Comic Books: Getting In On The Ground Floor

[The Lensman]

Planetary is one of my all time favorite series.

But my favorite comic series of all time is James Robinson's Starman. It's a sorta superhero comic.....It's about the son of retired Golden Age hero Starman, who reluctantly get's into the gig. He refuses to wear tights and wears everyday clothes with a leather jacket and some goggles when he "fights crime". The book is a nice blending of mainstream DCU and Vertigo. Had a lot of great characters and character interaction. Opal City is probably the most well developed city in the DCU.

The book has a begining, middle and end, and over the course of that, it's main character, Jack Knight, grows and evolves. Plus it brings in any character that held the name of Starman throughout the history of DC publishing...."Legacy" being one of the central themes.

If you get a chance, read the first story arc....that'll pretty much give you a feel for the look and feel of most of the series.

 

[Myasishchev]

The first arc was Robinson finding his footing (and Harris too, for that matter) and it ain't pretty. I'd never read it until recently--despite having read most of Starman back in the 90s, having started picking it up with that one that introduces Bobo Benetti, which is great--and I was really turned off by it.

Comics shouldn't really have 800 words per panel. Seriously.

That said, overall it's really a gem of a comic, yeah. The Shade is basically one of the greatest characters introduced in the past twenty years (of course, technically, he was created in 1942 by E.E. Hibbard but that's like saying Bill Finger and Jim Mooney created Catman or Mick Anglo created Miracleman, which is true but in no important aspect other than some of the surface elements--valuable, sure, but nothing that cuts to the core of the characters as they are known today).

P.S. Jack Knight: patient zero of the North American hipster epidemic? Discuss.

 

[Sean Aaron]

Well, that's a reading. My reading was "the only approved rules are the ones Batman makes up," and this proposition is continually proven by a series of strawmen that Batman beats up.

You should have been at Spiegelman's lecture where he tore into it. Until that point I hadn't really read Dark Knight Returns with a critical eye, but there really is some disturbing shit in there. My biggest problem with it is that Batman isn't really acting like a superhero should. He's really not much better than the forces he's fighting against: like defeating the gang leader and breaking all his arms and legs when it isn't really necessary.

It was a fun book as a teenager when Batman being an ultimate badass was cool, but now it just looks like fanboy wank to me and doesn't have anything important to say to a modern audience.

 

[Myasishchev]

I can't believe I said Batman beats up strawmen and didn't make a Scarecrow reference.

Anyway, yeah, there's this whole weird "crippling is okay, even if it isn't necessary, as long as you don't kill someone" moral code. It happens three times! And of course the Bat-halo prevents any easily-fatal spinal and skeletal injuries from being actually-fatal. Breaking someone's femur is no small inconvenience. You can bleed to death from that even if it doesn't cut the femoral artery. Let alone breaking someone's neck in just the right way so that it does not lead to death by spinal shock, does inflict quadriplegic paralysis, but does not lead to asphyxia. (Actually, looking it up, it seems you could do this but I would suppose it would be a pretty advanced manuever with a lot of margin for error even in an expert's hands if your only surgical tool is in fact your hands.)

But now I have to wonder how different DKR would have been, if it were different at all, if Bane had been invented yet.

 

[Admiral_Young]

We put Frank Miller on trial here in a thread for The Dark Knight Strikes Again. It was a memorable thread that stretched on for multiple pages and was immense fun. I forgot who was the prosecutor and who served as defense.

 

[Myasishchev]

Jackie Chiles?

 

[Professor Zoom]

We put Frank Miller on trial here in a thread for The Dark Knight Strikes Again. It was a memorable thread that stretched on for multiple pages and was immense fun. I forgot who was the prosecutor and who served as defense.

I assume the verdict was Guilty....

 

[Set Harth]

Does insanity qualify as a defense?

 

[Professor Zoom]

Does insanity qualify as a defense?

No. Not in this case.

 

[Myasishchev]

I guess I conceive it less as a criminal proceeding and more as a competency hearing. But I wasn't there, and it's all make-pretend anyway.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ I don't remember to be honest. This was shortly after the graphic novel was released. I'm sure the thread is lost now. I don't even remember who started it now.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Does insanity qualify as a defense?

Exhibit A: All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

Exhibit B: Holy Terror.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I actually liked some parts of All Star Batman and Robin and was looking forward to the seemingly abandoned sequel. Jim Lee didn't even really know what was going on according to interviews he gave after the issues came out.

 

[Myasishchev]

Jim Lee: "I was just following orders. ASS SHOT orders."

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Hahaha. Pretty much. Which contrasted with the interviews he gave in Wizard during the book's publication which were much more diplomatic along the lines of "Frank is just doing something different". I can only imagine his face when he got the first pages from the first issues on his desk.

 

[Myasishchev]

The really ironic thing is that Jim Lee is pretty much the last person I would go to if I needed somebody to draw me softcore porn. Magneto tossing the X-Men amidst the rusted hulk of a sunken submarine? Yes. Women that aren't stiffly posed and don't all look the same? Less.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yeah. Jim Lee was probably like WTF? Why wasn't I told we were doing a prequel to The Dark Knight Returns?