultaneously fills in the “Robin job” of bringing light-heartedness to Batman’s dark persona, but he’s never overshadowed by Batman and both get to save the day.
Superman: Birthright
One of the best Superman origin stories out there. Notable aspects I immensely enjoyed were the increasd roles of Lara-El and Martha Kent, Superman becoming a hero because he wants to be a hero rather than anyone telling him of his great importance (no influence from Johnathan Kent or Jor-El), and giving plausible explanations for both the Clark Kent disguise and why Lex would not equate Superman and Clark ESPECIALLY since they were childhood friends.
Superman Last Son
This story is of special note as it was co-written by Superman 1&2 director Richard Donner. Another boy from Krypton lands on Earth and Clark and Lois and Clark take him in as their son, Christopher Kent. The story also features an invasion by Zod, Ursa, and Non, all of whom have more characterization than they did in Superman 2.
Lex Luthor: Man of Steel
Admittedly, I’m cheating as I’ve not read it yet, but I do own it and the premise is so good I pretty much have to. It’s set in the mainstream DC universe and told from the POV of Lex Luthor, with the goal of showcasing Luthor’s more humanist traits.
Despite the similarity of their namings and concepts, I don’t think Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader has much in common with Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. Man of Tomorrow is very much more of a retirement story / victory lap, whereas Caped Crusader is (in a very Gaiman fashion) about Batman-as-symbol/Batman-as-myth.
They’re both good, but they’re pretty different.
Comixology is having a sale on Dynamite bundles, mostly their licensed stuff like Red Sonja, Vampirella, and The Shadow.
But, for anyone who was looking to pick up some more Garth Ennis, series runs of The Boys ($50) and Jennifer Blood ($20) are on sale. Doesn’t include related mini-series, which in the case of The Boys is a significant omission. Still, less than half of the price of the digital omnibus collections (which also don’t include the mini-series that were released as numbered collections).