Comics/Manga Discussion Thread

[Avaitor]

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

[Dr. Insomniac]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Insomniac]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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!

[Avaitor]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Insomniac]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Dr. Insomniac]

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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.

[Daikun]

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.

...and Linkara just reviewed it.