543 replies to this topic

[JasonT]

Shawn, on 30 September 2011 - 01:43 PM, said:

So, Jason, is Ultimate Comics Spider-Man better than the original? ...

Two issues in is too early to call, but my guess would be yes.

Shawn, on 30 September 2011 - 01:43 PM, said:

Yet, I'm recluctant because Bendis has sucked so bad for so long. Is this more of his hyper-decompressed storytelling with TONS talking heads?

Not yet.

TestosteRohne, on 30 September 2011 - 09:21 PM, said:

I'm not as blown away.
I picked  it up on the strength of your ravings, the art is lovely, a nice amalgam of Stuart Imonen on form and Steve McNiven, but let's bear in the mind that it's only been two issues so far.
The demand of the monthly grind will change that.
This script sees Bendis excel at what he used to do, and there's a good degree of sincerity there, but I don't see a deep foundation for a new Spider-man let alone a new superhero.

So you don't like it because you think it won't maintain its current high standard?   Horses for courses. I'll shout you a pint or two next time I'm in town, to compensate.

[TestosteRohne]

JasonT, on 01 October 2011 - 01:17 AM, said:

TestosteRohne, on 30 September 2011 - 09:21 PM, said:

I'm not as blown away.
I picked  it up on the strength of your ravings, the art is lovely, a nice amalgam of Stuart Imonen on form and Steve McNiven, but let's bear in the mind that it's only been two issues so far.
The demand of the monthly grind will change that.
This script sees Bendis excel at what he used to do, and there's a good degree of sincerity there, but I don't see a deep foundation for a new Spider-man let alone a new superhero.

So you don't like it because you think it won't maintain its current high standard?   

Not quite.
However, I suppose I do for the most part digest and/or judge a comic book in retrospect as a six parter or some such.
Or in this case, there just wasn't enough bite in those first two issues to make me think otherwise.
It must be said that I enjoyed the first two issues but nowhere near the same level as say Unwritten, the recent issues of Daredevil even most of Aaron's output; all issues I hold as my favourite this year.

Again, art wise Ultimate Spiderman was lovely for all the reasons you mentioned, but I'm increasingly wary of the spread thin Bendis.

[Christian]

Avengers 1959 #1 by Howard Chaykin-I liked this, a lot. It was quite fun. Chaykin chooses some interesting choices from the Marvel Universe to make up his team of Cold War-era Avengers.

Only one Marvel book for me this week, compared to all the DC. That's a real change.
Three really good new DC books this week.

[TestosteRohne]

Christian, on 06 October 2011 - 02:03 AM, said:

Avengers 1959 #1 by Howard Chaykin-I liked this, a lot. It was quite fun. Chaykin chooses some interesting choices from the Marvel Universe to make up his team of Cold War-era Avengers.

Wasn't it Bendis' baby first, selection wise?

[Christian]

TestosteRohne, on 06 October 2011 - 10:59 PM, said:

Christian, on 06 October 2011 - 02:03 AM, said:

Avengers 1959 #1 by Howard Chaykin-I liked this, a lot. It was quite fun. Chaykin chooses some interesting choices from the Marvel Universe to make up his team of Cold War-era Avengers.

Wasn't it Bendis' baby first, selection wise?

Oh, has there been an Avengers 1959 story in the past? Is this a spin-off? I had no idea. I thought this was all Chaykin's idea. There's nothing in the first issue about prior Avengers 1959 material.
I thought it was Chaykin inspired based on some of the selections though, especially including Dominic Fortune, since he's the only one who ever cared about the character.
Not that Marvel has a lot of 1950s-era characters to choose from.

[JasonT]

Christian, on 07 October 2011 - 12:28 AM, said:

Oh, has there been an Avengers 1959 story in the past? Is this a spin-off?

Uh-huh. There's more info here: http://www.comicbook...rticle&id=32907

[Christian]

SHIELD #3-Dammit. I guess Hickman is writing too many books a month now, so he decided to leave out the dialogue for this comic. Two paragraphs of dialogue in the entire book, apparently informing us that the professor is taking us "back to the future" next month.
This used to be a real sleeper for Marvel, now I'm thinking I'm done with it.
Paying full price for a silent issue, without any warning on the cover that the writer couldn't be bothered to do his job....

Legion of Monsters #1-Against all expectations, this is actually good. It's playing for laughs, not so much horror. A group of Marvel Universe monster characters are basically placed in a supernatural police drama story. It's pretty funny. Nice selection of Marvel horror characters too.

[Shawn]

Christian, on 13 October 2011 - 12:54 AM, said:

SHIELD #3-Dammit. I guess Hickman is writing too many books a month now, so he decided to leave out the dialogue for this comic. Two paragraphs of dialogue in the entire book, apparently informing us that the professor is taking us "back to the future" next month.
This used to be a real sleeper for Marvel, now I'm thinking I'm done with it.
Paying full price for a silent issue, without any warning on the cover that the writer couldn't be bothered to do his job....

I agree! What in the hell was that waste of $3.99??? I'm all for using the images to help tell the story because that is the point of comic books, creating a balance between images and words. If you have too much of one, you loose something. And there wasn't much going on in this issue, really. Just a bunch of shit blowing up. Very disappointing, because Hickman is better than this.
Also, I hate to say it but it's starting to feel like Hickman got so wrapped up in all this cryptic-ness he painted himself into a corner and forgot how to get out of it, ya know? Volume 2 has been a letdown compared to volume 1

[Shawn]

Wolverine & The X-Men was one of the best X-books I've read in a long time. It was....fun! Logan as Headmaster is just so crazy it works. There are tons of little touches that really make it shine such as; a mutant Brood as a student, some former Generation X'ers/New Mutants as teachers, Beast as the lovable mad scientist, Toad as the janitor, the new Danger Room, Doop as the recepetionist. All accompanied by some solid art. It's an all around good introduction, while laying groundwork on what's ahead, as a 1st issue should be.

[Shawn]

The other Jason Aaron joint, Incredible Hulk, did not grab me as well. There's an interesting new dynamic of Banner being the monster this go around, but other than that I just don't care. Silvestri's art was not horrible

[Lou K]

Picking up Aaron's Hulk, not for love of the character but rather the writer. We'll see.

[Christian]

I'm hoping not to enjoy Incredible Hulk too much, as I don't feel like buying another new comic, but I couldn't resist checking it out. I haven't read a Hulk comic since Bruce Jones left the title.

Wolverine & the X-Men was exactly what I was hoping for. Marvel just needed to start over on X-Men. The book has been so dead for years. I don't see how anyone could enjoy where X-Men has moved since House of M. Every core concept for the characters has been lost since 2005. Mutants are a dying minority, not the "next stage of human evolution". There's no core team being trained at a small school, there's an island where all mutants live together and basically do nothing. The books have been a chore to read, as there's a cast of hundreds. The characterization of Cyclops has been strange, to say the least. And, it seems like the best that writers could do to create tension was to return to the reliable stand-by of every human hates mutants, as the "mutants are the new cool thing" plot left the books in even more of a dead-end. Getting back to basics and trying to tell a fun story was exactly what X-Men has needed for six years now.
Anybody who read X-Men in the early-1990s or before who picked up an issue lately would have no idea what they were reading. The book has strayed so far from the days of the X-Mansion.
Uncanny X-Men will still be a mess, I'm sure, as Marvel remains stuck with the whole House of M/Utopia gimmick.
It's nice that they offer us something different, finally.

A lot of the new DC books are still selling out quickly...

[Lou K]

I haven't read much Hulk, always found him a bit 1 dimensional, but I sorta liked the new 1st issue. Savage Hulk. I'd like to know how he came about a tribe of Mole Men. Suspect that's in WW Hulk, which I don't have. Those Mole Men remind me of something Steve Rude would draw in Nexus. We'll see where this is going.

Picking up Hulk left Secret Avengers on the shelf; didn't make the cut. Also saw something called Captain Swing or some shit, from Avatar, but only issue 4/4 and I had no patience to track down the rest.

Spaceman #1 for only a buck! It should be titled Avaunt 2099. Anytime Azzarello and Risso get together it's a real treat.

[Christian]

Captain Swing from Warren Ellis? That's an old mini-series. It's from two years ago, I think. I thought Ellis actually finished it, but maybe he never did, and I forgot all about it. I read it when it was first coming out. It's ok. A steampunk story featuring Luddites led by Spring-Heeled Jack, or something like that...it's been so long I forgot the plot.

Secret Avengers get one more issue from me. Ellis trying to pack an entire story into one issue is hard to watch. It seems to be random ideas and random scenes that all boil down to a big fight and the Avengers saying something that sounds sort of cool, but may not actually mean anything.
I mean, why were the bad guys' lair (I think it was their lair?) out of an Escher painting? No idea.
It's sort of like if Grant Morrison took a downer and started listing ideas. "Man, wouldn't it be cool if there were, like, different universes that had, like, different physics in, like, each one, and...Man, what was I saying? Something about a big superhero fight? Yeah, man."

Incredible Hulk #1-I really did like this story. It's been done before (Hulk existed without Banner towards the end of the Peter David run), but Aaron does have a twist. I wasn't sure about the underground fight, and I too would have liked to see more of the Hulk underground, but otherwise, the issue kept me engaged. Should be interesting to see how the new direction for Banner is going to work.

[Shawn]

Uncanny X- Men #1 was bad. I'm sort of glad they "ended" the original Uncanny X-Men book so I can keep these seperate in my head. Bravado is the key word here, false that is. It starts with the writer (didn't he used to be good?) with bravado thinking this is good storytelling. Cyclops has it too, thinking the X-Men are mightier than the Avengers. And the entire team spouts crap dialog, with one liners full of false bravado. Everyone has their badass voice mode activated. Colossus is the Juggernaut?!?! WTF! Oh and Magneto is just one of the team in such a small way he comes off like a bit-player. This is garbage. There's nothing fun, cool or interesting going on here.

[Christian]

It's basically just a continuation of what Uncanny X-Men has been doing for the past couple of years...since moving to Utopia, basically.
The only change is that Cyclops wants to make the X-Men more into an Avengers type team now, instead of just hiding on Utopia and hoping the humans don't decide to try to kill them.
I like Mr. Sinister as a villain, so I liked seeing Sinister show up again...but it was all trying far too hard to be enjoyable.
Like I said, I'm glad we fans of X-Men have Aaron's book to read now, as for far too long this was the only status quo we had for the X-Men, now we have an alternative.
This direction for the X-Men is just a dead-end, but I don't know how Marvel is going to write their way out of this direction, other than by offering other X-titles not based around Utopia.

Shawn, I think part of your problem, specifically, is that you haven't been reading X-Men for the past few years. A lot of your complaints were already attempted to be explained away by prior stories. It doesn't make this a better book, it just makes it not read as so awful to someone who's gotten used to non-sensical, attempted ultra-slick X-Men stories completely lacking in characterization.

[Shawn]

Ah, that makes sense....sort of. I've not really touched the main X-books since Wedon/Cassady on Astonishing X-Men. Otherwise it's been very brief or with the more frige books like X-Factor.
I did like Sinister coming back & glad they're doing something with him. I like the evil , elitist Victorian vibe he gives off.

BTW what happened to Marko? Is he dead/missing after Fear Itself?
I kind of like him on the Thunderbolts

[Christian]

Hmm...
I don't think it was explained in X-Men what happened to Marko afterwards. Because he's a mystical powered human, he wouldn't be on Utopia.
I stopped reading Thunderbolts, but since he was on that team, the follow-up to what happened to Cain Marko after Colossus became the new avatar of Cytorak would probably be in that book.

[Lou K]

Old Man Logan - any good?

With so few monthlies actually in my pull these days I wouldn;t mind a new, alternate take on a character that I think has just been done to death.

And what's y'all's take on Aaron's Wolverine? ust cracked his Ghost Rider stuff and it's pretty good, although the first arc suffers some terrible artwork.

[Kate]

Lou K, on 09 November 2011 - 04:28 PM, said:

Old Man Logan - any good?

It's The Dark Knight Returns by way of Unforgiven Starring Wolverine. It was fun, though suffering from the usual shortfalls of being a thing written by Millar, but worth your buck.