Bore Comics Thread: Crisis On Infinite Megathreads

[bork]

Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy #5 and Amazing Spider-Man #24:

With these, the clone conspiracy storyline is over....sort of.  There's still a "Clone Conspiracy Omega" follow-up coming out soon.  I liked how this storyline started, but the ending just kind of fizzled out.

To recap, a new company pops up called "New U."  They claim to have a process that can cure anyone of any disease and they can even bring the dead back to life, as clones, who have all of their memories right up until they died.  So we get to see the returns of a whole host of characters, like Jean DeWolfe, Gwen and Captain Stacy, Doctor Octopus, etc. etc.  But it turns out that this company is actually under control of the Jackal and that there's a huge flaw in the process requiring a pill taken daily.  If the pill is missed, the clone becomes a crazy zombie-like creature and we later find out that they can infect regular humans.  Kaine (the Spider-Man clone who was the Scarlet Spider for a while) has also been to alternate earths where he has seen New U team up with Parker Industries and the result unleashes a zombie plague that destroys civilization.

So why would Spider-Man work with the Jackal?  Because (SPOILER TIME!)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

"The Jackal" is really Ben Reilly, the other Peter Parker clone and former Scarlet Spider/Spider-Man.  He was brought back by the original Jackal, tortured to death over and over again, and resurrected to perfect this whole "New U" clone process.  But Ben finally was able to escape and did the same thing to the Jackal, eventually producing a ton of Miles Warren clones and making the real one think he was a clone too by this point.

Ben reveals himself to Peter and offers to team up, even going as far as to want to resurrect Uncle Ben, but unlike in other realities, Peter ends up declining and fights him instead.  Ben then unleashes his clone virus and shit starts getting bad.  It's then up to Spider-Man, Kaine, Spider-Gwen, Silk, and a couple of clones like The Prowler to stop everything.

[close]

The storyline ends with

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The heroes getting the upper hand by using a popular Parker Industries device to transmit some kind of sound that reverses the zombie plague (it was initiated the same way, too).  A lot of clones end up dying, but not all of them.  And in the aftermath:

-Doc Ock fights Ben Reilly and at the end of The Clone Conspiracy #5, it looks like both of them are dead and their bodies disintegrated.

-There's a hidden sub-basement at New U that has a lot of cloned people's original bodies being stored, and some new found process allows them to all be restored.  TOTAL COP-OUT here that lets some of the characters who just "died" come right back again (I.E. The Prowler) like nothing happened.

[close]

Then in Spider-Man #24:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

-We find out that Doc Ock and Ben didn't really die and faked their deaths.  ASM #24 reveals that Ben, whose body was beginning to break down from the virus, was going to transfer his mind into a "perfect clone" that didn't have any imperfections and doesn't need medication as it couldn't get the virus. 

-Doc Ock stops Ben from doing this and it is implied that he has transferred his mind into this body instead (or at least run off with the body) and escaped.

-As all the clones are dying, one of the original Jackal/Miles Warrens realizes he's fine and that means he's the real deal.  He comes to his senses and decides to go after Ben.

-Ben Reilly then quietly slips out and runs away to his safe house, but the Jackal is waiting.

[close]

And here's where it gets stupid:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ben and the Jackal fight and Ben ends up realizing that he has "won" and has beaten the Jackal in that he took the Jackal's own research and perfected it.  He doesn't feel the need to fight anymore and decides to live for himself and blah blah blah WHAT THE FUCK?  The Jackal then blows up the safe house and Ben escapes.  Fire fighters arrive and we hear the Jackal screaming, so he's likely going to come back too.

[close]

So basically from this small exchange, we get something akin to a pro wrestling-style face turn and the new "Jackal" is apparently a good guy again.  He just tried to take over the world and did a whole bunch of bad shit, but he's "come to his senses" now and from solicits we know that he's going to return as the Scarlet Spider.  And this is all just so fucking dumb. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Especially with this being a storyline about clones.  If you have a "perfect clone" that gets mentioned...why not just have him come out of his pod-thing at the end and reveal that he's another Ben Reilly with all the previous one's memories and have him be the Scarlet Spider in an attempt to make amends for what his evil 'brother' did?  Would make a hell of a lot more sense.  But if this instead means Doc Ock gets a new body, I'm also OK with this.  If the clone body is another Peter Parker (we never see its face), maybe this means more Superior Spider-Man and/or Doc Ock pretending to be Peter and taking control of Parker Industries?

[close]

I'd really just like to see Spider-Man get back to his roots, to be honest.  Go back to working for the Daily Bugle and get back with Mary Jane already, then go do street-level super heroey-stuff again.

[bork]

Read it, but it was so long ago that I really don't remember if it was good or not.  I know it got canceled so it may not have had the most satisying ending.

[benjipwns]

Read The Boys and I dunno.

I kinda want some sort of hybrid of it and Checkmate/Planetary/Authority/that sitcom about superhero insurance claims but none of them seem to hit the right balance. Maybe Planetary did, but still I prefer the lower scope of superheroes in the world of The Boys or Powers for example. Or even making them mundane like Top Ten and Gotham Central.

One part that really really really hurt The Boys was all the backstory in terms of explaining how supes came to be and blah blah blah, which sucks because the first explanation of why 9/11 was different worked so well that ultimately spending about a third or more of the issues on all the stupid little details to set up the characters never worked as well as other series where they've rarely gone beyond like "hey this dude, he's our Superman but we can't call him that but he's basically Superman you got that? and this guy? Captain America but not, clear?" and so on.

There's also the fact that for like 55 issues The Boys are this low rung, Carrie on Homeland season one type shit, and then suddenly they're in the center of a world changing plot and then it just ends.

Maybe just most of these comic writers outside of Greg Rucka simply aren't good enough to pull off a series where humans and their entities/weapons/etc. deal with the emergence of superhumans from the point of view of the humans, in a non-openly comedic fashion. (Wonder Woman even saw a way to pull this mostly off.) Even Warren Ellis always seemed to find himself getting lost in there being all these secret conspiracies and crap angles that dud when revealed instead of playing it straight, Planetary being arguably saved because it ended right at this point. Maybe The Wild Storm will turn out well.

Going to shift over to picking up on Rebirth stuff probably soon, I was following along early on and like New 52 decided to just let it pile up instead, I thought I had re-learned my lesson after reading along with the Bat-Gordon mess.

I think the final Rebirth issue is coming out soon too. Only two years after they started this?

EDIT: Forgot Rucka's the one doing Lazarus. It's doing the same trickle out rather than info dump the world on you thing outside of the backup material letting you just "buy in" the world as presented.

[benjipwns]

DC Universe: Rebirth Special #1
May 2016

Batman Rebirth #1
June 2016

Superman Rebirth #1
June 2016

Batwoman Rebirth #1
February 2017

Justice League of America Rebirth #1
February 2017

when Batwoman has been in Detective Comics for over six months now

how are Marvel and D.C. so bad at scheduling these, when they've both done it multiple times in the past and know what not to do...Wonder Woman and Hawkman were ruined by misaligned scheduling related to the original Crisis over thirty years ago that they spent at least the next decade trying to rewrite and yet D.C. was still printing New 52 based books this year

spoiler (click to show/hide)

they should do this with the film universes to see if the "normies" notice

[close]

[benjipwns]

Marvel Comics first announced the launch of Marvel NOW! in July 2012. Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso described it as "the next chapter in the ongoing saga of the Marvel Universe." Alonso further explained, "From October through February, we’ll provide at least one great reason for readers—old, lapsed or new—to go into a comic store each week: a new issue #1, featuring an exciting new creative team and driving concept, that’s an easy entry-point into the Marvel Universe." Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada stressed that unlike DC Comics' The New 52, it is not a reboot, but a shifting of the Marvel Universe following the events of Avengers vs. X-Men. Quesada explained that there will be "a lot of changes to the character status quos, alter egos, costumes, creator shifts, design shifts, the way that we do our covers, digital shifts and the way we start delivering our books"

In September 2013, Marvel announced a next phase of Marvel NOW! in the aftermath of the "Infinity" storyline, (which led into the "Inhumanity" storyline) called "All-New Marvel NOW!" which will see new series being launched and will also provide entry issue to existing series.

Marvel NOW! officially ended in May 2015 at the start of the Secret Wars storyline, which saw the end of the Marvel Universe. Following the conclusion of Secret Wars, the universe is scheduled to be relaunched again in All-New All-Different Marvel.[9] Alonso stated that the relaunches are reminiscent of the North American television season, explaining "I think that the comics industry -- certainly, we are -- slowly working into a season model that's not too unlike what we see in our favorite cable TV shows: a seasonal model that offers accessible entry points for new readers and is respectful of long-term fans. We did Marvel NOW! and All-New Marvel NOW!, which were both two very successful campaigns. And [All-New All-Different Marvel] is the latest campaign."[10]

In May 2016, Marvel announced the return of Marvel NOW! following the conclusion of the "Civil War II" storyline.[11] Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort stated that the relaunch is timed to coincide with "Civil War II" as means to "refresh and revitalize" the titles explaining, "One of the things a big event story is judged on, rightly or wrongly, is what kind of an impact it has on the Marvel Universe in its aftermath. That just becomes a condition of these big event stories: what is it at the end that changes the landscape?"

at least DC is binding and branding the trades different, last time i looked i couldn't tell the marvel ones apart without checking the publishing notes

[benjipwns]

 

[benjipwns]

As if Lazarus' current delay hasn't been bad enough, it's now becoming an indefinitely extended one because the artist wants away from it and Rucka won't continue without him.

Then rather than do more backstory about the world stuff in the back of the issue like normal Rucka instead writes a four page rant about how evil Trump is.

Speaking of things that are taking forever. The Dark Knight III is actually going to finish this month, even after they added another issue. But now Miller says that Azzarello screwed it up by rewriting it and so he's going to do a fourth series that's the actual real conclusion to the universe.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I assume the interesting parts of The Master Race along with the stuff that has been subtly retconning Strikes Again are what Miller hates about it.

[close]

I started Outcast and read up to where it's at, talk about decompressed storytelling. I guess much like The Walking Dead it also has a TV series that has similar plot beats and points shared with the book but is otherwise doing its own thing. Has good reviews though like TWD I'm not sure I want an alternate version of the same thing enough to watch it.

I liked Injection quite a bit more, too bad it's only got eleven issues so far.

[bork]

Recent comic musings:

-Inhumans Vs. X-Men (quietly?) ended.  The big takeaways here are that the terrigen clouds that were creating Inhumans and killing mutants were purged from the atmosphere.  Emma Frost using her powers to manipulate everyone into thinking that Black Bolt killed Cyclops was revealed and she is now a villain again, wearing a weird fusion her own clothes and Cyclops'. 

-The fallout from this is that the Inhuman 'royal family' is going to leave Earth and go into space.  They get their own series called Royals.  The other nu-Inhumans will keep doin' thangs on Earth.  The X-Men are reorganizing into various teams again.  Old Man Logan is quickly becoming the 616 Wolverine and will be in multiple books.  Not sure why when there's also X-23 and Sabertooth, but X-23 at least is going solo and will not be in any team books going forward.  Also everyone except a few people now think that Magneto is dead.

-All-New X-Men #19, the last issue of the series, finally reveals why the original five time-displaced X-Men can't go home.  Previous issues already revealed that Beast has gone back several times.  He takes the rest back, using magic he learned, and shows the team why- There's ANOTHER team of original X-Men already there, doing everything that they would have.  They have essentially been replaced.  The theory presented is that time "righted itself" and basically filled in the void left by their disappearance or that they are from what is now an alternate universe that was erased (from Secret Wars?) or just inaccessible to them for some reason.  So basically...they're all here to stay.  They are going to be apart from the other X-Men teams though.

-Superman.  I'm still reading stuff and catching up, but this is some head-scratching shit.  So a quick recap- Alongside the New 52 Superman and Lois, older versions of them, revealed to the pre-New 52 versions, also popped up in the DCU, with a kid named John.  After New 52 Supes and Lois (who became Superwoman, then was killed off in issue #1, lol) both died, the older versions stepped in to replace them and John is Superboy.  A recent storyline also introduced Clark Kent.  Like...he's Clark, without powers, and apparently was somehow the real deal.  (Pre New 52 Superman was not acting as a reporter and is a farmer)  It is then later revealed that he's actually Mister Mxyzptlk, who was being held prisoner by the mysterious hooded fellow who has shown up in various DC books and kidnapped individuals, then imprisoned them somewhere.  He is implied to be a Watchman.  Mister Mxyzptlk then does something that erases Clark and Lois's minds and makes them forget about John, but in the end, some weird shit happens and the New 52 versions are brought back and then merged with the pre new 52 versions, combining both timelines together and restoring their memories of John, righting the universe, and WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE?  BEATS ME.  STOP DOING THIS SHIT, DC.  FUCKING STOP.

[benjipwns]

I still don't understand why there was anything wrong with having two Supermen from a "we need to make it easy on readers" standpoint. The non-explanation they had before Convergence made more sense, that the older one and Lois and son were somehow abandoned into the new universe. And so you had a wise old hand and the younger inexperienced one.

But they had already written themselves into a corner with the whole everyone knows CLARK IS SUPERMAN plot that they suddenly dropped and that none of the other books (like Justice League) acknowledged as having happened.

It's funny that they have no problem with clusterfucking every other book in some attempt to make the canon explained as coherent (even though it's always BECAUSE MAGIC), but Batman and Green Lantern's canon goes untouched to where they just handwave any inconsistencies away because they're the lone books they've let just go on with extended plots without having to grind everything to a halt and reboot every five years. Hell, they wrote the New 52 launch around Grant Morrison's ongoing Batman plot.

Actually, that's the cause of a lot of these Superman problems. Since Morrison was writing the "five years in the past" Superman book while everyone else was supposed to be writing "future" Superman books only Grant didn't bother to tell anyone his plot wrapped itself up in a neat bow and nobody needed to actually pay attention to it to write the later set Superman stuff. So you had two years of plots starting and stopping as each writer bailed off the book thinking they had to stick with Grant's canon since he got the canon pass on Batman Incorporated. (Which Snyder ignored anyway because DC had already decided to bring back Damian along with discarding Morrison in general to where Multiversity went from a planned major event to being a quality side-show to Countdown level garbage like Trinity War and Convergence.) Then when they actually seemed to be connecting the books back together they scratched every storyline in progress each time to restart a new one including his whole dating Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, Johns had gotten the clout to also say screw it and ignore everything for Justice League which let him write an actual "scale" event that all the other books ignored despite being a far superior and logical vehicle for "rebooting" the universe than Convergence was. (Convergence's villain for six of the eight issues is still by far the most baffling thing I've seen in comics in decades.)

I still don't think there's an actual plan here for using the Watchmen. They just needed somebody plausibly powerful enough yet also someone who doesn't need to actually appear in the books other than making secret little name drops. But has to be a big name they can keep tossing out. They've weakened or turned into a joke every one else they've got on that level (Anti-Monitor, Superboy Prime, Earth 3, anything to do with magic/The Rot, etc.) and they clearly aren't interested in Morrison offering them The Empty Hand/The Gentry on a silver platter because nobody will recognize it whereas in a couple years they can do some dumb thing where Superman fights Dr. Manhattan in some crossover and it reboots him and probably Wonder Woman and maybe even The Flash yet again.

Or the DCEU implodes and Johns gets semi-fired and nobody has to fit Cyborg into things anymore and we can bring back John Jon'zz and oh wait, that was actually the most baffling and amazing thing about the New 52. Stormwatch-Grifter-Hellspont...which was the main plot of the Superman book for like three issues before that got bailed on suddenly too!

Darko do I love nerd-whining about DC's editorial from Flashpoint forward.

And this was the company that thought they had botched post-Infinite Crisis somehow when it has all the storylines everyone looks back fondly on now like 52, the New Krypton saga, Sinistro Corps and the explosion of the light spectrum, Hush/Red Hood plus Morrison's Batman, etc.

[benjipwns]

 

[bork]

I really liked the pre New 52 Superman/Lois/John stuff.  Especially when it was this Superman hiding himself from everyone and doing things on his own.  That was fun as well and the most I was interested in the character in a long time.  Now after this storyline, I'm not sure if I give a shit again.

[chronovore]

First two hits are free: New Brian Wood social comic PDFs
https://www.darkhorse.com/Company/BriggsPreview

[bork]

X-Men Gold #1- Hey, wow, this really is a return to form, as promised.  Classic-style superhero stuff with a team of more recognizable X-Men characters.  Living back in the mansion in NYC.  They're back to humans fearing them for being different and all that stuff, with the goal being to change their minds via good deeds.  Good first start.

Royals #1- The InHumans equivalent to X-Men Gold #1.  Not as good.  This is the (former) mostly-royal family going into space on a quest to find out more about the themselves and blah blah blah.  Props to the creative team for the much-needed character redesigns, although some may not like how "anime" they look now.  But it just really didn't grab me that much. 

[bork]

Marvel's big Secret Empire event has started.  This is the result of all the build for the past year or two, with Captain America as a dictator-like head of Hydra.  So how did it come this?

Previously:

-The Red Skull, who was dead before, was brought back a few years ago.  This version of him is cloned from as he was during WWII, so he's much more ruthless.
-The Red Skull gets a piece of the deceased Professor Xavier's brain and has it added to himself, giving him psychic powers.
-Captain America loses the super soldier-serum inside his body, which ages him to that of an 80 or 90 year old man.
-At some point, a cosmic cube is taken and given sentient life as a magical little girl named Kobik.  Yes, really.
-Said magical little girl's cosmic cube powers are used to create a new kind of supervillain prison by Maria Hill and SHIELD.  It's a small town where everything seems like it's out of a 1950s sitcom.  The villains are changed to think that they are regular people.
-Some of the villains realize they have been mind-fucked and plot to change things back to normal.  They succeed.
-At some point, The Red Skull 'befriends' Kobik and makes her think that it will help Captain America if she fucks with his mind.
-During the event where the villains are getting their memories back and breaking out of the prison-town, Kobik restores Captain America back to his youthful self.  It is at this point that his memories (and it appears, part of reality along with them) get altered.
-Steve's memories of the past are now that he was recruited by Hydra and trained to be a spy by them.  He still becomes Captain America, but is secretly working for Hydra.
-Hydra are not the Nazis and have different goals/beliefs during this time.
-Present-day Steve is now working for the Red Skull, secretly, and doing thangs behind the scenes to further the Hydra agenda, including killing people outright.  Meanwhile, the Red Skull is building up the Hydra ranks.
-However, Steve has his own agenda.  He is told to kill Dr. Erik Selvig, but instead hides him away in a safe house.
-Kobik has been hid away and 'protected' by the Thunderbolts, who were led by The Winter Soldier.  During this series, she attempts to alter Bucky's past as well, but fails.

Secret Empire stuff:

-In Uncanny Avengers, the Red Skull is defeated and Beast operates on his brain to remove the psychic abilities.
-At the end of the current Thunderbolts run, Baron Zemo pops up with some villains and gets some Thunderbolts to turn villain again.
-They beat the shit out of Bucky and Kobik is 'killed'.  She turns back into the cosmic cube and shards fly all over the place.
-Bucky is tied to a plane, with a bomb, and sent out into the sky to die.  The plane explodes and this being a comic book, he's probably still alive or will come back.
-Dr. Selvig, who (I guess?) created Kobik, does something that helps her to turn back into magical little girl again, then kills himself.  Uh?
-Steve has continued doing thangs and has set himself up to become the supreme commander of SHIELD.  He purposefully gets the alien Chitauri to come invade Earth. 
-In space, Alpha Flight, led by Captain Marvel, protect Earth from threats and also have a giant planet-spanning barrier shield up.  This is disabled by what appears to be a suicide bomber from Hydra, but is really Steve fucking with them.  He re-activates the the shield and cuts off Earth from everyone in space, effectively locking out Alpha Flight, Captain Marvel, and The Guardians Of The Galaxy.  And the Chitauri are still around.
-Steve confronts The Red Skull, reveals that he's not working for him anymore, and throws him out a window onto some rocks, killing him.
-Steve is given full power over the military because of all the shit going on and then reveals himself as the new supreme leader of Hydra.

*Whew*

Now for the dumbest part of this- The Kobik-altered past of Captain America is made further fucked-up when it is revealed that Steve was originally an agent of Hydra, trained since childhood, and that the Nazis won World War II.  What changed things is that the Americans found the cosmic cube and used it to alter reality to win the war, making Steve think that he was a good guy.  Steve, back in the WWII era, is taken to a super-duper-secret Hydra stronghold in Japan and shown visions of all of this and the 'altered' future.  He is put into some magical pool that will prevent him from being completely altered and in the future he will be restored to his full-on Hydra self, which is where the story is now.

So what Marvel has done is basically retconned Captain America to have always been a super-villain from the beginning.

Comics


Rather than having gone through all that dumb shit, I don't understand why they didn't simply have The Red Skull use his psychic powers to fuck with Captain America's mind and turn him heel.  They need to keep this stuff way more simple and stop it with these convoluted messes of storylines.

[chronovore]

Comics

Pretty much, yeah.

Shit, I'm mainly following Marvel through MCU and whatever Fox puts the X-Men through. It's far less convoluted than that.

Thanks for the write-up. Now I'm not compelled to follow up on the comics.

[bork]

The actual event itself might end up fun.  It's the build-up that was just... .  Although I did like the Steve Rogers: Captain America series that has led up to this.  Asshole-Secretly-Evil Steve makes for some good reading.

Anyway, I'm glad that Marvel is going to take a break from all this MAJOR STORYLINE EVENT!!!!! stuff for a while after this one ends.

[chronovore]

The actual event itself might end up fun.  It's the build-up that was just... .  Although I did like the Steve Rogers: Captain America series that has led up to this.  Asshole-Secretly-Evil Steve makes for some good reading.

Anyway, I'm glad that Marvel is going to take a break from all this MAJOR STORYLINE EVENT!!!!! stuff for a while after this one ends.

 It seems like Marvel is running around with its head cut off. They want to blame problems on their diversity efforts, but the problem lies with the lack of diversity in their own creative staff. Their own tone deaf ideas of what diversity is. In many ways they haven't graduated from naming Heroes "Black Lightning" and "Marvel Girl," which in the current political environment sound as bad as "Optimal Oriental" or "Captain Taco, Defender of La Raza."

 With very few exceptions you've got the same problem Marvel has always had:  White dudes writing about what they think the problem is, rather than the people who are suffering under the problem.

[bork]

My issue with the diversity thing is them just adding 'clones' or replacing existing characters outright.  Like...why do they feel the need to have younger/different gendered/race versions of the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor etc.?

How about NEW CHARACTERS?  That's why Ms. Marvel is awesome (despite using an old name, lolz). 

I also like how they killed Wolverine, but then just replaced him with Old Man Logan, on top of X-23 being the new Wolverine, Daken still around, and then Jimmy Hudson, the Ultimate universe Wolverine, also just popped up in the 616 universe.

[Tasty]

I'm triggered by bork's use of "John" instead of his actual name, "Jon."

Speaking of, Superman has been the best book since Rebirth started and still is despite the #COMICS! shit with Mytzlplk and unification or whatever. In fact that entire arc was pretty clever and had very strong writing, but of course if you just read a description of events it sounds like kooky bullshit. And I think the uniting of the Supermen was necessary, but I say that as someone who VASTLY preferred the pre-New 52 Supes to the post-New 52 one.

I need to pick up Super Sons. Jon and Damian interacting basically writes itself and it's always great.

Close second for best post-Rebirth book is Detective Comics, even though it's lost my main man Tim Drake. Some really good character writing and interactions there.

[bork]

I'm triggered by bork's use of "John" instead of his actual name, "Jon."

It took me a second to realize that you're responding to an old post. 

[Tasty]

Haven't been here in a while!

Multiversity went from a planned major event to being a quality side-show to Countdown level garbage like Trinity War and Convergence.

Trinity War was pretty cool, and was nowhere near "Countdown level garbage."

Meanwhile, Johns had gotten the clout to also say screw it and ignore everything for Justice League which let him write an actual "scale" event that all the other books ignored despite being a far superior and logical vehicle for "rebooting" the universe than Convergence was. (Convergence's villain for six of the eight issues is still by far the most baffling thing I've seen in comics in decades.)

That just mirrored how Final Crisis would have been a much better way to reboot into New 52 than Flashpoint, lol.

And this was the company that thought they had botched post-Infinite Crisis somehow when it has all the storylines everyone looks back fondly on now like 52, the New Krypton saga, Sinistro Corps and the explosion of the light spectrum, Hush/Red Hood plus Morrison's Batman, etc.

Haha, yeah. Was a much simpler time.

To be honest I never hated New 52 much and was usually its defender, despite the treatment of some of my chars. It mostly got a pass on me for Snyder's Batman run, and Gleason/Tomasi's Batman & Robin (who are now doing Superman, coincidence?!?) Forever Evil was fun. Grayson was excellent. DCYou was a glorious, wacky trainwreck that I wouldn't have minded them keeping around for a while. (Gordon as Batman should have gotten more than just one arc IMO.)

Even still, Rebirth is definitely a step up. It's like they realized "Hey we should actually care about this shit." Lol.

[bork]

It's funny; I think rebirth is better...

...but I haven't really been reading much from DC since this year began.

[benjipwns]

I read Invincible finally since it's ending this year so it was funny when I started reading Batman post-Rebirth where I left off and it suddenly turned into the same kind of issues full of mindless violence with Batman and others just getting the shit beat out of them for like four issues straight. Though nobody's face was ripped off or body torn in two or eye punched out yet I thought we were getting close. I'm still not even sure why because it didn't slow Bane down any which was the stated goal.

Catwoman plotline was kinda hokey and abandoned way too fast. Also Bruce being a jerk to Gordon randomly.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Best part, the Robin's (sans-Tim) take Bruce to Batman Burger and he starts to eat his hamburger with a knife and fork because he was a rich only child half-raised by Alfred.

[close]

I really liked Thief of Thieves and read that like everything else Robert Kirkman touches it's also getting a TV show. Though he left the comic halfway through to give it to Andy Diggle (The Losers) but you don't even really notice the hand-off.

Read the three Snowpiercer books (two and three are collected together) and liked the second train's story much more than the first (which was what the movie was based on) although I'm pretty sure you can't just put chains on a trains "tires" and drive it across snow/ice like it's a truck. Also for a series that's all like "HAHA CHECK OUT THIS CRAZY TWIST!!! WOAH HUH!" the best one is entirely mundane yet so obvious from you know, having seen trains in real life and stuff.

I'll spoil it incase anyone has read the books and still doesn't know what I'm thinking of but wants to or just doesn't care about being spoiled:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Trains often have engines on both ends since they can't turn around and stuff on the tracks.

The plot builds up how the bridge they're headed towards is out, so they just switch engines and leave the dude flying above behind low on fuel.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The best part of this is probably that the train is run on a regime based around propaganda about planning for running into the other train (Snowpiercer) but now they actually have another train to run into when they split the train, and someone points this out but is ignored like everyone else sensible.

[close]

[close]

[chronovore]

I didn't know INVINCIBLE was still going, thanks for letting us know it's ending soon. I'll likely pick up the trade paperbacks and finish it off with a nice re-read of what I've got in-hand.

[Purple Filth]

Read that Secret Empire spoiler and went   

How long until all of this is retconned.


Also is Tim Drake back yet or still imprisoned?

[benjipwns]

I didn't know INVINCIBLE was still going, thanks for letting us know it's ending soon. I'll likely pick up the trade paperbacks and finish it off with a nice re-read of what I've got in-hand.

It's ending with issue #144*. The last 12 issues are the final arc. There will be 12 Ultimate Collection Hardcovers. 24 Collected TPB's. Up to 10 and up to 23 are out respectively. Penultimate TPB just came out this month. There's also giant hardcovers called The Complete Library that collect like 24+ issues each but one hasn't come out in five years and that was up to #70.

The Ultimate Collection's actually seem like normal collected editions because it's Kirkman so what's normally six issues he does in twelve.

*How The Walking Dead got 30 issues ahead despite starting almost a year later I have no idea.

[Tasty]

Now for the dumbest part of this- The Kobik-altered past of Captain America is made further fucked-up when it is revealed that Steve was originally an agent of Hydra, trained since childhood, and that the Nazis won World War II.  What changed things is that the Americans found the cosmic cube and used it to alter reality to win the war, making Steve think that he was a good guy.  Steve, back in the WWII era, is taken to a super-duper-secret Hydra stronghold in Japan and shown visions of all of this and the 'altered' future.  He is put into some magical pool that will prevent him from being completely altered and in the future he will be restored to his full-on Hydra self, which is where the story is now.

So what Marvel has done is basically retconned Captain America to have always been a super-villain from the beginning.

Comics

What the fuck, this is even stupider. They had like two easy outs here and they chose the stupider harder-to-retcon-easily one just to say "Fuck everyone who thought we weren't serious about this stupid plot twist."

Read that Secret Empire spoiler and went   

How long until all of this is retconned.

Well they just announced "Marvel Legacy" AKA Marvel Rebirth, so...

Also is Tim Drake back yet or still imprisoned?

Still imprisoned. Last shown (IIRC) at the start of the Superman Reborn storyline in Superman #18 (March 1, 2017.)





Hopefully Batman/Flash: The Button starts to resolve things there... But it's only been a few months.

[benjipwns]

There's no way you're convincing me they have anything that will make sense, let alone work out of this Watchmen/Two Supermen?!?!?/THREE JOKERS EVERYBODY FORGOT THIS/Mister OZ *WINK WINK*/Flashpoint Universe mess you've made, Geoff "Tasty Meat" Johns.

You didn't even have six issues worth of plot for Justice League vs. Suicide Squad. And Eclipso was a stupid villain, not an iconic one.

[benjipwns]

Oh and the Superman Reborn rumor is basically what you'd expect.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

They're erasing the New 52 sorta. It's just stuff that happened in everyones past...sorta. We're back to what time would have been had those years passed normally before Flashpoint. And Superman did this...somehow because of his other son, you know the one he left in the Phantom Zone a decade ago? And the Eradicator I think? Maybe the other Supermen from that time he died? Except for Batman obvious because he has a canon shield because it screws up the Robins ages. But just move the stuff around so it works okay? Clark and Lois have been married ever since we saw them get married way back in the 90s. Shut up, Dan DiDio is taking all my artists away for his stupid thing that's going to die in a year. And I also have to deal with this fucking disaster of a movie slate now.

And the semi-okay part:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Darkseid is back. He and the New Gods never died. The Darkseid War was the real start of "Rebirth" after all. Just consider that entire run to be Justice League Rebirth.

[close]

[close]

In a lot of ways, it's what they should have done over a year ago and said were the intentions but I guess Johns was the only one who actually did want to do it, and now that he's gotten power it's happening but there's no way he's going to find a way to tie this together.

[Tasty]

Three Jokers was dumb but the lack of follow up there is due to Johns being super fucking busy.

Just like what happened to his sublime Shazam run.

I'm not convinced they have a solid plan for the Watchmen stuff but I dig it on a meta level. It'll probably devolve into Manhattan punching Supes or some shit but I'm enjoying the tidbits they've been teasing out here and there.

Two Superman? Nonsense. It's one Superman now - the best version.

I don't even know who Eclipso is... *hands in DC fanboy card despite spending like a hundred+ dollars on DC Comics since Rebirth started*

[benjipwns]

Two Superman? Nonsense. It's one Superman now - the best version.

if that summary out of C2E2 is true

 

[Tasty]

Oh and the Superman Reborn rumor is basically what you'd expect.

They're erasing the New 52 sorta. It's just stuff that happened in everyones past...sorta. We're back to what time would have been had those years passed normally before Flashpoint.

This was confirmed in DC Universe Rebirth #1. Wally kept going on about how 10 years was "stolen" from the heroes (among other things.) Once he said that everyone basically assumed the event was going to somehow reintegrate pre-Flashpoint things. The biggest tip of the hat came in Convergence/Lois & Clark when post-Crisis Supes popped up in New 52 Land, proving all that shit did happen and still could exist.

I took Superman Reborn as a "localized" reintigration specific to Supes, not a larger one for the whole universe as IO9 and others have said. Basically just Superman's two histories have been unified, but it does pave the way for a later, larger-scale integration/rewrite.

And Superman did this...somehow because of his other son, you know the one he left in the Phantom Zone a decade ago?

No, who do you mean?!

And the semi-okay part:
Darkseid is back. He and the New Gods never died.

They never do. I think that's the one constant of the DCU haha.

The Darkseid War was the real start of "Rebirth" after all. Just consider that entire run to be Justice League Rebirth.

It's basically Geoff Jonhs: Rebirth, lol, stretching back to his The Flash: Rebirth run.

[Tasty]

Two Superman? Nonsense. It's one Superman now - the best version.

if that summary out of C2E2 is true

 

[benjipwns]

Chris Kent, Zod's kid that they adopted. Though Mon-El was supposed to come back before too.

Chris Kent was in The Multiversity which is ultracanon because it takes place in our real multiverse. It says so right in the one issue.

The New Gods had never died before, that's why Death of the New Gods and Final Crisis were supposed to be the two-part epic and the...FINAL Crisis. And this will now be my two-part loser rant.

But then Jim Starlin was told he had to follow Countdown instead of the other way around since DiDio loved it ("52 done right!") even though all of it takes place with completely random characters in nonsensical places...AND THE NEW GODS EXCEPT LIKE TWO AREN'T EVEN IN IT. Which is why Death of the New Gods makes zero sense in terms of the core mystery (Starlin started it before he knew what order people had to be killed off...which turned out to be not any of them) and Darkseid and Orion die in their long prophesied battle (Morrison has been obsessed with this, it's in JLA a lot, it's in the very first issue of New Gods too) and Superman just hangs out and watches it all rather than does anything. (Oh, and the "villain" reveals that all that stuff that happened Infinite Crisis, Alex Luthor, so on, that was all secretly him as part of his big plot to...just let things happen...while Metron watches?)

Even though they've been hiding in human bodies all the way back to Seven Soldiers because someone was already killing them off back then but they didn't have their own book to die in and Death of the New Gods wasn't planned yet but Final Crisis was. (I assume Morrison was just going to say they finally had the war and Darkseid won and someone said HEY WE CAN DO A MINISERIES FOR THIS BUT FUCK IT UP.) Then Orion and the other Apokolips New Gods have to die again in Final Crisis (Mister Miracle is killed in Seven Soldiers leaving all the New Genesis New Gods dead...except Mister Miracle is an escape artist) so the plot makes sense and Darkseid can win (he doesn't in Death of the New Gods because he can't win before Final Crisis) and bring about the end of the Fourth World. Except Mister Miracle is alive meaning the anti-life equation can be resisted, and Darkseid can be killed (by Batman because natch) and then as a response try to take the whole multiverse down with him but Superman is Superman so of course he can survive the end of the multiverse and be able to wish for a happy ending.

It's like you noted above, if they had thought ahead and they had the time because Morrison was in charge of it, Final Crisis could have rebooted us into New 52. But they decided at some point to actually reboot the universe, but not totally, and then somewhere else decided to stop everything and find a way to go back. I can't imagine they commissioned Morrison to write The Multiversity AND a full sequel to it along with creating that whole map of the multiverse if they had no intention of setting down something regarding the multiverse to use like the Earth 2 book did.

Now they're basically doing for Superman what Morrison did with Batman originally. It's all canon. All of it. Somehow, in some way it happened. And now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if The Button is going to do that for The Flash since it sounds from having read the first Batman issue of it and piecing it together with Supes and this general idea like they might just be going back and erasing Flashpoint from having happened or at least from having been universe altering.

And then Green Lantern is such a mess anyway and nobody cares about Wonder Woman so they'll just tidy those two up somewhere. And I don't even remember what's going on in Aquaman but I imagine they're going to do something to make him more like the movie version. And everyone else will just go along being rebooted on the fly like they have been for years. The only annoying part is everyone redoes the origins, I think Oliver Queen has had like six new origins and backgrounds and the Teen Titans keep refounding themselves and starting over in their relationships so they all hate each other to start and then randomly killing some new guy SO YOU KNOW THERE'S STAKES EXCEPT NOT FOR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS YOU KNOW AND OH WHOOPS WE'RE USING THESE CHARACTERS IN THE OTHER BOOKS CAN YOU HOLD ON A BIT.

I thought I had loved previous Titans nonsense but my favorite really was New 52 when they spun off The Ravagers and then that series just like ended in the middle of the story and then they rebooted the Titans series again and were like none of that stuff happened okay and forget what they all did in the other books too?

I kinda liked how they did the Titans -> Outsiders, Young Justice -> Titans swap way back in the day when they realized they needed to bump up both teams finally. Oh shit, that wound up collapsing into Countdown though, maybe Dick Grayson is the true villain of the DC Universe.

Long story short, JSA was the best, it's never coming back and neither is Checkmate, even though JLvSS referenced them both. They're dead benji. DEAD. REAL DEAD. (And they were too, Hal Jordan all let them age in Zero Hour and they mostly did die and haven't come back. And Mr. Terrific was so black they banished him to Earth 2 (and the future?) and made him randomly disappear in the middle of the plot, and none of the rest of the main cast of Checkmate was seen again except for Amanda Waller after Booster Gold ended. That was a good book too...man, Flashpoint, fuck you.)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tho I kinda liked the "World of Flashpoint" which we could now put on one of those unmarked Earths in Morrison's map!!!!

[close]

[benjipwns]

 

[benjipwns]

ha looking at wikipedia to see who was behind New 52 i forgot all the stuff like how they couldn't tell George Perez anything about Superman's backstory (were the Kent's alive, what's his relationship with Lois, etc.) but expected him to write the character as if he'd been around for five years, fired and then rehired gail simone, had a bunch of people leave before their runs even started because editors wanted to change everything and then all the weird batwoman stuff that eventually left her non-canon until she came back with Rebirth in Detective Comics.

[Tasty]

Except Mister Miracle is alive meaning the anti-life equation can be resisted, and Darkseid can be killed (by Batman because natch) and then as a response try to take the whole multiverse down with him but Superman is Superman so of course he can survive the end of the multiverse and be able to wish for a happy ending.

Yup, Final Crisis was a classic Morrison headtrip. Which is to say not super great. Hence my preference for Infinite Crisis.

Now they're basically doing for Superman what Morrison did with Batman originally. It's all canon. All of it. Somehow, in some way it happened. And now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if The Button is going to do that for The Flash since it sounds from having read the first Batman issue of it and piecing it together with Supes and this general idea like they might just be going back and erasing Flashpoint from having happened or at least from having been universe altering.

I wouldn't say "all of it," it's clearly just post-COIE stuff. The problem with Morrison is he was dredging up shit like Batman of Zur-En-Arrh and other stuff from the Silver Age literally no one except him cared about.

the Teen Titans keep refounding themselves and starting over in their relationships so they all hate each other to start and then randomly killing some new guy SO YOU KNOW THERE'S STAKES EXCEPT NOT FOR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS YOU KNOW AND OH WHOOPS WE'RE USING THESE CHARACTERS IN THE OTHER BOOKS CAN YOU HOLD ON A BIT.

I thought I had loved previous Titans nonsense but my favorite really was New 52 when they spun off The Ravagers and then that series just like ended in the middle of the story and then they rebooted the Titans series again and were like none of that stuff happened okay and forget what they all did in the other books too?

Both Teen Titans were dismal and Ravagers slightly less so. The first N52 TT with Lobdell writing was a fucking trainwreck.

I kinda liked how they did the Titans -> Outsiders, Young Justice -> Titans swap way back in the day when they realized they needed to bump up both teams finally. Oh shit, that wound up collapsing into Countdown though, maybe Dick Grayson is the true villain of the DC Universe.

Well they finally "killed" him in Forever Evil, isn't that enough for you?!

Long story short, JSA was the best, it's never coming back and neither is Checkmate, even though JLvSS referenced them both. They're dead benji. DEAD. REAL DEAD. (And they were too, Hal Jordan all let them age in Zero Hour and they mostly did die and haven't come back. And Mr. Terrific was so black they banished him to Earth 2 (and the future?) and made him randomly disappear in the middle of the plot, and none of the rest of the main cast of Checkmate was seen again except for Amanda Waller after Booster Gold ended. That was a good book too...man, Flashpoint, fuck you.)

Aaaaand you lost me again.

Tho I kinda liked the "World of Flashpoint" which we could now put on one of those unmarked Earths in Morrison's map!!!!

Possibly the only truly neat thing to come out of Multiversity.

Edit- Wait, New 52 is clearly Earth-1 and pre-New 52 seems to be Earth-0.

HE PLANNED IT FROM THE START!!!11

Edit 2- Nope I read that wrong, Earth-1 is the graphic novel-verse and Earth-0 is the current DCU.

[Tasty]

ha looking at wikipedia to see who was behind New 52 i forgot all the stuff like how they couldn't tell George Perez anything about Superman's backstory (were the Kent's alive, what's his relationship with Lois, etc.) but expected him to write the character as if he'd been around for five years, fired and then rehired gail simone, had a bunch of people leave before their runs even started because editors wanted to change everything and then all the weird batwoman stuff that eventually left her non-canon until she came back with Rebirth in Detective Comics.

I wasn't aware of the Batwoman thing. She was non-canon? I can't believe that.

Also yes, everyone realized Superman was a mess pretty much from the start.

[Joe Molotov]

Providence is finally finished, and it was a wild ride. The Old Gods Humanity

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kinda weird/disappointing that Robert Black became a footnote in the final chapters, and the last issue was completely centered on the Courtyard/Neonomicon characters and Babby Cthulhu. He was only mentioned through his commonplace book, which turned out to be useless and pointless in the end, just like human life.

[close]

[benjipwns]

I wouldn't say "all of it," it's clearly just post-COIE stuff. The problem with Morrison is he was dredging up shit like Batman of Zur-En-Arrh and other stuff from the Silver Age literally no one except him cared about.

After DC published the Black Casebook collecting these old issues (most of which i already had read or owned) with Morrison's commentary on them and I went back and through his run again I appreciated it and R.I.P. way more when in the moment it felt like a complete mess that doesn't make any sense. Even the Joker prose story and Joker's eventual role in the finale strangely works. There's supposed to be something about the grids and stuff that he's telling Bat-Mite but I never looked that up.

It actually is made slightly worse by the Return of Bruce Wayne which reveals who Dr. Hurt really is, though Morrison himself said that he intended it to in fact be Batman defeating the devil. (In the end, it's Batman defeating a fate worse than death, the Omega Sanction!)

Kinda like how Batman Eternal and some others have messed with the Court of the Owls, Hush, etc. by trying to explain too fucking much. I really appreciated how Snyder left "the Joker" in the end, on the park bench with a bit of a sad resignation with Bruce running off to become Batman again. (Also how he basically more or less had the Joker say in Endgame "stop giving a shit about my origin so much, you're missing the entire point.")

Aaaaand you lost me again.

JSA is really good and Earth 2 started with the same themes. I liked coming into it with Starman first. Aged heroes passing the baton to a new generation that goes heavier on the personal relationships since none of the characters have to run off to their own books like the JLA. And since they weren't important characters like Superman or whatever the writers were allowed to do what they wanted for a whole like 200 issue run unlike JLA which after Morrison left got thrown around and outside of the Elite era had zero sense of continuity. The same writer was doing Earth 2 but quit because editorial started interfering with Futures End deciding the fate of his world and characters before he could even start using them. Even though I think editorial stopped paying attention to Futures End after they did all the one-shot issues so they just send Tim Drake to fix the past and shoot him into the Batman Beyond book because why not then let Earth 2 Society pick up the actual strands of where Earth 2 wound up going.

And Booster Gold spins out of 52 and is really fun, it's him doing a version of Marvel's Exiles series.

Starman/JSA/Booster Gold are all pre-Flashpoint books, though Booster bleeds over into Flashpoint since he's hopping universes anyway.

[benjipwns]

Normally don't read The Flash but because it's The Button crossover...yep, Barry and Bruce went back to the Flashpoint universe. (Bruce causally walks in with an elaborate tether to latch himself to the Cosmic Treadmill because of course he's prepared one. )

In the process they saw a bunch of DC history and were all "that's not how that happened"...including stuff from before Crisis...they saw Barry's original run to Bruce warning him of the future during Crisis that BvS lifted.

Best part: Barry off hand suggesting that maybe they should have stuck the button in the Justice League's big ol secure vault instead of leaving it laying on a table under some papers in the Batcave.

[bork]

Ben Reilly - Scarlet Spider #1:

-I can't get over the stupid costume.  Nope.  Just can't.  It actually wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have the stupid cartoonish-looking mouth on the mask.

-Ben is an unlikeable asshole.  Maybe that's what they're going for purposefully?  I hope so.

-He saves a woman from a mugger, takes his gun and shoots the guy, then demands payment for saving her and tells her he'll be back if she can't pay him all the money he wants.  Our...hero...?

-Ben seems to be a schizophrenic and sees/talks to versions of himself as the (original) Scarlet Spider and The Jackal.

-He sees an old lady at a casino and thinks of Aunt May.  Her name is JUNE and he starts calling her "Aunt June" and tells her husband that he's her nephew and WHAT THE FUCK THIS DUDE IS CRAZY. 

Am I to believe the rumors that Marvel is about to make Magneto, Holocaust survivor, a member of Hydra all along, actually making him a NAZI?

They're trying hard to make it so that Hydra aren't Nazis now. 

[chronovore]

Am I to believe the rumors that Marvel is about to make Magneto, Holocaust survivor, a member of Hydra all along, actually making him a NAZI?

They're trying hard to make it so that Hydra aren't Nazis now. 

If so, that's some of the most fucked up shit I've seen.

I was starting to think that way in Agents of SHIELD TV show as well, in that Hydra has been made to predate the Nazis and have a more lovecraftian goal than simple provide "order" to the world (on their terms, natch).

[Yeti]

Am I to believe the rumors that Marvel is about to make Magneto, Holocaust survivor, a member of Hydra all along, actually making him a NAZI?

They're trying hard to make it so that Hydra aren't Nazis now. 

If so, that's some of the most fucked up shit I've seen.

I was starting to think that way in Agents of SHIELD TV show as well, in that Hydra has been made to predate the Nazis and have a more lovecraftian goal than simple provide "order" to the world (on their terms, natch).

Are you caught up on Agents of Shield? If not don't click the spoiler

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/agentsofshield/status/849451227620548608?lang=en

[close]

[bork]

X-Men Gold #2: Magneto is secretly building a time platform to send the X-men back to their own time.  Except that in the last series, they already went back and found that they'd been replaced by other versions of themselves.  So what is the point of this?

Secret Empire #1: Did I miss something?  The story has jumped ahead to what appears to be a considerable amount of time following #0.  Hydra has a firm grip on the United States and controls the government.  Kids are taught revisionist history in schools.  Inhumans are rounded up and placed into prison camps.  Mutants have been expelled from the country and have their own land in the northwest U.S.  New York is encased in some magical dark dimension bubble.  Captain Marvel and some others are stuck in space.  People are told to report anything that might seem odd or against Hydra to the government. 

...So how are they not nazis again? 

Captain America has a cabinet of villains he works with.  Most of them are planning stuff against him but he's aware.  He's also holding Sharon Carter hostage (I swear she was turned evil too some months ago) and has captured Rick Jones (former sidekick, now super-7331 hacker guy).  There's a team of Avengers working for Hydra.  It has some bad guys like Task Master, Black Ant, and The Superior Octopus (Doc Ock!), but then also has Deadpool, (Thor) Odinson, Vision, and The Scarlet Witch.  None of this is explained in the book.

Then there's the resistance.  They have a secret base and the team is comprised of (most of) The Champions, Thing, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and some others.  The Tony Stark A.I. that Iron Heart has is the main focus here and it's weird.  Why not just bring the real Tony back instead already?

The issue ends with

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rick Jones being shot by a firing squad and Hydra showing a display of their power by attacking cities because...reasons?  I don't get it.  They already control everything.

[close]

And that's about it.  Followed by a bunch of upcoming comic listings that will (hopefully) further explain what the fuck is going on.

Also, I like that (Peter Parker) Spider-Man has a prominent placement on the cover...but isn't in the book at all. 

[chronovore]

Am I to believe the rumors that Marvel is about to make Magneto, Holocaust survivor, a member of Hydra all along, actually making him a NAZI?

They're trying hard to make it so that Hydra aren't Nazis now. 

If so, that's some of the most fucked up shit I've seen.

I was starting to think that way in Agents of SHIELD TV show as well, in that Hydra has been made to predate the Nazis and have a more lovecraftian goal than simple provide "order" to the world (on their terms, natch).

Are you caught up on Agents of Shield? If not don't click the spoiler

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/agentsofshield/status/849451227620548608?lang=en

[close]

I'm not caught up, but I clicked anyway, and YEAH! I DGAF, because it's all just comic book logic and unneeded complexity. And, yeah: Hydra are all nazis.

Also, I ever catch any writer who made Captain America a retroactive Hydra member, I'm goin' in dry.

[chronovore]

Toxic comiclinity

It's the arrested development that will get me actually arrested.

I need to remember to unsubscribe from my Marvel Unlimited subscription before it renews another month. Someone gave me a free month, and I've been charged for three more months due to my inaction while arguing with myself that "I might read more next month."

Instead, I've been re-reading The Luna Brother's THE SWORD, and loving it again. Their actual artwork is about as pedestrian as it can be, but their pacing, paneling, and writing is really impressive. I started with their GIRLS book and didn't make it past the first TPB.

Also been wanting to enjoy Rat Queens more than I am. I love the idea behind it, but it just feels cheesy and shallow, where I want something more along a Joe Abercrombie or Scott Lynch novel.

[bork]

I need to remember to unsubscribe from my Marvel Unlimited subscription before it renews another month. Someone gave me a free month, and I've been charged for three more months due to my inaction while arguing with myself that "I might read more next month."

1. Go to http://readcomiconline.to/

2. Read tons of comics, including Marvel, for free, from your browser.

3. YARRRRR MATEYS

[chronovore]

[benjipwns]

It is the most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project I have ever worked on in my career.

It took my heart and soul over.

“We’re not going to do a story like this unless we one-thousand percent believe in it. It is all about the story; it is only about the story. There are no crossovers. No watered down one-shots or mini-series on top of this one. This is a standalone story. There is only Doomsday Clock.

[Tasty]

Batman (2016) #24 spoilers:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bruce proposed to Catwoman. :facepalm

[close]

[bork]

Somehow I don't expect that to work out. 

[benjipwns]

best part is that Selina recently kinda had an extended psychotic breakdown (to explain where she's been since they canned her books and started rebirth and why she was in Arkham)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've always thought it'd be interesting to explore the whole aspect of their relationship where Selina is totally fine with killing to protect Bruce...she even does it in Batman Returns!

[close]

knowing where the issue is headed is actually better than being surprised by it, it kinda ties together Tom King's run so far

[Tasty]

Secret Empire Turned Ultron Into the Most Sensible Person in Marvel's Comics

After the human-robot traps everyone at a literal dinner table, the two sides of Secret Empire begin to go at each other verbally in lieu of using their fists. While both sides try to convince Pym-Ultron that they’re in the right, he ultimately shuts them all down by pointing out that literally all of them have spent the last couple of major story arcs and events fucking up in massively different ways.

Comics!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or rather: Marvel Comics!

[close]

[Tasty]

Is it me or has Marvel's actual comics been shit for a while now?*

spoiler (click to show/hide)

*Can't say much about DC since I dropped it a few years ago too.

[close]

From a DC fan's point of view it's kinda interesting. They made some great moves a while back while DC was suffering blowback from New 52 (and the lead up to it.) Marvel Unlimited, first of the two to do day-and-date digital, integration with Comixology, a well-rounded alternate universe free of continuity (Ultimate), and events that while not great tackled contemporary topics in interesting ways. Civil War was shit, but it was the first time I remember thinking, "Wait, heroes can fight each other (all out?)"

Despite some storm clouds (constant event crossovers interrupting lines, a focus on "dark and gritty" for its own sake, heroes never really getting to be heroes) it all seemed like it would pay off in Secret Wars. And it kinda did... until Marvel went right back to their pre-Secret Wars strategy soon after. It feels like there's a new Marvel event every three months and even as a casual observer it's exhausting to keep track of. Not to mention they pre-announced their next three events so it's even more obvious there's never any stakes.

[bork]

Civil War II was definitely bad.  And largely pointless, except for one thing, which is Spider-Man (Miles) standing over a dead Captain America in D.C.  It was supposed to be a vision from an Inhuman that never happened, but with Secret Empire, well...guess that's the ending.

What has been pretty good in Marvel, despite the absurdity of how it happened (check a page or two back; I summarized it), is Captain America being turned into the number one villain.  The Steve Rogers Captain America books leading up to Secret Empire are worth a read.  I've also been enjoying the Spider-Man and X-Men books lately, because they've been entirely self-contained and are almost being treated like mini-universes.  Looks like they're about to start Secret Empire crossover shit, though.

The other thing that seems to be happening (unless it's some kind of comic book swerve and these guys are from elsewhere) is that characters from the Ultimate universe are coming back.  That universe was destroyed/combined with the 616 universe in Secret Wars, with only Miles and his family/friends seemingly surviving.  But now there's a group of Ultimates popping up (in Ultimates, IIRC, lolol), Jimmy Hudson (Ultimate Wolverine's son) in X-Men Blue, and another Steve Rogers in Secret Empire, wandering around a forest wondering what's going on.  LMAO (and fuck off, Marvel) if they're just going to have Hydra-Cap die or stay full villain and have Ultimate Cap just replace him.  There also may be Ultimate Thor back, but this other Thor is being referred to as "War Thor" and seems to be a different character.

Secret Empire is only on #3, but it already feels like it's just dragging on.  I also hate how it just shows Hydra running America, Inhumans in camps, and mutants on a reservation of sorts, but gives us almost no details on how this takeover happened so easily.  NYC is in some kind of big darkforce bubble, so most superheroes are trapped within, sure, but it's still a head-scratcher how easily this was pulled off. 

I guess I like this series more than Civil War II, but I'm really tired of Marvel crossovers pitting heroes against each other and them just introducing younger rehashes of heroes.  Do something fucking NEW already.

[Junpei the Tracer!]

You don't want something new, you want something different. You wanted something new you wouldn't be reading cape comics

Blackblot is nice.
ASM:Renew Your Vows is nice.

[Tasty]

Isn't Renew Your Vows basically Superman: Lois & Clark/Superman Rebirth but not canon?

[benjipwns]

i read some non "cape" stuff, or at least like one of those deconstructive takes

thief of thieves was pretty hot, think i already talked about it, waiting on the conclusion
harrow county is i dunno, like really uneven, and i know it's supposed to have all this OUTSIDE THE COMIC stuff like extended prose and artwork online you're supposed to get into but like nah breh
jupiters legacy/jupiters circle is kinda like invincible/incorruptible supercompressed, i liked it because millar totally didn't millar all over himself
huck wasn't as great as everyone else seems to think, got too weird rather than what literally every review says about it staying "grounded"
cryptocracy which had some cool world building even though it ends after six issues, hate when that happens
started southern bastards which had a neat opening that while not that well written as it comes in blind sorta sets up for a series that you could see going places, especially with the ending, i only read volume one but i got the rest sitting here and looked at the first part of volume two and it starts to play in the world should read the rest so far or somethin

crypotcracy made me want injection to come back already, i hate these "artist owned" books that the writers drop in an instant to go write five issues of spider-man or whatever lol

rucka literally did that with lazarus and then put in a whole authors rant about how donald trump just makes him not want to live and etc. etc. so the book is going away for who knows how long, it's like get back to making my comics bitch, this trump's america now you're slave labor!

[bork]

You don't want something new, you want something different. You wanted something new you wouldn't be reading cape comics

Semantics. 

Isn't Renew Your Vows basically Superman: Lois & Clark/Superman Rebirth but not canon?

Kinda, yeah.  Takes place in an alternate universe (first introduced in Secret Wars) and has Peter, Mary Jane, and their kid all being superheroes.  (MJ wears a suit that gives her powers, IIRC.)