Rolling comic book thread 2018

At the begining of this year I decided not to buy any new comics and to rearead my entire collection instead.

I'm still at the As -_-

It's the same conundrum I face every year: I've read a ton of stuff, watched a ton of movies, heard a ton of music, etc. but it's all pretty much exclusively from years prior to this one, so I can never participate in any of the fun year-end discussions.

xpost oh man Tommasso is an old friend and I am super psyched to learn about that gig w/Allred! Fuck yeah!

(you can see how good I am at keeping in touch with old friends)

the Snagglepuss book was great, like the Flintstones he did the year before

Russell is writing a few other things now, including a good looking Lone Ranger book

So here's an interesting thing I noticed about this week's new Marvel comics (and I say this with the caveat that I'm looking at these digitally and not in the store, though i'm inclined to believe this holds true for the physical books as well): all of the superhero series releases - though, notably, not the Star Wars books, kiddie books or the presumably earlier cover-finalized miniseries - have been redesigned in honor of Stan Lee's death so that the top of the cover is dominated by a simple, horizontal black band with Lee's years of birth and death. The book's title and issue number have been shunted to the lower left corner with (of course) the Marvel logo. Here's two sample covers so you can get a clear idea what I'm talking about:

http://i.imgur.com/w97POF3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Jq563d7.jpg

Two things jumped immediately to mind when I saw these:

1) - It's amazing how much cleaner and more effective this looks from a graphic design perspective. It also unifies and brands the books in a comprehensive and recognizable way that almost certainly will appeal to OCD weekly comic buyers (are there any other kind?) and people who want to see and clearly display the cover art. Modern comic covers are an unnecessary riot of clutter and extraneous detail; minimizing word balloons, indica, titles and blurbs greatly improves and modernizes them visually.

That said:

2) - For several years now, Marvel has pretty consistently put the names of a book's creative team on the cover, often (as Image generally does, but DC generally does not) including both the first and last names of the creators. I assume the rationale for making the call as to when full names or just last names are used is likely due to space considerations, contractual obligations, name recognition if it helps sell the book (so weird to me that DC just lists "MORRISON" on the front of the new Green Lantern, as if his name isn't the main reason many if not most new readers will buy it), or even (GASP! CHOKE!) editors recognizing that anyone who writes and draws a book deserves to have their complete names on the work they made. I don't really know for sure.

However, with the Death of Stan commemorative redesign, for the first time in a long time there are _no_ creator names on the covers. Just Stan's band, the cover image, the name and issue number, the indelible MARVEL logo and that's it. So there's the most immediate public way that Marvel chose to celebrate Lee's passing: by pulling the names of the people that write and draw their books off the cover.

Excelsior?

It stinks.

Seems especially sucky to have that band at the top of characters/titles that Stan did not co-create.

^ they're doing this again this week as well btw

Rereading Gail Simone's Atom, which I first got into due to this very forum. Representation in comics having come a long way since it was released (on the page at least) some parts now feel very clunky and outside-looking-in; a bigger problem for me this time around is John Byrne's art is absolutley garish, and the colours do it no favours. But I'm getting to the part where tiny aliens fight Cthulhu worshipping pilgrims, and that's still jolly good fun.

there's a 2019 thread