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Post by james on Nov 4, 2021 13:06:58 GMT -5
I just picked up Kirby's 19 issue Eternals. After reading a thread about he Eternals I realized that other than in Thor or other titles I never read Kirby's.
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Post by Batflunkie on Nov 4, 2021 18:43:52 GMT -5
I recently read Rick Veitch's Brat Pack. Holy crap, was this series dark...and probably would have seemed even more so had I read this when it originally came out nearly 30 years ago. I can definitely see how this influenced Garth Ennis' The Boys. Veitch's The One was one that I re-read a lot as a teen (mostly out of lack of things to do in a house where tv was restricted and internet was slower than vaseline on toast) and it's always stood out to me as incredibly surreal and out there. Alan Moore has credited it as being a proto-Watchmen, but it definitely has it's own ideas and identity
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 4, 2021 18:53:21 GMT -5
I just picked up Kirby's 19 issue Eternals. After reading a thread about he Eternals I realized that other than in Thor or other titles I never read Kirby's. I had and sold off the entire series back in the early 2000's . It was that or eat dog food. I don't remember it being so great other than the amazing looking Celestials. I think I got 20 bucks for the entire series.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Nov 4, 2021 21:10:21 GMT -5
I recently read Rick Veitch's Brat Pack. Holy crap, was this series dark...and probably would have seemed even more so had I read this when it originally came out nearly 30 years ago. I can definitely see how this influenced Garth Ennis' The Boys. Veitch's The One was one that I re-read a lot as a teen (mostly out of lack of things to do in a house where tv was restricted and internet was slower than vaseline on toast) and it's always stood out to me as incredibly surreal and out there. Alan Moore has credited it as being a proto-Watchmen, but it definitely has it's own ideas and identity This was the first thing I read after I had read Brat Pack (I wasn't able to find The Multimortal, so I read The One instead.) I did enjoy it, and this precedes Brat Pack (not that they’re interconnected.) I wonder how well this series was received in 1985. It was totally under my radar at the time, being 13 back when it came out. I only cared about established heroes from the big 2 back then…dumbo kid that I was (am.)
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 5, 2021 17:51:36 GMT -5
Hark, A VagrantKate Beaton, 2011 This collection’s publication date kind of puts it on the boundary between what’s consider ‘modern’ and ‘classic’ on this forum, but the actual comics were posted online in the preceding years, so I guess this counts as the latter. Even though it’s kind of weird to think of web comics as ‘classic’. Anyway, I was really happy when I saw this book in the library and immediately checked it out. I used to occasionally read the individual ‘Hark’ comics when they were being posted new, but for some reason I can never seem to get into the habit of regularly following web comics. So 70% of the material in this book was new to me. And man, is it good. I remembered how much I love Beaton’s offbeat sense of humor. The topics of her satire ranges from history and classical literature to, occasionally, modern(ish) politics, pop culture and even superheroes. Here’s an example of the latter: The entire archive of Hark, A Vagrant is still available online, by the way.
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Post by profh0011 on Nov 5, 2021 21:15:21 GMT -5
^^ This has gotta be the same guy who did a cartoon about "20,000 Leagues" where the giant squid just wanted to make friends...
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Post by Batflunkie on Nov 6, 2021 11:55:49 GMT -5
Been re-reading through Judge Dredd The Complete Case Files V1. While still not fully formed yet beyond "Dirty Harry In The Far Flung Future", it gets better with each subsequent story and the Robot Wars and Luna-City 1 epics are great. Really love Ron Turner's artwork, even if he only did two or three serials. His stuff is very clean and really pops, kind of has a 60's vibe to it that's kind of interesting. Also, I don't care what anyone says, Walter was a great addition to the series even if he's just played as comic relief
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 7, 2021 8:38:53 GMT -5
Re-GiftersBy Mike Carey (writer), Sonny Liew and Mark Hempel (artists), 2007 Stumbled onto this one in the library recently and checked it out, because: a) Sonny Liew is one of the artists and I really like his work, and b) I occasionally like to read children’s/YA stuff if it’s good. It tells the story of Jen Dik Seong (called ‘Dixie’ by her friends), a Korean-American girl in her early teens who lives in LA with her family (her mom, dad and twin younger brothers). Dixie is having the typical problems of an early teen, i.e., a crush on a slightly older guy in school who barely knows she exists, plus she’s in training a big national hapkido tournament in LA – something not only important to her, but also a point of pride for her entire family. And there’s also a ‘re-gifting’ theme that runs through the whole story, which starts at the birthday party of the boy Dixie is crushing on. This is a light, fun story with a lot of humor and heart. And the art is really nice, and perfectly suited to the story.
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Post by The Captain on Nov 7, 2021 9:10:06 GMT -5
So much read in the past couple of months that I haven't had time to post here.
Been reading my way through Sandman this year, as I have been picking up one TPB per month of the series. Only have one more to buy, and I just finished "World's End", which is the eighth in the series.
Also been reading Fantastic Four from the beginning and am currently up to issue #32. It's far better than the DC output from the same time period I've read ("oh no, Superman has to marry a gorilla" or "check this, Robin turns into an actual robin"), but it still is very tough to get through for me.
My biggest issue is the repetitiveness of the minor aspects of the stories (Ben and Johnny fighting and wrecking something, Ben storming off because he's mad at Reed, Reed being an insensitive and clueless prat, and Sue's abject uselessness), and while I know that is pretty standard for early Marvel because they didn't want ongoing storylines, it makes for a rough go of it. It really feels like lather, rinse, repeat for issue upon issue.
Now, there is some stuff in there that I like. The ongoing Reed-Sue-Namor triangle actually works, as they do a nice job with Sue being torn between the two (although they haven't gotten into what she LIKES about Namor, other than he doesn't ignore or demean her like Reed does). The villains are pretty decent, although there is too much hand-waving of SASS (Silver Age Silly Science), like what EXACTLY makes Puppet Master's clay work as it does or how EXACTLY does Mad Thinker's computer work to know to the precise second when something is going to happen. I guess for readers in the early 1960s, it was a simpler era and they didn't need to know how the watch was made, just that the watch could tell them the time, and that was enough.
Probably going to finish the FF Omnibus #1 in the next day or two, then will either go to the Epic Collection that follows right after or jump to the Spidey Epic collecting the issues from the late #80s to early #100s.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 7, 2021 9:58:24 GMT -5
Surprising that you found the early FF's a slog to get through. It brings up a subject that has been in my mind for a while. There are some series that suffer from binge reading because of the sameness of the stories. I never thought that FF was one of those runs.
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Post by The Captain on Nov 7, 2021 10:06:19 GMT -5
Surprising that you found the early FF's a slog to get through. It brings up a subject that has been in my mind for a while. There are some series that suffer from binge reading because of the sameness of the stories. I never thought that FF was one of those runs. It's getting better as things progress. I only felt the first 10-15 issues were tough, but then they start to do a few two-part stories as well as give Sue some additional powers, which takes her out of being just the "damsel in distress" for the boys to rescue. I give them some leeway, as they were really trying something new and still figuring it out.
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Post by kirby101 on Nov 7, 2021 10:07:53 GMT -5
Surprising that you found the early FF's a slog to get through. It brings up a subject that has been in my mind for a while. There are some series that suffer from binge reading because of the sameness of the stories. I never thought that FF was one of those runs. I don't think there was a sameness to the stories, I think what The Captain is referring to is a certain sameness to the interactions of the FF in those early issues. Which as you say, is amplified by binge reading.
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Post by Duragizer on Nov 7, 2021 16:59:41 GMT -5
I've read up to FF #80 and I still find it a bit of slog, though these later issues are certainly easier to read than the earlier ones. At the end of the day, Ben is the only member of the FF I can say I really like, and Doom the only villain. At this point, I'm only sticking with it to the end of Kirby's run 'cause I'm a diehard fan of the man.
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Post by The Captain on Nov 7, 2021 17:14:48 GMT -5
Surprising that you found the early FF's a slog to get through. It brings up a subject that has been in my mind for a while. There are some series that suffer from binge reading because of the sameness of the stories. I never thought that FF was one of those runs. I don't think there was a sameness to the stories, I think what The Captain is referring to is a certain sameness to the interactions of the FF in those early issues. Which as you say, is amplified by binge reading. This is what I was saying exactly. In the first 10 issues alone, we saw: Johnny and Ben fight each other: 5 times (and 6 times in the first 15 issues) Reed urge caution while Ben argues to rush into a fight: 3 times (and 4 times in the first 15 issues) Sue gets taken prisoner by the villain: 3 times If you didn't get issue #3 with Johnny and Ben's first fight, which explains their dynamic (younger kid versus older veteran), they gave you the same thing in issues #4, 5, 8, and 10. If you missed issue #2, where Ben is shown as a man of action versus Reed's more calculating persona, they play it out again in issues #3 and 6. If you somehow didn't understand that's Sue role in the early books was to be helpless and useless, they made certain you got that in issues #3, 5, and 8. It's good stuff, but they really limited themselves with the "every issue may be somebody's first issue" concern, and for a brand-new comic book from a brand-new company with a brand-new angle on the superhero genre, that was certainly valid. As I wrote, it seemed to be less frequent going into the second and third years, as I'm betting that Marvel was finding that their audience was loyal and knew what had happened before. They even made mention of that in one of the letters pages, writing that the audience was torn between stand-alone stories and two-parters, and that they would do whichever was necessary to tell the story right.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 9, 2021 21:17:52 GMT -5
Been reading Gotham Central this week (I was being stubborn and wanted the old TPBs since I had the first one, and they were harder to get)... great stuff. Of course this set of trades (I have to still get the last one) skips a few issues that seem to be a fill in artist, so that's annoying, but the story doesn't really miss a beat. Its too bad we can't have more of this... have what is essentially a police drama in a super hero setting is quite fun.
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