Listeners' Off-The-Rack
KyleMoyer
Posts: 727
I suppose this is kinda similar to the "What I read - 2012 Edition" thread on the old new forums, but this title I think encourages more discussion rather than listing. Try to keep it spoiler free and if you must use spoilers, tag them and keep them minor.
I just read up to issue 6 of Detective Comics. I have to admit that I'm like Pants and am mainly buying this book because I have been for decades, although I don't really think it's as bad as people make it out to be, but it isn't really good. Unexciting might be the best way to describe it. Daniels just jumps from one plot to another, from the Joker to the Dollmaker, to the Penguin, to Snakeskin, etc. without giving you a chance to really care about any of the plots. Now keep in mind, I don't mind the fast pace. With the number of great Batman villains, I get frustrated with seeing one character take up a whole 6 issue arc for half a year. I would love to see more 1 or 2 parters, but that's based on the assumption that these would be actual stories involving these characters. Instead, we're not getting real stories, just frantic jumping back and forth making me not really care.
I just read up to issue 6 of Detective Comics. I have to admit that I'm like Pants and am mainly buying this book because I have been for decades, although I don't really think it's as bad as people make it out to be, but it isn't really good. Unexciting might be the best way to describe it. Daniels just jumps from one plot to another, from the Joker to the Dollmaker, to the Penguin, to Snakeskin, etc. without giving you a chance to really care about any of the plots. Now keep in mind, I don't mind the fast pace. With the number of great Batman villains, I get frustrated with seeing one character take up a whole 6 issue arc for half a year. I would love to see more 1 or 2 parters, but that's based on the assumption that these would be actual stories involving these characters. Instead, we're not getting real stories, just frantic jumping back and forth making me not really care.
Comments
I'm totally with you. Detective Has been a little wierd, I thought we'd see more of the Joker's face thing but it's only popped up in Suicide Squad #7 recently. I thought it would be more of a running plotline. Still, I liked Daniel's run on Batman with Dick, so I'll stick with Detective for now until it gets really bad. I like his new artstyle a lot too. He's really grown as an artist since his Teen Titan days.
If you plan on buying DC Universe by Alan Moore HC almost everything of the previous material from the tpb collection in 2006 yes it now has Voodoo, Deathblow, Wildcats 50 & Wildstorm Spotlight included but....
IT does NOT have THE KILLING JOKE in this new HC!!!
I enjoyed the new stories but seriously it is obvious that the solicitation omission is a error of misjudgment by many comic fans, myself included.
Matthew
One that doesn't matter is Silvestri's art. I've always liked Silvestri, probably because he was the artist on the Uncanny X-Men when I first started reading them. He was never one of my favorites that I would hunt down something I wasn't interested in just because he was drawing it, but he was someone that I liked to see drawing books I was interested in. But his art in this book looks very.... maybe sketchy is the right word? I know he always had a pretty sketchy style, but this just looks unfinished. Maybe it's the inker? But he only lasted 3 issues, so it doesn't really matter.
I'm not 100% sold on the evil Banner thing. I get the reasoning behind it but they need to do a bit to get me completely on board with it. It is an interesting role reversal though to have Banner being the one causing all the destruction (by sending the Stupid Rat Creatures after Hulk).
And one thing I like about this series. I've been bugged in recent years (as a long-time, but inconsistent Hulk reader) how the Hulk would change from form to form with no real explanation. I know during the first half of PAD's run and well before that, he would change constantly, but there was always a reason for it - a catalyst for the change and if you followed the series, you knew who the Hulk was. It seemed to start in the later portion of PAD's run and got very strong with some of the following writers, where Hulk would just be a different take on the character and no real explanation is given. Bruce Jones wants to write a savage Hulk, so he's a savage Hulk again. Then after that, we get Planet Hulk, so we're first we have Banner showing up for the prelude, but then we go back to a Hulk that can talk and communicate and has a brain, but Banner's never around and it's never really explained why. Then the next writer wants to do something else so we get another Hulk and who cares if you're confused. Here we have a definite status quo on the Hulk and it looks like there's an actualy in-story explanation for how we arrived at this point (even if it hasn't been completely told yet - unless it was told at the end of previous series which I haven't read, but the context makes it appear like it hasn't been).
Has anyone else been reading this?
I also got Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu from Top Shelf at STAPLE. That man can wield a brush like nobody's business!
I don't get the evil mad scientist Banner is playing right now. I can understand him having anxiety issues, withdrawal issues and such having been seperated from the Hulk. However the way he is being portrayed right now I can't buy into it a great deal.
I have been an inconsistent Hulk reader as well. if a writer wants to do different take on the character, fine, justify and explain the change. I never liked Hulk and Banner being two seperate entities. Different personalities of the same person I'm fine with but two completely different seperate people, occupying the same body in whatever sense, no thanks. I always liked Banner being the man in the monster, the Jekyll & Hyde aspect of it.
If you haven't gotten to the issue yet they do explain how Hulk and Banner got seperated but it didn't satisfy me, it was kind of predictable and it didn't explain to me (yet) how after so many years of wanting to be free from the Hulk, why Banner is acting the way he is.
I'm going to stick with this series for a couple more months to see if it gets better but I either put two much faith into Jason Aaron and/or got my hopes too high.
Lady Mechanika #0. Saw a recently released 4th print of this on the shelf and bought it on a whim after hearing good things about it. It was interesting enough to look for later issues. And with it's publishing schedule, it's not like it will impact my comic book budget at all so that's a plus. And it had cookie recipes in the book. And the first caption on the first page was my birthday (just off by roughly a century, but still). My only real complaint was that there were times when the flow of the word balloons seemed off. I had to re-read the page a few times because I read the balloons out of order, which for someone who has been reading comic books for as long as I have, shouldn't happen unless you're doing some sort of avant-garde weird panel layouts, which this book wasn't doing.
Uncanny X-Force Vol. 2: Deathlok Solution - Take the more violent X-Men characters and have them go on missions where they kill the bad guys. Doesn't sound like a recipe for something I'd be interested in except that that isn't really what the book is about (to this point at least). I read once that the biggest determiner for a soldier returning from war over whether they would have some sort of PTSD or psychological issues was not whether they got injured or whether they saw their friends get injured or killed - it was whether they were forced to kill someone. That messes with people's heads no matter how trained you are to become a killer. And that's what this book is about and that's why it's so interesting.
The Unwritten Vol. 3: Dead Man's Knock - I'm really getting into this book, but you know what really made this volume? The second to last issue that was reprinted in here (I think that would make it somewhere around 16 or 17 or so) was a choose-your-own adventure issue. Seriously. There was one "bad" ending, but if you get that one and go back to the page you left and make a different choice, they all eventually end up in the same place, but the different paths give you different insights into the character's past. It was an absolutely brilliant way to do an issue.
Surfing the Comixology store I discovered an intriguing cover. When I read the short description : I decided to give it a try.
Prior to this I've never read an issue of Supreme. Alan Moore is one of my all-time favorite writers. And yet - I totally missed his '90s run on the book.
Although being a newbie to the Supreme universe, everything was clear to me from the get-go. It's a highly entertaining superhero comic. Playfully ironic, the writing is lighter and more cheerful than the "typical" Alan Moore. In some ways it feels like a loving tribute to the Silver Age comics. It's super-fun.
I'm still rather new to Erik Larsen's art, but I have to say this book looks incredible awesome - and I need more Larsen....quick....
The inks (Cory Hamscher) and the colors are perfect (Steve Oliff). CGS favorite, Chris Eliopoulos, does the lettering.
Due to a breathtaking cliffhanger I MUST pick up the next issue.
5/5