What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

I am utterly baffled by the popularity of Bendis. There is some kind of mass delusion affecting a generation of comic fans so that they are completely blinded to his glaring weaknesses as a writer. Unless somebody asks, I'm not even going to repeat them here, because I have probably already gone through my list earlier in this thread. His writing is the equivalent of Rob Liefeld's artwork, which was also the target of a great deal of undeserved devotion, back in the '90s. These days, Liefeld is widely mocked, but Bendis is continuing a long, slow, editorially-approved tour of devastation through every Marvel team book. Two or three years from now, I fully expect Bendis to be writing the worst Fantastic Four issues ever.

All that said, I was very impressed with an issue of Daredevil where Bendis wrote a long and credible courtroom scene, one better than any previous courtroom scene in Daredevil. And I say this as somebody who was a fan of Daredevil even in the pre-Frank Miller years. That Bendis courtroom scene may have lacked action or even suspense, but it felt very authentic.

Yeah, I mean, I know we've been through the Bendis-bashing probably three times here already, but this was the worst I've seen him, easily, and I had to write down the actual verbatim examples. This was far and away the worst Bendis comic I've read; I just finished it, and beyond all the stylistic problems, the plot was completely paper-thin. There was not a surprise in the book. Here was the plot:

- Superman-analogue "Olympus" dies in a sketchy apartment, naked; people saw a flash of light when he died
- Woman comes by for a booty call, finds out he's dead, tells detectives that she slept with him sometimes
- Olympus's wife commits suicide because of scandal
- Detectives find his batcave under her home; there is a rolodex full of fuck-buddies
- they talk to all the fuck-buddies, 32 of them, each of which are given a panel and a few pointless words like "I loved him..." or "It was just once or twice"
- the last one turns out to be the one who was with him when he died. He died having an orgasm.
- She's freaked out because she has a husband and kids, doesn't want it coming out
- Cut to her tearful story being told on TV; she was paid half a million dollars for her story

Ta-da.

Where was the story here???!? Where was the "I didn't see THAT coming!" or "what's going to happen next???"

The comparison to Liefeld is actually funnily on-target: Liefeld distracted from his lack of drawing ability with a ton of extra little lines, and Bendis distracts from his lack of a compelling story and inability to write actually believable dialogue with a ton of extra words & word balloons.

The Warren Ellis guest-star story in this book is godawful too. Two pages are literally just huge fucking word balloons with Warren Ellis giving his usual rant that he's written a million times before about how much he hates superheroes.

Part of the problem is Marvel editors. Even many Bendis fans will admit that his better work was early in his career and only on solo street-level titles. And yet Marvel keeps assigning him high-powered team books, over and over again.

One theory that I have been hearing lately is that much of the Bendis success story can be traced to the editorial decision to include Spider-Man and Wolverine in the New Avengers line-up. That, plus above-average artists, helped boost popularity beyond all reason.

Early in Bendis's career I picked up Powers. I hated it... well that's an exaggeration. I bought two books of it all together, trying to give it a chance and I really didn't like it. I gave up after than and never read anything else from him every again.

Then, maybe two years ago, a buddy of mine leant me Ultimate Spiderman... I am not a Spiderman fan, don't like his world, don't like the character... all that stuff. But for some reason this series appealed to me. Not enough to pick it up for myself but for some reason I thought that it seemed like Spiderman done right. I still didn't like Spiderman's world very much, still didn't care for the character, but it seemed to me that Bendis did what should have been done for the character whether I liked it or not. It felt like it would be a great teenager Spiderman book and seemed totally appropriate.

Not enough Superman talk in here. Read through Kingdom Come and All Star Superman for the first time in years. Of the two, Kingdom Come just works for me more, and part of that just seems to be that Superman works best alongside other superheroes.

Batman especially makes Superman look like a boring demigod who has had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Superman needs that foil, the guy who can accomplish just as much without a single power. With that idea in the picture, Superman becomes a much better character.

I like Ultimaate Spider-Man in very specific places. Now, BMB's run on Daredevil, on the other hand, is probably my favorite thing to happen in superhero comics in the decade they came out.

Powers sucks hard.

Shellhead wrote: Part of the problem is Marvel editors. Even many Bendis fans will admit that his better work was early in his career and only on solo street-level titles. And yet Marvel keeps assigning him high-powered team books, over and over again.

But no, that's the thing: my examples above are from a crime-themed indie creator-owned book. Definitely no editorial interference, no editor would've allowed all that garbage.

dragonstout wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Part of the problem is Marvel editors. Even many Bendis fans will admit that his better work was early in his career and only on solo street-level titles. And yet Marvel keeps assigning him high-powered team books, over and over again.

But no, that's the thing: my examples above are from a crime-themed indie creator-owned book. Definitely no editorial interference, no editor would've allowed all that garbage.

I haven't read Powers, but that example before was cringe-worthy. But if he can't write street-level solo books well either, then why does he get so much work from Marvel? Is he blackmailing Quesada? Because we're talking about a writer who writes heavily decompressed stories, bad dialogue, lame fight scenes, and too many deus ex machina endings. Worst of all, he seems almost completely tone-deaf when it comes to characterization. So what does Bendis bring to the table to get all these writing gigs? There has to be something.

I've also been reading early Superman stories via the SUPERMAN CHRONICLES. Early Golden Age Superman is CUH-RAZY! I get a real kick out of it, but almost purely because the depiction of Superman is so drastically different than *any*thing that followed. In the second story, he causes a life-threatening cave-in just to teach some rich folks a lesson, almost none of which have demonstrated that they've done anything bad. He chuckles a lot all throughout whenever he threatens someone's life. SUPER-creepy with Lois, too. This pair of blogposts actually covers the gist of it pretty well:

www.according2robyn.blogspot.com/2013/09...sal-dick-part-3.html

according2robyn.blogspot.com/2013/10/sup...sal-dick-part-4.html

Best comic I've read in months and months though is Yuichi Yokoyama's GARDEN. I actually found TRAVEL annoying, but Garden was fun with every turn of the page. I'm looking forward to reading WORLD MAP ROOM, in which there is apparently a little bit of a story.

Also read GOLD POLLEN and other stories, which had astoundingly beautiful art but was among the most frustratingly inscrutable comics I've ever read. I actually couldn't make it to the very end of the last story, and it's not a long book.

I enjoyed reading some silver age Superman comics when I was a kid, despite being mostly a Marvel fan. I particularly liked the Jimmy Olsen comic for the really lively plot twists. Take a look at this cover gallery and you will understand that Jimmy Olsen is Superman's greatest frenemy:

www.coverbrowser.com/covers/jimmy-olsen/2

dragonstout wrote: Best comic I've read in months and months though is Yuichi Yokoyama's GARDEN. I actually found TRAVEL annoying, but Garden was fun with every turn of the page. I'm looking forward to reading WORLD MAP ROOM, in which there is apparently a little bit of a story.

Well now I'm torn on whether to get this. I read (is that even the right word? perused maybe) his New Engineering a while ago, well half of it or so. It was fun but incomprehensible. Certainly unique.

I think I talked myself into at least one more. What did you like better about Garden?

iguanaDitty wrote:

dragonstout wrote: Best comic I've read in months and months though is Yuichi Yokoyama's GARDEN. I actually found TRAVEL annoying, but Garden was fun with every turn of the page. I'm looking forward to reading WORLD MAP ROOM, in which there is apparently a little bit of a story.

Well now I'm torn on whether to get this. I read (is that even the right word? perused maybe) his New Engineering a while ago, well half of it or so. It was fun but incomprehensible. Certainly unique.

I think I talked myself into at least one more. What did you like better about Garden?

New Engineering is the one I've heard the least about...I feel like I started really hearing about him with Travel. So I don't know how it compares to New Engineering.

With Travel, the deal is that it's basically a long train trip through a somewhat fantastical world, but the emphasis in Travel is taking very normal things, like buying a ticket, and making them seem super-dramatic and weird. Lots of Travel is the main characters walking through the train, looking at the passengers. Something like the way rain looks on the window is abstracted and celebrated. Maybe I'm a philistine, but I found Travel boring.

But then Picturebox had their 50% off sale at the end of last year, so I took a risk on some books I otherwise would not have.

Garden is actually *never* boring. As in Travel, there's basically no "story" to speak of: it's still just emotionless people walking through an environment. But where the environment of Travel was a normal train, the environment in Garden is NUTS. It's a gigantic amusement park kind of thing? A huge man-made "garden", where everything natural has been replaced by unnatural things. As they walk through the garden, they narrate what they're seeing and how it works the way it does, which is helpful and entertaining; you definitely know exactly what's going on at every moment. It's very inventive; I both wanted to find out what they'd see next both for the *concept* and also for *how it'd be depicted*. It's much more open than the claustrophobic Travel; it's like a gigantic playground. Also, there are a ton of people on the walk, and the character designs are a lot of fun.

So basically, Travel is about making the everyday look unnatural and super-dramatic via the art, whereas Garden is about exploring a totally crazy future playground.

I don't recommend it without reservations; you have to know what you're getting into, i.e. very geometric art, no meaningful characters, no story beyond "walking through a big playground". It's avant-garde, and as with all avant-garde stuff your mileage may really really vary. In my experience sometimes avant-garde stuff is insufferable, but sometimes it really really clicks, usually when it's infused with fun and exploration rather than being dead-serious. Un Chien Andalou, for example, is really fun. I really like a lot of Brakhage movies, mainly because they're fun and surprising (and short!); Window Water Baby Moving is probably my favorite, though, even though it's not a lot of "fun". Man With a Movie Camera is one of my all-time top 10 favorite movies; there's a part in the middle that moves me to tears, but mainly it's just so damn inventive and fun. GARDEN is fun.

While we're talking Picturebox books, which are mostly misses for me, GOLD POLLEN AND OTHER STORIES was not fun. I also couldn't stand 1-800-MICE, literally could not read that book past a couple dozen pages. I love Mat Brinkman's comics (who also did a lot of the art for Cave Evil), both TERATOID HEIGHTS and MULTIFORCE. It's been a few years since I read STOREYVILLE, but was completely unimpressed. I love Gary Panter's art a lot of the time, especially when he's going kaleidoscopic as in JIMBO: ADVENTURES IN PARADISE, but found the INFERNO and PURGATORY books close to unreadable and the DAL TOKYO book *actually* unreadable; all three of those books are insufferably pretentious.

Hope that description of Garden, as well as Picturebox likes/dislikes, helps you figure out whether you want to buy Garden!

Iron Fist: Living Weapon
I know Barnes said it sucked, but I really liked it. I do have a soft spot for the character having read it pretty regular in the 80's. I thought the writing was tight, the art was mostly very good, and the action scenes well done. I've hadn't previously heard of Kaare Kyle Andrews he is both the writer and artist. He did a very nice piece in the back of the book about the influence of Steranko's Nick Fury run. A hugh plus in my book. Also undead ninja robots are just plain cool.

This isn't really about anything I'm reading, but more my four-year-old...

I got the Walt Simonson run of Thor in the math trade from Barnes, and it arrived just yesterday. My son has a lot of interest in superheroes, and especially in Marvel. He already loves Thor, so I assumed he would love these books. Sure enough, while I was getting dinner ready with my wife he parked on the sofa and looked at the pictures all the way through the first volume.

I got back last night from seeing Godzilla, and my wife informed me that he spent the rest of the evening going through the next two volumes. He was so engrossed that my wife actually delayed giving him a bath so he could finish some more. And then this morning, while we were getting ready to go he asked if he could read some more.

He told me "I like the colors."

San Il Defanso wrote: This isn't really about anything I'm reading, but more my four-year-old...

I got the Walt Simonson run of Thor in the math trade from Barnes, and it arrived just yesterday. My son has a lot of interest in superheroes, and especially in Marvel. He already loves Thor, so I assumed he would love these books. Sure enough, while I was getting dinner ready with my wife he parked on the sofa and looked at the pictures all the way through the first volume.

I got back last night from seeing Godzilla, and my wife informed me that he spent the rest of the evening going through the next two volumes. He was so engrossed that my wife actually delayed giving him a bath so he could finish some more. And then this morning, while we were getting ready to go he asked if he could read some more.

He told me "I like the colors."

I was startled by this comment, because that was one of several things that I disliked about the Simonson Thor run. The colors always looked so washed out. Turns out, the omnibus edition has dialed up the colors to a more vivid level:

[image] 1.bp.blogspot.com/_fZ37jdy-g4M/TIWvbDR1r.../Thor_%23350_p01.jpg [/image]