the OFFICIAL comic books discussion thread!!!

[Al]

I'm a sucker so I'm shelling out money for all of it, but thus far the House of M has me much more intrigued. More than likely this is because The New Avengers has rocked my world for the last five months. Luke Cage and Spiderman together at last!

On the other hand, I was heartbroken to see the Blue Beetle bite it, and I want revenge! Even though I hadn't touched a DC comic in many a year, he was my favorite when I first started to collect (during the death of Superman) and has remained so. There's always been a soft spot in my heart for heroes without powers like Batman, Green Arrow, and even second-tier guys like Booster Gold (who I thought was phenomenally crystalized in Countdown). But could they come up with a better name than Infinite Crisis? Please?

Al

[Hucklebubba]

siegeshot said:

I wonder what the ark looked like?!?!

I would imagine it being some sort of sleek hovercraft that could also turn into a huge robot. And go into space, even.

[quote author=poolman board=music thread=1116903328 post=1117146649Or maybe it was alpha and omega rays. Oh lordy, I'm so clever.[/quote]

You're a riot, Alice!

[kylerexpop]

not to beat a monkey or anything, but that's why you should read only stories written by The Morrison. his initial jla: classified is dc fun squared, with talking apes and superhero-eating. yes!

my reflex answer is, of course, bleu. blue hair + vague emo tendencies - smoking = OH EM GEE i love her lol!!!!

but clover does seem like the stronger, better, faster choice. bleu is unreliable, and you just know she's going to be in the typical idiotic "my first real boyfriend is the one so no matter who else i go off with he's the one i run back to and think about all the time." that's a very big personality quirk out here in socal, and i assume elsewhere, so i see it very plainly written in bleu's genetic code. clover seems more capable of genuine relationship and moving on from said relationship(s) if things go bad, but i also think you'd also get more out a relationship with clover.

i can't believe i just wrote that much about blue monday characters. chynna is really hot, though. i took a picture of her with my bond camera and she was like "that's awesome!" and i was like "give the sugar to me, baby."

[TheLuckyOne]

From those cover photos in the back of Blue Monday trades, I'd have to agree- Chynna IS really hot. Though she's also married, I think... bah. Oh well, it'd never work- she likes Pepsi, I'm a Coke man to the end. Sad.

Moving along, new topic for discussion- which is Marvel's better reprint program, Masterworks or Essentials?

For those unaware, Marvel Comics has two programs going for reprinting their older stories. The advantage of Masterworks is that they're (mostly) hardcover, look extremely nice on bookshelves, and are in full color on very durable, glossy paper; the downside is that they only reprint 10 issues at a time and are extremely expensive (with the exception of a few recent softcovers, they're 50 bones each). Essentials, meanwhile, typically reprint about 25-30 issues each and cost between $15-18. Plus, since they hit so many more issues at a time, they're much further along in each character's history, and -- as they're much cheaper to produce -- Marvel is willing to reprint some of their more obscure old books, instead of just Spider-Man and the X-Men. On the downside, they're in black and white, softcover, and on pretty thin, rippable paper.

Call me cheap, but I'm an Essentials guy. Color is nice, but I can live without it if it'll let me get 75 issues for what I'd pay for 10 color ones with Masterworks. Plus, you're never gonna see gems like Howard the Duck or Tomb of Dracula reprinted in Masterworks, no matter how great they were. So I'll take an Essential every time, but I know some people just can't get past the lack of color. Thoughts?

-D

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

Ok, for those who care, here's an update on the three books I've bought and read.

St. Swithin's Day- Good, but extremely short. I would have enjoyed it more if it was longer and the main character more thought out. But as it is, I enjoyed reading it. It was enough to get me interested in Grant Morrison. Anyone have any recommendations for Grant Morrison stuff worth checking out?

Preacher: Gone to Texas- This one was just brilliant, in every sense of the word. I loved the mish-mash of religion, western, violence and pop culture that made up this book. The artwork was excellent; detailed and colourful without distracting readers from the dialogue, which is very smart and funny. I can't wait until I can buy the rest of the books in the series, and there is talk of a Preacher movie off in the distance, which makes me excited too (although I wish I could be involved in the process, I already have ideas about who I would cast).

V For Vendetta- I'm very close to finishing this, and I am really enjoying it. If they stick to the source material, this could be a very interesting film. The artwork matches the chaotic atmosphere of the book very well. I have a feeling that I haven't absorbed everything the book has to offer, though, so I'll be very likely reading it again soon after I finish it.

[TheLuckyOne]

oogieboogieman said:

It was enough to get me interested in Grant Morrison. Anyone have any recommendations for Grant Morrison stuff worth checking out?

Gee, I wonder if Kyle might...


For Morrison stuff, I'd recommend Animal Man and the first half of his run on JLA. A lot of people would tell you New X-Men was great... I suppose it depends on how familiar you are with established characterization, vs. Grant's.

But yeah, Preacher is really outstanding. Starts to drag a bit after the first 3 or 4 books, but definitely pulls it all together for the last one, Alamo. As long as you're able to temporarily set aside your religious outrage and remember that it's fiction -- like Dogma, but way moreso -- excellent stuff. Don't know about that movie, though; they'd have to water it down so much just to clear the MPAA...

-D

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

theluckyone said:

Don't know about that movie, though; they'd have to water it down so much just to clear the MPAA...

Yeah, that's true. But if Sin City and Kill Bill can make it with an R rating despite the extensive violence, swearing, and sex, Preacher could make it with minimal changes made.

From what I've learned, the film is currently in Development Hell, but the actor they have in mind to play Jesse Custer is James Mardsen (Cyclops from the Xmen movies). This doesn't really sit well with me, because he seems too clean-cut for the character.

My casting ideas I mentioned before are pretty much: Michael Madsen, Clancy Brown, or Ron White (for a more authentic Texan feel) for Custer, and Billy Boyd, Callum Blue (Mason from Dead Like Me), or Keith Richards for Cassidy.

Oh, and I'll definitely be checking out Animal Man and JLA, thanks.

[kylerexpop]

animal man and jla are both sterling recommendations. i tend to think morrison's overall run on jla gets a bad rap, just because he goes cosmic towards the end and explodes all over the place. but his story with the daniel incarnation of dream/the sandman is stellar (#22-23), his "crisis times five" and army vs. jla stories are great, and his brainchild "dc one million" (now conveniently collected into one tpb) is actually fantastic and very much a throwback to the zany days of multiple earths and wildly-garbed superheroes. you might just love it.

now that there are two tpbs of "doom patrol" on the shelves, it's worth checking those out as well. "the invisibles" is incredible but might be a little too out-there in a x-files way for you, if you just want some fun comic times.

and if you have a barnes & noble nearby, the 15th anniversary edition of "arkham asylum" is worth picking up not only for the fabulous layered story but also for the inclusion of (a version of) the original script with updated morrison notes and a bunch of other extras. why b&n? because they usually will have an unwrapped copy you can read without paying for. not that i said so.

[kylerexpop]

here's a question i'm a little lost on:

i recommended the new issue of "desolation jones" by warren ellis to a friend, since everyone is going crazy over it. i bought it but haven't read it.

he liked it a lot, and would like some more ellis recommendations.

i don't anything more than the first two tpbs of the authority. what else has ellis done that's worth reading? anyone?

[TheLuckyOne]

Kyle, are you telling me you don't read Planetary? Ellis super-goodness, that is. Spectacular art (by John Cassaday, currently illustrating Astonishing X-Men), and a truly fascinating story that involves explorers of the unknown, and of course the mysterious Fourth Man.

Basically, it's an excuse for Ellis to write homages to a ton of different genres and old stories... so in one issue, for instance, Planetary will be investigating a group of pulp heroes (based on the Shadow [son of the Lone Ranger], Doc Savage, Tarzan, Fu Manchu, etc.), the next issue they'll attend the funeral of a parody of John Constantine, with spoofs of all the DC Vertigo characters (and revealing, in the end, that Constantine just turned into Spider Jeruselam). Oh, and they visit Monster Island from the old Godzilla movies. Plus their biggest opponents are evil versions of the Fantastic Four. I can't really sum up how great the series is here, but trust me- much, much better than The Authority. That'd be my number one Ellis recommendation.

-D

[TheLuckyOne]

oogieboogieman said:

Yeah, that's true. But if Sin City and Kill Bill can make it with an R rating despite the extensive violence, swearing, and sex, Preacher could make it with minimal changes made.

In terms of the violence and sex, agreed; but something that takes half as many liberties as Preacher does with religion will never make it as a major motion picture. When you're dealing with God abandoning heaven, angels snorting coke and using hookers, the bastard child of an angel and a demon being more powerful than God, and, oh yeah, the notion that Christ didn't die on the cross but actually went on to have children (who've been carefully secluded and interbred ever since), you're reeeeeeally pushing the lines of good taste. If you can set that aside and just enjoy the madcap hilarity, it's great fun, but you'll see me cheerfully listening to country music before you see that stuff in a mainstream film. Mark my words.

-D

[Al]

So... I read the new Green Lantern #1 the other day, since it's supposed to be such a big part of IW. Is there any easy way to explain to me how Hal Jordan came back? Last I knew, he went insane, killed all the other Green Lanterns, and tore the universe apart. It seems like a triumphant return would be difficult...

Al

[TheLuckyOne]

You needed to read the Green Lantern: Rebirth miniseries that preceded it. In a nutshell: it was revealed that the classic weakness against yellow objects the rings have is due to an ancient god of fear and chaos (very much like Unicron from the Transformers) named Parallax, who the Guardians eventually captured and imprisoned in the Central Power Battery that powers all GL rings, thousands of years ago. When Sinestro was imprisoned in there as well in recent times, he awoke Parallax and it started to corrupt the greatest, most fearless GL: Hal Jordan. It caused him to go insane and do all that evil stuff, then when Hal became the Spectre, Parallax tried to take control of that. In the process, Hal's spirit was freed, returned to his body, and he defeated Sinestro and banded with the other classic GLs (Guy, John, Kyle, and Kilowog) to imprison Parallax in the Battery again. So now everything's pretty much back to normal. So to speak.

Simple as pie, right?

-D

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

theluckyone said:

oogieboogieman said:

Yeah, that's true. But if Sin City and Kill Bill can make it with an R rating despite the extensive violence, swearing, and sex, Preacher could make it with minimal changes made.

In terms of the violence and sex, agreed; but something that takes half as many liberties as Preacher does with religion will never make it as a major motion picture. When you're dealing with God abandoning heaven, angels snorting coke and using hookers, the bastard child of an angel and a demon being more powerful than God, and, oh yeah, the notion that Christ didn't die on the cross but actually went on to have children (who've been carefully secluded and interbred ever since), you're reeeeeeally pushing the lines of good taste. If you can set that aside and just enjoy the madcap hilarity, it's great fun, but you'll see me cheerfully listening to country music before you see that stuff in a mainstream film. Mark my words.

-D

Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. Chalk that up to me not reading all the books and therefore not knowing just how grand the religious twists are (thanks for ruining the "angels using coke and hookers" part, btw ), and me generally not placing as much of an importance on religion as the majority of the world does. The issues of Christ's children and God leaving Heaven wouldn't be a big deal, as it's touched upon in Dogma, but the other issues you mentioned would be enough to piss off a lot of people. I would be happy even if it was made independently with limited release, but that would be nearly impossible, because the movie would need a large budget.

...sigh. Oh well, on the bright side, a Preacher movie would be loads of fun to make, and I would no matter what, if I choose to carry out my aspirations of being a filmmaker, assuming the project falls through now or is indeed crap.

[TheLuckyOne]

oogieboogieman said:

(thanks for ruining the "angels using coke and hookers" part, btw )

Heh. Don't worry, it's a pretty minor scene, I'm not spoiling it for you. Wild horses couldn't get me to tell you what happens in the final issue, though I will say that it pissed even me off for a while, and that's after having accepted all the liberties Garth took with Christianity through the 65 preceding issues.

oogieboogieman said:

The issues of Christ's children and God leaving Heaven wouldn't be a big deal, as it's touched upon in Dogma,

Ahhh... read book 3, then tell me if what was done in Dogma is even 1/100th as likely to provoke controversy. One of the few times it's fortunate comics have such a low profile in mainstream society...

-D