and Dead Tree Comics

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Mothra
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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Mothra » Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:08 pm

Read the first of the new Robocop series. Was impressed - it feels like Robocop, has a pretty solid story, and the art's nicely done. I'm in for at least a few more issues.

Also been picking up the new Venom run, which feels like it was made specifically for me: someone who read every single one of Venom's short-lived solo series back when he was a teenager, lost track of the character over the course of the following disparate one-shots (where his character fluctuated wildly), and gave up for like 15 years. The new series acknowledges all that stuff happened, but glosses over everything after Venom: Finale.

Also back is my favorite iteration of Eddie, where he has the longer hair, wears the suit more often than not without the head, and has a minimal of green slobber.

Story is surprisingly good, which I think is a first for the entirety of Venom. A lot of new elements here I'm wholly into, including a way more interesting backstory for the symbiote race that involves it being present on Earth back in the 70's and, potentially, the viking era.

So yeah, they've got the character just right. Very optimistic to see where it goes.

In unrelated news I'm catching up on that Conan collection I got for Dirty Santa two years back, the one with the ice people, and holy shit does this series rule.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Wed Jun 27, 2018 1:41 am

I have mixed feelings about Derek Charm.

Image

On the one hand, he sure is derivative. I have read Batman Adventures comics where I spent less time thinking "boy, this sure is a comic drawn by somebody who is imitating Bruce Timm."

On the other hand, y'know what? If you're going to copy somebody's style, Bruce Timm is a great fucking choice. Remember when everybody was trying to draw like Jim Lee? That sucked. Trying to draw like Bruce Timm is way better.

Also I can't find any scans of the page where Kraven is leaning up against the Kra-Van, but here's a good page of Squirrel Girl talking to Kraven.

Image

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby mharr » Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:30 pm

I'm sure you're all familiar with this. It's the magnum opus of the old-school MAD magazine artist that went on to write those deeply horrible Clarissa strips.


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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby zaratustra » Thu Jul 05, 2018 4:14 am

the next panel spoils batman and catwoman's wedding on batman 50

Image

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:39 am

I really don't know what to make of the Black Panther. In. SPAAAAAAAAAACE! arc.

"Okay, you guys, we've got a real opportunity here. New fanbase, new #1. You know what to do. Let's change the Black Panther comic up to appeal to our new audience. Let's make it more like that wildly popular movie. You know the one I'm talking about. That's right: Star Wars."

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:49 am

Gotta wonder if the idea is to make Star Wars more appealing to Black Panther's audience.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:28 pm

Brentai wrote:Gotta wonder if the idea is to make Star Wars more appealing to Black Panther's audience.

Yep, checks out.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Fri Jul 27, 2018 10:12 am

Simpsons Comics to end with issue #245; my LCS owner, Drew, suggested Bongo is likely shutting down entirely. (It only publishes one other comic at present, Spongebob Comics, and that's going on hiatus.)

This isn't entirely surprising; I don't think Groening has been involved in the day-to-day operations of the company in 20 years, the Futurama comic went all-digital awhile back, and co-founder Bill Morrison left the company last year and now runs Mad. Humor comics just don't plain sell well in America (though they're huge in Europe).

Drew also mentioned that there's talk of the licenses maybe getting picked up by IDW or Boom or some other publisher.

25 years is a pretty damn good run for a licensed comic.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Fri Jul 27, 2018 10:33 am

Here's a headline for you: Frank Miller: 'I wasn't thinking clearly when I said those things'

Miller doesn't go nearly far enough in condemning Holy Terror and his comments about Occupy, but given how low I've set the bar for him I'm impressed that he's distancing himself from them at all.

Neal Adams is more candid about why Miller went off the deep end.

Why did Miller take a years-long sabbatical from the medium he’d pursued his whole life? Adams blames the traditional trappings of fame – bad influences and alcohol.

[...]

In part, he blames Miller’s success for the years he says his friend sacrificed to that lesson. “You cannot accept other people’s view of you. You cannot believe when other people say, ‘Oh my God, you’re great, you’re a legend.’ You cannot accept that. It’s no way to live. And as soon as you do, you start convincing yourself that you’re something that you’re not, that somehow you can drink two bottles of whiskey and nothing will happen to you.”


That doesn't excuse Holy Terror; alcoholism doesn't make you a bigot. But it goes a long way toward answering the question we heard so much in 2011: "What happened to him?"

I'm glad to hear he's doing better, and I hope his future work is a return to the old, charming Frank Miller madness instead of the bad, deranged-man-screaming-on-a-street-corner kind.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:08 am

For a marketing stunt, Wakanda Forever by Nnedi Okorafor and Oleg Okunev (a comic where the Dora Milaje team up with Spider-Man and then the X-Men and then the Avengers) turned out to be a pretty solid character piece rooted in '90s Panther continuity. To the point where, despite its obvious intention to serve as a jumping-on point for people who saw the movie, it's hard for me to recommend to people who haven't read the Priest or Coates comics.

It's about Nakia, who's one of those characters where the movie version has nothing in common with the comic version except a name. In Priest's comics, Nakia was a Dora Milaje who became obsessed with T'Challa and went supervillain. I haven't read every Panther comic of the last twenty years but I've read most of them, and I'm pretty sure no other writer has used her until now (though Priest himself brought her back for a short story in a recent Black Panther Annual).

Wakanda Forever is a satisfying return to the character, who's fallen on hard times: the drug that gives her her powers is killing her, and she wants to see her king one last time before she dies.

For the most part, Okunev's art didn't do it for me; his work on Nakia is the exception. His depiction of Nakia as a stooped, emaciated addict is eerie, and suits a story where she's treated more as a tragic figure than a supervillain.

Anyway, I liked it. Might be worth checking out in a trade, if you're a '90s Panther fan like I am.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Fri Nov 09, 2018 1:06 am

Image

The Green Lantern #1, by Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Sun Jan 20, 2019 6:00 pm

George Perez has announced his retirement, citing health issues.

It's sad to hear about his declining health, but as Evanier notes, there's no small comfort in knowing that he's retiring with plenty of financial security. In a body of work that spans decades, Perez's most lasting contribution may be co-creating Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire. It's nice to know that the American comics industry has now reached a point where if you create characters who go on to carry three separate TV series (and appear in various other shows, movies, and toy lines), you're probably going to make pretty good money.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby zaratustra » Thu Jan 24, 2019 6:01 pm

Thad wrote:George Perez has announced his retirement, citing health issues.

It's sad to hear about his declining health, but as Evanier notes, there's no small comfort in knowing that he's retiring with plenty of financial security. In a body of work that spans decades, Perez's most lasting contribution may be co-creating Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire. It's nice to know that the American comics industry has now reached a point where if you create characters who go on to carry three separate TV series (and appear in various other shows, movies, and toy lines), you're probably going to make pretty good money.


Also his "everyone in a crowd shot" style earned him artist job in some memorable events - Crisis in Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet, JLA/Avengers.

I think the only guy left in the industry with "good honest comic art by good honest people" style now is Dan Jurgens.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Fri Jan 25, 2019 7:39 pm

zaratustra wrote:
Thad wrote:George Perez has announced his retirement, citing health issues.

It's sad to hear about his declining health, but as Evanier notes, there's no small comfort in knowing that he's retiring with plenty of financial security. In a body of work that spans decades, Perez's most lasting contribution may be co-creating Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire. It's nice to know that the American comics industry has now reached a point where if you create characters who go on to carry three separate TV series (and appear in various other shows, movies, and toy lines), you're probably going to make pretty good money.


Also his "everyone in a crowd shot" style earned him artist job in some memorable events - Crisis in Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet, JLA/Avengers.


Yeah, I thought of including the cover of Superman holding Cap's shield and Thor's hammer in my post. One of my favorites.

I think the only guy left in the industry with "good honest comic art by good honest people" style now is Dan Jurgens.


I'd say the Allreds count, though they're a generation younger than Perez and Jurgens.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Mon Feb 18, 2019 10:34 am

Remember how I used to occasionally post about the free preview comics Marvel would put out and their questionable quality?

I haven't done that lately, because Marvel's preview books have generally been of decent quality in recent years.

But man, this Captain Marvel preview book is a return to poor form.

It starts off with two pages from The Life of Captain Marvel. I started reading it and my first thought was "Oh Lord, they're doing Photoshop Blur again?"

In the '90s, when comic book artists first started using Photoshop, they used the blur filter. A lot.

But on closer inspection, no, that's not what happened here; the entire page is blurry. The lettering is fine and readable, but the art behind it is a shitty, low-res image. Somebody should have caught this.

Oh, and the second page ends with Carol's mother saying "Besides..." And that's it. The third page is not included in the preview. (There is also a figure standing there in the lower right of the page, but you can't see who it is because there is an ad almost, but not quite, entirely covering whoever it is.)

Guys, you could have picked any two pages from the book. Could you not have found a pair of pages that didn't end in the middle of a sentence? Or, here's another thought: for some reason, your Captain Marvel preview comic ends with a two-page preview of a Blade comic. Perhaps, instead of Blade, you could have put two more pages of Captain Marvel in your Captain Marvel preview comic? That way you wouldn't have had to end one of the previews in mid-sentence?

There's another gem in the middle, where the comic advertises prominent moments in Captain Marvel's history:

First Flight
Ms. Marvel #1 (1977)

Earth's Mightiest Heroine
Avengers #183 (1963)

Binary Star
Uncanny X-Men #164 (1963)

Legacy
Captain Marvel #1 (2012)

Taking Alpha Flight
Captain Marvel #1 (2016)

So, note to whatever intern put this list together: if you look something up, and you see a citation that says, for example, "Avengers (1963) #183", you can't just switch those two numbers around. The order is important.

(I mean okay actually you can switch the two numbers around provided the issue number is "1", as it is in 3/5 of those examples. But not for larger numbers!)

And note to the presumably at least one other person who had to look at these pages before they went to press: this is an obvious mistake you could have caught just by glancing at the headers. Ms. Marvel clearly did not join the Avengers in 1963 if her first appearance was in 1977. While comic book characters frequently travel back in time, comic book printing schedules do not.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Tue Feb 19, 2019 12:46 am

(The Blade preview also ends in mid-

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Mothra » Tue Feb 19, 2019 12:50 am

Mothra wrote:Also been picking up the new Venom run, which feels like it was made specifically for me: someone who read every single one of Venom's short-lived solo series back when he was a teenager, lost track of the character over the course of the following disparate one-shots (where his character fluctuated wildly), and gave up for like 15 years. The new series acknowledges all that stuff happened, but glosses over everything after Venom: Finale.

Also back is my favorite iteration of Eddie, where he has the longer hair, wears the suit more often than not without the head, and has a minimal of green slobber.

Story is surprisingly good, which I think is a first for the entirety of Venom. A lot of new elements here I'm wholly into, including a way more interesting backstory for the symbiote race that involves it being present on Earth back in the 70's and, potentially, the viking era.

So yeah, they've got the character just right. Very optimistic to see where it goes.

So, I finished "God of the Symbiotes," and loved it a lot. Great, 6 or 7 issue arc.

THEN, it goes directly into two full issues of Eddie stuck in a room, being given a lore dump about Agent Venom by some random-ass character I've never heard of. It concludes with a cliffhanger about Carnage coming back. Ugh. So yeah, I'm out again.

God of the Symbiotes is worth the read. Don't bother to go past that, though. Was immediately reminded why I don't regularly read comic books.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Mothra » Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:39 am

Man... Saga is still good, still consistently surprising and gorgeous and creative, it's just... it's got that comic book problem where the more you see of any character, the more certain it is something horrible will happen to them. Which it does, usually in as tragic a way as possible, until they're fully dead.

Makes me want this series to end so we don't keep churning through beloved characters.

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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Büge » Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:06 am

Mothra wrote:Man... Saga is still good, still consistently surprising and gorgeous and creative, it's just... it's got that comic book problem where the more you see of any character, the more certain it is something horrible will happen to them. Which it does, usually in as tragic a way as possible, until they're fully dead.


It's Brian K. Vaughan. He is incapable of giving any character an ending that isn't Old Yeller at best, Requiem For a Dream at worst.

I suspect it's because he knows the business of comic books too well. If he doesn't send characters off in a manner that makes the reader recoil in misery, someone else might bring them back.
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Re: and Dead Tree Comics

Postby Thad » Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:29 am

Büge wrote:I suspect it's because he knows the business of comic books too well. If he doesn't send characters off in a manner that makes the reader recoil in misery, someone else might bring them back.

I mean, Saga is creator-owned, so it's probably not that.

(Not sure about Y. I think Y itself is creator-owned but DC controls the ancillary rights, the TV series which I guess is actually happening this time, etc.)

But yeah that last Saga was rough. And followed immediately by "Also sorry but we're taking the next year off sorry."

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