What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

DarthJoJo wrote: Finished it with a double feature of Tom King, his Vision and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow limited series. The man has some of the best straight prose this side of Gaiman or Moore. You can see it in the contrast of these two books not just in the style but tone and voice. There is the bleak horror and doom of the narration in Vision alongside the stilted, precise speech of the synthezoid family. Ruthye is very formal and precise but in the way of someone trained to speak in a royal court rather than someone with merely impeccable grammar. Supergirl feels like that one panel of All-Star Superman, "You're much stronger than you think you are," blown up over eight issues. A woman of limitless power leaves her 21st birthday to accompany a girl on a mission of vengeance. Sometimes she punches her problems, sometimes she helps dig graves, sometimes she spoonfeeds an alien missing both arms. Along the way Kara takes red kryptonite pills to fight a space dragon and survives a day on a world with a green sun. Lots of good stuff.

I go back and forth on Vision. A horror story from the jump, it almost feels like character assassination (not that I've ever had an opinion on Ultron's creation, beside Paul Bettany's better than necessary performance). None of it is the sort of thing a hero should do. Maybe it would have been better with an original character, but then you lose the weight that decades of history and context provide without a ridiculous load of exposition and footnotes.

I read King's Vision run a few years ago, and the memory has lingered. Vision was one of my favorite heroes when I was a kid, because he was somewhat similar in personality to Mr. Spock. King played fair with Vision, retaining his personality and backstory while daring to push the boundaries of his potential. The scene where he battles the Avengers was impressive and did justice to Vision's full capabilities.

I just started reading Ms. Marvel, the modern version featuring a teenage Muslim-American girl in New Jersey. The art is good enough and the writing is good enough, and hopefully both will improve. Aside from that, I am currently reading the entire original run of Avengers via a free comic website that is plagued with pop-ups. Just getting through 22 pages of comics can require dismissing up to 50 pop-ups on my tablet, because the Amazon Silk browser is relatively lacking in anti-malware software. I just finished issue #140, which I originally read back in the mid-'70s. The next issue features the debut of artist George Perez. His early artwork was a little unpolished, but featured some very dynamic layouts.

Glad to hear it isn’t a hit piece on Vision. It’s absolutely a great, haunting story of good intentions falling apart in the worst way, but I worried Vision was forced into the story King wanted to tell rather than a story that fit him.

Which is a strange worry for a character I never think about, but there it is.

I read the first few volumes of Ms. Marvel back in the day, through the Wolverine guest appearance I think. Really enjoyed her as a teen learning the ropes of superheroism in the same way as the beginning of Miles Morales’ story.

The King story was a completely reasonable extrapolation from Vision's lengthy past history. Early on, he was nearly obsessed with gaining humanity (long before a similar storyline with Data on Star Trek: Next Generation). He married Scarlet Witch, moved to a suburb in New Jersey, and started a family with the assist of Wanda's magic. Later, Vision was corrupted by an alien AI (ISAAC, of the moon Titan) and tried to create a utopia by taking over the world via computers. Later, a black ops team captured Vision, dismantled him, and wiped his memories. He eventually got back his memories but without the emotional context, bringing his relationship with Scarlet Witch to an end. In short, Vision was an idealist without a normal moral compass, so King's story of Vision's second attempt to start a family was a valid interpretation of the character.

Moreso than her Pakistani-American and Muslim heritage, I appreciate the way Ms. Marvel is very grounded in her community. Her character exists in the context of family, friends, classmates, and other community members, making her a rich character compared to the cardboard DC heroes of the silver age of comics. Even her hero deck in Marvel Champions reflects this, giving her three support characters who can only help her in alter ego form, encouraging her player to switch to alter-ego more often than with most other heroes.

On a really great run of comics lately. Simon Spurrier and Charles Adlard’s Damn Them All is gender swapped Constantine but good gender swapped Constantine. Ellie Hawthorne is a demon-dealing magician in employ of the London mob. No one, including the devils, is as capable as they think they are. Everyone is kind of lame and has no respect for anything. Like Elle repeats “It’s not about who’s the better magician. It’s about who’s willing to be the bigger bastard.” Violence ensues.

Daniel Warren Johnson’s Murder Falcon had to walk for Do A Power Bomb! to fly. Rather than a young woman seeking closure in the death of her mother by entering a supernatural wrestling tournament, it’s young man facing mortality by fighting monsters with heavy metal. The music. Not like lead or something. Johnson faces the hard questions with his hobby loves with no shame. Murder Falcon is a celebration of music from the jump. It’s a little shaggy and too many characters are introduced to do their awesome thing in their first pages and then recede entirely into the background, but lesser Johnson is still another level.

The Ghost Fleet, by the dream team of Donny Cates and Johnson, is Transporter 2 or Fast and Furious in panels. It’s absolutely dumb, but the total indulgence in the stupidity and thrill of seeing a man run through tanks with a katana carries it. Cates and Johnson have been transcendent when they go for the heavy stuff, but this is just them having a blast and going balls to the wall for eight issues. Can’t believe David Leitch doesn’t have it in pre-production already.

Damn Them All ends a little weak. Some great characters, but if you're going to dive into angels, demons, Filipino legends and the like (I can't believe I'm saying this because way too many things are obsessed with it) it would help to have some firm lore. Is our traditional understanding of them right? Wrong? Alfie's notes are flippant and coarse. Is it just the contrast to what we'd expect dealing with the supernatural, or are they really that lame and pathetic? Kind of minimizes the stakes.

I kind of hated Tom King's Riddler's One Bad Day. Mitch Gerad's art is gorgeous. The story is stupid. What if Riddler didn't have any gimmicks? What if he was just the absolute smartest and most amoral of all Batman villains? What if he always knew Batman's secret identity and has spent years sneaking into Wayne Manor and watching various Robins sleep? What if he gave Joker the plan to paralyze Barabara and break Gordon? Then he'd be so overpowered as to be boring and stupid. Feels like a fifteen-year-old trying to convince his friends that Riddler is way better than Joker but, in doing so, gets rid of everything interesting about the character.

The same type of villain is explored in Scott Snyder's Black Mirror to much better effect, not least because said villain is new (mostly). James Gordon Jr. is as smart and amoral as King's Riddler, but his set pieces are better and the personal relations at play make him hit harder. The Killing Joke reference is even better. Francesco Francavilla's art adds a wonderful luridness to a most unremarkable Batman villain.

Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw's The Paybacks was an unexpected but pleasant surprise in a $5 bin, not the least because it expands the world of their earlier collaboration Buzzkill. Superheroes and villains are dragged into a Suicide Squad arrangement when they can't pay their loans. Bloodpouch has an eyepatch that is a pouch. A character is named Skisquatch. It's irreverent. It's fun.

Andrew McLean's Head Lopper isn't appointment reading either, but it's just as fun as The Paybacks. He lops heads and drags around the head of a witch that won't shut up. Fun.

Juni Ba's Monkey Meat anthology isn't as good as Djeliya, but the anarchic punk spirit is strong in these stories revolving around a company that sells literal monkey meat in a can and a drink made of souls. I will definitely be watching out for his Damian Wayne series.

Black Mirror is the only Batman hardcover in my collection. I liked that it featured Dick Grayson as Batman, but the tone was often very heavy and dark. There were some very memorable scenes, especially at the auction, but I found James Gordon Jr. nearly intolerable in his smugness.

Tom King’s The Human Target is really good. Like all the best comics, it’s a murder mystery. The Human Target is poisoned while impersonating Lex Luthor to draw out an assassin. He has twelve days to live and discover the killer. Every day is a new issue and a new member of the Justice League International to be investigated.

Very much in Tom King’s wheelhouse: a somber character study of superheroes where no is particularly heroic.

Greg Smallwood’s art is gorgeous. It draws out the mid-century sun-drenched noir setting perfectly. Worth the price of admission alone.

DarthJoJo wrote: Tom King’s The Human Target is really good. Like all the best comics, it’s a murder mystery. The Human Target is poisoned while impersonating Lex Luthor to draw out an assassin. He has twelve days to live and discover the killer. Every day is a new issue and a new member of the Justice League International to be investigated.

Very much in Tom King’s wheelhouse: a somber character study of superheroes where no is particularly heroic.

Greg Smallwood’s art is gorgeous. It draws out the mid-century sun-drenched noir setting perfectly. Worth the price of admission alone.

So I looked up Human Target on Amazon, and a browser extension showed me that one of our local libraries has it, so I checked out both volumes not realizing the story spread across both, and finished them in a day. Pretty good stuff. DC noir.

That’s an amazing browser extension. I wonder if it could cover full library networks because my local is fairly small but part of a pretty robust system.

DarthJoJo wrote: That’s an amazing browser extension. I wonder if it could cover full library networks because my local is fairly small but part of a pretty robust system.

I wish you luck on your journey.

www.libraryextension.com/

I keep trying to Libgen my comics because I am lazy and selfish, but it's easier to check out physical copies or order them for our campus library.

Been on a great run of comics lately. I thought IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run was losing steam after they killed Shredder and assumed control of the Foot Clan. But then they went to space and traveled in time and brought me all the way back in. Didn’t expect Ace McDuck or Antrax to make appearances, but they made the best of their issues. Hakk-R was a pretty great villain, too.

Cullen Bunn’s The Sixth Gun is just the back half of the original Trigun but set after the American Civil War. There are magic guns that grant powers and a colorful cast of villains and heroes. Good pulp fun.

Ryan Parrott’s Rogue Sun is just a great superhero. There’s no gimmick, no postmodern deconstruction of the form and setting. Just good storytelling and compelling characters. Also a reference to Quinns when playing a fake Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective.

All of the above is good to great. A lot of fun stuff but nothing life changing, nothing critical. James Tynion IV’s The Nice House on the Lake might be the latter. Expect nothing less from the man behind the Batman/TMNT crossovers. Walter invites ten friends from high school, college and his New York life to a billionaire’s lake house in Wisconsin. And then the world ends for everyone not there.

It’s appropriate the pull quote on the cover is from Damon Lindelof. There’s mystery, there’s science that borders on magic. Not all mysteries are answered, but the ones that actually matter are. It’s brutal. Read it.

Dominion clearly appears in the background of a living room, but unlike the above Quinns reference, it’s not plot relevant.

I've quite liked The Nice House on the Lake as well, though I read it as singles and I suspect I've lost a bit by not going through it all in one go. In case you haven't seen it, The Nice House on the Sea is has released several issues. There are some really cool new mysteries that I am eager to see resolution to.

Grommets is a really fun read. It's about some "uncool" kids bonding through skate culture in the early 80's. To come of age without helicopter parents and cellphones sounds quite nice compared to the present day.

Matt Kindt's Gilt Frame has really impressed me. The art style is similar to Mind Mgmt, and it's a 3 issue story about an older woman and her 20-something nephew traveling to France with an antique chair and stumbling into a murder mystery. I quite like the dialogue, and I am jealous that Matt Kindt apparently co-wrote this with his mother.

I did see The Nice House on the Sea and am hyped but am also a trade paperback guy. I don’t have a local shop that would make singles make sense, and my kids would instantly destroy anything bound by staples.

I checked out The Dark Knight Returns thinking it was The Dark Knight. It is not.



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Right. The Dark Knight Returns was Frank Miller's first venture into the Batman mythos. It also has the honor of being the first comic book ever reviewed by The Washington Post. But a lot of news outlets were getting into comics around that time, as Watchmen was released right around then, too, and was almost as much of a smash as DKR was. Miller later went on to write Batman: Year One within the confines of Batman and Detective Comics. It was that story and Steve Englehart's run on Detective in the mid-70s (later reprinted as Shadow of the Bat before the series of the same name) that Nolan based much of his trilogy on (adding in the execrable Bane in the third film.)