dogpoet

It's simple to tell, really. When I pick what comics to read, I do so on the basis of the writer. It's the Gaimans, Morrisons, Moores and Ellises that get me to pick a book up. If the artist happens to be someone like McKean or Quitely I consider that a HUGE plus but I am not likely to pick up some unknown's comic illustrated by Quitely if a Morrison comic illustrated by an unknown is next to it.

 

 

If Mingola is drawing it, I'll give it a chance.

 

Rocket Raccoon!

He inked all sorts of ridiculous crap back in the '80s, didn't he?

Mind you, kelley Jones' first professional work was on The Micronauts...

Yeah, well, I didn't want to leave the shop empty handed because they were having hard times.

It's not like they're bankrupt at the moment though, and I'd even hazard to say that they've earned hard times by shipping stuff late, or with different writers and/or artists than they promised or by generally mucking their readers about.

Unless you mean the shop, rather than Marvel, in which case I admire your backbone.

I reserve my enthusiasm for when I have been proved right to be enthused.

Like the Ladykillers? You could be wasting your enthusiasm in cases like that.

Meanwhile, back to the Eternals:

 

what issue are they up to now? I've only read the first one.

I'm waiting for the bind up. I can't see why anybody bothers buying Marvel miniseries as the individual issues come out at the moment. (Now if they were reissuing the original series as single issues with the art recoloured and cleaned up, rather than as a hardback for fifty quid, on the other hand...)

Story first, but the art must be outstanding too. Though I have bought plenty of books by a writer I've never read simply because the artist was one I liked. But I won't buy that writer's efforts again if it sucked. The exceptions being Ellis, Ennis, Morrison. Not being a fan of Seaguy, Tokyo Storm Warning or Goddess has not influenced my opinions of the writers themselves at all. And the art was decent in all 3 of those horrible stories.

Goddess was an example of a limp story with mediocre art imo: I've never been mad keen on Lieloha (or however you spell it) he's okay on scenery but his people just look wrong. I think it's an over rendering thing.

I'll take a decent story over decent art myself, though on the other hand I have bought comics I suspected were going to stink purely because they were iluustrated by Tom Coker (Blood and Water) and Walt Simonson (Elric: Birth Of A Sorceror, though that one's a lot better than I was expecting just very repetitive so far...)

Mind you, Blood and Water may not count as I bought it off ebay for a quid and a lot of people seem to hate Coker's artwork.

If you enjoy Gaiman, Kim Newman might be worth a look, assuming any of his stuff is in print besides The Man From The Diogenes Club at the moment. (Not that there's anything wrong with that one.)

The buggers do seem to be dropping like flies at the moment, don't they?

Ah. Good thinking, that.

Possibly, but only if anybody else bothers to post, to be honest.

An old friend once recommended Demon City. Is this any good?

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's good. Even if it isn't, it still may be.

Well, there's always still toime to have a ret-con. That's DC's forte...

Didn't work when Azzarrello tried it, and it isn't like he got invited to the last of these Crisis things, is it?

Depends, really, though i've read and bought more than my share of shittily illustrated masterpieces, than of beautifuly rendered fluff, so i'll go for the story.

 

 

Shouldn't this be a poll, though?

It probably should be, but I thought there might be a bit more discussion if people can't just vote for one option and leave it at that.

Did Morrison have any involvement with that? If he was planning to but Millar and Bendis squeezed him out somehow, small wonder he's taken the hump with his former mini me.

Plus, Morrison and Millar had quite the falling out a couple of years ago, so I doubt Morrison'd be doing that anyway.

I'd not heard about that. Sounds interesting. Any details about this?

Obviously, one expects both a decent script and decent art, but is the presence of one likely to leave you willing to tolerate the absence of the other? Would you rather a comic with beautiful artwork (however you define this) and a godawful script, or a comic with an excellent script and artwork that makes Rob Liefeld look like Carlos Equezzera?

I just hope Morrison will drag his ass to DC in a few years, so ilar can get working on GL and Supes already.

Millar was complaining a year or two (or possibly three) back that DC have blacklisted him, so that's probably quite unlikely now.

Nah, Edie was even more interesting.

Despite the fact that a fair chunk of her backstory was revealed during that Hand Of Glory story?

Ah, that's Millar in the political/action/blockbuster mode. I prefer his Morrison wannabe titles, though these others sure have their immense entertainment quotient.

He's probably getting paid rather more for that approach, so who can blame him?

John Smith? Didn't he do an episode of Hellblazer, and that Scarab miniseries...?

 

Also, Millar kept his Morrison-lite vibe in some of his UFF stuff...

That's him. Scarab definitely wasn't too far removed from early '90s Morrison, imo.

I've not actually read any of the Ultimate FF stuff, to be honest. I was thinking more the Authority, The Ultimates, and what have you.

Pooka's onto something with the suggestion about dope, Christian: it's an incredible muscle relaxant and it sounds like that's what's causing your problem in the first place.

Ah, yes, Keith has some very good solo output, artistically, and it's interestingly written, though not always great.

His art on the Maxx was absolutely beautiful: some of the best comics art I've ever seen anywhere, to be honest. I'm really pleased DC are collecting that stuff now that they've acquired his services. It's what descriptions of Mike Ploog's stuff always leave you hoping he draws like.

We need some new "I can't believe it's NOT Morrison" people on DC titles, ASAP. Like Milar, Milligan and the like.

Millar's really gone off into his own thing since outgrowing his initial American comics role as Morrison's mini me, unfortunately.

It's an interesting idea you have, though: John Smith could probably do a pretty decent pastiche of Morrison and that Kek-W bloke at 2000AD's almost there already, but I can't see anybody at DC making a contract or a cheque out to somebody with a silly name like that.

I just want Morrison to take a crack at every comic book coming from Marvel or DC now!

OK, his Marvel stuff wasn't the best....but who cares!

It would bankrupt me, and Morrison would need all the help the aliens could muster to get those deadlines, but I have faith that he could do it!

Even if Morrison was only spending an hour writing each script, it'd still be an improvement over 99% of the books currently being put out by Marvel and DC!

You don't fear that the effects of spreading Morrison too thin might be catastrophic?

Which issues did Dringenberg do? His name rings a positive bell in my head.

Most of it between Sound and Fury and the prologue to Season of Mists: it was just the occasional issue here and there (a Doll's House story and most of Dream Country, iirc) that he didn't do.

I'd have said the problem with Sam keith was probably unsympathetic inking and colouring more than anything else, given that his work on the Sandman is the only art of his I've seen that I've really disliked and he tends to ink his own stuff elsewhere. His style possibly isn't very appropiate for the rather dour tone of the early issues, either, but that wouldn't lead to him churning out crap artwork.

Yeah, I guess that's sort of what I meant. I was also shrooming when I saw it, so...

:D

That could account for it....

Good point, Charlie. And not to beat a dead horse, but I think the standardization of spelling, at least in English but probably in most alphabetic languages, is quite recent, perhaps duriing only the last 200-300 years.

[Captain Obvious]The publication of dictionaries was the main reason for the standardization of spelling, so we're actually talking the 18th rather than the 19th century. This is also the main reason inc's argument about txt spk and similar bollocks representaing part of the ongoing evolotion of English or any other language doesn't really stand up: with the exception of French (which is thanks to the heavy handed rule of the Acadamie Francais arguably a dead language) the vocabulary and its form is defined primarily by dictionaries. This is the source of the only real differences between American and United Kingdom English, for instance.

Txt spk, on the other hand, is down to sms messages having a rather harsh character limit in a lot of phones, and so is hopefully a passing hideous aberration rather than anything more significant than laziness or idiocy if used in any other context.[/Captain Obvious]

Well I can see the hilarity in that. :D

Unless you're serious, in which case I'd have to set the Daily Mail on you...

;)