Episode 1506 Talkback - Off the Racks: Multiversity #1, Sensation Comics #1, and SIP Kids #1
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
We're serving up an OTR sandwich on digression rye this month, squeezing our trio of narrow-focus reviews between two generous slices of off-topic comic talk! First, we reminisce about the very geeky wedding of our recently married friends (and occasional CGS co-hosts) Dani and Bill. Then, it's Off the Racks as usual, featuring Sensation Comics #1 and Multiversity #1 from DC and SIP Kids from Terry Moore's Abstract Studio. We top it all off with our reactions to the premiere of 'Gotham'! (1:39:45)
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Comments
A WORLD OF TOYS EPISODE!?
I thought Pants had given up all his plastic vices? Will have to listen.
Good idea with the spinoffs with the show proper showing up less frequently. In fact, I'd just par it down to one RSS feed: CGS and whatever shows you do come through this one portal.
On a happier note, I was quite pleased with Multiversity. I'm hot and cold when it comes to Grant Morrison. With this title I went into this first issue with the attitude of 'hey, we know how Grant can roll so I'll just go with it and enjoy as much of the ride as I can'. I really enjoyed the first issue, mainly because it did remind me of how much I could enjoy a DC book. I'm sticking with this one.
Gotham: Nowadays a show has to catch me at the first episode to determine whether I stick with it or at the very least, give it a few episodes. I found Gotham to be quite entertaining. The one weak link for me, especially during the second episode, is Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney. Quite frankly I find her performance to be quite annoying and what kind of accent are we aiming for here. As for the other characterizations, I like them. I think Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald 'Penguin' Cobblepot is the one who has me the most intrigued. I'm going to stick with this show for now.
The Wonder Woman comic was OK. I think I agreed with just about everything the guys said about the issue. I just finished #2 and that was a buy for me..it's nice to see improvement and hopefully the book catches on despite the price.
Multiversity was a very strong buy for me. I already gave my thoughts in the Multiversity thread but I'll just reiterate that it's a great issue that was worth the wait.
Something that may have been overlooked when discussing the Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman is that not only is this title a call back to Diana Prince's first appearance, but this story was actually released as a digital first in 3 parts (at .99 a piece), so while I also loathe the new $4 price point, it did have a complete story (plus a second one, with arguably less quality) and it was a great product in and of itself. While I don't like that almost ALL Marvel books have jumped to $4 each or more, at least the digital version is free with purchase, a model I'd love to see DC adopt. Maybe simply being anti-Nu52 that would make this a "borrow" for me, but as far as price point, heck, the Multiversity books are all $4.99 each. Now, if only Gail Simone could write Wonder Woman until the end of her career... this story, while clearly NOT Nu52 era, almost reminds one of the Greg Rucka era Wonder Woman, doesn't it?
Speaking of Multiversity, I'm somewhat surprised DC got in two books this month and Marvel got overlooked. I suppose they deserved a little love after having been overlooked a few times in recent Off the Racks episodes, but with the Spider-Verse kicking off and books like Superior Spider-Man #32 doing tremendously I hate to see them overlooked. I probably just hoped to hear you guys' thoughts on some Marvel stuff of late. This episode was a bit DC heavy. Now then, if you want to talk about world-building, did anyone check out George Perez's Sirens from Boom? Make sure you are well-rested and have plenty of time to go through that first issue. It's dense...
As for the Gotham series, when contrasted to the fun that is AoS this season (so far), Gotham leaves me wanting... And a Batman story with no Batman? Not really interested. As for the writer on the pilot episode, he's written at least 20-30 episodes of CSI, so his forte seems to be police procedurals. Not sure what happened here.
Thanks for the new episode guys ~ looking forward to a re-visit to the World of Toys soon.
I'll agree the pricing is obnoxious since it's only 2.97 when purchased digitally. But who knows what the economics are for digital first books. I get the impression that the print versions are solely for the Luddites and have no real bearing on how they produce the title.
I guess my question is, if you had only read the first story and it had only been 1.98, what effect would that have on your reviews of it?
http://comicbook.com/2014/10/03/scott-snyder-dc-comics-considering-the-case-against-a-batman-pri/
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/10/03/twelve-issues-of-batman-for-less-than-16-a-year-1-33-each-dc-comics-entertainment/
I subscribe a similar way, through Magazines.com when the Ebates cash-back discount is around its peak (40% or 52% cash-back), and end up paying something like $1.15 per issue. I've done it for over a year now, and those flurry of overpriced issues from the past year (which, there's already been three $4.99 issues and one $6.99 issue in the last year) all came to my door at no extra charge. But, yeah, every now and then an issue will have a few dings in the spine.
I applaud Capullo and Snyder for putting up some kind of resistance, but honestly when you take into account how DC uses better quality paper than Marvel does, better quality coverstock for their $3.99 and up issues, and how there's going to be more pages of content in these issues -- I don't really see how it's that unfair of a price based on what you're getting. I don't see how DC could justify selling it for less unless Capullo and Snyder agree to take less money or whatever. It's totally in line with Big Two pricing based on content. And yeah, that's part of the problem, I guess. But to look at it pragmatically, it just wouldn't make sense to see these issues of Batman for $3.99 on a shelf next to other books with far less content in them priced either the same or only one dollar lower.
The problem in all this, I think, is that DC is forcing more content as an excuse to justify higher prices, and they've done it with Batman in particular. Those $4.99 issues over the past year, and that $6.99 issue -- they all had enough extra content to justify the price. They really did. But the problem is that the reader HAS to buy it if they want to keep up with Batman. DC keeps forcing this to happen, because they're not content with just getting the usual $3.99 from this cash cow. And for what it's worth Capullo and Snyder in particular keep going along with it. While it's great that they're voicing some concern now, the fact is that their run has been marked by excess, crossovers, and events at every turn. It is what it is, for better or worse. I think readers would have rather appreciated it if Snyder had said "No, I don't want to jam in a fairly pointless Batman Eternal prelude issue into 'Batman'" or "No, I'm not going to lend my name to a pointless fill-in issue that was actually written by another writer", etc.
When things like Zero Year or Swamp Thing's Rotworld went on for sooooooooooo much longer than they needed to, I just have trouble celebrating Scott Snyder as a guy who's trying to cut costs and look out for the reader. Sorry. But good on him for at least putting up some resistance this time around.
Anyway, I'm only ever paying $1.15 per issue for it, so I don't really mind either way.
It was clear sailing after NML...then they started up again. One or two were pretty long, but most were just a couple issues. Still stank to have to get tie-ins of books you weren't getting.
Glad I've been avoiding collecting Batman for some time now. This price jump, if does pass, & the weekly books would've had me jump ship. There's only do much a budget allows & if you're only getting titles for 1 character, then its impossible to drop a couple books to off set the cost. You're kind of forced to abandon that character & look elsewhere.
M
For what it's worth, it's usually true of Scott Snyder that you only have to read "Batman" to understand the overall crossover. The trouble is that "Batman" has been peppered with $4.99-$6.99 "regular" issues for quite some time now, and the stories tend to run very long anyway. So, you didn't need to read any of the Zero Year tie-ins to "get" Zero Year, but Zero Year itself went on for far longer than it needed to. Most online magazine places only carry DC and Marvel. It's true that the odd website will sometimes offer deeper discounts on DC titles, but magazines.com runs really generous cash-back deals through Ebates sometimes, and whenever that happens you can end up only having to pay $1.15-$1.50 or so per issue for Marvel.
SIPKids: BORROW! Totally wrong solicit aside, as a big Strangers of Paradise fan, I was a bit let down. I like the characters, but it just didn't grab me. I hope #2 is an improvement. However, after listening to you guys review it, I think I missed a LOT of stuff. As for @Chris's question about Terry's previous work. I think I remember that Terry Moore wanted to be a comic strip cartoonist and he did another book concurrently with SIP called "Paradise, Too" which was a collection of some of the strips he had done and included faeries who like strawberry cake and a polar bear, I think.
Sensation Comics #1: BORROW! I enjoyed the stories overall, but I think I just wanted more for my money.
Multiversity #1: I guess BUY. Interesting set-up issue and sort of cliffhanger. Murd provided some insights about the cover and other artwork that I obviously missed. LOL!
Gotham: Didn't see it. Maybe I can find out on some pirate site.