Bought/Thought "It's the Punisher Beeyotch!" Edition for Nov.22nd

[Dread]

I've never had any trouble dropping books that seemed to be dropping in quality. There's no conceivable way for me to pick up every single ongoing that even remotely triggers my interest; it's just not possible. So why waste the money on something that doesn't?

Case in point, I dropped Blue Beetle after #5 because the art was getting shttier and the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. But I hear that the most recent issue, #9, was awesome beyond measure so I'll probably pick that up next week.

See? It's not like they burn all the books in a shop the moment that you leave the store; the worst thing that could possibly happen by not buying something that you might not like is that you might change your mind and buy it anyway a few weeks later. And if you don't, then you still win, 'cause you probably weren't going to like it.

I've long, long since paid the price of buying something without being sure of its quality. That price was called "Ultimate War." Never again, you bastards, never again.

Just repeating my stance on USM as of now: I'll finish out CLONE SAGA, and after that, depending on what the next arc looks like and how CS finishes, I am 50/50 on continuing. The book is "on notice" from me.

To be fair, I enjoyed BLUE BEETLE #9 better than the last two issues but I wouldn't call it the second coming. Don't set your expectations too high. That means you've missed the last 3 issues in-between, though. Will you really enjoy #9 without knowing what came before? Even if I could condense it here: "Jamie & Co. went around looking for his origins, confirmed it was alien, and met with the granddaughter of the original Blue Beetle (not Ted Kord, who was the second)"? That's the dilemma with modern comics sometimes. You may want to drop a book at some time, but then you can never go back because the next writer or good arc or whatever will build on the issues you missed, and it's not the same reading a summary on wikipedia. Different strokes, I guess. I'm anal retentive, and probably see comics like a history lesson. I don't like missing stuff. And I never belive a solict when it says, "perfect jumping on point", because it is always a lie. Two lines of dialogue summary is not the same to me. Granted, you may ask, "then how can you like 40+ year old characters when you've had to have read a lot of their past in summaries as no one has all of those comics", and I'd reply, "Like most people, I don't make logical sense sometimes. I just admit it."

But, yeah, USM is very close to being dropped after the next 2 issues. I want to see how the train derails and explodes fully. I mean, it almost makes NEW AVENGERS #2 look godly in comparison. As for the other Ultimate titles, Kirkman's at his worst in ULTIMATE X-MEN but it's still readable and Mike Carey is doing an interesting failure in ULTIMATE FF. It doesn't totally work but it's very interesting, which can be better than a generic story that works but took no risks (like, say, all X-Men stories written after Morrison).

 

[silversurfur65]

Dread....I always enjoy your reviews but for the love of God, why don't you read Daredevil !!

 

[Dread]

Dread....I always enjoy your reviews but for the love of God, why don't you read Daredevil !!

Short answer? I've been away too long and I haven't felt like adding another book to my ever-increasing list of titles that I buy.

Long answer? I used to read it for free when my mother had a subscription, so I got cheap and used to reading it for free. She cancelled her sub in the middle of Bendis' run during some Owl arc, and while it was slow, I did enjoy it (easily Bendis' best Marvel title). I considered buying it on my own (along with FF; Waid's run was just beginning and he was kicking rear), but I never got around to it.

 

[hippy fascist]

Short answer? I've been away too long and I haven't felt like adding another book to my ever-increasing list of titles that I buy.

Long answer? I used to read it for free when my mother had a subscription, so I got cheap and used to reading it for free. She cancelled her sub in the middle of Bendis' run during some Owl arc, and while it was slow, I did enjoy it (easily Bendis' best Marvel title). I considered buying it on my own (along with FF; Waid's run was just beginning and he was kicking rear), but I never got around to it.

catch up via trade?

 

[Dread]

catch up via trade?

The problem is funds matched with the desire to, well, catch up on a lot of things via trade. You have no idea how many trades I'd love to buy in theory but lack the funds to. Or the time.

 

[hippy fascist]

The problem is funds matched with the desire to, well, catch up on a lot of things via trade. You have no idea how many trades I'd love to buy in theory but lack the funds to. Or the time.

there are other ways. ways that I can't mention for fear of getting a probationary ban...

 

[BrianWilly]

That's the dilemma with modern comics sometimes. You may want to drop a book at some time, but then you can never go back because the next writer or good arc or whatever will build on the issues you missed, and it's not the same reading a summary on wikipedia.

Mmm. I think that if you didn't care about a character enough to keep reading about him in the first place, it's unlikely you'd care enough about the stories about him you missed. The reason I didn't read about Jaime's road trip was simply because I didn't care in the first place. Which is kinda the point, isn't it? If you're going to skip Ultimate Clone Saga, the point is to skip Ultimate Clone Saga.

And a character like Jamie, who is is zygote by comic book character standards and has had a series going for less than ten issues, is really the rarity and not the norm. For most people, most any comic book issue is going to be a "jumping on point." Heck, I started reading Green Lantern at issue #155; the series was practically over by then. You gotta start somewhere. Even Ultimate Spider-Man has had more than five years of stories by now; I rather think it's the exception as opposed to the rule for a reader to have been reading it since the very beginning.

I actually think that building on past arcs -- a long-running plotline, so to speak -- is not too common in comic books. Even really good series rarely have anything so complicated that is utterly essential for past issues to describe. And often, that sort of inaccessability isn't really anything for a book to brag about. I don't think someone like JMS remembers things that he puts into his own books most of the times; if you only started reading Amazing Spider-Man right this moment, nothing from beyond the past, oh, maybe seven months would actually matter, and JMS has been writing that book for far longer. That kinda makes him an uneven writer, but ironically it also makes the book pretty accessible.

And while I'm sure we would all love it if new writers on books would remember, recognize, and respect the good work done on books by prior writers, the sad fact is that very few do. Therein lies the problem of reading a book for its characters instead of for its writer quality in the first place; the stories you liked from a prior writer often won't make it to the next. Most of the X-books have been through myriad of different writers within the last five years and, with the way that those stories have been going, it wouldn't shock me a single bit if not a single one of them read a single thing that a preceding writer wrote.

(Excepting Joss, of course. Always excepting Joss

. And even I don't think he actually understood that Ernst was supposed to be Cassandra Nova.)