2012 what are you reading thread

the end of the Kirby run (1969) and oddly it seems most evident in the scripting/dialogue, the comic is way less wordy than previous years.

think it's a combination of things - the crucial switch to a much smaller original art size, jack being increasingly unhappy and unengaged, stan busy elsewhere, etc

Thanks for running order Kid - I'm reading the Dungeons in narrative running order, when I can get copies (they seem to be going OOP pretty quick, some orders of mine had to be refunded).

Reading the Walking Dead comic right now, it's really interesting comparing it to the show.

huh the art-size switch isn't mentioned in the intro, didn't know about that. innarestin

xp

someone mentioned Moto Hagio upthread, so i took out a short story collection... some beautiful drama in there.

trying bechdel's are you my mother... so grindingly frustratingly introspective but expertly done

Blimey, Are You My Mother is AWFUL! All that skill and time spent on an enterprise of embarrassing self-absorbed nitwittery

my brother just sent me The Transmutation of Ike Garuda. man I don't remember hearing anything about this when it came out, although I do have vague memories of Starstruck. looks pretty great so far.

I have read Bechdel's earlier stuff btw

yeah i gotta say i agree with morrison but all that skill!

Shakey Mo, FWIW there's more on the art size change here:

http://www.artofthecomicbook.com/history/art-reduction.htm

btw Matt Fraction's Hawkeye is incredible

I read this review of it:

Hawkeye #2-3: I hate to use the term Mary Sue, but suddenly Hawkeye’s a down dude who lives in Brooklyn where he attends rooftop parties with his neighbors, he loves 1970 Dodge Challengers, and he’s as irresistible to women as billionaire playboy Tony Stark and famous lawyer Matt Murdock, so what else do you call it. How any of this squares with the basics of the character — why he suddenly lives in Brooklyn instead of wherever it is that the Avengers live, why he’s a super-cool dude instead of the ex-circus ex-con archer guy…I dunno, it feels like Matt Fraction poured a bunch of unrelated ideas into a Hawkeye-shaped vessel because that’s what was available. I’m not saying there’s some One True Hawkeye out there, I’m saying I don’t think Hawkeye, One True or otherwise, is anything but an extraordinarily flimsy frame on which to hang surface-cool writing like this. At least we’re past the Russian guy who said “bro” all the time from the first issue, Fraction’s worst writing since the cussing dwarf from Iron Man, but these issues also set up the distasteful idea that Hawkeye and the girl who took over for him in the Young Avengers want to fuck but think it’s a bad idea, so it’s hardly a step in the right direction.

It might be my least favorite Fraction in a while (when you consider the "quality" of Fear Itself and Thor that's something) but Aja is a wonderful storyteller. I think I'd like it more without scripting.

It's silly and a bit smug, and I suspect it'll have seriously diminishing returns -- but it's been super fun so far. Fun enough to buy and not CBR! I'm not sure I care even a tiny bit whether it fits into Hawkeye's "One True Continuity".

Did Iron Man get good again, ever? I dropped it after "World's Most Wanted"

The new adjectiveless series (are they going the way of Spiderman, or is Invincible Iron Man folding in to this?) will be written by Kieron Gillen, so should be fun - I've enjoyed the Iron Mans I've been reading recently, less punching and more corporate hi-jinks. But not enjoying enough to buy, in fairness.

No, it's just kind of stumbling along to a close.

Iron Man closed, now. They wrapped it up with a Mandarin arc that was somewhat based on the same plot as the (alternate) future annual where Mandarin had won.

Dan OTM about Hawkeye. I still miss the Brubaker/Fraction/Swierczynski Iron Fist arc. Picked up the issues of this recent crossover garbage when they went to Kun Lun out of nostalgia.

I was following Secret Avengers for the plot arc that's been following the series, but I think they have it mostly wrapped up now, uneventfully. Marvel is good at setting things up these days, not as great at knocking them down.

tbh the only Fraction series I keep thinking is essential is Casanova

I liked his Defenders, but it does seem oddly derivative of Morrison's Rock of Ages (there are far worse things to rip off, of course), and at the end you just think "was that all just a cover to send them on a time/space trip?"

I've never read Morrison's Rock of Ages! New recommendation, I guess

I lucked into a pack of the first six Defenders issues, all alternate covers, at Big Brain Comics in mpls for like $10 or something

xp oh man it's amazing, probably the best arc in his JLA run, which is saying something.

I've never read Morrison's Rock of Ages! New recommendation, I guess

Read the entire Morrison JLA run though, not just that one!

I lucked into a pack of the first six Defenders issues, all alternate covers,

.......alternate covers?

Yeah, shops get a different cover on one of ten copies or something, some sell them as collectibles.

Multiple Warhead, wow.

Warhead(s), natch.

Yeah, shops get a different cover on one of ten copies or something, some sell them as collectibles.

Yeah but surely not on the first six Defenders!


btw Grant’s run is:
JLA #1-15 (Rock Of Ages is 10-15),
- You can read JLA Secret Files & Origins #1 anywhere between #4 and #10, but it’s inessential.
- You can read JLA/Wildcats in the same area if you really feel you need to, but don't come crying to me afterwards.
- It’s totally worth reading Aztek #1-7 before JLA #1, and Aztek #8-10 before JLA #10

Prometheus #1
JLA #17-18
JLA #22-23

DC One Million
- Grant wrote DC1M 1-4 and JLA 1,000,000, but also ghosted/plotted a lot of the others. A decent spread covers
- Chronos #1,000,000
- DC One Million #1
- DC One Million #2
- Man Of Steel #1,000,000
- Superman #1,000,000
- Starman #1,000,000
- JLA #1,000,000
- DC One Million #3
- Flash #1,000,000
- Action Comics #1,000,000
- Adventures Of Superman #1,000,000
- Man Of Tomorrow #1,000,000
- Resurrection Man #1,000,000
- DC One Million #4
- Hitman #1,000,000 is hilarious but not part of the plot.

JLA #24-26
JLA #28-31
JLA #34
JLA #36-41

(#27 is by Mark Millar and is just about OK, #42 is by D Curtis Johnson and is quite good, #35 is by JM DeMatteis and is part of some crossover bollocks, the other fill-ins are by Mark Waid or Waid/Grayson and don’t impact your reading by omission. There are also three pages of Morrison in some New Gods Secret Files & Origins special or something which you can probably live without.)

MULTIPLE WARHEADS is really good.

Don't have the Oni Multiple Warheads, so theoretically waiting for the all-in-one but may change my mind if the shop has shelf copies

MULTIPLE WARHEADS is really good.

Car named "Lenin", cuz it ain't "Stalin".

Is Aztek worth the effort, then?

Speaking of effort, reading the AV Club writeups of Sandman has made me want to delve back in and read the whole run. (I bailed after A Game of You, back when the singles where coming out). Should I dare? Is there good stuff there or just a lot of the usual Gaiman wankery?

A Game of You is kind of its own tributary, it doesn't go any further in that direction. It is also possibly the most interested he gets in recognisable humans.

After that it's a short story collection, a Dream and Delerium road trip (probably my favourite, but I have an unrepresentative fondness for Jill Thompson's art), another collection of stories (and stories of stories, aaah do you see?), a really long unfocused story which should be the grand thematic centre of the book, but where Gaiman by his own admission lost the plot a bit (but there is a lot of Marc Hempel art!) and a v. serious and meaningful coda.

oh i could play a game of you darling
still i'd be so l33t
oh i would still be so 133t

Is Aztek worth the effort, then?

it is mad flawed but if you're reading his JLA run for the first time and not paying for any of it, it's well worth including

a really long unfocused story which should be the grand thematic centre of the book, but where Gaiman by his own admission lost the plot a bit (but there is a lot of Marc Hempel art!)

where did he admit this? it's the best long book of the series imo (mainly because it's the only one with good cartooning) (Matt Wagner single ish is the absolute best bit)

I may have to [citation needed] that, I've definitely seen it but have no idea where - it seemed pretty clear at the time as well, 19 months for 13 issues, not much happening when they did come out, a lot of wait what is actually happening here.

Sandman has some really nice moments, although I'm still unsold on the entire Daniel character arc as set up and acted out.

Sadly, the things that stick with me the most are the most ridiculous Gaiman-esque gothy lines, like the guy from the undertaker realm explaining his first sexual experience with a line like "I spent my seed on a craven skull" or something like that

Game Of You really turned me off at the time b/c it seemed like such a ripoff of Jonathan Carroll's Bones of the Moon.

like the guy from the undertaker realm

^ the worst issue

Predictably, THE ZAUCER OF ZILK is neato in my book. At least the first half.

Remember when Gaiman deciphered the secret of marketing and made Death a cute girl?

hahaha that Hawkeye review is terrible and pretty much misses the point of the series, which is this is basically a madcap book drawn in the style of early 100 Bullets

Hawkeye is a chill bachelor dude, redeemed shady past, has a sweet car. How can you dislike it?

He's the new Luke Cage now that Cage has a kid and is all boring and shit

SWEET CHRISTMAS

also that review has a complete and total misreading of the Clint/Kate relationship IMO; at this point, it's basically a brother/sister relationship and any sexual tension is coming from her and so far has manifested as "I cannot believe how inappropriate you are"

now it could TURN into an actual sexual chemistry/unrequited passion thing but at the moment it's much more in the "I recognize you're attractive but no gonna happen" zone, which makes a good amount of sense given the ages of the characters

also I don't think my sporadic dips into the Young Avengers world fully showed me how hilariously awesome Kate Bishop is

Fraction’s worst writing since the cussing dwarf from Iron Man

Fraction needs to have this dude just randomly show up in every comic now to spite that review

Just read the first TPB of Brian Vaughan's and Fiona Staple's Saga, and enjoyed it a lot! Staples' self-coloured art looks great (she's put tremendous effort both to the grandiose sci-fi imagery, and to smaller details like character body language), and it's nice to read a new series that makes it clear right from the start that it's gonna be long and epic in scale... I assume Hazel will eventually become the main character (since she's the one narrating the book), even though it begins with her birth and at the moment focuses on her parents. There are some mildly irritating Vaughanisms present (I get that he likes to write "natural" dialogue, but I don't see why futuristic interplanetary soldiers with wings and horns and magic powers have to speak like 2010s urban Americans), but mostly it feels like the beginning of a great ride. Let's just hope it stays away from the worst Vaughanism of them all, his tendency to kill main characters in his books just for the sake of melodrama.

Too late!

this shit cray

http://royalboiler.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ike.jpg?w=640&h=490

It looks cray! What is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transmutation_of_Ike_Garuda