Comic Books Comic Book • Page 397

Drawn by Salvador Larroca, who sometimes draws cool stuff but also had some super awkward photo “referenced” faces in his Star Wars run, lol.

 

Just read another Tom King book last night and, surprise, surprise, there was more poetry!

That’s like 3 books in a few weeks that he used that framing device.

 

Never a bad time to remember how important a colorist is to a book.

If the industry’s gonna be bad at crediting ‘em prominently, all the more reason for us fans to notice our favorites, have our eyes open for more of their work like we would pencilers & writers, & remember to give ‘em shoutouts when talking about a book’s look or creatives.

 

Really looking forward to this. Only series on my pull at the moment outside of Ms Marvel.

 

I may or may not have, out of overwhelming curiosity, read Tom King’s Rorschach #1 this morning (via some morally questionable means that Rorschach likely wouldn’t have approved of).

In a vacuum, if you don’t know context, it’s a perfectly adequate comic. Not particularly subtle or memorable, but fine.

But, when you see what’s going on, it feels... weird? Like, the way it’s using Alan Moore’s creation (which he infamously lost to a shady contract) to essentially tell a piece of Steve Ditko historical fiction. Which, doesn’t feel super kind to Ditko thus far? Granted, it’s the first issue, so I’m sure King will find some way to turn things around by issue 12. But, if he’s really trying to comment on comic creators’ relationship to the industry (he randomly name drops Otto Binder & Frank Miller), doing so within a DC Comics Watchmen sequel feels weird.

I’ll say this: I like King’s unsubtle attempt at riffing on Moore a lot more than Geoff Johns’. Doomsday Clock had a few decent moments but ultimately amounted to a wet fart of an idea, & what I’ve seen online of Three Jokers is more of the same. At least King has a voice (maybe to a fault, lol) outside of “I like superheroes.” (If a Wally West stan heard me make this comparison, they’d hate me, lol, but while Rebirth > HIC, King > Johns for me.)

Would love a career path for King that led to some Bendis style creator owned work. Both have super distinct mainstream comic voices that are hit or miss, & both have great eyes for dope mainstream comic artists.

 

I'm super behind on comics lately, but I'd love more work from King along the lines of Vision and Mister Miracle. And I would absolutely read more creator-owned work from him.

Maybe once I finish my video reviews of the Hill House comics, I can get back to some stuff that I've been wanting to read.

 

I kind of blew off Snyder's Justice League run because it just... ended... and then that new run started, and it seemed like it needed you to read No Justice, and it kind of meandered... but, having said all that - when you can binge read and pair his Justice League run with Death Metal, I'm really intrigued and enjoying it in whole, seems a shame that editorial broke up the publishing schedule he intended.

 

I wish Justice League run had just contained Death Metal and changed the pacing so that DM had as much pages as all the Doom/Perpetua stuff and shortened that instead. There’s sooooo much dumb cool stuff in Death Metal but tons of it happens off screen or just too fast.

 

Honestly I'm hoping the DM "Universe" sticks around ala The Age Of Apocalypse over at Marvel, some of these characters and ideas would be very fun to see more fully fleshed out.

 

Justice League Odyssey was a triumph. So glad it got to tell a complete story in 25 issues. Especially at a regular pace all things considered. Jessica Cruz is the fucking best hero and she really shined in this one. I was kind of expecting it to be cancelled throughout it's whole run so I'm so happy to have gotten here.

 

That Giant Size X-Statix one-shot came out over a year ago, right? Good to know the teased revival series is still coming. Wonder how it’ll fit into all the Hickman stuff with Krakoa, etc.

 

Yep.

 

So, it looks like 5G became “Future State” and will be published in basically a giant dump over 2 months and then its back to your original scheduled programming.

 

I'm very OK with that development, have a bunch of future ideas and teases thrown out there, at least all those concepts aren't lost.

 

Went to look it up, & it’s an incoherent mess, lol. All these anthology miniseries & one-shots where it’s hard to discern what’s in what, etc...

I remember Convergence being cool ‘cause you could just pick random 2-issue monthly minis that interested you. Was so chill & relatively low commitment. Now if I just wanna get that Batman story drawn by Nick Derington, I gotta get, like, 4 oversized comics in a 2-month period, along with other stories that mostly do not interest me?

Like, I think I would’ve preferred some original graphic novels for the longer stories instead of this, lol.

 

Game changer here.

Starting Today on Marvel Unlimited: Enjoy Your Favorite Stories Sooner

 

Lol. Now that DC’s app finally caught up...they just went and one upped them!

 

https://www.cbr.com/netflix-sandman-shooting-casting-soon/

 

Bummer. I like Saladin Ahmed a lot & thought he did a mostly good job of continuing what G. Willow Wilson started. This is temporarily my only Marvel series on my pull.

Wonder who they’ve got in line next to write the character, & if they’ll relaunch immediately or wait for some Disney+ synergy.

 

The Justice League tie in to Doom Metal is so much fun, wish it was longer than four issues.

 

Random thoughts on the Marvel solicitations for January 2021:

Funny to me that Brett Booth is drawing some Hickman X-Men. Decided to take a break from Lobdell & draw the franchise Lobdell rode into an undeserved career? lol. Hope it’s more of an upgrade for Booth than a downgrade for X-Men.

I know Non-Stop Spider-Man has been delayed for a while, but choosing January, in the middle of Donny’s next Venom event, in a month with 3 ASM issues, is weird to me. Feel like dropping that & Silk (which is still missing in action) in the spring, maybe with a Free Comic Book [Day(?)] tie-in, would’ve given it more space to breath.

Really glad the Untold Tales of Spider-Man omnibus is getting a new printing. Hopefully I’m doing well enough financially when it drops that I can afford to treat myself to it.

 

the Future Stuff state looks so disjointed, is it like... in the future? cause it seems like there's a lot of new legacy characters, like a generation of them - or is it just a "futuristic" setting? cause it looks like some characters like Tim Drake and Nightwing haven't really aged at all, at least on their covers. such a weird event, quite happy it's not gonna be the new status quo, but I hope some new characters/ideas make their way into the main DCU.

 

My understanding is that most of it is a vaguely defined “near future.”

But, yeah, there are a lot of neat ideas thrown around in ways that I personally find alienating. Think I said this the other day, but I wish it were a little more like Convergence, where I could just pick a few interesting standalone 2-regular-sized-issue miniseries to read. There are too many titles that are 4 twice-monthly oversized issues, seemingly overtly tied into each other, with any clear anchors.

I dunno. At least some of the creators involved are cool? Like, Jen Bartel & Becky Cloonan collaborating on a Wonder Woman story is neat.

 

Yeah, it seems like if you're not in for the whole story... you're gonna miss a bunch. Or if you only want one story, you're gonna get a bunch of stories you didn't want. Oh well.

Some of the concepts seem cool and I hope they stick around - Brazilian Amazon Group with the Brazilian Wonder Woman, Red X being finally introduced, just the whole concept of this "Future State Earth" as an alternate Earth in the multiverse when it's all said and done - all that's very intriguing to me.