Thinking about it, I think the only Big 2 event comics I bought as they came out in my time as a comics-following adult are Secret Wars & Civil War 2? Which, Secret Wars was totally worth it. What a great story. Hickman's writing & Ribić's art made it feel genuinely epic, but the character stuff at the core with Doom & the Reeds also was super strong. (Apparently Hickman's Fantastic Four run was gonna lead to Secret Wars, until Marvel decided to shuffle creative teams & he ended up on Avengers, which makes sense 'cause it's really a F4 story.) I remember getting home with the last issue, reading it, & loving the ending so much that I immediately read the whole issue again. Civil War 2... wasn't quite so good, lol. But, it was drawn by David Marquez at the height of his powers, with the late Justin Ponsor on colors, plus a couple prelude stories by Olivier Coipel & Jim Cheung (also colored by Ponsor), so at least it looked fantastic. I hope Marquez gets to cut loose like that on Bendis' Justice League (w/ Tamra Bonvillain on colors, I believe). And, man do I miss Ponsor; saw his name in some Ultimate X-Men I was reading & got bummed that he's not around anymore.
Spider-Man: Life Story was super good, but none of the same creative team is involved here, so, we’ll see… The Fantastic Four Remake Their History in 'Fantastic Four: Life Story' In other news, Dawn of X vol. 12 dropped today, so I've got a date with some X-Men!
Wonder Woman is definitely my favorite thing to come out of Future State. Even besides Jones being one of my favorite artists, and her work here was some of her best, she actually managed to tell a truly compelling story in two issues, which isn't working out to well on the other two issues Future State series. Wonder Girl is a definite pull. Just hopefully Jones sticks around for awhile because Catwoman got lame as soon as she left. Also I wonder if any of these stories are going to give us closure on the Magistrate. Probably not, but they should have shoved a conclusion in somewhere when they knew this was only a 2 month venture.
Mark Russell, though!? I'm a proponent of the concept becoming bigger than Chip Zdarsky (who's got Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow coming up for himself). And, from what I know of Mark Russell's work, he's a brilliant choice for the Fantastic Four version of this premise. I'm 100% gonna get this.
Mark Russell is one of the better writers working today. And that’s me underselling it. He can basically turn any concept into poignant, hilarious gold.
I’m so checked out on the Magistrate stuff at this point because it feels so unrealistic that people would opt for it over masks and according to The New Batman, it’s apparently not even legal. At least with something like Futures End, you could draw a semi plausible line to what was happening but this feels like an idea with no reasonable way to get to it. Like how is it not legal? You’re telling me no one sued the city over making it a corporate police state? Or they won that suit when the city government itself says it’s unconstitutional? And the US government is ok with that? And is ok that Gotham is now it’s own nation-state? No more due process? (I know I’ve thought too much about this, but it stuck out like a sore thumb.)
Lol, yeah it's totally asinine. Which I would generally be ok with but it's not super compelling either. I do like that there's a centralized villain for all of the gotham stories though, in theory that's great.
Finally finished the entire Dark Knights: Death Metal run. All of the one shots were more fun than the majority of the 7 main issues IMO. Had a blast! Venom 33 was WILD this week. So excited for the end of Cates run there.
The Death Metal one shots towards the end were really great starting with the Speed Metal one and the Lobo one for sure
The good news is that it’s being fixed in digital & when it gets collected. The bad news is that Joe Bennett apparently has a history of being awful (which I didn’t realize), & Marvel editorial sucks at noticing these things (also happened in I believe X-Men Gold #1). Official statement, with an apology from Bennett that’s impossible to believe: I’m not following Immortal Hulk, but what I’ve seen of his art on it rules. That one double page close up in the first issue was great. Sucks knowing that he’s awful, especially when Al Ewing seems really cool. I wonder what the odds are of Bennett being removed from the series, though I kinda doubt it.
I read the first dozen or so issues and loved every moment. I’m really bummed I just can’t reconcile that especially after reading his past behaviours as you say.
Oh, shut up, Rich... lol. What was that one dumb Miles Morales name he was so sure was gonna happen, even though there was a movie on the way? Spy-D or something? He gets more gossip right than wrong on his insufferable shit site, but I bet this is another instance of Rich just being dumb. A couple recent Bendis tweets kinda make me think this is nonsense... & The Rock leading an upcoming Black Adam movie REALLY makes me think that, lol.
As I said recently, the way that so many industry people actually do talk to Rich is baffling. Honestly, that itself is probably an indictment against this industry... that has many indictments against it. If a comics person ever admitted to leaking a dumb fake scoop to him just to make him look like an ass, I would respect that person so much.