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Post by commond on Jan 19, 2023 17:56:03 GMT -5
I'm also reading Monster at the moment. I'm up to the 5th volume. How's the anime?
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Post by arfetto on Jan 19, 2023 18:04:43 GMT -5
I'm also reading Monster at the moment. I'm up to the 5th volume. How's the anime? It is a nice adaptation, faithful to the source and worth it for the soundtrack even if you have already read it. The manga art I prefer though. And there is always the tradeoff of reading at your own pace versus going at a television shows' forced pace (I guess it depends on how fast a person reads, but I would venture to say everyone reads faster than the anime's pacing, which I do like because it really can get a person "settled in" and invested but I can see how it could annoy some people). If you have plenty of free time, I recommend watching it.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 19, 2023 20:31:50 GMT -5
I think I read up to vol 5 or so until the store didn't have the rest and I lost track...defintely on my list to re-read..great book!
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Post by arfetto on Jan 21, 2023 17:10:59 GMT -5
Today the '90s comic I read was
Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji Chapters 1-24 (1996) by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. Over 500 pages.
I've watched all the Kaiji anime, but this is the first time I've read the manga (which the anime is adapted from). Kaiji is a series full of despair and hope and then despair again. Glimmers of light shine in the darkest moments, and the chance for life-changing success can turn into crushing failure on a dime - and yet a final dime in pocket can turn it all around once again. A vicious cycle, a roulette wheel. In short, it is a comic about gambling. But not just that, it is a comic about feeling like a loser in society, having no money and no ambition because you've been beaten down for so long, something that even a non-gambler of casino games can relate to (everyone at times is a gambler at life after all).
Kaiji is compelling because its title character is not-so-equal parts winner and loser, leaning more towards the loser side. Everyone is a winner sometimes, and a loser too, and our protagonist embodies that to a great degree. He isn't just an "everyman", though, he is the guy in the background even the everyman is often better off than. And unlike "too cool" character types who keep their emotions hidden, the feelings of our mulleted "hero" are on full display for the reader, nothing held back. It's intense, it's pathos, it's Kaiji. Zawa-zawa.
Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji begins in early 1996 and follows the..."exploits" of Kaiji Itō, a listless young man who wastes away his days losing at cards and resenting the rich.
The one thing that seems to bring him "joy", if it is even that, is to vandalize illegally parked high-dollar vehicles.
It is the only thing in life Kaiji feels he has control over. Shortly after Kaiji returns home after another losing streak, a yakuza member (who happens to be the owner of the vehicle Kaiji has just vandalized) makes a visit to Kaiji's place.
It turns out that Kaiji is deep in debt, and the yakuza has come to collect. Kaiji does not remember owing such a debt, but the yakuza explains that Kaiji's name is co-signed on a loan owed by Kaiji's former friend (who has gone "missing", leaving Kaiji with the bill). And the interest is piling up. The 300,000 yen Kaiji's friend borrowed has turned into 3.85 million yen. So far.
There is no way Kaiji can possibly pay, but fear not, claims the yakuza. He has actually come to offer Kaiji "salvation", in the form of an underground gambling game that takes place on a cruise ship called the "Espoir". If Kaiji does well in this "game", he can potentially wipe the debt clean.
Through some "Fear Of Missing Out" trickery by the yakuza, Kaiji agrees to join in the game, which is actually much more sinister than advertised. When Kaiji arrives, he finds the ship filled with hundreds of other "Kaijis", people deep in debt at the end of their rope. This game could be their final ruin (the fate of the losers could be forced labor or worse) or their only hope. The first game they must play against each other is "Restricted Rock Paper Scissors", an interesting twist on RPS, which makes up the bulk of the first 20+ chapters.
One day I would like to check the dates on the Yu-Gi-Oh manga series' Duelist Kingdom arc, which like this first storyline in Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji, involves a cruise ship, a card game, and "stars" the characters must collect to advance in the game. Yu-Gi-Oh and Kaiji both started in 1996, but I am unclear on the publication date order. Both are great stories in my estimation, I am just interested to see if Gambling Apocalypse inspired the opening portion of Duelist Kingdom.
Kaiji is an interesting character because he makes mistakes and blunders often, is a bit naive and has spent most of his life just "going with the flow", but also has an analytical mind. He will panic a bit, then realize a "way out" of the hole he has dug himself into and start crunching numbers. This separates him from many of the other debtors on the ship who often fold immediately and end up in the "Grieving Room". Perseverance and rational thinking, and yes, luck too, may be the keys needed to escape the Gambling Apocalypse.
The gambling games in Kaiji are rough, because Life is rough. And just when Kaiji thinks he has everything figured out and comes up with a plan, the gaming "meta" changes, as more exploits and loopholes and tactics are discovered by the other non-grieving players of Restricted RPS. Even in this den of losers, there will be winners.
Kaiji attempts to form a pact with some other debtors (including, it turns out, the former friend who got him into this situation in the first place) to successfully make it past this first game. But it is hard to control the hearts of others, and sometimes they don't go along with his plan. The grip of gambling is powerful. Logic and reason are often thrown overboard.
But Kaiji keeps at it after twists and turns and betrayals and comebacks. The comic is dark and depressing often, but the fact Kaiji keeps going is charming and lends an addictive quality.
And if he can ever clear his debt, Kaiji is surely going to turn his life around, right?
Right? Haha. Well, nothing in life is a sure bet. Great stuff.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jan 21, 2023 19:27:03 GMT -5
arfetto , The Kaiji anime was so good. It reminded me a lot of the original seven volumes of Yu-Gi-Oh! before it was rebooted with Duel Monsters as it's sole focus
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Post by arfetto on Jan 23, 2023 11:22:13 GMT -5
Today the '90s comic I read was
Wildstorm! issue 2 (1995)
Lacking a Simonson/Simonson story, the main draw in issue 2 is definitely the conclusion to Wiesenfeld's Deathblow tale.
Strangely, Cray and the Barbarian do not talk things out like gentlemen and instead do the unthinkable in comics: they inflict brutal violence upon each other.
Eventually the "cavalry" arrives, and the Barbarian, seeing no way out, kills himself with his own sword.
It turns out he was an escaped mental patient.
His doctor shows up and explains the whole thing, but it probably could have just ended on this above scene. But then, sometimes you have to hammer things home for readers I guess.
There are two more stories in this issue. One involves Pike (a character I remember from Jim Lee's WildCATS) and Taboo (who I've seen on covers of Backlash). I followed the story fine (it is about whether Taboo can kill her target as an initiation to join some group), but I don't have much to say about it not knowing these characters too well yet. The story seems to exist to fill in the blanks to some existing plotline in another title (perhaps Backlash?)
And there is also a chaotically '90s double page pin-up penciled by Jeff Rebner with inks by Eric Shanower.
It has a Wolverine-looking guy that eats people (or at least hungrily bites them). The comic says this is a pin-up for Stormwatch drawn in 1994. I've only read the Ellis Stormwatch stuff so far, and do not recognize these characters so he must not have used them in his run (or they got redesigns and I just don't notice them).
I did not enjoy this issue as much as issue one, but it is worth a glance for the Wiesenfeld art.
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Post by arfetto on Jan 23, 2023 17:48:36 GMT -5
Today I also read
Wildstorm! issue 3 (1995).
At the end of this issue, the editor explains a bit how this anthology is created. The most insightful sentence is perhaps:
"We guarantee you'll love Union in "My Enemy, My Monkey," a story inspired by Aron Wiesenfeld's dynamic "monkey" cover.
The lead tale here is My Enemy, My Monkey naturally. Could it be anything else? Union (an alien superhero unfamiliar with Earth culture it seems) comes across a gadgeted gorilla terrorizing people. Instead of a monkey on his back, this gorilla has a lizard-man atop it.
Buddha Buddha Buddha! - Mad Monk(ey)Union comes to a logical conclusion about the gorilla and lizard-man:
Yes.
Things start promising and gorilla and lizard-person hi-jinx may indeed ensue...but then it turns out Union just ruined the shooting of a movie scene, which is a bit more far-fetched than his own idea.
Still, it was a good thing Union stopped by, because another character also stops by to do a bit of shooting of their own. A deranged fan attempts to assassinate the lizard-man's A-list actor. And he probably has a compelling motivation to do so, let's see...
Oh. Well, anyway, Union saves the day, but laments how the gorilla was not able to understand him.
Clearly the story does not take itself seriously, but still, I think the cover of this comic could have inspired another kind of story where there actually was a real alien/animal threat for Union to take on.
Next, there is a second part to the Taboo story from issue two (I didn't realize it needed a second part haha, I felt it was a one-shot thing). It is okay, but I think I would need to read Backlash to fully follow or appreciate what happens here. In this respect, the Union story is better for someone "new to the Wildstorm universe" like me because it requires no actual knowledge of Union to follow along and "get it". It eases you in. This story just expects you to know the deal.
Taboo reviewing her own story in the anthology. I am not so harsh.I did appreciate learning that Taboo has a symbiote (and she may be able to hypnotize people?), though, which I did not pick up on in part one from Wildstorm! issue two.
Then, the comic ends with part three of the Spartan (from WildCATS) storyline that has been running since issue one. There is a nice concept here, the question of whether Spartan, as a robot who can download his "brain" into other Spartan bodies when he "dies", is fit to be a team leader of mortals as he does not fully appreciate having "one life" (and so perhaps cannot accurately judge when to sacrifice the lives of beings who do). But, the ending is botched due to a lettering and editor error: Haha. I feat this story didn't quite stick the landing. Would have been quite the fear if it did, though.
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Post by arfetto on Jan 25, 2023 17:19:14 GMT -5
Today I read
Strangehaven 1-3 (1995-1996) by Gary Spencer Millidge
and also
Negative Burn issue 24 (1995) because it had a Strangehaven short in it (and also a Paul Pope story).
I've tried to get into Strangehaven in the past, and I always finish issue one and enjoy it, but up until today I have never pressed onward to issue two (I do not know why, because I do like issue one well enough). Of course all across the letter pages in these issues readers are comparing it to Twin Peaks. It even has a Laura Palmer-esque mystery girl.
The "charming small town with eccentric townsfolk and a seedy, sinister side" exists all over entertainment and literature and is not exclusive to Twin Peaks, but these letters were written in the '90s a few years after the Twin Peaks phenomena so it makes sense that is the focus (the letters pages mentions Strangehaven even gets a review in a Twin Peaks magazine called Wrapped in Plastic haha - I am hoping this magazine came polybagged). Well, when done properly this style of story is often compelling, so I have no problems with the set-up. And the creator seems to know what he is doing, there is some nice character interaction within these stories.
But, for now I have just
too many questions
haha, so I will simply read the comic further rather than write much about it just yet.
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Post by arfetto on Jan 25, 2023 18:32:34 GMT -5
I also read one more '90s comic today.
Wildstorm! issue 4 (1995)
This comic wraps up the Wildstorm! anthology series, but by this issue it is more like "Wildstorm." than "Wildstorm!", sadly.
Issue one started big, even if the plots were small, with Walt Simonson and Aron Wiesenfeld interiors, and while Wiesenfeld contributed covers to each issue (and a pin-up in this final one), issue four lacks any single tale with staying power.
Well, sort of...there is a story here I will probably always remember simply because the writer is credited only as "Merv" and Merv writes this:
Wiesenfeld's cover depicts Fuji from Stormwatch, but Fuji does not show up within - though all three short stories are centered around Stormwatch characters. As I mentioned before, I currently am only familiar with Stormwatch via the Ellis/Raney stuff, but I plan to read the earlier works eventually. Based on the early Ellis/Raney issues, I could follow all the stories in this issue (having rudimentary knowledge of early Stormwatch), but interestingly most of the characters here are ones Ellis elects not to use or focus much on in his run (they are characters he quietly shuffles off after a few issues, save one). Raney does pencil Merv's story though (but the finished art does not look as good as Raney's usual work).
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 26, 2023 0:14:19 GMT -5
Strangehaven and Negative Burn were more in my wheelhouse, as the 90s progressed. The superhero material, apart from a select few, wasn't doing it for me and more and more I was reading other genres and more independents. Dark Horse was a great source for this but there were plenty of others and I jumped on Strangehaven, when I discovered it. At the time, I recall copy comparing it to The Prisoner and I felt that was a little more apt than Twin Peaks. I enjoyed it, but the publishing schedule wasn't always regular and I ended up with gaps in it, before eventually getting digital.
Negative Burn I discovered later in the game, but I had been reading Dark Horse Presents for a while. Similar vibe, if slightly different material and print quality. One of the things that got me to read it was Christopher Moeller's Iron Empires, which had debuted in DHP and the Shadow Empires: Faith Conquers mini-series. That was a terrific little saga and the DHP story, The Crossing, continued in Negative Burn, with Moeller's brother aiding with the story. For some reason, that material never got reprinted in the trade collections, with the DHP material, the Shadow Empires mini and the Sheva's War mini, from DC's Helix line.
I was also reading Brian Bolland's Mr Mamoulian, which had been published elsewhere (seems like it appeared in at least 3 publications). Negative Burn became a regular reserve for me, up until the end and I eventually got the whole series, digitally.
Around the same time, I started reading things like A Distant Soil, Strangers in Paradise, Hepcats, Love & Rockets, Hate, Cud and Eno & Plum (Terry Laban's anthology, which debuted Eno & Plum, then their own books). That stuff helped fill in the time while I waited for the next Hellboy or between issues of Starman and Power of Shazam, or another Grendel Tales.
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Post by commond on Jan 26, 2023 6:50:58 GMT -5
I absolutely love Strangehaven. I'm hoping that Gary can finish it. The last few issues of Meanwhile have all been kickstarter projects.
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Post by coinilius on Jan 28, 2023 1:01:00 GMT -5
There is a really good video on the creation and process of creating Strangehaven on YouTube by In Praise of Shadows:
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Post by arfetto on Jan 31, 2023 12:38:05 GMT -5
I want to read DV8 by Ellis and Ramos.
I very much enjoyed the Ellis written Stormwatch comics when I read them for the first time last year and those comics were my main inspiration to read more '90s comics this year, including Image stuff. I also liked Ellis' The Authority (not so much Mark Millar's haha) which was quite refined with its four issue arcs, but Stormwatch in particular was just very fun (and more chaotic, less structured) and the work Ellis/Raney did on it reminded me of Morrison/Porter on JLA around the same time period. I was reading JLA back in the day, but not Stormwatch. I wish I had read it when it was being released, but it was never at the grocery store haha (JLA was).
So, the next longest work Ellis did on '90s Wildstorm seems to be DV8. Well, Planetary I have already read and only a few issues came out in 1999, I think issues 1-6 (though after reading The Authority I did purchase the Absolute Planetary not too long ago and am slowly reading through that). I will have to check the dates, I don't know which series Ellis worked on first, Stormwatch or DV8. I have a lot of issues of DV8, but I think only the first 7 or 8 are written by Ellis, maybe just 6 and he plotted the next or something (I will verify soon).
I also have a tpb collecting the first six issues:
The only thing I really know about DV8 (besides glancing through issues without reading them) is I remember Wizard Magazine giving the Ellis/Ramos issues a D or F rating haha, largely based on "questionable content" (I do not remember what the problem was exactly, just something about, perhaps, terrible characters doing terrible things and the reviewer felt gross reading it haha). They really did not enjoy it. Later on after Ellis and Ramos leave the title, I remember Wizard giving the comic a higher score with the new creative team. So I am quite interested to see just what is so reprehensible about the Ellis issues that even Wizard (a magazine that was never exactly a bastion of good taste) took a "moral stand" against the title haha. I do recall they did not appreciate Ramos' art style on such a "dark" comic.
Out of curiosity, before reading DV8, I checked online and saw that the team/characters first appeared in Gen13, which makes sense (8, 13). It seems they stop appearing in the title after issue 12 or so (according to comicvine anyway). I have some of these issues:
but not all of them, so I went ahead and ordered:
A Gen13 comic collection that came out last year haha, to start from the beginning.
Was this wise? Likely not.
So, this collection has the Gen13 mini-series (which, according to comicvine, introduces a few of the characters who later become a part of DV8) plus the first 5 or so issues of its regular series.
The DV8 team forms in Gen13 issue 6, and stays in the title until issue 12 (again, according to comicvine). These are not in the above collection, but I have issues 6-17 of the regular Gen13 series as singles (then a huge gap with a few singles here and there, then the Adam Warren stuff), so I should be able to read all the pre-having-their-own-title DV8 appearances in Gen13 so I can eventually be an "expert" on something nobody cares about haha (my favorite genre of expertise).
I basically know nothing about Gen13. My cursory view of it is that it is probably like '90s Harbinger from Valiant, but with more stylish art and extreme paneling that made it seem "cooler" to kids back in the day. Since I read Team7 this year (and a Simonson/Simonson Gen13 story in Wildstorm!), I already know the premise of Gen13 will likely involve "Gen-Actives" and the sons and daughters of a few characters from Team7.
Well, it is a long road for me getting to DV8, but surely a '90s comic thread needs Gen13 too or the picture is not complete. I will also be watching that Gen13 animated movie.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jan 31, 2023 14:36:16 GMT -5
I only ever speculated with Gen 13 based on how popular and so sold most of them way back then to buy other stuff I wanted. I think I only read the first mini-series and then rest where bought to make money. I wasn't working then (except summer job) so I was needing it to fuel my collecting. I've never read DV8 then or since. Though it's issues remaining fairly inexpensive I have thought about it several times. I have it on my want list on my CLZ account and on occasion have flipped through local stores' $1 bin to see if I can find any.
And since you mentioned it, if for whatever reason Ellis pissed off Wizard has me more curious to read them than before. Not a fan of Ramos art (first introduced to it way later on a Spiderman title he did in the late 90's iirc). I'll be curious to hear your report when you get to read them.
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Post by arfetto on Jan 31, 2023 19:03:02 GMT -5
Today I read:
Gen13 (1994 mini-series) 1-5 (via the Deluxe Edition Collection DC released in 2022)
Checking these out, I really get why J. Scott Campbell was a "superstar artist" in the '90s. He totally captures something about the era in his art. His work in the first few issues of this series are "kind of rough", to put it kindly haha. The word "wonky" could be used liberally to describe a lot of the art here. Despite this, there are flashes of Campbell's future art even in issue one, and by issue three or so he is already settling into what would become his trademark style.
This is expressive, high energy stuff. I am a fan of how colorful the colors are. From Freefall and her pink hair to Grunge and his green tattoo, Gen13 is a slick looking book, even with the odd anatomy. Jim Lee and the rest of the Wildstorm gang were also doing dynamic work in '94, but Campbell gives characters personality via the face more than what I am used to seeing from '90s Image.
And, like me, Campbell definitely had G.I. Joe ('80s to '90s era) Cobra action figures haha:
I don't know who Campbell's influences truly are, but looking at it surface level, it seems to obviously be Jim Lee (and the rest of Lee's crew) and Todd McFarlane:
(though his "McFarlane" face ends up looking more like Angel Medina art, as for the finger, I'm not sure haha)
The story in this mini-series is straightforward (except some wordy exposition telling us what we already know). Some teenagers (I am not sure their ages, though Fairchild is in college) are lured to a compound (in Fairchild's case, it is presented as a summer internship) where they are subjected to tests to bring out their "Gen-Active" abilities. The guy in charge of all this is Craven (who is also the antagonist of the Team7 mini I read) but he is never seen on panel here. Instead, his underling Ivana Baiul is the face of the operation and she is apparently up to "no good"...or rather, she is up to "more bad" than even Craven haha. If one of the test subjects does not "Gen-Activate" in a timely manner, she requests they be disposed of. Fairchild ends up meeting Freefall, Grunge and Burnout, and they work together during their time at the facility - and also decide to escape together when they learn the truth about the place (well, Burnout is nowhere to be found when the other three attempt escape, but shows up later with Rainmaker and one other character to assist them).
Two Gen-Actives and future members of DV8 also appear in this mini: Threshold and Bliss. They are brother and sister and have a "Lannister" thing going on, though it seems a bit one-sided. Their father was Callahan from Team7, but he is apparently killed in front of them at a young age and then they are taken away by I/O (International Operations), the American Intelligence Agency that Craven works for, and raised to be psycho psychic killers.
When I was a kid, I found a lot of Image comics impenetrable to read (so I mostly just looked at them haha) compared to my Batman or Valiant comics, but I think I was just picking up the wrong stuff. Like Spawn, for example, (which I tried to read again in 2021 but fell off, I'll pick it back up in this thread because I am a fan of the Capullo and Medina art, though I am a bit of an outlier because I don't think McFarlane's art on Spawn is his best work) and some Liefeld Extreme books (I could rarely get through a page of Team Youngblood haha), those books can be a chore due to various reasons (that I can explain about if I read some for this thread). Even the early Wildcats issues (pre-Robinson and Moore), though they excited me with the character designs and energetic Lee art, still took me forever to get through in terms of actually reading them. Savage Dragon and Shadowhawk were very easy to read and therefore some of my favorites growing up.
Compared to the above mentioned Image titles (sans Dragon or Hawk), Gen13 has a breezy quality, helped by the art and colors and character designs. I guess you could call the script by Choi "workmanlike", it is there to get the job done I suppose (well, basically by reiterating what we already see in the art, but that is just how it is sometimes with American comics) but he should probably get more credit than I assume he does (I rarely hear anyone talk about him, but to me he is quite suited for this book). The Gen13 mini is 90 percent flash and 10 percent thought, which is probably how it should be haha. I loved seeing all the '90s phrases in the word balloons that were cheesy even back then, but otherwise it reads very much like a Marvel X-team book of the '90s (in my non-expert opinion) with a bit more levity.
As for whether it is actually good? Hmm, I enjoyed it, but I don't know if it is something I would recommend to anyone here. The characters are pretty thin (I don't just mean how Campbell draws the girls)...for example, we know so far that Fairchild used to be a meek college bookworm that is coerced by her roommate to do her lab work, but then she becomes Amazonian after her Gen-Factor activates, so now that opens up possible storylines reconciling her personality with her physical powers. Fairchild has potential with this juxtaposition, but currently her character is pretty basic.
Freefall is bubbly sometimes and snarky other times and smokes. Smoking is her personality so far haha. Bobby/Burnout, I think the creators of this comic did not give a second thought about him after they created him haha. As far as this mini is concerned, he is just a sullen guy who gets fire powers (and luckily already had the nickname "Burnout" before getting them). Rainmaker doesn't even appear in the first issue, and joins them in issue two to escape the compound they are staying at. There is not much known about her yet. Grunge is the "fun" character, he is the most enjoyable to read here (but I bet his character type gets annoying real fast in the actual series haha). But the designs for the characters are nice and pretty distinct even while fitting in with the '90s Jim Lee aesthetic. I like their varying heights (Grunge, for example, is 5'3 which is unique for a male superhero type, Wolverine excepted).
One thing I am interested in, is this:
Google told me "Team7" first appeared in Team7 issue one, so I started there. But Team7 issue one came out near the end of 1994. The Gen13 mini-series ended by summer of '94, well before the release of the Team7 comic, and as we see, they appear here. So, I wonder if there are even earlier appearances of "Team7" via flashback in other books. I was curious about the designs of the group in the Dixon/Wiesenfeld mini-series, especially Dane's design, because he looked so different from how he does in Wetworks. My guess is perhaps the group first appeared in this one page flashback in the Gen13 mini and at the time no one knew exactly who all the members were (though Grifter and Deathblow are pretty obvious on this page), so then Wiesenfeld and company had to match up the eventually chosen roster to the designs depicted here. I do not know if I making sense haha, just rambling...maybe I should read Deathblow next and see when it was first released.
The main misstep I think for the Gen13 mini is the appearance of Dale Keown's Pitt character, simply because he does not add much to the story. If Pitt were removed, not much about these issues would change, and yet, he takes up a lot of page time.
I do like the Pitt design and stuff, and will get around to reading his comic eventually, but the appearance kind of detracts from the experience of a single mini-series that is meant to tell a simple, coherent story. So, while the first Team7 mini succeeded in that respect, Gen13 fails a bit due to the Pitt interference.
Oh, also, Lynch from Wildcats and Team7 also appears in the mini:
This was a lot of rambling, I did not really gather my thoughts very well for this post haha.
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