Comic Book Thread

[Edward J Grug III]

Wow, that sounds awful.

Not to worry, it'll be undone within a few years.

[LucasM]

That is the stupidest, most ill-advised revamping of a character I can recall.  I've intensely disliked Slott's work on anything I've read him on, but this sounds like a new low for him (though, clearly, something that the editors approved, so 'blame' is not solely his).

Yes, it will be nice when it is reversed.  Now if they can just reverse Peter making a pact with the devil... that, too was massively out of character.  ["deal with the devil": Trading his relationship with MJ for Aunt May's life.]

[Johnny Unusual]

I haven't been reading it lately, but I completely disagree.  I think Slott is one of the consistently strongest writers in comics these days.  His sadly brief tenure on Avengers finally gave some life to Hank Pym, moving him out of the realm of also-ran or depressed former wife beater to a great science hero.  His work on She-Hulk was a wonderful mix of humour and legal drama that showed the strength of She-Hulk didn't just lie in her strength.  Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is a very cool look inside the world of Batman's villains, introducing a bunch of cool new ones (including a great one with a lot of potential that no one seems to be able to make work). 

And I think he is my favourite Spider-Man writer of all time (with Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek coming pretty close).  I think One More Day was pretty stupid (so much of what was needed to undo the marriage and identity revelation could have easily been done without a magic wish), but I think what came after was pretty great thanks in no small part to Slott, who provided a rich supporting cast (for a long time, it seemed Spider-Man's world became very insular and didn't balance the Spider-Man/Parker stuff), great new status quos (J. Jonah Jameson as the mayor of New York is a brilliant move), some good villains (Mr. Negative is definitely one of the more interesting would-be Kingpins I've seen), and most importantly a sense of tremendous fun without lessening the stakes, which some writers just seem to forget sometimes.

Personally, I think the new Spider-Man sounds interesting.  Largely, because I love stories of villains put into the shoes of a hero and it changing him (which is what the preview seems to imply).  Reminds me of the early issues of Thunderbolts and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2 parter where Faith switches bodies with Buffy.  It's been a while since I caught up with Spidey, but I am rather interested.

[Edward J Grug III]

I'm with Lucas - I've disliked everything of Slott's I've read.

[mattwnelson]

It's been a long time since I bothered with the "regular" Spider-Man (quite frankly, I think the Ultimate Spider-Man version got it right in a way that the mainstream version hasn't in decades) but yeah, this is a really, really stupid plot contrivance. And we're talking about a character who went through a cloning identity crisis and continuity reboot engineered by the devil. This is a character that knows from stupid plot contrivances.

It's possible that Slott is a talented writer (I'm not sure if I've read anything of his, since I don't read a lot of superhero comics) but even a talented writer can't make a ludicrous idea a good one.

[Johnny Unusual]

I will agree that Ultimate Spider-Man was the only Ultimate book that never faltered, even when basically the rest of the universe did.  There were some moments weaker than others, but those were usually just OK or so-so rather than out and out bad, even in the face of wrong-headed ideas like Ultimatum.  The new Ultimate Spider-Man has been rather enjoyable too, but I do wish the first volume moved a little quicker.

[mearnest]

I'm a big fan of ASM and have enjoyed a lot of Slott's run, but I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I will say that one of the really disturbing aspects is that Ock-Spidey is putting the moves on MJ now.

[SJP]

Well, not to derail the Spidey talk, but I did buy this a month or so ago, and finally finished the last few stories this month...


After seeing the new movie, I've decided it is in my best interest to start reading his stories.  And you know what?  Having read NONE of the newer entries about him, I was actually quite excited to read the older stories first, since I'm not wedded to any notion of how he acts and any of his baggage with other judges like Anderson and Hershey.  Here, he's just a Judge with a gun, and his landlady and Walter the Wobot.  Sure, there's lots of people dying, but there's an innocence and charm about the late-70s Dredd that I can't help but like.  It's a very pulpy storyline with that Silver Age feel that's very easy to get into.

Only shame is, I'm pretty sure this falls victim to the same deal as other collections of its ilk and is in black and white.  Anybody know for certain if these were in color at one point, even a sort of monochrome with orange or blue highlights?  Just seems like I'm missing something reading these.

[Johnny Unusual]

I don't know about that.  Usually, I'm actually OK reading black-and-white reprints of colour series, since I'm from a generation of colour advances and find a lot of it looks better without (or with colour touch-ups, like in Gemstones' very handsome EC reprints).  Personally, I'm hoping for more 2000 AD reprints of classic and influential stories.  I do love those Tharg's Future Shock reprints.  I did just pick up the Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 1 and I must say that it is nice to read in colour.  Does make it rather expensive though.




Also got Hark! A Vagrant for Christmas.  Completely awesome!  I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work.  Especially in the giant Choose Your Own Adventure book Ryan North is working on.  (BTW, anyone notice her pony inspired a horse that was in the Adventure Time episode "the Eyes")

[MrTorso]

The new ongoing Judge Dredd from IDW is not bad so far (only 2 issues in).

[Johnny Unusual]

Just finished reading one of the lesser books in the EC canon.



An interesting attempt to keep the same kind of stories after the rise of the comic code, but ultimately just didn't seem to have the same heart as the other books and the art just wasn't as good.  Still, interesting in a historical sense in seeing what EC did to try to survive in a repressive new era of comics.

[Pak-Man]

Does anyone know of a reputable site for buying single issues of a comic with free shipping? I'm trying to hunt down The Tick #100, but I've always bought my comics in person, and I don't want to give my credit card to just any old comic book store I find in Google.

[MrTorso]

Why not go right to the source:

http://www.necpress.com/tick.aspx

[Johnny Unusual]

READ THIS:
Malinky Robot

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I really like this.  If you have a chance and love Asian culture, beautiful painted art and gentle, fun story telling, then read it.  It's a kind of storytelling I don't see a lot of outside of even most indie comics.  The pacing is intentionally slow and there really isn't any great point except to enjoy the sci-fi scenery in this slice of life comic.  Check it out ya'll.

[Pak-Man]

Why not go right to the source:

http://www.necpress.com/tick.aspx

Because they want to charge me $4.75 to ship a $7 book. I might get that deseperate, but I know a lot of places send back-issues for free..