Dr. Fleming

He's a fucking raccoon from Outer Space!

You criticise his accent and you are trying too hard to not enjoy yourself.

He's NOT a raccoon!

...Sorry. He just wouldn't like you using that term!

Seriously now: the most fun I've had at a cinema in ages. The chemistry and bantering between the group was fantastic, and Gunn handled pretty well the tone balance between the comedy (95% of it worked for me) and the pathos (I nearly teared up with "We are Groot", for real. Also, drunk Rocket agonising over being called a "vermin" somehow hit me in the heart, too).

With a few things ironed out, such as using a MacGuffin different to a "magical orb" (hello, The Avengers!), making Ronan an actually interesting villain and less time devoted to the convoluted cosmic shit and more time to develop the slightly sudden friendship of the group, if would have been pretty much a Perfect Blockbuster.

A slightly younger Laurence Fishburne would have been great.

Awesome!

It's a very interesting comic: you can read it as an examination of male friendship (which branches off to a betrayal/redemption thing, yup), as a broad satire of North America (Arseface's character arc, for instance), as a good ol' love story... and that doesn't even take into account the basic synopsis (the religious thing). It had grating tics and sometimes it was a bit of a drag to read (I'm looking at you, Salvation), but trying to dissect and *get* it is fun. One can easily understand its classic status.

Is it even that deep?

My own suspicion is that Ennis just needed to get Cassidy out of the way so that Jesse and Tulip could ride off into the sunset together, which is fair enough. He was far more interested in the love story level than the rest of the stuff in the tale, imo.

I always felt that, actually, the most important thing in Preacher was the relationship between the two male leads (and I have a suspicion that Ennis felt that way as well, given that the climax is mainly -I mean, apart from all the other balls in the air- a confrontation, both thematic and physical, between Jesse and Cassidy).

Anyway: au revoir, Boys. You had a so-so epilogue, but you were interesting during pretty much all your run, except for a few arcs.

General spoilers for #71:

Being a softie, not unlike Wee Hughie (scratch that: a whole lot more than him), I loved the "ending", even if I need a re-reading in order to try to make total sense out of Butcher's process/motivations.

And also, hats off to Stillwell for being such a magnificent bastard. I genuinely hope he ends up unscathed, for intellectual reasons.

And I think I will miss Braun's art in the final issue, which will be drawn by Robertson (already stated somewhere in the thread, wasn't it?). Darick's art looked its best in Transmetropolitan... possibly because someone else inked it.

Aww, poor Wee Hughie.

Yes. Poor Hughie, indeed.

Oh: Ennis himself commenting that very issue of the comic (double entendre: Hughie's issue and the 66th Boys issue). Pretty interesting: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/05/03/garth-ennis-commentary-on-boys/

"No doubt Hughie’s tendency to mope and turn inwards is a source of frustration to many readers, all used to comic heroes who learn from experience and develop into fully-rounded characters ready to handle anything. In my experience this is like no one who’s ever existed in real life; even the most capable people either maintain or eventually return to their essential flaws. I doubt any twenty-something lad unused to trauma and violence could simply absorb it straightaway, and if he did become hardened or inured it would be as a different, less sensitive person. In other words, Hughie’s bizarre triumph is that he remains Hughie."

I see Milligan's now trying to appeal to the furry readership.

Get ready for new members in the forum!

The CBR ones

I hit the front page of that site a couple of times a week to see if they've linked off to any interesting previews (the last one being for JLD, appropriately enough) and I've yet to see any links to a negative review of something, the blurbs tend to read along the lines of "XXX gives the latest issue of YYY four stars saying "I thought it offered a solid story with some above average art!"".

 

They only seem to do positive reviews, is what I'm saying here.

To be completely fair:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=4496

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=4484

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=4493

And a few more in the reviews' front page right now score fails as well.

Ladies. Gentlemen.

Garth Ennis' children's book, ERF.

Yup. And this story arc (the penultimate one) isn't nearly done. Good stuff.

How do folks feel about Carey's run on X-men?

 

Unsurprisingly, I haven't read it but kudos to the man for lasting seven (SEVEN!) years on one of the main X-books - that's got to be some kind of record!

A certain Chris Claremont would like to have some words with you :).

But yes, impressive.

slinker, about the shark-jumping, I swear I thought exactly the same thing as I was reading the last pages. In a semi-ironic way.

I guess we have to be optimistic. But "unexpectedly happy ending + in-your-face three-page Rick speech that makes explicit the implicit ("We are the walking dead" et al.)" was a weird juxtaposition.

Uh, yeah, exactly... Here in Spain, there is almost no single-issue market, excluding the superhero works that sold decently in their original release (read: USA) and some self-published/zine stuff. The Vertigo series are exclusively released in TPB format. Years ago there was this "mini-TPB" fever, with many publications (100 Bullets and Hellblazer, for instance) being published every month in 2-3 issue "prestige" format, but that thing died slowly.

As a wise man once said:

what is this i don't even

No, seriously. This has me stoked for the conclusion of the arc. I actually envy the trade waiters this time.

Hey, Spain! Another... Spaniard here putting up with Planeta's publishing nightmare! Let's bond over it :).

Well, at least they're doing now the "author's library" thing, which is nice (original Ennis run in 4 fat TPB's, Delano run projected for another 4, all of Azzarello in 2, all Ellis in 1, etc)... But what you say about the shitty translations = ten times true. I'm fucking sick of reading comic-book translations (by somebody paid by a multi-national media group, not by some random fan doing a scanlation) where I can totally see the misunderstanding and then think to myself "Oh, RIGHT, he/she translated this literally instead of interpreting it as a figure of speech. WAY TO GO" or whatever. This is not only a Planeta thing, but it's where it becomes more noticeable. I've read some beautiful and nice translations too, but the bad ones unfortunately tend to overshadow them...

Oh, and have you seen the gradual price increase of the volumes? Firstly, 20€ for 10-11 issues of the Ennis run in one TPB... Nice... Then the increase to 22€ in later Ennis, for the same amount of issues, and then: 25€ for Delano's first ten. What the fuck? The Azzarello era, which I'll buy sooner or later, has a way cheaper price-per-issue average.

Jeez, it's a hard time for being a comics buyer in this country... I'm Lucky I've started a passionate relationship with BookDepository.com :D.

'ooh!' indeed.

 

Was that him, or was it something working for him, I wonder?

My first thought was that it was Mallory himself. Haven't stopped to consider if it makes sense or not yet. The "Was the criminal that looked almost exactly like Hughie his father?" stuff will probably remain untold, but this shouldn't.

Highland Laddie is still crap, though. Do we need six issues to reveal the drug dealer is Hughie's dad?

Well, it didn't go there. It's still a heavy possibility, of course.

 

Cracking little side-story, I thought. The final issue got several 'heheh's, one 'ooh!', and a manly muffled sob out of me.

Despite the genital mutilation (how many times, Garf?) and gull vomit projected into a human mouth (I LOL'd, btw), this has been the sweetest Ennis' been in a while, right? The character work has been pretty cool, and the examination of love/hate towards one's previously idealized past (or some shit like that) was written in a compelling way.

It's been so weird to watch this comic change through time. I lost my patience with it in Herogasm (thought it was going nowhere and fell flat), but after that, Ennis upped his game. I'm 101% sure this is gonna read a hell of a lot better in one sitting. To be honest, it's amazingly ambitious. I mean, which other comics put alternate history, political thriller, non-sappy romance, gross-out comedy and superhero commentary in the blender? One could argue that it bits more than it can chew or that some of those elements cancel each other out or whatever, but hey, since the The Innocents arc, it's really working. This mini included, save that drug smuggling business that added like 0% to the story.

Oh, yes, I (almost) sobbed too. The ending was just devastating. Plus I'm a sucker for mother/father issues in fiction, if not ham-fisted. Which this wasn't.

And thanks for the welcome, JasonT! And to the rest of you for the recommendations. Already read Born and the Preacher stuff anyway :).

Anyone read The Boys' 50th issue?

Refreshingly (and understandably) non-celebratory, just another piece of the story arc. Mallory's characterization ultimately caught me by surprise, I expected something more tough, but it was pretty nuanced, while not exactly original. It seems Butcher's always been the prick in the team.

Oh, and that John Higgins pin-up art was deliciously gross.

On another note, which are the best Ennis war comics? I really wanna try some. War Stories and Battlefields are the consensus, right? Which story arcs, exactly? Only read Battlefields' Dear Billy and I thought it was excellent.

Didn't fancy much the first issue of the Highland Laddie mini (though it takes some balls to release twenty-some pages of people continously talking in Scottish jargon), but this week's Boys, I dug. This arc's a slow burner, but it's shaping up a very fine flame, if you know what I mean.

I'm 200% sure that that was Butcher fucking with Mother's Milk... milk.

OK, now I'm starting to see glimpses of the best Ennis again, after many years (and thank God for that). The reveal is gonna be crucial, and for the first time in the whole series, I cannot wait for the next issue. Everything is going to a tipping point. The Homelander on the verge of breaking bad, Mother's Milk seriously questioning Butcher's decisions, and now the outcome of Annie's words to Hughie.

'Bout fucking time, Garth.

HOLY SHIT @ the latest Breaking Bad episode. I got strangely misty-eyed at the end. Can't wait for the (extra long, btw) season finale.