The Trades Thread

Topic

Attempting to kick off a new version of this as Ben’s one disappeared.

A MW tradition, and the cause of many an empty wallet!

Replies

That’s a good point actually. I’e just seen what’s in it, and that’s a ridiculous amount for one volume. If they had split it into two volumes then ironically I would probably have paid more than $150 in total without complaining!

1500 pages is, frankly, nonsense. I love the OHC size format, but my upper limit for comfortable reading was breached by the first Fantastic Four omnibus and that was “only” 848 pages (admittedly that was back when trades still had reasonably thick paper – I suspect an 848 page OHC with modern production values would be about half as thick).

Yeah, the reprints of those first-wave omnis ended up about half the thickness.

Quick production value reviews:

Kill or be Killed OHC

This is an astonishingly good value edition – a 600 page plus oversized hardback, with quality paper, binding and extras for RRP $50.  Surely some mistake? Nope.  With this volume Brubaker and Phillips have thrown down the gauntlet to everyone else.  It’s going to be great addition to their bookcase section.

X-Men by Roy Thomas & Neal Adams Gallery Edition

Been seeing these editions for a while and since this was among the earliest X-Men and superhero material I ever read as a kid, decided to take a punt on it.  First, this is a large volume – Absolute-size dimensions and, unusually for Marvel, they haven’t messed around with the paper quality either.  This is a relatively small volume, but I got it for just under £20 and feel I got my money’s worth.

For any compact story where, like here, the art is excellent the format will be an excellent showcase.

Dealer Alert

Amazon is currently offering:

Superman: Man of Steel Omnibus 1 – £38.75

It has to be an error but Amazon have previously honoured some of these cases so it’s worth a punt.

 

Ben wrote:

Kill or be Killed OHC This is an astonishingly good value edition – a 600 page plus oversized hardback, with quality paper, binding and extras for RRP $50.  Surely some mistake? Nope.  With this volume Brubaker and Phillips have thrown down the gauntlet to everyone else.  It’s going to be great addition to their bookcase section.

Great to hear. I should be getting my hands on my copy tomorrow.

Well, this is a lovely looking book.

As beautifully designed as you’d expect, and really chunky (and good value) at 20 issues.

While I was initially disappointed at the decision to place all the covers at the back, the reasoning and explanation given here makes sense. And at least there are plain blank pages to signpost the issue/chapter breaks.

While there’s a nice afterword here from Brubaker and some cool illustrations from the individual issues’ text pieces, there isn’t anything more here in the way of extras. It’s better than nothing, but it would have been nice to have a bit more commentary and/or art process stuff.

Then again, this book already feels like it’s bursting at the seams as it is. The comic is the main thing, and it’s very nicely presented here.

Doc Frankenstein Post Modern Prometheus HC

This collects the 6 published issues with an additional 65 pages new to the collection that finishes off the story. Of course the draw here is Steve Skroce’s phenomenal art which is showcased superbly in the oversized format. Well worth it.

That sounds very tempting. I’ve never read it before but I love Skroce’s art.

https://smile.amazon.com/East-West-Apocalypse-Year-Two/dp/1534300597/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/144-9277596-6022420?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1534300597&pd_rd_r=9767cf53-21a4-4663-a495-572bb700888b&pd_rd_w=9bDge&pd_rd_wg=KFpFe&pf_rd_p=5873ae95-9063-4a23-9b7e-eafa738c2269&pf_rd_r=HD2S50PWRNMM70ESCX2J&psc=1&refRID=HD2S50PWRNMM70ESCX2J

Amazon black friday lighning deal East of West Omnibus 2 – 24.74. It ends in 1.5 hours.

it covers 16-29

Omnibus 1 is on sale for 32.40

Today’s reads:

Thorgal: Volume 0: The Betrayed Sorceress

I had thought this was a later prequel, but it turns out to have been the very first albums done in 1980.

The stories here are perfectly fine – even thugh it’s older material, Van Hamme and Rosinki have already gotten good at working together.  I wouldn’t class it as a must-buy, but if you’re a fan of the series and it’s going cheap, it’s worth grabbing.

Invisible Kingdom: Volume 1

While I can see what Dave was talking about in his review – it is very clunky and on-the-nose and some of Ward’s art is pretty, but unclear – I still enjoyed this quite a bit.  It is sledgehammer subtlety. but I quite like the point it makes of people placing meaning in purchases.  I’m intrigued enough to give it a second shot when Volume 2 is out next year.

The production values are pretty damn good too, it’s a quality item.

Middlewest: Volume 2

So, a while back @Rocket asked how dark this was and I can now give him an answer: Really, really dark.

It’s very well executed, it’s a very clever book, but it is also, beneath that cartoony exterior veneer, absolutely brutal.  Toxic masculinity is a phrase thrown around often, but this is perhaps the first comic I’ve read that really zeroes in on what that means.  It is superb in how it does it, but it also hit a good few emotional bullseyes for me too.  There are things I know I don’t like, but this is one of the first books to really tell me why I don’t like those things, why I’m repulsed by them.  And while the attitudes that lie behind the toxic masculinity phrase are linked to a whole lot of men, women have no immunity to them either.

This volume also recasts Dale, due to how the story plays out.  Dale still chose his actions, but there was an element of him being compromised and badly influenced in those actions.  It all becomes far more ambiguous in the best of senses as Abel now has an insight into how his father became the way he is, with the same danger being that he fears he could go the same way.

Young has set up one hell of a central drive for this horror story – yes, it does qualify for that tag.  The question is how he intends to resolve it, which is why I’ll be bagging Volume 3 next year.

 

I took advantage of CyberMonday deals on Amazon to order four hardcovers: EAST OF WEST V1 and V2, and the LAZARUS COLLECTION V1 and V2. With discounts and free shipping, they averaged out to $24 each after tax.

I Hate Fairyland

This is a weird series to look back at.  Read the lot today and a fair summary would be that it’s a series that bumps along and then just stops.  It stops at #20, but it could have been earlier or later to the same effect.

As a black comedy the series works very well – there’s a good few psychopathic acts of total slaughter per issue, it’s so off the rails you can’t, nor are supposed to, take it seriously.  As once you start examining the book in a less screwball light it gets more fucked up, not less.  Fairyland is basically kidnapping kid, Gert meanwhile is a one-woman genocide machine to whatever local area she ends up in.

Eventually Young realises this and tries to go deeper, which is when the series goes wonky.  As it ends up taking the tack that the best thing for Gert and Larry is to be exactly who they, a total psycho and her enabling friend.  So Gert then ends up getting offed and ends up in hell, which kind of fits.  Then an apocalypse hits out of nowhere and the only saviour is Gert? Yeah, so Dark Cloudia ends up going exactly the same way as Cloudia.

By the time you get to #20 you kind of know that it doesn’t matter if Gert succeeds in getting home or not, it isn’t going to change her snarling nature.  There is one brief moment of realisation, where she works out that, had she simply listened to Larry, he likely would have got her home far, far sooner but she always thought she knew best.  This is, however, Gert so it’s a really fleeting moment.

What makes this utterly fucked-up series work is Young’s art which clues in the reader that this isn’t that serious a tale and, if the reader is looking for that? Well, the reader can go fluff themselves.

Got my hands on the new (and final) LOEG hardcover today.

I got the version with this beautiful 3D bookplate, signed by both Moore and O’Neill.

 

 

Immediately one of the favourite books in my collection.

 

Is it possible to get a consistent set of LOEG hardbacks? I know there have been various collections over the years, but I assume that because of switching publishers they are all different and there’s no chance of getting anything resembling an Absolute set of the whole series?

Well, you can get all the LOEG books in standard-sized hardbacks, I think. That’s probably the only format that’s utterly consistent in terms of all of the LOEG comics being available in that form.

I think DC did do TPBs, standard HCs and Absolutes for v.1, v.2 and Black Dossier, and there have also been omnibuses of the DC-published stuff.

Then Century was released in individual floppies and then collected in a single HC, and then all the Nemo books only came out as slim HCs – there wasn’t ever a full collection, although they did put out a slipcased version of the three books.

And now Tempest is in HC.

Mister i by Lewis Trondheim – a silent French comic i heard about on a podcast last week. A 32 page collection of single page stories, all structured using the same sixty panel grid. Every story follows the structure of “Mister i is hungry, Mister i tried to get some food, Mister i does horribly in the process of getting food.” Weird, dark, funny.

I just brought the final trades for Harrow County and so am rereading it from the beginning. While I still enjoy the series it’s a bit disappointing to see how badly the plot is put together. A lot of the reveals make no sense or contradict what was previously shown, sometimes within the same arc. The art is still beautiful and the writing is good but the actual story is a mess.

I’ve not posted in the trade thread for a while because I’ve spent that time reading the original Thunderbolts series, collected across Thunderbolts Classic v1-3, Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts v1-2 and then a chunk that hasn’t been collected that I got through other means.
I’ve read the early issues before and all of the New Thunderbolts revival series, but not the main chunk of this. It’s broadly pretty good, but there are ups and downs as it moves through a few distinct eras.

The first is the most well known one – Busiek and Bagley’s tale of villains posing as heroes to scam the world. It works really well, making the best of an opportunity that would never exist again, of the main Marvel characters not being present in the MU, in real time, for about a year. Unfortunately, the failure of Heroes Reborn does throw a spanner in Busiek’s long-term planning, it seems, as Zemo’s careful scheme quickly gets rushed to hasty confrontation as the Avengers come back. Despite this, it pulls off a decent conclusion to that arc.

After that, you’ve got the remnants of the team off trying to be heroes on their own and this also works well. Busiek does some really good character work with all the main T-Bolts, taking characters who were pretty thin before, for the most part, and making them three dimensional and real. This is always one of Busiek’s best skills, along with fixing continuity issues and picking up dangling old plot threads (without them being too hard for new readers to get with), because, to borrow the terms Hickman used recently to talk about his X-Men run, Busiek is additive rather than destructive. His work has the spirit of “yes, and…” from improv, when it comes to dredging up old characters, aligning disparate portrayals and dealing with the events of other books.

Bagley is also really good here too, getting steadily more impressive as the series goes on (helped by changes in inker). A lot of his work here is actually more impressive than his later work on Ultimate Spider-Man, which I just remember as being 90% extreme close-ups of talking heads. There’s actually some action going on here, and his costume designs are pretty good too, except maybe Meteorite.

The next era of the book is the introduction of Hawkeye as the team’s new leader, which gives another good twist to the format, as directionless villains are now given a compass of sorts to earn their redemption. Busiek eventually hands over writing to Fabian Niciezia though and this is where problems start to crop up. It’s not that I dislike Niciezia’s work – here or elsewhere – but he inherits some ongoing plot threads and quickly adds more to them (possibly working from outlines from Busiek, who is still credited for a year or so after he leaves) and ends up juggling several things – a conspiracy in the CSA, Roxxon doing something dodgy, Jolt being murdered, a Zemo up to stuff, yet another new Citizen V, a reporter murdered, Techno posing as Ogre and his suspicious containment tubes, the CSA and/or Citizen V putting together a team of “Redeemers” based on the T-Bolts previous identities – and it’s not that deftly balanced in terms of time-frames. Characters are frequently complaining that the team’s doing nothing to find out who murdered Jolt while getting caught up in other things, and that’s entirely true. It just gets left up in the air for ages, while other plot threads also meander, others accelerate, seemingly all so they can come together and be resolved in #50, which doesn’t quite work. It’s not planned out well enough and feels like a collision of ideas that should have been spread out a bit more.
#50 sees another change, with Bagley leaving to be replaced by Patrick Zircher, who does good work (after a shaky first few issues, imo, possibly due to a mismatch with inker Al Vey). The team gets shaken up again, with Hawkeye sent to jail, most of the rest pardoned and trying to take up normal life and then the Redeemers working under Captain America in an official capacity. And this doesn’t really work. For a start, the Redeemers aren’t fleshed out at all until they’re unceremoniously killed off a bit later, and it’s hard to care about most of them when you don’t even know their names. Their coming together is one of the rushed plot threads from the build up to #50 and I still couldnt’ tell you if the CSA formed them or the V-Battalion did. Citizen V is actually one of the more tiresome elements of the book, as the series continues to pile backstory onto the identity.

Originally, it’s the name of a second world war vigilante that Zemo reused as his T-Bolts identity, posing as the original’s grandson. Then it turns out that the original Citizen V had a granddaughter, who took the identity after Zemo to redeem it. But also, she’s part of a secret organisation the V Battalion, who have been working together since WW2 to do stuff. But then it’s not really Citizen V’s granddaughter, it’s Dallas Riordan, who’s grandfather was just a V Battalion member. Then it turns out that the original Citizen V did indeed have a grandson and he’s not only Citizen V now, but he was before Zemo happened to take the name. Except this guy is, again, Zemo because Zemo’s mind was shunted into the comatose Citizen V’s mind after the villain was killed by Scourge. And that’s not even getting into all the side series stuff. The series just gets weighed down with all this convoluted crud from the V Battalion and the Redeemers and buckle from its pretzel-esque twists.
This is sort of cleared away when the Redeemers are all killed off by Graviton, the original team come back to defeat him, but end up being thrown, save for Songbird and Hawkeye, to Counter-Earth. This kind of makes the Redeemer stuff feel like a bit of a waste of time. There’s a couple of ways it could have been framed better – the T-Bolts jealous that the Redeemers do better or are accepted by the public more, or the Redeemers realising that the Thunderbolts were much better at hero stuff than people gave them credit for, but it just doesn’t really go for any of that. They’re there, they die.

The shunt to Counter Earth starts the last era of the book and probably the weakest. The title goes twice-monthly and alternates between those on Counter Earth, as they end up taking over the planet (to a degree) to save it from catastrophes, and Songbird tracking Hawkeye, who has escaped from prison but is sort of undercover for SHIELD and picking up some new T-Bolts on the way. The alternating doesn’t really work, as it means each issue has to work stand-alone, killing the momentum of the ongoing plot threads. But it’s necessary to have them come together at the end. Zircher soon disappears and it’s clear the title, having since been palmed off out of Breevort’s editorial office, is no longer in favour at Marvel, as it’s given newbies and mediocre artists, who fail to deliver anything particularly interesting visually. The writing also just feels perfunctory at best, possibly because it’s been doubled up on the schedule. When the title ends (with a finale that once again ends up dragging in the bloody V Battalion) it feels like something of a mercy more than anything else, and those meandering last issue remind me a lot of the dying days of Marvel’s GI Joe or the Nam, where there’s just a sort of unenthusiastic melancholy to everything. To continue, it really would have needed something to give it a real shot in the arm – a new creative team ideally.

That said, I’m keen to go on and re-read New Thunderbolts, which was also by Niciezia, which I remember being really good.

I remember everything devolving into a mess over the last few years.

The “Fight Club” Thunderbolts, in and of itself, was not bad but it should never have been associated with Thunderbolts. I think that created a lot of ill will toward the book.

Yeah, I’d not long got into comics when that happened and I remember a lot of people being annoyed with it. I didn’t even bother reading those issues and considered 75 the final.

Odd bit of Amazon fishing.

 

Marvel Classics Comics Omnibus – a collection of 70s comics adapting classic literature. I had no idea they’d even done anything like this. I’m not sure a bit thick omnibus of them all shoved together is the best way to extract value from them (though I don’t know how saleable to the mass market they’d be individually, given the verbosity of 70s comics).

I know some like matte paper in OHCs – and for some it can work – but using that for the Justice League OHC1 feels like an insult – especially given the standards DC had established for these editions, before blowing large holes in their rep over the last 3 months.

I’m now going to wonder what on earth they’ll be doing on future editions – might be time to bail once more on DC as they prove the only people that can stop DC is themselves.

EDIT: The same is also true of the King Batman OHC4.  DC have apparently also done the change at the paperback level too.

Previous buys of matte paper editions were generally for niche titles at lower price a few years back.  So, they’ve changed the paper but kept the price.

Well, this is an enormous beast.

It includes the contents of three previous hardcovers – the DK3 HC, all the covers from the deluxe HC collection of the variants, and the deluxe HC of Dark Knight: Last Crusade too. Great to have it all in one package, and the art looks decent at the oversized scale (although some of the Miller stuff from the mini-comics looks a bit rough at this size).

Ben wrote:

DC have apparently also done the change at the paperback level too.

I just picked up the second Hitch Hawkman trade and thought the matte paper worked pretty well. I think it will always depend on the specific material what looks best.

Having already bought the Collector’s Edition hardcovers and slipcase, I’m not sure I can justify the Absolute DK3. But, that is a pretty great looking book. Andy Kubert’s art must look great at that super large size too.

 

Slaine and ABC Warriors (Mek Files hardvovers) all down to half price on the 2000ad webshop. Today only i think.

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/on-sale

Was going to order the ABC Warriors vols 2, 3 and 4 from the 2000ad shop but it turned out there were cheaper copies on ebay (the P&P mesnt the webstore discount wasnt the cheapest deal). Ah well, ordered them from the other sellers.

Recent reads:

Rumble Volume 6

This was an OK read, get the sense it might read better with volumes 4 and 5, as they seem to form a rough sort of trilogy.  As to whether it continues, could go either way without too bad a hit.

Sharkey the Bounty Hunter

This reads like a more off-the-leash 2000AD tale, which is no bad thing.  Nor is Millar trying to be all that innovative here, this is more homage to those 2000AD stories he grew up with than anything else.  Bought cheap it’s an entertaining, OK read – not his best, not his worst either.

Kick Ass Volume 3

I’m hoping we get a fourth volume because this isn’t out of gas yet.  Niles has the confidence to end some plots in very decisive fashion, while kicking off some very interesting new ones.

A very fun read.

Just found out that as a subscriber to 2000 ad I had a 50% discount voucher on the online shop attached to my account. Result! Just ordered the following

Dredd Case Files 20-34 at £9.99 each

Absalom vol 2-3 £6.49 each

Brink vol 2-3 £6.49 each

Complete Skizz £9.99

Megacity Undercover vol 3 £6.99

Scarlet Traces vol 1 £7.99, vol 2 £8.99

Lawless vol 1-2 £7.49 each

 

I’ve been on a Moore kick lately in anticipation of the final LOEG volume. After burning through almost everything I have by him (I’m partway through a reread of From Hell), I decided to buy a used copy of The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks. I was hoping for quick, funny sci-fi tales along the lines of “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” and that’s exactly what it is. I’m very happy with this purchase and anticipate a lot of rereads in the future.

My favorite strip so far isn’t a Future Shock but a Time Twister (can’t remember the name, I don’t have the book at hand as I’m at work) about a man who attempts to build a time machine to correct the mistakes of his life. Unlike the other stories in the collection, this one’s melancholy rather than funny. It opens with the scientist falling through an ill-defined space as he re-experiences moments from his life, from happy child moments to sadder ones like his wife leaving him over his obsession with the time machine. It turns out his theories were incorrect and that building a time machine is impossible, and he commits suicide by jumping into a river, its water being the ill-defined space from the beginning of the story. As his life flashes before his eyes, he realizes with some satisfaction that he has, in a way, found a way to go back in time.

Those Moore future shocks are great. It’s a really excellent collection and he packs a lot into each one.

He’s a great short-story writer in general – I love his work on the ABC titles Tomorrow Stories and Terrific Tales, and I’ve just finished reading his Doctor Who work which is all short stories too.

It’s a bit of a cliché, but a true cliché I think, that these short stories were a great training ground to learn how to be a really tight, no-flab writer.

Where did you find his Doctor Who stuff, Dave? Would love to check that out too.

 

He did five Doctor Who Magazine stories – two eight-page stories spread across four two-page instalments, and then three standalone four-page stories.

The details are all here:

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Alan_Moore

I tracked down the original issues for the three four-pagers and then picked up the two issues of Marvel’s 80s Doctor Who reprint comic that collected the eight-pagers as backups.

So here’s all I needed for the whole lot:

They’re pretty good – most of them have art by David Lloyd which helps. There are some good ideas in there and they pack a lot in.

(Spending my spare time tracking down old Doctor Who comics on ebay – this is why my wife knows I’m such a catch.)

 

Dave wrote:

this is why my wife knows I’m such a catch

Catch and release…

Hawkman v.2 TPB: Deathbringer 

This was just what the doctor ordered.

After a difficult couple of weeks where I’ve been a bit stressed out with work and sickness in the family, I was ready for a bit of simple superhero escapism. And this book delivered that in spades.

Building on the foundations of the first TPB – in which Carter Hall began to explore his past lives by meeting up with his former selves and realising that they are all part of a much larger story – this second volume pulls together a lot of those story strands and fashions them into a thrilling, large-scale climax that owes a lot to Bryan Hitch’s amazing, soaring artwork.

Juggling huge numbers of characters (without spoiling anything, we get a big multi-hero team-up that’s sustained for several issues) and Big Ideas, Hitch manages to make everything appear graceful and clean and easy to read, despite the panels being crammed with detail.

It helps that the story is relatively straightforward and simple, although not overly so. If anything, it’s impressive that Robert Venditti has managed to take a fairly inaccessible character like Hawkman – who I knew very little about before reading this run – and give him such a great overhaul that at once explains him in a really simple, straightforward way while also adding many layers of depth and storytelling possibilities.

For the most part, this is just good old-fashioned superhero comics. There’s a villain, a plan to destroy the world, a big action climax and some dazzling fight scenes. But by leaning on the historical angle and exploring Carter Hall’s past lives (in a way that’s not dissimilar to the Brubaker/Fraction run on Iron Fist) it elevates it to something more. And Hitch makes it all look amazing.

Recommended.

Bobby Stride wrote:

Dredd Case Files 20-34 at £9.99 each

I just finished my Dredd Case Files reread and theres some really strong stuff in that last third of the published volumes.

Books Etc have the HoXPoX HC on for £27.52:

https://www.booksetc.co.uk/books/view/-9781302915704

Not bad.

Dave wrote:

Books Etc have the HoXPoX HC on for £27.52:

https://www.booksetc.co.uk/books/view/-9781302915704

Not bad.

Thanks for info. Best price I’ve seen so far. Just bought it.

Thanks Dave – have cancelled the Amazon order and nabbed it!

Is there an active SpeedyHen password going around right now? Asking for a friend.

Anyone know if Young Justice Book 4 successfully made it out? I’ve got it pre-ordered with SpeedyHen, who day the release date was yesterday, but I’ve had no dispatch email and they say it’s out of stock, which is usually what happens when DC cancel something at the last minute.

Yes, it came out on the 11th.

https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/AUG190693

But a delay of 1-2 weeks is normal for non-Diamond retailers, and Speedyhen usually automatically shows books as not in stock when the official release date has passed but they haven’t got copies in yet. I’d expect it in shortly.

SpeedyHwn sometimes have terrible trouble getting DC items.  I’m still waiting for Lucifer Omnibus 1 but they do eventually get them.

It’s odd as they sometimes send DC stuff out on the Diamond shipping date too. It’s quite unpredictable.

I picked up a few Tintin books from my local Oxfam bookshop this evening. It’s been twenty plus years since I last read any Tintin (back when I was on late primary / early secondary school) but I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into them.

Which ones did you get?

I plowed through New Thunderbolts recently and it really holds up well. Better than I expected actually. I remembered all the Wellspring of Power stuff getting pretty confusing, but I followed it all with no problem this time. I mean, I still couldn’t tell you if Songbird was playing Zemo or actually in love with him, mind, given she told Radioactive Man she was planning to kill him but seemed entirely unfussed when Zemo mentioned in passing that he knew that. But overall it holds up really well and there’s good material for cool minor characters like Joystick.

Tom Grummet’s art is a big highlight too. Considered he seemed to be a last minute replacement for Barry Kitson on the Avengers/Thunderbolts mini, he sticks around for the whole run and does some great work, improving with every issue. He’s a vastly under-rated artist. That said, the colouring hasn’t aged as well. There are quite a few issues where it all feels incredibly heavily saturated with colour, creating an overly dense visual tone.

I’ve gone onto Ellis’s run (which is probably as far as I’ll go with my re-read) and it’s a mixed bag really. Generally, it works well and Ellis’s disdain for the superhero genre fits nicely with the title’s new premise. And he writes Norman really well, giving him a lot of depth (even managing to make him seem like a semi-decent guy at times, like when he’s talking with Mac Gargan).

But some of the other characters don’t survive the transition from Niciezia’s run to the new Civil War enforced status quo well. Songbird working for a pardon makes no sense – she had a clean slate legally from years earlier and hasn’t been convicted of anything. Radioactive Man is also treated like he’s a criminal on work release, despite references to the approval of the Chinese government, which similarly doesn’t make sense. His membership in the previous iteration of the team was CSA-approved. And then there’s Swordsman, who Ellis regresses back to before he ever took that identity, completely ignoring entire point of the character under Niciezia. Which sucks, but is kind of what you expect when you give a superhero book to Warren Ellis, I guess.

Deodato’s art is nice, but boy does it feel like he owes Tommy Lee Jones some money.

Dave wrote:

Which ones did you get?

Crab with the Golden Claw
Red Sea Sharks
Destination Moon
Explorers on the Moon

Bruce wrote:

Destination Moon Explorers on the Moon

Yeah!

Martin Smith wrote:

I plowed through New Thunderbolts recently and it really holds up well. Better than I expected actually. I remembered all the Wellspring of Power stuff getting pretty confusing, but I followed it all with no problem this time. I mean, I still couldn’t tell you if Songbird was playing Zemo or actually in love with him, mind, given she told Radioactive Man she was planning to kill him but seemed entirely unfussed when Zemo mentioned in passing that he knew that. But overall it holds up really well and there’s good material for cool minor characters like Joystick.

Tom Grummet’s art is a big highlight too. Considered he seemed to be a last minute replacement for Barry Kitson on the Avengers/Thunderbolts mini, he sticks around for the whole run and does some great work, improving with every issue. He’s a vastly under-rated artist. That said, the colouring hasn’t aged as well. There are quite a few issues where it all feels incredibly heavily saturated with colour, creating an overly dense visual tone.

I’ve gone onto Ellis’s run (which is probably as far as I’ll go with my re-read) and it’s a mixed bag really. Generally, it works well and Ellis’s disdain for the superhero genre fits nicely with the title’s new premise. And he writes Norman really well, giving him a lot of depth (even managing to make him seem like a semi-decent guy at times, like when he’s talking with Mac Gargan).

But some of the other characters don’t survive the transition from Niciezia’s run to the new Civil War enforced status quo well. Songbird working for a pardon makes no sense – she had a clean slate legally from years earlier and hasn’t been convicted of anything. Radioactive Man is also treated like he’s a criminal on work release, despite references to the approval of the Chinese government, which similarly doesn’t make sense. His membership in the previous iteration of the team was CSA-approved. And then there’s Swordsman, who Ellis regresses back to before he ever took that identity, completely ignoring entire point of the character under Niciezia. Which sucks, but is kind of what you expect when you give a superhero book to Warren Ellis, I guess.

Deodato’s art is nice, but boy does it feel like he owes Tommy Lee Jones some money.

At what point does it transition into a tine travel story with Satana, Man Thing, Troll etc.

 

I liked that version

 

Anonymous wrote:

At what point does it transition into a tine travel story with Satana, Man Thing, Troll etc.

I think that’s the tail end of Parker’s run, maybe when it rebranded as Dark Avengers (certainly it was Parker that brought in Satana, Man Thing and Troll, I assume the time travel’s near the end, I fell away from keeping up with it, unfortunately).

Martin Smith wrote:

Tom Grummet’s art is a big highlight too. Considered he seemed to be a last minute replacement for Barry Kitson on the Avengers/Thunderbolts mini, he sticks around for the whole run and does some great work, improving with every issue. He’s a vastly under-rated artist.

Grummet is one of those guys that’s super dependable, puts out good if not flashy material to deadline and as a result is rather taken for granted. We’ve been discussing Fallen Angels in that regard but there are a few modern comics, especially with the increased shipping rate, that could really do with a solid Tom Grummet job on them instead of the barely readable fare they are providing.

Dealer Alert

Albeit one that’s really just for me and @mark-abnett

X-Men: Apocalypse vs The Twelve Omnibus – SpeedyHen – £60.42

Remember this will be post-Brexit, so lock your orders in.

Other SpeedyHen ones of note:

Harleen OHC  – £16.04

Everything I’m hearing says this is superb.

Star Wars: Age of Republic OHC – £18.82

It’s Jody Houser writing Star Wars – sold.

Sightings of Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol 3 are being reported. August 2020 ship date.

No bloody idea why DC have taken so long getting these out, but this will nicely complete the set.

Saw that on amazon the other day and bagged a pre-order. Will be nice to have the whole set.

Ben wrote:

Harleen OHC  – £16.04 Everything I’m hearing says this is superb

It’s very good. May have to grab this myself.

Dave wrote:

Books Etc have the HoXPoX HC on for £27.52:

https://www.booksetc.co.uk/books/view/-9781302915704

Not bad.

Just nabbed it. Bloody hell thats an incredible price

My copy of Powers of X / House of X has arrived.  It’s a quality volume but then it ought to be with a RRP $60 price tag for a 12-issue collection!

Glad to hear it. I liked HoXPoX a lot and I think I may be getting the HC for Christmas.

Digital or Trades thread for a digital trade?

Picked up the Paul Jenkins Hellblazer collections to read over Christmas. I had not heard that they were Sean Phillips drawn.

So far, I had a sneaky read of a few issues. Delighted

Nabbed a copy of Batman Damned, didn’t expect it to be a Euro size OHC.  Very nicely presented hardback.  If the rest of the Black Labels match to this they will be well worth buying.

Part of the Black Label mission statement is they allow the creators to pick their format (within reason and cost I’d assume). A lot have been wider Euro dimensions and oversized but it’s not their policy per se as the selling point is the imprint doesn’t have one.

The Superman: Year One HC was similar oversized square dimensions, so I think we can probably assume that if the single issues were in that format then the collected edition will be too.

Of the Black Label books I’m currently buying, the Question, Harleen, Wonder Woman Dead Earth and Joker Killer Smile are all in that format, unlike Batman Last Knight on Earth which was regular page size.

Useful to know, thanks.

Latest from Speedyhen suggests DC massively under estimated the interest in Lucifer Omnibus 1.

Latest from Speedyhen suggests DC massively under estimated the interest in Lucifer Omnibus 1.

Xmas reads so far:

Batman Damned

Bloodshot: Salvation

Descender

Will be more substantial reviews after the home laptop’s had its annual tune-up and virus shield renewed.  Series I’m hoping to read over the break:

Harrow County

The Sixth Gun

Ben wrote:

Descender

Which reminds me, I just read the first volume of Ascender. It pretty much picks up where Descender left off, with a major time-jump in between and switching from pure sci-fi to sci-fi/fantasy. It’s an interesting way of continuing a project; it’s not really like reading a different story or even a sequel, but like reading the second part of a story that has shifted genres. Quite an unusual thing to do really, but it’s working for me.

Also read the final volume of Coda, Si Spurrier’s indie fantasy comic set in a post-apocalyptic, post-magical fantasy world. It was pretty neat; a fast-paced ride that was both satirical and serious,  centered around some great characters to tell a tight little story. Well worth checking out.

 

He’s quite good, this Spurrier guy. Maybe he should write a Vertigo book or something.

I got the first volume of Michael Cray at long last. Interesting that Ellis’ plot document in the back has a ton of uncensored swearing, while the comic itself (and The Wild Storm) were censored.

That’s a good reminder – need to reread and finish The Wild Storm

Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp

Due to Avatar’s “fire sale”, I got the TPB for $5.99. The cover price is $24.99. What a deal!

This series was originally released over 2007-2008. What’s wild is that with some small tweaks to the dialogue, the premise would work right now. The premise is that John Horus, a member of the disbanded vigilante group The Seven Guns, kills the President and Vice President for being criminals and then demands new elections. This sets off a hunt for the remaining Guns that produces a huge body count.

First, the art: Ryp is just phenomenal and he’s honed his craft so much more since then. Even back then though, his art was spectacularly detailed and incredibly dynamic. He is such a gifted artist. His two-page spreads demand you stop and just look at every square inch of the pages. Awesome stuff.

As to the story, it has all of Ellis’s stylistic tics which, if you’ve read even a little of his work, get quite repetitive and a bit old. Looking at the tale that was told, it really was a missed opportunity. The book is pretty much an all-out action ride with character moments but it could have been so much more. A “superhero” kills the President and Vice President because, in his judgment, they are criminals beyond the reach of the law. That’s a great jumping off point to explore superheroes and powerful people and the limits and consequences of power. Ellis tried to touch on it a bit towards the very end but it almost feels tacked on.

It’s not bad by any means and the art is great but the story could have been so much more.

I remember reading Black Summer at the time and enjoying it, although mostly for the amazing art.

If you’re interested in more of their collaborations, they did another adult/political superhero book at Avatar, called No Hero, after Black Summer.

I reread Black Summer recently and enjoyed it.  I remember opinions on it here (well, MillarWorld) being similar at the time it came out – that it had loads of great ideas and a load of Ellis writing tics.

Black Summer I enjoyed but No Hero was utter shite.

I enjoyed Black Summer for what it was and the time it was written. I think if Ellis had written it today, he probably would have made it more of a critique of superheroes.

I got volume 1 of The Wrong Earth, by Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle for Christmas. That’s a really fun book. The concept is basically what if Adam West and Frank Miller’s Batmen swapped universes, which has some good jokes straight off – the dark vigilante Dragonfly marvelling at the inanity of his counter-part’s villains, the heroic Dragonflyman baffled by the moral greys of the dark, grimy world he’s in – but it builds on that into some interesting character development. Dragonflyman is more pragmatic than you’d immediately assume, the Dragonfly willing to work with the nonsense of his new world to still work towards his goals.

Plus, it’s really fun. There are some great little gags, like the Dragon Wagon of Earth-Alpha (the West-style world) being summoned from a building which bears the sign “Abandoned Warehouse. No Trespassing”. Igle’s art is also brilliant. It’s able to not only tell the story clearly and excitingly, but it lends itself to both the bright and fun universe and the dark and gritty universe without feeling like it’s devolving into cliches or an obvious clash of two different styles. The two versions of Dragonfly stand out in their universe by their costume designs and actions rather than because they look like they’re drawn differently, if you get what I mean.

Jebuzz

Ithink someone priced it wrong that’s what it feels like.

 

anyone else buy HOX/POX through Books etc?

.

Just picked it up for £29.97 on EBay from Speedy Hen.

saved .50p by not going through their website.

weird.

I received my copy fine from Booksetc,  but with an RRP of $60, £53.99 any price under £30 is doing well.

Books Etc. have pissed me about with orders at unusually low prices before. It was definitely showing as back in stock after you ordered it, but at a higher price, so I’d suspect they’ve filled orders at that price and cancelled earlier orders at the lower price. Not good behaviour.

I read the back-up strips from The Wrong Earth today. They’re all parodies of different eras of comics, from strips with Alpha-Stinger that are dead on for Golden Age Robin and Bucky solo stories to a two-parter that is a pretty straight slap at the puffed up self-important 00s comics by the likes of Ellis and Millar. One took me a little while to twig to though, as the art looked plainly modern, yet the story kept mentioning standard bits of technology as though alien and new.

I eventually realised it was taking the piss of Chuck Dixon’s 90s Bat-books, where he’d use lots of then-cutting-edge tech in his stories, but make a total meal out of the terminology. On that level it works quite well, but the art is pretty in distinguishable from the 00s story and the main book (in terms of colouring at least) and could have done with being made to look more obviously 90s.

Still, the cyber villain with a necklace of 3 3/4” disks is a great throwaway villain

House of X/Powers of X HC

Having quite enjoyed this pair of linked miniseries when I read them the first time around but having been a little bit disappointed by the ‘Dawn of X’ issues that followed, I was interested to see whether I would revise my opinion of HoXPoX when I read it for a second time in this smart oversized hardcover.

And I have revised it. Upwards. Because reading this project for a second time, with the knowledge of what is to come, you can really appreciate it in a new way – particularly when it comes to all the little bits of misdirection and invisible setups that make the later reveals work so well.

It’s great to realise that so many of the book’s Big Ideas – and there are lots of them in play here – still work so well once you can scrutinise them fully from the start with the later twists and revelations in mind.

It’s also great to really appreciate how deftly Hickman deals with them all, and the wider implications of the story he’s telling. Nothing feels short-changed here, despite him making so many dramatic changes to the X-Men status quo, and the characters explore some difficult topics in a way that feels natural but unflinching, making for an electric, dangerous-feeling read.

I also enjoyed this series a lot more this time around due to not expecting a complete reading experience as I did the first time around. If you’re expecting all the loose ends and story ideas raised here to be addressed and tied up by the end, you’ll be sorely disappointed; but as a start to a new era of the X-Men this works very well.

It helps that the art is so good, with the different art styles of the two series meshing well, which becomes particularly important as scenes start to be shared between the two books and the story strands all intertwine.

This is a great read, and being able to plough through it in a short space of time – rather than over a few months as originally published – really brings out how well all of the ideas fit together so smoothly and how cohesive the whole project is.

I enjoyed rereading it so much that I’m going to reverse my decision to drop the Hickman/Yu X-Men title for the time being, and stick with it on faith that it will come good over the long-term. Getting reacquainted with HoXPoX, and remembering what a great set of X-Men comics it is, has made me keen to see where this all goes.

Thanks Dave, that review says this is one for the super-tradewaiting approach.  And talking of that, holiday reads – yeah, I’ve been busy:

Bloodshot: The Book of Salvation OHC

This was a good follow-up / continuation of Lemire’s run.  It’s only weakness lay in the less than conclusive conclusion, which has been a factor in some other recent Valiant work.

Descender

Even reading as a trade, this was a slow burn title and, at times, its glacial pace was infuriating.  I made it to Volume 4 and then decided to go the long route.  Read as a complete story? Works so, so much better.

What is particularly impressive is how it all plays out, which in turn sets the stage for the next story of Ascender.

We have become used to redemption and reconciliation stories, that things will work out even if it is only story logic that dictates it be so.  Here these elements are absent.  Here the already terminally flawed characters do not work to fix their flaws or try to improve, they instead opt for bullish bluster – even in the face of extinction.  And extinction has no time for this shit. Pulling that card on the readers right at the end and expecting to get away with it takes a whole lot of nerve.  Does it? Yes, I think it does.  For all that the Descenders are indeed a bunch genocidal, high-and-mighty superbastards, they do have a point.  These civilisations are not going to fix themselves.  What follows is a stunning sequence, both in story and creative terms.  The way the destruction is conveyed communicates perfectly the level of destruction, with a real emotional edge that would have been very easy to lose.  It would have been easy for the numbers alone to numb the reader, but the sequence actively prevents that.

As for Ascender? I’m hoping for a couple of big OHCs and then a third act.

Absolute WildC.A.T.S

Is there a better pure distillation of 90s comics into visual form than this? Lee is one of the foremost artists of that era and his work here shows why.  It’s all big guys, with massive amounts of weaponry beating the crap out of each other, while a couple of supermodels fight a duel to the death.

It’s impossible to take any of it seriously but as a big, dumb 90s superhero ride it’s hard to top.

Harrow County

Reading the Library editions really allowed the art to show itself off to the max.  The story? It’s OK.  I can see what Rory was getting at, earlier stories don’t mesh up that well to the final destination but neither is it that big a flaw for me either.  Again, reading as one big set paid dividends.

The Sixth Gun

Well, this here is quite a tale, especially when read as a set of six oversized Absolute-style hardbacks.

There is something about the combination of Bunn-Hurtt-Crabtree that produces comic brilliance far greater than the sum of its individual contributors.  The Damned is similarly brilliant and, how about that? By the same team.

While I can see the appeal of issuing this as six – and not five – big collections, the bulk of the flashback stories didn’t work for me and only got in the way of the main act.

As to the story, it is a very well done epic tale.  All the characters work and it ends at the right point.

I’m undecided as to whether I’ll look at Shadow Roads.  If it gets a nice big hardback? Maybe I will.

 

Ben wrote:

Absolute WildC.A.T.S Is there a better pure distillation of 90s comics into visual form than this? Lee is one of the foremost artists of that era and his work here shows why. It’s all big guys, with massive amounts of weaponry beating the crap out of each other, while a couple of supermodels fight a duel to the death. It’s impossible to take any of it seriously but as a big, dumb 90s superhero ride it’s hard to top.

Personally, I wish there was more of this on the stands today.

Ben wrote:

As for Ascender? I’m hoping for a couple of big OHCs and then a third act.

I’m enjoying Ascender a lot. It’s a clear sequel with many of the same characters but has a different feel with less of the Astro Boy homage and more supernatural stuff added to the sci-fi.

One  I forgot about:

Batman: Damned

So what was that all about then?

 

It was about Azzarello disappearing up his own arse, which is true of a lot of Azzarello books. The art was lovely though.

Loved Damned. Thought it was a great take on the last temptation of Batman.

I loved 100 Bullets but I have to admit not a great deal else that Azzarello has written. His Wonder Woman was quite fun in the Nu52 but I’ve pretty much given up buying anything else by him.

I’ve liked some of his stuff but I think he has difficulty with providing satisfying endings. I thought Damned was pretty good, right up to the point where it ends and you realise it wasn’t really building towards any kind of real tangible ending. I had the same problem with his Faithless recently too. There was a similar “you decide what this all means” kind of climax.

Combined with the self-satisfied nature of some of his puns and wordplay it makes his writing quite off-putting to me.

He’s worked with some great artists though.

Vikram wrote:

Loved Damned. Thought it was a great take on the last temptation of Batman.

See, despite the excellent art, it read as a ‘story about Bastman being dead but we don’t ever say he is’ – it would have been helped by being less cryptic.

Art is lovely and it looks great in the hardback but the story didn’t really work for me.

Ha! Complaining about Azzarello’s “you decide what it all means” style whilst being a big fan of Grant Morrison’s “you decide what it all means” oeuvre is pretty funny 😂

I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, Dave. You know I love you. It just tickled me.

I’ve honestly analysed my reasons a lot less. I just found I was buying stuff he wrote out of habit because I really liked 100 Bullets. Then realising I didn’t like much of it, so now I’m not going to bother unless something he does gets rave reviews. I shall skip The Damned because at best the reviews were middling.

I loved Azzarello’s 2003 miniseries Batman/Deathblow (with Lee Bermejo), but I admit I haven’t read much more of his stuff. I did enjoy the first arc of his current series at Image, Moonshine (with Eduardo Risso).

Vikram wrote:

Ha! Complaining about Azzarello’s “you decide what it all means” style whilst being a big fan of Grant Morrison’s “you decide what it all means” oeuvre is pretty funny 😂

I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, Dave. You know I love you. It just tickled me.

Ha, that is fair I guess.

I suppose with Morrison’s style there is enough there for me to care on some level and to want to read into it further to decide what it all means. Big ideas and engaging concepts that grab me. (And in fairness to Morrison he usually gives you a basic superhero plot at the core of it all, to hang all the more outlandish or metaphorical stuff off. His weakest books are the ones where he forgets to include or loses that core.)

With Azzarello and Damned I think a lot of readers got to the end of that book and felt like they couldn’t say what had actually happened in the story they just read. He likes his ambiguity and double meanings but sometimes I think that goes too far and becomes so unclear as to risk being meaningless.

After enjoying Alan Moore’s Tharg’s Future Shocks so much, I bought some more of his early British comics: Halo Jones, DR & Quinch, Skizz, & The Bojeffries Saga. The latter three haven’t arrived yet (I’ve read DR & Quinch before though and loved it) but I’m about halfway through Halo Jones which I’m really enjoying. It’s crazy how good Moore was from the very beginning. I don’t find it as polished as V for Vendetta or Miracleman but it’s chock-full of great sci-fi ideas. Moore & Ian Gibson create a complex far-future society on a flooded planet Earth and just drop you into it, forcing you to figure out cultural norms and slang A Clockwork Orange-style. The story is pretty laid back and slice of life–the first volume mainly follows a shopping expedition through the chaotic Hoop slum where Halo lives–which makes it feel quite like a Love & Rockets story set in the future (and eventually outer space). Another great purchase. Trust in Moore.

Halo Jones is wonderful. A great shame it was never finished.

It was also pretty daring at the time for 2000ad which was still very much viewed as an action comic for young boys. So he had some challenges proposing  a female cast on a future shopping trip.

It is a pity Moore’s full 9 volume idea never got to be seen but for me it does end in a fairly satisfying place rather than a cliffhanger.

Also The Glyph episode is, along with the Chronocops future shock, a masterclass in how to do a story in 5-6 pages.