Post by Hoosier X on Mar 14, 2016 14:24:14 GMT -5
This is a thread where people who love old comics can talk about new comics.
And I don't mean that it's a place for cranky curmudgeons to bash new comics just because Thor is now a girl or Gordon is now Batman and his suit looks stupid.
It's OK to have a little bit of that. I don't want to drive anybody away by saying they can't vent about some of the stupid stuff in modern comics. There's plenty of stupid stuff to vent about. But I'm hoping this thread can be a little more constructive than "Superman wearing jeans is stupid."
My main target for this thread is those comic-book fans who read comics in the 1960s and/or the 1970s and/or the 1980s and might sometimes think about reading new comics again after decades of indifference or outright hostility. But they're not really sure what to read.
We all realize that comic books are different now. In the 1960s, you could pick up an issue of a comic book you never read before and pay your 12 cents and you could tell from that one issue what was going on, what the comic was about and whether or not you were interested in the further adventures of Metamorpho or Daredevil or whoever.
Even later in the 1960s and into the 1970s, when the adventures were continued to the next issue, you still got a recognizable chunk of a story.
It's a little different today, and it's easy to see why people who are used to older comics might not like the idea of paying $3.99 or $4.99 (not 12 cents!) for Part Two of a story written for the trade with very little in the way of explaining what's going on. There are lots of pages with two or three panels and very little dialogue. It takes three or four minutes to read the whole thing and you have no idea what's going on. You have to buy four or five issues (at $4.00 each) to get a whole story. And if it's not a particularly coherent story, you're out $16 or $20 (plus tax and gas money!) for a comic you didn't really like.
I know that not all modern comics are like that. But a lot of them are.
And I'm not saying comic books are bad just because they have a lot of pin-up pages and very little in the way of an explanation when you come in late. It's just something you have to get used to. I was reading 10 or 12 DC comics when the New 52 started and some of them were the kind of modern comics where you read it in three or four minutes because of modern decompression. Some of them were pretty good. (But it's a technique that's frequently abused, and some of them were pretty bad.)
So I'm hoping some of the longtime fans will read this thread and I'm hoping I can convince them to give some new comics a try. I'm not going to say "You will like 'Superior Stutter-Man' because it really has the flavor of Silver Age comics." I'm going to say "I liked 'Amazing Associates' because it had nice art and I like the dynamic of the main characters."
A few words about my credentials so that everybody knows where I'm coming from. I read a lot of Harvey comics as a kid, with a few super-hero comics here and there. When I was ten, I started reading MAD religiously, and I also read quite a few issues of Cracked and Crazy. And then when I was eleven, in 1975, I started collecting super-hero comics (mostly Marvel) and by early 1976, I was regularly reading Fantastic Four, Hulk, The Avengers, Iron Man, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, X-Men and quite a few others.
This went on for a few years. I think I was buying 30 comics a month pretty regularly in the early 1980s. When I got bored with a few of the Marvels, I eventually started getting a few DC comics regularly. (My favorites were Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Legion of Super-Heroes and All-Star Squadron.)
After "Crisis on Infinite Earths," I quit buying as many comics, and the number of comics I bought monthly fluctuated through the 1990s and the early 2000s. There were times when I was buying around 12 comics monthly and times when I was only getting two or three. I collected Cerebus from about #100 on and Sandman from #20 to the end. I bought Detective Comics from the start of Knightfall all the way to the 780s. I bought a lot of Legion comics in the 1990s. I read almost everything Alan Moore wrote. And every issue of Sandman Mystery Theater!
Then I stopped in 2004 and didn't buy any new comics until 2011. I started picking up Detective Comics again because I saw it on the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble. I only bought three issues before they canceled old Detective and started over again with #1 as part of the New 52.
I bought 10 to 15 new comics a month for the next year and a half. I got a lot of New 52 series. Detective, Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, Batgirl, Catwoman, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman. (And a few others.) I bought a few Marvels. The Defenders. (I love those twelve issues so much!) Red She-Hulk. Captain Marvel. I also got a bunch of issues of Dejah Thoris, Queen Sonja and Vampirella from Dynamite Comics.
And then I quit again in early 2013.
A few months ago, I got curious about what was going on in modern comics. Plus, my nephew (he's 13) likes to pick up a few comics now and again. So we go to the comic book store once a month or so, and I've also started picking up a few comics at Barnes and Noble.
Of course, I picked up Detective Comics. A longtime favorite, I have back issues to the early 1960s and I have every issue (of the old series) from #421 to #881. And I want to get every issue of the new series. I got a couple of very recent back issues but the first brand-new issue I picked up was Detective Comics #47 and - lucky me! - it's part of a cross-over called Robin War. And I thought "Oh goody! I can jump right in with a cross-over! If it's good, then it's a great way to get back into what’s going on in the Batman comics! And if it's bad … well, bad cross-overs are just part of being a Batman fan!"
(I’ll save how that turned out for a later post.)
And I started picking up Wonder Woman again because the first issue I saw - #47 – had the Cheetah on it. It was great! I liked #48 and #49 a lot as well.
And Marvel has started over again on Captain Marvel, so I picked up the first two issues of that. I got #2 only yesterday and I haven't read it yet but I liked #1 a lot.
I'm also filling in a lot of holes for what I missed over the last two and a half years. And I’m trying to finish a few storylines of the comics I was reading when I quit in 2013.
So that's where I'm at now. I'm not going to limit the discussion to comics that just came out now. Anything from 2006 to the present is fair game. I'll probably post about Robin War in a few days.
And I don't mean that it's a place for cranky curmudgeons to bash new comics just because Thor is now a girl or Gordon is now Batman and his suit looks stupid.
It's OK to have a little bit of that. I don't want to drive anybody away by saying they can't vent about some of the stupid stuff in modern comics. There's plenty of stupid stuff to vent about. But I'm hoping this thread can be a little more constructive than "Superman wearing jeans is stupid."
My main target for this thread is those comic-book fans who read comics in the 1960s and/or the 1970s and/or the 1980s and might sometimes think about reading new comics again after decades of indifference or outright hostility. But they're not really sure what to read.
We all realize that comic books are different now. In the 1960s, you could pick up an issue of a comic book you never read before and pay your 12 cents and you could tell from that one issue what was going on, what the comic was about and whether or not you were interested in the further adventures of Metamorpho or Daredevil or whoever.
Even later in the 1960s and into the 1970s, when the adventures were continued to the next issue, you still got a recognizable chunk of a story.
It's a little different today, and it's easy to see why people who are used to older comics might not like the idea of paying $3.99 or $4.99 (not 12 cents!) for Part Two of a story written for the trade with very little in the way of explaining what's going on. There are lots of pages with two or three panels and very little dialogue. It takes three or four minutes to read the whole thing and you have no idea what's going on. You have to buy four or five issues (at $4.00 each) to get a whole story. And if it's not a particularly coherent story, you're out $16 or $20 (plus tax and gas money!) for a comic you didn't really like.
I know that not all modern comics are like that. But a lot of them are.
And I'm not saying comic books are bad just because they have a lot of pin-up pages and very little in the way of an explanation when you come in late. It's just something you have to get used to. I was reading 10 or 12 DC comics when the New 52 started and some of them were the kind of modern comics where you read it in three or four minutes because of modern decompression. Some of them were pretty good. (But it's a technique that's frequently abused, and some of them were pretty bad.)
So I'm hoping some of the longtime fans will read this thread and I'm hoping I can convince them to give some new comics a try. I'm not going to say "You will like 'Superior Stutter-Man' because it really has the flavor of Silver Age comics." I'm going to say "I liked 'Amazing Associates' because it had nice art and I like the dynamic of the main characters."
A few words about my credentials so that everybody knows where I'm coming from. I read a lot of Harvey comics as a kid, with a few super-hero comics here and there. When I was ten, I started reading MAD religiously, and I also read quite a few issues of Cracked and Crazy. And then when I was eleven, in 1975, I started collecting super-hero comics (mostly Marvel) and by early 1976, I was regularly reading Fantastic Four, Hulk, The Avengers, Iron Man, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, X-Men and quite a few others.
This went on for a few years. I think I was buying 30 comics a month pretty regularly in the early 1980s. When I got bored with a few of the Marvels, I eventually started getting a few DC comics regularly. (My favorites were Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Legion of Super-Heroes and All-Star Squadron.)
After "Crisis on Infinite Earths," I quit buying as many comics, and the number of comics I bought monthly fluctuated through the 1990s and the early 2000s. There were times when I was buying around 12 comics monthly and times when I was only getting two or three. I collected Cerebus from about #100 on and Sandman from #20 to the end. I bought Detective Comics from the start of Knightfall all the way to the 780s. I bought a lot of Legion comics in the 1990s. I read almost everything Alan Moore wrote. And every issue of Sandman Mystery Theater!
Then I stopped in 2004 and didn't buy any new comics until 2011. I started picking up Detective Comics again because I saw it on the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble. I only bought three issues before they canceled old Detective and started over again with #1 as part of the New 52.
I bought 10 to 15 new comics a month for the next year and a half. I got a lot of New 52 series. Detective, Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, Batgirl, Catwoman, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman. (And a few others.) I bought a few Marvels. The Defenders. (I love those twelve issues so much!) Red She-Hulk. Captain Marvel. I also got a bunch of issues of Dejah Thoris, Queen Sonja and Vampirella from Dynamite Comics.
And then I quit again in early 2013.
A few months ago, I got curious about what was going on in modern comics. Plus, my nephew (he's 13) likes to pick up a few comics now and again. So we go to the comic book store once a month or so, and I've also started picking up a few comics at Barnes and Noble.
Of course, I picked up Detective Comics. A longtime favorite, I have back issues to the early 1960s and I have every issue (of the old series) from #421 to #881. And I want to get every issue of the new series. I got a couple of very recent back issues but the first brand-new issue I picked up was Detective Comics #47 and - lucky me! - it's part of a cross-over called Robin War. And I thought "Oh goody! I can jump right in with a cross-over! If it's good, then it's a great way to get back into what’s going on in the Batman comics! And if it's bad … well, bad cross-overs are just part of being a Batman fan!"
(I’ll save how that turned out for a later post.)
And I started picking up Wonder Woman again because the first issue I saw - #47 – had the Cheetah on it. It was great! I liked #48 and #49 a lot as well.
And Marvel has started over again on Captain Marvel, so I picked up the first two issues of that. I got #2 only yesterday and I haven't read it yet but I liked #1 a lot.
I'm also filling in a lot of holes for what I missed over the last two and a half years. And I’m trying to finish a few storylines of the comics I was reading when I quit in 2013.
So that's where I'm at now. I'm not going to limit the discussion to comics that just came out now. Anything from 2006 to the present is fair game. I'll probably post about Robin War in a few days.
