I can't believe I'm still engaged with this, but...Dave Sim is reprinting the dailies of a strip he's been pumping out for the last few years now, called, "Cerebus In Hell". I have no idea where it ran - probably only on his website - but, it's Cerebus...or at least, a very limited handfull of images from the original comic (maybe 4 in all-!), just our favorite earth-pig, wandering around in Hades as illustrated by the original woodcuts from Dante's Inferno, plus word balloons. And in-jokes. I am not making this up. The odd thing is, it's actually worth reading an entire comic-sized issue, because the dialog is pretty clever and funny. And every issue is a "number one", and parodies of famous covers of other big comics. There's one pattered after Love and Rockets #1, and one resembling a Marvel '70's book cover...and one ripping-off DC Crisis On Infinite Earths...and a World's Finest one...and Teenage Mutant Ninja Cerebi...and well, on, and on.. Great thing is, ya don't have to buy more than one to get the idea, but, just sitting around pondering how he came up with the idea that this would be something he should do, is almost worth the price of admission. Almost.
I'm trying to get caught up on Doomsday Clock. My other regular reads are Saga and Paper Girls. Brian K Vaughn is a master of comic storytelling.
Agree. I love both of his current series. My local comic book guy recently recommended three new series (I think they're all on Image): Freeze Die Self-Made They're each up to the third or fourth issue and I'm enjoying them all. I started reading the new Sandman Universe comics that began last year, but now that the first two series are up to issue six, I'm dropping them all except Lucifer. Found them to be just OK in some cases and interesting but poorly-written in other cases.
I just finished Volume 11 of DC's Fables reprints, which takes you up to the end of war with The Adversary. My funnybook store owner had been pushing it on me for some time, just never gave it a try until a couple years ago. Pretty satisfying overall, particularly in light of ABC-TV's Once Upon A Time, in which the characters curiously seemed to switch lifelong allegiences just about every season. So, is Bill Willingham going to make this book his life's work (or, would that be just keeping track of all the players...)?
He wrapped it up after 19 or 20 volumes IIRC. A pretty good read all the way to the end, although there are a couple of low spots.
I think there's a lot of gold into re-imagining characters the public has grown old with. I am, however, getting pretty sick of walking into the same comic store I've been visiting for the past 20 years, and not recognizing whoever this dude is on the cover of a book called, "Superman"... It's an eye-rolling event every few months telling yourself, "Oh, the Universe must have collapsed and re-formed itself again...guess I can ask my 12-year-old nephew next time I see him - after he finishes setting-up my wi-fi, I suppose..."
Yeah I've pretty much stopped reading any of the "regular superhero" books from Marvel or DC because I've gotten sick of company-wide crossovers and rewriting the continuity. Is it too much to ask for them to just publish a book featuring Superman or Spider-Man (or whoever) that you can just buy once a month and enjoy on its own merits? (That's a rhetorical question.) Ultimate Spider-Man used to be like that, but when even the Ultimate universe started having crossovers and company-wide events (Ultimatum), I ditched it.
Whic is funny, because that's what prompted them to start the line in the first place. Beloved characters, fresh start. I recall it was sometime in the early '70s, amidst Marvel's domination of the comics world, when DC inserted a two-page strip into Superman, acting as an in-house "editorial". For years, Clark had grown up in the 1920s on the farm, while a 33-year-old (approx.) Kal-El lived and worked in the Metropolis of an era more in-line with the book's published date. And, they wanted to explain to readers why they needed to change that. Considering Marvel's continuity was more present-day on every day of the week, obviously this was a move they had to make to keep competitive. But, it wasn't until they killed Barry Allen in Crisis On Infinite Earths, that I finally decided, they didn't really have to do that. Then came the Green Lantern with the wacky bangs, and Lois was suddenly marrying Clark, and none of the Legion of Super-Heroes looked right anymore. So as it turns out, hormones wasn't really responsible for killing my childhood. It was Crisis. And John Byrne, I suppose...
Silver Surfer Epic Collection: Thanos' Quest Great early 90's run from Jim Starlin/Ron Lim, leading up to the Infinity Gauntlet.
Oh, and how could I forget Middlewest. 4 issues in and so far I'm pleased. Lots of fun ways it could go and its a really neat world they move around in. My local comic book store guy also recommended High Level and the first issue was good, I'm in for at least another couple issues.
I started reading X-Men again about five years ago and enjoyed it, but stopped because I didn’t like the decompressed storytelling - I’d forget where I left off each month - and wanted to catch up later. Now I try to go back and start again and I can’t figure out which of the multiple X-titles that have since started, stopped, been retitled, and started again to pick up. What happened to having one title, consecutively numbered, that reliably comes out each month?
I don't think that Crisis On Infinite Earths killed the DC Universe. In my opinion the main flaw in Crisis... was that they didn't go far enough and tried to keep some of the old continuity around. That, in turn led to the repeated attempts to fix the DC Universe. As an example, Hawkman was so damaged by the continuity mess that they put him to the side for years before they distilled him back to what he originally was. I think John Byrne did a good job of rebooting Superman, establishing a solid basis for the character. For me, Byrne made Superman an interesting character for the first time in a long while. Unfortunately, it destroyed The Legion of Super-Heroes. I don't fault the Legion Creative Team for the problems, they did their best to fix the continuity issues and I think if their first fix (the Superboy who was in the Legion was from a pocket universe) had been allowed to stand it would have worked. What happened was that that they had to keep fixing things over and over again until they ended up having to wipe everything out and starting over again.
Crisis worked in the 80s, even if it did mess up some of the established characters. Several great series came out of that and I think DC was at the top of their game in the mid-to-late 80s. Unfortunately, trying to keep continuity for characters who have been around for almost 80 years under multiple writers and editors is impossible. These days I try to enjoy each series for what it is today, with mixed results.
You have two things going on here: -heritage, which informs your readership of the profile and significance of the characters involved (even if they don't really know all the backstory) - don't forget, while Marvel intended to stay current because they didn't have all that much invested in the heritage angle...DC "invented" the world of comics the the baby boom was born into...and, -continuity, which tells you "where" a story "should" be, and you can't go around "meeting" Eisenhower if you're going to turn the Daily Planet into a contemporary of "Lou Grants"'s world, 20 years later. Somehow that had to change, but how do you tell the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, their historys are irrelevant, without giving up one of the only stable things in your marketplace - the heritage...? Like I said, despite Cap, the Torch and Namor (and, okay, Patsy and Hedy, but, c'mon...!), all Marvel's "heritage" was happening "now"...and that meant continuity was easily won on their side, without their risking the other. And I've been on the frontlines of too many "startup, bold and brash" radio stations challenging the "legendary" market leaders, to know what you can do, and what you can't, in the battle of the perceptions of your market. For a company as connected to its' past as DC, Crisis wan't 'Who Shot J. R?'...it was 'Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower': a great product overall, and quite sensational, but it still tripped over a few sharks in the process, in terms of the character licensing business - which Marvel was clearly winning.
I have the first big Fantagraphics hardcover collections of these (and quite a few of the original comics) and I've reread them a few times. Such amazing stuff. Are you a Jamie 0r Gilbert? I started out team Jamie, b/c I identified with the punk rock esthetic, but over time I've been drawn more to Gilbert. Both are great of course.
Byrne has said the one thing he regrets in his Superman reboot is eliminating Superboy completely. After seeing how things turned out, he would have tried keeping Superboy around in some form.
I've tried and failed multiple times to get into Love and Rockets and it just doesn't resonate with me. I cant figure it out because everything I hear about it makes it sound like it would be right up my alley, but nada. Maybe I should start at the beginning?
i'm been reading some of it lately, and i can't really relate to it. i keep wondering, why are these characters doing these things?
Not necessarily. Like many comic series, it took a little while to find its feet. The early Jaime stories, for instance, have a science fiction element that was later dropped completely. I'm definitely on Team Jaime because Gilbert's writing just doesn't resonate with me as much. But that's just a question of individual taste. My recommendation would be to pick up the second or third Jaime volume (The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. or Perla la Loca if Fantagraphics is still publishing that edition) but it may just not be for you. I'm the same way about Grant Morrison, for instance. Lots of people love him and consider him one of the best mainstream writers working today, but his work inevitably bores or annoys me, so YMMV.
93curr, I understand that Buffy is under new ownership - prompting the end of the long running comic book seasons and the start of this new high school era story. In your opinion, is this new series something that people can easily switch to and enjoy?
One option would have been to do something that was done in the animated series Legion Of Super-Heroes: The Legion visits Clark Kent before he became Superman and took him to the 31st Century. There he gained experience as a superhero. Although he was concerned about being away, he was told that it was not an issue since he could return to the Present a few seconds after he left and no one would notice he had been gone.
