Ixnay by Night

Sean was by FAR my favorite Hellblazer artist, with probably Manco as runner up.  Remember when Constantine actually had good, quality artists drawing his title on a regular basis?  If only we had that now.  

That was a one-shot that came out during Robinson's JLA run.  Starman and Congorilla had been absent from the ongoing series for a few issues, so that one-shot showed what they were up to while the rest of the League was fighting (I believe) the Crime Syndicate.  But yeah, good story, marred only slightly by some really dodgy Brett Booth artwork.

Yeah, wow, Cry For Justice was nigh-unreadable and really made me wonder what happened to Robinson since the end of Starman.  Maybe League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fucked him up worse than people thought?  I DID enjoy his run on Justice League of America proper, though, and I thought he had a groove going with a pretty unique cast when the New 52 pulled the series out from under him.

Even though I'm not much of a fan of the character, I broke down and read James Robinson's run-so-far on Wonder Woman.  I'm a rather large Robinson fan, even his dodgy stuff is usually at least interesting on some level, but his Wonder Woman is just extremely...pedestrian?  boring?  unremarkable?  I'm not sure what term fits it best, but there's nothing about it that yells "you should read this!", especially coming on the heels of the fantastic movie.  

On 11/21/2017 at 1:25 PM, Christian said:

Yeah, it's that post-modern hipster smugness that's such a part of so much of Fraction's writing that really puts me off most of his work.

I read his Hawkeye too. I didn't love it as much as most people seemed to though. I thought it was worth reading, but not anything that couldn't be missed.

I wasn't upset to see Fraction leave Marvel Comics. His work on the long-running Marvel titles he worked on was just atrocious. He turned in horrible, uninspired work on Iron Man, Thor, Uncanny X-Men, and Fantastic Four (some of the worst dreck on each of those titles) before leaving Marvel, not to mention an unreadable cross-over event.

That is EXACTLY what I don't like about Matt Fraction's writing, that hipster mentality that comics are only cool if they're quietly mocking the past material.  His Uncanny X-Men was the worst for that, with his descriptive captions for each character every issue.  "Cyclops: Only Wears Designer Raybans", shit like that, when the X-Men moved to San Francisco.  

Doomsday Clock read to me like a really well-written Watchmen fanfic, like it's only there to show how the writer can reference the original material without adding anything new.  It's Johns writing a Moore pastiche, which is kinda like seeing a monkey drive a car.  Entertaining, but ultimately pointless.

Yeah, I was a fan of Seeley's arc, but Kadrey's first issue left me totally cold.  I'm not a fan of Fabbri's artwork at all, it's so pedestrian and uninteresting, which I guess fits with the stories he's been slotted to draw both for Oliver and now this.  I'm glad Seeley's back in a few issues.

I'm so not a fan of Matt Fraction, nothing he's ever done has impressed me in the slightest, but against my better judgment I read the first trade of Sex Criminals.  It was okay, interesting concept and some witty moments, but nothing to write home about.  

I checked out the first issue of Coyotes, since it was getting such stellar reviews online, but just didn't care for it at all.  

Yeah, it was the Phantom Stranger.

In a slightly more on-topic note, I've been re-reading my Hellblazer trades in the evenings after the kids go to bed and my wife's in the shower, and I'm currently up to "Tainted Love".  My wife, who normally doesn't care anything for this funny book hobby of mine outside of her obsession with the Flash and Daredevil TV shows, saw the rather random page of John and Kit's break-up scene and asked what was happening in the story.  So I went into the broad strokes of the John/Kit relationship, knowing she's a sucker for romantic drama, and she became very interested.  She actually asked if she could read the series, so I pulled out "Dangerous Habits" and told her to start there.  I don't think she's cracked it open yet, but she's got her bookmark placed in the middle of the volume where Ennis's run begins, so I have hopes that I may have finally converted her.

1 hour ago, Lou K said:

I think for me I just assumed it would be traded later. Those issues always felt a little thin for 4 bucks. But loved the Vargr story

They all have been traded, haven't they?  I know Ellis' second arc, "Eidolon" (and boy does he love to re-use names like that) had a hardcover release like "Vargr", I just never picked it up. 

I'm a huge Bond fan, and that first Ellis arc was really excellent, but for some reason I didn't keep up with the series after that.  Lots of great writers attached to it, though, so I'll have to rectify that sometime in the future.

Read through the issue this morning, not too bad a yarn.  Not as Constantine-centered as I was expecting, and I think Love Street was probably the better of the two, but it was a nice look at 70s punk rock through some interesting sets of characters.  Wonder why it never got published?  

Thanks!

So, I'm a social worker in the mental health field, specifically I work with adults who have serious mental illnesses (schizophenia, bi-polar, mood disorders, etc.).  I recently got a promotion to Program Manager of a group home for some mentally ill women that is staffed 24 hours a day, one staff person per 8 hour shift.  I recently got reports that my weekend night staff person had been sleeping on the job, so I did a pop-in visit at 1am Saturday night.  Not only did she have an air mattress blown up in the office part of the home, but she wasn't even there.  She'd decided to run out for a bit in the middle of the night while our residents were asleep upstairs.  I was waiting for her when she returned and heard all her excuses, then Sunday morning I had to call and fire her.  

It was a bit surreal, I had never fired anyone before.  She deserved it, of course, it was gross negligence, but still.  Damned strange feeling, lol.

Or perhaps this is some kind of Tyler Durden scenario, where I'm actually a separate personality that comes out and posts replies to you while you think you're asleep.  

The post in the comics section about Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing vs. Jesus issue made me wonder if anyone had a copy of Marquee Moon they could share.  I remember it being online years ago, but never got around to reading it; from what I understand, it was Peter Hogan's sequel to Love Street, right, with punk rock Constantine as the star?  

Just to throw my two-cents in, I think Bendis was probably going back to the well with Riri Williams after he had such success with Miles Morales.  It really seemed like one of those instances of "worked once, bet it will work again" creative decisions.

On 11/3/2017 at 1:52 PM, Christian said:

Ah, thanks for finally offering an explanation! Ixnay let this post of mine sit there for like a week, with no explanation, letting me rack my brain trying to figure out why I wasn't allowed to see the New Mutants thread, and then I find out there isn't one!

The title still shows up in the Movies section on my page, even though the thread has been deleted.

And I'm doing it again, letting your posts go unanswered for an extended period of time.  It is, of course, all an intricate plot on my part to drive you irreparably insane.

Moo-hoo-ha-ha.

From what I understand, Doom Patrol keeps getting pushed back further and further on the schedule due to Gerard Way being delayed by other things, but I think an issue DID ship a week or so ago.  Young Animal has that weird DCU crossover event coming next month (or is it January?) as well, with I believe all of the titles returning from hiatus after that's concluded.  Still, though, yeah...that line launched with such fanfare only to be immediately forgotten about it, didn't it?

44 minutes ago, Christian said:

OK, so I guess that the complaints about Kid Lobotomy are accurate. The plot seems to be something of a mess. This is a comic book suffering from ADHD. Which is a shame, because I really did want to like it, as there are few too "artsy" comic books around, and far too few comics I am really enjoying right now. I'm still going to give the book one last chance, because I want to like the book, and at least Franz Kafka is going to show up next issue, so that's something for my collection.

I read the first issue of There's Nothing There. OK, it's just the first issue, so I can't comment very much on the overall quality. The one thing that I felt was very inauthentic was at the beginning of the comic, the starlet girl was going on about the slave trade in New York. This seems at odds with her self-centered and empty-headed portrayal throughout the rest of the comic. Does she have hidden depths that she keeps hidden due to her stardom, and feels that's not who the public wants in its "it girl"? That might be the case, but it seemed completely at odds with her portrayal throughout the rest of the issue.

It seemed more like the direction it was going was that she was going to be woken up from her insulated world and realize that not everything revolves around her. That was what I got from this first issue.

I wasn't going to waste my time on Kid Lobotomy after the first issue, but I am sorry the second issue was a mess for you, since you were the biggest proponent of it that I've encountered so far. Just because I hated it that doesn't mean someone else can't find merit in it, y'know?  Here's hoping it evens out for you in issue # 3!

I read There's Nothing There all in one go week before last, so things are kind of blurring together for me, but the way I took that slave trade exchange at the start of issue one was that the main girl (whose name escapes me, even though it shouldn't, been a helluva week) was simply regurgitating facts to appear socially conscious.  She does this a few times in the series, if I remember correctly, because she is superficial and vapid and totally enamored with herself.  She has this false air of "I don't care what people think of me" (and that REALLY comes into play in the third issue, I believe), but she absolutely DOES want people to think she's more than she really is when it comes to being a responsible adult talking about responsible adult things.  Everyone just kind of blows her off as an airhead, which she totally IS, and that infuriates her even more when she starts seeing ghosts and everyone just smiles and says "oh there you go again".  

Or I may be WAY off base with that reading, lol.  Still, though, I thought it was a series with an interesting mystery.

On 11/1/2017 at 4:36 PM, Christian said:

If you'll go up a few pages, you'll see my very positive review of issue #1, and I am still reading it, and it has not made me regret giving it a very positive review for issue #1 as of yet.

Finally got around to picking up the first four issues of Mister Miracle, and yeah, definitely worth the read.  I'm totally invested in the storyline, and I've never really been interested in the Fourth World stuff outside of when Final Crisis was happening.  King and Gerards have definitely got me interested in where the story's going.

Marvel still has Dan Slott as a long-term name writer as well.

Not to change the subject, because I love reading the Ballard/Burroughs debate

[EDITOR'S NOTE: the discussion referenced here has been moved to a new thread http://hellblazer.ipbhost.com/topic/10770-one-in-a-milligan/ because it really deserves to be more prominent]

(seriously, it's fascinating the different takes on the meaning behind Kid Lobotomy, which was excrement yet still seemed to have fostered some great conversation), but I've got a new comic recommendation.  THERE'S NOTHING THERE was a comic published by Black Mask that just wrapped up with issue # 5, and it was a really great ghost story that dealt with fame and the public spotlight.  It was written by Patrick Kindlon and illustrated by Maria Llovet, and it really gave that old school 90s Vertigo atmosphere.  Check it out when the trade gets released!be

Yeah, I started the topic but then deleted it because I couldn't figure out how to embed the frigging YouTube video for the trailer.  Sorry guys!