My CBR Shame

The Hawk and the Dove #1

The Hawk and the Dove #2

I just finished (like three hours ago) my marathon of pre-Crisis Flash, from #300 STRAIGHT THROUGH to #350. Ye gods. Infantino, I really don't know what to make of you. Your loose lines (covers inked by Klaus Jansen, which makes it all wonderful) are sometimes immaculate, sometimes asinine. The panels where Barry Allen gets his face bashed in are really, really something.
I really, really feel sorry for the Flash. He was put through hell for nearly three years before his title was cancelled, and then he gets sent off to the future to be reunited with his formerly-dead wife, but by that time, I think he's already dead!

Read Yesterday:
Zero Hour w/ several x-overs (not the complete x-overs as the D/L file suggested): NOT THAT BAD. Clearly intended to be a sequel proper to Crisis (subtitle: Crisis in Time) (dead Flash hoax) (Spectre vs. Villain at the dawn of time), the best stuff was the timeline bleeding crossovers, like the multiple Batmanses in Superman: Man of Steel or the tweeness of Tim Drake teaming up with younger than him Dick Grayson (after a bit of malevolent Jason Todd OMG dickery). The Ordway over Jurgens art in Zero Hour proper is pretty nice and certainly gives it a Crisis Sheen, even if every character is in their lamest costume.
Also cool is Green Arrow #90 written by Dixon maybe? drawn by Barretto (of whom I've become fond since MarMan: AmSec), basically, two timelines unfold at once as GA chases a goon.

Having read and quite enjoyed THE KINGDOM I thought I was ready for anything. I WAS WRONG. Onslaught: X-Men was worse than I remembered (ya rly!!) but also funnier, especially all the scenes where the X-Men go "come on, you're Magneto aren't you" and Onslaught goes NO NO NO. Things I was reminded of: those 90s costumes, that 90s art style (the comix equivalent of gated drums on 80s records), 'Joseph', 'the X-Traitor' etc etc. (actually they did a reasonable save on this).

Onslaught: Marvel Universe however - OMG. How I love stories where the villain is defeated by a plot mechanism which all the characters understand immediately and act as if it's logical when in fact it makes no sense AT ALL. "Onslaught hav become pure THOUGHT let's all jump into him, except all the X-Men who just stand around. Hurrah it worked BUT AT WHAT COST." Sobering to think that if Heroes Reborn had worked in kickstarting the speculator boom again, this might really have been it for the MU as we 'knew it'. Hearty laffing at bare-chested Thor. Really awful art. TEH WATCHER, always a hallmark of quality eh. Has the Watcher ever appeared since Joe Q took over?

"I, Great Odin, didst witness half my people vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The ceremonial eyepatch of sorrow did I immediately don!"

As Pete intimates above the plot of Infinity Gauntlet rests on the premise that gloves are really easy to pull off somebody. This is surely not true - if it had been the Infinity Trousers which had to stay up around Thanos' waist to guarantee his cosmic power, then you'd have had a credible slash fic crossover.

The first issues are actually really good, Marvel doing Crisis - without the payoff, which is always the miniseries problem - but even though you know the reset button will get hit the apocalyptic set-up is cornily compelling. ("The Isles of Japan - are no more.") As usual with re-reading old crossovers part of the fun is remembering lame own-title plots that impact on them, i.e. Thor not being Thor any more.

Once Perez leaves and the actual FITE gets going things degenerate rapidly. Starlin loves his cosmic entities but he doesn't actually have any grasp of how to make them seem cosmic, they're just FITEsters a bit more tuff than superheroes but less tuff than Thanos. The last two issues are a game of tag, and at the end you're left with the dispiriting feeling that the whole point has been to make Warlock look badass.

Surely also hearty laughing at this?

http://dreamers.com/xmen/images/comics/ons/Image26.jpg

I gotta admit, I love "Infinity Gauntlet". Giant huge crossovers have always been my biggest superhero comic fetish, and this was the first (non-Elseworlds) one where EVERYONE DIES. Knowing that of course they'd all come back in the end somehow didn't take away all that much emotional impact, for me. Also, handy two page guide to Marvel's cosmic entities! Also, the scene where Hulk and Wolverine are on the rooftops and suddenly it starts snowing and they're like "omg it's June!", felt really - ahem - chilling to me as a youngster.

Also the Thor "Casket Of Ancient Winters" storyline which had loads of really sly crossovers into other comics and tons of "How come its snowing" scenes, back in 85/86 or so, which was when I started reading comics so probably diminished the impact of Infinity Gauntlet for me.

But IG is good yes! Up to about #4 anyway.

There is a lot to be said for a comic wherein the writer does little more than parade his own obscure creations back and forth while murdering the most popular character in the Marvel universe with a blunt instrument, in terms of sheer chutzpah.

As a longtime Silver Surfer reader I thought the whole thing was just awesome, of course, especially when EVERY DEITY/COSMIC BEING EVER shows up, and the Living Tribunal is like "eh whatever." I was a bit disappointed by the Celestials' poor showing against thanos, but it is what it is.

The glove not fitting thing is obviously another manifestation of Thanos' sublimated desire to fail at everything. I can sympathize.

Not actually the complete Red Hood, it's just Family Reunion (Batman 635-641) a standalone (645) and the first two parts of Franchise (646-647). I went and found a DCP with 650 in it, which is the last one pre OYL, so I assume that there's just more fighty fighty in the two issues in between.

I'm not surprised that Winick (I guess) has brought in a sarcastic condescending villian in Black Mask, nor that the title is best when he's on stage, it's funny and snappy like Barry Ween. But he also does the grim brooding stuff well, and I basically enjoyed it throughout.

Question: Why are Oracle and Batman on the outs at the start of the story? Is it because she got herself technovirused up in Birds of Prey?

So I'm a little slow, sue me.

Fascinatingly, Todd takes over the writing with issue 20 and I can't tell the difference. There are a few less 'fratakta yaddaddas', it's a lot nastier in places, but it's the same tough police-procedural kind of thing. Bendis gets no credits at all, so either a) Todd pulled a fast one and failed to credit his input, b) Alex Maleev does ALL THE HEAVY LIFTING and Bendis is the archetypal writer being propped up by his artists, or c) this noir stuff is DEAD EASY if you've got a copy of David Simon's 'Homicide' and a few DVDs handy. Or d) Todd's a talented writer, which is certainly possible.