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kingandyTravelling Man have started sending their comics out monthly, which is a good thing.
Except it means I am exposed to more godawful JLA. Jesus God. Crucifer the EVIL VAMPIRE (this is writ high in flaming letters upon each page, that he is EVIL and not only this but a VAMPIRE who is EVIL) ponces about declaring things to be "Delectable!". Wonder Woman, dumped in the road in front of a fucking trauma surgeon who just happened to be passing, struggles to get out of bed not once but twice, and both times is rushed back to bed. The dialogue is stilted and trite (I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds good). The thing that annoys me most is that the JLA seem to have entirely forgotten who the Doom Patrol are. It's as though Claremont remembers reading stories with them in when he was a kid and has taken his JLA assignment as carte blanche to "reintroduce" them. I know complaining that Rita Farr is supposed to be dead (as is the Negative Man, who is now a flying skeleton) is not exactly a fair point when you're talking about the Doom Patrol, but if she was resurrected she at least would have looked up her adopted son, Changeling / Beast Boy, over in Teen Titans. Wally West should really display more recognition for Cliff Steele: Robotman than he should for Cliff Steele: Formula One Driver. Claremont's just rebooting them without a care for continuity or causality. Fucker.
AND OH LOOK The Doom Patrol are back in their new monthly comic. WHAT ARE THE ODDS i ask you. Featuring the annoying Jubilee-alike Nudge and her friend Grunt around whom this Tenth Circle storyline is revolving for no reason other than they want to build up a readership for this new comic. Looks like they may be taking Faith out of the League too. Well, at least she's not just being consigned to limbo like most of the second-stringers when a new creative team rolls around.
That aside. Good comics this month, otherwise. LEGION is drawing to a head, with Abnett and Lanning preparing to tie up their threads and tidy away the toys of the "Second Galaxy" as they come to the end of their five-year mission. (It's tempting to think they didn't have all this planned, but I went back to the very first issue they did - five years ago, I didn't actually notice the change in writers because the artist was the same - and they set some things up there that didn't come into play until just last year.) If anyone's interested, there's been an interesting twist on the original chronology (Legion was rebooted ten years back with actual IC events and time restructuring) - originally, Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) was resurrected with the soul of "Proty the Protean", but this time around Garth Ranzz (Live Wire) has come back from the dead by having his soul (or synaptic pattern, or something) imprinted upon the body of an ex-teammate-ex-villain. It's all a bit involved, but interesting stuff. I await the new writing team with some trepidation as they have a tough act to follow. Hmm ... looks like Keith Champagne, is getting a fill-in issue in order to fuck with Wildfire. Mm, trepidation, I know him primarily as an inker. Sometimes people can swap jobs like that, but it doesn't always work out. Anyway, then he passes over to Gail Simone from Birds of Prey. Well, worse things have happened. And what's this, Dan Jurgens? I used to like his art ... so, mm, maybe. We shall see.
Interestingly, in two comics this month - Legion and TEEN TITANS - the heroes enter into bargains with the enemy. And in both comics, one of them is lying.
I have a comfession to make - I didn't used to like Geoff Johns. When he started JSA he seemed to be content to wallow in the past, recycle old characters and indulge in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. I let the title slip, which irritates me now, because he really seems to be somebody who knows his stuff. In the exact way that Claremont doesn't, he takes the past and uses it as the foundation for something new and interesting. If he thinks things should be different he decides where he wants to be and plots out a road map, rather than just deciding "Oh yes and the Doom Patrol are alive". For example. His work on the new Teen Titans series has been exemplary. He's been given an obvious remit - to try to have things as close to the TV series as possible within current continuity, bringing back Beast Boy and Starfire and Raven and Cyborg (Starfire's hair is straight now, not the huge mass of curls that it used to be, but she's still not even slightly naive, in contrast to her TV counterpart) - but rather than slapping things right in he's taking his time, working things out naturally so that it seems as though there's no other way they could have gone. Even Bart's sudden change of heart from Impulse to Kid Flash only seemed unnatural because he was stuck as Impulse for so long; he decided long ago he wanted to be the next Flash, and only hung onto the Impulse name because it was the name of his solo title. Also liking what he's done with Brother Blood - it does make so much sense, they were obsessed with Raven for the longest time... I'm not sure where he's going with the "Superboy Cloned From Luthor" thread but I'm sure it's going to be fun. Probably for precisely that reason.
Green Lantern ... is seeming a little rushed. The hurried recap at the start of this month's episode felt like they had to throw one or two things out with the reported impending return of Hal Jordan. Kyle's ring-powered reconstitution happened off-panel, making me think the "Next Issue" tag at the end of last issue should have read "Yeah, Kyle's Fine" instead of "Kyle Returns!" If it was a Christopher Priest comic it would have. But I digress. Though I haven't dug Ron Marz in the past, his return for what is apparently Rayner's swan song seems to be going quite well. A lot of the bizarre things I'd heard about (Kyle getting thrown out of his own apartment by his cheating ex!) made a lot more sense in practice - Jenny's been paying the rent for months anyway, and she didn't throw him out - she offered to leave but he decided it was better for him to go. After all, he has a spare apartment on the moon. Like JSA and Titans I'm interested to see where it's going, which is what keeps comics rolling, after all. Looking forward to next month's cover we see that the GL staff are of the opinion that one should ignore the skin-heavy costume that Jenny's sporting in Outsiders, that or they don't talk to the other team. Either way, it's probably for the best.
I may drop the title when Kyle leaves. Hal isn't nearly as hot (if I'm honest, Kyle is probably basically the reason I started collecting GL - it's not entirely lechery though, it's that I can relate to an artist much more than I can a fearless test pilot), and also it will teach those fan-pandering idiots at DC. Next thing you know they'll be resurrecting Barry Allen, Lord knows he gets enough flashbacks and time-travel appearances in a month...
So anyway, that's my comics for the month. JSA: Good. Titans: Excellent. Green Lantern: Nice. Legion: fantastic. JLA: No, no, no.
Except it means I am exposed to more godawful JLA. Jesus God. Crucifer the EVIL VAMPIRE (this is writ high in flaming letters upon each page, that he is EVIL and not only this but a VAMPIRE who is EVIL) ponces about declaring things to be "Delectable!". Wonder Woman, dumped in the road in front of a fucking trauma surgeon who just happened to be passing, struggles to get out of bed not once but twice, and both times is rushed back to bed. The dialogue is stilted and trite (I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds good). The thing that annoys me most is that the JLA seem to have entirely forgotten who the Doom Patrol are. It's as though Claremont remembers reading stories with them in when he was a kid and has taken his JLA assignment as carte blanche to "reintroduce" them. I know complaining that Rita Farr is supposed to be dead (as is the Negative Man, who is now a flying skeleton) is not exactly a fair point when you're talking about the Doom Patrol, but if she was resurrected she at least would have looked up her adopted son, Changeling / Beast Boy, over in Teen Titans. Wally West should really display more recognition for Cliff Steele: Robotman than he should for Cliff Steele: Formula One Driver. Claremont's just rebooting them without a care for continuity or causality. Fucker.
AND OH LOOK The Doom Patrol are back in their new monthly comic. WHAT ARE THE ODDS i ask you. Featuring the annoying Jubilee-alike Nudge and her friend Grunt around whom this Tenth Circle storyline is revolving for no reason other than they want to build up a readership for this new comic. Looks like they may be taking Faith out of the League too. Well, at least she's not just being consigned to limbo like most of the second-stringers when a new creative team rolls around.
That aside. Good comics this month, otherwise. LEGION is drawing to a head, with Abnett and Lanning preparing to tie up their threads and tidy away the toys of the "Second Galaxy" as they come to the end of their five-year mission. (It's tempting to think they didn't have all this planned, but I went back to the very first issue they did - five years ago, I didn't actually notice the change in writers because the artist was the same - and they set some things up there that didn't come into play until just last year.) If anyone's interested, there's been an interesting twist on the original chronology (Legion was rebooted ten years back with actual IC events and time restructuring) - originally, Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) was resurrected with the soul of "Proty the Protean", but this time around Garth Ranzz (Live Wire) has come back from the dead by having his soul (or synaptic pattern, or something) imprinted upon the body of an ex-teammate-ex-villain. It's all a bit involved, but interesting stuff. I await the new writing team with some trepidation as they have a tough act to follow. Hmm ... looks like Keith Champagne, is getting a fill-in issue in order to fuck with Wildfire. Mm, trepidation, I know him primarily as an inker. Sometimes people can swap jobs like that, but it doesn't always work out. Anyway, then he passes over to Gail Simone from Birds of Prey. Well, worse things have happened. And what's this, Dan Jurgens? I used to like his art ... so, mm, maybe. We shall see.
Interestingly, in two comics this month - Legion and TEEN TITANS - the heroes enter into bargains with the enemy. And in both comics, one of them is lying.
I have a comfession to make - I didn't used to like Geoff Johns. When he started JSA he seemed to be content to wallow in the past, recycle old characters and indulge in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. I let the title slip, which irritates me now, because he really seems to be somebody who knows his stuff. In the exact way that Claremont doesn't, he takes the past and uses it as the foundation for something new and interesting. If he thinks things should be different he decides where he wants to be and plots out a road map, rather than just deciding "Oh yes and the Doom Patrol are alive". For example. His work on the new Teen Titans series has been exemplary. He's been given an obvious remit - to try to have things as close to the TV series as possible within current continuity, bringing back Beast Boy and Starfire and Raven and Cyborg (Starfire's hair is straight now, not the huge mass of curls that it used to be, but she's still not even slightly naive, in contrast to her TV counterpart) - but rather than slapping things right in he's taking his time, working things out naturally so that it seems as though there's no other way they could have gone. Even Bart's sudden change of heart from Impulse to Kid Flash only seemed unnatural because he was stuck as Impulse for so long; he decided long ago he wanted to be the next Flash, and only hung onto the Impulse name because it was the name of his solo title. Also liking what he's done with Brother Blood - it does make so much sense, they were obsessed with Raven for the longest time... I'm not sure where he's going with the "Superboy Cloned From Luthor" thread but I'm sure it's going to be fun. Probably for precisely that reason.
Green Lantern ... is seeming a little rushed. The hurried recap at the start of this month's episode felt like they had to throw one or two things out with the reported impending return of Hal Jordan. Kyle's ring-powered reconstitution happened off-panel, making me think the "Next Issue" tag at the end of last issue should have read "Yeah, Kyle's Fine" instead of "Kyle Returns!" If it was a Christopher Priest comic it would have. But I digress. Though I haven't dug Ron Marz in the past, his return for what is apparently Rayner's swan song seems to be going quite well. A lot of the bizarre things I'd heard about (Kyle getting thrown out of his own apartment by his cheating ex!) made a lot more sense in practice - Jenny's been paying the rent for months anyway, and she didn't throw him out - she offered to leave but he decided it was better for him to go. After all, he has a spare apartment on the moon. Like JSA and Titans I'm interested to see where it's going, which is what keeps comics rolling, after all. Looking forward to next month's cover we see that the GL staff are of the opinion that one should ignore the skin-heavy costume that Jenny's sporting in Outsiders, that or they don't talk to the other team. Either way, it's probably for the best.
I may drop the title when Kyle leaves. Hal isn't nearly as hot (if I'm honest, Kyle is probably basically the reason I started collecting GL - it's not entirely lechery though, it's that I can relate to an artist much more than I can a fearless test pilot), and also it will teach those fan-pandering idiots at DC. Next thing you know they'll be resurrecting Barry Allen, Lord knows he gets enough flashbacks and time-travel appearances in a month...
So anyway, that's my comics for the month. JSA: Good. Titans: Excellent. Green Lantern: Nice. Legion: fantastic. JLA: No, no, no.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 12:27 pm (UTC)How's he gonna make a come back...?
Not many people will ever trust him entirely again, after the OA incident
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:03 pm (UTC)Why do I always type "Gentlement"?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:06 pm (UTC)And the fact that you slag off the stuff you're reading reguarly.
I do get a resonable dose of graphic novels and comics through
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:17 pm (UTC)Read something semi decent!!!
hell, I'll lend you my collection if you want something of decence to read.
Mr. Parr, Mrs Livingston and I highly recommend Transmetropolitan (which I know you've read some already). So hah.
Which reminds me. Anyone know when the final book is due out...?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:21 pm (UTC)It's true that being drawn nets something a certain amount of points with me. I'll give any comic a shot, especially if somebody else buys it. Hell, I read Gotham Central every month, purely because
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:16 pm (UTC)The original four-issue Books of Magic is interesting as well.
Watchmen is a "full story" with a beginning, a middle, and an end that has interesting (if sliiiiughtly dated) comments to make about super-heroes.
Look up "V for Vendetta" for somewhat similar reasons. Read "Extraordinary Gentlemen" for fun.
Maybe check out something like "Maus" if you want a change-of-pace, and remember that they're not "comics" they're "graphic novels."
"Stormwatch" has regularly entertained me, and I like "Planetary" as well. Heck, some "Hellblazer" is quite good as well.
Obviously, if you've read this stuff then ignore me.
Don't forget
Date: 2004-05-18 12:17 am (UTC)