boredsilly

What was the great offender - the art or the story? Can't say I'm into the Ultimates that much, but I'm sort of interested in seeing what these two were going to do to keep the ball rolling.

And has anyone here read Batman and The Mad Monk or Batman and The Monster Men? If so, are they any good?

slop101

I didn't read it, but I flipped through it, and while I've liked Joe M. in the past, I thought the art looked terrible. It was all airbrushed/photoshopped into oblivion, like really bad/too much CGI. The coloring was too dark, and I couldn't tell what the hell was going on, since on top of all that, everything was contorted and had really extreme angles. It was just a bad looking book. And I've never been a fan of Loeb's writing anyways, so this was an easy book to skip.

The true sequel to the Ultimates will be when Millar and Hitch take over Fantastic Four next year.

Superboy

Both.

The art isn't inked - it's strictly photoshopped and computer colored. Think "Xtreme X-men". It's really hard to read. The story was really bad too, very mid-90's Image-inspired crap. I haven't been following Ultimate Spider-man, but where the hell did Venom come from, and why is he like the 626 incarnation?

Sigh. Looks like the Ultimates universe is at an end. I really enjoyed Ultimate Spider-man, X-men, and the Ultimates in the beginning.

And yes, the Matt Wagner Batman books are great. If you haven't already, check out Trinity. It's a great "year one" type Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman story.

taffer

I noticed in Ultimates 3 that Venom referred to himself in the singular "I" instead of the plural "we". Does Ultimate Venom not do that or was it a mistake in the comic?

boredsilly

Cool, I'll check those all out.

It's a shame about The Ultimates. I'm not a huge Joe Mad fan, but I do remember liking some of his X-Men work. Loeb, I think has a reputation he doesn't deserve. His name is bigger than it should be in comics. I like a lot of his work, but his name isn't one where I think I must read that. So I guess I can't be all that surprised.

Just for shits and giggles, what creative team would you have liked to see take over The Ultimates?

Superboy

I like Loeb sometimes, but I find the majority of his stories are really just carried by the artwork. His work leading the Superman books was a good run, I thought OWAW was a decent crossover, and Superman/Batman was an excellent "pure superhero" book that had a great "modern-silver-age" feel to it. What I really don't like about his work though is how he can never manage to wrap up his stories conclusively. I always feel like his endings are rushed and poorly planned.

I'd really like to see Millar/Hitch back on the book because I loved the concepts they explored. They were writing a post-modern Avengers.

I guess i'd really like to see Grant Morrison on the book. His post-modern science fiction take on JLA was great.

Giantrobo

So does anyone else have a LCBS that gets shorted on books? My order was light today and they -claim- "the distributor(Diamond?) shorted them". But I know if I go to my backup shop, the books I'm missing will probably be there in large stacks.

I think they just under order to save money and I understand that. But when a regular customer starts gettting tired of missing books at your store, only to have said customer have to hunt them down at other shops, and thinking of ending the relationship....you need to do something better.

Jackskeleton

I'll follow up last week's fuck you to Joe Q. with this week giving a big fat FUCK YOU to Jeph Loeb. What happened loeb? I used to like you a lot. What happened to the writer of a Long Halloween?

Hush was blah and Superman/Batman was just one cluster Fuck after another.

But this.. This one takes the cake. First it doesn't even have anything carried over from the previous volumes. I think the only thing they kept was the creepy relationship between Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and it's very bad when you can be less subtle about something than compared to Millar.

Then you have Hawkeye, who they kept the whole family being fucked over but gave him a complete death wish and costume redo. Forget arrows, those were too wimpy of a weapon, let's give him guns! Lots and lots of guns! Make him look like Grifter and Bullseye. That'll totally make him look hard!

Oh and then worse thing possible. Loeb just made them 616 costumes. Either that or Mad couldn't put down whatever latest final fantasy series that is out to do some fuckn research on what the ultimates look like.

I remember a couple years ago he refused to draw Batman with the modern non-yellow chest symbol where the company had to edit it out for a variant cover. I used to love Joe Mad. But he pretty much said FUCK YOU to the folks when he stopped Battle Chasers mid-stream.

How Marvel expects Mad to be on any sort of schedule with this book is beyond me. I mean, did you see what video games are out now? I bet he'll be playing Guitar hero all day and not have any time to draw from any shitty script Loeb wrote for him.

I mean, shit, what the fuck was with the ending? The bullet made that hole in his hand and he didn't realize it till AFTER he opened his hand? 616 quicksilver once outran a laser to push scarlet witch out of the way and Ultimates version is suppose to be 10x's faster than that? Yeah.. FUCK YOU LOEB. FUCK YOU MAD!

boredsilly

Are these books that should have been in your pullbox? If so, it would make no sense for your shop to not order books they're 99% sure someone is going to buy.

boredsilly

Not making excuses for this book, I still haven't read it (and probably won't now), but I've read some people explaining this away by saying the passage of time between the last series and this is when they may have got new costumes.

I really appreciate what the Ultimate Universe was made for, and I think it was pretty successful in its goals, but with this Crisis-like sounding event right around the corner (Ultimatum) this Universe is getting just as complex and confusing as the mainstream Marvel or DC.

I haven't read any new comics in a minute. Just reading old trades which is a good time.

Jackskeleton

You don't even want to make that excuse for the book because Loeb fucks even that up.

In the last volume of Ultimates Valkyrie was nineteen years. Two years later in this passage of time Valkyrie is STILL fuck'n 19? How the hell did that work?

It's pretty clear that Loeb doesn't know the source material or just uses his Editor mandate to not bother.

I'm expecting Fury to show up in issue #2 as some middle aged, gray streak in his hair white guy smoking a cigar.

boredsilly

Fair enough.

Giantrobo

You see, that's the part i don't get. I can't quite figure out what's going on here. I'm in every week and my orders are simple(99% DC). It's not a weekly screw up, but it happens every couple weeks. I don't feel like changing stores but once again, I'm seriously thinking about it.

There's also a chance my pull box is being raided by other customers. The boxes are where one can get his/her own pull stack out of boxes with our names on it and take it up to the register. Hell, if they're fucking up other people's orders like mine then maybe some of the customers are just making their own fixes. I wouldn't do that so I just suffer.

boredsilly

That actually sounds pretty plausible. If you're ordering book that your store gets only a few shelf copies of, and they run out, I wouldn't be surprised if people do pick through others pullboxes.

I actually stopped going to my LCS because they would always fuck up my pullbox. There were always titles in there that I didn't ask for (and it wasn't them pulling things they thought I might be interested in) or missing titles that I wanted.

I say go to them with your concerns and if they don't get right, take your money elsewhere.

fujishig

Diamond does short stores at times, but usually on the non-mainstream stuff. If this is happening consistently, I'd worry about the health of the store...

Read the huge Godland hardcover the other day... i think it was almost too hyped up... it's good, don't get me wrong, but I didn't see anything earth-shattering. I'll continue to follow it, though.

Gamblor187

I'll second Superboy's comments. Matt Wagner's Batman books were two of last year's best. They're the best Batman stories that I've read in years. If you like them, you should also pick up the trades of the Batman/Grendel minis and "Batman: Faces". I know that I'm repeating myself here, but no one does Batman better than Wagner.
Trinity was great, as well.

Patman

A good comic book store would never let customers rummage through the pull boxes. Not only do you have to worry about customers poaching "hot" issues from other customers' boxes, but you have to deal with the customers that stick unwanted issues into other customers boxes too.

Superboy

I thought The Long Halloween and Dark Victory were mediocre stories. They were simply too convoluted with no plot resolution whatsoever. Typical of Loeb.

Hush wasn't blah, it was just a remake of The Dark Knight Returns, KnightFall, and recycling his own Dark Victory.

Many people don't like Millar's stories, but at least he knows how to properly construct them. For a writer, the process usually goes:

1. Idea
2. General Themes
3. Plot
4. Characters
5. Story
6. Dialogue
7. Incidental additions here and there for entertainment value (jokes, inside humor, cultural references)

Apparently, Jeph Loeb hasn't heard of this process, and he only knows:

1. COOL idea
2. Utter clusterfuck as poorly planned plot disintegrates into nothing
3. Deus Ex Machina

However, I did like Superman/Batman. It was fun, freewheeling, and the art kicked ass.

Actually they look like their Heroes Reborn counterparts. Someone should tell Jeph Loeb everyone hated Heroes Reborn, they hated the unnecessary sequel, and they hate stupid Image comics from the early '90s.

He didn't stop, he just re-adjusted his publishing schedule. One issue a year? you gotta be kidding me.

Yeah. I guess it's common in the industry now for artists/writers to never give a crap about any of their work. The only Image guy who seems at all consistent with his timetable is Jim Lee.

Patman

Well Jim Lee is still sort of sporadic. Erik Larsen is the iron man from Image.

fujishig

I was about to say that, but he's just had a long hiatus in his book. Still, Savage Dragon is the only one from the original Image crop to still be chugging along with the creator at the helm for every single issue. I think he now does his own lettering and colors too.

boredsilly

Ok two glowing recommendations has got me really excited now. I sure as hell hope I love it as much as you two seem to.

Speaking of Batman, I read the second issue of Gotham Underground and I am really enjoying this book. I love books about crime lords fighting for power, and when those crime lords are in Gotham...it's only that much better. The Bat Family are being used to great effect here as well. They're in the book, but it isn't about them, which I appreciate (you can read about them in a dozen other books). Just a perfect comic for my sensibilities. Plus it's cool to see some lesser used Rogues being brushed off and reused.

JustinCleveland

The Wagner stuff is great if you don't like your Batman completely tricked out with every gadget known to man. I love it because he still has to struggle, has to learn. He's not perfect. Very much a sequel to Frank Miller's Year One and Jeph Loeb's Long Halloween, etc.

Sessa17

I ran a comic book store for years so I've definitely got the info on this. Stores do get allocated from time to time, especially if your store is not a high volume store, however this rarely happens with Marvel & DC books, & I know for a fact there is no way a store is shorted on a weekly basis on Marvel & DC books, both companies let the retailer know if a book is shipping late (which is diferent from being "shorted" anyway). What can happen, is one of your store's boxes gets shipped to another store, which does happen if there are other stores in your area, & quite often a comic book store is getting another store's boxes, they are going to keep them & not report it.

Now what does happen often at shitty comic shops is, when a book gets hot or if there is a big crossover, like the curren't Ra's story or Messiah Complex, the retailer will often not up his orders two months in advance for all the people that don't normally by the comics that the crossover appears in. So when the comics ship, & now your store has big subscribers that want all the crossover issues, the retailer since he didn't increase his order, will pull the issues from a subscriber that may not get that much, or doesn't come in every week.

So, the bottom line is, there is absolutely no excuse for a subscriber at any store, to have their comics missing frequently, if this is happening, your retailer is doing something shady with your comics.

slop101

Only because Larsen's art looks like ass. There's a reason why people like him and Bagley never miss a deadline, and people like Lee and Hitch keep missing them: good art takes time, generally speaking.

Patman

If you think Larsen's artwork looks like ass, you should watch him autograph a comic, or do a quick sketch, the way he holds the pen(cil) and crooks his arm during his writing and drawing motion is scary!

I've always found Hitch to be more of an Alan Davis emulator, but a little less fluid and less tight. I have no idea how Hitch is going to meet his deadlines on an ongoing title like FF (I suspect lots of fill-ins during the Millar/Hitch FF run).

Jim Lee is getting looser, almost too loose, even with Scott Williams as his ever-vigilant inker. Jim Lee used to be a "must buy" for me, but not anymore (I definitely don't buy ASB&R anymore, after the first couple of issues).