Topic: General Comic Book Discussion

@RR529 even if it is free it’s still giving money to the scumbags at Amazon ;p

It’s Batman day today, happy Batman day everyone! If I didn’t have Super Mario 3D All Stars at the moment I would have been tempted to try and read the entire Grant Morrison or Scott Snyder Batman runs to celebrate. Instead I’m gonna read Batman and The Monster Men, I love Matt Wagners work.

Happy Batman Day! I'm mildly tempted to grab Batman: The Enemy Within on the Switch eShop since I haven't played that one yet, but I think I'll wait for now. XD

@RR529 I agree; while I enjoyed the ending, it didn't quite measure up to that situation you mentioned towards the middle. Still, I did like the changes here where Barbara was the name of Gordon's wife, and he had a son instead of a daughter.

As far as origin takes go, it's one of the better ones I've been exposed to.

So far this tail end of this year, DC's one comic that has been doing really good is Batman Rebirth/Batman with the Joker War stuff.

that and Image Comics with Gideon Falls which is about to end in December

Recently finished up reading volume 1 of Black Widow & the Marvel Girls, which was a collection of Black Widow centric one shots, and in each one she interacts with a different Marvel superheroine (the Enchantress, the Wasp, Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel, and Storm), with the final story included the 70's Spider-Man issue where she first debuted her more modern appearance.

It was okay. Out of the four main stories I probably liked the Wasp & Ms. Marvel (the current Captain Marvel) ones the most, but there wasn't anything super gripping or anything. The 70's Spider-Man issue was a neat novelty though, as it was inferred that Black Widow had some level of superpower in that interpretation (particularly copying Spider-Man's abilities).

Mentioned it the anime/manga thread, but I also recently read the first volume of Fairy Tail, which was decently fun (Amazon doesn't seem to have many other manga as part of it's free Prime Reading though, which is a shame).

With Alan Moore being Alan Moore and creating another controversy I decided to pick up Halo Jones. It's really good but it just makes feel sad it was never finished.

Recently finished up Vampirella: Crown of Worms on Prime Reading.

Wanted to try something a bit different than the typical superhero fare, and this fit well for the spooky season. It pretty much follows a female vampire who hunts down other vampires, and while she apparently has bad blood with Dracula, they must form an uneasy alliance after she runs across a nest of vampires who are under the control of an ancient interdimensional god worm (yes, it's pretty nuts) which aims to bring on the apocalypse.

It's by far the goriest comic I've yet read, and while the character was originally conceived to be pretty cheesecake in terms of design, this appears to be a bit of a grittier reimagining where she seems to be at odds with her "old self" and is struggling to find herself.

Just read Batman Three Jokers. It's good (better than Johns' Batman Earth One imo) but it's not the modern classic and cannon shaking story I was hoping it to be. It's funny as even though it doesn't hit the highs of the best of Batman it enthralled me more at the time of reading it than the recent runs of Tom King or Tynion even though I would say their runs are better. I get the feeling if they didn't big it up in Darkseid War I would have enjoyed it more from having lower expectations.

The trick they pulled with Joe Chill is fantastic, easily the best use of him I can remember of and there's a few ideas to add to The Joker (maybe)lore but the Three Jokers thing itself wasn't really needed despite a decent idea being there and Red Hood's characterization was really hit and miss from issue to issue.

I've just picked up Wonder Woman Earth One Vol. 3, I LOVE Grant Morrisons stuff but I'm still not convinced he's a good fit for Wondy.

Ok so the Boom Studio Power Rangers run has revealed its new Green Ranger! But the Ranger has broken one (if not two depending on how you see it) tenets of the Rangers oath! What do y’all think of this? This could potentially change everything going forward considering how much this compromises the Rangers.

@GameOtaku im loving it so far, and it felt like that moment in civil war when Spidey took his mask off.

Moving forward its going to be awkward for Kimberly having both Mathew and Tommy on the team. I'm just hoping it doesn't descend into teen dating drama - there's enough of that at the moment with Bulk getting jealous about Skull and Candice lol.

@Mr-Fuggles777
There’s bound to be further repercussions seeing how Spideys unmasking didn’t help much. This puts the others at pretty substantial risk of being identified as Rangers let alone Billy who was instrumental in development of this green Ranger. Zordon was already determined to take away the Omegas powers after they freed Drakkon so this right afterwards is whoa!

@GameOtaku I can't wait to see where they go with this story. Imagine if it leads into a civil war like event - especially now Zordon will have lost faith in a lot of the ranger's.

On a slightly different note, but if you enjoy MMPR from Boom - have you started reading Radiant Black?

@Mr-Fuggles777
I picked up the first issue. It’s good but I’ve only read the first issue so we shall see how it goes.

But on that note have you read the new Ultraman comic by Marvel?

@GameOtaku no I haven't, I don't read a lot from Marvel anymore. They went a bit strange for a while swapping everyone's genders etc.
I still get Amazing Spiderman and have just added the new Alien book to my subscription.

I'm quietly optimistic after Radiant Black #1 - it has the same flavour as PR so far.

After downloading it around Halloween, I've finally finished reading Vampirella: the Essential Warren Years Volume 1 (hope it's okay to revive this thread. Not sure where to put this since it's not a Marvel or DC comic).

First time reading a comic this old before (it's a collection of stories from the late 60's into the 70's), and it was an interesting curio, though I don't think I'll be eager to return to the character any time soon (at least from this era). Man, probably just a byproduct of it's time due to how comics were distributed/consumed, but it felt like they had to go to full lengths to explain her backstory every single chapter, as well as that of the surrounding cast (this got better as it went on though).

Really seems like they were learning what they wanted it to be as they went along. The first two chapters seemed a lot more campy than the rest (& that's saying something when the heroine is wearing what amounts to a one piece swimsuit at all times, and this is treated with a straight face at all times, lol), but it then quickly takes a much more dramatic turn as she quickly finds herself at odds with a cult that's trying to resurrect a collection of ancient demons (drama that involves a ballooning cast as they wrap all the Dracula lore including the Van Helsing family into it), but then eventually it seems like they realize it's all a bit much as they pare back the cast & silently retire the grander narrative as the last several stories just revolve around them getting involved in one random supernatural case after another as they travel the world (honestly this is where I'd say the series starts to really hit it's stride).

@RR529 from what knowledge I have of the character she is partly a by-product of the time and does get better as it goes along.

You can really tell they wanted young teens to buy the comic.

I went into the funny books store earlier today and got chatting to the guy behind the counter and with complete sincere enthusiasm they sold me on a book. They talked about the comic artist’s work as if it is rivalling The Sistine Chapel, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez so I’m very much looking forward to what if the Justice League were dinosaurs trade.

Started reading the Dark knight Returns yesterday, and it is still damn good. Not my favorite Batman story, but it’s up there imo. To me though Dark Knight Returns is one and done deal. I don’t bother with the sequels. I tried the second one but yeah…couldn’t do it.

@Themagusx1 yeah, I wasn’t keen on the sequels either. But I did hear Grant Morrison talk about how it’s misunderstood, Frank Miller was writing and drawing it in a more raw expressive way whilst 9/11 was happening which I can see in that context.

As trashy as it was I would like to see him and Jim Lee finish off their All Star Batman series as it was (dumb) fun.

@jump That does make sense. Grant Morrison is awesome, and is a smart guy so I can see where he is coming from. Aside from his writing comics he wrote an awesome book called Supergods which is an evaluation of the super hero genre and his takes on them. Are you familiar with it?