What Are You Reading?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just read The Kill Lock yesterday and it's definitely a pretty great 6-issue stand-alone series. I definitely recommend checking it out, especially since it's available for free to Comixology Unlimited members. The ending also did a good job of wrapping things up in an unexpected but still thematically satisfying way, IMO.

I also started reading Ice Cream Man, which is shaping up to be a pretty solid modern horror anthology comic book.

I've also been reading through Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men run ever since I caught up to the current Daredevil issues. I did previously read the Dark Phoenix Saga as a TPB several years ago back when I was still in college, but that was out of context of the issues leading up to it and either way my memory of it is fuzzy at best so it's worth revisiting. When it comes to these old critically acclaimed runs it's always interesting to look at them under a modern perspective. Something like the Lee/Kirby FF run was wildly dated in many ways but I could still eventually appreciate in on it's own once I got a feel for the material and was able to somewhat adjust my mindset to the standards of the time period it was produced in. Same with Dennis O'Neil's Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman material from the 70's that I've read. However, there is also stuff like Frank Miller's Daredevil run which, regardless of how shitty of a person Miller has come off as in his later years, I can't deny holds up remarkably well even today. And JLI from the late 80's is also perhaps one of my favorite comic books ever as well..

As for Claremont's X-Men run so far (I'm currently up to issue #110), it sort of falls in-between. It does fall into a lot of trappings that other Marvel comics of it's era tended to fall in that could make them a bit less accessible for modern readers. Mostly formulaic stuff such as having forgettable villain-of-the week stories preoccupying much of the content and having out of left field plot conveniences to try and wrap up certain stories within an issue rather than let them play out more narutally. However, as it goes on, I do see how good of a job Claremont has done with the new team, fleshing out and fully realizing every character as individuals as well as in terms of their inter-personal relationships with each other. He also really shines at planting seeds for long term story-lines with the Phoenix Saga stuff, and given the time period handles the drama surprisingly maturely given how many young readers would have been picking up these books (even though plenty of adults also read these comics as well). Currently, I'm not quite as in love with it as some people are, but I do definitely enjoy it enough to keep reading, and do really respect how it pushed the boundaries of what you could do in these kinds of comics for that time period. As I keep reading, though, it may continue to grow on me more.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I read some Claremont ages ago, and while I liked plenty of it like DOFP and God Loves Man Kills, and maybe it was because Claremont was often butting heads with Shooter during this time, but his way of storytelling had an obvious weak point. He could plant seeds and make them grow and intertwine, but they were never going to blossom and reach a definitive all-consuming climax. On a franchise standpoint, all these plot threads branching out and seldom ending were all a boon and proved to be the impetus for the countless X-titles or Insert-Adjective-Here X-Men comics, but it also became a little annoying even if you're used to seeing comic book characters go on forever. Like finding out Scott has a huge family tree of Summerses, and all the members of that family tree have their own story arcs and casts, and also all the other X-Men have secret family members with their own spinoff comics like Charles' son or Colossus' sister. And even when Claremont was invited back to end his X-Men on his own terms with X-Men: The End, it felt clumsy and almost unwilling to connect all of his prior plot threads into a fitting conclusion.

[Markness]

I've read a good chunk of the original X-Treme X-Men which Claremont helmed in the early 00's. It's gotten a lot of mixed reviews but it's honestly better than Chuck Austen's Uncanny X-Men run which is awful in terms of both art and writing. X-Treme X-Men has a dark and visceral art style and while the writing drags some, the good parts make up for it. Claremont also returned to Uncanny X-Men after Austen got the well deserved boot; I have all the trades of that run but I haven't read them yet. I need to close the gaps by reading X-Men Forever, X-Men Black Sun, Grant Morrison's New X-Men, and the last trade of X-Treme X-Men.

[Markness]

I re-read the first 12 volumes of Fire Force and the volumes I didn't read previously (13-21). My interest in this manga has been renewed and I look forward to Vol. 22 which is coming out soon. I am also re-reading the first volume of Orient and will get the second volume that is coming out at the same time as Fire Force Vol. 22.

I also read the second volume of Hyde & Closer and will read the next three once my order from RightStuf which has volumes three and four in it (I bought Vol. 5 from a seller on eBay) comes in along with Black Cat volumes 11 and 12. I've been collecting Black Cat since the library I read it from years ago no longer carries it and some of the volumes on the aftermarket are very pricey, especially 9, 15, and 16. Same with Atsushi Ohkubo's first manga, B. Ichi. All the volumes of it have prices that will make you go "Ouch!" if you see them.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been reading Ostrander's Suicide Squad run but only very sparsely up to now. With how much praise and critical acclaim the run has gotten by fans, I think it's been alright so far, but I haven't really been wowed yet. That said, I'm only on the second volume and it is improving bit by bit, maybe as Ostrander gets more comfortable with his plotting and character dynamics. It still has the chance to grow on me over the next few volumes, so we'll see if it really wins me over or not.

I'm back up to the Dark Phoenix Saga in Chris Claremont's early Uncanny X-Men run, which I originally read back around 2012 I think in the TPB format. This time, however, I have the full run's context before going into the arc which definitely improves it a lot. I still think, at least so far, it's a really good arc for it's time and with how influential it was as well as incorporating pretty heavy concepts back when comics were widely seen as still being only for children by many (and arguably, there are still sadly many who believe this mentality). That said, I don't know if I'd quite put it on par with Miller's Daredevil run from around the same time, or some of the more iconic Spider-Man story-lines between the 70's and 80's as well. Up to now, as someone coming into Chris Claremont's stuff fresh without any previous nostalgia for it, I do appreciate what he did for the time and I do think that even today it's generally pretty good (so far), but I wouldn't personally call it great, myself, at least not yet.

I've been reading Gintama as well, though I'm only 30-something chapters in right now. This is my third attempt to get into this series, except this time I'm trying the manga over the anime mainly because of time constraints. There are some bits of humor that definitely work for me but others just aren't my cup of tea, but I plan on giving it at least the first 100 chapters before I really decide whether or not this series of for me. After all, some series I initially couldn't get into (such as One Piece and World Trigger, among others) took around that long before they really got to a point that hooked me, but once they did I was treated to some of the best material to come out of Weekly Shonen Jump that I had ever read. So, I'm hoping that I can get to that point with this series as well.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think with Dark Phoenix, there's the fact that not only has it been adapted so many times, but it's influenced other franchises from Dark Willow in Buffy to the White Violin in Umbrella Academy that it's hard to value it on its own terms. It also unintentionally pigeonholed Jean Grey in a sense.

[Markness]

I gave Grant Morrison's run of New X-Men a shot and it honestly felt so masochistic to read that I had to drop it. The characters felt too different from what we were familiar of them from before, Frank Quitely's art was queasy to behold, there was no connection with what was going on with Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men, and the pacing was painfully slow. I loved JLA but none of those qualities were to be found in New X-Men. I tried to like it because it's supposedly something you can get used to and it was rated better than Chuck Austen's writing for Uncanny X-Men but I just felt like I wanted to read something else. Joe Casey's run of Uncanny X-Men at least has good art and X-Treme X-Men has consistent writing as well as good art.

I am glad I picked Fire Force back up and I did read some online chapters of Orient the year it debuted but with the physical volumes being released in the US finally, I am truly reading it now. Fire Force is getting better the more it goes on and Orient has the fun and adventurous tones of Magi. Ohkubo says Fire Force will be his last manga and it lives up to Soul Eater. Ohtaka is still a good mangaka and Orient is a worthy successor to Magi.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I haven't read New X-Men but I have come to learn that there are primarily two types of Grant Morrison comics: stories that emphasize deeper themes and challenge conceptions of the genre while still maintaining an approachable narrative that emphasizes his love of superheroes or comic books in general, and stories that are just self-indulgent pretentious jibber-jabber because Morrison wants to flex his hard-core knowledge of superhero continuity and make ludicrous amounts of meta-commentary on it at the expense of reader enjoyment. Comics like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Flex Mentallo, and ASSM fall into the former category and are genuinely great reads. Comics like ASHOSE, The Invisibles, Final Crisis, and parts of his Batman run fall onto the latter category and are kind of a chore to get through, IMO.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I love New X-Men for most of the run, but the final arc with the Magneto reveal's garbage and the ending's even worse. The thing about Morrison's tenure is that they were given the job to purposely shake up the X-Men formula after decades of Claremont and Claremont-like writers, and to make the X-comics feel fresh and new again after a long time in that status quo. Their manifesto on X-Men explains it better than I could. But thanks to the last arc and editors and fans getting shaky at some of the changes made, we got back to Claremont-style stories for a while until Hickman got his shot at the wheel.

And while Morrison can get ahead of themselves a few times, I'm fond of both types of their comics. Final Crisis is a mess, but it's an endearing mess that I think captures how big and psychologically daunting a Crisis story is than all the other stories where all the DC heroes team up to fight one giant bad guy. The Invisibles is Morrison at their most personal and unchained, and it's wildly inconsistent from what I remember, but it was pretty fun and I can understand why the Wachowskis took some ideas to make The Matrix. And for their Batman run, I love it for the most part. It's what happens when you take every version of Batman at that point from Adam West to Nolan to BTAS and Brave & the Bold and shove it in a magic Scottish blender. Morrison gets that Batman not just as a franchise but as a character is inherently contradictory. Like I fucking hate the "Why doesn't Bruce just use his money to repair Gotham instead of beating up poor people?" take that floods Twitter every month, but it gets at the idea that Bruce's story is insane when read as the life of one man, and Morrison does all they can to dance with that interpretation.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

With Batman (I still have yet to read all of Morrison's run) I wasn't really knocking it for the ideas it presents and themes that it tackles, but rather how ridiculously hard it is to even comprehend some of his stories unless you have a near encyclopedic knowledge of decades-worth of previous content to understand the meta-commentary that Morrison goes for. I understand and even like the idea of merging all of these Batman interpretations into one as a central thesis for his wildly inconsistent characterization through various mediums. However, it feels like it's really hard to appreciate at times if you aren't at least partially as well-versed in Batman lore as Morrison himself. I suppose that can be a general criticism for some of his other work as well. More often than not so far I like Grant Morrison's writing, but it's somewhat ironic that despite how critical he is of the overtly gritty and depressing comics popularized by writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller in the mid-to-late 80's for their questionable entertainment value, he has kind if occasionally done something similar with a different approach. As opposed to dark and gritty he can sometimes come off as overly obtuse in his writing approach, to questionable entertainment value.

Don't get me wrong, whether or not his stories work for me, I respect his constant ability to challenge readers with his writing, so I'm not bashing any of his stories. That said, "The Coyote Gospel" is my preferred kind of Grant Morrison, with a strong and poignant meta-nerrative that never completely overtakes the surface narrative. It's equal parts entertaining and inciteful upon re-reads.

Just my two-cents, anyways.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Morrison's criticism of Moore often sounds rooted in personal reasons than constructive criticism, same with Moore's criticism of Morrison. It's like a Joan Crawford/Bette Davis rivalry between them. Though at least Morrison occasionally acknowledges the absurdity of it at times, like in their recent Wonder Woman comic.

And I do agree that their Batman run can be a hard read at times. I didn't understand most of it when I first read it ages ago, but the comics benefited greatly from rereads and seeing how later Batman runs have fumbled the ball to a degree. I kind of see it as the flipside of the Dini BTAS-style mode of Batman storytelling, where BTAS refines Batman lore into something accessible, Morrison exacerbates it to ambitious levels. Which I think DC knew when they had Dini write Detective Comics around the same time as Morrison's first act of their Batman stories.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just read volume one of Asadora! in one sitting and already have the second volume pre-ordered. Trust Naoki Urusawa to be able to hook me in no time at all. Makes me finally want to get around to reading Billy Bat, which I'll just have to read scans for even though I haven't done that in a while since it doesn't look like it will be officially available in English anytime soon.

I've also finally gotten onto reading Lucifer, as of late. I read through all of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman last year and while doing so picked up both omnibus volumes of Lucifer for a really great deal to read at a later time after finishing the main series. I just got up through The House of Windowless Rooms arc and this series is proving to be a pretty damn great run so far, that feels like far more than just an in-Universe spinoff. While The Sandman had a overarching story, it was really more about the power and meaning of stories and story-telling in and of itself, so it had a more disjointed narrative style that both worked to it's benefit and detriment in different ways. Lucifer, at least so far, while still retaining a familiar element to The Sandman does seem to put a good deal more focus on it's core story-line which makes it a somewhat more engaging read for me when consuming multiple issues at once.

I'm also strongly considering getting the new Books of Magic omnibus that just recently released, though I'll try to see if I can find a similarly good deal for it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just got up to this issue of Uncanny X-Men and couldn't help but chuckle at the placement of this ad:



Because an issue about grief and mourning after the tragic death of a beloved character is the perfect place to promote a toy shopping spree. I can't help but be amused by the tone-deafness of it.

Also, I started reading Master Keaton and am really digging the series so far. It's kind of like Sherlock Holmes meets Indiana Jones.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Maybe the shopping spree was an excuse to sell off some old Jean Grey action figures. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Lucky for whoever sangged those up considering how much some of those figures would be worth by the time the X-Men exploded in popularity with the animated series.