Animation Revelation Forum

Speak on subjects not covered in other threads here.

I'll start: Civil War sucks, House Of M is one of the biggest waste of potential I've ever seen. The last thing I was interested in in the Marvel universe was their cosmic/space universe...but apparently they killed that off. Yeah, that doesn't even make sense but that's what I hear.

You know, I like JSM' run on Amazing Spider-Man. It was lauded when he was working on it, but now his run seems to be tainted with him ending off with Brand New Day. But I still think that he brought in some much needed life to Spidey and his mythology when he was there.

BND is awful, yes, but I'm willing to forgive Straczynski for that considering that it was Joe Quesada's meddling through and through. You can tell that JMS is grinding his teeth throughout if you actually take the time to read it. The return of Gwen Stacy drama also was unneeded and pretty tacky overall, but even then, I can see what he was going for there. And although it also gets a bit of a bum rap nowadays, I like his 9/11 issue. If anyone should have the right to look at the travesty and comment on it right after it happened, it should be Spider-Man. He's nearly synonymous with the city at this point in history.

Truthfully, he made some very good stories for Spidey, had a solid hold of the character, and added some genius ideas. I especially applaud him for finally letting Aunt May in on her nephew's secret, and not messing with either character in the process.

I did like what I read up to that, which I talked about in the other thread.

When/if they are collected, I want to get:
Saga
Nick Fury MAX
X-O Manowar (reboot)
And that Hardcore #! preview season

Bryan Lee O'Malley posted this on his tumblr.

"To be perfectly honest, I thought of a way to continue / expand the story of Scott and Ramona. I don?t know if I?ll ever do it, and I can?t tell you what it is, but I thought of a pretty good way. It would pick up the ?main? storyline a couple of years later, and incorporate all the main characters (minus the evil ex-boyfriends and Gideon).

A creator can?t help but think about these things sometimes.

Like I?ve said before, after I finish my current graphic novel Seconds I?m planning to start a brand-new series that I?m very excited about, but maybe in a few years I?d think about playing with Scott Pilgrim some more"

Discuss.

I thought the ending of the series was perfect...and I think he kind of hinted that Ramona and Scott's relationship did go well which was kind of a mystery. I'd of course pick it up asap day 1 but I don't think it's necessary.

Yeah, there isn't much need for a continuation, but I love the characters enough that I'd like to see them again.

Maybe he can make a one-off chapter every now and then to keep us updated, but I don't see there being much of a need for another series.

Take those ideas and make an animated serial or something.  It doesn't have to be a full-blown series, but a several episode arc would be awesome.

Unless he's choosing to take the Calvin and Hobbes route and doesn't want to have his characters animated(the one Adult Swim special aside).

I don't see why he'd feel that way, if we got the special and the movie. But he may very well be, I'm not sure.

The good thing about O'Malley having a tumblr is that he answers every question he receives, and publicly too. I might have to ask him about that later.

I was actually thinking about something along the lines of an animated sitcom on the series. Since sitcoms never really change anything, they could use that format to have a storyline where nothing really major happens.

But that's what made Scott Pilgrim special. That things changed and progressed with each book.

What I mean is Scott doesn't really need another major arc again. I think the show should just let us see what the gang is up to years later.

Well I do personally think that as an extended series, Scott Pilgrim might lost its appeal, certain characters will become less endearing, and O'Malley can easily run out of ideas. Scott already was a bit of an idiot in the GNs, and I'm afraid that I'd grow to be annoyed by him if it went on.

An occasional chapter or special here or there would be nice, but I don't know if lightning can strike twice with another graphic novel series or a cartoon.

Yeah and it could make the comics' story less meaningful. Meaning if it's anything about Ramona and Scott having trouble keeping their relationship together, then it would be like Scott what through all of those events in the books for nothing. I'm fine with nothing or a small series. I don't see O'Malley pulling off a T2 or Legend Of The Drunken Master (reference drop :sly: )

I'd be down for an animated series myself.

This reminds me, though; I still need to do a refresher on the actual novels one of these days. I'm still way behind.

I'd be down for a series focusing on someone else in their group. Maybe the way their world works changes on whose perspective we're seeing? That'd be an interesting thing.

Man, I still remember the day I bought volume one. I was in a Borders looking for something knew, saw it on the shelf, and thought, "Hey, the guy who did the art for The Windwaker has a comic book!" Rest is history.

Also seconding an animated series.  :thumbup:

Maybe he can do a story on how Stephen Stills came out of the closet in volume 5, since we never got to see how that came around.

The last time I read the series was when Vol. 6 came out, so my memory of all the side stories is pretty much terrible. I remember Stephen turning out gay, but was there any build up to that? I think that plot point was just kind of "meh" to me because it seemed to have come out of nowhere, from what I recall.

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 08:00:04 PM
I'd be down for a series focusing on someone else in their group. Maybe the way their world works changes on whose perspective we're seeing? That'd be an interesting thing.

Man, I still remember the day I bought volume one. I was in a Borders looking for something knew, saw it on the shelf, and thought, "Hey, the guy who did the art for The Windwaker has a comic book!" Rest is history.

Also seconding an animated series.  :thumbup:

Young Neil or GTFO.

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 08:12:03 PM
The last time I read the series was when Vol. 6 came out, so my memory of all the side stories is pretty much terrible. I remember Stephen turning out gay, but was there any build up to that? I think that plot point was just kind of "meh" to me because it seemed to have come out of nowhere, from what I recall.

Well they even joked about that in the last volume, saying that he came out in the fifth, but didn't bother telling Scott (or the readers) since he was busy dealing with his own problems.

Was thee much build-up to Stephen Stills coming out? Not really. But it's not too surprising if you reread the series, since he has no real interest in girls and gets closer to Joseph than any other character. Even when Knives had a brief crush on Stephen Stills, he kinda shrugged her off.

Also, Neil called him Captain Homo back in book 5.

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 08:00:04 PM
I'd be down for a series focusing on someone else in their group. Maybe the way their world works changes on whose perspective we're seeing? That'd be an interesting thing.

Man, I still remember the day I bought volume one. I was in a Borders looking for something knew, saw it on the shelf, and thought, "Hey, the guy who did the art for The Windwaker has a comic book!" Rest is history.

Also seconding an animated series.  :thumbup:

I didn't start reading them until around the time the first trailer for the movie came out.  I have the books at home, but I also have all six digitally on my phone, it gives me something to read when I'm on the john.

(That moment you see someone quoted you and you wrote "knew" instead of "new".)  :unimpressed:

I'm all for some Young Neil focus. I think it ended with an implied relationship potential for him and Scott's sister, and I always found her pretty damn entertaining.

Quote from: Comeau on September 06, 2012, 08:47:19 PM

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 08:00:04 PM
I'd be down for a series focusing on someone else in their group. Maybe the way their world works changes on whose perspective we're seeing? That'd be an interesting thing.

Man, I still remember the day I bought volume one. I was in a Borders looking for something knew, saw it on the shelf, and thought, "Hey, the guy who did the art for The Windwaker has a comic book!" Rest is history.

Also seconding an animated series.  :thumbup:

I didn't start reading them until around the time the first trailer for the movie came out.  I have the books at home, but I also have all six digitally on my phone, it gives me something to read when I'm on the john.

Go ahead and change your name to Commode.

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 09:04:39 PM
(That moment you see someone quoted you and you wrote "knew" instead of "new".)  :unimpressed:

I'm all for some Young Neil focus. I think it ended with an implied relationship potential for him and Scott's sister, and I always found her pretty damn entertaining.

Young Neil and What'shername Pilgrim vs The World. :thumbup:

I still think that Roxanne's still alive in the books. Maybe show her having revenge.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on September 06, 2012, 09:39:22 PM
I still think that Roxanne's still alive in the books. Maybe show her having revenge.

"To be perfectly honest, I thought of a way to continue / expand the story of Scott and Ramona. I don?t know if I?ll ever do it, and I can?t tell you what it is, but I thought of a pretty good way. It would pick up the ?main? storyline a couple of years later, and incorporate all the main characters (minus the evil ex-boyfriends and Gideon).

And Roxanne was chopped in half. Da fuq you talking about?

She didn't turn into coins, just into rabbits. And Knives' dad kept one of them.

I always figured everything was just playing out the way Scott would see it, anyway. People getting into super battles, exploding into coins, etc. I never thought any of them actually died, just that it was just exaggerating what would otherwise be a mundane situation.

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 10:03:37 PM
I always figured everything was just playing out the way Scott would see it, anyway. People getting into super battles, exploding into coins, etc. I never thought any of them actually died, just that it was just exaggerating what would otherwise be a mundane situation.

But that wouldn't be as fun. It's more interesting to think the story ran with fighting game logic. Plus, you can't explain stuff like Subspace by Scott being crazy.

Meh, it's what I go with. Otherwise, it's just kind of... yeah...  :wth:

Whatever, artwork was good and the humor was still fun.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on September 06, 2012, 10:08:40 PM

Quote from: Nel on September 06, 2012, 10:03:37 PM
I always figured everything was just playing out the way Scott would see it, anyway. People getting into super battles, exploding into coins, etc. I never thought any of them actually died, just that it was just exaggerating what would otherwise be a mundane situation.

But that wouldn't be as fun. It's more interesting to think the story ran with fighting game logic. Plus, you can't explain stuff like Subspace by Scott being crazy.

Yes you can.  :D

FUCK YES

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-GBVBazpfmpo%2FUWXJyvIyVHI%2FAAAAAAAAT48%2Fz_obIH3vCok%2Fs1600%2FDPOOL2012013_previews.jpg&hash=539bfec743aea8c725eb82eb584d51972a902d15)

I must read this....

Also, speaking of comics, a friend of mine loaned me Superman: Birthright, since he said he considered it a good origin story and since he knows that I'd most likely get confused with other comic book stories ingrained deep into the continuity and mythos of the DC Universe. I read the first 3 parts so far, and I think its pretty good, but I'm a total newbie when it comes to comics, so that's just my opinion so far.

Holy whoa. I am so behind on Deadpool only because they've been releasing so many of his comics. I still got to finish Daniel Way's run and start Deadpool Classic, Deadpool MAX, Deadpool Corps, Here Comes The Deadpool and Deadpool Vs. The World if that's out. Oh and I love Iron Fist so double count me in.

Quote from: Ensatsu-ken on May 17, 2013, 02:08:12 PM
I must read this....

Also, speaking of comics, a friend of mine loaned me Superman: Birthright, since he said he considered it a good origin story and since he knows that I'd most likely get confused with other comic book stories ingrained deep into the continuity and mythos of the DC Universe. I read the first 3 parts so far, and I think its pretty good, but I'm a total newbie when it comes to comics, so that's just my opinion so far.

Birthright is my 2nd favorite Superman comic. In my unpopular it's better than Red Son. (Which I also love and is my 3rd favorite Supe comic)

Personally, I'd recommend Deadpool Classic, Deadpool Max, and the current run over those others. Not a big fan of Way's 'Pool or Corps. (Still picking up the video game on day 1, though!) If by Deadpool Vs. The World, you mean Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe, that one is pretty awesome too.

Yeah Way's DP is the only series I read that had weak Deadpool stories. I'm still trying to finish Classic (which is my favorite) and yeah,  I meant Deapool Kills The Marvel Universe :D

Wait, Lovers & Madmen is canon? That explains why so many hate it. I think it's the best Joker origin comic (much more than The Man Who Laughs and I like The Killing Joke more but it doesn't count, imo) but by no means should it be canon. That's ridiculous.

favorite origin tales:

2. spider-man noir
1. superman birthright

favorite justice leaguer (comics only)

5. plastic man
4. hal jordan
3. green arrow
2. superman
1. batman

the around 2000 version of plastic man seemed just like his brave and bold iteration that he predates and that's the one i listed.

favorite comic book noir characters:

8. Agent Philip Graves
7. Tao (kind of, sort of a low rent Sakyo)
6. Dizzy Cordova
5. Riley Richards
4. Milo
3. Tracy Lawless
2. Wylie Times
1. Lono

my favorite robot characters from most media:

9. Vision (Avengers: EMH)
8. T-800
7. Danger
6. Atomic Robo
5. Cameron
4. Scud
3. J
2. T-1000 and T-800
1. Joe Pi - It seems like Alan Moore teamed up with Togashi to make this manga-esque robot. One of the most instantly likable characters I have ever encountered and he's just as intelligent to boot.

i've thinking, outside of john carpenter's the thing, which could be no. 1 for me, all of my favorite fictional stories are in western comics. I might be forgeting a few, but my top ones are: 100 Bullets, Watchmen, The Walking Dead and All-Star Superman, possibly in that order. I think of 100 Bullets as my favorite comic ever and Watchmen as the best, if that makes sense. Superman Birthright or Classic Deadpool and maybe, likely a few others could take the 5th spot for my list. I like them more than either FMA anime. More than Samurai Champloo. More than Samurai Jack. More than Dexter's Laboratory. More than Rurouni Kenshin manga. More than Samurai Executioner...Those are my top 2/3 titles in cartoons, anime and manga. :)

I have been thinking about, for live action and animation, I tend to like more action based series but for comics, not so much. While action is clearly a part of my favorites, series like Watchmen and TWD aren't that action packed.

Lastly, The Walking Dead and American Vampire are my favorite currently running series from any form of fiction period. American Vampire is another candidate for my top 5...and I have only read about 3 Volumes of it. For comparison sake, I was reading Scalped around the same time I started AV. I love Scalped. I've read a few volumes of Scalped by the time I read one of American Vampire. AV clearky trumped what I read of Scalped. By around volume 2, there was no way I could enjoy Scalped more than AV. It was that good to me. I wonder if it could get into my top 3...There's not a form of fiction, except a few video games with my brothers lol, that I have liked more than The Walking Dead comics and American Vampire over the last few years.

Ok, rant over. Lol. This is really a lot of small things I tried to put under one subject. I will follow this up with a few more lists later.

I do tend to like more story and character-driven series than action-packed ones, myself, hence why many of my favorite manga are stuff like Ashita no Joe, Ode to Kirihito, REAL, Monster, 20th Century Boys, Death Note, A Silent Voice, and so on.

I know. I am a self-confessed action junkie myself but there's something about deeper stories that can be more appealing to me.

I love action as well, of course. Knightfall is really appealing to me and the first volume has been awesomely action-packed. Same with manga like Dragon Ball and various other classics, some of which are also among my favorites. But, much like you, when it comes to comics/manga, it's the dramas or character-driven genre stories that really stick with me. Hence why, in my very limited exposure to Western comics (I do eventually plan to remedy that), Watchmen is my favorite comic, and I love what I've read of The Walking Dead. And, as I've already elaborated, most of my favorite manga aren't really action series.

Half of my favorites (out of two lol) manga isn't action-based. The half would be Samurai Executioner. It features a lot of stories with numerous characters in usually dire situation. The setting, which is much more realistic than any non-live action feudal Japan I've ever seen, the writing and character interactions is what makes it interesting for me. The main character doesn't even get into a real fight until several volumes in.

I am a fan of character focused stories. A few of my favorites have protagonists that mostly just hang out and discuss things. That makes the moments when they do things like kill zombies or gangsters that much more special.

In order, (you wouldn't believe how long it took me), my Top 30 Western Comic Book Protagonists:

Spoiler

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi789.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fyy180%2Fgunswordfist%2Fmosaic2afd405642e6cbc4490a750523430ba8a4a35864.jpg&hash=1a98f04852ea5f21be63512faa680437ef77210a)

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Wow, good job with that!

Glad to see Iron Fist. Totally underrated hero. Am I mistaken or are you missing Iron Man? I thought he was one of your favorites.

Like a lot of people, only in live action. I also like the live action Cap more. Same goes for their Avengers EMH counterparts, which I like just as much as the movie ones. That's likely due to my lack of exposure to them in comics though.

Yep, Danny Rand was made a favorite due to Ed Brubaker's run. It was incredible.

Deadpool being #1 is good. Very good. :joy:

Great list. I really need to read more comics.

I am really enjoying what I've been reading of Brubaker's Iron Fist run, though.

Quote from: Foggle on March 12, 2015, 09:56:59 PM
Deadpool being #1 is good. Very good. :joy:

Yessir! I love the crazy guy.

Quote from: Dr. Ensatsu-ken on March 12, 2015, 09:59:25 PM
Great list. I really need to read more comics.

I am really enjoying what I've been reading of Brubaker's Iron Fist run, though.

You already got around to it? Good. Good.  :)

I'll [try to] make a villains list next. After the tournament, of course.

And [attempt to] merge my favorite comic book protagonists list with my favorite anime/manga protagonists list.

Annnnnd, this project is complete.

Top 30 Favorite Eastern And Western Comic Book Protagonists:

Spoiler

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi789.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fyy180%2Fgunswordfist%2Fmosaic6d97bb24e6fe579076bf7b4b2d7c48af5161321f.jpg&hash=523703237bd3005c6d283f3b825a8bcc0c3a1085)

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I try to reuse as few images as possible. I purposely reused Black Jacket Lupin and the Zenigata pic, which are both from the same artist (

Spoiler

http://tojosaka666.deviantart.com (http://tojosaka666.deviantart.com)

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). They rock. Ok, I'll merge the villains later to have my true top 30 characters of comics list.

http://www.comicvine.com/articles/ten-great-time-travel-comic-book-stories/1100-151776/ (http://www.comicvine.com/articles/ten-great-time-travel-comic-book-stories/1100-151776/)

Spoiler

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Foriginal%2F0%2F40%2F4465983-back-to-back-to-the-future-the-complete-saga-cover.jpg&hash=a313e7e946c52b1270c5a61d7d5557197b4a527c)
(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Foriginal%2F0%2F40%2F4466039-young.jpg&hash=f19963feb27060e72b73f7185529828f3662e7da)
(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Foriginal%2F0%2F40%2F4466042-futureimperfect.jpg&hash=f6af2392b0dd64d2bc9d3b6caa1034964f6c8989)

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My type of article!!

Help reprint Atomic Robo (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tesladyne/atomic-robo-reprint-regalia)

Man, I wish I had some money. I liked the first volume or two that I read.

Mutant Zombie Island. Indian War. Nazi Vampire War. Origin story co-written by Stephen King himself and so so much more in just 4 Volumes. I'm sitting here thinking about my favorite arcs and other parts of American Vampire and I'm now pondering how I have just read these great comic books just one time each. Since I'm an impatient bastard, I'll read them again after I read Volume 5 and 6. I can't believe it's been two years since I've read any of it.

Ok, my favorite comic book heroes and villains updated list, which I finished compiling for another site today.  30 points is the highest, 1 is the lowest. I'm too tired to change that. lol

HEROES

30 Points: Deadpool

29 Points: Spider-Man NOIR

28 Points: Ultimate Peter Parker

27 Points: Batman

26 Points: Superman

25 Points: Oliver Queen

24 Points:Daredevil

23 Points:Iron Fist

22 Points:Dashiell Bad Horse (Scalped)

21 Points:Hulk

20 Points:Hal Jordan

19 Points:Wylie Times

18 Points:Thor

17 Points:Wolverine

16 Points:Joe Pi (Alan Moore's Top Ten)

15 Points:Carl Grimes (The Walking Dead)

14 Points:Travis Kidd (American Vampire)

13 Points:Scud (Scud The Disposable Assassin)

12 Points:Tracy Lawless (Criminal)

11 Points:Atomic Robo

10 Points:Glenn (The Walking Dead)

9 Points:Rick Grimes

8 Points:Cecil (Invincible)

7 Points:Omni-Man (Invincible)

6 Points:Pearl Jones (American Vampire)

5 Points:Fat Cobra (Immortal Weapon)

4 Points:Jesus (The Walking Dead)

3 Points: Dizzy Cordova

2 Points: Caiera

1 Point:Mark Grayson/Invincible

VILLAINS

30 Points: Lono

29 Points: Lincoln Redcrow

28 Points: Skinner Sweet

27 Points: Lex Luthor

26 Points: Deathstroke The Terminator

25 Points: The Joker

24 Points: Constantine Drakon

23 Points: Bullseye

22 Points: Li Zhao (Infinite Kungfu)

21 Points: Barracuda (Punisher MAX)

20 Points: Riley Richards (Criminal)

19 Points: Danger (X-Men)

18 Points:Negan (The Walking Dead)

17 Points: T-Ray (Deadpool)

16 Points:William Leather (Planetary)

15 Points:Taskmaster

14 Points:Tommy Glass (American Vampire)

13 Points:Maestro (Hulk)

12 Points:Regent (Invincible)

11 Points:Diesel Engine (Scalped)

10 Points:Donnie (Criminal)

9 Points:Wesley Willeford (Scalped)

8 Points:Bane

7 Points:Gorr

6 Points:Dracula (American Vampire)

Batman/TMNT crossover (http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2015/07/10/the-dark-knight-meets-the-heroes-in-a-half-shell)

Better than Space Ghost!

Joe Kelly is writing a Deadpool/Spider-Man team-up series, Gerry Duggan is back to continue the story from the recently-ended Marvel Now Deadpool run, and Cassandra Cain is back as a main character in Batman & Robin Eternal. I fucking love superhero comics right now! :joy: :joy: :joy:

Awesome Deadpool news! I need to get past Deadpool Classic 9. lol

Bloom County might be coming back. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bloom-county-comic-strip-is-coming-back_55a32f7ce4b0b8145f72f611) Who knows for how long, though. The series is tied with Calvin & Hobbes as my favorite comic strip ever and I love it to pieces, but the spinoffs Breathed made since ending it, Outland and Opus, weren't very good. So for now, I'm only cautiously excited about this. Hopefully it's a return to form. With the current social and political landscape, Bloom County's satire would be just as welcome now as it was back in the 80's.

Also, I finished American Vampire Volume 6 yesterday or early last night. I geeked out so hard when one of my favorite characters returned. :shakeshakeshake:

Quote from: Cartoon X on July 13, 2015, 09:15:46 AMBloom County might be coming back. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bloom-county-comic-strip-is-coming-back_55a32f7ce4b0b8145f72f611)

Not "might be." IS. ;)

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FPrwCO0D.jpg&hash=fa1f2d17b5309eac120c35a17673d385771c705e)

Ah, it's like it never left. Hope we get some good ol' Donald Trump jabs soon.  ;D

Went to Barnes and Noble today to take part of their Manga Mania promotion. Buy 2, get 1 free - same deal as with the DC comics promotion a week back. They're also giving out free posters and samplers and stuff like that, which is sweet. I snatched up the Durarara!! and Akame ga Kill! posters (don't read/watch the latter but it's still a free poster so why not?), as well as the Viz and Kodansha manga samplers. I decided to focus on catching up on series I've wanted to collect, so I grabbed me Assassination Classroom volumes 2-4, Yamada-kun volumes 1 & 2, and A Silent Voice volume 1 so that I'd be caught up on all three of those. Wished I had a bit more budget to use so I could've caught up on Food Wars! and World Trigger too, but them's the breaks. Overall, I'm very pleased with my haul, and was glad to see so many other people there to take part in the deals as well. People of varied ages to boot. One guy got a basket and tried to buy like 50 volumes, and Vlord told me later that he had his card suspended.  :D

I think my post office likes Cassandra Cain even less than DC's executives do...

Spoiler

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKoMo82UsAEIJlK.png)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKoMq9BVAAEs8cU.png)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKoMqBlUwAA7KL_.png)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKoMrBOUEAAxV91.png)

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I didn't know gsf worked at the post office.

 :D

"We hope we didn't inconvenience you"?!!! Even I'm not that much of a dick about Cain. Any chance they'll recompensate you?

Quote from: gunswordfist on July 24, 2015, 12:40:19 PM
"We hope we didn't inconvenience you"?!!! Even I'm not that much of a dick about Cain. Any chance they'll recompensate you?

I can get a full refund from the person I bought it from, thankfully, but the post office should compensate them. There's no way the package could have gotten this messed up without it being used as a punching bag or something.

Yes they should. I honestly have no clue how they could have fucked up a comic book like that. It's not like it's glass or anything.

That first picture was from before I opened the packaging; it was torn apart, and the destroyed book was poking out the top, the moment it got delivered.

I legitimately think they ran over it with the mail truck or something.

Yeah, I would seek a refund from the post office. This is their fault. Your seller should be reimbursed.

Quote from: Spark Of Spirit on July 24, 2015, 03:05:24 PM
Yeah, I would seek a refund from the post office. This is their fault. Your seller should be reimbursed.

Viz has licensed Goodnight, Pun Pun. (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-07-24/viz-media-licenses-inio-asano-goodnight-pun-pun-manga/.90859)

And so 2016 continues to be the year my wallet is bled dry. It's great to see Inio Asano's most acclaimed/popular/best manga finally licensed in the west.

http://www.comicvine.com/articles/deadpool-and-cable-team-up-again-for-a-new-series/1100-153172/ (http://www.comicvine.com/articles/deadpool-and-cable-team-up-again-for-a-new-series/1100-153172/)

(https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Foriginal%2F0%2F6063%2F4738056-dpandcablesplitsec.0.jpg&hash=838d7451bd4fbc209abbbfa38d8751e3eecad625)

YES! :worship:

Was just about to post this!

Life is beautiful. :swoon: :swoon:

Yes, yes it is.  :'( I really want to catch up now.

AWWW YEEEAAAAHHH! This is gonna be sweet! ;D

Oh my fucking God..I feel stupid as hell for not remembering Bolland's name from The Killing Joke. His Cursed Earth art has really made me a fan: (https://animationrevelation.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-RifPlJUscWU%2FTWQxlAu4rdI%2FAAAAAAAAAFA%2F41H_R7yBxrk%2Fs400%2F1.jpg&hash=e60a7f1f68b235091a86b01e426da7f5055ac0fa)

Wasn't expecting a re-release of this. (http://www.boom-studios.com/series/title?series_id=1483&name=Crimson) Never mind in hardcover. Wonder if they'll get Out There next by the same team.

I do miss the Cliffhanger line.

WHY AM I ONLY JUST NOW FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ7eaUSVIAE0qLP.jpg)

Wait, Bebop, Rocksteady & Krang debuted in the TMNT animated series? I had no clue...

They indeed have.

Yusuke Murata draws some awesome Spider-Man covers. (http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2016/05/10/one-punch-man-manga-illustrator-covers-spider-man-collection)

Seeing people like Yusuke Murata, Kohei Horikoshi, and Nobuhiro Watsuki (among others) pay tribute to American superheroes (most prominently for Marvel characters) makes me think that it would be cool if Marvel offered some of them to do manga mini-series based off of some of their characters and properties (similar to stuff like the Bat-Manga or the Spider-Man manga from several decades ago). Or they could feature them as guest-illustrators for certain issues of the comics, or even just feature more of their cover art in their releases like they have done for Murata.

With all of the clear influence that both Japanese and American comics take from each other these days, combined with stuff like this along with the Marvel/AoT crossover that came out a couple of years ago, I'm wondering if manga and comic book crossovers may become a more common thing in the near future.

Godly. I feel sorry for whoever's cover got compared to his.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ci8HhdGXAAAyxRH.jpg)

Ohohohoho.

(https://i.imgur.com/ZWNFyjA.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/hXI8Udd.jpg)

Is anyone here backing this (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1951067948/vampire-hunter-d-message-from-mars)?

Somehow I missed hearing about this.

Viz is releasing an updated Fullmetal Alchemist manga. (https://www.toonzone.net/fullmetal-alchemist-to-be-released-in-deluxe-edition)

(https://www.toonzone.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FMA_FE_01-3D-1.jpg)

Word? *clicks link*

That's cool, but I'm still waiting for the date for their Perfect Editions for 20th Century Boys.

Quote from: Avaitor on April 25, 2018, 02:28:02 PM
That's cool, but I'm still waiting for the date for their Perfect Editions for 20th Century Boys.

They start coming out on September 18th. (https://www.amazon.com/20th-Century-Boys-Perfect-Vol/dp/1421599619/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524695888&sr=8-3&keywords=20th+century+boys)

Quote from: VLordGTZ on April 25, 2018, 05:38:49 PM

Quote from: Avaitor on April 25, 2018, 02:28:02 PM
That's cool, but I'm still waiting for the date for their Perfect Editions for 20th Century Boys.

They start coming out on September 18th. (https://www.amazon.com/20th-Century-Boys-Perfect-Vol/dp/1421599619/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524695888&sr=8-3&keywords=20th+century+boys)

Now that's perfect!

Frank Miller is apologizing for some of the crazy shit he's said over the years. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/frank-miller-xerxes-cursed-sin-city-the-dark-knight-returns)

So, I just finished reading the Hawkeye omnibus by Matt Fraction. If The New Frontier is my favorite DC Comic, then I can consider Hawkeye as my favorite Marvel comic so far. I'm still mostly a novice in this department of course, but this just really worked for me on so many levels that it will be hard for anything to top. It definitely lives up to all of the praise and critical acclaim that it gets.

I still have a couple of Fraction volumes waiting to be read, but if the first 3 are any indication, it's easily one of their best series this decade. A great use of Clint, and Kate is just as strong of a protagonist.

Humble Bundle now sells manga. (https://www.humblebundle.com/books/manga-to-anime-kodansha-books)

Every purchase also donates to charity.

Yeah, Kodansha and Humble Bundle have teamed of a number of themed promotions in the past (Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, Tsutomo Nihei, etc).  This one in particular is a great deal.  80 volumes of manga for $18 is a steal! 

Congrats to Rumiko Takahashi for winning an Eisner Award. (https://www.polygon.com/comics/2018/7/23/17603332/eisner-awards-winners-2018-list-san-diego-comic-con-sdcc)

Shonen Jump is free now. (http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/weekly-shonen-jump-free)

Amazon is releasing Initial D in its entirety. (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-04-17/comixology-kodansha-comics-release-complete-initial-d-manga-in-english/.145825)

This is the first time the complete story has been released in English. (The final 15 volumes were previously never released. Thanks, Tokyopop!)

Volumes 34-38 are out now; 39-48 are coming later this year.

R.I.P. Kazuo Koike (https://twitter.com/koikekazuo/status/1119061843933192192)

MasakoX shows off the manga exhibit in the British Museum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEqoFJVSeoE

So, Shogakukan is doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1a7e6oNtSA

It's one thing to sue pirates (which makes sense), but requesting access to their credit cards and bank accounts? Can they legally do this? :whuh:

RIP Vertigo (https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/06/21/r.i.p.-dcs-vertigo-imprint-1993-2019?fbclid=IwAR2bRfNJkafyCJfrFl4TYHxG4r8f6Ev-ry4eCXQSfqplLpun77jWKLAgMko).

So yeah, it looks like the label is folding as DC is trying to consolidate their imprints together. This could be a good thing, or not-so-good one. Hopefully some of the series and characters that haven't been integrated into the core DC universe will go to good new homes with their creators.

While it's mostly a name change, it's still hard not to mourn Vertigo's death. It's a line that grew into its own subset of comics and writers who could appeal to people who otherwise wouldn't have bought any of DC's output. That outsider approach and appeal to creator rights was a boon back in the day. Granted, Vertigo was never the same after Karen Berger left, and Image has been the popular place for creator-owned comics for quite a while now, but it's sad nonetheless.

So a Marvel X Shonen Jump collaboration was just announced: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/09/02/yu-gi-oh-kazuki-takahashi-draws-manga-short-about-iron-man-spider-mans-trip-to-japan

Seems like a small side project for some mangaka to take part in, but we could get some fun little one-shots out of it.

The Far Side is coming back! (http://thefarside.com)

So, I've read a fair amount of Marvel and DC books over the past few years, in addition to other comics. I've found a lot of stories that I enjoy, but do you know what I've realized about almost all of the ones that resonate with me? They are almost always well over a decade old (in many cases several). To this day I have barely kept up with any current runs not because of confusing continuity or having trouble finding the material to catch-up, but because single-issues are so absurdly expensive. Even digital releases are only about a dollar or two cheaper than print, and I can't help but feel like it's such a bafflingly dated business model that I'm shocked that it still exists in the format that it does.

I'm not going to pretend like I know the slightest bit about the logistics of how comic book sales work and how much money needs to be charged to recoup costs, but clearly sales are pretty abysmal these days for the Western side of the industry, all across the board.

I mean, even for stuff that I have enjoyed like Ewings' Immortal Hulk run or King's Batman run, I've still only kept up by trades because why the fuck would I want to spend $4-5 for roughly 20-pages of content (we're talking maybe 10-15 minutes of reading material if I'm being generous). I really feel so stupid for reading Bryan Hill's Killmonger miniseries that way, which I kept up with because it was really good, but had I waited for a trade I could have read it in one go for significantly cheaper.

Meanwhile, you have manga sales through the roof proving that people still read comic books as individual issues just as much as ever. I mean, look at Shonen Jump right now. Like a lot of people, I'm subscribed to their service and have online access to all of their Viz translated new releases as well as an insane backlog of a huge library of their collected works. And that's only $2 a month for all of it (with nothing in the way of outside ads). I'm currently keeping up with several weekly titles and a couple of monthly ones without any significant financial investment.

I'm not saying that I'd expect Marvel or DC to do the exact same thing, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that there is no reason that at least their digital releases need to be priced nearly as high as they currently are. Maybe offer the option for bundles of 4-5 series at that price (even if it's digital only), or at least reduce the price for single digital issues significantly.

Maybe I'm just a nut who doesn't know what he's talking about. I've heard other people complain that modern Western comics are failing because a lot of modern books just suck (which, to be fair, I've run into a lot of garbage from stuff published this decade). Personally, though, I think the industry's collective insistence on adhering to a horribly dated business practice and release format is more to blame, here.

I'd argue comic book sales are stagnant instead of dropping, based off of Comichron's charts. (https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales.html) In fact, sales from the month of July 2019 look better than July 1999, and only slightly worse than July 2009. But I agree that single issues are overpriced for comics you could read within 5 to 10 minutes, and anyone going to a comic book store could read them off the shelf and put them back with little hassle.

That makes sense, but you have to figure that the people behind the industry would have tried to move away from this by now. It's one thing to stay stagnant, but if stagnation is still relatively low in terms of sales, wouldn't it be in the industry's best interest to try to increase sales?

I suppose my main point more than anything is that I don't really see the reason why comic book single issues need to be that expensive to begin with.

https://twitter.com/otakucalendarjp/status/1200363726190174208

Inuyasha is getting a sequel. (https://www.cinelinx.com/movie-news/tv/hold-everything-an-inuyasha-sequel-appears-to-be-in-the-works)

Didn't really care for the epilogue of KnY. Reminds me of Digimon Adventure 02, or Naruto, or Harry Potter. Not sure why creators feel the need to show "the next generation" featuring one-off characters we have no investment in. That said, this epilogue does nothing to actually ruin what came before it, especially since it's a few generations in the future rather than just the main characters' kids. Still, it's made more baffling and unnecessary by the fact that chapter 204 was a more than appropriate ending for the series, tying up all of the loose ends and wrapping up the main duo's journey.

I really loved the last arc. It felt very JoJo's esque in how intense the final bouts got, with several beloved characters falling in the final battle, particularly in emotionally resonant ways that felt like a real gut punch to fans rather than just as mere shock value.

I will miss reading this series from week to week, but I'm glad that it maintained a consistent level of quality throughout it's run and, unnecessary epilogue aside, ended on a high note rather than being dragged out for longer than it needed to. I will definitely be following whatever Gotogue works on next.

So, I have the entire Lee/Kirby run of FF4 on Comixology and I read through a few issues every week. I just came across this little issue today:

(https://www.pocho.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/hatemonger2.jpg)

Man, you've gotta love the 60's.

lmao, yeah. That cracked me up when I first saw that.

Dennis O'Neil passed away yesterday. A talent without equal who etched his mark on characters like Green Arrow, the Question, and of course Batman. He'll be missed.

I heard about this as well. I have been making an effort to check out the works of more classic writers, though unfortunately I have not yet read much O'Neil's run outside of a few odd issues of Batman and The Question (I will be getting around to his comic book runs eventually). That said, it's always saddening when we lose comic legends who produced decades worth of great content, and may Dennis O'Neil be able to rest in peace.

Like other people have recently done, I've been processing my thoughts on the Warren Ellis news this week. And watching as one of the biggest influences on my own writing being outed as a serial groomer with at least 50 victims. Everyone's got that "JK Rowling" moment where they find out a favorite author of theirs turns out to be a shitty person, knowing a writer who's sparked joy and intrigue in your mind for years also wrought misery and manipulation in others. I just didn't like his work. I binged through his interviews, articles, and blog posts since I was a teenager. I bought and read comics I wouldn't have given a shit about if his name wasn't on the cover. But knowing what he did to people who were just as obsessed with his words and cultivated personality drops a wet turd on all that fascination, especially when some of his colleagues and collaborators like Paul Duffield and G Willow Wilson say they aren't surprised by the news. Wasn't impressed by his apology either. It's odd for him to go "I've never considered myself famous or powerful" when he's had a Netflix show and a series of Bruce Willis movies. Just sounds like humble bragging.

So, I admittedly started reading the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four run as a sort of personal experiment. I wanted to start a long-running comic book series from the beginning and see how it changed over the decades and going through various writers' and artists' interpretations. Obviously, this would be a long and costly endeavor (which is why I'm only doing it digitally and waited for a major sale to get a bunch of volumes at a really good deal), and I can't guarantee that I'll stick it out the whole way, but for now I've been pacing myself at about an issue a day on average. That said, while I obviously respect the hell at how forward-thinking this series was for it's time as well as Lee and Kirby's overall contribution to superhero comics, those first few years-worth of issues had a lot of stories that were quite frankly a bit of a snooze-fest to get through by today's standards and by my own personal tastes. However, I'm not sure if it's just a general improvement in quality between their creative synergy and story-telling abilities, or if reading through enough issues got me mentally trained into the right mindset to enjoy these in the way that they were intended, but I do think that the run has finally started to click for me. Most likely it's a combination of both of those things, but I'm leaning more towards the latter due to some much better changes in story structure and pacing.

I'm currently 51-issues in (I'm right now on the issue that introduces Black Panther) and I was definitely much better able to appreciate the Galactus trilogy as part of the overall serialization than if I had just went to seek it out and read it isolated by itself, like I do for most popular comic book stories. In general, I really approve of how Lee and Kirby moved away from the episodic issue-to-issue stories with clear cut beginnings and endings, and instead started blurring those lines with interconnected story arcs. These aren't the full-fledged story-lines that would develop to become more elaborate in this genre of comics throughout the next few decades up to the modern day, but you can see the groundwork clearly being laid out in these issues. I also appreciate how, despite how basic it all still is at it's core and still be targeted towards a younger audience more than anything else, you can tell that Lee and Kirby and trying to add some level of nuance to the characters and even the villains. Aside from giving Doctor Doom a bit more of a tragic past for readers to somewhat sympathize over, they also don't introduce characters like Galactus as a straight-up evil being, but rather as an apathetic life form that does what he needs in order to survive and preserve his own existence. It's nothing all that special by today's standards, but it feels incredibly thoughtful compared to the very early stories that preceded it.

I'm at the point where I have now been able to read a few issues a night on certain occasions because I'm actually interested enough to keep going on, which I do see as genuine sign of improvement. That, and it has been truly rewarding to see Kirby's artwork really improve over just a few years worth of drawing this book. That said, while I do generally praise the growth of this series throughout this era of it, I do have to say that one aspect that has not aged all so well is it's treatment of Sue Storm and other female characters in general. I can completely understand that it's product of it's time, so I give it some leeway in that regard, but it is almost a bit too obnoxious at times how overtly sexist it is, and despite being normal for it's era, that doesn't really excuse it in that regard.

Still, overall I've gone from reading it just as an experimental thing to actually somewhat looking forward to going through the rest of it. Of course, after I finish the Lee/Kirby stuff I may need to take a break to wait for the next big sale to keep on reading further than that. However, I will still try to read all of the main FF titles from it's inception to the modern day, as many years as that may take. That said, there's more than enough material as it is, so I'm obviously excluding spin-offs and crossovers from that marathon, otherwise I'd probably go insane! :sweat:

I do recall the FF comics picking up around the 50-issue mark. That's when Lee and Kirby picked up their storytelling skills, and started building more seeds for the future of the 616 that will transpire for decades to come. Lee's dialogue also becomes a bit sharper, and as you said, Kirby's art just keeps on improving.

You're right about Sue, though. It's unfortunate that although Lee was a strong civil rights advocate, his material involving women was pretty regressive. It's honestly kind of surprising, when you consider how strong Joan is reported to be. I don't think that he actively resented women, but he could have and should have done better when writing characters like Sue Richard, Pepper Potts, and Jean Grey, for instance. Future writers will give them more depth and personality, but Lee is still the blueprint for many of these characters in unfortunate ways.

I recently read through JSA: The Golden Age by James Robinson. You can see a lot of his core values in this era of superheroes as well as the general themes he was fond of exploring take shape here before you saw him greatly expand on those aspects in his Starman run. It's a pretty solid, fairly short read, but definitely a memorable story. I certainly wouldn't mind reading other more modern takes on classic DC characters and properties.

Been reading Grant Morrison's Animal Man run. Read through a whole volume yesterday. This is the type of Morrison writing that I love. It's the perfect combination of good storytelling and characterization that tells good surface level stories but has layers to the more philosophical nature of the themes that he likes to explore beyond that. And it gradually eases into the weirder stuff rather than just throwing you into it at once.

His Batman run, by contrast, at least the Black Glove and RIP stories, was something I found to be largely impenetrable and hard to get into. I'd certainly like to give it another shot someday, but only when I comfortably feel a bit more Morrison-literate, if there is such a thing.

Does anyone know what the best collection to go for would be if I want to read Dennis O'Neil's original Batman run from the 70's? The closes I can find is the Neal Dams collection, but it also seems to intersperse his work with various other writers in the mix. I kind of wanted to move up some Dennis O'Neil works from my backlog. I already have his Green Lantern/Green Arrow run which I will read after I finish Morrison's Animal Man run. But, I also wanted to check out his Batman material as well.

I finished Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. I was already spoiled on the main twists of this series years before I read it, but it still really impresses me how much of it works out. It's also a good thing that I read this after I had already read Crisis on Infinite Earths, since the last several issues would have made no sense to me without that context. As one review of this run that I read a long time ago said, this is arguably one of the better examples of self-indulgent writing. It pushes the past the boundary into pretentious every now and then, and has it's share of flaws, but it's also kind of endearing for that very same reason, especially when Morrison himself acknowledges that in the series through his insert character. I personally like it just as much as Flex Mentallo and Doom Patrol (which I'm planning to re-read soon). All-Star Superman is still my favorite Morrison comic by far, though.

Also, "The Coyote Gospel" is easily one of the best single issues that I've ever read of a superhero comic thus far. Especially when given further context by the end of the run, it really helped affect the way that I think about the medium, and fictional characters in general, which is something that Morrison clearly aims for in his writing.

Dark Nights Death Metal is yet another frustrating event comic. Lots of DC insanity that I wish was more widespread, but then it does things I hate like shoving in Dr. Manhattan.

I read through the Tales of the Demon collection containing all of Dennis O'Neil's Ra's al Ghul stories since unfortunately that's the only Batman collection of specifically his work that I could find. It's definitely of it's time, but I can certainly appreciate how these stories helped to establish the more serious tone of Batman's adventures as well as many other aspects of the character that would be influential going forward.

However, I'm also reading his Green Lantern/Green Arrow run, and I've been particularly impressed so far. While still dated in some obvious ways, it's progressive for it's time in surprisingly nuanced ways that presents social issues of the time in a fairly gritty, down-to-earth manner. And, while there are clear bad guys to take down in each issue, O'Neil very tactfully uses the opposing ideals and stances of Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen to show the positives and negatives of opposing viewpoints without allowing for a clear  black-and-white depiction of any issue that he explores through these stories. I'm kind of surprised that there are clear criticisms of government authority and the American legal system yet those same issues are stamped with the CCA approval label. Not quite sure how they managed to get away with that given the CCA's notoriously strict censorship policies, especially back then.

Was thinking about panels yesterday, specifically how dull some layouts can be. Like how some comics love using the 9-panel grid because a certain comic about watches did it, but then it gets so overused that half the pages of an entire book look like this.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/63/e1/fa63e104987f060104b39bf0b46f801f.jpg)

A lot of comics also seem to completely miss the point of why Dave Gibbons took the 9-panel-grid approach to Watchmen in the first place, and do it more as a way to try and emulate that comic book's success.

It really makes me appreciate comics that play around with the concept of panel layout all the more. Grant Morrison's Animal run comes to mind in particular since I read through that recently. Chas Truog's artwork specifically utilizing things like panel borders or even a lack of them altogether really made for some refreshing story-telling concepts that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on July 20, 2020, 03:56:19 PMWas thinking about panels yesterday, specifically how dull some layouts can be. Like how some comics love using the 9-panel grid because a certain comic about watches did it, but then it gets so overused that half the pages of an entire book look like this.

...and Linkara just (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp2nn-s8mCU) reviewed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoO2odHigZU) it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPUW9nw-f3Q) :lol:

Well, this is pretty awful news: https://www.google.com/amp/s/comicbook.com/anime/amp/news/act-age-manga-creator-arrest/

Having the author (Nobuhiro Watsuki) of my favorite WSJ manga (Rurouni Kenshin) outed as a pedophile was devastatingly disappointing as it was. Having the author (Tatsuya Matsuki) of what was my current favorite running WSJ series (Act-Age) arrested for the physical act of engaging with minors is beyond disgusting to me.

It just never ceases to disturb me how the creators of genuinely great pieces of art can be such shitbags in real life. Tack onto that Warren Ellis also being outed for predatory behavior towards women, among various other creators guilty of various indecent and criminal activity, and it really makes me weary to think about the people behind the art being produced.

Act Age has officially been canceled.
(https://comicbook.com/anime/news/act-age-manga-canceled-weekly-shonen-jump-arrest/)
I hadn't got around to reading it yet, but I know that it was a beloved series for many, so it's unfortunate that he's a creep. Hopefully the artist will move on to something just as good, if not better, now that she's done with it.

Act-Age's cancellation is super depressing for me, but after Matsuki's actions, it was necessary. It was easily the best series in WSJ right now by a landslide, and it's disturbing how the writer behind the best female representation from the magazine in years is a total scumbag. A lot of mangaka are showing their support for Shiro Usazaki on social media, so I hope we see another series by her eventually. Act-Age was her first work as a professional artist, and her improvement since the beginning of the series has been insane, so it'd be devastating to see her career cut short because of this.

Shueisha absolutely made the right (and only) call here in abruptly cancelling it, and Matsuki definitely deserves what he's gotten and everything else now coming his way after such terrible behavior towards minors. That said, I can't lie, this news is crushing for me. Despite being scum, his work on the series was phenomenal and it was by far my favorite currently running WSJ manga, with Kei Yonagi being an incredibly well-realized protagonist that few other Jump titles could even come close to matching up to. I will sincerely miss keeping up with this series and I really wish it didn't have to be an absolute piece of shit person which was talented enough to write it.

Still, what's done is done and there is no going back. Much like others, I hope that Usazaki can find other great work now that Act-Age is no more. Given her improved skill, I'm sure there are other writers who would be eager to work with her.

Kissmanga is dead.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfcSjl6UwAAz9Iw?format=jpg&name=large)

Invincible trailer just dropped: https://youtu.be/VMaA1m7LPU4

I read through the whole series a couple of months back and really enjoyed it, and this looks to capture that same sort of energy, so I really hope that it does well.

I've only read up through volume 9, but I really enjoy Invincible, too. Frankly, I think it's much better than Robert Kirkman's other major series.

But anyway, this is indeed looking pretty good. I think it was a good call for animation.

Viz got Fist of the North Star. (https://twitter.com/vizmedia/status/1317150070337359874)

Wow, I wasn't expecting Viz to ever try again at publishing Fist!  :SHOCK: It's good to see a classic manga that didn't get completely published in the English speaking world come back from the grave!

Read the latest Berserk chapter. Despite the long gaps between the chapters these days, the content in them makes up for the long waits. I especially was blown away by the memory in the Beserker Armor. We see Void but with four different members of the Godhand. Fans have speculated there was a previous Godhand and that they cycled out members but I tend to think maybe the Skull Knight killed the others except for Void and that the current members aside from him are replacements.

Anyone have any opinions on the current X-books?

I am interested in reading Teen Titans Academy when its first issue drops this March. Looks like they will be taking an X-men like approach with the seasoned Titans teaching a new generation. A similar thing happened in the 90's with the X-book Generation X.

Quote from: Markness on January 19, 2021, 12:53:26 PM
Anyone have any opinions on the current X-books?

Yeah, the ones I've read have been pretty good. Marauders has a really fun dynamic between Kitty and Emma, and making a pirate branch of the X-Men's an inspired take. Read a little of Hellions, and I liked it even though it read like X-Men Suicide Squad at first. And the mainline title's great. It managed to give Apocalypse some much needed character depth.

So my interest in Thor spiked recently after God of War and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Not to mention Chris Hemisworth's portrayal as the character got me very interested. So I'm curious about any good Thor comics, preferably not dating back to the old days (60s-80s). I can't help it. I love good artwork (bonus points if its modern with great artwork)

I guess the same can be said about Ironman, but I've been interested in this angle when Dr. Doom becomes Ironman but I have no idea where to even start with that one.

For modern stuff I think Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron would be right up your alley. It's a 4-volume run so it's not too big of a time investment, unless you plan on reading everything leading up to War of the Realms. As a stand-alone title it's an easy jumping on point and it introduces perhaps the best original new villain in Marvel comics of the past decade in Gorr the God Butcher. The God Butcher story also has ties Donny Cates' Venom run (which I also think would be up your alley).

Thor by JMS is also pretty great but it gets cut short and never really gets the chance to properly unfold and conclude due to editorial being more interested in tying it into the Siege event than in letting it be a strong stand-alone story. Good solo runs being sabotaged by having to tie into major crossover events is perhaps my biggest issue with the modern era of Marvel comics.

And if you're still invested in Asgardian characters than some of the Loki solo runs from around that that timeframe are pretty noteworthy as well.

If you ever feel like giving some of the older stuff a chance, though, than Walt Simonson's Thor run from the 80's is still the most iconic (it's what Waititi takes the most influence from in Thor: Ragnarok), and to me it still holds up incredibly well as a genuinely great superhero comic.

All of that sounds pretty good. I will probably stick with the stand alones for the time being and will see how I feel after looking into your suggestions.

Thanks a bunch.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on January 19, 2021, 03:14:34 PM

Quote from: Markness on January 19, 2021, 12:53:26 PM
Anyone have any opinions on the current X-books?

Yeah, the ones I've read have been pretty good. Marauders has a really fun dynamic between Kitty and Emma, and making a pirate branch of the X-Men's an inspired take. Read a little of Hellions, and I liked it even though it read like X-Men Suicide Squad at first. And the mainline title's great. It managed to give Apocalypse some much needed character depth.

I pretty much agree with you. Marauders along with Excalibur also have the best art of the X-books. It was good to see Apocalypse get more development and be reunited with his wife. He says Professor X and Magneto will see him again. It probably won't be under pleasant terms considering his history with the X-Men but we'll just have to see.

I also like S.W.O.R.D. and I like how the first issue featured Blink and Gateway; I just hope they will appear again since they weren't in the second issue.

I am going to get back into Fire Force and I also got the first volume of Shinobu Ohtaka's follow up to Magi called Orient. Her art style still looks the same but that's fine since she has an appealing one. I think the manga's only real problem is that it moves way too fast. A whole lot of characters are already present but they aren't properly introduced and there is already a god level enemy. I hope Ohtaka will slow the pace down as it goes.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marvel.com/amp/articles/comics/mutantkind-soars-to-the-top-in-the-new-x-corp-series

I am glad that the X-Corp title is finally coming this May. It will focus on Angel and Monet St. Croix/Penance.

So, I've been checking out New World Reviews (https://www.youtube.com/c/NewWorldReview/videos) lately. He's pretty great.
Much in the style of Totally Not Mark, he has been doing blind reads of manga lately.

He has fully caught up to Black Clover recently, and now he's catching up on Jujutsu Kaisen.

Black Clover playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqPDtPdtSNivvs8sXDNPjgwktBibo-MIR)
Jujutau Kaisen playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqPDtPdtSNisvQfz_45ExcoJuLXgrChs1)

I watched this video about how modern culture's ruined Watchmen, (https://youtu.be/KtR-CQvUDxQ) and it fails to grasp not only Watchmen but superheroes in general. The guy acts like what makes Watchmen work is just because it's political and he thinks it makes superheroes look like assholes, which both simplifies what the book's appeal is and also confuses what it's trying to do with the superhero genre. This shit's rich is because he spends time berating fans for worshiping Rorschach while acting as if Rorschach's an evil character despite neither of those are correct. And then the video accuses modern comic culture of failing to understand Watchmen while only bringing up a couple of examples like Snyder films and Doomsday Clock, while ignoring plenty of other responses to Watchmen like Multiversity, Marvels, Kingdom Come, The Twelve, and countless other comics. Or even the HBO show. Heaps of this video are just poorly-researched tracts while acting like Watchmen's a sacred cow that few people understand or appreciate, when it's really one of the most accessible of Moore's books.

R.I.P. Kentaro Miura (https://www.cnet.com/news/kentaro-miura-the-creator-of-berserk-has-passed-away)

Man, this is such a shock to hear. Berserk will never be completed.  :(

Oh my god. No.

RIP

That's devastating to hear. I am far from caught up on Berserk, but even the chapters that I have read show the immense artistic and story-telling skill of Miura as an artist and writer. It's no wonder he was such a huge influence to so many creators. May he sincerely rest in piece.

(https://i.redd.it/e5zq5l7ia7071.png)

RIP Miura.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1zPojLWQAAaKx5.jpg)

Monster author Naoki Urasawa has started his own YouTube channel!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkIFOAoFm47XOAlJwTa6Ieg/videos

Gotta love how Urasawa jokingly mentions how disheartened he is by people asking him about his next work when it's already being published. I myself have love the first two volumes of Asadora! and have the third volume pre-ordered. It kind of astounds me that Urasawa can still be such a compelling writer even this late into his career.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I did pick One Piece back up for my re-read. A few years back I re-read the East Blue and Baroque Works sagas, but then for whatever reason stopped reading again. However, I had a re-surge in interest in the series again and since then have re-read through the Skypiea and Water Seven sagas, and have just started on Thriller Bark. It's almost absurd how much the earlier content holds up and even improves on a re-read given knowledge of later events. Whether he had them planned out or not, Oda does such an incredible job of inter-weaving various story threads throughout hundreds of chapters that you can't help but notice several clues seeded far earlier in the series that you know will pay off in big ways later given hindsight. What's more is that it actually has caused me to completely re-interpret several scenes as I re-read them. It really is a shame that nobody on this board could ever really find any appeal in One Piece (though, I completely understand it, as it's unique style isn't to everyone's liking), because it's one of the few series that has gone on for as long as it has and arguably gotten even better over time. To be more specific, it's not simply that it's story gets better as it goes along (in a general sense it does, though my personal favorite arcs are still some of the earlier ones), but rather that the longer it goes on and the more mysteries are uncovered, the more the overall story improves, including older arcs as well as Oda's ability to tell the story in later arcs with a more sophisticated and complicated story structure. At the same time, it still never completely forgets it's routes, which I like to describer as a Shonen mashed with Lord of the Rings and Looney Tunes. It's not a perfect series, but there genuinely isn't anything quite like it out there, IMO. It will leave a huge void in Shonen Jump's lineup whenever it inevitably ends (which, while still several years away, will definitely happen within this decade at it's current rate and given Oda's comments in recent interviews).

I've also been back to reading Fantastic Four again, and I'm now in the 160's where writers are still cycled around (though mostly it seems to go to Roy Thomas after Gerry Conway had a string of several issues), and it does at least feel like some stability has been restored to the title at this point. The original team is back together, Johnny Storm is back to the traditional blue costume, and the story arcs have more of a sense of cohesion to them rather than feeling like the writers are throwing a billion ideas at the wall and trying to see if any of them stick only to fumble their way into something barely resembling a conclusion and then recycling the entire process ad nauseum. Still, even with the improvement it does feel more like the title is now just trying to go back to replicate the Lee/Kirby-era magic but without the same level of creativity that they brought to the table as a duo. It's passable for the time, but pretty cookie-cutter stuff overall.

For the record, I don't plan to do this with any other superhero comic, but it is a personal experiment that I wanted to see through, so at least as far as FF Vol. 1 goes, I will remain committed to reading it in chronological order in terms of the main series publication. Again, though, I'm skipping most spin-off material and crossovers unless it's absolutely essential to the main run (like, I did skip The Human Torch solo series from the 60's, even though some of that material does get used in the main series, namely The Fifth Dimension). Really, though, at this point I'm just kind of slogging through the series to finally get to John Byrne's run, which is what I've really wanted to read for a while now given how much acclaim it has gotten.

I've just started reading Peter Tomasi's Superman run and I'm already hooked. I was originally going to wait until after I had read John Byrne's Superman run, but I managed to snag the new omnibus at a really good price and started with that. I'm already pretty hooked. I love the tone and style of this story, and it's immediately refreshing to read a story that treats Superman with respect after all of the evil Superman-type characters that have been thrown at us in recent media. While I enjoy some of that stuff, Superman himself is actually a pretty compelling character when written by someone who clearly actually likes that character.

I've also been reading Uzumaki by Junji Ito, which is pretty refreshing since I haven't read much in the way of horror manga before. This has a unique style and sensibility that could only work as a manga specifically which is a core part of it's appeal. It's pretty great if you're the type to appreciate the psychological and surreal aspects of horror as opposed to more intricate stories with a bit more logic applied to them. This one is planted firmly in the real of the weird and mysterious, which is pretty much what I wanted out of this title.

I'm also still in the middle of my One Piece re-read, about half-way through Thriller Bark, and I still love this arc. I never understood why it is commonly thought of as one of the lesser arcs by a majority of the fan-base. I think people tend to prefer the more "epic" story arcs with more plot progression for the core story-line of the series, but the whole theme and point of the series is about the adventure to get to the destination. I'd argue that these seemingly more "isolated" arcs (and I use that term loosely since even these still connect to the main story in big ways much later on) are all the more in the spirit of One Piece as an overall series. As for Thriller Bark, I just love the Tim Burton-esque style of the monsters, and how this is basically one big loving tribute to cheesy horror clichés. It's a really fun arc that really shows how creative Oda can be with the concepts that he takes from other forms of fiction and applies to his work with a unique twist of his own.

(https://64.media.tumblr.com/e0e11e5c9d9a8453a59b4c9eada10f31/1fafa288804ec556-ba/s500x750/6e2cb50c16d865a16cb197a5afa61d03a1224c73.png)

The Hellfire Gala's been fun to read, seeing Steve and Emma interact, Doom pissed off at psychic butterflies, and Deadpool trying to sneak his way into Krakoa. But I question why Beast is such an asshole now. There's a whole page in the newest issues with what amounts to his god complex manifesto, demanding his right to wiretap the world just to keep it safe. Someone at Marvel hates Beast for one reason or another. Years before this, I recall he was one of the characters who joined forces with Tony's Illuminati, or teamed up with the Inhumans even when he knew about the mutant genocide. Maybe I'm just too used to the Beast in the adaptations who was more of the astute, jovial foil to Logan's personality, but Charles is also portrayed a lot nicer in cartoons and films than he is in the comics, and the contrast there wasn't as jarring.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5EfF1kWYAYc7Fj?format=jpg&name=small)

Cool that Morrison's just sick of the "evil Superman" trend as we are. (https://www.cbr.com/superman-and-the-authority-grant-morrison-interview/)

I finally read the Hellfire Gala issues and I am honestly underwhelmed. I agree from a previous post from you that it's really out of character for Beast to be such a jerk and Professor X comes off as cold and mechanical. I don't like how he's being written at all these days. He used to have a good fatherly vibe to him but he now comes off like a robot. I also don't understand why Magneto was embracing Scarlet Witch and then it turns out she's dead now. This is too abrupt. I was also hoping to see more of Blink but she keeps getting pushed to the wayside.

I also find the art to be queasy in some issues though not as bad as when I saw Frank Quitely's art in New X-Men.
I am not sure if I will continue to read further X-book issues. Maybe after Onslaught Revelation, I will consider myself finished?

On the contrary, I think Charles' personality shift in this era's been very interesting to see, since the rest of the Marvel universe knows something's off about him if he can invite all these villainous mutants to his new empire while abandoning his old ways, turning the X-Men into something resembling a cult than a superhero team. I do miss the kindly Patrick Stewart mentor role he had in adaptations, but Charles represents a man who's finally been broken by the endless hunts and purges from humanity, and with the knowledge that humanity exterminating mutantkind is as inevitable as civilizations discovering fire, wants to break the cycle instead of fight another battle with his old enemies while preparing for challenging new threats. And that will lead to a man who's grown colder and distant to the students he befriended years ago.

It does disappoint me that Hickman's passing the title to Duggan and he won't be coming back until September to do Inferno, but I liked Duggan's Marauders so hopefully the change in writers won't change the quality.

Uzumaki is getting a coloring book. (https://twitter.com/VIZMedia/status/1413528553707216896)

Top 10 Marvel Comics (So Far):

10. Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment (Roger Stern)
9. Killmonger (Bryan Hill)
8. Moon Knight (Warren Ellis, Brian Wood, Cullen Bunn)
7. Spider-Man: Life Story (Chip Zdarsky)
6. Truth: Red, White, and Black (Robert Morales)
5. Journey Into Mystery (Kieron Gillen)
4. House of X/Powers of X (Johnathan Hickman)
3. The Mighty Thor (Walt Simonson)
2. Hawkeye (Matt Fraction)
1. Daredevil (Frank Miller)

Note that I am including his entire initial run, as well as his tie-in issues from other comics, and his second run with the Born Again story-line, as well as his stand-alone prequel The Man Without Fear in that number one spot. That, to me, is easily the quint-essential Marvel style of superhero storytelling at it's absolute best. Yes, I know that Miller has had some pretty shitty hot-takes on race and other subject-matter in his later years, but I'm the kind who tends to separate art from the artist unless it's genuinely impossible to do so. In that regard, it's similar to how I would still consider Rurouni Kenshin to be my favorite Shonen Jump manga despite Watsuki being into child pornography. I mean, I fucking hate it, and it makes me sick, but I can't change how I feel about the actual work itself (though I completely understand if others feel differently). Also, I'm only including completed works/runs on here, thus I didn't consider Zdarsky's current Daredevil run or Ewing's Immortal Hulk run (which I'm not sure if it's still ongoing, but I'm certainly not caught up to it either way).

Honorable Mentions: Ms. Marvel (the original 19-issue run by G. Willow Wilson), Thor: God of Thunder (Jason Aaron), Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Roger Langridge), Thor (J. Michael Straczynski), Fantastic Four (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby), Annihilation (various writers and artists; and yes I'm including all of the tie-in material rather than just the 6-issue event itself), Secret Wars (Johnathan Hickman; this can potentially make it into my top 10 once I get around to reading all of his material leading up to this event; I've already read some of his Avengers stuff and will be looking to read his Fantastic Four run as well), Captain America (Ed Brubaker; again, I need to read more of his stuff to really rank it, but I loved The Winter Soldier and it's been too long since I last read The Death of Captain America), Captain America: White (Jeff Loeb and Tim Sale), Spider-Man: Blue (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale), Doctor Strange: The Oath (Brian K. Vaughan), Nextwave: Agents of HATE (Warren Ellis), Uncanny X-Force (Rick Remender), Venom (Donny Cates)

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of other titles, but that's my list for now. As usual, I fully expect it to change over the coming months to years as I read more and more content and acquire new favorites. I had started reading Punisher Max by Garth Enis a few years back and really liked what I read, but hadn't gotten back to it since. At some point I'll do a full read-through of that series and it could potentially be a favorite.

At a later point I plan to do my updated DC list, and I want to do one for Shonen Jump as well, but I'm still reading through a bunch of series (both new and old), so I may not get around to that one for a while.

Top 15 DC Comics (So Far):

15. Superman Smashes the Klan (Gene Luen Yang)
14. Flex Mentallo (Grant Morrison)
13. Batman: Ego (Darwyn Cooke)
12. Green Lantern/Green Arrow (Dennis O'Neil)
11. The Golden Age (James Robinson)
10. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (Alan Moore)
9. Green Lantern: Emerald Knight (Keith Giffen)
8. Batman: The Black Mirror (Scott Snyder)
7. Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil (Jeff Smith)
6. Batman: Year One (Frank Miller)
5. All-Star Superman (Grant Morrison)
4. Justice League International (Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis)
3. Animal Man (Grant Morrison)
2. Starman (James Robinson)
1. The New Frontier (Darwyn Cooke)

I'm excluding certain titles even if they technically are part of the DC Universe, simply based on how they are largely their own thing despite being under that publisher. For example, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman does technically take place in the DC continuity (and yes it is the main continuity, as early issues directly reference stuff that was going on in JLI at the time), but it quickly evolved into it's own thing to the point that it's easy to forget that it has any relation to DC other than technically being based on an older property of theirs. Same with Watchmen and various other titles that are under the DC or Vertigo imprint but don't really involve themselves in the larger Universe. That can be part of it's own list, probably. While something like Animal Man is technically a Vertigo title, it is still tied into the greater DC Universe, so I decided to count it. Also, some iconic titles I have started but have yet to finish and thus cannot rank them yet, including George Perez's Wonder Woman run, Ostrander's Suicide Squad run, Tomasi's Superman run, Tom King's Mister Miracle mini-series, and at least a few others, so naturally this list is still subject to change. And yes, I also technically haven't finished Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol despite loving it. I have all three volumes but I have to start from scratch one of these days and finish it start to finish (and on that note, I also just started his JLA run).

Also, I extended the list to 15 as opposed to just listing a shit-ton of honorable mentions like with the Marvel list. I could still do that here but I don't feel like taking the time to do so at the moment. Eventually, I could probably extend both lists out to a top 20, anyways.

These are both really good lists! It's been too long since I've read what I have from your choices, and I need to get to a lot of these.

It's funny, I think a long time ago, you would look to me for super hero book recs, but now I'm doing the same with you. ;)

Quote from: Avaitor on July 24, 2021, 10:04:45 PMThese are both really good lists! It's been too long since I've read what I have from your choices, and I need to get to a lot of these.

It's funny, I think a long time ago, you would look to me for super hero book recs, but now I'm doing the same with you. ;)

Haha, I probably haven't read as much as it seems like I have, but everything adds up over time I suppose. You still definitely have me beat when it comes to classics, though. I actually just referenced your old Marvel list to see which other old stories were worth looking into (still working my way through classic FF, and I'm about 170+ issues in).

Currently, I tend to get most of my recommendations from certain YouTubers or Dr. Insomniac from some of what he posts about.

Overall, though, I've definitely been more into reading (comics, manga, novels, etc.) than watching, so I've barely seen any new shows or anime. Mostly if I watch something these days it's a movie.

Good lists.

Quote from: Dr. Ensatsu-ken on July 24, 2021, 03:46:30 PM
Note that I am including his entire initial run, as well as his tie-in issues from other comics, and his second run with the Born Again story-line, as well as his stand-alone prequel The Man Without Fear in that number one spot. That, to me, is easily the quint-essential Marvel style of superhero storytelling at it's absolute best. Yes, I know that Miller has had some pretty shitty hot-takes on race and other subject-matter in his later years, but I'm the kind who tends to separate art from the artist unless it's genuinely impossible to do so.

I know this isn't a popular opinion at all, sympathize with people who felt hurt by his later comics, and I still don't like any of Miller's recent work, but after he apologized for many of his remarks and The Holy Terror, I think his views are more muddled than most critics say and he's tried to make up for his past mistakes. Which makes it easier to praise his best works without pointing out a caveat compared to, say, Ellis or Loeb.

Yeah, that's a fair enough point. I'll be honest in that I hadn't followed much of Ellis and Loeb's horrible treatment of women and people of other races respectively, but what I said about Miller applies there as well. If the work itself is good I will acknowledge it. That doesn't excuse the people behind it, though.

In Loeb's case I specifically only tend to like his collaborations with Tim Sale, as I've noticed his other works (IMO) tend to range from mediocre to terrible. As for Hush, I think it's alright, but never quite got the hype. Ellis being a creep does sting a lot more for me personally, though, given how genuinely talented he has been as a writer.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on July 25, 2021, 12:08:15 AMGood lists.

Thanks!

I always thought Hush was kinda crap. It has wonderful art, but the story's like if someone did a cover album of Batman's greatest hits up to that point. It's too much of a "Who's Who?" of Batman characters that it feels like a Batman recap but with a villain plopped at the end so they can pretend there's a story.

And yeah, Ellis being an asshole hurts, since similar to Whedon who also fell out of grace last year, he acted like he was helping outsiders break into the industry and that he was trying to break the old norms. And at many times, he did help great writers like Gillen and Fraction find a way in. A lot of the best writers working either at DC/Marvel or on their indie stuff used to be at Ellis' old forum before they had their first big hit, so it's a shame there's a dark veil around that legacy now.

Great lists Dr. E-k! I'm more familiar with the titles on your DC list, but I definitely jive with your choices. I really want to get around to reading more Marvel and DC stuff, so I'm definitely gonna use your lists as a reference for what to prioritize checking out!

Quote from: LumRanmaYasha on July 25, 2021, 09:56:57 PMGreat lists Dr. E-k! I'm more familiar with the titles on your DC list, but I definitely jive with your choices. I really want to get around to reading more Marvel and DC stuff, so I'm definitely gonna use your lists as a reference for what to prioritize checking out!

Thanks! I'm still trying to get around to a lot of other titles myself, including some classics like Craven's Last Hunt and Swamp Thing, among many other titles. So my list will constantly keep changing.

I also forgot to mention Gene Luen Yang's Shang-Chi mini-series in my honorable mentions for Marvel. It's not necessarily a top-tier story or anything like that, but it's a solid foundation to what I believe was meant to be a new jumping on point for a full serialization going forward.

Also, once it completes, Zdarsky's Daredevil is sure to be one of my favorites. It has been consistently excellent from the start.

Also, I completely forgot about Superior Spider-Man by Dan Slott. That one might actually edge out Life Story for me, but I may edit it onto to the list later.

A new chapter of Berserk will be published posthumously. (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-08-11/kentarou-miura-berserk-manga-gets-new-chapter/.176104)

Despite some rumors last week, Hickman's still doing Marvel after Inferno. (https://ew.com/books/inferno-jonathan-hickman-last-x-men-comic/) He's just writing the events instead of monthlies.

Also:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9A4XnAVgAIiVEQ?format=png&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9p4v-rWQAYn6Sa?format=jpg)

God, I don't like this. Making Mephisto the chessmaster of all of Spider-Man's misery. It diminishes the rest of his villains and turns them all into pawns.

How did Mephisto resurrect after getting killed by Blackheart and which issue did he come back? That is something that's been in the back of my mind but I can't find an answer for it.

Current Marvel is doing a good job making me not want to give them more money.

Farewell, Comixology. (https://www.cbr.com/comixology-new-app-shutters-external-website)

Since Spencer's run is hinging entirely on "Will he retcon OMD?!? Tune in next chapter!", it leaves me to consider for all the shit OMD did to change Peter's life, why didn't it bring back Gwen if they wanted to bring him back to square one? SSM, Emma Stone, Spider-Gwen, and Gwenpool have all proven there are ways to make Gwen an interesting character instead of just Peter's girlfriend, and I've seen more criticism of "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" than praise lately.

I'm still on my One Piece re-read/watch (was re-reading the manga but switched to the fan-edit for the anime with the post time-skip material), and am currently back in the middle of Whole Cake Island. It's funny because this arc is still relatively recent in the grand scheme of things, only completing a few years ago, but I still forgot so many details from it which tends to happen given how dense and layered the story gets as it goes along.

I really do have to stop and kind of acknowledge just how incredible of a writer Oda is. He has really used the medium of manga and long-form storytelling to craft something that goes beyond just being another battle shounen series (it is definitely that, but only in one aspect), as it also unquestionably qualifies itself as a genuine fantasy epic. I have known how good the series is for a long time after I got over my pre-conceived biases against it well over a decade ago at this point, but it wasn't until going through so much of it once again with the foresight of the later story arcs as well as within a relatively short amount of time (as in a few months to go through nearly a thousand chapters/one hundred volumes worth of material) that I really appreciated how insanely well put together this story is. It's not an exaggeration when people compare it to the likes Tolkien's Middle Earth or Martin's ASOIAF or Jordan's Wheel of Time, among other notable series. Not so much in terms of the actual content itself but more so in regard to the scope of the world being presented and the complexity of the narrative and themes that it presents as the story continues to unfold.

I believe it works on two levels, as the early material is very much in the realm of what you expect from the genre, but with a more humorous and cartoon-style take that doesn't take itself too seriously, or so it seems, while it seeds more serious subtext and complex narratives into the mix as the story progresses (all while still never completely losing site of it's original tone). I've seen some people who are more inclined to reading novels describe One Piece as absurdism and make the analogy of this being to battle shounen manga what Terry Pratchett's Discworld is to fantasy stories. While that's a very broad generalization, it's not unfounded as One Piece does purposely take a very over-the-top tone, even for it's genre, and is unapologetically silly in it's overall presentation in a somewhat Looney Tunes-esque fashion. But even within that strange combo of style and genre, Oda manages to slowly but gradually infuse more and more layers of nuance to the themes of the story, and most impressively shows so much forethought in how the story unfolds. Regardless of whether he plans out material in advance or not (there are several cases of both in his story), it almost always works in a way that the story beats feel natural and reveals make sense like they were always meant to be there and the clues were always there. The series has gained a strong reputation for how several future characters, moments, and entire story arcs are foreshadowed years (sometimes over a decade) in advance of publication release, and it's insane how some of it is legitimately planned out that way, while in other cases Oda would come up with ideas on the fly but integrate them in so well that you couldn't tell the difference.

Most notably the post time-skip material is so much more effective for me on a re-read now that I see the big picture, and can appreciate the through-line of the story when I'm reading it all at once rather than week-to-week. I still stand by my opinion that Fishman Island and Punk Hazard make-up possibly the weakest stretch of chapters in the series so far, but even those have a lot more strong material in them than I initially gave them credit for. I also give them credit for having to do a lot of leg-work in setting up a bunch of new plot-lines from scratch after Oda cashed in his chips by wrapping up several previous story arcs and plot threads leading up to just before the time-skip. Thanks to that, the last several years of material up to the current chapters have been all the stronger for it now that they can pay-off all of that build-up.

I suppose I felt the need to make this post as my own self-acknowledgement that this series truly is one of a kind. I already liked it plenty for a long time now. It's not perfect, and I have my issues with it, but a lot of it's faults feel almost trivial in comparison to it's strengths and what it accomplishes in the grand scheme of things. Part of my enhanced perspective on it comes from everything else that I've read and watched since originally starting the series. I've read more fantasy novels, as well as quite a few manga and comic books, and it really does stand out as something that I have not seen any other author do on this level when it comes to long-form stories. It also makes me realize that when this story eventually reaches it's conclusion, while I am excited to see how it wraps up, I will also be genuinely sad to see the journey end and know that there won't be anything quite like it to experience again.

Another in the long line of "Hey, wasn't Logan a cool movie? We should do something like that." (https://www.polygon.com/comics/22678268/buffy-the-last-vampire-slayer-comic-boom-studios-post-apocalyptic-spike?utm_campaign=polygon&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter)

It's funny. I was remembering the Dark Horse comics ending the other week and thinking how dumb it was. I had problems with the show ending, but that's more due to pacing problems than anything, while I look back on reading Season 12 and thinking "Wow, Joss doesn't know how to write his own characters anymore". And I haven't followed what Boom's been doing lately, so I can't comment on that, but that DH run was all over the place in quality. Some issues and arcs that stood next to the best episodes of the show, and then shit like Xander and Dawn becoming a couple and recycling the same "growing up and being an adult is hard!" metaphor the show and Angel already did but without doing a thing to freshen it up. It really shows how much the actors contributed to the show, since a lot of the best TV shows have the lead actors performing as if they're reacting against the script than flowing with it. And without them, when a TV show decides to do tie-in books or comics, these characters often come off as shadows of their real selves unless a writer can successfully drag the story into a new medium. And Buffy struggles to do that because too many of the show writers came onto the comic and forgot writing for a comic character is not the same as writing for an actor, while the writers who didn't work on the show didn't shake up the formula and often wrote traditional Buffy stories instead of breaking new ground.

I met the writer of the mainline Buffy book for Boom, and she's very cool. I haven't read her run yet, but I am hoping that some fresh blood with someone more experienced with comic writing will do something different with the characters. Because yeah, I wasn't impressed with what I've read from Dark Horse's canon run, either.

As for Old Woman Buffy, idk, it's not the worst idea. I'm more surprised that Disney hasn't tried to eat up Boom's contract and bring Buffy over to Marvel yet.

I don't think Disney cares what publisher Buffy's on. To them, it's just a show that ended 18 years ago, and all attempts to bring back the IP end up in development hell. And the comic probably makes enough money for Boom to keep making it, but not so much that Disney would notice and want the rights.

I guess, but the moment that Dark Horse's rights to Alien and Predator expired, Disney latched them up. You'd think that Buffy wouldn't be too far behind in terms of popularity as those.

But that could have been more of an incentive from Marvel, who may not be as interested in Buffy. Disney is still having other publishers take on Scrooge and their other legacy characters, after all.

And if it's Marvel's decision, then it's a strange one since they were the ones who hired Whedon to direct their Avengers movies and write some X-Men comics. Of course, that was then, and Whedon's reputation wasn't soured yet, so maybe different minds are at play there. Maybe it's the fact Alien and Predator have new shows and movies in production, while the Buffyverse's been dormant on TV for a very long time (remember when Ripper was a sure thing?).

Now I'm remembering more shit from the DH comics, like pregnant robot Buffy, Buffy and Angel having sex in the air and making a sentient universe, Xander imagining a ghost Anya haunt him, Spike's spaceship, Harmony suddenly gaining a 100 IQ points, the Scooby Gang fighting a knockoff of Sarah Huckabee Sanders wearing samurai armor. I can kind of appreciate the comics for answering "What if Buffy never ended and kept airing on the CW like it was Supernatural or something?" Because in a way, they are significant to the cultural narrative of the franchise by way of showing just how the Buffyverse struggles to adapt to the times, watching a paragon of 90s network TV rough it through the late 00s and 10s while its creator falls from grace. Similar to Star Wars' or Doctor Who's expanded universe, Buffy's EU is a roller coaster that I wish more of the show's fans talked about.

Quote from: Markness on August 28, 2021, 02:31:39 PM
How did Mephisto resurrect after getting killed by Blackheart and which issue did he come back? That is something that's been in the back of my mind but I can't find an answer for it.

Could someone please answer this for me or where should I go to find an answer?

Quote from: Markness on September 19, 2021, 04:56:20 PM

Quote from: Markness on August 28, 2021, 02:31:39 PM
How did Mephisto resurrect after getting killed by Blackheart and which issue did he come back? That is something that's been in the back of my mind but I can't find an answer for it.

Could someone please answer this for me or where should I go to find an answer?

I had to google it myself, and according to the Marvel wiki, in Aaron's Avengers run:

Quote
Following the defeat of the moon god at the hands of the Avengers, Mephisto found he was unable to resurrect himself through his usual means, and - taking on the form of a demonic black dog - began devouring the family members of the individuals who had made deals with him in the past in order to gather enough energy to resurrect himself, assisted by Howard Stark.[17]

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on September 19, 2021, 05:07:50 PM

Quote from: Markness on September 19, 2021, 04:56:20 PM

Quote from: Markness on August 28, 2021, 02:31:39 PM
How did Mephisto resurrect after getting killed by Blackheart and which issue did he come back? That is something that's been in the back of my mind but I can't find an answer for it.

Could someone please answer this for me or where should I go to find an answer?

I had to google it myself, and according to the Marvel wiki, in Aaron's Avengers run:

Quote
Following the defeat of the moon god at the hands of the Avengers, Mephisto found he was unable to resurrect himself through his usual means, and - taking on the form of a demonic black dog - began devouring the family members of the individuals who had made deals with him in the past in order to gather enough energy to resurrect himself, assisted by Howard Stark.[17]

Good enough. I've pretty much accepted that when it comes to continuity in Marvel, it's best to just roll with it.

Dr. Stone is entering its final arc. (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-09-26/dr-stone-manga-enters-final-arc-takes-1-week-break-so-authors-can-do-research/.177836)

EDIT: R.I.P. Takao Saito (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-09-29/golgo-13-manga-creator-takao-saito-passes-away-at-84/.177952)

Nichijou is back. (https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1450874197190881289)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FEXf1TRXMAMrW9j?format=png&name=small)
Shame.

Dark Horse might explore a company sale. (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2021-12-04/bloomberg-dark-horse-weighs-options-that-could-include-sale/.180274)

Kieron Gillen compiled a Spotify playlist for his upcoming X-Men run. (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1slXJJdxhqg2CxDKQHepog?si=Cnu3TSPmQMGoGXUVh9vZTQ&nd=1)

Quote from: Daikun on December 04, 2021, 05:50:03 PMDark Horse might explore a company sale. (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2021-12-04/bloomberg-dark-horse-weighs-options-that-could-include-sale/.180274)

They've been bought by Embracer Group. (https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1473299974259720204)

Unless Dark Horse actually finishes publishing the rest of Eden It's An Endless World! (Doubtful at this point.), the most likely last product I will buy from them is their translation of the latest Berserk volume.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJFXFJ9WUAMm-fJ?format=png&name=large)

Why are we getting Flashpoint 2? (https://twitter.com/CBR/status/1482019766466457603)

I read this article a few days ago regarding the limitations of Batman and if there's anywhere new to say with Bruce Wayne as a character, or if writers are stuck to replaying the old favorites. (https://www.comicbookherald.com/batman-swallowing-his-own-cape-the-modern-caped-crusaders-narrative-autocannibalism/) I kind of disagree, since these things usually go in waves. It's easy to look at everything post-2012, when Nolan ended the Dark Knight movies, Morrison ended their Batman run, Brave and the Bold at the time recently wrapped up, and see a phase where creators throughout the mediums are struggling on new things to do with the character. But even if it takes a while, characters like Batman always eventually find a visionary to shake the status quo and squeeze new life.

Though I'd argue a character like Spider-Man is going through these issues. When was the last time someone successfully added anything new to Peter Parker's life, instead of just throwing more Spider-people into his supporting cast?

Shueisha has launched a lawsuit against CloudFlare. (https://www.shueisha.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/statement2022Febfainal.pdf)

R.I.P. Mia Ikumi, author of Tokyo Mew Mew (https://twitter.com/mew_mew_new/status/1503206111729446915)

She died of a brain hemorrhage.

A new manga subscription service has launched called Azuki. (https://www.azuki.co)

Azuki's almost a year old, it's been around since last June.  :sweat: But yeah, it is a great service and app to read Kodansha, Star Fruit Books, Sozo Comics, and Glacier Bay Books titles on. And especially more reliable and less buggy than Crunchyroll Manga to read Kodansha's simulpubs.

Goodbye, Eri is available for free on Shonen Jump's website. (https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/goodbye-eri)

So Ram V and Zdarsky are writing Detective Comics and Batman respectively at the same time this Summer. Batman comics are gonna get really exciting soon.

Boycott Seven Seas Entertainment.
https://twitter.com/t_orleskv/status/1531661645658763264

The Union is not calling for a boycott at this time (https://twitter.com/_UW7S/status/1531644542427901952), but yeah, it's a really bad look for Jason DeAngelis and other higher-ups at SS that they'd rather pay lawyers and union busters probably more than double what they would spend just increasing all their employees' wages.  >:(

Berserk will indeed continue.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/375827753402105858/983695990966075442/1654575049225.jpg)

Kodansha has teamed with Humble Bundle. (https://twitter.com/hermanos/status/1535248272138199041) All proceeds go to the Trevor Project.

Found a recent Top 71 DC Comics poll list.

Spoiler

(https://i.redd.it/reigyeqzqa791.png)

[close]

I was going to say I'm surprised by all the Wally love, but I suppose his endless shafting across all DC media lately's given Wally fans a huge push.

With everything Ezra Miller has going against him lately, DC would be smart to push Wally after the upcoming Flash movie.

Surprised they didn't use Wally in the first place to differentiate themselves from the show, or at least use Bart. Ezra's Barry always felt more like Bart than Barry to me.

So glad to see both Animal Man and Starman in relatively high spots on that list.

R.I.P. Kazuki Takahashi, creator of Yu-Gi-Oh! (https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2022/07/07-1/yu-gi-oh-creator-kazuki-takahashi-passes-away-in-diving-accident)

A tragic loss, for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh! was a big part of my pre-teen years, and I enjoyed reading the first few volumes a couple of years ago when I found them for cheap. He left behind a hell of a legacy.

Love Hina author Ken Akamatsu has entered the realm of Japanese politics and recently won his election. He's the first manga artist to do so.
He's also enacting some interesting policies regarding video game preservation.

https://nichegamer.com/ken-akamatsu-task-force-classic-games

Junji Ito is now making NFTs. (https://twitter.com/TOMIEbyJunjiIto/status/1575734600902488065)

ANN has been acquired by Kadokawa (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2022-11-01/kadokawa-announces-acquisition-of-anime-news-network-media-business/.191434)

Wow. Um, ok.

So, while I've personally never cared for the age-old debate between whether Marvel or DC has had the better output (mostly because it's a moot point to idolize one corporate giant over another who by all accounts were complete dicks to their actual creators and artists), I do think that it can be somewhat interesting to compare them during specific eras. While the 60's and 70's definitely tend to be associated with Marvel being the more dominant brand both in terms of sales and critical reception from fans (though I'd argue DC had its hits with writers like Dennis O'Neil and Steve Englehart, as well as artists like Neal Adams), it's interesting how I don't see DC's post-COIE era being brought up more often. While Marvel still had the dominant market share, I'd say that having read a decent amount of comics from both from that era, DC more frequently had the better output from an artistic standpoint, IMO. A lot of the relaunches were actually quite successful between the mid-80's to early 90's, and we got more experimental stuff as well, whether it be stuff like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Watchmen, or Grant Morrison's Animal Man run, among other titles. However, I have read or am currently reading several other titles from around that era, and many of them still hold up remarkably well, IMO, and feel ahead of their time in many ways. We got Ostrander's Suicide Squad run, which essentially modernized the team and is still largely influential in terms of how we see them today, as well as his stuff with Hawkworld in the early 90's. Booster Gold got a great mini-run, and we also got John Byrne's Superman run, George Perez's Wonder Woman run, Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol in the early 90's, and another one of my all-time favorites in Keith Giffen and J. M. Demateis's excellent run on Justice Leage International, which is still my favorite team book of all time.

Marvel had great titles and stories of it's own during that time, but from what I've read they weren't really doing much new either, and were kind of just sticking to their guns of formulaic story-telling that had worked for them in the past. It's kind of like that era's version of the MCU by Phase Three, where they had perfected their style, but they were also kind of relying a bit too heavily on it to the point that it was starting to feel a bit old even though when done well by better writers and artists, it was still undeniably entertaining.

Anyways, that's just my observation and personal opinion, specifically regarding that era between both publishers. That said, I'm hardly an expert on the subject and not as well-read as others would be, so I could find that my opinion would change were I to expose myself to even more titles. Who knows.

I do think DC was doing more interesting things come the mid 80's and into the 90's, as well as allowing Vertigo to blossom. It's telling that this was around the time that Marvel was going bankrupt, although they definitely had their commercial successes as well, like how anything with an X would break records, or the height of Venom-mania.

Yeah, whenever I read about comics criticism, there's never really much in the way of praise or interest for 90s Marvel besides Infinity Gauntlet, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man work, or Marvels. Or anything X-Men, but that's a given. It wasn't a coincidence that the 90s was the point when Marvel almost collapsed and they had to sell the film rights to all their well-known characters. And you can definitely tell much of the company's 00s decisions like Ultimate and Marvel Knights were reactions to that ennui.

Quote from: Avaitor on January 07, 2023, 02:29:08 PMI do think DC was doing more interesting things come the mid 80's and into the 90's, as well as allowing Vertigo to blossom. It's telling that this was around the time that Marvel was going bankrupt, although they definitely had their commercial successes as well, like how anything with an X would break records, or the height of Venom-mania.

To be fair, the Marvel bankruptcy was more around the mid-90's, and DC wasn't doing too hot either during that stretch of time. It was a bad time for comics in the United States in general, and it wasn't just due to perceived poor quality (there were good comics during even this time in the history of the medium, after all), but also had a lot to do with how the publishers (especially Marvel) were conducting themselves and how they were producing their products to capitalize on the speculator period of people trying to buy up issues of comics in hopes of reselling them at a higher value several years later. Marvel became far more focused on catering to that market without any regard for the quality of their output that it ended up turning a lot of their core fans away and once the bubble burst on the speculator market, that's when they felt the effects and crashed HARD. Oddly enough, DC actually went through a similar period back in the 70's, but didn't get hit nearly as badly as Marvel did in the 90's.

It's funny, because I have learned quite a lot about this period of time through the natural osmosis of seeing it brought up countless times from various articles and content creators on YouTube that I have followed over the years. I never specifically set out to research it but couldn't help but learn a ton about it due to how big of a deal it was in the history of Marvel as a company and in the comic book medium at large. That and the death of EC Comics in the 50's in conjunction with the birth of the Comics Code Authority are topics that I have absorbed a lot of information about over time.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on January 07, 2023, 02:34:58 PMYeah, whenever I read about comics criticism, there's never really much in the way of praise or interest for 90s Marvel besides Infinity Gauntlet, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man work, or Marvels. Or anything X-Men, but that's a given. It wasn't a coincidence that the 90s was the point when Marvel almost collapsed and they had to sell the film rights to all their well-known characters. And you can definitely tell much of the company's 00s decisions like Ultimate and Marvel Knights were reactions to that ennui.

Wasn't Heroes Reborn also kind of an early attempt at trying to soft reboot their long-established IPs? I ask that question genuinely because I've never read any of the comics from that brief period, but I've seen it brought up that way before.

Oddly enough, I think what saved Marvel at least as far as the comics are concerned were the fresh takes on their classic characters during the mid 2000's to early 2010's, like with Ed Brubaker on Captain America or Warren Ellis on various titles, including Iron Man and Moon Knight (Nextwave was great, but I don't think it was a big hit at the time or anything like that). And whether you like it or not, I don't think that you can deny that writers like Bendis and Millar were a big proponent of this as well. As much as I don't care for Civil War as a comic-book event, it's undeniable that it had a big impact on readers at the time and helped drum up a lot of interest in Marvel comics again. The Ultimates Universe was also initially successful, but I think that those other titles in the main Universe really probably helped bring in a lot of readers again

Quote from: Dr. Ensatsu-ken on January 07, 2023, 02:46:09 PM
Wan't Heroes Reborn also kind of an early attempt at trying to soft reboot their long-established IPs? I ask that question genuinely because I've never read any of the comics from that brief period, but I've seen it brought up that way before.

Yeah, though its legacy seems to amount to little more than that one Liefeld drawing of Captain America. The one with the hideous pectoral proportions.

And with Bendis and Millar, I've got tons of gripes with them as writers, but they know how to make event comics feel like events for better or worse, like in a Michael Bay sense. Civil War was awful, but it got people who otherwise didn't read comics talking about it.

Knew it. Morrison's back at DC, if just for a oneshot. (https://twitter.com/CBR/status/1635310954488516611)

And a tweet reminded me that while they haven't been upfront about it, Morrison made quite a few jabs at Superman Rebirth in their later DC work, some more lighthearted than others. (https://twitter.com/DavidMann95/status/1635372918627786752)

Kodansha is launching its own manga app on May 10. (https://teaser.kmanga.kodansha.com)

MAL has launched MyMangaList (https://mxj.myanimelist.net/readthismanga/2023/try-manga)

Spoiler

(https://i.redd.it/deja-vu-1994-2023-at-twitter-v0-ccpxchc3ia0b1.jpg?s=84f2b9acce2a0a0fd213ce33d304f2fbd15baa6f)

[close]

So how long until Charles resurrects her?

November.

Been looking at all the reception toward the recent ASM run, and it's interesting seeing the few defenders insisting that it's great aside from offing Kamala, and the fandom won't accept change. Of course, some of those same defenders are the ones who think Heroes in Crisis was a misunderstood gem and aging up Jon was a good idea, so YMMV.

It does strike me how much of a deep, parasocial connection Spider-Man fans have with Peter and MJ getting together. Enough that I saw people say they'll watch Spider-Verse 2 purely just so they can watch something where the two are married and have a daughter. You can usually gauge how loathed a Spider-Man story is based on how much it interferes in that relationship. And I've seen the people who like the run insist looking at a story like that is unhealthy, comparing it to judging a work's quality purely on how much it panders to shippers, which I understand, but it's still so messy.

Anyway, Strange Brain Parts made a funny video about the lightning rod of the whole arc.

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on June 02, 2023, 08:47:50 PMBeen looking at all the reception toward the recent ASM run, and it's interesting seeing the few defenders insisting that it's great aside from offing Kamala, and the fandom won't accept change. Of course, some of those same defenders are the ones who think Heroes in Crisis was a misunderstood gem and aging up Jon was a good idea, so YMMV.

It does strike me how much of a deep, parasocial connection Spider-Man fans have with Peter and MJ getting together. Enough that I saw people say they'll watch Spider-Verse 2 purely just so they can watch something where the two are married and have a daughter. You can usually gauge how loathed a Spider-Man story is based on how much it interferes in that relationship. And I've seen the people who like the run insist looking at a story like that is unhealthy, comparing it to judging a work's quality purely on how much it panders to shippers, which I understand, but it's still so messy.

Anyway, Strange Brain Parts made a funny video about the lightning rod of the whole arc.

I wonder how this run will stack up against the upcoming manga of Doctor Octopus getting Isekai'd into the body of a Japanese school girl (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-05-29/spider-man-across-the-spider-verse-film-gets-manga-spinoff-about-doc-ock-in-schoolgirl-body/.198587), which is not quite the Superior Spider-man sequel that I was expecting.

Probably as well as that one Batman manga where Joker babysits a baby Bruce. Or the one where Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are schoolgirls. (https://www.momentofmoore.com/post/7986888069/not-an-imaginary-story-alan-moore-and-neil-gaiman)

Though it is annoying how the Spider-Man movies and games are all doing these wonderful things with the character and his world, while the comics are stuck in this rut. Shame Zdarsky said he has no interest in ASM, and nobody's apparently thought of throwing Ewing on to do Immortal Spider-Man or something.

R.I.P. John Romita, Sr. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/john-romita-sr-dead-marvel-artist-1235515094)

RIP Keith Giffen (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/keith-giffen-dead-blue-beetle-and-rocket-raccoon-1235616096/)

So, this is yet another one of those times where I'll come out and insist that more of you guys who aren't should really try and get into One Piece. The series has been on a constant streak of excellent material for the last few years (since Whole Cake Island, IMO), and it's absolutely insane to me how Oda keeps things this interesting over 1,000 chapters in. If the length is what scares you, I should say that it's really not as much of marathon as you might think since the writing is not necessarily that dense (though it gets a bit more wordy in later arcs). For the most part, you could down an entire volume in under an hour, and that's coming from a relatively slow reader. Even the more verbose parts of the manga still wouldn't take as much time to read through as a single issue of most comic books since it still tends to be less wordy than those. While it is a shonen at it's core, it has battles as creative as anything from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and the actual story-telling is on par with some of the best manga out there, IMO, granted it does take some time for Oda to reach that skill level as an author, so don't expect it to be excellent right away.

Honestly, I'd say the best way to handle this series' length is to take it one saga at a time. A saga usually tends to last around 100-ish chapters on average, with some being shorter and other stretching longer, but by consuming it that way it hardly feels that long anymore. Just take breaks in-between each one if you feel like you want to try other stuff, but I think past a certain point the series will really just hook you and you will want to read more just to find out what happens next, like any good serialization would make you want to do.

On the comic book side of things, I finally decided to sit down and start reading Brian Michael Bendis's entire run on Ultimate Spider-Man aside from the Miles Morales era which I have already read, what with Hickman now being the one to revive that series. And here's the thing: I avoided this series for a long time simply because I know a lot of people who aren't particularly fond of Bendis as a writer. Indeed, the few things of his that I have read have ranged from OK to pretty bad, but to be fair it was only small bits and pieces of other random comic book runs.

So, having read the first 10-issues so far with a fresh perspective and no nostalgic bias for this series, I can say....it mostly falls into that aformentioned "OK" camp of Bendis's work. However, I feel generous so I will say as a compliment that I can already clearly see why this series got so popular. Bendis actually does a legitimately good job of streamlining his story-telling to make it extremely easy to follow, and while his decompression style may be a turn-off for some, it actually helps to keep the material from feeling too dense which I think would usually scare off younger readers or those not well-versed with the style of western super-hero comics. His dialogue is pretty cringe, but to be fair I'm not sure if it would have come off as more natural at the time it was originally released, and to be even more fair it's not like a lot of the comics I like from earlier decades aren't equally as guilty of awkward dialogue (though those were clearly not trying to have the characters sound realistic, in their own defense). In many ways, he reminds of of someone like Masashi Kishimoto with Naruto, at least pre time-skip Naruto, in that the writing isn't necessarily all that good, but it is simplistic in way that each author uses to their benefit to showcase cool things that would grab the attention of a less experienced reader and then keep them hooked with themes that they could relate to.

I kind of see Bendis from that era as Marvel's equivalent to what Geoff Johns was for DC. Both seemed to have their hands in tons of series, and while both had their duds, they mostly saw success through a very safe, stream-lined approach to writing their stories. They tend to lack depth and mostly repackage old ideas in a more watered down fashion, but once again to their credit, managed to do so in a way to keep a fairly decent-sized base of readers sticking with their stories on a consistent basis for a fairly long time throughout their careers.

In fact, it's because of how easy it is to read through this material that, even though I'm not all that wowed by what I'm reading so far, I would find it relativel easy to make it through this run at a few issues a night so long as it doesn't do anythig monumentally stupid for entire consecutive story arcs (and yes, I already know about Ultimatum, but from what I understand Ultimate Spider-Man only loosely ties into that).

Quote from: Dr. Insomniac on October 12, 2023, 12:11:16 AMRIP Keith Giffen (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/keith-giffen-dead-blue-beetle-and-rocket-raccoon-1235616096/)

We're unfortunately getting to that time where many of the unique voices that brought us classic comic books from the 60's to the 80's and even beyond in some cases, are getting up there in age. Sad to see him go, of course, and his JLI run with J. M. Dematteis will forever be among my favorite DC comics.

At least he took his end in stride.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8MrCnPa8AABxmi?format=png&name=900x900)

And while I'm not making promises, I'm almost sure one day or another, maybe when the series is nearing its final chapters or after it wraps up, I'll end up speedrunning through One Piece. Kinda like when the Attack on Titan anime reaching the endgame convinced me to go through all of that and see what everyone was talking about, though hopefully with much brighter prospects than how that ended up.

As for USM, Bendis can be a good writer when working under a certain niche. Alias, Powers, and Daredevil can attest to that. It's just that he'd rather work well outside of that niche, leading to many of the more questionable to say the least Marvel event comics, or his Superman run (I'm still baffled when I see comic critics I usually like insist his Superman run is a misunderstood masterpiece and he saved Jon as a character). Kinda like how Johns was much more celebrated when he was working on JSA and Green Lantern, but then expanding his reach on other DC characters and mediums showed his limitations and blind spots, culminating in him making sequels to Watchmen and The Killing Joke that no one liked.

And limitations is the key word with USM, because it excels at being somebody's first Spider-Man comic, but I don't think its best moments compare to stories like Kraven's Last Hunt, Life Story, or If This Be My Destiny. Which I guess is my way of saying USM is more interesting for people with hardly any previous history with Spider-Man.

Sigh... back to normal...

While it's obviously no secret that Krakoa lost most of its direction after Hickman left and its only appeal at that point was to watch Gillen and Ewing have fun playing around with the characters, going back to "Hey, remember the 90s cartoon?" feels like a huge step backwards. I get why since status quo and synergy, and I'm sure Simone will do just fine, but it reminds me of when Hickman left the FF after Secret Wars, and how that felt like a ship without a captain for ages. Though I've heard very good things about the latest Ryan North run.