bishopcruz

Well, Graphic Novels are coming to Amazon digitally. DC just made a deal with Amazon that gives the Kindle Fire exclusive access to their run of GNs. That is good in a way, but I don't like the fact that it appears that this is ONLY for their new device. So if I wanted to read it on my Kindle app on my phone or on my PC I would be unable to. That sucks. Prices seems decent, watchmen was $9.99 for example, so that is good, but it does seem to limit availability. One step forward, two steps back.

The option is nice, and at least fans will stop their bitching now.

Nah who am I kidding, now they will bitch about slight pixel misplacement or some shit.

Oh, and as to Constantine, he hasn't shown upthat much, he was barely in JL: Dark thus far, but he should be in it more as the series progresses. I heard he was around for some brightest day shit, but I didn't read any of that. I do think the current guy on JL: Dark is the guy writing Hellblazer right now though, though I could be wrong.

Thanks, Bish. You just reminded me of how pathetically backlogged I am when it comes to Bat Books-- I still haven't gotten to "Hearts of Hush" yet. I did read the Gates of Gotham mini-series recently, and that was pretty good though.

Heart of Hush was the last Detective Comics run before Bruce bit it. Dini did the impossible in making Hush and interesting villain. Pretty crazy.

Also, read the aforementioned Run by Snyder, he co-wrote Gates of Gotham, and that 'Tec run is even better.

^ah, didnt know that. yeah, bish had me kinda sold on western too, even before knowing that.

 

speaking of - baytor/bish/logans, how's Constantine working in the regular DCU? I love him in Vertigo but it's been at least a year since ive read him there anyway.

 

ps bish what's your go-to bats book, the one with that writer you've been hyping? pretend im too lazy to go back a page to look it up

The Bat book to get right now is Scott Snyder's Batman, great first issue, tells its story efficiently, and Greg Capullo kills it on art. Damn good book overall. Pre-relaunch, Snyder did a run on Detective Comics from #871 to 881, which was not only one of the best Dick Grayson stories ever, but one ofthe best Gordon stories, and honestly one of the best Batman tales ever.

Snyder is also writing Swamp Thing and American Vampire (Vertigo) and I loved the first issue of Swamp Thing. American Vampire is an honest to god fresh take on some vampire ideas with amazing art and great characters.

Why is it absurd she doesn't know his identity? And Selena says she's "not sure" if Bats knows her identity, and she doesn't care b/c she's all about the fetishist sexxors. So,it's not certain he doesn't know.

Well, the first is a continuity thing, Batman Inc. was supposed to remain untouched, as with the rest of the Bat continuity, and well, her not knowing pretty much makes the first couple of issues impossible. That and it kills some of the best stuff that ever happened to her character, including Dini's great 'Heart of Hush' run.

However, him not knowing who she is, or more specifically not being sure if he knows is just crazy. Essentially, in the entire time she has been a supervillain in Gotham, she has never been arrested by Batman. He has to have never called her by name, or seen her outside of costume with her knowing. It's just pretty absurd, considering that he went to visit her at her apartment, and knew when her previous place was blown up. The line is awful, and I honestly hope it gets tossed into a corner and ignored.

Just read Teen Titans and GL: New Guardians as Angel picked them up. Both were pretty good, though TT seems a bit emo.

Still debating it tho, if you grab it let me know. Still, have to say of the ones I have read out of this whole shebang, there are about two each week, that are can't miss books:

Batman, Demon Knights, Wonder Woman, Action Comics, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, All Star Western, Batwoman, and JL all fall under that category.

Then there are the, cool if you like the characters, that's for stuff like Nightwing, Superboy, and GL.

The absolute shit pile is reserved for Red Hood unless it get a LOT better very quickly, The Legion books, (or so I hear), Men of War, and probably Catwoman (and even Catwoman would have been a lot better if not for the absurdidy of her not only not knowing who Bruce is, but him not knowing who she is!!).

Still about 15% of these being pretty much universally acclaimed must reads is pretty damned impressive.

Logan, how did you like Batman?

Yeah, I just wasn't feeling Jenkins on Dark Knight before the new 52, and honestly, I have 2 other bat books that I am pulling for sure, with one maybe, so we'll see how it goes.

As for what I have grabbed so far:

All Star Western was awesome, Jonah Hex in Gotham with Amadeus Arkham as his Watson trying to solve a serial killing? Yes please!!

Superman was pretty cool, not amazing, but a good first issue, stuff happened, and you got a good feel for the characters and the art was great.

JL: Dark: Wasn't bd, but it felt like the entire issue was setup, not as bad as say JL #1, but I feel like the next issueis going to have to get some story going. Personally I would have dropped the cameos by the JLA in liu of more time with Constantine and Zatanna.

Also thinking about I, Vampire, I am hearing very good things about that one.

Ok, so this week I'm gonna grab:

All Star Western

Superman

Justice League Dark

Teen Titans also could be good, and I've heard good stuff about the Flash, but I don't care much about Barry.

It's been a pretty solid month so far, it has about 1/2 dozen exceptional books, and about a 1/2 dozen REALLY bad ones (Legion of Superheroes accounts for two of those.) A lot of the books in the middle are at least pretty good, so we'll see how the initial month of the 52 ends up. DC has already sold out of every issue at the distributor, and every book is getting a second printing, with a few getting 3 and 4.

Now the question is, can they maintain this in any way?

Word has it it SHOULD be going soon, but nothing as of yet. I dunno, it just seems silly as hell to limit your product to one particular platform, especially when there are more droids out there now than iPhones, and that the droid marketplace is set to beat the Apple one in downloads soon. Then again there are probably a ton of different licensing agreements, but it is dumb as hell on Marvel's part.

Dark Horse also has this problem, though they do at least say that there is an app coming.

Big sale on Comixology for the Justice League. Buncha books including New Frontier, Tower of Babel Identity Crisis, and the JLI run are $0.99 each.

New frontier for like $6? Yes please.

Really? I'd figure the other shit was far far worse. I was just making an offhand comment on how half the time writers try to bring in the real world issues into a comic they don't do their homework and it comes off as silly and drags me a bit out of the story. But kudos to you for making accuracy your primary motivation.

But honestly, my main gripe as I said was that the comic felt incredibly short. Hope issue two actually tells us a bit about y'know Miles, the main character. I mean this issue was decompressed even for Bendis. It is very much written for trade. Didn't mention the art though, friggen fabulous.

Ok picked up Batman, Wonder Woman, and Nightwing. All three were pretty fucking good.

Snyder's Batman continues his run of complete awesome at Dc and Vertigo, I've said it before but this guy is THE up and comer to watch, he gets Bruce, as well as the rest of the Bat family and it shows. The book is meaty the art is great, ans the mystery is kickass. Very good start to the series.

Wonder Woman was dark as fuck, but it does a great job of bringing in the Greek gods as some seriously scary beings. also the art was great.

Nightwing continues with the amazing art, and it very much gets Dick as a character.

So yeah, VERY happy with these three.

Now time for Red Hood. Pleasw don't suck.

Reason for edit: posting from a phone is a pita.

No, it's Marvel. They sell their stuff on comixology, but it is not available to read on Android. I heard they might have a exclusive deal with Graphic.ly, for droid or some shit, but the selection there sucks, and I honestly do not want to go with multiple apps.

Bendis was writing well to be sure, but for $4 I felt a bit cheated. Just not enough story, and very little focus on Miles himself, mainly on his family. What was there was very well done, but odd choices. It just felt that very little happened in the issue, but Bendis can be extremely decompressed at times.

That and for trying to be all into the whole charter school thing, Bendis needs to do his homework. Charter Schools cannot by law charge tuition. That was also odd.

Marvel just started doing digital trades, the discount is like $1 off of the singles, but its a start. However fuck mervel up the ass for not allowing its comics to be read on Android. Seriously, what the flying fuck? Dark Horse also needs to get off its ass and get its Android app working.

What do you mean? Demon Knights takes place in the dark ages. Etrigan wouldn't get his promotion until later, during the original Swamp Thing run, which did still happen, Swamp Thing is in main continuity.

Dunno how fair the reviews are honestly. Comics Alliance has been pretty down on the reboot overall it seems, but I think what was most interesting about the reviews is the fact that they tended towards extremes. A lot of the titles in the middle had like 2 high ratings and 2 low ratings, like half would give it an 8 or 9 and the other have a 3 or 4. Suicide Squad was dumb, I think I might give it another issue because it was mainly setup (though what they did to Savant PISSED me off.) Superboy was pretty damned good and Demon Knights was fun as all shit. It was odd not seeing Etrigan rhyme, but apparently he didn't always used to, Moore started that up during Swamp Thing apparently.

Batwoman was a quality book, story is interesting, and I love the character, that and JH Williams might be the best artist working at the big 2 right now. Damn, the book looks amazing. Deathstroke was complete 90's schlock, in a good way, curious to see where it will be going. GL was cool, but not enough to get me back into it, it was better than it has been in a while though. Mr. Terrific was pretty boring.

Batman and Robin was a little weird. I like Tomasi a lot so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that Damien is even more of a little shit than usual because its a first issue and he's reintroducing the character.

But again, it seems that this second week of books was pretty much as varied as the first week. Some people loved books that others hated and vice versa. My favorites were Demon Knights (D&D with Superheroes? Yes please!), Batwoman, B&R, and Superboy. Tomorrow is gonna be the big day for me though, Azzarello on Wonder Woman, Snyder's Batman, Higgins on Nightwing are three that I have been looking forward to since this was announced. I MIGHT check out Red Hood and Catwoman, but I'm not sure yet.

I would've preferred cohesion. JL's 5 years ago IS a full from the start reboot, but everything "rights itself" in the future. Which is still frustrating.

Well, if by rights itself you mean that Superman, Wonder Woman's, and everyone who isn't Bat-Family or GL's status quo is pretty much different, so not quite sure what you mean. The universe as is is in medias res, JL is five years back, Action is about half a year before that, they are the origin stories of the verse. Then big stuff has happened, but its now 5 years later. Hard to say whether it will be cohesive or not (I think it will overall, though there will be some really odd bits of continuity running around.) off of one month. So far nothing seems to stand out as not fitting in to the new DCU, at least with any of the stuff I have read.

I'm just saying for a company that prides itself on fucking with the status quo so implausibly and frequently, this was a lazy stunt. As you've explained: Crisis 3 without the event. I mean WTF. Not gonna argue with the result, folks who forgot about chronium covers are picking up all 52 #1's and possibly more, which is probably a lot more books than DC'd move otherwise, and they're not going to be worth shit.

Agreed on Flashpoint being the absolute worst way to bring this about. CoIE was planned for YEARS, this was planned for months. On the bright side, it does seem that DC is very committed to variety with the relaunch. Very few people like everything, but what has surprised me is that just about every book has people who loved it. Some people call Animal Man the book of the week, others call Action Comics the book, hell I have just seen a few places raving about OMAC being their favorite of the new books because it is old school Kirby fun. If this continues then it could work out for them, If there are 52 books, and they each have a unique feel, or if most of them do even I think good things could be coming.

Now granted that this could have been handled better, but still wondering why everyone was expecting a complete across the board restart. Hell the title of the thread says (some of). It is essentially crisis 3.0.

Now is everyone saying they would have preferrered a complete restart, 52 origin books and go forward there? I kinda prefer in medias res myself.

On another note I have no idea what Jay is talking about

yeah, and no - if you try to think in terms of how many years (x) aged or whatever, sure. but even with hyperreality/earth 2/etc, DC was supposed to kinda shine on its continuity, especially when even golden age stuff can sometimes be tied in. not yet read any of it, but this sounds like a hot mess - if it's screaming "crisis reboot", why not just tell it in an alternate timeline or elseworlds, a la ultimate?

 

a few of the one's logan's pointing at sound interesting, but i kinda want to a) let a few arcs pass and b) sit back & wait, because if this is just some Heroes Reborn stuff that some people might dig, and then get kinda tossed next year or so, it's hard to want to invest time in that.

 

*edit - maldron's saying GL & bats meet in JL, and bats doesnt know @ lanterns, despite lecturing Guy in JLI. that's weird. part of me's interested the writers are given so much freedom from the editors, but part of this sounds sloppy too. hopefully some good stories come of it?

-double edit: oh bish said JL's int he past. uhm, okay.

Definitely could have been handled better, for sure. Though I would argue that continuity in DC has been an odd piece of work for a LONG time, especially since crisis. This whole thing had me looking into prevois reboots, and just about all of them were fucked in one way or another. Hell after Crisis, most things stayed, except for Supes and Wonder Woman, Jonah Hex was a cowboy in the future, Jason Todd's entire backstory changed, Dick's reason for leaving Batman was different, the JSA got added in, power girl was an Atlantean, and that's just the start. I figure that most of the new DC stuff will stick, the stuff that doesn't work will get tossed as it always does, and that will be that. DC's continuity has been a general idea at best for a long time now, Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis made it worse. But at least CoIE was relatively clear in comparison to Flashpoint, which considering how muddled it ended up being, is kinda sad.

Continuity exists when it needs to, and is ignored often at whim.

I doubt that we are going to have a full scale retooling after this, I do think that certain things will get shifted back to be closer to how they were depending on how successful the changes are, but considering they relaunched Everything at #1, I don't see it getting reverted whole cloth. It's kinda wishful thinking on the part of fans, and trust me, I WANT some stuff reverted.

Either way, the #1's have all been good at least thus far, so here's hoping that the freedom given to the writers takes us to some cool places.

Edit: Also, DC being known for continuity? Really? I dunno, compared to Marvel I've always thought that DC's continuity was hot mess that changed pretty much at whim.

Basically, unless they say it has't it probably happened. We'll figure shit out as it goes basically. Seems like all the major events happened in one form or another, Supes still died for example, Nightwing was still Batman for a bit, there was some form of Crisis on Infinite Earths. All of those major events have been condensed into about 5 years, 7 or more for Batman, but 5 for everyone else. Some books, like Teen Titans, have thrown out tons of continity, some like Green Lantern and Batman, have thrown out a lot less. Honestly, thinking about continuity in comics is a headache no matter what. The medium is not really set up well for it. But there it is. I wish they were clearer, but that's how it goes.

I figure most old continuity won't much matter and if it does, they will mention it. Easiest way to think about it.

According to the creators only Action and JL are in the past. Everything else is set in the modern day. Basically Heroes started appearing just over 5 years ago, and everything happened in that time frame. Bruce was active for longer, as an urban legend. That's pretty much it. Swamp thing just came back from the dead in Brightest Day, so it's referencing that. But yeah, the timeline is gonna be fucked, as it was just post CoIE.

As far as the books, my surprise of the month was either Batwing or Detective Comics. Tony Daniel is usually an average writer, but he puts in his bet work ever for this issue. Action is a lot of fun and I'm hooked. Batgirl was a bit of a disappointment IMO, not Simone's best work, but we'll see where it goes, art was great tho. Still that could just be me getting used to non oracle Babs. Worth it if you like the character. Might just be I had really high expectations for the book too.

Animal Man and Swamp thing were just plain awesome, creepy as hell, and great character work. Also the art on Swamp Thing was amazing.

JLI felt late 80's early 90's but was fun, OMAC much the same. Batwing had amazing art, an a very strong introduction. Static was pretty good too.

So of the ones I have read, nothing awful, and quite a few very good books.

TLDR:

Get:

Animal Man

Swamp Thing

Action Comics

Detective Comics

Batwing

Batgirl

Maybes:

JLI

OMAC

Um, unless this was drawn in 1911, 28 years before his first appearance, this is definitely not '90s.

As for the rest, some of the 90's stuff is actually still pretty good, yeah a lot of it is an overdrawn mess, but stuff like this:

is quite good. Very well put together cover, good lighting, and the figures aren't in any way Liefeldien. And this one is a classic, McFarlane was considered the top of his game for a reason:

A lot of the rest is shit though, but there really were some great artists in the 90s.

Are we assuming they'll just keep him thirteen? That they're not gonna move time forward a time or two to let the world age?

Well, I think that the safe assumption is, even if they might be planning to, they won't age him in any meaningful way. Look at it this way, since 2000, when the Ultimate universe started a grand total of 1 1/2 years has passed. 6 months of which was after Ultimatum, which was supposed to have been a prelude to a 5 year jump. Peter Parker went from being a freshman, to halfway through his sophomore year. If they do decide that time can move quickly, and after a year or so we have a Miles as a senior getting ready for college, then color me pleasantly surprised. But no, every time they have talked about moving the UU forward, they have pussied out on it.

That and considering Bendis wants to use this comic to talk about the whole charter school political situation, I figure he'll have at least a decade of pontificating.

When Stan Lee pitched Spider-Man, he said he insisted he wanted Peer Parker to be a teenager, despite his editor's insistence that "teenagers are not superheroes, they're sidekicks."

And while Stan Lee was WRITING Spider-Man he got Peter out of High School in less than 3 real life years. Peter was still a teenager going in to college, and no one was bitching. Hell I didn't even bitch TOO much at 15 year old Peter at first because that IS where Spider-Man began, him never advancing past high school however did grate on me after a decade.

Let me put it this way, Dick Grayson, who aged slow as all hell, aged from 8 to 18 in roughly 30 years. Peter aged at about 1/3 that rate. Bendis has an issue moving Peter forward.

I also want to address the 'iconic' idea of Peter in high school, and that's just not the case. As I said, Peter was barely in high school as a hero. He was in college for roughly 10 times longer. It was during that time that Spider Man, as everyone knows him was born. We met MJ, Gwen, Harry and a ton of the core cast. He had financial troubles, and he was still a teenaged for his first couple of years.

And Miles is barely even a teenager. Miles is ridiculously young, especially for the Ultimate Universe. Peter's troubles were overblown for a High School kid, middle school is just absurd.

VA was pretty good, esp the Maria/James scene. James even sounds like it MIGHT be the same guy which it can't be due to disputes over royalties for SH2. 2's voice acting was by far the worst part of the game, even though it worked in spite of itself (it was damn alien and creepy, which fit the game's mood.) The big question is going to be whether or not the voices can fit the performances, remember SH2 did the Uncharted thing where the acted out the scenes on a stage for the mo-cap, then animated the faces by hand.

Edit: Ok, listened to the original Jail scene again. Shit that was bad. James, had I never played SH 2 before is laughably bad. I think the game did so well on all other levels that the bad VA just washed away after a while Maria had the best actress, but even she is mediocre by most VA standards. Honestly if they were going for a big name director, get Andrea Romano, no one is better.

Still here is the prison scene: