The General Comic Discussion Thread - Part 1

I only get interested in Mr. Miracle if he is Scott Free. His character is so rich and interesting. Scott Free is mythological. Shilo Norman comes across as a tech nerd who found some stuff.

granted, I haven’t read a ton of his stuff.

 

So I went to my LCS to (curbside) pick up my comics. Haven't been there for two months and had about a dozen comics on my reserve. After rate conversion, total ended up 100 Canadabucks... Ouch.

Hadn't realized those Future State titles cost 6.99 USD an issue.

 

I'm in pain just reading that. This month actually marks the year mark since I've gotten monthly comics. Only been down once in December while I was stopping at the nearby mall for some gifts, and picked up a nice variant because I felt a little bad about the whole thing. Mind, there's probably only one monthly I would have been picking up in the interim year under better circumstances - but one is better than none.

 

Outside of the final four issues of Kirby's Mister Miracle, I've not read anything else with Shiloh in it, but I've always liked him or rather, I've never been given a reason to not like him. It's doubtful I'll ever get to Morrison's Seven Soldiers.

I hope he still has ties to Scott and the New Gods in his new series though, as it sounds otherwise pretty interesting.

 

Reading Future State: Superman/Wonder Woman and....its really disappointing that Jonathan Kent is practically Clark. The writers dont really give him a different personality, he has all of Clarks powers. Compared to Yara who is definitely her own character and not Diana...its sad.

 

I’ve been going through Kirby’s Fourth World stuff lately. Mister Miracle is next on the list. I’m loving Forever People. Kirby’s Sonny Sumo >>>> Morrison’s version from Final Crisis. Same goes for all of the Fourth World characters who show up in Final Crisis, so I’d think it is safe to assume that Kirby just does these characters better.

 

checked out Batman B&W on comixology. can't get a break from the Tom King crying Batman stuff. Ughh.

Thankfully that issue had a lot of other good stories in it. Will just have an eye out for the credits so to avoid Mr King.

The new Crime Syndicate miniseries looks cool. I will check that out.

 

Another week, another Future State.

Outside of that however, i read the "love is a battlefield special"...eh.
Im so over Batcat, mainly thanks to King.
It bores the hell out of me and has nothing that interests me.
I assume that not even their main thing, this cat and mouse game could change that.
But having them in some kind of steady relationship, is so boring.

Diana/Steve the same pretty much...mainly because Steve Trevor is just such a bland character.
Lets be honest, the only thing worth about this Special is Ivy and Harley...and god damn it DC, make this canon and run with it.

Anyway, onwards to future state

Dark Detectives visuals are super cool
Justice league is fine, but doesnt blow me away.
The Superman/Wonder woman teamup is a mistake, because it shows why aging up Jon was a mistake.
You didnt give him a chance to build a character, thats why he feels so empty next to Yara.
He doesnt really have an identity on his own, its a bit as if you do Shazam with Superman.
A grown up acting super childish, but in this case its not cute or anything.
One of the biggest mistakes in most recent years was that...Bendis aging up Jon for nothing but empty shock value.
It brought nothing to the character and hurt him incredible.

Jon needed time to gain an identity that made him more unique in the future.
It is why aging up damian wayne would easily work, but Jon does not.

All in all, again pretty nice week...but again, outside of Yara nothing groundbreaking we need to keep for when this future state event is over.

 

Between Bendis aging up Jon and DC’s massive mishandling of Wally, Rebirth really went downhill in the past two years.

 

I dont think Bendis has managed to do anything special at all during his time at DC and I had trouble even finishing reading his Action Comics stuff. It just wasn't very good.

 

Action was absolute ****. On top of the bad writing, JR, Jr. does not have it anymore, his detail choices have been miserable. Looks like it's just a paycheck for him and Janson.

 

I think the fault is more with Janson than anyone. JRJR's art in Action Comics #1021 and Superman: Year One was inked by Danny Miki and I thought his art was fine. It's the stuff inked by Janson that's pretty...unpleasant.

Anyways, I've been pretty unapologetic about how much I've enjoyed Bendis' work at DC. I've said this before, but I felt like all of his books were derailed by Death Metal and all of the nonsense regarding FutureState (it being condensed from a long form initiative to a 2-month filler event). All of the books, especially Young Justice and Legion of Superheroes, felt like they were building towards something bigger (like why Young Justice characters suddenly remembered each other) and then Death Metal decided to have its way with continuity and then FutureState changed, and the books all meandered away, because the final Young Justice, LOSH, Action, and Superman books didn't feel like concluding issues. I thought that was a shame.

But in the Superman books, I felt that Bendis introduced a lot of interesting ideas that better writers can certainly improve upon, though it's to be seen if aging Jon up can work for anyone else writing him. I'm excited that Teen Lantern is going to be a player in the new Green Lantern book, and I hope that Impulse has a presence in The Flash book. Naomi on the Justice League should be cool.

That said, I'm pretty turned off by all of the $5 books DC is putting out. Looking at the May solicits, I'm up to 13 books, which is around where I was pre-shutdown, but the prices are higher. I may axe Wonder Woman, Action, and Superman in favor of Nightwing and The Flash, but keep Green Lantern. I have a tendency to give books two issues before making up my mind, but I'm not sure if it's now worth the $20 extra dollars to read 4 books that might be no good.

 

I couldn't get into Future State. I intended to pick up The New Batman and Dark Detective, but 8 bucks? I know it has two comics inside but I had no interest in the other comics. Plus, the reveal of Lucius's OTHER(!) son being the new Batman was pretty lackluster. Why not just make him Batwing?

I've been hitting the back issues of Batman and Detective and Spider-Man titles now. I'm looking forward to the Grant/Breyfogle stuff and am thinking of picking up the Dark Detective trade. I also want to get the Batwoman Elegy trade. I really enjoyed the New 52 Batwoman comics, but finding out Rucka wrote this makes me want to check it out.

But digging into DC's backlog is very difficult. Is there a website where there's an organized list of Batman and Detective runs? I really want to dive into the 70's and 80's runs but it's hard to keep them straight. If you try to look up great Batman stories it's most the same old Year One, TDKR stuff. DC does a horrible job with their backlog. I know in the past year they've started to publish the more classic Batman runs, but for the longest time they only publish the stuff that sells.

 

DC is pretty scatterbrained when it comes to their older collections. The bronze age Brave & The Bold is being collected in omnibus form first and then trades later. Theres a lot of fun Bob Haney penned stories there with some gorgeous primo Jim Aparo art.

Theres also the Tales of The Batman line that has multiple volumes dedicated soley to the Batman and Detective runs by Gerry Conway. There's also a Len Wein volume as well.

If you wanna do some bin diving though, i recommend checking out Batman #400. To my knowledge it's never been collected but its the final pre-Crisis Batman story before the Legends crossover and the start of the Max Allan Collins and Mike W. Barr runs on Batman and Detective (also recommended to check out in the Second Chances and Dark Knight Detective vol 1 trades). #400 was written by Doug Moench and a murderer's row of artists like Bill Sienkiewicz, Joe Kubert, Mike Kaluta, George Perez and Brian Bolland.

EDIT: There's also the Tales of the Batman: Steve Englehart book that collects the entirety of the Strange Apparitions story which is definitive Batman, and also includes "Night of the Stalker", which Darwyn Cooke later reinterpreted as "Deja Vu". Great stuff here.

Also, Batwoman: Elegy was great.

 

Elegy is definitely worth it, imo. I'm just waiting to own it myself until the omnibus that's coming later this year.

 

I will always recommend Elegy, so hope you enjoy @Doctor Jones . I'm going to end up with a third copy of it later this year due to the upcoming omnibus

 

Thanks for the recommendations! That #400 sounds mighty interesting. Are Conway and Wein's runs worth it? I know Conway aced it with ASM, but that doesn't necessarily mean he translated well to Batman like Wein vice versa. For the stuff that isn't published, like I'd be interested in the start of Schwartz's tenure as editor-in-chief starting with Detective #327 in 1964. That stuff I'd imagine I'd have to go back issue diving though.

I actually bought the Engelhart hardcover last year. Loved it! Definitely some of my favorite Batman stuff. There's just something about Batman in the 70's that I love. It has some of the best artwork and covers, and it has the perfect balance of fun but still retained the character's darker roots. Batman wasn't just a detective but a swashbuckler too. It's something that I think if Sam Raimi made a Batman movie like he wanted to, it would have been something like this. I'd still like to see this type of Batman movie some day.

I know this might be a lot to ask, but do you know the particular order of the Batman and Detective runs by writer in the 70's to 80's? I know it can be spotty since people like O'Neil jumped around a lot. If not, who are your favorite or best Batman and Detective writers besides the usuals like O'Neil and Englehart in that time period?

 

While not complete, I have the the Tales of the Batman: Carmine Infantino hardcover that came out a few years ago that collects all of Infantino's Batman work starting with Detective Comics #327 and continues with Detective Comics #329, 331, 333, 334, 335, 337, 339, 341, 343, 345, 347, 349, 351,353, 357, 359, 361, 363, 366, 367, 369, his story from Detective Comics #500, and some Brave & The Bold stuff. Lots of fun. It may be a little hard to find, but it's certainly cheaper than bin diving for them.

The issue with a lot of these Tales of the Batman books is that they're creator specific, leaving gaps in the chronology.

It's kinda difficult to list the run orders by writers, since as you said, many writers hopped around. In the 70's, you'd see a rotation between Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, Frank Robbins, Gerry Conway and a few others. Their wikipedia bibliographies may have the complete runs listed so I'd check that out. If you're really bored, just go through Mycomcishop.com and and tally up the issues.

I don't think the concept of prolonged creator runs really begins until the 80s, even though Frank Robbins for example had some lengthy runs on Detective and Batman throughout the 70s. But I believe it begins proper with Gerry Conway on Detective Comics 497-513, 515-526. Conway also wrote Batman #337-359, which would occasionally crossover with the Detective book.

Both titles were then taken over by Doug Moench Detective Comics 527-565 and Batman 361-400.

After Moench, Max Allan Collins took over Batman, introducing the post-Crisis Jason Todd (and was interrupted by Year One), and Mike W. Barr took over Detective Comics with Alan Davis pulling art duties.

Len Wein is one of my favorite Batman writers of the 70's. He has a 2 page short in Detective Comics #500 called "Once Upon A Time..." that pays homage to a few strips of Charles Shultz' Peanuts strip about Snoopy trying to write a novel. It's illustrated by Walt Simonson that's as moody as it gets.

I'm also partial to Frank Robbins, as I was given a box of old Detective issues as a kid from a friend of my dad's that had a bunch of tales penned by Robbins. They're great pulpy fun.

 

@Doctor Jones I would strongly recommend Birth of the Demon, Bride of the Demon, and Son of the Demon if you like the style of that era Batman.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time. This was all very helpful! That rotation between those four writers, was that just on Batman or Detective or did it crossover to both?

I've read Birth of the Demon, but not the other two. But I'll be sure to try to check them out.

 

No problem!

The rotation semed to be on both books. Len Wein would do a 2 issue fill-in on Detective here and there, and an issue or so here on Batman as well, for example. But as far as I can tell, none of the stories they wrote crossed across both titles until Conway took over both titles. Doug Moench's run also did that.

 

This helps more than you think. Thanks again.

By the way @CrimsonMist can you recommend any great Riddler stories? There don't seem to be a whole lot at least to my knowledge. I've read Dark Knight, Dark City which was damned good, the Riddle Me That five parter from Legends of the Dark Knight and just recently Batman: Earth One Vol. 2 which I loved. Not Hush or TLH though, just purely Riddler stories.

 

DC Returns to Batman '89 and Superman '78 In New Comic Series

 

Really looking forward to the Batman '89 book. I take it it's intended to fill in the gap between B'89 and the Flash movie.

 

Absolutely buzzing, will be reading both for sure. We seem to have more details about the Batman comic for now.