The Trades Thread

Choose trades. Choose OHC. Choose Absolutes. Choose killer supersize volumes. Choose Marvel, DC, Image, Dynamite, IDW and a ton of others. Choose cheap crappy paperbacks. Choose limited run deluxe. Choose to buy from your local. Choose to buy online. Choose to buy from the Galactic Empire (Amazon). Choose some new shop no one’s ever heard of. Choose second-hand. Choose translated material. Choose Eurocomics. Choose Manga. Choose 200AD. Choose Judge Dredd. Choose cool stuff.

The range of trades has never been wider, there’s never been as much material as there is now but it’s a minefield. Buy now or wait for a better edition further on down the line, assuming there is one? Buy before it goes out of print and becomes triple the cost? Buy from full price from your local shop to support it or online with a fat 40% discount?

In the end, what really helps are two things.

1. Deals. Sharing the best prices from across the internet.
2. Reviews to say what is great and what isn’t quite that good.

There have been many incarnations of the Trades Thread. This is The Carrier’s.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by RonnieM.

Will the board count this as a reply? No idea.

It doesn’t like paragraphs either, we’re all going to have to be less verbose.

OK, let’s get some exclusive Carrier content on the go, and talk about some TPBs I’ve picked up and not posted about yet!

Maneaters vol. 2

Like book 1, this is a slim volume – 4 issues, of which three are comics and one is a magazine-style thing, in this case a series of exercises designed to scare girls into accepting the hormone blockers of the story’s absurdist dystopia. The comic issues are very good, escalating the story, adding depth, and continuing to ramp up the craziness and keeping some good silly references and in-jokes.

But that 4th issue that’s all backmatter continues to be a problem. It kills momentum on the story. I get why they’re doing it and I like the concept, but it’s 25% of the page count, or as I said talking about book 1, it’s one month’s worth of comic. If the frequency was fewer – like one in six, or if the trades collected six issues, skipping the 4th issues for a later sourcebook collection? I dunno. I’m still liking this, but it is self-limiting.

The Mask Omnibus 1

Collecting The Mask, The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back, this was a pure nostalgia buy. I loved the first two Mask stories as a teenager, and while I have a copy of The Mask Returns, I don’t think I ever read Strikes Back, and hadn’t read the first one since the early 90s.

And it’s not as funny as I remember. But that’s OK, there’s still a lot of interesting stuff going on here. I was a teenager when I read The Mask, so there are a lot of political undertones that went right over my head but are far more obvious now – the prominent one being the Mask’s influence on Stanley in the first story increasingly making him into a cruel reactionary. Though the story does make it clear that he always had it in him, he just wasn’t confident or physically powerful enough to manifest it before using the Mask. It’s sorta like Breaking Bad that way.

The other thing that’s interesting is seeing Doug Mankhe’s art improve over the first volume. If you’re lucky enough to have the original collection of the Alan Moore/Alan Davis Captain Britain TPB, Moore’s introduction points out that Davis’ art improves by leaps and bounds, sometimes on consecutive pages. And it’s the same for the first Mask story as well. Now, to be fair there’s quite a production gap between page 1 and page 130 or so (the first third or so was first published in an anthology before the miniseries came out, and because one lead directly into the other they’ve always been collected as a single volume), but the improvements are phenomenal. And while The Mast Returns doesn’t have a page-on-page improvement, it’s fantastic out of the gates, maintaining an amazing level of work that’s equal parts Geoff Darrow ultradetail, ligne claire, and somehow an animation-like fluidity and clarity. It’s impressive as hell.

And then The Mask Strikes Back ruins everything.

OK, not really but it’s a noted step-down over the prior two stories. It feels less like an organic sequel and more like a cash-in. Mankhe is still on pencils, but he’s inked by two other artists, and it looks and feels like a mid-90s comic in a lot of bad ways, there’s lots of heavy lines, crosshatching and deep shadows, and while the art is still good, it’s in spite of the inking (and flat, flat colours) rather than them enhancing the work.

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay

I read William Gibson’s script many years ago, so I knew what to expect here – a cold war allegory where Hicks, Ripley and Newt wind up on a US space station staring across the gulf of space at a communist one, who retrieved Bishop from the Sulaco when it drifted too close to them. And of course, aliens happen!

As Alien stories go, there’s some wierdness here – people mutate into aliens at points – it’s explained well enough in the script but it is a leap beyond what was in the movies. The story is well-crafted and exciting, and does a better job of explaining some of the plot elements than what I remember of the screenplay.

The art is variable though. The likeness of Lance Henrikson as Bishops is remarkable, but Hicks, Ripley and Newt don’t match that same verisimilitude. The same thing seems to hit the new characters, where some have more detailed studies than others. It works well enough overall though, the writer/artist, Johnnie Christmas has a good eye for action and where to use detail in backgrounds. The biggest failing is in some of the action/suspense scenes, where there just aren’t enough pages to get across mounting tension while also progressing the story. Pretty good read, though.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by lorcan_nagle.

OK, let’s get some exclusive Carrier content on the go, and talk about some TPBs I’ve picked up and not posted about yet!

Maneaters vol. 2

Like book 1, this is a slim volume – 4 issues, of which three are comics and one is a magazine-style thing, in this case a series of exercises designed to scare girls into accepting the hormone blockers of the story’s absurdist dystopia. The comic issues are very good, escalating the story, adding depth, and continuing to ramp up the craziness and keeping some good silly references and in-jokes.

But that 4th issue that’s all backmatter continues to be a problem. It kills momentum on the story. I get why they’re doing it and I like the concept, but it’s 25% of the page count, or as I said talking about book 1, it’s one month’s worth of comic. If the frequency was fewer – like one in six, or if the trades collected six issues, skipping the 4th issues for a later sourcebook collection? I dunno. I’m still liking this, but it is self-limiting.

The Mask Omnibus 1

Collecting The Mask, The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back, this was a pure nostalgia buy. I loved the first two Mask stories as a teenager, and while I have a copy of The Mask Returns, I don’t think I ever read Strikes Back, and hadn’t read the first one since the early 90s.

And it’s not as funny as I remember. But that’s OK, there’s still a lot of interesting stuff going on here. I was a teenager when I read The Mask, so there are a lot of political undertones that went right over my head but are far more obvious now – the prominent one being the Mask’s influence on Stanley in the first story increasingly making him into a cruel reactionary. Though the story does make it clear that he always had it in him, he just wasn’t confident or physically powerful enough to manifest it before using the Mask. It’s sorta like Breaking Bad that way.

The other thing that’s interesting is seeing Doug Mankhe’s art improve over the first volume. If you’re lucky enough to have the original collection of the Alan Moore/Alan Davis Captain Britain TPB, Moore’s introduction points out that Davis’ art improves by leaps and bounds, sometimes on consecutive pages. And it’s the same for the first Mask story as well. Now, to be fair there’s quite a production gap between page 1 and page 130 or so (the first third or so was first published in an anthology before the miniseries came out, and because one lead directly into the other they’ve always been collected as a single volume), but the improvements are phenomenal. And while The Mast Returns doesn’t have a page-on-page improvement, it’s fantastic out of the gates, maintaining an amazing level of work that’s equal parts Geoff Darrow ultradetail, ligne claire, and somehow an animation-like fluidity and clarity. It’s impressive as hell.

And then The Mask Strikes Back ruins everything.

OK, not really but it’s a noted step-down over the prior two stories. It feels less like an organic sequel and more like a cash-in. Mankhe is still on pencils, but he’s inked by two other artists, and it looks and feels like a mid-90s comic in a lot of bad ways, there’s lots of heavy lines, crosshatching and deep shadows, and while the art is still good, it’s in spite of the inking (and flat, flat colours) rather than them enhancing the work.

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay

I read William Gibson’s script many years ago, so I knew what to expect here – a cold war allegory where Hicks, Ripley and Newt wind up on a US space station staring across the gulf of space at a communist one, who retrieved Bishop from the Sulaco when it drifted too close to them. And of course, aliens happen!

As Alien stories go, there’s some wierdness here – people mutate into aliens at points – it’s explained well enough in the script but it is a leap beyond what was in the movies. The story is well-crafted and exciting, and does a better job of explaining some of the plot elements than what I remember of the screenplay.

The art is variable though. The likeness of Lance Henrikson as Bishops is remarkable, but Hicks, Ripley and Newt don’t match that same verisimilitude. The same thing seems to hit the new characters, where some have more detailed studies than others. It works well enough overall though, the writer/artist, Johnnie Christmas has a good eye for action and where to use detail in backgrounds. The biggest failing is in some of the action/suspense scenes, where there just aren’t enough pages to get across mounting tension while also progressing the story. Pretty good read, though.

Let’s do some inaugural Amazon fishing from the Carrier. Just a couple of DC things.

Wonder Woman: War Of Gods HC – this is all of Perez’s work on Wonder Woman, the blurb tells me. And why would that lie?

Nightwing by Devin Grayson volume 1 – hey, remember when DC started mining their 90s back catalogue, got seven volumes into Nightwing and stopped? Yeah, well, forget that, here’s the Devin Greyson run, which started about thirty issues after the point those previous trades got to.

There’s going to be more Blacksad? Sweet.

Have you read Glanzsman’s USS Stevens? It’s superb work with an incredible sense of authenticity.

Wow, I had no idea they’d hit 33 volumes of the Dredd Case Files. That’s impressive.

That’s a point – need to start on the 90 volume Dredd Mega Collection.

It is one of the best quality hardbacks I have.
Among other extras, it has Presidential letters, attesting to the brilliance of the material from Bush Sr and Obama.

Richard Boom wrote:

BATMAN DAMNED
It was a trippy read. The art is fab, but the story is not comic-y that’s for sure.
Nor is the ending really a real ending… There are loads of questions I might still have.
I do hope there will be a followup on this!

It’s a bit of a “you decide” ending. Some think that speaks to storytelling that makes you think. I think it’s just lazy.

Chew:The Smorgasbord Edition Volume II
At this point I go from reread to new material as I went up to the end of #30 before switching to these editions.

This is very much Chew’s Empire-Strikes-Back volume, things get darker, the characters are split up and some very nasty fates befall them, with a very major death at the midway point.
At the same time, there is a running joke with, who else?

Who is on a global slaughter tour.
Layman manages to combine various forms of comedy with tragedy, you really do get to care and feel for Antonelle, so her death really hits home. Guillory’s art somehow makes it all work and the combination of the two of them is superb.
There’s now an awful lot riding on the final volume but I think they’ll be up to it.

Dealer Alert
Get it quick:
Batman Eternal Omnibus – BooksEtc – £48.97

[n]Defenders: The New Defenders Epic Collection[/b]

This is one of those Epics that is a mish-mash of various things, in name of completeness, that is admirable in theory but less successful in practice.

The first section is the end of DeMatteis’ transformative run on the title. I really liked his earlier issues, but the change to the “New Defenders” has been a bit naff. I’m not sure I see the appeal in making the avowed non-team into yet another “proper” team and while I like Angel and Iceman, throwing them in with the Beast makes for a sub-X-Men (proto X-Factor) feel that undermines the book’s own identity. This isn’t help by the big bad in these initial New Defenders issues being a very minor villain with a grudge against Professor X that he’s taking out on the New Defenders.

Near the end of this run an Iceman mini series is included. It’s not too bad actually (and has an awesome logo design), following Bobby as he goes to his parents’ retirement party, falls in love with a mysterious girl and gets caught up with Oblivion. Reading this mini, you can really see the justification (if needed) for having Bobby come out recently. Mutants are often used a blanket allegory for oppressed minorities, but Bobby’s identity issues here really do feel like a pointed allegory for homosexuality – if you ignore him falling madly in love with a random woman, I guess.

After that it’s back to the main title, which hands over to Peter Gillis. He only does a couple of issues – one a particularly weird San Francisco set story featuring two PIs – before it’s interrupted by another mini.

This is Beauty and the Beast, by Ann Nocenti and Don Perlin and it’s absolute trash. Beast really doesn’t line up with his sort of absence from the Defenders here (he’s meant to be on a college lecture tour) and ends up in some melodramatic relationship with Dazzler, who has just been outed as a mutant. Dazzler gets caught up in some underground mutant gladiatorial fight pit thing (which the story can’t seem to decide whether it is purposefully violent or staged) and there’s yet more very shonky melodrama, along with a deus ex Doom, set up very clumsy in the first three issues by repeating pretty much the same scene of him shouting at a subordinate. Oh and there’s some house for runaway mutants that Dazzler and Beast shack up in, which ties into Spider-Woman of all things. The mini is a totally confused mess that has no real redeeming features. Well, the art’s nice, but Perlin’s on most of the Defenders issues too, so it’s not special or anything.

Gillis’ run is returned to after that and by comparison it’s excellent. In a more general sense, I don’t know if I’d rave about it, but it does bring back a nice element of weirdness that had been rinsed out of the series by DeMatteiss’ reformatting. By the momentum of these first fee issues is killed somewhat here by the mini-series shoved into them.

This might prove pretty popular too.

Batwoman Omnibus

Though I’m not sure Williams’ elaborate double page spreads will be done any favours by an 900 page hardcover.

Yeah, they do sometimes fuck around which is why SpeedyHen has been getting a few more orders.

Meanwhile, it looks like Lion Forge are doing a seven-volume series collecting all the works of Toppi, in Absolute-size hardbacks no less. Volumes 1-2 are out now and can be got for just under £15 each, which is quite the steal.

Likely going to order the first one this weekend.

Dealer Alert
And this is a big one. This particular OHC was RRP $49.99 / £44.99, but has now gone up to RRP $60.00 / £49.99.
House of X / Powers of X – Amazon has just offered it for £27.29

Does this collect every issue of both series? That does tempt me.

Might be worth nabbing the Amazon price as if SH and everyone adjusts to the $60 RRP that’ll be the standard online discount price.
SH preorder will go active 25 October.

That image of the flooded town from the Talbot book reminded me immediately of Paul Duffield’s artwork on Warren Ellis’ FreakAngels series. In a very good way!

Speaking of Freak Angels, Avatar is having a fire sale on trades in the Previews for December. There are bunch, including Freak Angels, for $5.99 each. There’s a lot of older stuff at ridiculously low prices.

I think I’ll pick up the Black Summer TPB for $5.99.

I borrowed the first couple of trades of The Beauty this weekend. I’ve been keen to read it for a while, after trying the first issue and finding it intriguing. The premise is that a new STD has become rampant, one that makes people almost instantaneously beautiful (in a conventional sense), the only trade-off being a consistent mild fever. Except, it turns out that people with the Beauty are spontaneously combusting!

That’s a decent premise, unfortunately the creative team don’t tell an interesting story with it. It all feels like a lesser version of similar books – Revival, Chew etc – in that we get a pair of cops investigating it, running into a government cover-up, an underground movement, an evil pharmaceutical company and a perverted hired gun. Frankly, I don’t need to say anything of what happens because you can probably piece those elements together yourself and nail the outline of the first trade yourself. It’s deeply predictable and bland stuff, with paper thin characters, which is a shame.

When I originally read the first issue, I thought it was let down by the artist, Jeremy Haun, not being able to distinguish enough between those with the Beauty and those without. I think I was a bit harsh on that assessment, on the first issue at least, and it’s actually really helped by some colouring, where those with the Beauty have a “glow” of sorts, which is quite subtle and clever. But it falls away from use pretty quickly and the art really does struggle to differentiate those that do and don’t have the disease.

The surprising thing was finding that the second volume abandons the initial story and becomes an anthology series set in the comics’ world, with a different guest artist on each story. That’s a bold move given the world of the comic isn’t that far removed from the real world and, frankly, isn’t interesting enough to support this. One story of a large criminal using the Beauty to completely change his appearance and escape detection summed up the tenuous nature of an extended Beauty world, for me and I quickly lost interest in the rest.

The Book of Chaos Vol. 1 – I have a soft spot for European style comics. Generally the sci-fi stories and art are what draw me in. However, I’m starting to figure out that the pacing of individual albums doesn’t work all the well for me. They tend to be the rough equivalent of 2 American comics. So it tends to leave the story in a really odd place. This book was no different. It did a bit to introduce the idea and then just kind of leaves it nowhere. Can’t say I’m too inclined to pick up more unless it’s very cheap.

https://www.comixology.com/The-Book-of-Chaos-Vol-1/digital-comic/521021

This is a series of four albums, designed to be read as a set. Humanoids did a big trade of the quartet. Read that way, it worked very well.

Complete albums tend to be the exception. Multi-parters tend to be the norm. It might be that diptychs work best as the first album sets it moving, places the characters in trouble and the second gets them out – that’s what has been done series like IR$, Orbital and Largo Winch. Metabarons tends to also go with a two-part structure for each piece.

Warlords of Appalachia – This book got mentioned in an interview with Phillip K. Johnson on his upcoming D&D style DC book, The Last God. It sounded interesting, the preview looked good and it was on sale, so I gave it a shot. I should say that I’m usually not a big fan of these dystopian future books that are really just a commentary on the author’s own political leanings. However, I really liked this one. It had just enough of those elements but mixed it with a bit of almost modern legend and was inhabited by characters that felt familiar to me if a bit exaggerated by the circumstance. In this book, the character that would usually be cast as an ignorant, inbred hillbilly is the hero of the story. This character is almost Arthurian in nature but not in a heavy handed way. It’s more the way that Firefly is a Civil War story. It is obvious that the author has put a lot of work into realizing this world and it doesn’t just drop off at the edges of the contained story. There are even in story songs included at the beginning of chapters. There’s a lot of backstory that is inferred instead of outright said. All of this really worked for me to make a rich story. So this book comes with my highest recommendation especially if you’re looking for something non-superhero from a new author who seems to have a lot of potential.
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https://www.comixology.com/Warlords-of-Appalachia/digital-comic/525915

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by RonnieM.

Al-x wrote:

So I managed to pick up reprints of the missing issues of the Byrne/Claremont run of X men.

The Classic X-Men (aka X-Men Classics) series that ran from the mid-80s to the mid-90s was a great way to pick up those early Claremont-Byrne issues, especially the earlier issues that had covers by Art Adams, Steve Lightle and Mike Mignola, as well as new material from Claremont, Ann Nocenti and John Bolton that filled in some gaps.

Amazon are currently offering the Bendis Miles Morales Spiderman omnibus, due Feb 2020, for £40.62, a decent price for a 30-issue collection.

Picked up my Spawn: Vault edition 2 from the post office today. It’s easily the biggest book I own, collecting the second half of Todd’s pencilled issues from the first few years of Spawn. Every copy is signed, and 1:500 has a sketch (I wasn’t lucky), which means I now have signed work from 5 of the 7 Image founders.

Fully lettered, uncoloured, oversized (original art size), it’s a readable collection, but the art is clearly the draw here. I’d love to have the first volume too but it went out of print and doesn’t come up often in the used market.

Apart from being the biggest book I own, it’s by far the most expensive.

Some Amazon fishing. Hopefully this won’t look too bad with the board’s paragraph problems.

Symbiote Spider-Man: Alien Reality – I have no idea is this is modern or archival material.

Spider-Ham v1 – ditto, but at 112 pages, I’d guess new.

Punisher- Soviet

Amazing Fantasy Omnibus

Immortal Hulk OHC 2

Heroes Reborn: Avengers – at 496 pages, it’s a pseudo-Epic Collection, but that’d only cover a chunk of Busiek’s run. I can’t imagine they’d want to call the later bits “Heroes Reborn” given how removed they are from that.

X-Men Milestones: Necrosha – was it a milestone though? Really?

Morbius the Living Vampire Omnibus

Steranko is Revolutionary – this is one of those uber-size things like Kirby Is King.

What If? Classic Complete Collection v4

Fantastic Four Epic Collection: By Ben Betrayed! – I assume Ben Grimm rather than Ben Stevens of North Lanarkshire. (It’s likely v4, so late stage Lee-Kirby).

Astonishing X-Men Companion – the New X-Men Companion was just X-Men Unlimited stories, but I think that had been cancelled by the time of Whedon’s Astonishing, so who knows what this is. Ghost Boxes?

Silver Surfer Omnibus v1

Cuphead volume 1 – a comic based on the game basedon Golden Age animation.

Neil Gaiman Library v1

Collects the full graphic novels A Study in Emerald, Murder Mysteries, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire in a single deluxe hardcover volume.

I was just coming to post that, though I had a feeling it had already been posted on the old forum. Or maybe we were just discussing how it was unlikely to happen? :D

Yes that was the previous discussion, pretty sure this trade listing is new this week.

The solicit text there looks to just be the Moore/O’Neil story, rather than everything.

Hey, hey @dealerobiwomble! Hey Guess what!

GUESS WHAT GUYS I READ A TRADE

I did! It was Batman: White Knight and my friend lent it to me after we saw Joker together. I finished it yesterday.

It was…. it was definitely a collection of pages in trade format.

I’m so involved in this thread now!

I liked White Knight a lot, especially all the callbacks to TAS. But the last issue or two got a bit schmaltzy for me, even fan fictiony with how warm good-Joker and Harley’s relationship was and characters saying exactly what others mean to them even though a lot of those Bat-family relationships are better left unspoken. But those are minor criticisms for me, as a vehicle for Murphy’s singular artwork/muscle car fetish it’s great, and has interesting ideas for how to do new things with Joker and Batman.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Will_C.

Reading White Knight a few weeks ago made me want to read Joe the Barbarian again, as that’s where I first encountered Murphy’s art. But I’d sold my copy having never really liked it that much. Reasoning it was worth it for the art, I bought a new one and ended up really liking the story as a whole this time. I don’t know what changed but I found the story emotionally affecting and exciting this time around. I do think it would have more impact if we’d spent more time with Joe before he gets sucked into the fantasy world, but we get to know him and his fears and hang-ups well enough along the way that the ending still packs a punch. The letter from Joe’s father is up there as far as poignant moments in Morrison comics go.

Murphy’s art didn’t disappoint, either (not that I thought it would). He really is a one of a kind talent. Even though their styles are completely different, he’s a lot like Kirby in that every panel is infused with dynamic energy. There isn’t a shred of boring posture in the entire book.

Liking Joe the Barbarian so much encouraged me to reread a couple Morrison books that I didn’t like as much on my last reread: Flex Mentallo and The Multiversity. I never disliked them but I used to really love them, and now I do again.

I think what bugged me about Flex last time was what I perceived as the hollowness of the comic’s central tragedy of adults not being able to engage with superhero stories the same way they could as children. But this time I saw it as being more about the loss of childlike wonder that naturally occurs with age, and how important it is to hold on to wonder to lead a fulfilling life. More importantly, though, Flex Mentallo is a really successful surrealist story. The narrative is pure stream-of-consciousness and is loaded with weird archetypal imagery, a lot of it disturbingly sexual. Its world is quite similar to Eraserhead, which obviously appeals to me a lot.

With Mutliversity, I always liked the one-shots (except The Just, which is a decent story hampered by lazy artwork) but the meta themes in the bookend chapters rang hollow for me last time I read it. I think it helps to read Morrison’s meta DC work as making larger points about art, how we relate to art, and how commodification dilutes art over time, instead of ultimately being about the behind-the-scenes goings on at DC editorial. The latter is quite a silly subject to devote so many pages to but the former is much more interesting and worthwhile.

The shining jewel in Multiversity is Pax Americana, of course. It’s just a masterpiece on every level and ends on a brutally tragic revelation that reframes everything that came before it. I only just put this together, but it’s likely that Captain Atom <spoiler>played along with President Harley’s messiah fantasy so he could be destroyed, right? Both men are broken in different ways and just want someone else to end it for them.</spoiler>

It was fun to read Multiversity a few days after I reread The Green Lantern #1-12 in one big chunk (it reads even better that way, including the more out there final issues). TGL picks up a lot of Multiversity’s threads. The Cosmic Grail in TGL #11 gets a brief mention in The Multiversity Guidebook as something the Atomic Knights are searching for, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Multiversal GL squad works with (or against) Earth-23 Superman’s Operation Justice Incarnate–which I assume will happen in either TGL or Morrison’s eventual Mulitversity sequel.

I have, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing. I loved the artwork, though. His stuff looks great, maybe even better, in black and white. Although Matt Hollingsworth’s colors are a great match for him.

In the backmatter of Joe the Barbarian, Murphy says he draws for black and white and had to consciously make himself leave detail for Dave Stewart to flesh out with coloring. You can sorta see the tension between the two in Joe, but I think his pairing with Hollingsworth on White Knight is a lot more seamless.

Just painfully finished “The Batman Who Laughs” HC.
Most difficult (visually) read I had make in my life. I almost quit because it was really hard to read the red font on dark grey background that was used in many parts of the story. I had to find a way to reflect the source light on the book in order to be able to find angles where it was possible to read the lines.
I hope this is the last time someone thinks red on dark grey is a good idea.
Due to that fact I didn’t enjoy the book that much but I’m still looking for the continuation in Batman/Superman.

Well, I thought White Knight was fine – the art was good, but i’ve nere fully been in love with Murphy like some folk here (but i like him a lot, just not liz hurley in a bikini levels of appreciation).

My friends commments on White Knight are below – i don’t really disagree with them:

“1. As I’ve said, the character work was lacking. It was a novel of ideas, and the characters were archetypes and mouthpieces for those ideas. Batman was gruff and that’s it. They didn’t bother to come up with anything for the Joker more than “sane”. Similarly, a lot of the actual dialogue lacked subtlety and was a bit on the nose.
2. Too many ideas with too broad strokes. The core premise is great but I would have liked to have had it dealt with on a smaller scale without all the other villains, shady Wayne history and giant super-weapons. It just felt crowded.
3. There’s a difference between being politically balanced and just fence-sitting. I felt like it wanted to talk seriously about the politics of criminal rehabilitation, etc., but was too scared to really delve into it. A lot of its politics felt like Frank Miller-lite, like the way it (not just the characters) seemed to be mocking the idea of Joker going straight, like what are these pinko liberals even thinking?
4. I did not like Batman’s beard.

But mostly I was fine with it; it just seemed like a wasted opportunity. I didn’t mind the two Harleys because in a way that was a kind of meta look at the evolution of her character over the years. “

Yeah, I felt it was not greater than the sum of its parts and I wasn’t hugely compelled to keep going. The central idea with the Joker was a good one, and Neo Joker was novel, but I could care less about the Freeze stuff and the GTO.

garjones wrote:

This is what prevents me loving Murphy’s writing. He has some fine ideas but it is quite unsubtle and goes very ‘on the nose’.

I thought you were a huge Chris Claremont fan though…

Is Batman’s beard a reference to Catwoman?

Sad reading that and realising they’ve all passed away.

Giant-Size X-Statix #1 from a few weeks back made me eager to go back and read the old X-Force/X-Statix issues, which I’m almost done with. I torrented them back when I was a broke college student but have now bought all the trades. I prefer reading comics in that format anyway (I guess I’m in the right thread for that! haha)

The X-Force issues are one of the most interesting things anyone’s ever done with superhero comics, it may even be the best series to come out of the hit factory that was early 2000s Marvel. Milligan and Allred’s skewering of vapid celebrity worship, reality TV, and turn of the century malaise is just as relevant today if not more so. Entertainment’s reached saturation point in just about every genre and medium and with the state of the world there’s more pressure than ever to just lay on the couch and live vicariously through fiction and celebrities.

The X-Force issues manage to bind these weighty themes to compelling plots and the tragic romance of the Orphan and U-Go Girl, as well as an oddball sense of humor that’s hard to describe due to being totally unique. Everything about the book is just weird–the characters, their motivations, their missions, their manners of speaking. But it all works because Milligan and Allred are 100% committed to their perfectly married idiosyncratic styles.

After the X-Statix relaunch, there is a noticeable dip in quality that sets in after the first ten issues. The Princess Di/Henrietta Hunter arc, which I just finished, is pretty abysmal–overlong, unfunny, and mean-spirited. But I remember liking where the series ends so I’m looking forward to reading the fourth and final volume, at which point I’ll buy the Dead Girl mini-series which is great.

Dealer Alert
For UK posters only – Wordery are doing one of their buy one, get 10% off the others offers, expires Monday.
Does seem odd but if you do the right combination of items it can work.

I thought AA was incredible when it came out, but I read it again about 3 years ago and it’s not aged that well as a story

It is a bit arsy.

Very much of its time and impressive back then though