COmics: House of M vs. Infinite Crisis. Opinions so far?
 

House of M is somewhat of a let-down so far for me. Maybe it's because I haven't read Marvel comics in years, and suddenly I'm looking at these "crossover" issues with titles I used to read, but I'm totally unable to distinguish between what is an effect of Wanda's doing and what is business as usual for the story.

For example, Deadpool & Cable. Huh? Cable's an infant? What the hell is happening here?

The main series and the spin-offs that are limited series for House of M are OK. Not the usual great writing I've come to expect from Bendis, but OK. I did like that they released a variant of the "Official Handbook to the Marvel Univierse" that was dedicated to the series (called "Secrets of the House of M.")


The "countdown to Infinite Crisis" is also failing to impress me. I don't mind the Day of Vengeance title, as I have always loved the minor sorcery characters that are rarely used. The Raan-Thangarian War is boring. Villians United is interesting, but seems muddled. Omac Project... I'm just tired of the "yeah, Batman's a prick that's doing things behind our backs that endangers us, but we'll put up with it because he's Batman" stories.

DC shill chimes in here... :p


I can't comment on "House of M" or whatever it's called but As far as DC's Countdown, I think people should be more patient. It's obviously building up to something without "blowing its wad" too early so that's why it probably seems slow too many of you. I understand that many are in a hurry to get to "meat" of this Crisis. I also understand that when it does finally come many <i>will still</i> be disappointed because people are harder too please these days.

All I'll say is [scottish accent] Gehv it a fook-ahn chahnce mate.[/scottish accent] :D

House Of M - Typical Bendis.

House Of M Crossovers - 98% shit.

Infinite Crisis - What i've read, I liked.

Infinite Crisis Crossovers - 98% solid.

And lest it be said i'm a shill like *cough other people cough* ;), I still collect individual X-Men character limited series for crissakes..

I've read most of "Crisis" so far, but have zero interest in "M". I don't even know what "M" is all about!

I read the preview of the 1st few pages of House of M in Wizard and it made me want to vomit. Bendis can't write the Avengers so I can only imagine how awful it turns out when he gets his hands on even more characters (perhaps Secret War bad?). The one "HoM" tie in issue I've read in Incredible Hulk was crap. Honestly, marvel right now reminds me of the whole Heroes Reborn era... but worse.

I don't know anything about DC's crossover, but I would say even if it was nothing but Aquaman swimming around in someone's backyard pool for 12 issues, it would be better than House of M.

hey, I'm a self confessed and proud Shill for DC compared to the rest of the Marvel fanatics around here. :lol:

I have little idea what either one is about, since I only collect a few monthlies.

I have no idea what's happening with Crisis, and I'm left to ponder whether I can't understand something like the latest Superman/Batman issue because of poor writing, or because it somehow crosses over into Crisis. The various alternate timeline subplots in the DC books that I do collect monthly(JSA, Superman/Batman, Titans, and Legion) have me even more confused.

I know House of M is some kind of Scarlet Witch altering reality plot, and seeing as how it's a direct continuation of the Avengers Disassembled story that destroyed the Avengers Busiek and Perez had gotten me to love again, I can't see myself wanting to pick it up.

Eh, if it's big enough, I guess I can pick up the whole thing in trades anyway. If it's an event that will pass with few ramifications (like Silent Night, the Joker crossover event from a few years ago, etc.) I won't even remember it in a year or so anyway.

Countdown to Infinite Crisis is one of the few crossovers that actually has some serious build up behind it. It's still way too early to judge that one just yet, but I'm still willing to give them credit for ever trying a crossover of this magnitude.

House of M is your typical "summer crossover". Nothing special there. If you want to read a good Marvel crossover, read Marvel Team-Up.

From what I understand, the goal of Infinite Crisis is

I'm also enjoying Day of Vengeance because of Bill Willingham's writing.

The basis for House of M (no spoiler tag since this is all established going in) is that Scarlet Witch is crazy, she's killed half the Avengers. Professor X and Dr. Strange can't figure out a way to keep her sedated, and her powers are manifesting again. While the X-Men and Avengers are meeting to decide what to do with her (the X-Men want to kill her, the Avengers want to find another solution), Magneto takes her away. Her powers manifest and screw up reality and change things to where mutants won the war with humans. Now Magneto rules from Genosha. Humans aren't treated badly, per se, but they are considered inferior to mutants. Some of the heroes have realized that something is not right in this new reality.

Not following either one.

The only "big event" series I'm reading is Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers.

It's all good, very typical Grant Morrison channeling silver age weirdness through modern filters.

:eek: I hope not. But even if it's true so far the build up has been interesting to me.


Sounds interesting...

I don't like either one. House of M is Age of Apocalypse/Heroes Reborn all over again, both of which were crappy concepts that were superficially pleasing. The single issues are virtually unintelligible, and the main series is a total mess.

My favorite Marvel series right now is probably Ultimates, because Millar is poking at Avengers disassembled. I can forgive his political ramblings.

Infinite Crisis is...I don't know what it is, and I don't know what's going on, and I don't know what the hell is happening or what it's going to be about. The miniseries right now aren't really building up to anything and they're just a confusing mess. They're probably not going to make any more sense after the series is finished either. It's just a sales maneuver. The prelude ranks right up there with crappy stories no one cares about and retcons that will eventually have to be retconned so that hundreds of issues of continuity eventually make sense. It's almost as bad as the Alicia Masters/Skrull storyline. Almost. For anyone that's reading Invincible, imagine if Kirkman waited 10 years for the "big reveal" and undid all those years of continuity. Instead, he pulled the rabbit out of the hat right away, and even then subtle (and not-so-subtle) hints were always dropped to the reader. What a total ripoff.

I love the stuff leading up to Infinite Crisis so far, but I think it's because I loved everything building up to Infinite Crisis, starting with the newest volume of Teen Titans, before I even knew of the crisis at all.

House of M is decent but forgettable. I'm mainly upset that my Internet hasn't been broken in half yet.

re: House of M. Bah, humbug!

I'm in love with Crisis. The latest issue of Omac and the lead up superman story arc were just amazing.

Yeah they weren't kidding about changing the relationship between Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.....but I guess in some ways Bats was right about Superman all along. ;)

I'm not going to bother buying books that I wouldn't normally buy, so can anyone tell me what happens in the two non-omac titles leading up to Omac Project #4?

To be continued in Omac #4.

Oh...and I'll join in for the HIGHEST RAVES for the Infinite Crisis crossovers and WASTE OF MONEY for House of M(ediocrity) rants.

Andrew

I've been interested in what DC's been doing with the whole IC thing, but I've never been much of a DCU reader. So, in the last week or so I decided to really dig in and read a bunch of this stuff. Now that I've finished a good chunk of it, I'm pretty disappointed. I guess my biggest disappoinment is that the stuff I read first was really good, but I haven't really liked anything I've read in the last couple days.

I found a list of recommended reading for IC and it highly recommended reading Superman/Batman, so I started with that. I was really surprised with how good the series was. This might be blasphemy, but I think it's the only thing from Loeb that I've really liked. Then I started reading a couple series that I had been meaning to get around to that I knew were going to have some ties to IC, including Manhunter and Outsiders. I had read the first Outsiders tpb awhile back and didn't like it too much, but I ended up being impressed by how much better it got. Manhunter really impressed me too. I also read some Flash and JSA, but I'm so behind on both of those series that I just set them aside for now.

I think I started being disappointed when I got to the Supes/CM story by Winick. It wasn't too bad, but I've already kind of forgotten what happened in the story. I found the beginning of Omac and DOV intriguing, but I don't feel like they've been that interesting since.

One DCU title that I had been keeping up with was Teen Titans. I really liked the first 15 issues or so of the title, but I thought the future storyline was terrible and the Dr. Light story was OK, but I was expecting something much better. I was really disappointed in the Outsiders crossover. It had so much potential and I thought it was very poorly handled.

The one story I was aiming for because I didn't want to accidentally hear any spoilers was Sacrifice. I pretty much hated the first 2 issues of it. They were pointless and nothing really happened until it got back to the Rucka written issues. They were ok and I liked the ending, but some of these big fights are getting so boring. They also seem so illogical. I know that's an odd word to use, but it feels like the writers don't put enough thought into these fights to make them interesting, but still retaining some sense of logic. Also, what's the big deal about Supeman being mind controlled? Sure, Superman is potentially the greatest weapon a person can use, but they act like it's the first time this has ever happened. I'd imagine Superman's been mind controlled hundreds of times.

I haven't read VU or R/T War yet. I want to read Adam Strange before I start R/T War and I'm not sure what's best to read for VU. Could some people recommend what's the best comics to read to get some background on VU before I start it? Also, that list I mentioned suggested reading Hush and the Red Hood story. Have those tied into any of the stories yet? Even though I've been disappointed in most of the IC stuff I've read, I'm still interested in the whole experiment DC is doing. I'm still looking forward to reading the other 2 Countdown mini's. The only thing I'm not that interested in is the Donna Troy mini. I think I'll skip that.

On House of M, I haven't read any of the tie-ins, but I might read some of them later on. I don't feel like they'll tie in to the main story as much as the various IC stories will. As for the mini, while it's been disappointing too, I've definitely enjoyed it more than any of the IC stuff I've read.

I guess I just like Marvel's style a lot more than DC's. Marvel is more character driven and DC is more plot driven. Everything I've read for IC has lacked emotion imo. Everything is handled too lightly. The biggest example of this has nothing to do with IC. I've always heard people rave about JSA and I like most of Johns work, so I was catching up with some of the early stuff and I couldn't believe how badly a lot of things are handled in that series. I still admire the series for trying to incorporate continuity and for trying to tell such epic stories, but over and over again I was disappointed with what would happen in the stories. They have all these major things happen, but it feels like they never have any real ramifications. Any emotion they try to inject into the characters comes off as so pathetic. I think I've heard people say all of Bendis's characters sound alike. If you want to see a book where every character sounds alike, read JSA. Every character is basically Mr. Exposition. I think the most ridiculous aspect of the series has been how every other issue a character will "die", but of course none of them ever stay dead. I think the only character that has stayed dead so far has been Extant and he had the stupidest dead of them all.

Sorry to go off on a JSA tangent, but the quality of that book has definitely been the biggest disappointment I've had in the last couple weeks.

Huh? "lacked emotion"? Blue Beetle? Batman's betrayal and the reaction of others to this revelation? Superman's going nuts? What were more were you looking for?

You're not a DC fan and that's ok because it seems few here at dvdtalk are. ;) Needless to say that's probably why you felt the way you did. Either way there's plenty of emotion in the IC books and you don't have to look far to find it.

Identity Crisis #5 and the Teen Titans follow-up (was it #19?) was pretty intense for me, from what I remember.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Giantrobo

Huh? "lacked emotion"? Blue Beetle? Batman's betrayal and the reaction of others to this revelation? Superman's going nuts? What were more were you looking for?

You're not a DC fan and that's ok because it seems few here at dvdtalk are. ;) Needless to say that's probably why you felt the way you did. Either way there's plenty of emotion in the IC books and you don't have to look far to find it.

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I think by "lacked emotion", he's talking about that feeling you get after you realize you've just wasted your money on a POS book.

If that's the case, he's absolutely right. I haven't felt that during IC yet. NOT during the kick ass Teen Titans v Dr. Light storyline and most definitely NOT during those two badass panels in Wonder Woman. "-KRK-"

I read ID Crisis back when it came out and it was much better than any DCU I've read since. It definitely nailed the emotion.

Word on the street is that as a result of the Infinite Crisis . I'm hoping this isn't so!

If this is true, there's no way this lasts a year.