Ixnay by Night

Seems to me that the Dini/Animated Series Harley Quinn was replaced by the Suicide Squad/Margo Robbie version a while back.  The Injustice games and comics play into that a lot as well, since she's one of the main characters there.  I don't get her appeal at all, she grates on my nerves whenever she appears (much like Deadpool, in fact).  I flipped through Heroes in Crisis and wasn't too impressed, it was a bloodbath with the barest attempts of resonance other than "look at all these characters we can kill off, guess who's next!".  Easily the least engaging comic I've read from Tom King by a mile.  

Nice artwork, though.

No idea, I have neither read nor watched the show of Handmaid's Tale, couldn't even tell you what it's about.

Checked out the first issue of Maneaters by Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemcyzk, and it was fairly interesting.  I was a big fan of their Mockingbird series and this is done in a very similar style, with lots of big cutaway panel pages and diagrams for stuff interspersed with the story.  I'm curious to see where it's going, so I'll definitely check out the next issue.

I finally got around to watching the two Constantine episodes of Legends via Netflix, and that show is still goofy as fuck.  I don't know who half of the characters are anymore after they ditched Hawkman and Firestorm, so adding John to the mix did seem to liven things up a bit.  I quite liked the exorcism episode but the second one, the Event Horizon ripoff homage, wasn't as entertaining.  I'll be checking back in with the next season that starts in October, maybe having Matt Ryan back on a weekly basis will make the show consistently watchable.

Agreed with all comments above, the artwork is gorgeous but Azzarello's narration for John is shit awful.  I read it digitally, so I missed out on the Bat Cock until I saw it in some news article, they're really swinging for the fences with the mature readers label now aren't they?  

As with most things by Azzarello, I feel like he's trying way too hard to be edgy and "deep", which makes it all come out as insufferably hard to read through.  Plus, he's got all of his favorite wordplay puns out in force, which is probably the thing I dislike about his writing the most.  I'll stay reading just for the artwork, but the story had done absolutely nothing for me.  

Black Hammer had one of those spit-take "wait, what the fuck just happened" cliffhangers that gets my blood pumping.  Glad to see the mysteries getting some sort of resolution, even if all they do is lead into even MORE mysteries.  

I was kinda surprised that Andy Diggle didn't use anything he set up in that Lady Constantine mini-series when he did his later run on Hellblazer, considering he brought over stuff from that Swamp Thing arc he wrote (the psychic guy whose name I can't remember).  

Honestly, the first Seeley arc with Jesus Merino was the only bit of the newest series I'd recommend at all.  The Oliver and Kadrey stuff was awful, and Seeley's last arc was stretched out way too long.

Ghost Rider's my favorite character, I do a podcast on the guy, and RTD is probably one of my least favorite GR stories.  Clayton Crain's artwork is beautiful but can't make up for the shit awful writing.  Ennis said in interviews at the time that he didn't know much about Ghost Rider and didn't care anything about Johnny Blaze as a character, he was obviously just doing it for the paycheck and it showed bad.  He and Crain got it right with "Trail of Tears", but RTD is aggressively bad.

A Walk Through Hell released its third issue this past week, and it's starting to lose me.  After that gloriously horrifying first issue, it's like the book's just spinning its wheels now.  I don't know, weirdly disappointing how each issue has had major diminishing returns for me.

I think you'd be shocked by the difference in Savage Dragon comics from the early 1990s, like the one you posted the cover for, and the ones from today.  Larsen went in this seriously bizarre direction not long ago where he essentially turned it into a porn comic for pages at a time in each issue.  Liberal amounts of bodily fluids were being thrown around during the copious amount of oral sex scenes between Dragon and his wife.  I guess that's the true gift of self-publishing, you can porn the shit out of it whenever you want!

I think I'll pass on JLD, didn't like the last incarnation of it at all.  I agree that DC's attempts to force every iteration of a character into one timeline is a bit excessive, I think it tells more about how they perceive their readership (dumb as fuck) than it does about the readers themselves, who are more than capable of keeping multiple versions of characters straight in their minds.

For reasons I'm not quite sure I understand, I've been reading Savage Dragon for the past year.  It's like this glorious trainwreck that I can't look away from, and besides the impressive scale of a series written and drawn for 20 years by Erik Larsen it's also kind of refreshing to read a book where literally anything could happen to any character at any time.  I have respect for a creator who's not afraid to shake the tree of his series on a fairly regular basis, and though it veers into some damned strange territory at times Savage Dragon is weirdly entertaining.  

Yeah, I think this must be far from what Seeley originally had planned, it seemed for sure that he had something more appropriately "final" in the works for the end of this story.  I get all the complaints, but I actually really liked Seeley's brief tenure here, though this arc wasn't anywhere near as good as his first.  Margaret Ames was a plot device, sure, and one who really got the short shrift in the artwork department (I swear Fabbri increased her breasts by a cup size each issue, she was approaching Power Girl levels by the last issue), but I quite liked John's characterization and his interactions with the other characters.  I didn't even mind Huntress, whose appearance was more than the typical "guest star superhero twat", like Captain Marvel in the Fawkes run.

All that said, I think it's a mercy killing to end John's series at this point.  It's a bit sad that it'll be the first time I'm not buying a Hellblazer/Constantine comic every month, even when the quality was down I still didn't regret it (well, okay, maybe by the end of Doyle's run, that shit was awful).  Maybe let the character lay in rest for a few years before trying again.

RIP John, you deserved better.

So last night my family and I were at the local skate park, my 10 year old foster son has been really getting into skateboarding the last few weeks.  I used to be a pretty decent skater back in my high school and college days, nothing amazing but I had all the fundamentals down, so I thought I'd try and teach him some tricks.  It's been close to two decades since I stepped on a board and was way too cocky about my skills.

Naturally, I went down a ramp, fell, landed wrong, and wound up in the hospital emergency room with a fractured big toe and the rest of my toes severely sprained.  Currently laid up in bed while my wife nurses me back to health.  This is the third time I've broken a toe on this foot, I think it may be time to just chop the damn thing off.  

I think Slott really wanted his name to be forever associated with Spider-Man in the way as Claremont/X-Men, Byrne/FF, and David/Hulk; this decade long run that defines the character from now on.  Unfortunately, I think he really just overstayed his welcome when readers were wanting a new voice on the series.  I was the one defending the "Brand New Day" rotating writer era, which sound like what Spencer's run is aiming for in way of tone (based on your description anyway, Christian, I haven't read the first issue yet).  Heavily influenced by nostalgia, to put it in nice terms?  Hey, sometimes back to basics is just what a franchise needs to freshen itself up after a period of darkness (see Busiek and Perez rescuing the Avengers).

Read the first issue of The Quantum Age and it didn't grab me the way all the other Black Hammer stuff did, which I devoured as quickly as humanly possible.  Maybe it's because I'm not much of a fan of the comics its paying homage to, here's hoping it picks up for me in the next issue.

I read the first two issues of Mystik U but didn't bother with the third.  It was okay, nothing special but not offensively bad either.  I doubt we'll see any kind of series spinning off from it, wasn't it a relic from the DC You relaunch that brought us such classics as the Ming Doyle Constantine and rock star Black Canary?  I'm surprised Mystik U got published at all, to be honest.

I can't remember, has The Wildstorm brought up the Daemonites yet?  The Kherans are running around in the open, perhaps the alien implants in the Team 7 characters are culled from Daemonites?  I was starting to lose interest in The Wildstorm in the later issues of the second arc, but bringing in Lynch, Slayton and the rest have me totally invested in the book again.  

Quantum Age # 1, Avengers # 4, and Cosmic Ghost Rider # 1 for me.  

Yeah, Snagglepuss did not go where I was expecting in that final issue.  Brilliant mini-series on the whole, though I can't imagine what the approval process Hanna Barbara must have in place for their comic adaptations.  "Flintstones as social commentary?  Sold!  Snagglepuss as a look back at McCarthyism?  Go for it!"  At this rate, the inevitable Captain Caveman series will be the next Dark Knight Returns.

Thanks Christian, that's extremely helpful!  Just going back and reading over some of the stuff in this thread has made me wary of the "Hell On Earth" stuff, but it looks like it would be a long time reading before I make it to that point anyway.  

Dave, I didn't know Guy Davis was the artist on BPRD, I love his work.  His Sandman Mystery Theatre remains some of my favorite art, so I'm happy to hear that I've got his work to look forward to!

I've never read the Hellboy universe stuff, but Dark Horse has pretty much their entire back catalog up on Hoopla so I decided to dive in and start reading with "Seed of Destruction".  Looking over the list of Hellboy and BPRD volumes is...daunting, to say the least.  How in the hell are you supposed to read through this stuff, do the Hellboy and BPRD volumes crisscross with another?  Do you read them separately?  How many damn relaunch volumes of BPRD are there?  I'm not finding this to be very reader friendly, I'm afraid.

That said, "Seed of Destruction" was decent with some great Mignola artwork.  Reading my way through "Wake the Devil" now!  

Based on your guys recommendations I've been burning my way through Black Hammer, and hell yes it's a great comic.  At the back end of the first volume now, will definitely keep reading!

Edit: Still reading through Black Hammer on Comixology instead of working and just finished Doctor Star.  I'm such a huge fan of James Robinson's Starman, I can't believe I didn't know this comic existed until now.  Lou, you're right, I had tears in my eyes reading that final issue.

I see "Hold Me" as this quintessential Hellblazer story that everyone loves unconditionally, except for me.  It's a solid, decent done-in-one story, so it meets my criteria for inclusion, it's just not my favorite story.  However, your points about how it's a a list for a fictional collection is certainly valid, so why would I put in a story that I don't like so much?  Switch out "Hold Me" for Delano's "In Another Part of Hell" from # 84, much better issue and one of my personal favorites.