dadaluholla

Summer is coming to a close and that means its time for the quarterly change of the general comic discussion. Time is really flying by!

davidh777

I like it: and the next thread will be for the holiday haul

boredsilly

Man, I have practically stalled all of my monthly reading. The only thing I'm reading month to month is Blackest Night.

I'm not a crafty person, but I'm going to be going to the Baltimore Comic Con next month, and I hope to buy a bunch of cheap quarter books so that I can cover my entertainment unit in comics. It's something I've always wanted to try, so I hope it works out ok.

dadaluholla

Question:

Long time comic fan, but never been to an actual "con". I've always been afraid I'd be too overwhelmed and have a heart attack the sight of that many comics, and plus I would probably spend more than I could ever possibly afford. Anyway, I think we have one coming up in the Cincy/Kentucky area soon, and might take the risk of going. I know they usually have cheap boxes of single issues, but can you usually get cheap trades and graphic novels as well?

boredsilly

Cons are the place for cheap trades. I can't speak for all of them, but you can find a 50% off booth, or buy 1 get 1 free booth pushing trades at nearly any con. The key is to not buy the first thing you see, just walk the whole floor first, and find where the deals are.

Also, if you're worried about spending too much, just set up a budget. $100 can go a long way at a con, especially if you aren't trying to get sketches.

ivelostr2

A bunch of people at the Con near me last year had Marvel Omnibi in the 35-45 price rance and DC absolutes in the 30-50 range, so keep an eye open for that when you go.

davidh777

Just blind-bought at my local LCS. Looked like it had the same feel of Savage Sword so I was intrigued.

JasonF

At the Chicago Comicon last month, you could find most recent Marvel trades and many recent DC trades for 50% off with little effort, and often cheaper if you shopped around. And, for some reason, everyone had stacks and stacks of the Gerber/Skrenes/Mooney Omega the Unknown trade at $10 apiece.

boredsilly

The second Gotham Central HC FINALLY came out this week or last. Goddamn. Am I crazy to think a year between volumes is too long?

kevin75

i agree. the gotham central, y, and fables books i think, are all coming out with those long waits in between. boo.

boredsilly

I can understand not wanting to flood the market, but once every 6 months should be long enough between volumes.

ivelostr2

SO, i've been catching up on GL in the last few weeks, the trades finally came from DCBS... I thought the entire story was great up to, and including the RotRL, so then i picked up the final crisis trade, which also came with them...honestly, I enjoyed the beginning, but they lost me on the whole Superman Beyond part, there was no real explanation of the Club Darkseid, was this fleshout out somewhere else and not in FC HC? and Kalibak as a tiger...I don;t get it...Sometime i love morrison, and sometimes I have no clue what the hell is going on...Batman and Robin is awesome though...

fujishig

Just think of the people who read Final Crisis without reading that Superman mini that was included in the HC. Or the poor unfortunate souls who suffered through Countdown to Final Crisis and Death of the New Gods only to find that FC just contradicted them both anyway. Or someone who read only Morrison's Batman, who think he was killed in some helicopter crash only to get two nonsensical issues of Batman being trapped.

Darkside Club and Shilo Norman are both touched upon in the Mr. Miracle issues of Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory, but I don't know if it's ever really fleshed out anywhere.

boredsilly

I hate to be that guy, but Final Crisis is truly one of those books I just simply cannot understand how people enjoyed. There are tons of folks who did, and that's great, but I thought it was awful. I truly wish there was a way (magic) where the same exact series could have been released without Grant Morrison's name on it. Maybe with him taking a pen-name or something.

I honestly believe there are some folks who liked it, just because he's the guy who wrote it, and not on the merits of the story itself. Not all, but definitely some.

Patman

Final Crisis was the final straw for many who read DC crossover events. Then again, I got sucked in with Blackest Night, but I hope Geoff Johns has better clout not to get rick-rolled by DC editorial like Grant Morrison did in Final Crisis.

boredsilly

This latest issue of Blackest Night made me realize that I don't really care about this story either. It's not a bad comic mind you, but when I'm resisting the urge to skip past panels? That ain't good. I think this is another, in an ever increasing line, of mainstream plot-threads that I enjoy hearing about, but not reading so much. I really dig on listening to podcast that discuss Dark Reign, but I don't have the desire to read a lick of it. It's a little weird, but I'm just rolling with it.

Patman

Blackest Night is feel like a really convoluted way of bringing back dead characters. I'm also sort of middling on it, but I hope at least the issues will come out on time. Sad that I'm somewhat happy when crossover event issues simply come out on a timely basis given the past track record of other mega-events in the near past.

davidh777

This should arrive tomorrow! Have been wanting to reread these stories for years.

ytrez

I just found out that DC is releasing The Newsboy Legion Vol. 1! Can't wait! Now for Boy Commandos!

Superboy

Old Man Logan wrapped up a little bit better than I thought it would. Overall, a pretty good story, even though it felt like he was reusing a lot of his old ideas. And it wasn't very original. I might just be a sucker for McNiven's art...

His other series, Kick Ass, has some serious bones to it...

dx23

Could someone explain to me why is Grant Morrison is so popular? Even though I like the current Batman and Robin series, I find the rest of his work to convoluted in a really bad way and he comes across as an Alan Moore wannabe. The whole Final Crisis mess is ridiculous and I absolutely hated how the complete story was handled. I remember he was pretty good too in JLA, but that was more because he was able to use the DC powerhouses in the proper manner they hadn't been used in years.

ivelostr2

Im with ya, I am loving Batman and Robin, but, as i posted a few up, Final Crisis was a mess for me, i didn't get it at all...I don't know what was accomplished by it, other than batman's death...speaking of which...I know it is enevitable that Bruce will be back, but I'm really like Dick and Damian as Batman and Robin, it makes it more fun than it has been in years I think. i would love for them to be in those roles for at lest a few years and see how it works without bruce...

boredsilly

I had my issues with Final Crisis, but calling Morrison an Alan Moore wannabe seems like a disservice to Morrison. I think his fans rub me the wrong way a lot of the time, but he's actually a pretty wonderful writer as far as I'm concerned. The great thing about Grant is that no matter whether the books works or not he's always swinging for the fences. He's an idea man, and the ones that are great, are great.

Morrison has written some of the best comics I have ever read. We3, All Star Superman, Arkham Asylum, JLA, Animal Man, and JLA Earth 2 just to name a few. Many of his other runs are heralded as great as well, I just haven't read the likes of The Invisibles, Seven Soldiers, and Doom Patrol yet.

To answer your question though, I think Morrison is so popular, because think what you will of his books, he's almost always interesting. He, more than most writers I would imagine, really puts himself in his books. I don't really get the sense that he feels too good for comics, or does them for the paycheck, but instead makes these books because he has things he wants to say and ideas he wants to get across. That counts for something in my book.

dx23

Yes, he has done great work on different titles, but I think that he has taken the the nickname of revamp guy a little to personal. His tenure at Marvel ended on a sour note for his constant rebooting and revamping of established characters in X-Men and I kind of feel he has been doing more or less the same thing lately with the DC big guns. Maybe its just that he has been an integral part of the annoying crossover-big event-year round-non stopping gimmick that has hampered DC (Marvel too) over the last 5 years, but Final Crisis show the same weaknesses he showed at the end of his X-Men run, where he took Magneto and changed over 30 years of character development just for the hell of it. I feel he did the same to Batman, the New Gods and the DC canon in general.

Superboy

He's hit or miss for me. I thought that his work on JLA was really spotty, and that some of the literary devices and references he was using went way over the head of the average comic reader. Also, he made many of the same mistakes that past JLA writers made: diluting the big 7 with an overstretched membership, modern-age moments of stupidity (like Catwoman's "big reveal" during the Prometheus storyline), and a totally anti-climactic final storyline where it almost seems like the characters KNOW they're in a comic, but in a dumb way.

His Batman work is also hit or miss for me. It was interesting seeing him create a "novella" from the perspective of the Joker, but the overarching storyline and themes were just too obscure. However, his ideas to reshape Batman into a "pop" comic was brilliant, and served the character well. He is, after all, a pop icon.

I agree that Final Crisis was a mess. I liked his idea of the DCU and hypertime being living entities better. I think he had a lot of big ideas that just got lost in the noise. I would have liked to read that comic.

If you can, try to find his older work on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and one of my favorite comics of all time, Zenith. If you liked Grant Morrison even just a little, you'll absolutely LOVE Zenith. The story is fully realized, the characters are interesting and endearing, the plot actually goes somewhere, the narrative is very cohesive and solid, and there's a great deal of post-modern influence on his storytelling. A brilliant work that really needs to be given the spotlight.