Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Comics I'm getting on 5/5

Like last week, I'll be listing comics I'm getting, along with comics I'm not, and some commentary for each. DC is included this time for reasons which will become obvious.

Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine #1
A bad way to start, but alphabetical order means this is first. I absolutely loved Astonishing X-Men under Whedon. I've heard people complain (or maybe not even complain, but point out) that Whedon used ideas from Morrison. Well, as I'll mention later in more depth, I don't like Grant Morrison. Either way, Whedon had a great run and the more recent stuff has also been pretty good, although IMO, not as good. This is, from what I've heard, trying to capitalize on the Astonishing success by putting the adjective in front. Either way, Aaron is a great writer and Kubet on art seems like a lot of fun. If this is too serious (which I cannot see happening), this might be dropped, but for now, this is something I'll get. (PS, I mean, look at the Kubert cover here. That looks awesome)

Deadpool Corps #2
Surprise! Deadpool comic! Heck, it's the first of three this week. Even with Secret Six being added on later, in the comics I am getting, the majority are Deadpool. Heck, Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine is more of a toss-up than anything, since I don't have much info about the series. Secret Six is something I've added only this week just because I just caught up. So without those (which I could easily see being a possibility), it would be strictly Deadpool comics this week. Interesting. Anyway, Deadpool Corps has so far been really fun. The first reaction I can hear from lots of people is "Liefeld does the art? Isn't he the guy who did this? How can you read issues with Liefeld art? He's horrible!" Let me just say that there are plenty of artists I dislike more than Liefeld, some of whom other people really like. He isn't my favorite artist, but I honestly don't hate him. Besides, the art isn't the most important part of Deadpool (although bad enough art can make something worse, like Dillon's in Wolverine: Origins), the writing is. Gischler is my favorite current Deadpool writer. He makes the character freaking awesome. Prelude to Deadpool Corps was amazing, and the first issue was also amazing. I really am looking forward to this.

Deadpool Team-Up #893
For those of you who don't know, Deadpool Team-Up started at issue 899 and has been counting backwards. Now that that's out of the way, look at that! A second Deadpool comic. Deadpool Team-Up is absurdly hit or miss. Considering it has no continuity (that I can see anyway) and that each issue is done by a different creative team with a different team-up buddy, it can get wacky and absurd. Which is okay some of the time. This particular one has Captain Britain, which seems like it should be fun. I'm not a huge fan of Captain Britain, but I have read Excalibur (some issues) and New Excalibur (the entire series) so I know the character somewhat well. Him with Deadpool is something I want to see. The artist did a good job in the Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way series with his Deadpool art, so I am looking forward to the art. All in all, looks like fun.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8
And we come to the third on my Deadpool list. Huat is an okay artist who really needs to work on his lens flare (it is distracting and that is a problem), and did a decent job in the last issue. The story itself was actually fun and one of the better Deadpool comics of the week it came out, showing Deadpool is a mercenary for hire that will kill people, but he isn't fully a psychopath. He was doing the killing for a decent reason, and it was kind of cool. Either way, this looks to be fun and hopefully it will be.

Secret Six #21
Something that was pointed out to me when I got issues 15-20 on Saturday (minus issue 16, which I do want to pick up somewhere) is that Secret Six has had some of the best covers around. And Bob was right. Look at the cover to 21 up there in the link. Look at it. That is really cool. I digress. Wow, it only took one week of this to start into DC. Like I mentioned last week, I read Secret Six in volumes, but on Saturday, Free Comic Book Day, issues were on sale, so I was able to pick up those five issues I mentioned above (15, 17, 18, 19, 20) for under 10 bucks. Now I am caught up (aside from issue 16, which I will get, but I know the general plot of), so I'll continue with issues with Secret Six 21. Secret Six has been absolutely amazing. Gail Simone is one of the best writers in the business and her work is amazing on Secret Six. The Six are completely different characters that are each done really well, with their different personalities bouncing off each other and making for amazing plot and story and fun. Issue 20 was awesome, and this looks to be incredible as well. Seriously, I don't read DC, but I read Secret Six. That should tell you something.

Comics I am not interested in

Amazing Spider-Man #630
The first superhero I really liked was Spider-Man. I've read a lot of Spider-Man over the years, and I like the character a lot. When it came down to it, though, I didn't really read much Spider-Man. Around The Other, I started picking up the Spider-Man series that there were (Amazing, Friendly Neighborhood, Marvel Knights/Sensational). After OMD and BND, I started getting tired of Spider-Man. I am okay with a 6 issue series that takes 6 months to complete and is in one series. I don't like how everything became 3 issue storylines done in a single month with a different creative team every month. It became exhausting, and I gave up eventually. I wanted to maybe try picking up the Juggernaut stuff last week, but it didn't seem good. The Lizard has been an interesting Spider-Man enemy. More than anything, though, he hasn't been the most powerful villain Spider-Man's had to fight. The Lizard's going to take over Earth unless Spider-Man stops him? Um, what about the rest of the Avengers, or the Fantastic Four, or the X-Men or the Power Pack? Lizard is not the strongest, not the most durable, and he can control lizards to an extent. Stegron is like Lizard but more powerful because he controls freaking dinosaurs. Lizard is not the villain that seems like he would succeed in taking over the world. The story seems awkward when I look at it that way.

Spectacular Spider-Girl #1
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Spider-Girl popular enough that they decided to reboot her series, but not popular enough to keep it. And this is another attempt? MC2 was kind of cool, but I think letting it die gracefully is the best thing, not letting it resurface again every once in a while. It is more like a corpse bobbing up and down. It may be above water right now, but it still is dead.

Ultimate Comics New Ultimates #2
Oh, right. Sorry about last week. The Avengers must be a completely different team, right? After all, the Ultimates and the New Ultimates also exist, so the Avengers must be unrelated, right? Maybe I need someone who's keeping up with the current Ultimate universe to explain it to me, but this seems horrible. Not selling it for me is Loeb with a good artist. Hmmm, do Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum ring a bell? Loeb with a good artist doing the Ultimate universe. Sigh...

Uncanny X-Men #524
I picked up Uncanny 522 a couple months back because it centered around getting Kitty Pryde back. As much as I enjoyed Astonishing X-Men and Kitty's sacrifice, this comic made little sense. It was a mistake to try and pick up Uncanny in the middle of something, but I tried. This is apparently part 6. It was in other series too, maybe? I really don't know and I really don't care. The X-Men, like Marvel to an extent and DC to an extent, is hard to get into. It's hard to start reading X-Men because even at the start of an arc, you need to know the previous arc and what led into that, with the previous arc and what led into that, etc. I once played Mr. Jansenius in a play, who was a big believer in ignorance. I'd rather be ignorant of X-Men for now.

Batman and Robin #12
Well, time for the hate. I don't want to pick this up because it is part of DC which I really don't want to start getting into (aside from Secret Six), but this one specifically because it is Grant Morrison. I mentioned earlier how I don't like Grant Morrison. Let me repeat that here. I don't like Grant Morrison. From what I've read of his, it seems he has his own style of continuity. Instead of taking the characters as they are and making a story with those characters, he seems to make his own stuff up. Let's look at X-Men under him. The leather outfits: Yes, an actual person would more likely wear an outfit like that than a superhero costume, sure. But for 40 years, the X-Men have worn colorful spandex. Suddenly, everybody decided to wear leather? Was it orders from Cyclops? Was it just some random event where they all realized how silly wearing colorful spandex was? I'll let the movies off the hook because they don't have a continuity with costumes. The X-Men did. It doesn't make sense in terms of continuity. Magneto: Okay, Magneto is not a psychopathic murderer. Or, I should say, he never was before this. Oh, right! It was kind of, really vaguely explained that it wasn't actually Magneto, but Sublime, the sentient mutant mold, controlling Magneto. Do you realize how hard it is to control Magneto? The X-Men fought him many times, and I can't think of a time (except for when Professor X created Onslaught), that Magneto was just defeated by psychics. Hell, without psychic powers, Magneto astral projected and fought Xavier on pretty much equal terms. Magneto is powerful, mentally. He's also smart. While complicated and convoluted (and stupid), the retcon they did makes a lot more sense. Weapon Plus: Who's come out of Weapon Plus over the years that isn't form Weapon 10/X? Cap, Isaiah Bradley, Nuke, Fantomex, the Cuckoos and that big robot thingy (Ultimaton or something) are all I can think of. Who's come from Weapon X specifically? Wolverine, Sabretooth, Deadpool, Maverick/Agent Zero, Silver Fox, Kestrel, Kane (Weapon X), etc. So, throughout all of Marvel, a few characters outside of Morrison's run came out of Weapon Plus aside from Weapon X. Why the hell is X so successful? Seriously! Somehow Weapon X came up with more well-known superpowered characters than the rest of them combined. It doesn't make sense that there was something behind it that made X just the tenth. Anyway, as I've stated, I don't like Grant Morrison. Bring the hate, if you read this and think Morrison is awesome.


Superman: War of the Supermen #1 (of 4)
The reason I didn't pick up the prelude to this on Saturday was that I only had three free comics I could get and I'd rather not try and pick up something having to do with an event I didn't even know existed until Free Comic Book Day, having something to do with Superman with a buildup apparently from 2008. Just seems weird to me, not knowing DC.

3 comments:

YWz said...

"From what I've read of his, it seems he has his own style of continuity."

Thats a strange statement because in my experiences reading Morrison he has some of the best grasp of continuity. Part of the reason he is such a fan fave is his fidelity to continuity (especially the most esoteric bits) while still crafting creative and original stories. In fact his batman is a celebration of Batman's diverse and elastic continuity. It champions the zaney 50's batman that gave us a character like Zur-En-Arrh right alongside the more gritty stories of Dennis O'Neil.

I haven't read New X-man mostly cause I don't read Marvel (i don't understand its continuity) but I don't think you should judge morrison by that arc. From what I've read that story was influenced by some dark times in Morrison's like including the death of his dad.

Pi_3.14159... said...

I like the statement, because it is an entirely opinionated statement. What I've read is his New X-Men stuff. His New X-Men stuff was stuff I outright hated at one point and now just look at as stupid. So, from what I've read of his (New X-Men), it seems he has his own style of continuity (leather, Weapon Plus, Magneto/Xorn/Sublime). I'll freely admit that his other work could show great respect for continuity with him not changing things because he thinks that things should be the way he wants them to be regardless of how other people set things up before him, but that's not what I've seen in what I've read.

On read/RANT!, brucecastle likes Morrison a lot, and we've discussed Whedon's run on X-Men, and how he thinks Morrison is really an important blah blah blah for Whedon's run. So, as stupid as it may be, I try to look at New X-Men as something good because of that, and I just end up failing. I just don't see it as good. My friend got me the last arc (Here Comes Tomorrow) and talked about how great it was. It was amusing the first time I read it, and I somewhat enjoyed it, but when I actually read it, it was just horrible and stupid.

I guess I can try not judging his DC stuff as much, since I haven't read much of it (if any), but I read read/RANT! regularly and he gets so much praise that I just had to explain why I don't like him.

YWz said...

No, yeah I get that. I mean I sing Grant's praise all the time too. But I understand reacting against a creator who gets praised that have done your favorite characters wrong.

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