Bought/Thought April 8th - SPOILERS

[Themanofbat]

I guess I'm alone in the horse-face love.

I like the horse-face look better...

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Mmm, batter...

 

[iloveclones]

Food of the Gods when I was nine years old.....

 

[GNR]

Tan's art in GL is terrible.

Cap #48 was one of the series' finest issues.It's a known fact but I just have to say that Namor and Widow are so badass.

DD #116-117 make for one hell of a start in what could be another classic DD tale under Bru.

 

[Spider-Jay420]

I just read Superman/Batman #57 - Not great. I haven't read it in forever and haven't been following it at all. I just lost interest. The only reason I picked it up is because Abnett & Lanning plotted the story and I'm a big fan of their work. Dave Johnson, who doesn't ring any bells, actually scripted the dialog which was a little weak. And Whilce Portacio is on art. I haven't seen his work since Iron Man: Heroes Reborn and I wasn't a fan then either. Here, it was really bad. Stuck in the 90's, roided up Superman, just sloppy.

Basically, Superman is shrunk down into the Nanoverse courtesy of the Prankster and his giant shrink ray and after Batman gets a distress call on his JLA signal device, He and Robin check the scene. Bats calls in John Henry Irons to help him out as he, according to Batman, is the 3rd smartest person on the planet. (Really??) Time is running out, and the only way to save Superman is for Batman to get the "Honey, I shrunk the Kids" treatment and get in there and save his friend. Cuz the way time works on that tiny of a scale, Supes will die of old age by sunset.

The visual effects in the Nanoverse were kinda cool, but that was the only redeeming factor for this issue. Again, big fan of DnA and thought their take on DC's biggest guns would be really great. Not so. They only plotted and did not script, so I don't know how much they were really involved. Coupled with Whilce's art, it was over for me before it even began. Not gonna finish the arc, and all in all....waste of time. Sorry DnA.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Tan's art in GL is terrible.

?

His art's great (though it's more suited to the horror-style Orange Lanterns than the Blue ones who appear briefly in the start).

 

[Mr. Green]

Damn. Savage She-Hulk was pretty kick-ass.

I didn't really know what to expect, but from beginning to end it was huge blockbuster style action and a pretty decent story so far. I look forward to the battle of the She-Hulks next issue. Really good art, too.

Oh, and there was a really long "round table" style discussion with Van Lente and the dude who created Lyra and others. It was pretty sweet. I thought it was funny that the guy who created Lyra and wrote the story of her creation said something along the lines of, "Can I just say that I originally meant to imply that Hulk and Thundra had sex and that got downgraded to scraping cells from his cheek?"

Ha! He was probably so mad they made him write the story like that. Really, scraping cheek cells?

 

[Dread]

SILVERHAWKS and BIONIC SIX were like my "most underrated cartoons" of that time.

BIONIC SIX..I loved that show...too bad the TOy line was a total dud..although If I remember the figures were quality die cast metal.

I also remember "blackstarr" which was like Tarzan in space, from the same production crew that did the Tarzan cartoon of the time, and a Zorro one if I remember.

EDIT: I forgot about the MIGHTY ORBOTS..that is one of those cartoons that I really remembered well, and then I found out it was only on for 1 season..seemed like it was longer.

I vaguely recall MIGHTY ORBOTS, and of course GO-BOTS, but TRANSFORMERS was pretty much the king of robot shows.

True story; "BLACKSTARR" was actually supposed to star an African American hero as the "lost astronaut turned barbarian", but that was considered too "racy", pun intended, for the early 80's CBS network people, so the character was changed to a white dude as production started. BRAVESTARR, which aired a few years later, was among the first major shows of the 80's to star a non-white lead who was clearly Native American (the hero in BLACKSTARR was hinted at being Native American, but it was never revealed).

I honestly don't recall ever watching BIONIC SIX, although I heard of it later on. I was born in 1982 so for some of those early shows from before 1986 or so, if they weren't in syndication for a few years like SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS was, I may not recall it. In 1986, when Barry Allen was still Flash, I would have been four.

Although I join you in mockng Marvel over this, I don't think it needs to go quite that far.

I appreciate that you went to the extent of excluding me and hypers from the nameless mainstream masses, but I'm a big boy. It's my dinero, and I willingly spent it (let's be honest, I could download and read it if i wanted to, but I feel like if my need to read it is so high that I'm willing to DL, than I should be buying it)

If this were a ongoing like Amazing or DD, I would have a different viewpoint, but it's a mini. They almost seem timeless, even when they have events, like this one, tie-ing them into the "current" events. Now, instead of feeling like I'm reading a live story, it feels like a flashback story, no biggie.

I have no problem with them waiting for a certain writer/artist (even though it always ends up being the writer) to be available to finish a story. I certainly prefer that to having someone else finish it. Now, i wish they could take option C) and get more of a commitment/finished product from them before #1 is published, but wish in one hand....

I do worry that they take the wrong message from it being in th top 10, but they look at the same sales numbers that I see from time to time. They see the hit that titles like Ultimates took when they had delays (see, it's different for an ongoing) They can't possibly believe that they still have the lightning in the bottle that they had with Young Avengers.

But what's missing in this whole discussion is how much Yu likes drawing Betty. I mean, if he could have drawn an entire page of just her breasts, I'm sure he would have.

But, see, a comic like this breeds contempt when Joe Q later does an interview at NEWSARAMA going, "Hey, $3.99 comics suck, but we maintained the $2.99 price for a few years and you have to pay a high price for quality", and while that is true, do you think the LOST writer lost some pay for being THREE YEARS LATE with his work? You think he would EVER work in TV again if he was THREE YEARS LATE with an episode script, or even several scripts in the middle of a season's production? His name would be MUD. But for a comic book career, this is merely a blemish, and the high sales of this product, which should be seen as an embarassment for everyone but Lenil Yu, who actually can maintain a schedule, will ensure that Lindeloff WILL work in comics again. Just like Allen Heinberg's complete inability to turn in timely scripts for YOUNG AVENGERS (the last few issues of his run were horribly late, like 2-4 months behind schedule) didn't stop DC from pinning their hopes for a relaunched WONDER WOMAN title on him, with predictable results. Hell, Kevin Smith NEVER finished DAREDEVIL: TARGET #2 and has no intention to, but he's back doing a Batman mini for DC.

Unfortunately for Marvel and DC in a way, what is happening is a perfect storm of malcontent. The nation and even the world is gripped by a major recession, the worst since the 80's with the savings & loan scandals. Inflation is rising faster than Woody Allen at a pre-teen dance. Americans are losing their jobs at an alarming rate, with something like about 8% of Americans being unemployed, a high. In the wake of this, we have the leader of a cottage industry hiking prices 33% while showing the least bit of compassion or understanding about it. If we are being asked to swallow a 33% increase in what is, let's be honest, at least half of Marvel's already bloated catalogue of books with usually very little to show for that extra dollar aside for fluff content like in-house ads or sketches, then the customers at least should be guaranteed that these sort of horrendous latenesses and mistakes in judgement won't happen again. There has been no guarentee of such, and that is where a lot of vented anger is coming. Newsarama, which is only slightly less of a cheerleader for the Big Two than WIZARD, ran an article about prices and in less than two days it's gotten 90 replies, nearly all of them hostile towards Marvel, and few defending it. Joe Q posts his Cup O' Joe panel on his MySpace and to be fair it usually has a lot of nice previews and he answers fan questions, but the hostility of many of the replies whenever he talks about prices or tries to defend some of his philosophy would make even a SHH veteran blush. I see a real danger in Marvel almost daring the fan-base to turn elsewhere en masse with every statement. The fact that, I am sure, NOT ONE PERSON in the editorial department felt printing some sort of apology was required in UWvH #3, and they had room for it since it had pages of sketch material or in house ads, speaks volumes.

Lord knows I would be tremendously grateful and humble if I was in the position of releasing a product 3 years late and expecting my audience to still bother paying full price for it ($3 was full price for most comics until the end of 2008). Marvel doesn't project anything of that sort about this or other matters, and that irks me, no matter how cool NOVA and CAPTAIN AMERICA are. It seems to be that Joe Q's strength as an EIC is when he entrusts the right franchises/comics to the right people and leaves them alone, such as Brubaker on CAPTAIN AMERICA or Abnett & Lanning on Marvel Space (or, money wise, Bendis on AVENGERS); to his credit he sometimes knows when NOT to meddle with quality (something Dan DiDio doesn't). Whenever he opens his mouth or puts his own personal stamp on something, like ONE MORE DAY, it usually tanks. That says something to me.

It seems to me that the same level of thoughtlessness that led to zero apology for a product that is 36 months late is comparable with deciding to up the price of comics 33% during a recession that is spooky enough to scare even "Captain Hope & Change" himself in the White House all at once, rather than gradually. Joe Q knows how to do this; the second Bill Jemas was out the door, he worked on raising prices of comics from $2.25/$2.50 to $2.99 line wide, but he did it over the course of about 12-18 months and while there was an outcry, it wasn't nearly as loud and hostile as a buck at once. Just as whenever Joe Q poo-poo's criticism about events by going, "You want comics where nothing happens!?" is bunk because he sold comics from 2000 into virtually 2005 without needing a line wide event during the summer. You throw all these things together and you get almost a perfect storm of contempt from company to customer and I don't think that it healthy for anyone, and I wished someone on the inside was serious about fixing this, before the thing that Dan & Joe are daring to happen does, and the comic industry contracts. That'd be terrible for everyone.

 

[Themanofbat]

Inflation is rising faster than Woody Allen at a pre-teen dance.

Heh heh...

 

[Dread]

Heh heh...

Thanks. I was actually proud of that quip.

 

[RockSP]

Actually, I think the last thing I saw Kolins on before Solomon Grundy was Omega Flight. He hasn't done much of anything since returning to DC until Grundy.

He did that Rogues mini with Johns.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Oh yeah, I can't believe I forgot that.

 

[Spider-Jay420]

He did some Marvel Team up too.

 

[iloveclones]

He did some Marvel Team up too.

Which was awesome. I think that's where I became a Kolins fan, and Thor:Blood Oath cemented it. Anyone who likes his work, and hasn't read Blood Oath, is cheating themselves.

How recent is the Rogues stuff? I read his older run on Flash. Was it around the same time, or more recent?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Blood Oath was all kinds of awesome. I was disappointed at the time because it didn't further Thor's story at all, but now that we've got JMS' series covering that front, I look back on Blood Oath as a really fantastic slice of life from back when Thor was younger, life was simpler, and the Warriors Three were more hilarious.

Rogues is very recent. Much more so than his Flash run. Rogues was a tie-in to Final Crisis, so it came out just a few months ago, right around Final Crisis' first couple issues.

 

[iloveclones]

Do I need to know FC, or is it more Standalone? And is it in TPB yet?

 

[moraldeficiency]

Which was awesome. I think that's where I became a Kolins fan, and Thor:Blood Oath cemented it. Anyone who likes his work, and hasn't read Blood Oath, is cheating themselves.

How recent is the Rogues stuff? I read his older run on Flash. Was it around the same time, or more recent?

Best crisis tie in or book associated with crisis by a huge amount. The only problem with it is you just wanted to keep reading more. Each issue was full of badass scenes, fights, dialogue and art. And the best part? It only tied into crisis a little bit so you didn't have to translante morrisonspeak while dropping acid to understand how it all fit in.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Do I need to know FC, or is it more Standalone? And is it in TPB yet?

Nope, you don't really need to know anything about Final Crisis other than the fact that Libra was recruiting villains at the time. You'd need to more about the Flash comics at that point, but they explain the important stuff in the mini. It's a really good read.

 

[iloveclones]

So what's the short version of Flash? I see that Barry is back. What else is going on?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Wally's got twins who have different Speed Force powers (but not super-speed) and Bart Allen just came back in Superman and the Legion of Three Worlds (another Final Crisis tie-in mini that is still going because it's been obscenely delayed).

 

[iloveclones]

The series will be collected into a single volume:

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge (144 pages, hardcover, July 2009, ISBN 1401223338)

Waaahhhhh! I can't wait that long.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Damn, that's a long time. I think the mini ended in January or February.

 

[roach]

True story; "BLACKSTARR" was actually supposed to star an African American hero as the "lost astronaut turned barbarian", but that was considered too "racy", pun intended, for the early 80's CBS network people, so the character was changed to a white dude as production started. BRAVESTARR, which aired a few years later, was among the first major shows of the 80's to star a non-white lead who was clearly Native American (the hero in BLACKSTARR was hinted at being Native American, but it was never revealed).
wow thats crazy didnt Muhammad Ali have a cartoon series in the 70's...Hell i recall the Jackson 5 cartoon being popular too....but maybe because they were based on popular people.



But, see, a comic like this breeds contempt when Joe Q later does an interview at NEWSARAMA going, "Hey, $3.99 comics suck, but we maintained the $2.99 price for a few years and you have to pay a high price for quality", and while that is true, do you think the LOST writer lost some pay for being THREE YEARS LATE with his work? You think he would EVER work in TV again if he was THREE YEARS LATE with an episode script, or even several scripts in the middle of a season's production? His name would be MUD. But for a comic book career, this is merely a blemish, and the high sales of this product, which should be seen as an embarassment for everyone but Lenil Yu, who actually can maintain a schedule, will ensure that Lindeloff WILL work in comics again. Just like Allen Heinberg's complete inability to turn in timely scripts for YOUNG AVENGERS (the last few issues of his run were horribly late, like 2-4 months behind schedule) didn't stop DC from pinning their hopes for a relaunched WONDER WOMAN title on him, with predictable results. Hell, Kevin Smith NEVER finished DAREDEVIL: TARGET #2 and has no intention to, but he's back doing a Batman mini for DC.

Unfortunately for Marvel and DC in a way, what is happening is a perfect storm of malcontent. The nation and even the world is gripped by a major recession, the worst since the 80's with the savings & loan scandals. Inflation is rising faster than Woody Allen at a pre-teen dance. Americans are losing their jobs at an alarming rate, with something like about 8% of Americans being unemployed, a high. In the wake of this, we have the leader of a cottage industry hiking prices 33% while showing the least bit of compassion or understanding about it. If we are being asked to swallow a 33% increase in what is, let's be honest, at least half of Marvel's already bloated catalogue of books with usually very little to show for that extra dollar aside for fluff content like in-house ads or sketches, then the customers at least should be guaranteed that these sort of horrendous latenesses and mistakes in judgement won't happen again. There has been no guarentee of such, and that is where a lot of vented anger is coming. Newsarama, which is only slightly less of a cheerleader for the Big Two than WIZARD, ran an article about prices and in less than two days it's gotten 90 replies, nearly all of them hostile towards Marvel, and few defending it. Joe Q posts his Cup O' Joe panel on his MySpace and to be fair it usually has a lot of nice previews and he answers fan questions, but the hostility of many of the replies whenever he talks about prices or tries to defend some of his philosophy would make even a SHH veteran blush. I see a real danger in Marvel almost daring the fan-base to turn elsewhere en masse with every statement. The fact that, I am sure, NOT ONE PERSON in the editorial department felt printing some sort of apology was required in UWvH #3, and they had room for it since it had pages of sketch material or in house ads, speaks volumes.

Lord knows I would be tremendously grateful and humble if I was in the position of releasing a product 3 years late and expecting my audience to still bother paying full price for it ($3 was full price for most comics until the end of 2008). Marvel doesn't project anything of that sort about this or other matters, and that irks me, no matter how cool NOVA and CAPTAIN AMERICA are. It seems to be that Joe Q's strength as an EIC is when he entrusts the right franchises/comics to the right people and leaves them alone, such as Brubaker on CAPTAIN AMERICA or Abnett & Lanning on Marvel Space (or, money wise, Bendis on AVENGERS); to his credit he sometimes knows when NOT to meddle with quality (something Dan DiDio doesn't). Whenever he opens his mouth or puts his own personal stamp on something, like ONE MORE DAY, it usually tanks. That says something to me.

It seems to me that the same level of thoughtlessness that led to zero apology for a product that is 36 months late is comparable with deciding to up the price of comics 33% during a recession that is spooky enough to scare even "Captain Hope & Change" himself in the White House all at once, rather than gradually. Joe Q knows how to do this; the second Bill Jemas was out the door, he worked on raising prices of comics from $2.25/$2.50 to $2.99 line wide, but he did it over the course of about 12-18 months and while there was an outcry, it wasn't nearly as loud and hostile as a buck at once. Just as whenever Joe Q poo-poo's criticism about events by going, "You want comics where nothing happens!?" is bunk because he sold comics from 2000 into virtually 2005 without needing a line wide event during the summer. You throw all these things together and you get almost a perfect storm of contempt from company to customer and I don't think that it healthy for anyone, and I wished someone on the inside was serious about fixing this, before the thing that Dan & Joe are daring to happen does, and the comic industry contracts. That'd be terrible for everyone.

Marvel/JQ comes off as a drug dealer. They know you are hooked and they are gonna squeeze every last dollar from you while pushing inferior junk.

 

[iloveclones]

15 minutes ago, I didn't even know about this mini, and now I'm dying to get it. Damn, I love comics!

 

[Themanofbat]

Life in the Comic Shop can sometimes be that way...