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Post by rberman on Jul 8, 2020 21:15:52 GMT -5
I like Grant Morrison's comics, but there are a few of these. I know Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock think it is a bit more than a nod or homage. The whole thrown back through time while everything thinks they are dead element of Batman RIP is pretty much what happens to Captain America in Brubaker's run. There are quite a few elements of Annhilator that seem pretty much similar to the whole thing that happened to Philip K Dick that informed a couple of his novels (and a cool story done by Robert Crumb about the episode). As I read more of The Authority, there's a lot more where that came from. There's a thread about The Authority making their presence known to the public and becoming instant celebrities, which parallels the "mutant chic" story that Grant Morrison told in New X-Men.Or how about the team having conference calls in a room that only exists telepathically? Emma Frost was doing that for the X-Men at about the same time. The X-Men had better decor. Or the "Jenny Quantum" story in which the bad guys (Avengers stand-ins) destroy an entire maternity ward just to kill one super-baby that holds the key to the future? That was the core of the "Messiah Complex" 2007 story in X-Men which introduced baby Hope Summers.
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Post by earl on Jul 8, 2020 22:11:23 GMT -5
I'd say a huge part of 'boomtime' Marvel really is a reaction to The Authority, Ellis' Planetary, and also what Brubaker did with Sleeper. Those are really influential super hero comics.
Some of that style is just Millar brought over to Marvel and they let him get away with some total crazy stuff with the characters - Ultimates, Civil War, Old Man Logan, Wolverine: Enemy of the State etc. Ellis Iron Man definitely had some visual and stylistic elements that got picked up in the movies. Brubaker pretty much did a similar style with his Captain America run.
Bendis has his own rhythm and pacing thing, but I think he got to do stuff with the main Marvel characters he might not have if stuff like The Authority happened. Powers did some pretty neat stuff with super hero comics too. I'd put it up pretty high on best 'super hero comic' outside the DC/Marvel universe books.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 9, 2020 12:18:19 GMT -5
Read and enjoyed '70s Superboy & The Legion #223 & 224... Time Trapper and Stargrave by Jim Shooter, art by Grell & Wiacek. I was surprised the Time Trapper was from before Shooter was writing Adventure Comics in the '60s... I wonder what made him dig the character out for this. I had 224 on it's own way back but now I'm filling in the issues I didn't have... the letters mention there is more conflict among the characters, as opposed to the '60s legion where people inexplicably would cruelly turn on each other and then snap out of it with some daft explanation of a ruse that had to stay secret or being under some baddie's influence usually. I have a lot of other '70s Legions on-deck, up to #240 now.
Then I also have some late '90s Thunderbolts and Avengers to read out of order (going backwards on this runs so reading what came before the runs I started with), and Vol.3 of Nova written by Erik Larsen (well #1-4 anyway, and I might stop there as I see Venom is in #7 and I want to avoid anything with Venom, Carnage, that black suit or Deadpool). I might give the Byrne/Sears Spider-Woman a try for a few issues. The thing I was worried about (no, not another Spider-Woman) looks like it gets addressed right from #7 with Jessica Drew and the ones that came after her involved.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2020 12:48:16 GMT -5
Finished reading the 18 issues of the Paul Kupperberg Doom Patrol (as well as the Superman crossover issue, the Doom Patrol/Suicide Squad Special and the Secret Origins Annual which sets the series up).
I am so ready to start the Morrison era, but I do wish that Kupperberg had had more time to finish up his run and some of the lingering plotlines. I've read some of the Morrison issues before but had little to no prior Doom Patrol knowledge when I did. Interested to see if a little Doom Patrol context helps with my enjoyment of the series this time around.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2020 16:57:52 GMT -5
Inspired by shaxper's post-Crisis Superman thread (and my desire to actually read some of what I buy), I read Byrne's Man of Steel mini. I've not read much Superman at all, and what I have all came after Byrne, and I've read maybe as much Byrne. So I don't have a great frame of reference for the character or creator. That said, this was good, but not quite as good as I expected. The issues feel somewhat disconnected, and uneven. Almost like he had planned to do six issues of re-introduction, then realized he had maybe two issues of that he actually wanted to do, so he tossed in some other plots to pad it out.I thought the issue with Batman and the stuff in Smallville were much better than the stuff with Lois and Luthor, which is the opposite of how I usually feel about Superman books. Art was overall really good, but I felt like Superman in particular was always in a pose.
So yeah, good enough start, but not the excitement-building start I'd hoped for.
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Post by spoon on Jul 9, 2020 22:23:24 GMT -5
Finished reading the 18 issues of the Paul Kupperberg Doom Patrol (as well as the Superman crossover issue, the Doom Patrol/Suicide Squad Special and the Secret Origins Annual which sets the series up). I am so ready to start the Morrison era, but I do wish that Kupperberg had had more time to finish up his run and some of the lingering plotlines. I've read some of the Morrison issues before but had little to no prior Doom Patrol knowledge when I did. Interested to see if a little Doom Patrol context helps with my enjoyment of the series this time around. It's interesting how the timing of what people are reading lines up. I started reading Doom Patrol from the very beginning this past weekend, and I'm 11 issues into the Silver Age run. In a few weeks, I should get to Kupperberg. Before I started this binge read, #1-5 of the Kupperberg DP is actually the longest consecutives run of DP comics that I'd ever read. So even though it's a small bit, I'm interesting in those characters and I'm dreading the house-cleaning that I know happens just before the Morrison run. I've never read Morrison's Doom Patrol, and I'm lukewarm on the other Grant Morrison comics I've read, but I know how it's well-regarded so I'll see how the transition goes. I basically bought almost all the Doom Patrol appearances from the beginning through a TPB that reprints the first third of Morrison. The Silver Age Omnibus got me a bunch of issues in one convenient book. I didn't realize that there was also a Bronze Age Omnibus before I started snatching up back issues, although the individual issues might actually be cheaper than that omnibus.
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Post by berkley on Jul 9, 2020 22:45:52 GMT -5
I'm generlly not too interested in Morrison's superhero work with the Big 2 but I will say one thing: I do get the impression that with DC, he at least felt some kind of connection with the characters and the DCU as a whole, whereas his Marvel stuff looks like he couldn't have cared less.
In fact, my impressionis that Marvel has never had anyone from that 80s/90s wave of British or UK writers that really engaged with their characters or the MU like Morrison or earlier on, in a different way, Alan Moore, did with DC.
I freely admit this is a vague impression based on very sporadic and haphazard reading; and I imagine that many Marvel readers will cite names like Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, or Garth Ennis as counter-examples, but I don't think any of them reall did quite the same kind of thing: most of their Marvel work was made up of isolated miniseries or short runs here and there.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2020 9:40:54 GMT -5
Did this post twice.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2020 9:42:52 GMT -5
Ennis wrote a ton of Punisher, but I'd agree with that. I wonder why that is.
I hear about Marvel UK much more often than DC, which I would think would result in the opposite of what we see.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 10, 2020 17:18:37 GMT -5
I'm generlly not too interested in Morrison's superhero work with the Big 2 but I will say one thing: I do get the impression that with DC, he at least felt some kind of connection with the characters and the DCU as a whole, whereas his Marvel stuff looks like he couldn't have cared less. In fact, my impressionis that Marvel has never had anyone from that 80s/90s wave of British or UK writers that really engaged with their characters or the MU like Morrison or earlier on, in a different way, Alan Moore, did with DC. I freely admit this is a vague impression based on very sporadic and haphazard reading; and I imagine that many Marvel readers will cite names like Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, or Garth Ennis as counter-examples, but I don't think any of them reall did quite the same kind of thing: most of their Marvel work was made up of isolated miniseries or short runs here and there. If Future Shock: The Story Of 2000AD is anything to go by, Brits don't tend to enjoy superheroes as much as us Yanks do. To paraphrase Mills, "The English see a Superhero and wonder, "Just what the hell is he up to?"."
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,557
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Post by Confessor on Jul 10, 2020 17:54:08 GMT -5
I don't know, I think us Brits do really enjoy superheroes, but I also think that perhaps we are a bit more into other types of comics too. Comics focusing on sci-fi (2000 AD), war (Commando, Battle Picture Weekly), football (Roy of the Rovers), adventure (Eagle), kid's humour (Beano, Dandy), adult humour (Viz), and horror/mystery (Scream!/Misty) are and were just as popular as superheros in Britain.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 10, 2020 17:57:52 GMT -5
I don't know, I think us Brits do really enjoy superheroes, but I also think that perhaps we are a bit more into other types of comics too. Comics focusing on sci-fi (2000 AD), war (Commando, Battle Picture Weekly), football (Roy of the Rovers), adventure (Eagle), kid's humour (Beano, Dandy), adult humour (Viz), and horror/mystery (Scream!/Misty) are and were just as popular as superheros in Britain. Yeah, over here it's just pure superhero saturation, there's really very few worthwhile alternatives besides manga
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Post by berkley on Jul 10, 2020 18:07:14 GMT -5
I wasn't thinking so much that the Brit writers didn't like superheroes as that for whatever reason Marvel didn't get as much engagement from them with their superheroes as DC did with theirs. Morrison's work with DC and much of Ellis's and even some of Alan Moore's solo work shows that they do or did at some point feel some interest in the genre. But Marvel never seemed to get much out of them, as far as I can see, whether because the writers didn't care much for Marvel's characters or because of something about how Marvel ran its business, who knows.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jul 11, 2020 7:46:23 GMT -5
I think Morrison claimed to have co-written all of Millar's pre-Kick Ass output. Morrison did say that the final reveal in Millar's "Red Son" (2003) was his idea. Kick-Ass was 2008. Morrison and Millar had some sort of falling out, which raises the question of who was copying whom between The Authority and New X-Men. As I was reading the super-fast scene changes in The Authority TPB I found myself thinking, "This is a lot like Grant Morrison's 'conceptual avalanche' style." With a huge dose of meta. Here's a scene from #28. Those "Millar" issues read very differently from the earlier Ellis issues of The Authority, which are in a much more traditional, expositional superhero style in which character sit around and talk about their powers and their backstories. Morrison told Rich Johnston that he was the ghost-author of The Authority #28: So maybe he had something to do with the previous Millar issues as well, behind the scenes. Sorry, I was mis-remembering about when Morrison said he stopped assisting Millar. Morrison told Rolling Stone he had input into devising, plotting and even some dialogue suggestions until the Ultimates, which would have begun around the time of the Authority #28. link
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Post by rberman on Jul 11, 2020 10:28:03 GMT -5
Here's the relevant portion of the Rolling Stone interview:
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