Wait, you think the Paul Jenkins/Jae Lee run of Inhumans was mediocre? What would you consider not mediocre since you say you like them?
The Inhumans Marvel/IMAX
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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I think that part of their story was mediocre. To be fair, its the only huge flaw of the characters. Almost every Inhuman writer until Charles Soule a few years ago just kept finding stupid reasons why Black Bolt keeps letting his insane, mind controlling brother just either wander around freely or be in a prison where he can still easily use his powers to escape. As for Jenkins run, it is definitely not a great story. Not a terrible one, it has its good parts (I actually have the motion comic of it, although I had read the book before seeing the MC), but its a weak story. The whole "maximus can turn people into alpha primitives" was mind bendingly stupid, since its not like AP were created by terrigen mutating Inhumans in the first place and no one can actually manipulate what terrigen does to someone, not even Maximus.
Its also a prime example of putting him into a prison he can escape just as easily as if he weren't locked up at all, and everyone knew it. Some stories can justify Maximus being lose at least well enough for me to suspend my disbelief, but not this story. He's always been over powered and underestimated by the Inhumans, but this story did not do it well. Its exactly like if Luke Cage just let Purple Man hang out in his house along with Jessica and Luke/Jessica's daughter. Maximus is basically Purple Man for how OP his mind control powers of, and he was especially irritaiting in Jenkins run.
Give me Stan Lee, Charles Soule, and basically any other Inhuman writer. Jenkins run is maybe the most well known Inhumans run, but its far from the best inhumans story. I would never recommend it to people who wanted an Inhumans story but were unfamiliar with them. I mean, its better then the shitty Cosmic inhumans stuff like War of Kings, and better then the time Black Bolt married a harem of "Universal Inhumans" (god that was stupid, I think it was a Johnathon Hickman story and it got completely ignored the second the writer was done with the characters). But, yeah, Jenkins run is not what I'd call a great story. Its an ok story with some good parts and some very stupid parts.
One of these days someone is going to use that logic and read something that pretty much everyone hates because If I hate it then it must be good, and once that happens I'll laugh at them
Actually, that's unfair. If things I dislike are what people want as reading recommendations, I can help you out. So, yeah, even if its off topic you should know that I absolutely loathe Holy Terror and All-Star Batman (both by Frank Miller), Chuck Austen's X-Men run, Red Hood and The Outlaws, Marville, Trouble (Mark Millar's young Aunt May romance comic), Ultimates 3 and, let's think...um...oh, yeah, that literary masterpiece known as Spider-Man: reign. Saying I hate all of those is absolutely true (although its to different degrees, from Holy Terror being legitimately offensive to SM: Reign just being moronic), so by your logic I hope you enjoy them
That's just a starting list, though. If anyone wants to try more comics I think are awful, I can point you towards many more comics you'll love because obviously everything I hate is actually really good, apparently. So, by that logic, try my recommendations and I'm sure you'll definitely enjoy yourself 
Well yeah, obviously there's some stuff that is just so bad that everybody hates it, like All Star Batman and Robin, so I know to stay away from those.
I was talking stuff like Jenkins' Inhumans, where somebody makes a positive comment, and then you come in with some rant about how much you hate it.
I was talking stuff like Jenkins' Inhumans, where somebody makes a positive comment, and then you come in with some rant about how much you hate it.
To get back on topic for a moment, IGN has a new article up about how the show's take on Black Bolt.
So if this sign language idea is something new for the show, then how does Black Bolt communicate in the comics?
And now to go back off topic for a moment, did Frank Miller's writing actually get worse over time, with things like AS:B&RTBW, or did people just get tired of him?
So if this sign language idea is something new for the show, then how does Black Bolt communicate in the comics?
And now to go back off topic for a moment, did Frank Miller's writing actually get worse over time, with things like AS:B&RTBW, or did people just get tired of him?
This is true.
It's been a long time since having his name attached to anything actually meant something positive for me.
Black Bolt's makes gestures in the comics that are often extremely generic and people interpret them. It's a form of very primitive sign language, but it'll be things like "Black Bolt is holding up his fist - he's giving the signal of war." My understanding is this is a bit more structured while still not being ASL.
The general feeling is Frank Miller snapped after 9/11 and lost all sense of nuance and perspective. I think it's a little more complicated than that. The trends Miller is criticized for go back much further, imo, with a greater push towards violence and sex being used without any greater exploration of their meaning or role (unlike his original Daredevil run, which is extremely nuanced). Now it's not as bad as Holy Terror, which is garbage, but it's still a long-term thing.
That being said, I haven't read Dark Knight III: The Master Race. But I am aware of the ending, which feels like an attempt by Miller to rectify his past wrongs.
The general feeling is Frank Miller snapped after 9/11 and lost all sense of nuance and perspective. I think it's a little more complicated than that. The trends Miller is criticized for go back much further, imo, with a greater push towards violence and sex being used without any greater exploration of their meaning or role (unlike his original Daredevil run, which is extremely nuanced). Now it's not as bad as Holy Terror, which is garbage, but it's still a long-term thing.
That being said, I haven't read Dark Knight III: The Master Race. But I am aware of the ending, which feels like an attempt by Miller to rectify his past wrongs.
As I understand it, generally through telepathy with Medusa, who speaks for him.
From what I've seen, it's as if he became a caricature of the worst parts of his earlier work. If anything, what I've seen of his later work soured me on his earlier work, since I could see so many of the same obnoxious elements in it now. I still have Batman: Year One on my shelf, but I got rid of The Dark Knight Returns long ago. It has its merits, but it has its problems too.
Have you ever read Miller's Daredevil run? He took what was a second-rate Spider-Man book and transformed it into the Daredevil that we know in the space of a few issues. And Born Again is just amazing.
To be fair, I've just been replying to people. First to someone mentioning Medusa's hair getting cut in the comics, then Alidar Jarok specifically asked me if I thought the Jenkins run was actually mediocre, which I then replied to. Its not like I was posting my feelings on the Jenkins Inhuman run out of nowhere or unprompted.
Medusa speaks for him, but it's almost always not portrayed as telepathy. I'll say "almost always" because there's enough inconsistencies to be sure, but I don't recall it ever being explicitly telepathic and has often been explicitly just reading non-verbal communication. One time, he actually wrote something down (on some kind of weird pyramid writing block), which I'm surprised he doesn't do more often.
They have never explained why Black Bolt doesn't just write stuff down. He's completely literate as far as we know. I can only guess that its below his "kingly dignity" to go around writing notes. Same with using a type to speech machine, I guess.
On topic more reviews are coming out, and a review I follow and generally agree with, who is also not huge Inhuman fan or anything so there is no fan anger in his review, had very little good to say about the Inhumans, even saying that if he had been watching the episodes at home (since the first two episodes are being shown in theaters) he would have shut off Inhumans part way through episode 1 (and this guy has watched some stupid crap). Apparently by episode 2 the show is already doing that "We need to hide the powers because we don't have the budget to show superpowered stuff very often" thing which I'm sure at this point everyone knew they'd do.
The show also apparently didn't look great in Imax. Apparently the show has really obvious shots where they're showing off the fact they're filming with Imax cameras, but the show itself never looks like Imax quality. basically, it looks like what it is: a not high budget show shown on an Imax screen. The big problem seems to be the budget. It needed a big budget TV budget to make the Imax work, instead of the broadcast TV budget it has.
So, I could go into more the reviewer says but suffice it to say he's not a fan (not that he has absolutely nothing good to say, but it doesn't save the rest of it). At least for me, this confirms what I thought was going to happen. Low budget Inhumans made by an incompetent showrunner and with no care about the characters from anyone involved leads to bad things.
On topic more reviews are coming out, and a review I follow and generally agree with, who is also not huge Inhuman fan or anything so there is no fan anger in his review, had very little good to say about the Inhumans, even saying that if he had been watching the episodes at home (since the first two episodes are being shown in theaters) he would have shut off Inhumans part way through episode 1 (and this guy has watched some stupid crap). Apparently by episode 2 the show is already doing that "We need to hide the powers because we don't have the budget to show superpowered stuff very often" thing which I'm sure at this point everyone knew they'd do.
The show also apparently didn't look great in Imax. Apparently the show has really obvious shots where they're showing off the fact they're filming with Imax cameras, but the show itself never looks like Imax quality. basically, it looks like what it is: a not high budget show shown on an Imax screen. The big problem seems to be the budget. It needed a big budget TV budget to make the Imax work, instead of the broadcast TV budget it has.
So, I could go into more the reviewer says but suffice it to say he's not a fan (not that he has absolutely nothing good to say, but it doesn't save the rest of it). At least for me, this confirms what I thought was going to happen. Low budget Inhumans made by an incompetent showrunner and with no care about the characters from anyone involved leads to bad things.
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^^^
It's the 21st century - maybe they'll do a n episode titled: "Black-Bolt Gets a iPhone."
^^^
[This show will probably need all the Product Placement it can get.
]
The IGN article said that they looked at ASL and took some of the basics concepts from it, but since Black Bolt's never been to the US they changed things so that it wasn't actual ASL.
OK, that was kind of the impression I was starting to get. Where would the Sin City stuff fall on his crazyness scale? I really enjoyed the first movie and I've been curious to check out the actual comics.
How much has Miller been involved with DKIII? I know it's got his name on it, but I believe it's actually written by Brian Arzarello.