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Post by Joker on Apr 22, 2010 20:47:09 GMT -5
Now reading The Starman Omnibus, Vol. 4 by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Mike Mignola
Reading Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted by Nathan Johnson and Matt Yamapoopiea and various artists.
What the...?! The second guy's name is Y-A-M-A-S-H-I-T-A.
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Post by Joker on Apr 29, 2010 20:04:52 GMT -5
Read Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted by Nathan Johnson and Matt Yamas-h-i-t-a and various artists where after the four guys manage to end the haunting of a Broadway play they face an old nemesis that they ruined the career of in the past, who gets the help of an army of ghosts and gives them plans for proton packs so that a team of Ghostbuster-busters can zap the souls out of the guys. Lots of fun manga comedy stuff that's okay for kids (except for some bad language and Peter's lecherous ways).
Now reading The Starman Omnibus, Vol. 4 by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Mike Mignola
Reading Halloween: Nightdance by Stefan Hutchinson and Tim Seeley
Reading Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett
Reading The Losers: Book 1, Vols. 1 & 2 by Andy Diggle, Jock, and Shawn Martinbrough
Reading Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven
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Post by Chuck on Apr 30, 2010 19:40:16 GMT -5
Just picked up a Grove Press, first edition of Jean-Claude Forest's incredible Barbarella. It's as wonderful as I remember it.
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 1, 2010 6:20:13 GMT -5
I just laughed my butt off over "Matt Yamapoopiea" - Ahh I love our censors. He, he, he!
Anyway - Free comic book day Saturday! "and the crowd goes wild... yay"
Also: The very expensive Iron Man Omnibus Vol 2 is supposed to be out this week. Even with my subscribers discount it'll be expensive. Might have to get it from Amazon for $63 instead or take my chances on a used copy sometime down the line.
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Post by Don Quixote on May 1, 2010 6:38:23 GMT -5
I don't know if I want to drive forty-five minutes one way to go to Free Comic Book Day. I might just go so I can have something to do today.
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 1, 2010 15:00:03 GMT -5
It was a madhouse, a madhouse!
I picked up Iron Man/Thor, Green Hornet and Atomic Robo. Plus the shop I frequent gave out free chocolate and $5 medium pizza. Also picked up the new Stargirl figure. I don't know why (more clutter) but she looks good standing between Crow and Servo.
They had a facepainter their too, I asked for "The Crow", but I actually look like Robert Smith of the Cure.
(okay, that last part is a lie. I didn't get my face painted. What do I look like, some kind of nerd?)
DQ: 45 minute drive? Are you like Crenshaw, do you live off the bottoms?
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Post by Don Quixote on May 2, 2010 15:02:57 GMT -5
I don't live off the bottoms. I live on the mountains. My county is dying.
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Post by angilasman on May 6, 2010 20:28:21 GMT -5
The new Hellboy issue, Hellboy in Mexico, has a pretty awesome homage to Samson vs. The Vampire Women in it.
Also, when I bought it the clerk said he wished Hellboy was on ongoing series instead of a bunch of minis and one-shots. I told him it's kind of is: while the outside cover lists what story it is (Darkness Calls part 4 of 5, ect.) the inside front cover is always numbered, with Hellboy in Mexico being Hellboy Issue #46.
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Post by Joker on May 12, 2010 19:09:21 GMT -5
Read The Starman Omnibus, Vol. 4 by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Mike Mignola. First Jack Knight, the modern Starman, has to help clear the name of Golden Age superhero Bulletman when he's accused of treason while he and Jack's father fought jetpacked Nazis over Alaska. Then he has to go into space to find another past Starman. There's a neat story running through the legacy of all the Starmen where an African idol seems to bring lots of bad luck to everyone. Finally, there's an excellent story by Robinson and Mignola where Batman, Hellboy, and Starman have to stop a Neo-Nazi plot to bring a Lovecraftian elder god into their world. Another part of the Shade's journal appears where he has to go with a hired thug to track down a classic horror director in connection with the sudden appearance of murderous characters from "Alice in Wonderland" are menacing Howard Hughes. An excellent mature collection that is a DC comic, but feels like a Vertigo title. Read Swamp Thing, Vol. 4: A Murder of Crows by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben. Hippie Chester is trying to sober up when he finds one of Swamp Thing's yams in the swamp and finds that it has hallucinogenic properties. Then the husband of the radiation poisoned woman from the Nukeface story takes some and she has a very nice trip, while a vile drug dealer has every monster ST faced confront him. ST faces the bogeyman in another comic. Then in an issue called "Ghost Dance" a bunch of people go to a haunted house I was actually familiar with. I grew up in San Jose, CA where the major landmark is The Winchester Mystery House where the crazy heiress to the Winchester gun fortune thought she was being haunted by the ghosts of all the people killed with the guns and had to keep building onto her mansion to appease them. There are a lot of rooms in the sprawling manse, some strange like the one where the floor is all trapdoors and a door on the second floor that had to be cordoned off because you would just fall out into space since there's nothing behind it but the outside. Same place here, but the ghosts of the people and animals killed by the guns are stuck in a painful cycle of violence and suffering unless "the sound of the hammers must never stop." Now the meat of the book as ST and John Constantine must confront the people behind these supernatural events designed to increase people's fear during the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, the evil South American male witches coven, the Brujeria. Their ultimate goal is to awaken the primordial darkness from the beginning of creation that dwells on the edge of Hell. A meeting ST has with The Parliament of Trees could hold the key to defeating this darkness, and it better sine the fould thing has been awakened and even the forces of the demon Etrigan, The Phantom Stranger, and the Spectre prove useless against it. Excellent storytelling as Moore changes things forever and there's no going back. Read The Talisman, Vol. 1: The Road of Trials by Stephen King and Peter Straub, adapted by Robin Furth and Tony Shasteen. Young boy Jack Sawyer's father was killed by his uncle and his former b-movie actress mother is dying of cancer. Then he learns of the Territories, a parallel world to Earth where they have magic like we have physics. He must get across the U.S. to California through both worlds to get a magical talisman to save her while his evil uncle has polluted the Territories and sends his servants to destroy Jack in the excellent adaptation of the two authors massive adventure. Read Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. Fifty years in the future Wolverine has kept from popping his claws because of a terrible event that happened. He tries to lead a peaceful life on a farm with his family, but has to make payments to the inbred Hulk mutants. So he takes a job from the elderly, blind Hawkeye to deliver something to the East Coast of the Mad Max nightmare that America has become since the supervillains took over. When Logan has to embrace violence finally this excellent book explodes. They can say some bad words, but not the really bad ones (replacing those words with "@#$%"). Meanwhile, there is wall-to-wall violence and gore. Go figure. Read The Losers, Vols. One and Two by Andy Diggle and Jock. A bunch of ex-military black ops guys are on a "kill list" after covert people in the U.S. government try unsuccessfully to kill them all. Now they have to steal their identities back by getting incriminating evidence against "Max," the sinister head of these back ops. Explosive action as the team of outlaws tries pulls off a series of heists to bring down the bad guy. Reading Batman: Monsters by Warren Ellis, James Robinson, Alan Grant, and various artists. This "Legends of the Dark Knight" series takes place during the first few years of Batman's war on crime. "Werewolf" has the Dark Knight face off against a killer who appears to be the titular beast, but has a cop-out ending. "Infected" has him face off against two soldiers that were turned into bone-shooting bio-weapons loose in Gotham. Then one of them begins to spawn something contagious...and is headed for the Gotham reservoir. "Clay" is a retelling of the origin of Clayface and gets darker and gloppier near the end. A quality collection of stories from some great authors and artists. Read Batman: Lovers and Madmen by Michael Green and Denys Cowan. Another "Legends" story, this one with a brilliant criminal who begins to murder people randomly, throwing Batman off with no motive to trace. Then he makes a bad compromise of his core principles...and creates his own worst enemy. In one disturbing scene the Joker asks an unknowing little girl who he should spray in the face, with fatal results. An excellent rethinking of the Joker's origin. Read Scout: The Four Monsters bu Tim Bradstreet and Timothy Truman. In the far off year of 1999 the U.S. has become a barren place after overfarming. Famine and dischord are everywhere as the intesely corrupt U.S. governement has a dark plan for the future of the dystopia. Into this maelstrom comes an Apache ex-soldier warrior named Scout. After a revelatory night in the desert he gets a spirit guide to help him kill four monsters in seats of power in the ruined country. He could be crazy, but there's no mystery about the evil men he hunts down. A bloody and powerful book about a skilled hero with it's roots in Apache culture. Reading Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely Reading Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. Reading The Black Forest by Todd Livingston and Robert Tinell Reading Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett
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Post by Joker on May 14, 2010 21:16:21 GMT -5
Read Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Bruce Wayne is dead (for now anyway) and Dick Grayson/Nightwing has taken over as Batman, with his rebellious sidekick Damian/Robin. When an extreme circus troupe begins a deadly assault to drive Gotham crazy the dynamic duo must face the dangerously psychotic Professor Pyg, who gruesomely changes one young woman into a disturbed disfigured killer who joins forces with the deadly Red Hood, who is the psychotic Jason Todd. They start to kill off the mob in the city and the new Dark Knight and Boy Wonder must find a way to shut them down, even as the flamboyant, face-eating Prince-inspired assassin The Flamingo cruises into town. A crazy delight with fun liner notes by Morrison at the end.
Read Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. A young kid who reads a lot of comics becomes a superhero to fight crime since his life is so pathetic. The fiirst night he goes out to stop some vandals he nearly gets killed and his costume is stolen. A bunch of operations and some metal plates in his head later he goes right back into the world of crimefighting and manages to save a guy's life, becoming an overnight sensation on YouTube. Now he's Kick-Ass. Then while going on a job he meets the deadly ten-year-old killer, Hit Girl and her supportive father Big Daddy. A past crime has made this man shape his young daughter into a killing machine and their about to take down the mobsters they have a vendetta against. But a last minute betrayal leads to torture and wall-to-wall death and gore. An explosive and dark as hell comic from Mr. Nihilism, Mark Millar.
Read The Black Forest by Todd Livingston and Robert Tinell. During WWI, daring American soldier Jack Stratton is paired up with a British stage magician/occult expert to infiltrate a German castle in the cursed Black Forest. It turns out that a German occultist has been using Frankenstein's monster to retrieve the bodies of the dead from the front lines to create undead soldiers to win The Great War. The two also find that these Germans are werewolves and that the castle they are based in has the rightful owners, Count Orlok and his vampire clan in the basement. The world will fall before this deadly new army unless this brazen hero can shut them down. Creepy atmosphere and explosive action make this a great horror comic.
Read Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett. "What if..." are two powerful words in fantasy. What if the American icon Superman had landed in the Ukraine on a collective farm and was raised a communist. He would become their strongman and hero, of course. As time goes on and he has to rise to power to make the world work in his own red vision the U.S. collapses, even as the brilliant scientist Lex Luthor works tirelessly to destroy the alien, neglecting his wife Lois. Superman, with no human name except that, unites the world in the Global Soviet Union, but alienates his friends and enemies along the way. He has the best of intentions for humanity, but takes away the basic freedoms that people should be allowed. This can't end well. Mark Millar writes a powerful story about the things wrong in the world and just how much a strongman can achieve in this story and it's excellent.
Now reading Animal Man, Vol. 1, Vol. 2: Origin of the Species, and Vol. 3: Deus Ex Machina by Grant Morrison and various artists.
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Post by angilasman on May 18, 2010 17:31:39 GMT -5
I just got a few Usagi Yojimbo trades and they've really knocked my socks off.
You see, Usagi jumped publishers a bit in its first decade (now Stan Sakai has had a cozy relationship with Dark Horse, who have consistantly published his creator owned comic for about 15 years), what that amounts to is that the first 7 Books are still published by Usagi's original publisher Fantagrahpics and everything Book 8 onward has be collected by Dark Horse. I spent the last few months of 2009 and early this year gobbling up the Fantagraphics volumes - which started out as a bit crudely done but fun (Book 1) but rapidly improved in both writing and art as it went on. Noticeable jumps in quality include Book 3: The Wanderer's Road, when Sakai really got a handle on making his short stories spark, and in Book 6: Circles where Sakai turned out his first completely brilliant epic.
And now I've jumped ahead: the first few Dark Horse books are out of print, but due to be rereleased later this year. So I went form Book 7 to Book 12 and to my suprise a signifigant increase in quality occured. Book 12: Grasscutter skillfully weaves actual Japanese history and religion into various storylines that had been ticking away in the book for ages and Book 13: Grey Shadows contains the most inventive and cool Usagi short stories I've read so far! After book upon books of Sakai giving us his heavily detailed and researched version of 17th century Japan we never had any commentary or examination of what Sakai thinks about some of the harsher aspects of that world, but with these books Usagi himself and other characters seem more leary of the status quo and more concerned with what's morally right than what's expected of them. It's really cracking stuff and I do believe it's with these volumes that Usagi officially suplants Hellboy as my favorite ongoing comic series.
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Post by Don Quixote on May 18, 2010 22:02:38 GMT -5
The Marvels Project 8 came out last week, and I haven't had time to pick it up. But man, the series itself is awesome. A great little Golden Age Marvel series. It's a shame it was so short.
Has anyone been reading Iron Man Noir? I've been meaning to jump onto that. It looks fun.
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 19, 2010 1:09:57 GMT -5
^Yeah Iron Man Noir is a lot of fun, kind of Indiana Jones more than Noir, but thrilling. Better than the other IM titles IMHO.
The best comics I've been reading of late, have all been about the women. Why is it the superwomen can't get any respect? Batgirl is my favorite batbook (it's not genius, just good old fashioned comic book adventure), Supergirl is my favorite title of the now. and now Black Widow and Birds of Prey have popped up and both are amazing (BoP was especially great. Proving that sometimes, you can go home again).
I did start with Red Robin. He had a crossover with Batgirl and I liked it enough to add it to my holds.
Next week theirs the new Avengers title with Iron Man and Thor back in the group, sadly Captain America isn't the Steve Rogers version (who now heads up SHIELD)
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Post by Joker on May 21, 2010 23:51:16 GMT -5
Read Animal Man, Vol. 1, Vol. 2: Origin of the Species, and Vol. 3: Deus Ex Machina by Grant Morrison, Chaz Truog, Tom Grummett, and Doug Hazlewood. Buddy Baker was a third-tier forgotten superhero who everyone thought was dead, but he was only retired. A UFO blew up in his face and he got the ability to absorb animal powers from any nearby animal. When he decides to get back into the superhero game he faces off against the animal fusing B'wanna Beast, who has seemingly lost his mind whil looking for a gorilla companion. Working with the unethical S.T.A.R. Labs leads to Buddy becoming an animal rights activist. The horrors visited upon animals in the name of science, hunting and big business affect him deeply.
After a harrowing home invasion from the now Scottish Mirror Master, McCulloch he becomes a part of Justice Leage Europe and continues to fight for animal rights. Then things begin to unravel in his life and an encounter with some godlike aliens seemingly is the solution to his problems.
Then Buddy's whole family is murdered and he tries to save them with a time machine. But it turns out to be hopeless and he falls into despair, then he goes after the men responsible for his family's deaths. Finally, a trip to Arkham Asylum and a confrontation with the Psycho Pirate, the only person who remembers what the multiverse was like before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Another Crisis looms on the horizon as the Psycho Pirate's memories bring the long dead back to life. In the end there is only one man responsible for the tragic mess and Buddy is going to find him and hold him accountable...if that's even possible.
A very conventional comic becomes an increasingly existential story where Grant Morrison preaches a bit about the gruesome horrors visited on helpless animals...and the man who seems to be the only one who will use his powers to take a stand for them. Unfortunately, Morrison advocates that people join PETA, which has become a ridiculous political organization. I would advise you just help out your local ASPCA instead if you truly care about animals.
Near the end this story really gets trippy as characters shatter the fourth wall and can see us. It just reminded me how depressing our world without magic is and characters comment on that, too. An excellent read with a few powerful points to make along the way.
Read Crossed by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows. In the blink of an eye the world changes. People you knew suddenly become sadistic rapist cannibals with a cross of scar tissue across their face and nothing but a taste for perverse cruelty burning in their brains. A group of survivors escape from their Southwestern town and a nuclear explosion to travel up to Canada. The trip becomes much more arduous as they have to do it on foot to remain safe from their Crossed pursuers. By the time you see one it's already too late unless you're heavily armed. The Crossed rape, kill, and eat people - not necessarily in that order. The survivors find themselves facing terrible decisions to keep themselves alive and only their determination to live will save the human race from extiction. A harrowing and disturbing survival horror story from Garth Ennis.
Read Irredeemable, Vol. 2 by Mark Waid and Peter Krause. The superhero The Plutonian lost his mind and is seemingly invincible, wiping out whole cities and sinking Singapore. His former allies desperately seek an answer to defeating him, even trying to find a deadly supervillain whom the Plutonian feared. Meanwhile, he has flashbacks to his childhood and other events from his past that show that his mental illness went undiagnosed for so long because he kept his problems from others. This has all lead to his deadly psychotic break and someone has to find a way to stop him or the world will die. An explosive and powerful look into the twisted mind of a superpowered psychopath.
Now reading Rebel by Pepe Moreno
Reading Halloween: Nightdance by Stefan Hutchinson and Tim Seeley
Reading The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Mickey Spillane, Dashell Hammett, and various others
Reading Swamp Thing, Vol. 5: Earth to Earth by Alan Moore, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, and Alfredo Alcala
Reading Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths by Alan Moore, Jacen Burrows, Juan Jose Ryp, and Bryan Talbot
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Post by Joker on Jun 2, 2010 1:35:26 GMT -5
Read Rebel by Pepe Moreno. After a second civil war leaves America in a shambles with punk gangs at war in the streets of New York City while Neo-Nazis build their power up through extermination. Only Billy Idol-looking ex-soldier Rebel can help the gangs win their war for survival against the facist forces. Most of the characters are pretty underwritten and redundant narration makes the story much duller. The artwork is cool, but if it can't make the story better it falls a bit flat.
Read Halloween: Nightdance by Stefan Hutchinson and Tim Seeley. A chance encounter with an escaping victim of Michael Myers leads a man to try and track down the inhuman killer to find his wife. Why he thinks his wife is still alive is beyond me as Myers is the bogeyman of the midwest here and every man, woman, and child in Illinois fears him. The bodies pile up as a young woman continually recieves perverse crayon drawings seemingly from a child she failed to protect in the past. The two people's lives intersect as they try to hunt down The Shape. The story is dark and creepy, but far too bleak hardcore horror to be very compelling as there is no hero, not even Dr. Loomis, so it seems that all of these people are just lambs to the slaughter waiting to die. There's also a short story about the guy who killed his family with a hacksaw who made this new slaughter possible somehow years ago.
Read Swamp Thing, Vol. 5: Earth to Earth by Alan Moore, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, and Alfredo Alcala. Swamp Thing returns from the conflict with the darkness in Hell only to find that Abby has been arrested because of a nosy photographer selling pictures to a newspaper of her and ST in a loving embrace. She gets arrested for a crime that usually people get charged with when doing nasty things with barnyard animals and flees to Gotham City after making bail. Why anyone would go to Gotham City in the first place is bizarre and she promptly gets arrested again. But this time ST is in hot pursuit and wages a strange war on Gotham that turns it into a jungle and things will only get worse (even though they look like they just got better) unless the woman he considers his wife is released. Even the Dark Knight is powerless to stop him and time is running out, but not just for the city since covert government powers are about to make a deadly strike against the Swamp God with the help of a terribly evil man who has experience dealing with seemingly invincible enemies...
Things get more explosive in this volume as Swamp Thing's power is revealed to be gigantic and terrible if he decides to wield it a certian way in anger. Then when his exile from Earth begins the character of Abby Cable goes through a powerful change when a friend she hasn't seen in years shows up at her door being pursued by her psychotic armed husband. You can't be a damsel in distress when there's no one there to rescue you anymore and there's someone else counting on you. ST arrives on a blue planet where the mind of a lonely being with power of a god can become incredible and worthless all at once. Moore writes a powerful existential story of love and loss here.
Reading Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths by Alan Moore, Jacen Burrows, Juan Jose Ryp, and Bryan Talbot
Reading The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Mickey Spillane, Dashell Hammett, and various others
Reading Swamp Thing, Vol. 6: Reunion by Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Stephen Bissette, and Alfredo Alcala
Reading Hell House by Richard Matheson, graphic adaptation by Ian Edgington and Simon Fraser
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