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!
The Trades Thread
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Thanks everyone!
I guess I could have gotten the info from the cover, as well as clicking on the “read more” thingie…An expanded look at the world of Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Eisner Award-winning Black Hammer universe, with two complete series drawn by David Rubín and Max Fiumara.
Sherlock Frankenstein lies at the heart of the mystery of what happened to Black Hammer, Spiral City’s greatest hero, and Black Hammer’s daughter is determined to uncover his role.
Doctor Andromeda, an aged crime fighter, desperately struggles to reconnect with his estranged son as he takes on personal demons and interstellar battles.
Collects Sherlock Frankenstein & the Legion of Evil: From the World of Black Hammer and Doctor Andromeda and the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows in a deluxe, oversized hardcover format with a new cover, sketchbook extras, and more!
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BooksEtc cancelled the Hulk buy. OK, that’s £55 back in the bank. In other news…
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Bendis Era
I have enjoyed a lot of Bendis’ work. When he’s on form, he can be quite, quite excellent. This isn’t that Bendis. This is the Bendis being told to make a pile of stinking crap somehow not stink to high heaven. Of course he fails, no one could succeed at this. Within 5 issues of starting it’s already having to tie into Age of Ultron, after that there’s Infinity, after that there’s the X-Men crossover, this isn’t a set of stories it’s a set of tie-ins with only the most minimal connection to each other. The book’s identity? It doesn’t have one. And then, about halfway through, in an act of stunning weakness and lack of confidence, Quill’s entire look changes to match the film – even though it’s a near-certainty that exceedingly few of the audience went out and bought this comic after the seeing the film.
And then there is the whole Black Vortex event. Now there’s an even bigger pile of crap. Even the logical starting point, the Alpha issue, starts with a load of reference to other stories, but doesn’t tell you where to find them, so you have an event out of nowhere, based on stories elsewhere and the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. It’s also in that phase Marvel had where the equation was “diversity” = “man is wrong, woman is right”. Oh and along the way it blows up Hala.
The post Secret Wars run of just under 20 issues, even worse crap – just as it did for just about every book that tied into it, Civil War II fucks the book up. But the overwhelming takeaway of those issues? An underwhelming, formless void. A total lack of identity. Oh and the whole “marriage” plot with Pryde and Quill? Everyone knew that was going nowhere.
Unexpectedly, the Original Sins tie-in story was one of the ones that actually worked and defied expectations. Did it have to be teased for 18 issues? No. That did nothing for it, but the actual execution? Was surprisingly loyal to what DnA set up in the cancerverse.
Is there any reason to read this? Well, there are times when it does do some neat stuff, there is some great art but the writing is just so very weak overall. As a necessary bridge from DnA to Duggan? Tell you when I’ve started that run, it’s next. If you need to know how Thanos got out of the cancerverse? Have to say a Wiki summary is probably the better option.
So yeah it’s, it’s what it is – it’s crap.
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The Art Of Sean Phillips
Despite being a lover of comics, I don’t actually have many of these big coffee-table art books dedicated to a particular artist. I have that big Kirby: King of Comics book and the World Of Steve Ditko HC, and a few smaller sketchbooks and the like, but other than that, not very much. I tend to prefer seeing the art in context, in the comics themselves, rather than isolated and out of context in a big art book.
But this is an exception to that rule, a beautiful giant hardcover that presents a thorough career overview for Sean Phillips that’s also packed full of beautifully-reproduced examples of his art.
Through countless interviews with his collaborators – as well as a hugely thorough interview with the man himself – Eddie Robson traces a path through Phillips’ career, all the way from his early childhood efforts through to his relationship with Ed Brubaker (this book ends while they’re midway through Fatale).
It’s not easy to take a sprawling career and carve a relatively clean narrative out of it, but Robson’s text manages it, and does it in an engaging way – mostly by simply letting his subjects talk. Unlike some art books, there’s a huge amount of text here (as well as lots and lots of great, lovingly-reproduced images), and the interviews with Phillips and his various collaborators over the years go beyond the usual gushing praise, including discussions of stuff that didn’t work or didn’t come together as the creators hoped.
It helps that Phillips has gone through so many different art styles too, including painted work, watercolours, black and white stuff and traditional coloured comics art. He’s inked other artists and had other artists ink him, and it all adds to the great variety of style that we get here.
That goes for the subject matter too. From Phillips’ early art for girls comics through the likes of 2000AD and Crisis, his Vertigo work and his forays into superhero comics, his zombies, his sci-fi and – yes – his noir crime comics, there’s a great sense here of an artist who will try anything that will help him to learn and grow, and who has a work ethic that won’t ever let him rest on his laurels.
I went into this book as someone who liked Phillips’ art a lot, and came out of it as even more of a fan. More than that, though, I came to feel that I’d got to understand the man himself, his life and his working methods in far greater depth than is usually the case with art books like these.
A great job all round.
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My copy of Harleen just arrived today from Speedyhen. I had been debating whether to double-dip on the HC but I’m glad I did. Just look at this inventive book design with the clever use of the dustjacket.
There’s something similar on the back too, although not as arresting:
Looking forward to rereading this, and working my way through the extras in the back.
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For those interested Amazon have the TPB of Gene Luen Yang’s Superman Smashes the Klan up for pre-order for £7.03:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1779504217
Out in May.
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A couple of Sean Phillips books that I recently read after enjoying his art book so much.
Void HC
I read this a while ago when it originally came out in French, but I hadn’t read the English translation before now.
I enjoyed it a little more when I knew what kind of story I was letting myself in for. This is a violent, mildly disturbing slice of sci-fi that sees our hero attempt to navigate his way through a desolate spaceship littered with the dead, seeking to avoid a seldom-seen crazed captain while also battling his own inner demons in the form of hallucinations and paranoia as his grip on reality is starting to slip.
It’s a decent ride that’s fairly shallow but which looks good and drips with atmosphere thanks to Phillips’ art. The premise is maybe a little too simple to sustain the format (this is a European album -sized book), and the denouement falls into slightly over-explaining things when a little more subtlety or ambiguity might have worked better, but I still enjoyed (re)reading it and it’s nice to see Phillips’ art in a sci-fi setting for a change.
If you liked movies like Event Horizon or Sunshine then you’ll like this.
Heart Of The Beast HC
This Dynamite reprint of a slightly forgotten ’90s OGN features painted art throughout, coupled with a slightly pretentious script that fuses the New York art scene with a riff on Frankenstein’s monster and produces a story that’s surprisingly dull and unexciting to read.
Partly that’s down to the static nature of the art, which looks nice in individual panels but falls into that painted-art trap of lacking dynamism or energy.
Also, there’s an occasional use of photos in place of hand-drawn art, which Phillips admits in the backmatter is a bit of a cheat (to save on drawing certain complicated backgrounds or establishing shots), and feels like it, frankly.
But the script isn’t blameless either. While there’s some potential in the central relationship, it’s written in such a ponderous and sometimes pompous fashion that it’s hard to care about all these New York art types and their lives. Even when some action does occur it feels strangely uneventful, and by the climax of the story I was just wanting it to end.
A shame as the art mostly looks like it took a lot of time and effort, and there are clearly good intentions here for the story, it just doesn’t come together as an interesting yarn.
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Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 2 comes out October 6th
Collects Black Hammer: Age of Doom #1-#12 and Black Hammer: Cthu-Louise in a deluxe, oversized hardcover format with a new cover, sketchbook extras, and more!
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I picked up the new Death’s Head collection, which contains basically all of his 80s and early 90s comics appearances that don’t involve Transformers or Doctor Who – one page from Dragon’s Claws #4, all of issue 5, all of his Marvel UK series except issue 8, The Body in Question, an issue of Fantastic Four, one of She-Hulk, a story from Marvel Comics Presents, What if Death’s Head had Lived?, and a much later 2-parter commissioned by Panini for their reprint anthologies.
It’s very much a mixed bag. Some of it is tonal – Dragon’s Claws was more of a straight-up action series, and while Death’s Head’s solo series is mostly set in the same timeframe it’s more of a sardonic comedy. It feels very much like Judge Dredd’s more amusing stories, especially in the 80s. And when the solo series gives way to The Body in Question, it’s more of a Science-Fantasy macho fightbook even though it’s finishing offplot points from the solo comic! It’s also very interesting to compare the character in the one non-Furman appearance in the book – the Fantastic Four story is from the Walt Simonson written and drawn time travel epic where the FF, Iron Man and Thor were riding around on a timesled. Simonson gets Death’s Head’s voice all wrong, so while he’s using the almost staccato speech pattern, it’s all matter-of-fact and lacks that sarcastic twinge Furman gave him.
Some of it is art – there’s a lot of early Hitch and Geoff Senior in here and they do great, but there’s a few fill-ins on the solo series and they do break the flow when you’re reading the whole thing in one or two sittings. The solo series issues don’t have art credits for some reason, and while one of the fill-in is Liam Sharp I’m not sure which is which as there are a couple of issues that could be him or could be Hitch. I know I could look this up but that’s not the point here! Also, Senior’s art on the What If? issue is a bit too RARR 90s XTREEM, but it’s still fun.
The only real let-down in here is the 2-parter from Marvel Heroes, in which the Hulk is sent to the Blue Area of the Moon to fight a champion of the D’Bari – and it turns out it’s Death’s Head! But it’s just sort of bleh, it feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, which isn’t helped by the simplistic art style and the Hulkbusters that show up looking like ExoSquad castoffs. Furman only writes the second part, but it’s perfunctory and meh, and I’m glad I didn’t go out and buy this comic to get some Death’s Head. An interesting curiosity.
The backmatter is great though – there’s a reprint of a 2-page article from Marvel Age about the character, the afterword from The Body in Question, and a cover gallery. The Marvel Age piece has some lovely sketches from Hitch for the minor redesign he went through for the solo comic.
Overall I can’t just say go out and buy this. If you have the Panini trades from 2006, then you have everything here plus the Doctor Who appearances (which I’ve read and they’re not essential). If you’re not a fan of Death’s Head to begin with, I’m not sure this would convince you to get on board with the character as he’s very much a product of the age he was created in. But I hadn’t read every story in here and it was worth it personally to get almost all his stories in one place.
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I picked up the new Death’s Head collection, which contains basically all of his 80s and early 90s comics appearances that don’t involve Transformers or Doctor Who – one page from Dragon’s Claws #4, all of issue 5, all of his Marvel UK series except issue 8, The Body in Question, an issue of Fantastic Four, one of She-Hulk, a story from Marvel Comics Presents, What if Death’s Head had Lived?, and a much later 2-parter commissioned by Panini for their reprint anthologies.
It’s very much a mixed bag. Some of it is tonal – Dragon’s Claws was more of a straight-up action series, and while Death’s Head’s solo series is mostly set in the same timeframe it’s more of a sardonic comedy. It feels very much like Judge Dredd’s more amusing stories, especially in the 80s. And when the solo series gives way to The Body in Question, it’s more of a Science-Fantasy macho fightbook even though it’s finishing offplot points from the solo comic! It’s also very interesting to compare the character in the one non-Furman appearance in the book – the Fantastic Four story is from the Walt Simonson written and drawn time travel epic where the FF, Iron Man and Thor were riding around on a timesled. Simonson gets Death’s Head’s voice all wrong, so while he’s using the almost staccato speech pattern, it’s all matter-of-fact and lacks that sarcastic twinge Furman gave him.
Some of it is art – there’s a lot of early Hitch and Geoff Senior in here and they do great, but there’s a few fill-ins on the solo series and they do break the flow when you’re reading the whole thing in one or two sittings. The solo series issues don’t have art credits for some reason, and while one of the fill-in is Liam Sharp I’m not sure which is which as there are a couple of issues that could be him or could be Hitch. I know I could look this up but that’s not the point here! Also, Senior’s art on the What If? issue is a bit too RARR 90s XTREEM, but it’s still fun.
The only real let-down in here is the 2-parter from Marvel Heroes, in which the Hulk is sent to the Blue Area of the Moon to fight a champion of the D’Bari – and it turns out it’s Death’s Head! But it’s just sort of bleh, it feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, which isn’t helped by the simplistic art style and the Hulkbusters that show up looking like ExoSquad castoffs. Furman only writes the second part, but it’s perfunctory and meh, and I’m glad I didn’t go out and buy this comic to get some Death’s Head. An interesting curiosity.
The backmatter is great though – there’s a reprint of a 2-page article from Marvel Age about the character, the afterword from The Body in Question, and a cover gallery. The Marvel Age piece has some lovely sketches from Hitch for the minor redesign he went through for the solo comic.
Overall I can’t just say go out and buy this. If you have the Panini trades from 2006, then you have everything here plus the Doctor Who appearances (which I’ve read and they’re not essential). If you’re not a fan of Death’s Head to begin with, I’m not sure this would convince you to get on board with the character as he’s very much a product of the age he was created in. But I hadn’t read every story in here and it was worth it personally to get almost all his stories in one place.
How’s the colouring/art reproduction on the Marvel UK issues? I’ve got the Panini trades, but I found them to be a bit muddy on the colours.
The more modern DH story feels like a Saturday morning cartoon story probably because it’s from one of Panini’s kids comics, rather than the Collector’s Edition reprints. It came with a free Vortex Blaster! I know that doesn’t mean it can’t theoretically reach the same levels as TFUK, but that’s just the nature of modern British kids comics really. The two parts are interspersed with a puzzle page and a colouring-in thing, so *shrug*
And the Liam Sharp fill-in is… issue 6
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Harleen
It would have been so easy for this to go wrong, but it doesn’t. Instead this is an excellent tale that takes full advantage of what the Black Label concept opens the door to – new takes on known ideas. In this case, the relationship of the Joker to Harley Quinn, but it goes wider to ask the questions of why Gotham didn’t have a death penalty and what the effects of that might be. At the same time it orchestrates a very carefully maintained balancing act between rendering Joker as an arch-manipulator, without depriving Quinzel of her own agency and choices. It’s a very hard balance to pull off it Sejic nails it.
Talking of whom, I’ve enjoyed his work since Witchblade, but his move into writer-artist territory, first with Ravine then Death Vigil and Sunstone, the last I haven’t got around to looking at, has really elevated his work. He combines image and text in inspired and innovative ways – every page in this story is a very deliberate construction. Nor is he inattentive to reason and emotion, both feature strongly, in both story and art.
Finally, there is the collected edition presentation. An OHC is exactly the right format for this story – it shows off all the care taken on the imagery, panels and story and the deployment of it all to maximum effect.
One of the things that stands out are the little details like the cops yelling at each other for someone being stupid enough to bring a water cannon to an Arkham break-out when Freeze is a patient at Arkham! That’s not the only one in there too.
Being able to render Harley Quinn both willing perpetrator and innocent victim, along with a very damaged personality due to various negative experiences is quite the success. On the one hand, at every point, Quinzel truly believes she is making her own choices. Yet, at the majority of those same points, Joker is subtly tilting the deck just enough to influence the outcome. It’s a very clever bit of story-telling.
Absolutely superb work, I’ll look forward to his Ivy series whenever it comes out.
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Third trade of Gideon Falls really expanded the scope of that book. What seemed like a horror story that was very focused on a particular set of incidents, places and times, has become something with an expanded mythology and a very broad canvas indeed. I’m very much looking forward to the book exploring the new angles.
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has become something with an expanded mythology and a very broad canvas indeed.
Good way to describe it; that arc is the one that turned Gideon Falls from a book I like to a book that I need to keep following, and one that I need to keep telling people about.
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I picked up a cheap, preowned copy of Concrete by Paul Chadwick last week. Pretty good comics. Nice “everyman given superpowers” story. Cracking artwork throughout too. Nice clean linework, expressive faces (impressive on a rock faced character!) and clear, uncluttered storytelling.
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I haven’t yet, but Dave tends to get better sight of those than I.
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I see them on twitter sometimes but they’re only very occasional sadly.
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The she Hulk Byrne Omnibus pre-order has just gone live!
So it’s worth £60 then?
EDIT: Also gone active:
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Decided to nab it too, on similar basis.
Meanwhile, have been doing some Marvel reads:
Hawkeye OHC3
Collecting Lemire’s brief run, this is an effective successor to the Fraction run that revived the character. Perez’ art is no slouch either, using a painted, watercolour style for the flashback sequences, while using a cartoony one for the present story and later, a sketchier one for the future.
Ms Marvel OHC5
If you want proof that success cannot be engineered in advance then this book is it. Marvel gave it the green light but the expectation was a modest success, not a cultural earthquake and blockbuster hit. And it’s stayed that way ever since, all the way to this final collection, five years and one multiversal collapse later.
Wilson ties off her run in fine style, enemies return, subplots get resolved. It’s all quite, quite excellent.
Will I read Ahmed’s run? That’s up to Marvel, if they issue it in OHC probably. In the meantime I’ve his Black Bolt tale to read.
Immortal Hulk OHC1
So, did this live up to the reputation it has here? Pretty much. This is the book Ewing has deserved for a long time and, even more amazing, Marvel are not interrupting him with event tie-ins or relaunches or any other crap. The result is a book that can take time to develop, time to tell its story and deliver some shocks along the way. There’s also some superb innovation in terms of both the character and comic. I’ll say little about it but around issues #8-9 the book goes up a level and does things you never expected nor could expect. And then it builds further on those things…. Really, really excellent.
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I’ve never read it, Ben. But, I like Byrne’s art, am fond of the character, and I think it’ll go well with the two Byrne FF Omnibuses (which she features in). I hear good things about the run from those who have, but it’s a bit of a punt.
I enjoyed it. But it’s nothing at all like his FF run, so if that’s your touchpoint you might be disappointed. Byrne’s She-Hulk is a comedy, there’s lots of slapstick humour, fourth-wall breaking to make jokes, Jen laughing at Marvel continuity and kooky 60s villains, that sort of stuff.
It was fun at the time but not a thing I want to pay £60 to read again. Probably worth it if you haven’t read it and that above description appeals to you.
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I’ve never read it, Ben. But, I like Byrne’s art, am fond of the character, and I think it’ll go well with the two Byrne FF Omnibuses (which she features in). I hear good things about the run from those who have, but it’s a bit of a punt.
I enjoyed it. But it’s nothing at all like his FF run, so if that’s your touchpoint you might be disappointed. Byrne’s She-Hulk is a comedy, there’s lots of slapstick humour, fourth-wall breaking to make jokes, Jen laughing at Marvel continuity and kooky 60s villains, that sort of stuff.
It was fun at the time but not a thing I want to pay £60 to read again. Probably worth it if you haven’t read it and that above description appeals to you.
It was fun at the time but if you can pick up the individual issues on the cheap (paper or digital), that might be a better way to go to see if you want to spend big bucks on a collection.
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Recent reads:
Invincible Iron Man Bendis OHC1
Well, it looks pretty if nothing else. Between them, Marquez and Deodato Jr know how to draw. But the book itself is killed by events. It gets a nice bit of charge going around issues 4-5 but then those plots get shuffled off into other books. Then the mandatory, un-signposted Civil War II event impacts and it all ends as this unfocused mess.
Thanos – Cates OHC
Cates’ has had a mixed reception here but for me? He did pretty well here. The very idea of Frank Castle becoming the Cosmic Ghost Rider is the kind of bonkers stuff a writer can only really get away with at the start of their work and Cates is at that point. And he does have a lot of fun with it, which in turn makes for a fun read.
Moving onto more serious material…
Kivu – Van Hamme / Simon
The latest in Cinebook’s Espresso range, this is one of those very hard to read stories, but which it is important you do read.
Kivu is a region in the Congo, rich in the minerals that fuel the current, advanced tech economy. How are those minerals got? As cheaply as possible by any methods – and I emphasise any. You need to get the land off of a farmer so you can set up an open mine with zero safety but maximum profit? Kill him, rape his kids, rape his wife, sell them off into prostitution, then open the mine – multiple income streams in one go. Be under no illusion, the book warns its reader from the start and delivers on the brutality from the very first page. Yet, in the hands of a writer of Van Hamme’s ability, this is not gratuitous, attention-seeking brutality; instead there is a world-weary, matter-of-fact style to it. This is the way it is, the way it has been for 20 years and shows no sign of changing.
At the same time Van Hamme’s script allows no easy escapes – if the western companies were not paying for the minerals, someone else would be. The exploitation of one African group by another would not simply end.
The story is built around a new, naive engineer being sent to the area, who s unable to go along with the utter corruption and seeks to fight against it, despite utterly lacking the skills to do so. In this respect Daans is far from the usual, heroic lead. He is far more dependent on the allies he finds and wins by not going along with it.
There are two other figures in this story, both real:
Dr Denis Mukwege – 2018 Nobel prize winner
As a term rape gets invoked a lot, but often that invoking skates over the horror what it is. Here, that actual horror looms large, inflicting physical and mental scars across generations. Women who are physically torn by it, or who have children they cannot care for. Again, that matter-of-fact style Van Hamme uses only amplifies the horror and awfulness of it. It strikes the perfect of factual info and restraint enough to keep you reading despite what you learn by doing so.
Simon’s art accomplishes the same, razor-fine balance – showing enough of the horror for the story, implying more where it is most effective and bringing the utterly wrecked world of Kivu to life.
At the end you’re left with one big Q: What the hell can you do about this? And there is no easy answer.
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The Cartoonist Kayfabe channel recently did an episode on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. I bought the book back in high school (1996 maybe?) and loaned it to my English teacher who never got around to returning it. I lost touch with her after high school, so – inspired by the video – I ordered a new copy, and it arrived today.
I recall it being a big deal in the 90s, and from what I saw on the episode it really holds up. Looking forward to rereading it, and encouraging wife to as well.
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I liked Understanding Comics when I read it – it encouraged me to think about aspects of comics that I’d only really recognised subconsciously before. I haven’t ever returned to it though.
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I bought 3 of the Darwyn Cooke IDW Parker books a few years ago; I think I only ever read one of them and didn’t recall much about it so on a whim I’m re/reading all three.
They’re really so very good – every page is gorgeous as you’d expect, and the use of a limited colour palette is masterful.
It’s all crime/noir stuff, mid-century USA – lots of big befinned cars, fedoras, trenchcoats, pistols, cigarettes and debts. Parker himself is pretty humourless, and pretty much a closed book – the stories are plot driven, but I don’t mind that every now and then.
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Have to say I very much enjoyed the House of X/Powers of X hardcover.
Like many I haven’t read anything X since Morrison (I did enjoy Whedon/Cassaday HC’s but it was self contained).
Decided to go the HC route here, but am not able to enjoy a monthly and go into the dedicated thread.
Still, I’ll look back and see I made the best choice, right?hmmm, what looks like the “main book” is coming out in TP’s and there’s another format “Dawn of X” has all the #1’s in vol.1, #2’s in vol.2, etc.
Not really sure what I need to read.
Seems like it’s set-up for someone like me to get a juicy HC every X-mas for a while, but no proof that’s what’ll happen.
But when I’m questioning half of what I buy monthly I feel cheated avoiding what looks good.
Just sayin’
___________________The other point is Black Hammer came from you guys, and I helped spread the word.
(Library Edition volume 1)
– X-mas gift? Well received!
– Hospital stay? Well received!
– “Hey, can I move one of these heavy stacks of…, what’s this?”- (Well received, and he did purchase himself)1 user thanked author for this post.
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I’d skip the Dawn of X trades, the individual issues don’t tie together in any major way.
The Carrier consensus on the X-books is that X-Men, X-Force and Marauders are good to great, New Mutants is highly variable, and Fallen Angels and Excalibur are mediocre to bad. But Fallen Angels went on hiatus after episode 6 due to Bryan Hill’s lack of availability so it’s a bit of a moot point.
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Yeah I’d agree with Lorcan there. Follow those books in trades, they really aren’t all closely tied in and it means not wasting time and money reading Excalibur and Fallen Angels.
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Dealer Alert
Bargains going, move fast:
Batman: White Knight OHC – £19.04 – BooksEtc
Wonder Woman: Simone Omnibus – £32.12 – BooksEtc
Hard to resist at these prices.
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Biting their hand off at that price.
Just to note it is on Comixology for £278 under their new pricing.
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This site is doing a two-for-one offer on graphic novels:
(Disclaimer: I haven’t looked at their range or analysed their prices so I don’t know how great the offer actually is.)
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Crisis On Infinite Earths
I’ve put off, or avoided I guess, reading COIE for the best part of two decades now.
When I first got into American superhero comics, I was strictly Marvel and it took a little while to edge into DC. I found the depths of DCU continuity more intimidating than Marvel’s, for whatever reason, and COIE was emblematic of that. I knew enough to know that I didn’t know enough to get or appreciate it. So I ignored it until eventually, I just didn’t care enough about DC continuity to want to bother with it (probably around the time Infinite Crisis dug it up and “desecrated” it).
It was the Arrowverse version of Crisis which prompted me to finally check it out. That was fun, in a fanwank kind of way, but the story was pretty dull and it awkwardly lobbed in characters from the original (like Pariah) in a way that didn’t entirely work, so I was curious enough, finally, about the original, to see what they were meant to be like and what the original story was stripped of lots of budget saving standing around on the Waverider.
It’s not particularly good.
The first problem is that it’s not very self-contained. I asked rhetorically on Twitter a couple of months ago why I’d not got around to reading COIE yet and Russell H, formerly of this parish, suggested it was because the full version of COIE is a 1000 page long, £200 hardcover collection including all the tie-ins. I only went for the core 12 issues series and frankly, its continual attempts to spring-board and link to stories in other titles doesn’t hold up as well as a singularly self-contained story (like, say, Secret Wars, which isn’t particularly good, but at least every thing happens in there). It frequently breaks away from the main story to set up a tie-in for Guy Gardner as GL or the Omega Men or whatever and even if I knew anything about the Omega Men, it’s kind of hard to give a toss about that in the middle of the main story. I genuinely don’t know enough about DC history to know if this is the first time Guy’s a GL, but it’s not a compelling springboard. Similarly, the book takes a lot of time to set up a new, female Wildcat, who, given I’ve never seen before, I’m guessing didn’t turn out to be worth the bother.
Bigger than that though is that COIE is pretty terribly structured. There’s no organic flow to it, it feels really stop start and every other issue seems to do another big “gathering all the cast together” thing. And half of that just feels gratuitous. The series opens with Harbinger gathering together an array of heroes and villains who have been specially selected (including the Blue Beetle, who it later turns out is from the Charlton Earth, but seems unconcerned about being surrounded by a load of heroes from other Earths initially) by the Monitor. I took it that these would be an important group, the core of the story maybe, even though they were mostly B-listers at best. And yet… they do next to fuck all! They defend some macguffin towers, not well, and in no way that’s specific to their powers and then they’re forgotten about in favour of the next big gathering of heroes. What’s the point? Why did Killer Frost need her emotions messed with to make her fall in love with Firestorm? Why did Solovar need to be there beyond just randomly reminding people that he exists? It feels like the whole series was plotted on the fly and not well. Reading this has made me appreciate even more Kurt Busiek’s on-the-fly plotting of Avengers Forever. And JLA/Avengers, which I realise now has a plot that’s a synthesis of this and Contest of Champions (and better than either was individually).
And even 18 years later, it is intimidating in the sheer tonnage of DCU cameos and easter eggs it piles in, some of which just come out of nowhere. Thanks to Infinite Crisis, I always assumed Superboy Prime was a key part of COIE, but no he just turns up out of the blue in the penultimate issue and you’re supposed to know who the fuck he is and care. The whole backstory with Oa, Qward, the anti-matter universe, the Monitors forming out of asteroids? Honestly, the Arrowverse version that combined the Monitor into Krona was much better. Shedloads of Legionnaires, Omega Men, villains, Lieutenant Marvels(?!), western heroes and more flit in and out and honestly, it just left me numb, especially when, at the end, it tries to try actually come up with some emotional interest for some of the doomed Earth 2 characters who have barely even appeared before then.
Speaking of, given that the clear intent of the series was to merge all the different universes, there are some odd choices here. The happy ending for Earth 2 Superman feels a bit of cheat (“oh, I happened to store your wife in my internal void, just for you, man I’ve not met before”) but fair enough. Having Earth 2 Huntress and Robin survive the merging, unknown on New Earth, just to unceremoniously kill them off in a battle? Why? It’s hardly a fitting send-off for those characters, the deaths add nothing to the battle, it just feels like clearing up loose ends, ones that needn’t have existed. The only death that really feels momentous and weighty is Supergirl’s, with Barry Allen’s feeling a bit limp, given it stops just one of the Anti-Monitor’s many disparate, plans.
Art-wise, the book looks perfectly good, given it’s George Perez, but I’m not convinced DC haven’t scaled down the original pages for this trade, given each page has a large header space with chapter titles in. And there’s an Alex Ross cover, which would normally be a downside for me, but it’s a busy mess which is perfectly appropriate for this story.
So yeah, this is a bit of a disappointment really. As a story, it doesn’t really hang together well and frankly, I had more fun with the Arrowverse version, which, however much time it spent standing around and however forced its use of Pariah and Harbinger were, did actually make some improvements.
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I think that’s a fair write-up.
I always felt like COIE was more important for what it did, continuity-wise, than for what it was as a story in its own right. Because as a story it’s a barely readable mess, albeit with some pretty art.
But in terms of what it meant editorially, it ended up with this pretty huge significance that isn’t matched by the quality of the story itself. And in that way you could argue that it became the template for all the big DC crossovers that followed, leading the DCU down a path of increasingly convoluted stories about its own continuity.
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Yeah, it’s an editorial mandate somehow dragged out into 12 issues. I mean, when it goes to Pariah addressing the UN…!
And it’s not even a good mandate. Wanting to fold some of the acquired characters like Captain Marvel and Blue Beetle into the main DCU I can understand, but Earth 2 was fine on its own, surely.
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Every DC Fan Ever: Having Earth 2 to crossover with occasionally is so cool and fun
DC Editors: OMG FANS ARE CONFUSED BY MULTIPLE EARTHS WE NEED TO FIX IT!!!
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I liked Understanding Comics when I read it – it encouraged me to think about aspects of comics that I’d only really recognised subconsciously before. I haven’t ever returned to it though.
I love Understanding Comics.
I also used it as a main source on how comics work in my MA paper, since in spite of it not being an academic work it really was the best (and admittedly at the time pretty much only) work examining comics on a narratological basis.
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Has anyone read A Study in Emerald by Gaiman and Albuquerque? Comixology has it on sale until 9pm EST.
Haven’t read the comic (but seen it, and the art looks very good), but the original short story is great.
(Too late now anyway, isn’t it?)
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Joe Quesada really missed a trick not doing a 12 issue maxi-series out of his “no smoking” edict in the 00s.
To be fair Quesada did give us One More Day and House of M
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Some Amazon fishing:
Y – The Last Man Compendium 1 – 720 odd page paperback.
Fables Compendium 1 – 800 page paperback.
Sandman Boxset – slipcased paperbacks
Swamp Thing Noir – didn’t like the new colours on Moore’s Swamp Thing? Or the old colours either? Fine, have it without colours.
Batman by Paul Dini Deluxe Edition – I really liked Dini’s run, it was under-rated and overshadowed by Morrison’s, but leaving out the issues he didn’t write that were interspersed in it is a shame.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs Deluxe Edition
Gotham by Gaslight Deluxe Edition
Criminal v8 trade (#1-4 of the revived series)
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House of M kicked off a great X-run all the way to Second Coming.
OMD…. Er, yeah.
I just meant in response to editorial mandates.
Both came out of him wanting to put “genies back in bottles” if you remember that narrative.
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Some Amazon fishing:
Y – The Last Man Compendium 1 – 720 odd page paperback.
Fables Compendium 1 – 800 page paperback.
Sandman Boxset – slipcased paperbacks
Swamp Thing Noir – didn’t like the new colours on Moore’s Swamp Thing? Or the old colours either? Fine, have it without colours.
Batman by Paul Dini Deluxe Edition – I really liked Dini’s run, it was under-rated and overshadowed by Morrison’s, but leaving out the issues he didn’t write that were interspersed in it is a shame.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs Deluxe Edition
Gotham by Gaslight Deluxe Edition
Criminal v8 trade (#1-4 of the revived series)
Some good finds there. Thanks, Martin.
Regarding the Paul Dini Omnibus, that’s how I would have preferred they were published in the first place! Some cracking stories in there, and great art.
Speaking of which, I really hope that Gotham By Gaslight Deluxe Edition actually comes out this time. I was looking forward to the Absolute edition, and the product description still refers to that edition. To be honest, I’d be perfectly happy with a super slim edition with just the Mignola stuff. The rest of it is all superfluous in my mind.
The Demon Trilogy hardcover is also awfully tempting. The painted Breyfogle art in the “Birth” is gorgeous. Not sure about the two Barr stories though. Haven’t heard the greatest things about those.
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I’d skip the Dawn of X trades, the individual issues don’t tie together in any major way.
The Carrier consensus on the X-books is that X-Men, X-Force and Marauders are good to great, New Mutants is highly variable, and Fallen Angels and Excalibur are mediocre to bad. But Fallen Angels went on hiatus after episode 6 due to Bryan Hill’s lack of availability so it’s a bit of a moot point.
Just wait for the Everyone Gets a Sword crossover this summer where you have to buy all X-books to get the story like the old days.
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Dead Eyes Volume 1
This is a whole lot of fun – bleak, cynical but with a matching strand of humour to ensure it never gets too dark.
Duggan has done a couple of great runs – Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy and both defied the odds. The former had to somehow weave in years of shit X-Men plots and still stay good, while the former had to pick up its characters out of the ditch Bendis had driven them into. So, while I’m planning to check out Analog, this was my first run at his creator owned work. It did not disappoint.
It doesn’t hurt either he has McCrea on art.
And while there’s your standard Mafia villains, there’s a more nefarious adversary looming over this opening arc that even Dead Eyes hasn’t a hope against – the US healthcare system.
So, if you’re wondering whether these four issues are worth your money – yes, they are.
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Miles Morales Spider-Man Omnibus
Once upon a time Brian Michael Bendis wrote amazing comics. He even pulled off an Avengers run that often lacked a strong identity of its own, due to tying into annual events across its seven years. But then he got sucked into doing runs on X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy that went nowhere and did nothing. Neither run was a patch on the Bendis of old who seemed gone, but was he? This volume says nay.
Maybe it’s because this book more than any other is the one Bendis is most strongly linked to. Over 250 issues, probably 300+ with the annuals and minis, across 18 years. It’s a staggering amount of work but also, better than any other, represents both Bendis’ style of writing and why it can be so good. It needs certain elements, certain situations to work but when it does? It makes for a very fun and substantive read. True, some of Bendis’ later flaws are here – the story with Miles’ Gran starts but then she totally disappears later – pity, would have been good to see a parental smackdown of a pushy grandparent. But so too is the brilliant cast of characters that make the book work so very well – to the degree Marvel sought to keep it going after 2015’s Secret Wars ended the Ultimateverse.
The book also manages to keep Civil War II from fucking it up too badly and concludes the Tomoe story started over in Iron Man, both of those are quite neat.
Combine this with a whole lot of fantastic art and it makes for quite the swansong volume for Bendis to sign off with.
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with the New Mutant movie out shortly, I was hoping for a Sienkiewicz hardcover collection.
have I missed one?
IDW put one out in 2016 but it was very limited edition.
It’s on eBay, if you have a spare £700.
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with the New Mutant movie out shortly, I was hoping for a Sienkiewicz hardcover collection.
have I missed one?
IDW put one out in 2016 but it was very limited edition.
It’s on eBay, if you have a spare £700.
wow, for that price it would need to come with its own demon bear.
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A New Mutants Omnibus is expected for Sept-Dec 2020, exact info and release TBC
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Bit of Amazon fishing for Marvel:
Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus v2
Fantastic Four Epic Collection 6 – At War With Atlantis
Eternals Omnibus – that’s Kirby and seemingly everything up to but not including Gaiman.
FF by Hickman Complete Collection 3
Thor Epic Collection 19: The Thor War
War of the Realms Omnibus, which I think Ben mentioned recently. Packed with too much stuff, I’d say.
Dead Man Logan Complete Collection
Venomnibus v3 – oh yeah, there’s a Venom movie out this year.
Thor and the Eternals: The Celestial Saga – this is curious. It’s the size of an Epic Collection and has material not yet in them, but isn’t named as one and won’t line up with the Thor Epics by one issue.
Guess they want the Eternals name up front for the movie synergy.X of Swords OHC
Couple more DC things too:
Batman: Their Dark Designs – this is the start of the Tynion/Daniels run and is only 200 odd pages, which sounds to me like DC have gone back to “premiering” new material in small hardcovers before paperback.
Shazam: The Seven Magic Lands HC
Absolute Swamp Thing 2 – this may not be a new listing. I keep losing track of all the Swamp Things.
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I don’t use the search (which is useless at the best of times), I go through the categories to comics narrowed by publisher and then sort by publication date.
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Well, this arrived.
(Thanks for the tip-off Ben.)
It does what it says on the tin – it’s a deluxe oversized hardcover version of Batman: White Knight – but disappointingly there’s little new here in the way of extras.
The only additional items it has over the TPB are a few pencilled pages (which are beautiful – the pencils are incredibly tight and well-reproduced, and I could happily read an entire version of the story in this form), a variant cover from the DM hardcover, and some slightly larger versions of the design pieces in the TPB. It would have been nice to have a little more commentary or text from Murphy to delve into the thinking behind the book.
This is still one of my favourite comics of recent years, so I don’t regret my purchase, but it would have been nice to have a little more added value here. Maybe they’re saving it for the inevitable Absolute.
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It does what it says on the tin – it’s a deluxe oversized hardcover version of Batman: White Knight – but disappointingly there’s little new here in the way of extras. The only additional items it has over the TPB are a few pencilled pages (which are beautiful – the pencils are incredibly tight and well-reproduced, and I could happily read an entire version of the story in this form), a variant cover from the DM hardcover, and some slightly larger versions of the design pieces in the TPB. It would have been nice to have a little more commentary or text from Murphy to delve into the thinking behind the book. This is still one of my favourite comics of recent years, so I don’t regret my purchase, but it would have been nice to have a little more added value here. Maybe they’re saving it for the inevitable Absolute.
No bat-boobs?
I really do love Murphy’s pencils. I would probably double dip on a b&w only version of this and definitely for Chrononauts. It’s one of the things I loved so much about Punk Rock Jesus.
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I really do love Murphy’s pencils. I would probably double dip on a b&w only version of this and definitely for Chrononauts. It’s one of the things I loved so much about Punk Rock Jesus
For sure. Hollingsworth is a fantastic colourist and makes the book look good, but I think his work is even stronger uncoloured.
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Just read the second new LUCIFER trade, which completes the first story arc. It was fine. Nice to read a Lucifer book that actually went into horror territory, more than the Carey series did and more than any Vertigo book has in a very long time. (Maybe since Moore’s Swamp Thing, even.)
And this was definitely the Lucifer we know, and in the hands of a good writer. So it was a lot of fun. But at the same time, it also feels like this is all just variations of stories I’ve read about this character before… so I think I’ll jump off the train after this one.
I would definitely stick with THE DREAMING for the long run if Spurrier would keep writing it, but since that series will have rotating writers, I’m not sure if I’ll stick around, either.
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Yesterday Barnes & Noble dropped the price of the digital HELLBOY OMNIBUS collections from $14.99 each to $6.99 each, so I immediately purchased and downloaded all six volumes which contain all Hellboy stories up to the conclusion of Hellboy in Hell.
I already owned the individual issues, the TPBs, and the hardcover Library Editions, and now I have them digitally. Guess you could say I’m a Hellboy fan. Or an obsessive freak. Or both.
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I would definitely stick with THE DREAMING for the long run if Spurrier would keep writing it, but since that series will have rotating writers, I’m not sure if I’ll stick around, either.
I don’t think it’s rotating writers. Spurrier just said on Twitter he chose to go off the book, he’s writing an arc for Justice League which I’d presume sells more and pays better.
As far as I can see he’s just being replaced with Wilson and starting with a new number one so at least it looks like his run will have a proper ending rather than ending mid-story. I’ll definitely try Wilson’s run at least and tell you if it stands up at all.
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I picked up the new image reprint of 100% by Paul Pope the other day, having not even known it was coming out but having wanted to check it out for a long time.
And it’s pretty good stuff! The real draw is Pope’s art, which is amazing. He was working in Japan for Kodansha prior to do this series and it really shows, his art has lots of heavy inks and screentone everywhere and a wonderful kinetic style. It threads a fine line between stylisation and detail, which is aided by knowing exactly when to go for one style or the other.
The subject matter – a series of interlinking relationships anchored around a strip club is really well done, with the stories threading in and out of each other. There is a downside here though, in that a lot of the heavy lifting is done in narration – especially the relationship between Daisy and John. It’s really intense, but also very low-key and it works really well.
Definitely going to track down Heavy Liquid, which is set in the same world.
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I read Heavy Liquid a while back and enjoyed it, but never read 100%!
Pope’s style is just great.
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I picked up the new image reprint of 100% by Paul Pope the other day, having not even known it was coming out but having wanted to check it out for a long time.
And it’s pretty good stuff! The real draw is Pope’s art, which is amazing. He was working in Japan for Kodansha prior to do this series and it really shows, his art has lots of heavy inks and screentone everywhere and a wonderful kinetic style. It threads a fine line between stylisation and detail, which is aided by knowing exactly when to go for one style or the other.
The subject matter – a series of interlinking relationships anchored around a strip club is really well done, with the stories threading in and out of each other. There is a downside here though, in that a lot of the heavy lifting is done in narration – especially the relationship between Daisy and John. It’s really intense, but also very low-key and it works really well.
Definitely going to track down Heavy Liquid, which is set in the same world.
I wish Paul Pope was more prolific. I’m still hoping for the second Battling Boy book someday though that is looking slimmer as time passes.
I read Heavy Liquid a while back and enjoyed it, but never read 100%! Pope’s style is just great.
I liked 100% quite a bit more than Heavy Liquid.
My favorite Pope book by far is Batman: Year 100 though. I feel like The Batman film has borrowed some of the design elements we’ve seen so far from it.
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My favorite Pope book by far is Batman: Year 100 though. I feel like The Batman film has borrowed some of the design elements we’ve seen so far from it.
Yes, I can see that now you mention it.
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One day THB will be finished and collected.
Oh gods:
Pope published issue one of THB in 1994
Nope. It never will be will it?
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Things I’ve read recently:
Original Sin – oof, this is bad. Not sure why someone thought piling more backstory onto Nick Fury was a good idea. It completely drops the ball on selling that baton being passed to Bucky. The entire mystery around the Watcher’s death is pretty stupid, especially random team-ups being sent to find irradiated bullets everywhere. What really bugs me though is that Uatu’s eyes are treated as a storage device for everything he’s seen, which is just silly. He’s a guy with an enlarged head (and therefore brain) why are you making the eyes a storage device? I mean, I get the appeal of the visual (to a degree – it is still inherently silly) and perhaps the root of it (the old pseudo-science idea that the last image a dead man saw would be left on their retina) but it’d surely make more sense if whoever stole the eyes was using them as a device to see things, hidden knowledge etc (a lens of truth really) rather than regurgitate things they’ve seen in the past? Deodato’s artwork is also at its worst here, with way too much in the way of pseudo-panel borders to try and make pages look more interesting and active than they are.
Original Sin: The Tenth Realm – this is the Thor and Loki tie-in and it’s a bit better. Conceptually, it’s not too bad, the idea of a tenth realm that had been hidden away from the rest for ages and the angels of Heven kind of work (I’m not sure angels imagery on Earth needed to be explained away by an Asgardian related race, but whatevs). And having a hidden sister for Thor in amongst them also works, conceptually. Where it falls down is Angela though, who is just too ridiculous a design to take seriously. This is the first thing I’ve read with her in, so I don’t know how much of this Heven stuff was brought along with her from Spawn or how much is new, but I don’t think she herself adds too much to the story. It probably would have worked better with someone else, which is ironic for a story designed entirely around this character (who also doesn’t get to do a huge amount in it) and I think Thor Ragnarok did better with the small elements of this it borrowed for its version of Hela.
It could do with more consistent art too, it gets very choppy near the end with four different credited artists on the last issue and frankly, while I can see why someone thought to hire Simone Bianchi for the book with the bad girl angel characters, he’s not the clearest of artists to read and it all gets a bit murky at times. -
Batman: The Dark Knight Detective vol. 3 – Alan Grant, John Wagner, Norm Breyfogle, Sam Hamm, Denys Cowan, et. al
This collects Detective Comics #592-600. At first I thought nine issues was a bit of a ripoff considering vol. 3 of the Caped Crusader companion series collects 11 issues + an annual but two of the issues in this volume are triple-sized so it’s all good.
Issues 592-97 continue Grant & Wagner’s run. Although I’m a big fan of their Batman work overall, only the first couple issues here are any good. Those issues comprise an arc called “The Fear” where Batman takes on a psychotic shapeshifter with the awesome comic book villain name of Cornelius Stirk. The first three issues have typically great art by Breyfogle, then the next three have strong fill-in turns by Irv Novick & Eduardo Barretto.
But the plots of the non-Breyfogle issues aren’t very good and one of them features probably the worst ending to a Batman story I’ve read: in “Video Nasties,” Batman takes down a criminal who makes videos of random people getting attacked on the street and shows them to his rich friends. After Batman busts up the ring, he brings the audience to visit one of the victims in the hospital and they become overwhelmed by guilt and tearfully vow never to watch such videos again. Pretty lame.
After the Grant/Wagner issues, Sam Hamm (screenwriter of Batman ’89) & Denys Cowan team up for a seven-part saga called “Blind Justice” that sees #’s 598 & 600 expanded to triple-size. The arc introduces Bruce Wayne’s crooked mentor Henri Ducard. It’s a solid action story that blends a clever corporate espionage plot with sci-fi concepts like mind control and mind transference, and it’s also the rare Batman story that paints him in a not-so-heroic light.
Bruce discovers an international crime syndicate has infiltrated his company and is testing mind-controlled assassins in Gotham. After learning Bruce, in his role as WayneCorp CEO, is on to them, the cartel frames him as a Communist spy, pointing to his travels as a young man that saw him living in Asia and associating with criminals like Ducard. After an assassination attempt leaves him wheelchair-bound, one of the test subjects he rescued suggests that Bruce use confiscated cartel technology to control his body and continue the fight. But is risking another man’s life a step too far? Just how far is Batman willing to go to clear his name?
Hamm’s writing is typical of a writer new to comics but his ambition is high and he crafts a pleasingly cinematic tale bursting at the seams with fun ideas. Cowan’s scratchy linework and exaggerated musculature are a perfect match for the story’s dark tone.
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