The Comic Book Thread

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

Hey, tomorrow is Hellboy Day! It marks the big red guy's 20th anniversary in comics. Go to your local shop and pick up a special Hellboy comic released for the occasion.

Here's a succinct article about why Hellboy (and the Mignolaverse) is so cool:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/21/ ... fc5600000a

[Garasharp K7]

Seems like a good excuse to get back to those library editions. I'm almost finished the fourth one now.
I haven't been following the Hellboy books that much really. Apart from the hardcovers, I've read the BPRD Plague of Frogs collections and I've picked up the recent Lobster Johnson trade 'Satan Smells a Rat'. (love that title! ) Before that I bought a bunch of paperbacks years ago and that was it before the library editions came along. Like I said before, I tend to wait for the collections so it was quite a while before I went back to Mignola's world.

Read some more Metal Men - Doc Magnus has turned into a radioactive giant! I love how insane those those old silver age stories could get. Doom Patrol was just as bizarre at times too.

[lhb412]

^A few weeks ago I checked out Doom Patrol and Metal Men archive volumes from my library (I've mentioned how great their comic/graphic novel section is). I enjoyed Doom Patrol, but when I started reading Metal Men I quickly stopped reading - I liked it so much I had to buy my own copy!

[MekaGojira3k]

Finished Infinity Gauntlet and its tie-ins. I wish modern events were half as interesting as this...
I think the last time I genuinely liked an event series was Civil War.

Reading some Ed Brubaker Cap stuff to get hyped for Winter Soldier.

[klen7]

I love a lot of Ed Brubaker's stuff ('Criminal' and 'Fatale' are among my favorite series) but i've never checked out his Captain America run (despite a number of people recommending it to me)... I just can't stand the way the big two force tie-ins, and cross over events with characters or series i don't read..i mean i could ignore it.. but mostly it just annoys me when i see i'm missing a piece of the story... or when Wolverine/Superman shows up for no good reason

[MekaGojira3k]

[lhb412]

I've become a huge fan of Plastic Man since I started reading superhero comics in earnest about a year and a half ago. It's safe to say that of all the 'traditional superheroes' (costume, secret identity, ect.) he's my favorite. Now, mostly I've been concerned with reading Jack Cole's original Plas comics from the '40s, but I've recently begun raiding back issue bins and such for other appearances of the character.

In Cole's hands Plastic Man existed in a world somewhere between Warner Bros. gangster picture and Looney Tunes cartoon. Plastic Man's powers resulted in rapid-fire visual gags and he assumes a plethora of forms to accomplish his goals or to suit his emotional state, but while Plas is a prankster he's still a credible hero (much like Spider-Man after him), not a buffoon, like he's often portrayed as for the past few decades.

... which brings me to what I just read: Plastic Man: On the Lam, which collects the first storyline of Kyle Baker's 2004 Plastic Man series and it is incredible!!! Baker amps up the cartoonishness to Ren & Stempy levels and adds a whole lot of meta and forth-wall breaking comedy skewering modern superhero comics (reboots, canon, power rankings, and Plas' modern status quo as the buffoon of the DC universe are frequent targets), but Plas retains his heroic qualities and there are a few moments amid the madness where the comic gets quite dramatic and even heartfelt. It also features a wonderful incarnation of the Justice League, who are presented as out-of-touch jerks.

Also, at one point Plastic Man becomes a blimp.

[lhb412]

This is a few weeks old, but Shigeru Mizuki (creator of Kitaro) just had his 92nd birthday.

http://drawnandquarterly.blogspot.com/2 ... -2014.html

Mizuki is one of the coolest people alive today... probably one of the coolest who've ever lived. He had hardship. He won at life.

[Mac]

Jonathan Hickman just keeps flooding the market with cheap, derivative sci-fi stories, it drives me nuts. At least, there's Prophet keeping Euro-science fiction alive.

[klen7]

I really like 'East of West'... Prophet's pacing is glacial and at times nonsensical, some of the artwork is great, some of it is the opposite... but I do think Hickman and Spencer have too many titles going at once, i also feel like you need to be slightly 'altered' to enjoy 'Prophet' or 'Multiple Warheads'.

[lhb412]

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

[mr.negativity]

[klen7]

Interesting history on Captain Marvel

[klen7]

So i've been reading through Ultimate Spider-man ( i won an ebay auction for the entire run through Death of Spider-man) and i just finished the 'Ultimatum' event... what a huge F-U to the writers of all the series involved. They basically destroy everything that everyone had built with one really gratuitous event that pretty much just graphically mutilated and murdered about half of the heroes from the Ultimates universe.. Fortunately Spider-man's universe probably faired the best, but if I had been following Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four or Ultimates (Avengers) i would have probably rioted...Jeph Loeb dropped a number of notches in book for that... and i may possibly be traumatized from a scene involving the Blob.

[MekaGojira3k]

Ultimatum, and a lot of where the Ultimate Universe goes after that is trash. It's one of the reasons I hate Mark Millar anymore. Especially having re-read it recently it just feels like a 12 year old making a SUPER GRIM AND GRITTY UNIVERSE WITH REAL STAKES AND DUMB IDEAS. I liked a lot of the Ultimate Stuff, at first, and then it sort of went weird and then awful and then unbearable. I gave up when things like what happened with the Blob and his victim (the thing Klen mentioned) kept happening on a regular basis. Maybe it's just me getting older, but stuff like this and Wanted (Wanted I really loved when I first read it) I hate. I don't like what I read of Kick-Ass either.

[Dr Kain]

I haven't done one of these in over a year, so I thought now would be a good time.

[lhb412]

^Can I ask Jonah Hex if it's true that the reason DC has had his book consistently published for many years now is because his are DC's best selling comics in Europe, where superheroes aren't really popular but cowboys, comics, and cowboy comics are?

... also, Brave and the Bold had the best Aquaman.

In other comics news: my LCS got all that Hellboy 20th anniversary swag a week late. Still awesome, though.

[klen7]

[sentaison]

I just got the first volume of IDW's reprinting of Chuck DIxon'ss Airboy revival from the 80's. I picked this comic up back then and have the originals in a box somewhere. Re-reading these was a blast! This was Chuck Dixon's first outing as a comics writer, but the stories are very well done, and the artwork by various artists (including Tim Truman doing pencils in the early issues) is great. If you enjoy fun adventure I highly recommend picking up this trade.

[MekaGojira3k]

Guardians of the Galaxy finally finished the Trial of Jean Grey...which I didn't care much about..
Moon Knight #2 was nice, it was short, but the visuals were super solid.
I'm also enjoying the All New Invaders Issue 1 and 2. The art is okay, but mostly I'm just fond of the idea of the Invaders.
Even fonder of them going to the Kree homeworld.

[MekaGojira3k]

Just did an assignment for bonus points in my College Career Readiness class by having students identify the degrees/careers (in the case of Hal Jordan and Steve Rogers) of various superheroes in their day jobs.

I gave double points to the few that could identity Star-Lord's original career.

[MekaGojira3k]

The new Ghost Rider was neat, beautiful art.
I also picked up The Flash (which I was considering canceling my pull of but they're doing some Wally West stuff next)
Secret Avengers is fun, okay art but the covers are better. If the book looked like that I'd be in heaven.
I picked up Iron Man 23 and 24, which are about the Mandarin's rings being sent throughout the world...universe? Most of them have ended up
with Malekith, which feels somewhat restrictive on what could have been a truly epic concept.