The January General Comic Reading Thread - bring in the new year with funny books.
 

OMD is over. Rhas Al Ghul is alive again, I think? Strangers in Paradise is over. Y The Last Man has only a single issue left. Skrulls and another crisis loom. Here's hoping 2008 delivers the goods. I know one thing, this sure is shaping up to be a great year for comic movies. Iron Man and Dark Knight might be the best one two punch ever, if the trailers are any indication of the quality they'll bring.

What are you looking forward to in 2008?

The Vector crossover event that will run throughout all of the Dark Horse Star Wars comic books sounds interesting.

I also can't wait to see if DC has the balls to

The whole Ultimatum thing that will "completely change the Marvel Ultimate universe" has me interested. I also hope that we finally get the next issue of Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine sometime this year...

I was thinking about that, too, when I saw the ads for "Ultimate Human" - Iron Man vs. Hulk. Why not finish one story before starting ano... oh yeah; Marvel.

I am making it my New Year's resolution to get caught up on my unread piles of comics. I woke up today a little hung-over with an awful sore throat, so I plan on spending the entire day today reading comics.

This is just a small sample of the unread-mess I am dealing with. . .

Unread recent comics . . .

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/f...g?t=1199202930

Unread back-log (yup, that's another unread box underneath). . .

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/f...g?t=1199202960

First stack of unread trades I plan on starting today. . .

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/f...g?t=1199203016

Oh damn, I can totally sympathize, which is why I had to make myself put on the brakes when it came to buying HCs and collections. I'm going to try to get through the Immortal Iron Fist issues (I bought a run of 1-10 off Ebay recently). And then I'm going to get caught up on The Order, The Brave and the Bold (Waid/Perez), and Jack of Fables. I also have some Wildstorm titles to get through as well, but am proud that I've been keeping up with my other monthlies so far (but only because I read them while sitting on the can).

Bring on Brand New Day!!1!! Whoo hoo!!

I want to see what DC is going to do when Countdown is done and what's going to happen to the apparently Rogue Monitor/Captain Atom. Maybe they'll blow up the Multiverse again? :p

I'm really looking forward to a bunch of stuff this year, oddly enough non of them are events (though I will surely read and follow them), but I am really jazzed of Ed McGuinness being on Hulk. I miss seeing his art each month, and I just hope the writing matches his great art.

And Teen Titan's Year One should rock. If nothing else, the art will.

Jeph Loeb is writing Hulk. So probably not.

DC has the best Year One stories, hands down. Batman, Batgirl (often ignored, but it has great story and art), Superman, Justice League (this was a great story to be able to read in the mid-90s when everything sucked. Including the monthly Justice League titles), Green Arrow, Green Lantern and Flash, etc.

What I'm really looking forward to this year is dropping all of my fucking Marvel and DC books because they're about to do two incredibly stupid crossovers again. They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And maybe they haven't realized yet that they can't keep charging $4 to read a comic. So once Y: TLM is finished, as well as Ex Machina, then i'll probably start exploring new titles/backissues. I rarely if ever "phase" out of comics. There's always good shit out there to read :)

I tend to like Loeb, more than I don't, so I'm optimistic.

For Superman, do you mean Man Of Steel? Or For All Season's? If not I didn't realize he had a branded Year One Story. Same for Lantern, and Flash. Where are those stories told?

It's odd, considering I love the character of Black Canary and the JL at large, that I haven't read that Year One yet. I should probably get on that.

And yeah, I went on about it last month, I think, but Batgirl Year One is one of the best pure superheroine books I've ever read. Pretty much a perfect comic.

I used to like him. His run on Superman was refreshing and he took the books as a whole in a good direction. Superman/Batman was confusing but still a fun read. However, I can't see the Hulk being a "pure superhero" book. It's boring that way. It's been attempted before and the only time it was interesting was when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were behind the wheels. David's run is hands down the best take on the character.

Man of Steel. All Seasons works too...as does birthright. Overall, they rarely if ever go wrong with the origin/YO stories. Lantern and Flash had a 6-issue miniseries back in 2000 by Waid/Kitson called The Brave and the Bold. Great comic, it explored the character's Silver Age history.

It's okay, the story was retconned anyway.

I too loved Batgirl YO. All the initial reviews were really lukewarm and I thought it was just another throwaway book. But my LCS recommended the TPB and I loved every minute of it. The art was fantastic and the writing was suitably more modern.

That is actually on my too read pile. There are so many issues to get through, but I've only ever heard good things about it, and I really like the Hulk character, so I feel I owe it to myself to read it.

Now that you mention it, you're right. I forgot about Birthright, and while a lot of people hated its intergrating Smallville stuff into the superman mythos, I really enjoyed that book. I'll have to keep an eye out for Brave and the Bold.

And I could give a fuck about whether or not something is in or out of continuity. That is so fluid these days, the only real criteria I have for reading a story is whether it is good or not. Which is funny considering so many of the best stories aren't - Superman: Secret Identity or Red Son for example.

Holy shit! Is that the second Daredevil Omnibus? The one with everything else Miller wrote that wasn't in the first volume? When did that come out? I thought it wasn't due until later in the year. MUST. GET. NOW!

It's damn good. Long, too. I think there's a Marvel DVD with all the Hulk issues up until the end of Jones' run. Be sure to also check out Hulk: The End. I don't see there being much appeal for the new Hulk series outside of the art, which i'm sure is going to be spectacular. But the writing will probably be tepid at best.

Oh, i'm not saying that it's any less worthwhile now that it's no longer considered canon, but it's just annoying how DC would wipe away such a pivotal story when almost ALL the modern JLA stories somehow connect to it. It's almost as bad as "One More Day". Consider for example, the current Justice League America comic. Why in the world they would elect Black Canary as chairwoman when she's apparently had no experience with the JLA confuses me. Also, we're back to the original Silver Age incarnation of the league - where Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were founding members. Perhaps if they wrote their stories forwards instead of backwards, DC wouldn't have so many problems with their continuity.

I love Black Canary, but I agree it doesn't really make sense. Not really. She's a capable hero, but even in BoP she wasn't the tactician, that was Oracle. I could easily see Oracle being nominated "leader/manager" of the JLA, but Canary doesn't really fit. Hell, even as field tactics coordinator (I feel like a gigantic nerd for having just typed that out), that role naturally falls to Batman. It seems like DC saw how Gail brought Black Canary to prominence, and just wanted to capitalize on her new found status.

I just wish she was in the JSA, if she had to be on a team that isn't the Birds, since I'm having a hard time reading JLA.

DC, as much as I love them, have an impenetrable continuity and that is why I pay it very little mind. All I really need to know is the very basic motivation of the characters (those little blurbs about the character on the first page or two of a comic), the major events (batman had his back broke), and the immediate continuity of what's been going on for the last few years and that does me fine.

DC's continuity is surprisingly cleaner than Marvel's. The X-franchise has the worst continuity in almost all of comic dom. They write the ending to the story first, show up in the middle of the story a little later, and then at the very end they re-write the beginning. Here's a tip Marvel: the next time you start a story, that grips readers, try to finish it before your audience outgrows comics and a new one takes it's place and has no idea what's going on.

That's pretty funny... I still have no idea what happened with the 12, the third Summers brother, how Rachel came back, what happened with Cable and his prophecy and Apocalypse, what happened to all the AoA rejects who came through to this world, what happened to Angel's blue skin, and whether Xavier is alive/dead or can/can't walk.

Good.

Because all those stories sucked.

I remember when I first started trying to get into comics for reals in the mid to late-90's. I went to my local shop and said I was interested in creating a pull box. The guy game me a sheet, and naturally I added X-Men and Uncanny to the list, because I loved the cartoon so much. Now I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I don't fancy myself dumb either, and after four months of reading the books I still had no idea just what in the hell was going on. The X-books were impenetrable to a new reader back then. Love them or not, at least they've fixed that somewhat these days.

I used my holiday break to catch up on some reading and just finished the Captain America Omnibus. What a great read. I read most of the trades previously and am amazed at how well Brubaker presented a comic book resurrection and how he used all 25 issues to tell a progressing story (Lukin/Skull/Cap). A story which I'm assuming is continuing past #25.

I'm now reading Madman Gargantua now, giddy over how much fun comics can be.

I agree and disagree with this statement, because i'm a huge X-men fan and i've read nearly every issue of almost every single X-men book. For the sake of simplicity, let's sum it up like this:

It was not a bad idea. It was bad execution.

In more detail:

See, back in the Silver Age, comics had a beginning, middle, and an end. There were no decompressed stories, there were no crossovers, and stories rarely, if ever, carried on past 1 issue. This was partially because the medium was still in its infancy, and few knew of the storytelling potential of comics. This was further compounded by the influence of the market. Back then, comics weren't sold in comic stores - no direct market existed. They were sold in 7-11s, news stands, and other places where people bought newspapers and other light reading material. Because these outlets had no knowledge of comics themselves, they had sporadic shipping schedules, and constantly changing order lists. This was because to them, comics were seen as an impulse buy, something someone would purchase to amuse themselves for a few brief moments. The X-men was very unpopular in those days, filled with one-dimensional characters that rarely if ever grew and changed, with the story being an overarching allegory of sorts for social ills. It didn't have the personal drama of Spider-man, the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four, or the Wondrous adventures of The Avengers. There wasn't time in each comic to flesh out that many characters, villains, and events. While DC's formula for Justice League worked, many of those characters had a history and fanbase behind them, as well as successful individual titles.

Then along came Chris Clairemont, and a revolution in comics. He wanted to change everything that was wrong with the X-men. So he started telling stories that had a beginning, middle, and an end, but somewhere in between all that happening, other events were developing. They trailed on for years and years, slowly leading readers. This is not to say that the comics were at once an impenetrable gestalt of continuity, but rather, that was the inevitable future of the comic. And in this way, he used a single comic (remember that for a very long period of time, Uncanny X-men was the ONLY x-title on the market) to flesh out an enormous amount of characters; heroes, villains, family, and the events that shaped their lives. Even characters that seemed like they had no potential for growth like Cyclops, Wolverine, and Magneto became immensely popular.

The end result was that by the time X-men had become comic's hottest property, and Chris Clairemont was ready to guide them towards the future for a new audience with comics themselves becoming a swiftly changing medium. After being ousted from the X-men - by then a whole legion of comics that he helped to create and shape, other people took control. The eventual result was that the writers who carried on his legacy misunderstood his methodology. The writers of the X-franchise thought what hooked readers was all those little overarching bits of history, how characters that would be non-chalantly introduced would someday have a powerful impact on the lives of the characters, and little hints dropped here and there would enthrall readers later with immensely dramatic storytelling later. These were not the crux of what made X-men great. They were a reward of sorts, for long time readers to see what developed of what was once background noise. However, this focus on what made the comic great made the writers forget about what made the comic worthwhile reading in the first place: character drama. This is most apparent in that most of the mutants who appeared during the 90s and 2000s were utterly forgettable creations that are always quickly being sidelined in order to make more screen time for everything that Chris Clairemont made great.

The last aspect of this was that the X-men were turning into highly profitable properties, and the result was that the writing, characters, and stories stagnated to avoid any drastic changes in characters that were being mass marketed.

And now...the current state of the X-men? It's not impenetrable because there aren't 20 people in one comic all trying to generate a million little side stories. But if anything, it still lacks the creativity of past years. Keep that in mind the next time you pick up an X-book and you are enthralled by the appearance of a new character instead of being disgusted or uninterested.

I was tempted to get the omnibus - coming into Cap at the point of his death - but decided to hunt down the individual comics themselves. After hitting every comic store I could find, I was still a few issues short so I resorted to Ebay. I got the final missing issue yesterday, so as soon as it arrives and I have 1-24 in my grubby little hands, I will begin the journey into BrubakerLand for a few days. Looking forward to it! :up:

Mind if I ask why? It's one thing if you bought the individual releases as they came out to keep up with the story. But skipping the Omnibus for the floppies makes no sense to me. Besides the fact that the Omnibus would be a fraction of the cost for what the collected issues would be (and not be a pain in the ass to track down), there's the quality of the Omnibus, which is exemplary - better paper, larger format and extra material (did you pick up the Winter Soldier specials too, because they're in the Omnibus), and most importantly, no lame advertising.

Sure, individual issues may have a "collectability" about them, but so do first printings of Omnibuses - have you checked out the ebay prices for New X-men or Alias? They're pretty steep, if you can even find them.

Maybe it's because I took a step back from the X-men for a few years, but I was utterly confused when I picked up the HC of Supernova, Carey and Bachalo's series. As much as I think Bachalo can draw some pretty covers, I couldn't follow his storytelling at all.

Astonishing X-men, however, is a treat.

Yeah, that's what I meant. And you know, there might of been a book like this in the mid-90's, I just didn't know what it was.

Also, X-factor is a very accessible read for the non die-hard X-fan, like myself.