My CBR Shame

As I just mentioned on The Brown Wedge, the level of basic competence in mainstream comics today is really impressive. This has good pacing, dialogue, striking art, tells its story without too many 'what's going on here?' moments. I quite like the way Captain A's impatient soldier mentality is being played up. This almost reads like an Ultimate comic, the same emphasis on SHIELD hypercompetence and militarism and 'real world' threats and situations. Good, solid stuff.

. Shehulk (which I went out and purchased immediately, and then bought the issues that I'll no doubt buy again in TPB - the system works!)
. Zenith
. Everything Grant Morrison has ever written, in fact.
. Including Zoids
. Jark Kirby's Eternals
. Suicide Squad
. Crisis on Infinite Earths
. The Maxx
. The Demon
. Jimmy Olsen
. Zot!
. Ultimate Fantastic Four
. Miracleman (including various different bits of #25)

Who's writing/drawing Captian America, Tom?

I find it strange how short my first bout of comics fandom really was - it seemed like it lasted for ages but was barely 2 years. I got into DC with Legends, read through Millennium and was out of it by the time Invasion came around. Millennium had two points - a) tell a big cosmic DC story, b) introduce an amazing group of New! Characters! It does the first a lot better than the second (the new characters became rubbish and short-lived superteam the New Guardians). It's an unusual crossover in that the core series has very little of the main action. The tie-ins are often actually important to the plot (especially the FITEs) which must have frustrated less deep-pocketed fans (I gobbled most of it up though at the time). In the main series you get a lot of superhero interaction, ruminations on What It All Means, a bit of plot and a lot of patented Englehart hippie tosh.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed re-reading it. The central idea - one member in each superhero supporting cast is a sleeper agent - is ace, the villains are good until they go into space and everyone has to fight a huge yellow cartoon robot. The series suffers a bit from winding towards anticlimax about 2/3 of the way through. The philosophy is a little bit Eastern and a whole lot cobblers. The art is acquired taste Joe Staton but he handles the huge cast well. The new superheroes... well, less good. But as crossovers go it deserves rehabilitation.

"OMG we're putting this out WEEKLY can you handle the excitement?"

Legends was the first DC book I ever enjoyed and as such I could remember some bits pretty much off by heart, but even so re-reading it was probably a mistake - even at the time Len Wein's narrative didn't exactly seem sophisticated and 20 years on it's really clunky, sub-Claremontian at best (eg the repeated "What is the sound of the end of the world?" riff). Ostrander's plot doesn't exactly hold up to scrutiny either: alien televangelist seduces the world into hating heroes, OK this is fine, he has mental powers, but then the focus of this gets completely lost as a FITE is needed and giant Byrne robot dogs attack. Also the continual flicking between one hero and another is very bitty.

BUT none of this matters a WHIT compared to the overall purpose of the series which is to introduce wide-eyed new readers to the hottness of DC's super-universe. Reader, I was that reader (erm) and it worked fine for me. Legends in itself is bland (though I liked the Byrne art) but its main job was to launch DC's post-Crisis universe and it does that well. DC in the late 80s is probably my favourite publisher era ever and this is where it started so hats off. How many other crossovers launch spin-off series of the caliber of JLI, Suicide Squad and the Mike Baron Flash? Three months after the end of Legends DC Comics had gone from 0% of my 'pull list'* to about 60% and I can't argue with that maths.

*(not that that phrase meant anything to me at the time)

As regards the rest, big explosions, love/hate relationship with technology ("What's that?" "A book" "Is that what they used to look like?"), and regular everyone fancies our bald hero antics. So no surprises but I wasn't really looking for some.

I'm still sorta ambivalent on the QUESTION mini that he wrote. A little too wandery and singsong poetry for the character, but the art was So Pretty.

The art was quite a beautiful thing to look at.

To me, Aquaman's not that well done. Maybe I should give it another chance. I found Guichet's art kinda confusing.

The art was sooo much more important than the script on the recent Question mini, and convinced me to overlook Veitch's sometimes heavy hand (hey look, see, we're dealing drugs in the BATHROOM! Because Superman isn't a dirty pervert. Now let's show that a few more times! It was a clever idea, but I got it the first time.). TLE's Chris Reeve Supes was quite stunning.

if only Vertigo would collect FINALS (and fix up all the dumb post-Columbine censorship)

The last ten issues or so weren't that good, because Pfeiffer chose to end the series with a big arc that wrapped all of the ones that had come before. It felt a bit rushed and out of place.

The Ultimates Vol2 1-6 is much the same as the first volume: big heroics, bad heroes, lovely art and now a spot of intrigue.

Young Avengers 1-5 isn't exactly life changing, but it reminded me of what Tom said above regarding how the basic standards of comics seem to have risen noticably in the last 20 years.

New Thunderbolts 1-4 would have been 1-9 or so, but it is unfortunately unreadable rubbish.

No Ben Raab
No Howard Mackie
No Jay Faerber
No Todd Dezago
No Brandon Choi
No Larry Hama

And only one Chuck Austen!

You might have a point there.

Oh, but it is! It probably suffers from being read right after Young Avengers. YA#1 sets up several characters, and has a great twist, and a quality JJJ appearance. It has the advantage that it's an outside look at the characters, so it's expected that they stay mysterious for a while, where New Thunderbolts #1 is anything but the first issue of a new series.

All the characters seem to coast on goodwill and interest that they've built up in a million comics that I haven't read. And the characterisation is sledge-hammer subtle. "Looks to me like Atlas likes Songbird. Yep, Atlas definitely likes Songbird. Yes, we get it. Yes, we get it. Yes, we get it. Yes, we get it. Just fuck off, will you?"

Also the timely themes (Terrorists! State responsibility for terrorists! WTC United Nations falling down!) annoy me no end. Particularly when he goes to some lengths to establish a cramped and terrifying building collapse, only to have Atlas grow to the size of the building from the inside, then burst out through one of the walls and hold the building up from the outside. Architecture: it doesn't work like that.

And the dialogue is completely rubbish, though this probably just means it's retro.

(tomorrow the ILC characters poll will be back but I have a headache and this is easier)

16. ORION #1-25

At first I started reading this because it was Walt Simonson eye candy even though all that happens is the standard bite-bite-bite-fight-fight-fight stuff but then suddenly!! it starts getting really good, with a power corrupts storyline and deus ex machinae which are actually entertaining and monster cosmic stuff (including tasty loose ends, hey whatever DID happen to the earth-juggling super-giant?). And Simonson is still great! Towards the end it tails off a little and I think cancellation came as a disappointment but generally this is Good Stuff.

The Morrison/Millar run. At the time I thought this was really ace and now it reads very strangely, like people who want to write mad silver age stuff but haven't actually worked out how to yet. The ideas are there but everything's TOO big and crazy: the first two episodes in each arc are terrific and the third is always shit. Only bad in comparison to Ultimates and Seven Soldiers and JLA, I suppose. In the middle of it there's a really nice one-issue story about Jay Garrick and the Thinker which stands up better than all the hypercosmic sagas. It doesn't help that this was during the Flash "speed force" years so all the supporting cast are (dread word) 'speedsters' and the whole speed force concept is a massive "INSERT LAZY ENDING HERE" card to boot.

Ponderous vehicle for James Robinson to grim'n'grit up assorted G.A. and JSA characters. A review of this in the Slings And Arrows Guide praises the set-up in #1-3 but considers the payoff in #4 corny. THIS IS WRONG. The set-up is repetitive and hammers home the one or two personality hooks Robinson gives each character, which is all he can really afford to give them since the cast is so bloody huge. The diffuse focus means no arc really ends satisfyingly - compare to DC: THE NEW FRONTIER (covering vaguely similar ground) and you'll get the idea. HOWEVER the fourth issue is terrific because of it's awesomely hokey plot. Hurrah! If only they'd used the body of a cat.

Though he also later says "I'm honestly as happy writing Superman Adventures as I am writing Wanted. I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other"

Grant on Flash was OK, but not as great as I expected. Back then I had already been a fan of his work for a long time time, so having him as the regular writer for my favorite character ever was a dream come true. But...well, "Hell To Pay" was such a great ending for Waid's run it became a tough act to follow to anyone who had to step on his shoes. Plus, he went out with the promise of coming back one year later with "Chain Lightning" which, back then, was hyped to be this super-cosmic-time-and-space-spanning-Flash-epic that was gonna change the world for ever and all that crap. So Grant's stuff was OK, but by coming after "Hell to pay" and with the hype behind "Chain Lightning", his run turned out to be a bit underwhelming and it ended up being a mildly fun way of killing the time until Waid's return.

er because Millar used to write Sonic The Hedgehog monthly, I would not be surprised that the plot where Flash races Sonic The Hedgehog across the universe came from him rather than Grant.

Their usual writing practice was to divvy up dialoguing issue-by-issue, rather than story-by-story, so that would fit. Also since there's no way Grant didn't write that one with his new version of the Mirror Master, which wouldn't fit with the three-on three-off pattern. (of course it all got thrown wonky when he had to bail from the last three due to overcommittment, which might be what you're thinking of?)