What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

The first trade in the Fraction/Aja run on Hawkeye was reasonably good. Hawkeye was always one of my favorite heroes, but I haven't enjoyed any of Fraction's writing much in recent years. Although Fraction still has his tedious hipster moments, the pacing here is crisp and the dialogue is snappy and fun. Aja used to have a terrible time meeting deadlines, and it looks like he has simplified his style somewhat for the sake of speed.

So I have a random pet peeve about modern comics that the Fraction Hawkeye run comment made me think of. I got the first trade, enjoying the pitter-patter, like the art style. Two or three issues in, hey! guest artist! or new artist! or something. Everyone looks different! Who are these people?

Drives me crazy. It's like reading a novel where suddenly the main characters change in small yet annoyingly obvious ways three chapters in.

The first Daredevil Waid trade (heh) has the same thing. It really turns me off and breaks my immersion.

dragonstout wrote: I love Mat Brinkman's comics (who also did a lot of the art for Cave Evil), both TERATOID HEIGHTS and MULTIFORCE.

I love Brinkman too -- I had no idea he worked on Cave Evil! That's nuts!

It's been a few years since I read STOREYVILLE, but was completely unimpressed.

Yeah, me too. Santoro has gotten a lot of mileage out of that thing. My students loved him as a guest artist, though, they found all of his talk about "unfinished" art and his Golden Mean grid philosophy super-inspiring. I was sad to have missed his talk.

I was picking up a few things in Comixology and picked up the first volume of Nowhere Men from Image. By the end of the first issue I was stoked, by the end of the trade I was infuriated. An absolutely terrific premise (what if scientists were given the kind of treatment and fandom and rock stars?) was pushed aside for yet another goddamn "superpowered people in a world that hates and fears them" book, like we needed more of that. The more I think about it the more it bugs me, because I *really* want to read the book it started out as. I wrote more details on my blog .

I said that I would never read any of the Before Watchmen material. But the public library had a couple of volumes in hardcover, and I have so much free time right now, so I checked them out. Disappointing. Len Wein did a great job of telling the back story of Ozymandias, but ultimately added nothing essential. The tale of the Crimson Corsair was a frenzied mess of ultraviolence and pointlessness. The Dollar Bill story was slightly entertaining but utterly unconsequential. The Rorschach storyline was also extremely violent and pointless, and also too heavily inspired by Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle even makes a cameo appearance!

Worst of all was the Comedian storyline. There was a gawdawful effort to make him a more sympathetic character, despite the fact that one of his earliest acts as the Comedian was an attempt to rape the original Silk Spectre. Writer Brian Azzarello askes us to believe that the Comedian was close friends with Jack and Bobby Kennedy, but also murdered Marilyn Monroe. That he personally helped defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis but then did nothing while Bobby got assassinated. He spends a hefty chunk of the storyline in Vietnam, but without even a single panel showing his relationship with a certain Vietnamese woman, or for that matter, Dr. Manhattan.

The art was decent. That's the best that I can say about Before Watchmen. There was one particular splash page that showed someone kicking down a wooden door, and the pattern on the sole of the show combined with the shattering wood creates this fleeting impression of Rorschach's mask that was cool. Otherwise, nothing memorable, just solid storytelling with the art.

I just finished the first 6 issues of Black Science by Rick Remender. This really knocked my socks off. It's about this scientist with some ridiculous anti-authoritarian credo who builds a device called "The Pillar," which makes travel to other dimensions possible. The intent was to pull whatever he wanted from other dimensions for the benefit of mankind, but things get totally fucked up, the device goes off and sends him, his lab assistants, his kids, and the total asshole who funded the project through the "Eververse." To make matters worse, someone sabotaged The Pillar and they have no control over where they go and the amount of time they're stuck in wherever they're sent is completely random. As you read on you realize just how much a mess of his life was before this all happened, and even with this crazy shit going on he's still going to deal with the consequences. It's on hiatus until July and I think the first trade drops in June.

Other than that I've been reading some old Marvel books. I read the fist 5 issues of Silver Surfer, which is a character I enjoy and I kind of enjoyed what I read, but I got a little burned out on that pose where he's on his board, down on his knees, making those overly dramatic "woe-is-me" gestures with his hands. I read Days of Future Past in trade since I've never read it. The story itself is great, the issues they package it with are hit or miss. I loved the story about Nightcrawler in Dante's version of Hell. Didn't love the story about Wolverine going back to Canada and fighting Wendigo so much. I'm now reading Fantastic Four: Overthrow of Doom. I _LOVE_ Fantastic Four. One issue in. There's a totally ridiculous villain who turns into a tornado. So far so good.

I don't really play games much these days, but I've been reading a whole lot of comics from our library.

Astonishing X-Men: I've been going through the X-Men movies recently, since I hadn't seen any of them since X3, and I hadn't seen either X2 or X3 since they were in the theaters. It made me want to dig into some of the comics, which have mostly passed me by. This is the 12-issue arc from Joss Whedon, and I did like it a lot. As with lots of modern comic books, I find that not following comics constantly is a bit of a disadvantage in reading newer stuff. But I did enjoy this, especially the arc with the Hellfire Club.

Dark Phoenix Saga: Not a lot of insight to add to this, except I really loved it. It's a little like seeing the Dream Team in the Barcelona Olympics, because my conception of the X-Men has always been Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus. I like Bronze Age storytelling a lot more too, so this was a real treat for me.

Grant Morrison's Batman: Barnes' raving about this finally got me to take the plunge on it, and it's a lot of fun. Right now I'm plowing through Final Crisis, which I know isn't strictly necessary, but does give some context to the events of Last Rites, which I enjoyed even without its broader context. Very heady stuff, but I am enjoying it.

I'm approaching a place where I'm about ready to take a break from Batman and pursue some other other DC stuff. I particularly would like to read more Superman, whom I have always enjoyed in the abstract but rarely in comic form. I could use some recommendations on the DC universe, actually. Here's stuff I've already read:

- Kingdom Come
- Alan Moore's Batman and Superman work (Killing Joke, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow, For The Man Who Has Everything)
- All-Star Superman
- High-point Batman trades (Year One, Arkham Asylum, The Dark Knight Returns)

Clearly I'm pretty well-versed in Batman, kind of literate in Superman, and that's about it. I also read some of The Death of Superman, but that was pretty awful.

I've read every issue of All-New X-Men and rebooted Uncanny X-Men and still missed that they'd killed off Wolverine. I mean, sure, I could be paying more attention to comics news and all, but I think X-Men is probably only second to the Avengers in the number of books you'd need to read a month to follow the metaplot. I observe also that nothing in either of those books really prepared me for Axis either.

I'm catching up on the past 10 years' worth of Usagi Yojimbo. A few months back, an utterly random spam email made its way through to my inbox from an online comic/toy/game shop that I hadn't ordered from in years with an announcement that Dark Horse was issuing a signed hardcover this fall. Hadn't thought about the book in years, but I decided to take a flyer on the hardcover.

It landed a couple of weeks ago and has been the catalyst to hunt up and read the whole bloody thing from the beginning. Christ, what a good run of books.....

Usagi Yojimbo is one of the best comics coming out today. I'm not even that into samurai and feudal Japan stuff and it's a regular for me. Sakai's art and writing is phenomenal and the characters are fantastic.

It can seem daunting, but Sakai has a deft hand and can get you up to speed quickly. I started reading regularly at "Grasscutter" and have been following ever since.

Out now is Boo! Halloween Stories vol 2. This is a digital-only anthology of spooky stories available through Comixology . 64 pages for 2 bucks. I know a lot of the folks involved here (and was going to have a story of my own in this volume but that didn't work out...yet) and it's a great buy. Check it out.

Just finished volume 5 of American Vampire. I'm getting bored with Skinner Sweet, but various additional characters have kept the series somewhat interesting. Scott Snyder is a decent writer and captures the feel of different historical periods well, but the specific storylines are starting to feel repetitive. The art by Rafael Albuquerque is suitable for this series, but not my favorite style by any means. All of his work looks a bit sloppy with flashes of brilliance, and then his actions scenes look even sloppier and cartoonishly extreme with gigantic claws and fangs and buckets of blood. As a free checkout from the library, American Vampire has been a decent read, but I wouldn't recommend buying more than the first two volumes unless you indiscriminately love everything about vampires.

+1 in praise of Usagi Yojimbo. Came out in Germany in the 90's, but was discontinued after book 7. I only learned later that it continued and ordered shortly after Grascutter. Was really surprised when it ended abruptly. Stan Sakai must be the nicest and most humble person in comic business today. I think the regular Usagi will continue soon after the Mars Attacks crossover?

Mike Mignola is bleeding my wallet dry. All series in the Mignolaverse have been worthing getting them: Hellboy (in Hell), BPRD, Ape Sapien, Lord Baltimore, Lobster Johnson and Witchfinder. Epic.

Still reading Fables, it's okay. The spin-off Fairest can be good, but quality varies. Cinderella stories are generally quite good.

Whenever a new Goon comes out it's always a good read with fantastic art. It's almost always worth the wait.

American Vampire (2nd cycle) has started promising. Worth keeping for the time being. The same goes for Dead Boy Detectives.

I agree with you Shellhead about American Vampire. The first two volumes were pretty good, and then it's just gone downhill from there. The WWII story was good.

I finished reading Irredeemable and Incorruptible this week. Very enjoyable, Irredeemable is definitely darker of the two. Incorruptible is mostly lighter, but I wish it would have been more of a struggle for Max Damage to become a hero. Yeah he faces a lot of negative feedback from his city and what not, but it never felt like Max struggled to be good. It's not easy. I also felt the big climax and resolution wasn't as immense feeling as the rest of the series.

metalface13 wrote: I agree with you Shellhead about American Vampire. The first two volumes were pretty good, and then it's just gone downhill from there. The WWII story was good.

I finished reading Irredeemable and Incorruptible this week. Very enjoyable, Irredeemable is definitely darker of the two. Incorruptible is mostly lighter, but I wish it would have been more of a struggle for Max Damage to become a hero. Yeah he faces a lot of negative feedback from his city and what not, but it never felt like Max struggled to be good. It's not easy. I also felt the big climax and resolution wasn't as immense feeling as the rest of the series.

Both Irredeemable and Incorruptible were interesting, but fell short in terms of potential. Irredeemable relies too heavily on our understanding that the Plutonian is Superman, and so skimps on showing us how he became a hero despite the traumatic events of his upbringing. Incorruptible was more enjoyable, but largely leaves Max as a cypher. We know that he has become a good guy, but why he changed was not given enough consideration. More importantly, as you point out, we don't see him struggle with his commitment to being good, because he has somehow developed this amazing willpower that was absent from his villainous days.

I made a friend who sits next to me at work and he has been going to the same comic shop in Akron every Wednesday since 1984. I went with him one day and I've been going every Wednesday for about a month now. I picked up the Deadpool bi-annual to try it out and I fell in love with my new favorite character. I've been soaking up as much as I can of him. I really like hacing a physical collection, but the B&N digital offerings are significantly cheaper.

I'm also reading the Logan Legacy since I missed the Death of Wolverine storyline.

Also started getting into TMNT again.