Pasting in my post from the other comics thread that resulted in the Crisis Event which birthed this new reality:
Just read One Bad Day: The Riddler. I normally like Tom King but I dunno about this one.
I was into it until The Riddler revealed what it was all for and delivered his ultimatum: “let me escape prison right now or else I’ll just escape on my own later and kill one more person than I was planning to anyway.” And it works? Batman just folds? What am I missing that makes this not incredibly contrived?
I get that the idea behind this series is to give all of Batman’s other villains their own Killing Joke, but are all the other ones this on the nose about it? It even does the ambiguous ending thing where Batman kills the villain at the end, except here, it’s not even remotely ambiguous that he definitely does. The ending doesn’t make sense any other way. So why even bother being coy about it? Because it’s canon and we don’t want Batman to kill for realsies? And the particular way it’s framed feels a lot like it’s specifically validating the cool guy argument against Batman’s no-kill rule, that by not killing them he’s indirectly responsible for all the civilians his enemies kill when they escape from Arkham. Which like… yeah, that’s why the entire idea of superheroes doesn’t work if you treat it literally. Their utility as law enforcement is not the part we take with us into the real world.
I’ve heard a lot of people praise this story, is there something about it that just completely went over my head?
While I’m at it, I’ve also been reading the reboot of Ultimate Spider-man by Jonathan Hickman. The original Ultimate Spider-man by Brian Michael Bendis was one of the first comics I really followed so I was spiritually behind this whole initiative - I’d originally hoped it would be picking up with Bendis’ Peter Parker as a grown up family man but I figured that probably flew in the face of what a new Ultimate universe would be trying to achieve (bringing in new readers). But if that was the goal, it seems a little weird to have the new reality diegetically birthed Crisis-style in an extremely continuity-heavy limited series involving the evil Reed Richards from the original Ultimate universe and then have the entire storyline of the resulting new Spider-man be about the aftermath of that. The original Ultimate universe had zero baggage like that, which was the entire point.
Likewise it’s pretty obvious the premise of this series (Peter Parker doesn’t become Spider-man until he’s already in his mid to late 30s and raising kids with Mary-Jane) is meant to draw in people who loved the schlubby dad Peter Parker in the Spider-verse movies, but they only take that one superficial element of his character and so far in the first six issues it hasn’t really presented any challenges for him at all. This is a Spider-man whose life is going pretty great, all things considered. He doesn’t even need to sleep so he can do all of his superhero-ing at night and Parker stuff in the day. He’s able to get to work and raise his kids fine and even if he couldn’t it seems like Mary-Jane brings home most of the bacon anyway. It’s nice (sometimes you want the guy to just be happy), but a little frictionless.
The original Ultimate Spider-man grabbed me because more than any other take on Spider-man as a teenager, it ran with the powerlessness that comes with being that age and not being in control of your life at all. Sometimes in relatable ways like coming to blows with his Aunt May (Ultimate Aunt May was kind of a great character, A+ take on how a parent would deal with unknowingly raising Spider-man), but also in the big superhero ways like contending with these all-powerful patriarchal forces like Norman Osborn (an insane billionaire demon who knows where Peter lives) and Nick Fury (a well-meaning but still necessarily callous mentor who has Peter under constant government surveillance). If bringing prior baggage into the new Ultimate universe WASN’T an issue, I’d honestly have loved to see this version of Peter Parker as Dad Spidey. He’d probably have grown up to be a lot more similar to Spider-verse’s Peter B. Parker than what Jonathan Hickman is writing.
The one part of this series I do unabashedly love is the twist of Uncle Ben still being alive, and I really wish more time was devoted to him starting up a struggling newspaper with Jonah
Oh, Comics. I’m mostly a Marvel fan, and i mix this with black and white right to left reading graphic novels (yes, manga, i could say manga, but where is the fun in that)
Seriously i’m reading a bi weekly collection of new and old marvel stories collected by theme / storiline. They are hardcover big size books, very nice and well done (and in Italian). The latest one i read was about Venom and Carnage, with the comics that featured Carnage origin and the battle with Carnage, Venom and Spidey.
I’ve been reading a bunch of X-Men the past couple months. I’ve always been a casual fan of X-Men, but never read any of the comics until the 97 cartoon really got me in the mood. I just cracked open issue #1 from 1962 and have been reading straight through from there and I’m into the 1980s now. They’re not all winners, but I’m having fun either way. I took a bunch of funny screenshots along the way:
People really sleep on the tail end of the original X-Men comics! That Neal Adams art is wild!
A few years back I tried reading through the Claremont/Byrne run from the late 70’s and it had some amazing art and layout but the writing is incredibly creaky. Still, I appreciate how they were trying lots of things that were new to comics at the time.
Yes, the Neal Adams pocket at the end there is bonkers! That and the couple issues with Jim Steranko on pencils look way ahead of their time. The two Cyclops butts up above are one each by Jim and Neal. I also liked the first bit of Lee and Kirby issues if we’re talking good X-Men pre-Claremont. It made me realize that, hey, they really wrote some good comics, huh? But I can’t deny that once Claremont gets going, that’s the real hotness. Madelyne Pryor just showed up where I’m reading and I’m so ready for the drama.
When it comes to superheroes, I’m mostly a Marvel fan, particularly X-Men. I agree that Claremont’s run is slow to take off. But when it gets going, it goes!
I’ve been working my way through a bunch of 1970s Marvel stuff via those fancy pants omnibuses. I’ve really been enjoying experiencing Steve Gerber’s stuff! I finished his run on Man-Thing and am currently working through Howard the Duck, The Defenders, and Omega the Unknown. I’m also working through The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu and the 1970s Jack Kirby Captain America. Because these collections overlap with each other, I’m mostly reading them in publication order, which I think is a neat way to do it.
Steve Gerber was really a great writer who was trying to elevate the kinds of stories comics could tell.
Master of Kung Fu surprised me the most with it’s quality: Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy take that series in some amazing directions, turning Shang Chi into a sort of secret agent involved with international espionage. Unfortunately the series also struggles with its racist overtones (e.g. Fu Manchu as a recurring villain and there’s lots of Asian stereotyping) that makes it hard to recommend to everyone.
I’m a huge fan of Steve Gerber’s work too! Although I have to say he’s that kind of person who if he had lived I suspect would have been insufferable on social media. Particularly Omega the Unknown, which as a kid absolutely blew me away.
I think on the whole the second half of the 70’s at Marvel was when some of their very best output happened, between the out and out weirdness of Gerber’s work and Jim Starlin’s cosmic stuff.
I just started reading Secret Wars (2015) on my lunch break finally after dabbling in and out of the Hickman era Avengers / Secret Avengers stuff for the past 5 years. The story of those books was interesting, but Hickman really is verbose and as someone who doesn’t read comics a lot these days the lore heavy work can be a slog for me.
That being said, Secret Wars is great and well worth the hype so far. Are there any cool character runs from that era I should look into? I didn’t like House of M that much because the whole premise felt thin, but I like the idea of this kind of story which allows for things that are canon to 616 but feel like What If?
Anyone else reading Ultimate X-Men? I mostly just tuned in because Peach Momoko is an amazing artist, and it seems like it’s something different, but not entirely sold yet.
Reading the Moore run of Captain Britain. I really like the ten page issue format. Still very much an “every issue could be somebody’s first” mindset and so the repetition serves as leitmotif. Lots of little threads that you see Alan Moore pick up in later works like Marvel/Miracle Man and Promethea.
Alan Davis is turning out beautiful pages. I wonder how close to the script he stayed. There are lots of cool layouts. I like that it’s a little more to the cartoon-y side. It suits the overlapping realities well.
This is in the Captain Britain omnibus, but he’s cranky so you won’t find him credited in any listing.
I cannot speak to the larger Marvel landscape at all, and typically only tune in when I see something really different (previously I think the last superhero book I bought was launch Gwenpool). This is definitely different and deliberately very slow.
booo
as a weirdo reading like all 4 spawn titles, even the sam & twitch one is enjoyable right now
i’m reading more non-cape books than superhero ones, but there’s still some good to be found! can’t co-sign the new x-men book yet, but gail simone’s usually enjoyable. ahmed’s daredevil is okay, kinda in the shadow of what i considered a great run under zdarsky (who lost steam but seems more beloved there than his current batman run). between blood hunt and absolute power, i’m back to being tired of event books though
ill read pretty much anything al ewing does. most consistent writer this side of james tynion iv, who is absolutely killing it on horror books lately
