.Are you tired of reading comics in short, monthly instalments?
Do you yearn for nice, smart books with spines, dustjackets and no ads?
Are you willing to pay ridiculously inflated prices for hardcover reprints of comics you already own in three different editions, just because the page size in the new version is ½” bigger?
Then this is the thread for you!
Oh, I don’t really use Discord so wasn’t aware there was a parallel conversation going on there.
Lorcan set it up years ago after Millarworld was shut down. We had it as an option until Gar did the Carrier.
Lorcan has a link to it in the Server Move thread.
Checking it out
Is this what Final Night must have felt like for the denizens of the DCU?
It was a crisis for a lot of people.
Recent reads:
Norse Mythology Volume 3
It’s a shame this entire series is so tricky to obtain in the UK, without paying out. Not least as it is Gaiman with Russell on art and layouts, backed up with a fantastic set of artists.
Unlike the preceding volumes that were collections of stories, the theme of Ragnarok runs through this volume. And for a story that is thought to be known, there was more to it than I knew.
If you can get the hardbacks at a decent price, they are worth it. Excellent production values are well matched to those telling the stories.
Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea
This is a good mini series but it’s clear the Mignolaverse is reducing. What was five issue series has become four. Paperback trades replaced by hardbacks. It’s also suffering a bit from having concluded a huge, decades in the making story.
The various minis, like this one, are good, but it does seem to be faltering.
Barnstormers
I’ve really enjoyed Scott Snyder’s work since he got out of doing superheroes. American Vampire actually got finished. Then there’s individual series like We Have Demons, Dark Spaces: Wildfire and Clear.
This is like those last three. But it’s also the first time I’ve seen Tula Lotay’s art, which more than lives up to the chatter about it, it is excellent.
A take of crime that only ends one way, Snyder touches on the US’ western past, of civilisation changing and people trapped within it all.
One other thing that stands out on these stories he’s doing with Dark Horse are the quality of the collections. The trades are a couple of pounds pricier, but you can feel what you’ve paid for when reading it.
Dark Knights of Steel Volumes 1-2
I’ve been enjoying Tom Taylor’s work for a while now and this is another banger from him.
This is pretty much an epic Elseworlds tale setting the DC characters in a medieval world of warring kingdoms. Add superpowers, politics and bring to the boil.
The only flaws in this hugely entertaining tale is that it is an opening story, setting a world for future tales. Due to that the mastermind villain of the series evades her deserved fate. Bar those though? It’s very good.
I read the omnibus of The Immortal Iron Fist, a series I loved at the time (almost 20 years ago now). The first half of it, by Fraction, Brubaker, Aja, etc, is fantastic, but I’d forgotten that it limped on for another year after they all left.
Duane Swierczynski was never a writer I cared much for, and following on from an all-time great run just shows how he wasn’t close to that level. I’ve loved Travel Foreman’s art on other books, but it’s not a great fit on the later issues.
The Immortal Weapons one-shots that close out the series are pretty good, compared to the Swierczynski run, but the magic had definitely been lost by then.
I mentioned on the lifeboat Discord that I’d started reading Batman Cataclysm through No Man’s Land and I keep forgetting to update on that.
Road To No Man’s Land v1
In which Alan Grant seems to forget how to write good comics. Genuinely, one of the worst comics, let alone Batman comics, I’ve ever read is in here. Batman tries to stop a guy killing himself but gets in a fight with Mr Freeze and a Clayface who has fire/piezo electric powers. Batman, for some reason, calls out the name of everything he’s doing like an anime character. The back-up fills in the backstory of why the guy was trying to kill himself, with the most ridiculous levels of heaped tragedy (he was throwing him son up playfully, missed the catch, the kid landed badly and became paralysed and unable to talk. His marriage became distant because of this, then mobsters held him up for protection money but oh some weird lights – I assume some oblique reference to another DC mini-event – happened outside and the kid managed to say something! So the guy held a big dinner with all his family telling them things were going to be better from then on… just as the earthquake hit Gotham and killed them all. Jeez).
There are better written stories in here, but the theme of these “Aftershock” branded stories is very much just post-earthquake misery, which quickly gets wearing. Also a bit odd given Cataclysm had a rushed end that tried to sweep aside the lingering issues from the earthquake as being solvable, but here’s months more of it all.
Road To No Man’s Land v2
These are the issues that were branded Road To No Man’s Land at the time and they’re better. Azrael plays an oddly large part of things, as he gets on the case of Nicholas Scratch, some dweeb turned rock star that is leading a campaign to prevent Gotham getting federal relief funds. Why? It’s not made clear (to be fair, it’s carrying on into NML proper). It’s a nice idea, that the US would just go “actually, screw Gotham, it’s not worth the money fixing” but the problem is Scratch, who isn’t a great villain (he’d be fine in another story, maybe) and feels a bit underwhelming in this role. If it had been Luthor or Talia or a proxy for Ras Al Ghul, it would have been better, imo. Or even just, like the earthquake, no villain behind it but general public opinion and politicians.
Cataclysm, those Aftershocks issues, and Road To No Man’s Land broke my heart back in the day. I loved the 1990’s Bat-books so much, and this was the ignoble end to the Grant/ Moench/ Dixon era. I was so livid I almost didn’t keep reading into No Man’s Land itself. Which, I would have kicked myself for because that heralded the Rucka/ Brubaker renaissance. And that was definitely worth sticking around for!
I read the omnibus of The Immortal Iron Fist, a series I loved at the time (almost 20 years ago now). The first half of it, by Fraction, Brubaker, Aja, etc, is fantastic, but I’d forgotten that it limped on for another year after they all left.
Duane Swierczynski was never a writer I cared much for, and following on from an all-time great run just shows how he wasn’t close to that level. I’ve loved Travel Foreman’s art on other books, but it’s not a great fit on the later issues.
The Immortal Weapons one-shots that close out the series are pretty good, compared to the Swierczynski run, but the magic had definitely been lost by then.
I had almost the opposite reaction. Whilst a clear step down from Brubaker/ Fraction/ Aja et al, I did enjoy Swierczynski and Foreman’s continuation. I was very disappointed when the series was cancelled. I found Immortal Weapons pretty tedious in comparison, with the exception of Aaron’s brilliant Fat Cobra issue (and his guest starring role in Wolverine a little later on).
I greatly enjoyed Kaare Andrew’s follow on Living Weapon series though. Surprised that hasn’t made it into an OHC honestly.
I wasn’t planning on getting this. I enjoyed the series a lot back in the day, but I felt like I’d outgrown it. Then I met Todd Nauck and his wife at NYCC last year, who were both lovely and charming, and reminded me that I fraggin’ love these kids. So, here it is. Hope vol 2 isn’t too far away.
Finally got to this set:
Batman: White Knight OHC
This was a fun re-read and it remains a very smart examination of the Batman-Joker relationships, but also a whole lot more. By the end Murphy shows up how these relationships, Gordon, the GCPD, the Bat-family work in ways that are very smart.
Batman: Curse of the White Knight OHC
This was entirely new to me and is a very ambitious continuation that nails what it aims for. It is also an intriguing reworking of Azrael which really goes for it. Bane’s inclusion is nothing short of hilarious too.
At the end of this story there’s a major sense of finality, that this is where it all ends.
Batman: White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn HC
Delving more into the Harley-Jack-Joker relationdhip and its origins, Collins’ story is boosted by Scalera’s superb art. It’s a smart, fun side story.
Batman: Beyond the White Knight / White Knight Presents: Red Hood HC
Drawing on Batman Beyond this story has less impact for me, as I don’t know that material, but it still works well enough. At its heart, this is a story of recovery from the events of the preceding story and it succeeds at that. The Red Hood story is an OK interlude in the middle.
As to where now, it will clearly be going beyond Gotham.
I’ve enjoyed the White Knight books – it’s been slightly diminishing returns perhaps, but Murphy’s art is great and I like his slightly rougher take on these characters.
The Generation Joker mini (that comes between Beyond The White Knight and the upcoming World’s Finest) was OK but not essential – although probably worth picking up if you’re into the other books. The HC is out soon I think.
I wasn’t planning on getting this. I enjoyed the series a lot back in the day, but I felt like I’d outgrown it. Then I met Todd Nauck and his wife at NYCC last year, who were both lovely and charming, and reminded me that I fraggin’ love these kids. So, here it is. Hope vol 2 isn’t too far away.
Reading it in the six trades that (miraculously) came out over the past decade, the series generally holds up pretty well, except for all the non-PaD written specials they kept throwing out there.
I still have most of these in long boxes, but these books will be mighty tempting 
The crossovers much more so than the Amalgam one, but lots of fond memories either way.
https://www.cbr.com/dc-marvel-unite-crossover-omnibuses/
I loved the ambition of JLA/Avengers, and the art has its moments, but I thought the story was a total mess. I think its scarcity in recent years has probably elevated it to a standing it doesn’t live up to.
You go in knowing the story is superhero bollocks and then stay for Petez’ art.
I tend to agree that JLA/ Avengers isn’t the masterpiece that it’s reputation may have you believe. It does, however, have some really clever little bits and pieces that demonstrate the clear love and care that went into it from the creative team. My personal favourite bit was the throwaway line about the DC Earth being bigger than Marvel’s – accommodating the plethorea of fictional cities that are its hallmark. And, who can forget the buzz of seeing Superman with the shield and hammer? A “hell, yeah!” moment if ever there was one.
Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography HC
I picked this up as it was in the FP sale recently, and it’s been a fantastic read so far. An A-Z of DG’s career that touches on loads of aspects of comics history, full of funny, interesting and often candid anecdotes – and Gibbons proves to be a great raconteur.
It feels like the book equivalent of having a chat over a beer with one of the industry’s greats.
Plus this copy was signed by the man himself, which was a nice bonus.
That’s a great book. I went to a signing at Dave’s local shop (Chaos City) and he was in good form. The entry on Alan Moore I found quite sad. He’s pretty non-judgmental and doesn’t resort to finger pointing but it’s clear that he was hurt by Moore’s actions – leaping to unjustified conclusions and not listening to someone else’s point of view.
Yeah, when it comes to the more controversial topics he writes in a way that’s very calm and diplomatic but also makes his feelings pretty clear. The entry on Before Watchmen and how DC and Moore handled it was quite an eye-opener.
