2013 what are you reading thread

I also can't decide yet if I like the first trade of Jonathan Hickman's "The Manhattan Projects", but it's so totally batshit weird and I'm going back and reading it now again month later.

yeah that was an amazing 2-year (at least?) stretch

I didn't start buying until late 91 (bought #5 and 6 on a school excursion, along with the OG Vortex Ed The Happy Clown TPB) but I reckon it stayed great til 1998. The penultimate issue, where Buddy goes on the blind date, is amazing. B&W run ended in 94 if that's where you're drawing the line though

Manhattan Projects has a bum issue here and there but, I hope, is building to something

Age of Ultron - it's surprisingly good! Made me think I was under-appreciating Bendis, but then I read the new Powers, which was just the worst.

I enjoy the whole run of Hate, altho felt like his art started to get a bit lazy by the end. agree about the blind date issue

ha, he went from 3 tiers to 4 just in case ppl felt he was being lazy by drawing for colour

a friend of mine is apparently friends with Marc Guggenheim and gave me a bunch of his stuff to read... this is the first time I'd looked at a modern Spider-Man comic in oh 10 years. oof.

bendis = best avengers writer since roy thomas, official. also looking forward to reading his x-men 'reboot'. i 'heard' there's a twist at the end of age of ultron (to be written by neil gaiman???) but i don't know what it is.

i enjoy a slott spiderman when one comes my way - dude always puts a lot into his scripts, never cheats the reader - but the art is p horrible most of the time.

i'm old enough to have bought neat stuff on the reg, so at first i was a little wary of hate, but was quickly won round. pathetic i know, but i MUCH prefer the issues that bagge inked himself (the colour was fine, but the art seemed to lose a bit of its energy when he was only penciling it.) must've been quite a while when you could buy new issues of love and rockets, hate, yummy fur and eightball p much every cpl of months, truly we were spoilt...

SPECULATIVE SPOILER: Twist is going to be Marvelman coming to Marvel universe.

And Hickman's Avengers smokes Bendis, in my opinion.

must've been quite a while when you could buy new issues of love and rockets, hate, yummy fur and eightball p much every cpl of months, truly we were spoilt

yes this was an amazing time. whatever "underground" stuff comes out nowadays on the regular, it hasn't grabbed me like that stuff did

tbf, the market has changed where it makes more sense for people to release trades rather than floppies

yep

of course that means Joe Matt really will never finish anything ever again :(

bendis = best avengers writer since roy thomas, official.

Best ever, imo. I really like what Hickman's doing on his two Avengers books right now, but I think it's too early to say it beats Bendis.

Also, Age of Ultron continues to be awesome. I really like that they banked the pages, especially Hitch's issues, so they could bring this out quickly. The pace of the story is really helped by quick publication.

tbf, the market has changed where it makes more sense for people to release trades rather than floppies

the best shit is coming out in floppies right now, but thanks to insane US postage increases, I don't get to read any of it anymore

like what? i ask

eg deforge, rilly, huizenga, hanawalt, fiffe, koyama in general

I can't believe people think Bendis is the best Avengers writer since Thomas... He pretty much tore apart everything that was unique about Avengers, brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history, and wrote every character as if they were in gritty cop show and not a superhero comic. (Seriously, when it came to characterization, pretty much every character was interchangeable with someone else.) Which meant no more grandiose cosmic adventures and stuff like that, which had previously been the Avengers' forte, because they didn't fit Bendis' "realistic" vision. Sure, there were some good individual storylines, but the crossovers were increasingly bad, culminating with Siege which was just one massive fight with no rhyme or reason.

Even though it had some hacky moments and misfires (mostly the attempt to deal with racial and religious issues, which was a noble failure), in my opinion Busiek's Avengers run has been the best extended run of the title since Thomas' days. He knew what made the Avengers special, instead of writing it like a generic superhero book with interchangeable members, like Bendis did.

That said, I have been enjoying Bendis' current X-Men run so far. Seems like the gimmick of the old, more innocent X-Men time-traveling to the present day has toned down the gritty/hard-boiled tendencies of his writing, which is a refreshing change.

brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history

ie exactly what roy thomas and steve englehart did! every new avengers writer has a mandate - duty! - to reinvent the team according to their own tastes and fancies.

Busiek's run basically is roy thomas revisited - i prefer the illusion of change under bendis.

brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history

ie exactly what roy thomas and steve englehart did! every new avengers writer has a mandate - duty! - to reinvent the team according to their own tastes and fancies.

Well sure, but AFAIK those characters weren't popular ones with a lot of baggage (like Spider-Man or Wolverine) or writer's pets (like Luke Cage). Even if earlier writers introduced new team members, they still managed to do "Avengers style" stories with them, whereas Bendis simply took characters he liked, or characters that sell titles, and did stories that have little to do with previous Avengers legacy. I guess if you don't care that much about this "Avengers style" and like Bendis' particular set of tropes, this isn't a problem, but for me he was ill-fitted for the title.

I think if he tore down the old version, that was the point though?

Spider-man and Wolverine are overexposed because they don't have a lot of baggage - quips + agile + web shooters / claws + loner + drinks are sufficiently good handles to tell a story with them.

Also you are possibly the only person in the world who gives a shit about the idea of "Avengers legacy" - it's a dumping ground of unloved characters + the big guys.

x-post

i've been reading Avengers comics for more than thirty years Tuomas, so I think 'care' about the title as much as you do. i just don't have some platonic idea of an Avengers comic, or think there's only one way to write Avengers comics (I mean, at base, the Avengers just = some of Marvel's most popular characters all together in one comic. Which is why I don't have a problem with Wolverine or Spider-Man being members.)

Fair enough; it's just that to me Bendis' writing tics (the hard-boiled dialogue, the "realism", the way he treats superhero comics as if they were police or military fiction, the intechangeable personalities) are pretty much the opposite of what I like in superhero comics (cosmic sagas, high adventure, colourful characters, optimism), and what I've enjoyed in earlier Avengers comics. Bendis might've been a fitting writer for a title like Daredevil, where "realism" and grittiness were already an established part of the title, but I've never thought such qualities were what the Avengers was about.

Also you are possibly the only person in the world who gives a shit about the idea of "Avengers legacy" - it's a dumping ground of unloved characters + the big guys.

Haven't you ever come across angry Internet commentary on how Avengers Disassembled ruined the Scarlet Witch, ruined Vision, shat on Busiek's earlier reconstruction of the title, etc? My comments on this thread are pretty mild compared to how many others felt about Bendis and the Avengers.

Bendis really should have stopped after Siege, though. Everything after was just embarrasing.

nah, red hulk storyline was great!

I'd also put Steve Englehart and Roger Stern up there for Avengers writers.

The best Bendis' Avengers comics were still the ones about the villains. The Dark Avengers storyline, which was pretty much the sequel to Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts, I thought was the best read. I think the early blowing up of the Avengers and the early arcs up to the Civil War are pretty good, but later on the stories got pretty streched out.

People gripe about his 'pet characters' but really what creator doesn't have some in super hero comics. I thought how he used Luke Cage was pretty great myself. As for the Scarlet Witch, the only thing Bendis did was just take it to an end - as the whole "Wanda is kinda nuts" storyline goes back 30+ years. I still think it would have been better idea to have had it to be Loki during the whole Ragnarok end of Thor story to be the key to set Wanda loose and destroy the Avengers (as afterall Loki is the manipulator of the Marvel U and he unwittingly created them), but hey everyone want's to blame\use Dr. Doom.

As for the Scarlet Witch, the only thing Bendis did was just take it to an end - as the whole "Wanda is kinda nuts" storyline goes back 30+ years.

The thing is, this had already been resolved by earlier writers; during Busiek's run, for example, Wanda came to a deeper understanding with the nature of her powers, and she is also shown to remember her kids. But all of this development is ignored by Bendis: all of a sudden Wanda doesn't remember the kids anymore, she's crazy again, her powers don't work the way everyone thought they would... This is one of the biggest reasons why people thought Bendis shat on Busiek's run, and ruined Wanda. And it's not like Wanda was essential to the whole storyline, Bendis could've easily used several other characters to achieve the same ends, and without discarding the work of previous writers.

And let's just say I'm not one of those people who think Continuity Is God and should never be tweaked, but on the other hand completely ignoring it is a bit shitty too, since continuity is one of the things that makes the Marvel and DC universes different from comics with original characters, so if you don't care about it, you should probably be writing your own characters and not ones with decades of history.

New Avengers/Secret Avengers better than Avengers proper in the Bendis era.

Hickman seems to be doing pretty good stuff. I really liked his Secret Warriors as well.

The Warren Ellis Secret Avengers issues might be my favorite Avengers of recent vintage, but depending on where Hickman goes (and whether or not stupid mandatory events derail him) he could top that handful of issues with ease.

Also almost any way of dealing with DC/Marvel characters involves ignoring a lot of their continuity as there's decades of it and it varies wildly in tone and content.

Secret Avengers was a good but really frustrating book. I was intrigued by the plot Brubaker started, but then he left. Ellis was great, but very short. Remender seemed like he was telling an interesting story as well, but I haven't finished it. And then it was bogged down in tie-ins all the time.

It suffered for the fact the plot arc got fumbled through to a finish several writers later

"all of a sudden Wanda doesn't remember the kids anymore, she's crazy again, her powers don't work the way everyone thought they would..."

There was always supposed to be some big reveal on 'why' it happened and I guess there is some flashbacks in that Young Avengers series to the why being Doom messing her mind.

That's why I think it would have been better to have revealed it either at the time tying it straight into the end of the original Thor title being that Loki is the one that both caused her new bout of insanity and perhaps even the power up being tied to Ragnarok as it was part of him wanting to punish Thor by destroying the Avengers.

Just that to me would have been a cool way to tie it back towards what had gone on before.

Really the got to blow up the characters like Wanda, Vision, Wonder Man, Hawkeye, Hank Pym etc. as they can't really go big with the solo title stars 'usually'.

I think the whole Civil War kind of screwed up Bendis' momentum on the title. It sold a ton of issues, but it made his Avengers very different for like a few years. It also didn't help that while there was some good buildup and back story both Siege and definitely Secret Invasions were total punts as storylines. The actual mini-series just weren't that good at all and nothing much really happened. I think sometimes they would be smarter just doing it as a crossover between the regular titles and not having that extra mini-series or completely integrating it into some 52 style series, but hey they are about selling comics not necessarily telling a good story.

Well, Loki would have made a whole lot of sense, but Loki was a small child when Young Avengers came out, and the laws of comics say that whomever is found out to be responsible has to be punched repeatedly in the penultimate issue. So Doom it was.

You say that like there's a problem with punching child Loki in the face

Aw, Kid Loki is my favorite Marvel character at the moment, along with She-Hawkeye.

But it's more the problem with punishing a character for what he did earlier, even though in the meantime he died (twice) and was resurected as a sorta different person (twice). Hm, I wonder what he will be ressurected as next time. Frog Loki! Horse Loki!

shame kid loki isnt kid loki anymore.

they grow up so fast

how long did Lady Loki last? I was reading Dark Avengers and was just like "huh, Loki's suddenly a woman?"

Under a year, I think.

but Loki was a small child when Young Avengers came out,

Wait, what?

You haven't read Journey into Mystery? You should, it's one of the best Marvel series of recent years.

There was always supposed to be some big reveal on 'why' it happened and I guess there is some flashbacks in that Young Avengers series to the why being Doom messing her mind.

I've read Children's Crusade, but to me it felt like more like an author's saving throw than a part of some plan Bendis had originally had, especially since it came out 6 or 7 years after Avengers Disassembled. In AD and House of M, there is no implication at all that Wanda had been manipulated by some outside force (besides Pietro). If this revelation was "always supposed" to happen, you'd think Bendis would've at least dropped some hints towards it?

I read it, but Young Avengers predates it by ~5 years.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to assume that Bendis was overly bothered about tidying up loose ends on traditional Avengers-only characters - he was betting that he would gain more readers than he would lose with a clearing of the decks, and he won that bet handily.

I read it, but Young Avengers predates it by ~5 years.

Yeah, but I think Frederik B was talking about Children's Crusade, which was the series where the whole "Wanda was manipulated" thing was revealed, and which took place while Loki was a kid.

Yup.

Not comics, but damn if I can think of a better thread on which to post this: what looks to be every issue ever of Starlog is now available for free on Archive.org:

http://archive.org/details/starlogmagazine

fuck yes, thank you for pointing this out. now i just need a zip.
and another one for Famous Monsters!