I hate it when they end a good series (finishing with #36).  

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!  

That's is one wickedly BAD (a.k.a. AWESOME) cover!

Why The New DCU Is Not Floating My Boat

So last time I excoriated Marvel, this time let’s see why the DC New has created problems for me.

First point is what I have already canceled. Static Shock, this was a function of the character. I never enjoyed the character and the first issue did nothing for me. Men of War, I went in with high hopes and it added super hero stuff almost from the jump. It felt like it was a book that had no real direction. Next up is Hawk and Dove all that needs to be said is Rob Liefeld but we can add the de-aging of the characters. Captain Atom, they killed him and my interest in the book with issue #2. Savage Hawkman by Tony Daniel was all I really needed because Tony has good ideas but is not a solid writer from what I have seen. Still I tried three issues and Daniel needs a co-writer to help smooth out his work or at least a strong editor. Fury of Firestorm was just a horrible story that was all over the board and the art was weak. Deathstroke was over redesigned and his armor and sword were a joke, he is a great character and this was a waste of the characters potential. Also the writer played the mysterious game with a briefcase that bored me. The character knows what is in the briefcase, let me know. If your idea is good let the reader know. Blue Beetle felt like a rerun. JLI was so generic I could have written it. OMAC was just too much Kirby homage and not enough willingness to give us a straight story. Legion Lost was a bad idea. LOSH is too much Levitz. This is the new DCU, let’s get started anew and get a fresh voice. Red Hood and the Outlaws was apparently a comedy book. Batwing was tied to Batman Inc, that does not seem to exist in the new DCU or it does but it is a confused mess. Green Arrow was too new; Mister Terrific and Blackhawks were aborted by DC.

All in all Snyder, Lemire and Tomasi are producing great books and others have some hits with Batwoman, I Vampire, Supergirl and some others, but the underlying issue is that this was too hard of a break from what come before and I no longer have a bond with the characters. When you break that bond it becomes easier for me to drop a book. The characters are familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. Well written and strong art books like Suicide Squad has hooked me back in, but except for Deadshot and Harley Quinn Adam Glass is not using familiar characters. You could say Amanda Waller is, but she is now Angela Bassett and the hard break from the fat body style of before tells us this is a different universe. The other side of that coin is characters like Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon and Tim Drake all have a totally different vibe and I was bonded with those characters. Marvel over the years destroyed all the love I had for the characters and stuff like One More Day cut all loyalty I had to Spider-Man, this break has severely damaged the bonds I had with the DCU characters. It has not broken my bond with Batman 100% like OMD, but it has hurt it.

What Bugs Me About Comics Lately

I’m gonna complain about Marvel. Again I hope to get more regular with my posts on this blog in the next month.

Marvel is absolutely killing me with the maintenance of their $4 price points, their insane numbering and point one books and now the continuation of event after event after event. Marvel seems to want me to drop the entire line, since every time I get into a book I’m forced and dragged into buying other books.

Let’s take each point in order. First up is the continued proliferation of $4 books, even a cool little mini-series like Legion of Monsters is a $4 book. Captain America (a $3) becomes Captain America and Bucky and they launch a new Captain America and it is a $4 book. The Uncanny X-Men gets cancelled as it is re-launched after X-Men Schism (a $4 book) into Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men, one $3 book becomes two $4 books. The entire Ultimate line, which is only a few books, are all $4, but as a result I only get Ultimates as the other two series where not worth $4, but maybe worth $3.

What Is Happening

Probably started this blog at a bad time.

Hope to post more in the neaw future once my move is complete and hope to get regular posts up in February.

Week of November 2

A quick mention of everything I read this week.

Hulk #44 – Patrick Zircher is a very good artist, but is getting too cute with his layouts. Otherwise this is a decent story.

Batwing #3 – More fighting then you can shake a stick out and some decent art, but where the hell is the plot?

Moon Knight #7 – Why do I keep getting this, more crappy Bendis dialogue, but the story is intriguing enough and even Maleev cranking out a book on schedule is moody enough to make the art work.

Fear Itself The Fearless #2 – Entertaining and not taxing with solid art.

Sweet Tooth #27 – Damn if Lemire doesn’t know how to tell a good story and Matt Kindt on art for this flashback sequence is working very well. Plus we are learning just exactly what the heck is going on with these animal kids.

Rating What I Read Last Week

Aquaman #2 C+ - Slow building, great art.
 

Blackhawks #2 - C+ - Good story, mediocre art

Firestorm #2 - Cancel - Too much going on and pedestrian art

Flash #2 - C+ - Building, good art and okay story, growing on me.

Green Lantern The New Guardians #2 - C+ - Good story, weak art.

I, Vampire #2 - A - Great story, great art, wonderful moody feel to this book.

Justice League Dark #2 - B - Building nicely and excellent art.

Savage Hawkman #2 - Cancel - Story is trying to do too much and the art is too muddy

Scalped - B - Great Series

Incredible Hulk #1 - C - All set up.

Spaceman #1 - B - Cool premise and looks like it should be a good story. Love Risso's art.

Ulimates #3 - B+ - Hickman is starting to get the feel of doing big ideas and moving the plot at the same time, with some great art.

Red Wing #4 (of 4) - D - Too convoluted to actually understand reading chapters months apart. May read well as a trade.

Captain America and Bucky - B+ - A great character study and wonderful art.

Guarding the Globe #6 (of 6)  - C - Killed by delays

Walking Dead - B - Nothing happened, it was very good.

Secret Avengers - B+ - Aja's art rules and Warren Ellis does great one and done stories.

Daredevil #5 - C+ - I feel like Waid is preaching too much and sometimes trying to explain stuff that only makes comic book sense and trying to explain it makes it worse.

Superman #2 - B+ - Great art and a surprisingly compelling character piece, especially the Lois/Clark relationship.

Wolverine and the X-Men #1 - B - I wanted to hate it, but it was goofy fun and the characters even know Wolverine running a school is insane.

Voodoo #2 - C+ - Not sure this premise last long term.

Teen Titans #2 - B - Norm Rapmund really adds to Booth's art and the story is a good premise.

Mighty Thor - D - Cancel - I was reading Thor and the book decided to create a new Thor, I'm tired of this trick Marvel, seen it with Hulk to Hercules, Daredevil to Black Panther, Captain American to Cap and Bucky and need to judge each series on its own merit.

Things That Are Bugging Me In Comics

I do not have the time to do this justice, but I also want to this blog to have some new content more then once in a blue moon.

So a very short post, with no graphics, my current big gripes.

The armor and overly complex costumes. My chief example the new Deathstroke. His armor is so complex it has to slow down the artist and it is nothing but glitz and serves no purpose. Hell let's not even talk about the sword which is six feet tall. If you think artists can't hit deadlines make all the costumes so complex it takes them twice as long to draw the darn things.

Young children in comics. Okay I accept Damian as Robin, but grade school Spider-Man in the Ultimate Universe and the grade school Hellfire Club in X-Men, really is Children of the Corn your inspiration for evil bad guys. Can't wait for the evil babies attack on the Avengers.

Super powered Hawkeye? I had no clue the Ultimate Hawkeye has actual powers. Hell takes away the idea that Marvel has at least one regular person with no extras that can make the grade.

Daredevil delivering suits all over town so he looks good when he gets to where he is going. This is one of those cute things where a writer decides to try and explain stuff in a comic book story. Somethings are just that it is a comic book. Look no one knows Clark and Superman are the same guy, just accept the comic book logic and move on, explaining it becomes more ridiculous.

Hope to get more post out here on a semi-regular basis.

Wolverine #16 – A Quick Execution

How the f**k does the baddest ass hero in comics, get one of the toughest, hard as nails, raw emotional writers in comics and turn in such a weak and lame ass issue of Wolverine. This comic was possibly the worse Wolverine stories I have ever read and I had to check it twice to make sure Jason Aaron was really the writer. Add in Goran Sudzuka turning in Sal Buscema style art with coloring from the seventies and this book was a mess from the $4 price point to the bitter end of the story.

The story was about Wolverine who has gone all feral and is running around with wolves. He went all self pitying and depressed because the Red Hand set him up to kill his own kids that he never knew existed. Evil hunters find the wolves and capture a few and shoot Logan in the head thinking they killed him. Logan gets mad, saves his wolf brothers and the children these guys had captured to be fodder for their games of wolf fights and wolf fights with kids. If only they had also been Nazis and smokers they could have been the most evil people of all time. After saving the kids everybody in the all the groups he belongs to came out to the wilderness lead by his girl friend to tell him they love and want him to come home. Interspaced are head shots of all of Logan’s friends saying what they think of him. Everyone hugs and Wolverine gets excited and pops his claws killing his girl friend. Okay the last line I made up but it would have at least given the book some edge. 

Batman #1 – A Quick Rant

Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Jonathan Glapion (ink) and FCO Plascencia (colors) produced a beautiful book and a great story. They are resetting the Batman Universe and this book is already being universally praised. I’m not here to review it, I here to talk about a panel that stopped me in my tracks, the picture of Batman and the boys. Here it is:

My problem with the picture is it is changing Batman way too much. Green Lantern hardly changed a lick and the rest all needed to be overhauled, but Batman was great. I know they (DC Editorial) hated how old Batman appeared, but now he looks like if he is 30 it is probably too old. Dick Grayson looks like a 15 year old – really – he replaced Batman, how did this skinny punk replace Batman at all. Tim Drake is maybe a ninth grader and Damian is still in elementary school.

I know they wanted a younger Batman, but this takes it too far. It takes it way too far for Dick Grayson. It gets even more confusing when I opened up Nightwing as in that book Dick appears to be a grown up.

Do not, I repeat do not get this wrong, this is a Grade A, terrific story and a great opening in what should be a terrific series and this is DC’s best book of the New 52 so far, but let Dick be a man. Hell let him be as tall as Bruce, just not as wide. Also let Bruce have a little age on him, he doesn’t have to be 50, but he can be 35 or even 40. Steve Dillon when he started PunisherMax was drawing Frank way too young, maybe Greg will get it better down the road, unless this is a DC edict, but then why is Dick an adult in Nightwing?

Why do comics suck? Because DC wants us to believe in a cohesive universe, but can’t even be consistent within the same family of books. I’ll chalk it up to growing pains, but it really bugged me.

13 Number Ones Week One – Ranking The New DCU

My week in review on the Comics And website will go into other details but my initial impression of the new DCU is that the whole thing is a very, very strange experience. As a long term DCU fan nothing could have gotten me ready for the total and confused morass that the new DCU has become. These thirteen first issues show a picture of the DCU being totally changed. Some of the changes are good and some may not be, but I have no sense of the DCU as a cohesive whole at this point. Right now of the thirteen the way I rank them is as follows:

1)      Animal Man. I know DC is cutting back on Vertigo and that Animal Man was one of the early DCU books that got pushed into the Vertigo side, but this book read like a Vertigo series. The art had an indie feel to it and the “rot” of the flesh world was more of a horror element.

So I Told My Wife She’s Been Retro-Conned

It is sad but true. My wife did not take it very well, but I told her I still loved her and she would be a supporting character in my life and maybe a love interest at times, but she will stay in the mix. I told her it wasn’t a divorce; it was just that all of the marketing data was pointing to the fact that my life would be more interesting if the romantic interest angle was in my story line. I mean with her knowing all my secrets it is not as interesting as me trying to hide my double identity from a new girl. How much fun is it to have to make lame ass excuses to get out of a date, hide my costume from her or hurriedly leave some event? Heck I told her not to worry as with a retro-con we will never have been married so she won’t miss what she never had.

  

Flashpoint #5 – The Con Job Revealed

Hope to make this blog a more regular posting experience, but as I said before life happens.

The hype, the excitement, the concerns over DC’s new universe have all been leading up to this week and the book to end the old DCU Flashpoint #5 comes out and it was all a terrible joke. The Emperor is walking the streets naked, but the crowd wants to love the new clothes (old fable reference). 

The grand reveal is DC threw this idea together to re-launch their whole universe very, very fast. Flashpoint was used to as a mechanism to make the changes, but the changes have no rhyme or reason and this series was never intended to be what DC turned it into. 

In a few years someone will talk about how Didio wanted make this drastic change to the DCU and came up with DC retroactive and the ancillary Flashpoint books to give the creative crews a three month break to pull together the entire re-launch. I was hoping there was more planning behind it, but Flashpoint was obviously written as a series about Barry and why you can’t try and change time. DC decided to use two pages in this book as some bullsh*t gimmick to reset the DCU into whatever they want it to be. 

WHY NOTHING NEW

Just a short note to say that I have lots to say, but right now I'm in the midst of moving and have limited access to a computer. Plus this is not meant to be a daily blog. We may post three times a day or never.

The New 52 Makes Me Blue

DC comics suck. I read Detective Comics, Batgirl and Red Robin this week. Detective was just amazing and possibly the best Batman story told in the last 20 plus years. Batgirl and Red Robin were well done comics and enjoyable stories about characters that I have come to love and enjoy.

The Batman franchise was given a huge push forward by Grant Morrison. Outside of the JSA it was the only comic in the DCU that was going forwarding and building on a great history instead of doing soft re-sets, hard resets, or just plain wipe the earth clean type of stuff. 

I know DC had problems and their mid-list books were horrendous, but the new DCU is too much of throwing out the baby with the bath water. I’m prejudging all this stuff, but reading these endings made me said for what could have been. 

Innovation Must Be A Dirty Word

Why is it that innovation seems to be making a book yet another number one issue?

 

Marvel’s Big Guns promotion was yet another #1 issue of Moon Knight, Daredevil and The Punisher. Moon Knight’s first appearance was in 1975 – 36 years ago. Punisher is from 1974, so he is only one year older then Moon Knight at 37. Daredevil is from 1964 making him the old man of the group at 47 years old. After hundreds and thousands of stories about these characters Marvel pulled out all the stops and decided to re-launch each one of these heroes - AGAIN. Now from a pure professional story telling bit each book managed to find a new twist and take on the character or at least do a twist that is so old most people have forgotten about it. Moon Knight is so crazy he now talks to Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America. He even pretends to be them. That’s really crazy. Daredevil is actually going around happy and there is sunlight in his book, which has not been seen since before Frank Miller did Daredevil. The Punisher is the mysterious guy in the background taking out the bad guys. His obsessive mission is not the focus of the story. All three books are well done and if you like Bendis, all three books are enjoyable, but where is the real innovation.