Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

grrroosss

Grant Morrison's Doom Force just confused me when I was a teenager

psylocke has always been the most ridiculously broken backed, sexploited x-woman, even more than rogue

I don't really recall seeing Rogue treated that way(?) At least not in the era in which I was reading (pre-"Fall of Mutants" through post-"Inferno"). She was even spared from having to wear a skimpy costume, thanks to "can't-touch-her-skin"...

Yeah, Rogue was a weirdly arbitrary choice from the era when every female character was risking permanent spinal injury in an attempt to show off their quad-D cups.

https://letterpile.com/books/Psylocke-Costume-History

go back to Armored Psylocke IMO

iirc jim lee's 90's rogue was a "look-but-don't-touch" cheerleader fantasy and was regularly depicted in a similarly creepy way but after crawling through the muck to get those psylocke clips, i'm gonna leave a GIS for "sexy rogue marvel" to someone else.

are you thinking of Savage Land Rogue?

prob

yup, a classically sleazy storyline that was. she hooks up with Magneto which is eww

Lee/Liefield/McFarlane, and the "trends" they drove and exemplified, were 90% of the reason I stopped reading comics in the early '90s. (I also went off to college, but that alone wouldn't have stopped me.)

everything they've touched in the past fifteen years (at least) is hot garbage
still angry i bought those damn gold ink spiderman #1s as a teenager; I WAS IMPRESSIONABLE

As much as I dislike the 90s xtreme style* and variant covers, the increased prevalence of multi-title storylines was far more damaging. I don't know if it's still a big problem but I remember they kept saying "okay, we know you hate that so we'll stop it now" then start doing it again later. Probably lost them lots of readers.

I remember some comic artists saying they felt ripped off if a story lasted beyond one issue. I wonder how many people try these comics and feel that way?

*but I still think McFarlane did some interesting things and no matter how bad their anatomy, some of those Image artists at least gave a shit. There's a lot of dull stuff that nobody remembers or particularly likes.

I liked McFarlane well enough as an artist on "ASM"; his faces could be weird, and anatomy funky, but his style felt fresh at the time, and he & Michelinie made a good team. The problem began when he started writing...

(...his own books, not "ASM" specifically; which had moved on to McFarlane knockoff Erik Larsen.)

He drew some things similar but Larsen was far more talented overall. I think he once defended himself saying that he had drawn crazy poses Spiderman before McFarlane did. He done a few issues before McFarlane but I can't remember them well.

Don't know if everybody's seen this cover recently, maybe it's been circulating? Somebody used it with regard to female Dr Who. Quite funny, Superman not getting with the times.

https://www.comics.org/issue/34518/cover/4/

Lee/Liefield/McFarlane, and the "trends" they drove and exemplified, were 90% of the reason I stopped reading comics in the early '90s. (I also went off to college, but that alone wouldn't have stopped me.)

Yeah this is what happened to me. I haven't really been back tbh. (Speaking specifically of superhero stuff here). Superhero art eventually recovered from that trough to some extent but there's still something deeply off-putting to me about the way the stuff is colored, I just hate it.

Yeah the colouring really destroys so much good drawing.

can't lie i loved that shit (Liefeld, McFarlane, Lee, etc) as a kid so i can't hate on it too much now. it was for its target audience, teenage boys, who still buy comics if one can believe it

As a battle-scarred half-cybernetic survivor of those times, I am still regularly amazed that I buy more Image comics than Marvel and DC combined. Partly because they seem the most aware that "our defence is that teenage boys buy it" is contemptible bullshit.

I was a huge McFarlane, Larsen fan and I liked most of the main Image guys as a teen. Dislike most of it now except little bits of Larsen, McFarlane and Joe Chiodo. Sam Kieth is pretty good. Jae Lee was always a bit different and he evolved into something quite interesting.

J Scott Campbell is an odd case, because he's capable of genuinely good caricatures and you'd think he'd pursue his greatest strengths but nope. I realise he probably wants to do more than caricatures but if he used real life + photo reference more extensively, his output would be way better.

I still have a soft spot for Steven Hughes.

it's weird, I got into comics right before Image and that sales boom, but I was more into the myriad of half-forgotten Marvel titles than I was any of the Image properties

the only things that really stuck with me, that I got into from the very first issues, were Mike Allred's Madman and Sam Kieth's The Maxx

Feeling the entirety of mh's post!

The only one of the original Image titles I stuck with for any length of time was Spawn and its spin-offs, and that was almost entirely because he had wisely pulled in a lot of big-time writers (Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, Miller, Sim...were there others?) to prop up his own questionable chops. Almost all of the rest of that first wave crap was unreadable.

I followed Warren Ellis to Image and started picking up his Stormwatch, which I loved to death. I liked the concept behind Gen13 but disliked most of the books (although I did dig Ellis's DV8 a lot). Never really read anything outside of the Wildstorm universe aside from one or two issues of Witchblade.

My engagement with Spawn began and ended with the movie, really.

Same as MH, except for completely-forgotten DC titles instead of Marvel. Yes, I'm the person who would have read a Conglomerate comic.

I think the only Spawn issues I read were the couple Alan Moore ones and the one with Cerebus

I did shamefully subscribe to Wizard magazine for a couple years

Weren't Gen13 kind of a Weapon X thing?

Unlike most early Image books, which were really just X-Men variants (although there was quite a bunch of military comics), I thought Spawn was quite promising but I never stuck with it for long. The HBO cartoon seemed to be more acclaimed than the comics.

I guess more people didn't jump on the Image bandwagon because they were scared it wouldn't last? It's odd that Stephenson and Larsen were there from the start but were the ones to push it in the direction it is today.

I read Wizard for years, it was awful (but so we're most of the comics I read at the time) but hated changing my standing order but the final straw was when they were slating the Catwoman film yet still put it on the cover. There were occasional interesting features and interviews and the earlier issues were quite funny. There was a poster that boasted "100 issues, (?) covers and more tasteless jokes about midgets than any other magazines".

Slating = mocking

the whole idea of the "Image bandwagon" was kind of a mess because "Image" was the publisher, but it was a conglomeration of individual studios and one-offs by specific creators published under the umbrella. pretty much every time they tried to coordinate between studios it was a complete mess

I still hold out hope that the conclusion of Alan Moore's 1963 series will be published any day now

Weren't Gen13 kind of a Weapon X thing?

Yeah, there was a group of soldiers (Team 7?) that had some experiments done on them that trickled down to powers manifesting in their kids; the soldiers were the 12th iteration of this project and the kids were kidnapped when their powers began to manifest so they could become the 13 iteration, hence "Gen13". They were also tied to WildC.A.T.S. through the character Grifter, who was in both Team 7 and WildC.A.T.S.

well
http://forums.millarworld.tv/t/biggest-news-ever-netflix-buys-millarworld/10356?u=mark_millar

that guy sucks

The BBC: Millarworld, founded by Mark Millar from Coatbridge, includes his portfolio of characters and stories such as Kick-Ass, Kingsman, and Old Man Logan.

But since the first two of these have separate movie franchises not included in the deal, wtf have Netflix just bought?

All three do, the last one being a Marvel franchise.

I guess they bought all future IP from the mind of Mark Millar?

there are also sources referring to 'millarworld' as a publisher, but weren't all the comics published by other publishers?

Yeah, everything associated with Millarworld is published elsewhere and the majority of it is already optioned or made (Wanted, Secret Service, Kick Ass all made, Chosen and War Heroes both optioned by Sony). All that's left is Nemesis, Superior and the actually quite good Jupiter's Legacy/Children.

I also noticed the ref. to "Old Man Logan," and concluded it must just be sloppy reporting... that's obv. a Marvel-owned property with motion picture rights held by Fox (who recently made a movie based partly upon it, in fact).

I guess Old Lunch might be right but regardless this is an idiotic deal.

New Kerascoet for November
http://nbmpub.com/comicslit/dontouchme/satanpre1.html

Oh great. Not sure I loved Miss Don't Touch Me but would definitely read more by the same people.

Unrelatedly has anyone read EXTREMITY? It's a very violent (but not at all Kirkman-y) space epic YA thing with very good Philip Bond/Hewlett style art. Only read a couple issues but enjoying it so far.

Wonder if the Comics Journal site will still do the weekly listings after McCulloch has wrapped up? His most recent entry was quite odd and funny. Don't know how much I care now, but I'm still a little worried I'm missing really good things. I'll never buy Previews again (don't want to feel that violent rage every month).

Still keeping an eye on Fantagraphics, NBM, Yoe Books and Dark Horse's Corben comics.

http://comicattack.net/archives/129408
Kenneth Smith is still around and should have more work coming out eventually, he talks a bit about that here. I'm only really interested in his art/fiction. I found his columns for Comics Journal incomprehensible at the time and I know a lot of people either hated or loved them.

man i forgot about him. I can cope with a lot of theory despite never getting to college but Ken Smith was yeah incomprehensible.

Years back I was quite struck by the fact that the only comics he seemed interested in were heavily illustrated fantasy stuff. Which was a bit at odds with the image people had of Comics Journal intellectuals at the time.

There's an audio interview of him on youtube rambling quite interestingly. His philosophy book Otherwise has a cool cover.

huh going out with a bang
http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-93-98-1-25/

(NSFW for anyone else who cares)

oh yeah, sorry: that's a historical look back at Lightning Comics and their many nude variant covers

Wasn't there one more to go next week?

The reader letter around the middle of that page is great.