What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

I read Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, Morrison's first New X-Men omnibus and vol. 1 of Seven Soldiers of Victory.

Cinderalla was good, still not as good as Fables, but I liked it better than the first Jack of Fables I read. Is Fairest any good?

I liked New X-Men, Seven Soldiers is OK. I'll reserve final judgment until I read more of it though.

Shellhead wrote: I hate it when a writer feels the need to make Batman look like a clumsy amateur just to make a new villain look good. And then it's almost unbearable when the same writer suddenly lets Batman shrug all kinds of recent injury and humiliation and abruptly defeat the opposition with ease.

Maybe I'm repeating myself, I forget, but I hate it when an image of someone fairly clearly getting killed is the cliffhanger at the end of one issue, and then that shot is almost completely ignored the next issue.

I'm in the middle of the first Prophet paperback. Best contemporary mainstream comic I've read in over four years. I'll have to pick up King City when I have a chance. And what a freaking BARGAIN: that Prophet paperback is six issues for $10!!! In contrast, I was curious about the Death of the Family arc and wanted to pick up the first three issues. $4 each, are you kidding me? And those Prophet comics are really dense, too, they're a nice slow read.

I'm planning on catching up on all the big 2012 books now that I've got more reading time.

metalface13 wrote: I read Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, Morrison's first New X-Men omnibus and vol. 1 of Seven Soldiers of Victory.

Cinderalla was good, still not as good as Fables, but I liked it better than the first Jack of Fables I read. Is Fairest any good?

I liked New X-Men, Seven Soldiers is OK. I'll reserve final judgment until I read more of it though.

I read the first two Cinderella trades, and really enjoyed both of them. Jack of Fables started out okay, but kept getting worse. If I wasn't checking it out from the library, I would have given up by the second or third trade. The Jack of Fables crossover with Fables really sucked, and nearly every page with that blue ox was a complete waste of time.

You can't just read a little Seven Soldiers. Each individual mini is a decent story on its own, but the genius comes from the links between the stories. In effect, the overall story exists only because of the links between the minis, plus those two bookend issues. It's like that old parable about the blind men and the elephant. One blind man thinks that the elephant is like a wall (the torso), while another thinks that he is like a snake (the trunk), and a third thinks that he is like a rope (the tail). So each "Soldier" is like one of those blind men, but the reader of all the issues is able to see the elephant and the fumbling blind men. Unfortunately, the Mister Miracle mini is a difficult read that is essential to the meta-plot, and the final bookend issue is a bit of a mess.

Yeah, Seven Soldiers is definitely an all-or-nothing thing. I would go so far as to say that all of this talk about the individual serials being "stand alone" is crap. It really does require that you read all of it, or else none of it makes sense in aggregate.

The Mister Miracle quartet is definitely the toughest part...mainly because it's written with David Lynch logic, not the logic of a Spider-Man comic book. It also asks a lot more of the reader in many ways, not the least of which is understanding some pretty deep DC continuity mostly centered around the New Gods/Fourth World stuff. It's really the ONLY place where the more mainstream(ish) DC universe intersects with the set, apart from a couple of mentions of the Justice League in Zatanna's story.

I just got the first volume in hardcopy, it's funny, after reading it digitally I expected it to be much bigger.

On Snyder- I think you may be somewhat right that he's not a very good long-form writer although I think American Vampire gets much better after that second series. Read the WWII one, that one was awesome. So is Lord of Nightmares.

HUGE comics day today- All New X-Men 5, Batman Incorporated 6, Godzilla Half Century War 4, Punk Rock Jesus winds up with issue 6. Woo ha!

I need to read more of Prophet, I did like the three issues I've read quite a lot. Definitely Metal Hurlant influenced and not Rob Liefield influenced.

I gave in and ordered the Metabarons

It arrived this morning, and it is frikkin sweet. 500 pages of hard bound space opera epic gloriously drawn and coloured.

just starting reading THE WALKING DEAD: BOOK ONE.

Finished the Prophet paperback, still love it and looking forward to the rest as it comes! In those six issues there are four different artists, and they are ALL *great*. There is never a feeling of fill-in artists (because they're *not* fill-ins). The opening three-issue storyline is my favorite part so far, and favorite artist so far, but you can tell that everything is just starting, and that this is way more ambitious than I initially thought. Jam-packed with ideas like a less spastic Morrison. Not to damn it with faint praise, but it's the best sci-fi comic I've ever read, easy (note that I've barely read any European sci-fi comics).

I've got the first Morrison Batman paperback from the library; I gotta say that it really doesn't look appealing (WTF is with that text+videogame-art Joker story? Is that thing *remotely* worth reading?). If I get a good entire evening to myself, I'll be sitting down and reading The Nao of Brown instead, which I've started but really looks like it should be read in one sitting.

Not comics: out of curiosity and since it was on Netflix, I watched some scenes from the All-Star Superman movie. Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-yew! Shit voice-acting, REALLY shit faux-anime animation, and there appeared to be zero point to ever watching it if you've read the book, thanks to basically just slavishly lifting all the dialogue and staging from the comic, but with awkward voicework that makes everything fall flat (Morrison should probably never be read aloud, honestly).

I actually didn't read that prose issue on the first read-through...I've heard that it does tie into some other things though.

I just read the first two issues of it again, I still think it's great. But the thing is, it isn't until you get to "The Black Glove" and R.I.P. that it really becomes something special. The "Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul" section is actually kind of dull. But then it just blows the doors off, and it stays that way right up to Batman Incorporated #6, which came out this week. It all builds together, it's like Seven Soldiers in that it's a read it all or not at all kind of thing.

The new Godzilla Half-Century War is freaking awesome. You only need to know one thing about it. Mechagodzilla. I think the whole thing is building up to a battle with King Ghidorah, with the main character somehow involved. I freaking love this book. I'm totally buying the hardcover.

Punk Rock Jesus wrapped up well. The villain, who is truly a hateful and despicable character, makes a statement in it that you can't help but say "oh shit, he's totally right" about. Pretty surprising statement about youth, zealotry, and faith. This is another hardcover purchase, outstanding book.

Back at Doom Patrol this weekend. I may finish it. The space war thing was a total mess, I see what you guys were saying. It was just really sloppy, confusing, and not really all that great a story to begin with. I think HE felt that way too, but was sort of stuck in the morass of it all while writing it. The Beard Hunter, the sugar tongs, the ant farm...so surreal.

Michael Barnes wrote: But the thing is, it isn't until you get to "The Black Glove" and R.I.P. that it really becomes something special.

The Black Glove was by far the story I was most interested in, thanks to the JH Williams art, but that's sadly the one the library doesn't have, so I'd be skipping straight from Batman and Son to RIP. If I'm impressed by RIP then of course I'll go back and buy Black Glove and everything. Good idea or bad idea, will RIP be a complete mess without having read Black Glove?

Michael Barnes wrote: The Beard Hunter, the sugar tongs, the ant farm...so surreal.

Remind me, wtf are the sugar tongs? I've been reading Edward Lear to my son and I'm wondering whether it's a reference to the Lear poem.

Best is still ahead of you with Doom Patrol, IMHO.

R.I.P. is really mess having read Black Glove. Without it, I dunno. Try it and see. It really goes off the rails at a couple of points, so it may not matter. Black Glove really sets up Batman Incorporated though, more than anything else.

Black Glove is awesome though, probably one of the better sequences in the lot.

The sugar tongs...I don't know what they really are myself. Something about them being an intrusion into the physical world of the Dead Hand.

Yep.

I maintain only a peripheral connection to the comic world these days. I'm a minor joke at my FLCS (Vault of Midnight) because my pull is perpetually empty, since Messrs. Wagner and Busiek so rarely produce anything these days and I've come to prefer collected editions for a lot of the other stuff I read (Northlanders, etc.) In that vein, I was recently handed the collected edition of the first six issue of Saga, as I didn't even realize that Vaughan had gone back to work. Jeebus, he's excellent. Beyond genre, beyond whether you think his leading men are strong or annoying, beyond whether you thought the "cause" in Y was worthwhile (SF-worthwhile or otherwise), he's just an amazing storyteller.

I also picked up the second collection of Blacksad, which remains solid.

Just finished reading Book One of the Walking Dead. I gotta say, it was pretty disappointing. The writing isn't great and there is just no drama at all. The show is far more dramatic and that's too bad.

Whereas say with Game of Thrones the graphic novel, I find the comics more dramatic than the series on HBO (which I really like).

I know the Walking Dead comic started it all so it's like crapping on your maker or something but there it is.

Black Barney wrote: Just finished reading Book One of the Walking Dead. I gotta say, it was pretty disappointing. The writing isn't great and there is just no drama at all. The show is far more dramatic and that's too bad.

Whereas say with Game of Thrones the graphic novel, I find the comics more dramatic than the series on HBO (which I really like).

I know the Walking Dead comic started it all so it's like crapping on your maker or something but there it is.

I dunno, things get way more effed up and intense in the comics.

metalface13 wrote:

Black Barney wrote: Just finished reading Book One of the Walking Dead. I gotta say, it was pretty disappointing. The writing isn't great and there is just no drama at all. The show is far more dramatic and that's too bad.

Whereas say with Game of Thrones the graphic novel, I find the comics more dramatic than the series on HBO (which I really like).

I know the Walking Dead comic started it all so it's like crapping on your maker or something but there it is.

I dunno, things get way more effed up and intense in the comics.

The comic also doesn't rely on music to achieve it's emotion... or long shots that go on forever where you're just looking at the same guy and you build emotion into the scene because the shots gone on so long you're not sure what else to do. Your brain just goes there. With the comic the emotion comes about only because of the story and characters. Now I'm no huge defender of Kirkman's writing but it's as good as the show, no problem there.

The trick is that in comics the actors are only as good as you make them. The other thing is that the first book is mostly stuff you've already covered in the show and it will have less power for you by default. As the book begins to differ (and it is a completely different story a few books in) the emotional power should come back.

Embarrassing story, the ending of book 14 made me cry, at least I think it was book 14, I won't say what happened but I was on a public bus, standing up and reading while the bus rocked back and forth and just started crying all of a sudden. The story had really built it's hooks into me.

I still don't think Kirkman is a very good writer but I enjoy his books well enough.

Black Barney wrote: Just finished reading Book One of the Walking Dead. I gotta say, it was pretty disappointing. The writing isn't great and there is just no drama at all.

Totally agree with you, I just didn't want to shit on your experience ahead of time.

JonJacob said that "in comics, the actors are only as good as you make them"...I've got to disagree: in comics, the artist is responsible for the actors. Part of what drove me nuts about Snyder's Batman is that Capullo's acting *sucked*, the characters' body language and facial expressions either didn't match or wildly over-acted the dialogue. Will Eisner, I love the Spirit, but in his graphic novels, boy howdy does he overact. Compare to someone like Frank Quitely in the mainstream, who's one of the best actors I think the mainstream's ever seen, or Dan Clowes.