JD's Comic Book Thread

[JD]

I finished Vol. 2 of Geoff John's Aquaman on Thursday, and it was really good. I liked the introductions of Black Manta and The Others, they gave us some nice bits of backstory for Arthur. I'm probably going to check out the Aquaman and the Other spin-off at some point, I want to see more of them.

 

[JD]

The creative team of the upcoming Image Comics series Hell to Pay has announced that artist Will Sliney will be live streaming his work on the comic on Twitch.
This is a really cool idea, and I might check out at least a little of it once he starts.

 

[Relayer1]

Started back on Marvel after a short break and almost immediately reached a point with King In Black crossovers...groan !

I'm going to have to read bloody Venom again aren't I ? If only for a little while...

Edit : Just found out I haven't "quite" finished Empyre when I thought I had. Not that I can remember how it went after six weeks break. Same for X of bloody Swords. And I've still got scars from War Of The Realms.

Marvel - is it really asking too much to be able to just read some comics without getting tangled up in yet another shitty "event" ? Could we at least keep it to one every year or so ?

I took a break because I'd burned out and lost interest. Just tried Spidey and that tedious Kindred storyline pushed me back out - I'm struggling. I really think it's gotten too much to 'keep up' with the current stuff. There's too much, and way too much shit.

Time to get more selective. I'm going to start by skipping the current "events".

 

[Relayer1]

Started back on Marvel after a short break and almost immediately....

Made some progress. Read some Cap, Daredevil, Iron Man, Champions, Black Widow, Champions and Thor.

Quality varies, but shite crossover free and all enjoyable to differing degrees.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I started reading Monstress Vol. 1: Awkening last night, and it's one of the most gorgeous comics I've ever read. The story's been good so far, but I'm not that far into it yet, so it hasn't really gotten going.

I looked into this when you first wrote this and thought it looked interesting enough to put on my 'to read' list, but I figured I probably wouldn't get around to it for a long time. As it turns out, my wife checked that list and chose to get me this one for Christmas and it is, in fact, pretty damn awesome. So thanks for mentioning it!

 

[JD]

Glad to see I influenced someone else to check it out.

 

[Relayer1]

Jeez, the FF are looking kind of interesting for the first time since they came back.

Who'd have guessed ?

And, hot on the heels of me slagging X of Swords as yet another awful generic crossover, and worse still a contrived contest of champions, it gets Den Of Geeks next to top placing in it's best of the years comics :

https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/the-best-comics-of-2020/

Mind you, it rates Excalibur and much as I've liked what Hickman's done with the X Men, Howards crapped all over that book. It's horrible.

 

[JD]

EW.com also included it as one of their top 10 comics of the year, and Io9 included a certain event involving Betsy Braddock in Excalibur #14, which was their second X of Swords issue. I was a bit surprised to see it included on those lists, since your reaction seemed to be the one most of the Marvel readers on here had.
So are there any big events from Marvel and DC that are actually worth reading?

 

[kirk55555]

EW.com also included it as one of their top 10 comics of the year, and Io9 included a certain event involving Betsy Braddock in Excalibur #14, which was their second X of Swords issue. I was a bit surprised to see it included on those lists, since your reaction seemed to be the one most of the Marvel readers on here had.
So are there any big events from Marvel and DC that are actually worth reading?

From the last year or two I did like Marvel's Empyre event, but you kind of have to care about the Kree skrull War and characters like whole clean.

From their whole histories there's a bunch of good big events. from DC, off the top of my head, I really like crisis on infinite Earths, Blackest Night, Convergence, and Infinite Crisis. From Marvel, actually really loved Civil War, and secret invasion was pretty cool. I'm sure there are more that I like, that's just what comes to me immediately.

 

[JD]

Glad to hear that since Civil War and Secret Invasion are two of the events I own and am working my way towards in my Marvel reading. I've also got Secret Wars, which sounded really cool, but I can't really remember what kind reaction it got.

 

[Relayer1]

Glad to hear that since Civil War and Secret Invasion are two of the events I own and am working my way towards in my Marvel reading. I've also got Secret Wars, which sounded really cool, but I can't really remember what kind reaction it got.

I read Secret Wars back when it came out in 1985 and the original Crisis too (I still read DC back then). I suspect neither would stand up well now.

Since I got back into reading Marvel a few years ago I've read most of the recent-ish events. Secret Invasion didn't appeal, and neither did Infinity War, Seige, Avengers vs X Men or House Of M.

Civil War was good, as was, surprisingly. Secret Wars (2015). Civil War II was diminishing returns, Infinity and Axis weren't exactly great and neither was War Of The Realms.

Secret Empire I don't think was that good, but I did enjoy it.

Iron Man 2020 (which is listed as an "event") was a steaming pile of garbage, caught fire and extinguished with a bucket of piss.

I'm not liking X Of Swords and King In Black doesn't exactly appeal.

I'm burned out on them, but...what are your ratings of them ?

P.S. The first Spiderverse crossover event was damned good ! The second inevitably less so.

 

[kirk55555]

I read Secret Wars back when it came out in 1985 and the original Crisis too (I still read DC back then). I suspect neither would stand up well now.

Since I got back into reading Marvel a few years ago I've read most of the recent-ish events. Secret Invasion didn't appeal, and neither did Infinity War, Seige, Avengers vs X Men or House Of M.

Civil War was good, as was, surprisingly. Secret Wars (2015). Civil War II was diminishing returns, Infinity and Axis weren't exactly great and neither was War Of The Realms.

Secret Empire I don't think was that good, but I did enjoy it.

Iron Man 2020 (which is listed as an "event") was a steaming pile of garbage, caught fire and extinguished with a bucket of piss.

I'm not liking X Of Swords and King In Black doesn't exactly appeal.

I'm burned out on them, but...what are your ratings of them ?

P.S. The first Spiderverse crossover event was damned good ! The second inevitably less so.

I forgot about Secret Wars (2015). I enjoyed it, its one of the only decent things Hickman has written in my opinion, but what I really liked were the tie ins about the different regions created during the event. If anyone was going to read it, I'd definitely recommend checking out the various "Battleworld" and Warzones mini series along with the main mini, especially the Marvel Zombies, Ghost Racers, Civil War and Spider-Island minis.

I also liked Avengers vs X-Men decently, it wasn't amazing but it was a fun read.

 

[Relayer1]

If anyone was going to read it, I'd definitely recommend checking out the various "Battleworld" and Warzones mini series along with the main mini

Yeah, somewhat unusually some of the spin-off/tie-in's were pretty good !

 

[JD]

Sorry, I should have been more specific, I got the 2015 Secret Wars. A few months back Marvel was doing a big events sale, and I got the three from my last post.
I want to check out the tie-ins for Secret Wars, but Hoopla doesn't have any of them, so I'll have to see if I want to spend money on them once I reach that point in my reading.

 

[JD]

I finished reading Down, the 2nd volume of Kelly Sue DeConnick's first Captain Marvel series. I really love this series, there's cool action, and DeConnick's writing is great. I love Dexter Soy's art, and at first I didn't really care for Filipe Andrade's, but by the end of the first issue it did start to grow on me, to the point I was actually really liking it by the end.
After finishing that I started the second volume of Chew, which I borrowed from Hoopla.

 

[Relayer1]

And, hot on the heels of me slagging X of Swords as yet another awful generic crossover, and worse still a contrived contest of champions, it gets Den Of Geeks next to top placing in it's best of the years comics

Never mind, I've ploughed through the tedious Khonshu arc in Avengers and started Avengers "Enter The Phoenix".

Yay ! It's another hackneyed, tedious crappy bloody contest...

 

[JD]

I finished reading Chew Vol 2: International Flavor last night. The series is a lot of fun, and this gave us some new interesting story developments with the introduction of The Vampire, and what looks like the set for a relationship between Amelia and Tony. The stuff on the island, with the chicken fruit, was pretty good.
I'm curious if the last panel will come into play later.
Does Poyo the rooster come into play more later? There some references to him on the island, but he didn't actually appear. Some of the stuff I read about the series before I started made it sound like he was big deal, so I'm assuming he must actually appear on panel at some point.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Following up on the harassment scandals which shook the industry last year, Dark Horse has released details on their new anti-harassment policies.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Okay, @JD , you didn't know about the European comic series Storm, so here goes:

Storm is a Dutch series by various writers, but primarily by British artist Don Lawrence, who delivered beautiful painted pages. The basic premise is a bit Buck Rogers, but with the astronaut Storm landing in a post-apocalyptic Sword & Sorcery Earth (at least for the first nine volumes) instead of Buck Rogers' space opera future. He finds a companion in the barbarian woman only known as Roodhaar (Redhair). With the tenth volume, the adventures go a bit more trippy, with travel to other dimensions.

Don Lawrence did the art for the first two story cycles, The Chronicles of the Deep Earth (volumes 1-9, the ones set on post-apocalyptic Earth), and The Chronicles of Pandarve (volumes 10-31). Other writers and artists continued after Lawrence's death, but the main canon were the books by Lawrence.

Here are some cover and page samples I found online:

 

[JD]

That looks pretty cool.
Damn it's not on Comixology and the paper versions are insanely expensive on Amazon.
Image is going to be releasing a six issue The Old Guard anthology series with a whole bunch of different creative teams.
We've got the series original creators, Greg Ruck and Leandro Fernandez on the first and last issues. Alejandro Arbon and Kano are doing a story set in 19th Century Paris. Brian Michael Bendis is doing a story with Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma. Robert Mackenzie will be co-writting a story set during the Moon landing with Dave Walker, and artist Justin Greenwood. Matt Fraction is writing a story, and Vita Ayala will be writing a present-day heist story with art by Nicola Scott. Kelly Sue DeConick and Valentine De Landro are doing a story set in 13th Century Japan. Eric Trautman and Burchett are writing and drawing a western, and Andrew Wheeler and Jacopo Camagni are writing and drawing a Nicky and Joe story set in post-WWI Berlin. Matthew Clark and David Walker are drawing and writing a American Civil War story, and Jason Aaron, Steve Lieber and Horacio Altuna are also working on it.