Essential The Official Comic Book Discussion Thread [Support @Neuromancer’s book!]

[Jello Biafra]

Darkseid was back to being Darkseid in Justice League Odyssey #12 and that was not good for Jessica Cruz.

Fantastic Four #13 was cool. I love Hulk vs Thing fights so there was no way this issue could disappoint me.

Black Hammer/Justice League #2 was just as good as the first issue. It feels like this crossover is being slept on which is a shame.

So Bendis has a hard-on for Red Hood based on hwo he is making him into Batman 5.0 in Event Leviathan. And I still don;t knwo what the fukk Plastic Man is doing in a group of the best detectives in the DCU.
Elongated Man, Detective Chimp, J'onn J'onnz, Jason Bard, Renee Montoya...there are a grip of other folks I would choose before landing on Plastic Man.

And if you aren't reading Outer Darkness then you are missing out. That book is like some weird, dark magic version of Star Trek and it is pretty damn good.

 

[Jmare007]

The last few pages of Powers of X #2 were the weakest of the run so far. If you were already not interested in the 1000 years future, this issue will make you care even less

Nimrod is awesome his confrontation with Apocalypse is gonna be something else.

But I'm not going to bytch about it forever, if that's the question you're asking. I'll ask a different question, though: Why are people so enamored with Hickman's writing anyway? That's an honest question I'd like to see a considered answer to.

Because I'm all about big ideas and stories that take their time to develop and unfold, while at the same time giving you dope reveals. I'm also a casual comic reader so I'm not too attached to most of the concepts and characters, so when a story is compelling I don't get pissed off like a lot fans when those things get changed up for the sake of said story (when Bendis does it, for example, I hate it just like everyone else because dude has been fukking trash for a long ass time).

Hickman is far from flawless but you've been going on about him and kind of looking for answers as to why he's so well liked when the answer is pretty simple: he creates scenarios that grab your attention, comes up with ideas that are interesting (you yourself said it) and presents his stories in a way that make you care for the next issue and, most importantly, opens up the speculate and discuss what the fukk is gonna happen all the time, which is pretty fun to do.



It's like asking why people like Will Ospray - not that I'm saying Hickman is the comic book version of Ospray - even though he has a particular style that is not for everyone (myself included).

 

[Red Shield]

Powers of X2

So I'm guessing all the future stuff is the the 9th life considering the reveal of the old man.

 

[Primetime]

The last few pages of Powers of X #2 were the weakest of the run so far. If you were already not interested in the 1000 years future, this issue will make you care even less

Nimrod is awesome his confrontation with Apocalypse is gonna be something else.

4 weeks in and I definitely like HoX (Raw) more than I do PoX (Smackdown)

But I get the importance of Smackdown in building the rest of the roster up to further bolster the big paperview plans HickMcmahon has in store for us

See ya boys here next week Same time same channel

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

It's a fair question.

I'm a big X-Men fan, and this is the biggest X-Men series in years. Furthermore, I'm just interested enough in where it's going to keep reading it (I've said before that there were far worse writers on this beforehand, and some of the concepts he's throwing around are legitimately engaging enough to see them out). Also, this isn't a big commitment for me: I spent maybe 20 minutes of my morning reading and writing my post before going to work and mostly forgetting about it.

As for when I'll stop reading? Probably once HoX/PoX ends and I have a complete picture of where's he's going. I probably won't write a post on it every week, but this isn't like the previous Rosenberg run where it actively repulsed me. There's good stuff here, but what he does with it frustrates me to no end. But given the good stuff, I want to see where it goes.

I'm also just fascinated by what people think is really good comics writing these days, and the lack of real critical attention these writers get. And sometimes I'm just baffled when I read these reviews of comics I find not being able to do basic engaging storytelling or conceptual groundwork, or whose concepts unravel the minute I think of them like a writer or a critic as opposed to a fanboy (this isn't even getting into how ridiculously insular comics narratives have gotten. It's becoming increasingly difficult, to me at least, to find a high-profile comic I can give to a non-comics fan without having to attach a long-ass explanation to it. That's not a good thing, and I'm certainly not the only person thinking it).

But I'm not going to bytch about it forever, if that's the question you're asking. I'll ask a different question, though: Why are people so enamored with Hickman's writing anyway? That's an honest question I'd like to see a considered answer to.

His writing is enjoyable to me. I don’t really see what there isn’t to like. I talked about why I liked his huge Avengers story some in a post a few pages back. High concepts, intricate storytelling that fits together in a way that doesn’t seem too forced, good dialogue, good job of fleshing out characters’ motivations and their moral quandaries, fresh takes on stale franchises (Avengers/X-Men)...

I didn’t read most of your posts where you described why you didn’t like his X-Men run thus far, but a lot of what I did read I felt my response would mostly be “because it’s a comic book.” Comic books are easy reading with visuals, fast pace and a lot of action. No one would want to read Moira debating William F. Buckley for an hour, or organizing protests with grassroots leftist movements.

I don’t apply standard literary criticism to comic books. Hickman’s books are dope to me. If he’s so bad I’m not sure how you would be impressed by any previous Avengers or X-Men writer sans Grant Morrison. What X-Men or Avengers writers are good to you? Cause to me Hickman shyts on every post-Claremont era X-writer except Morrison and maybe Remender and Whedon, and he shyts on every Avengers writer ever I can think of...especially Bendis.

 

[Da Rhythm Rebel]

Respect everyone's passion for those saying this Hickman run isn't for them, but this has been the most interesting the X-Men have been in decades almost.

What he's done with Nimrod is a damn near miracle, with not even a lot of screentime yet.

Re: Today's issue..I'm not even mad at the last few pages. As a long time reader I like how he's threaded the Machine threat and built it up from Sentinels, to Master Mold to Mother Mold, and now the reveal today of the

Spoiler

Phalanx & Technarch

I expect when we get back to House of X in 2 weeks things are going to be insane

Spoiler: Theory

does this all end with displacing the current X-Men in the future? It seems that their souls may have all been digitized which is what the future X-Men were stealing, so they can bring them back?

 

[TrueEpic08]

The last few pages of Powers of X #2 were the weakest of the run so far. If you were already not interested in the 1000 years future, this issue will make you care even less

Nimrod is awesome his confrontation with Apocalypse is gonna be something else.



Because I'm all about big ideas and stories that take their time to develop and unfold, while at the same time giving you dope reveals. I'm also a casual comic reader so I'm not too attached to most of the concepts and characters, so when a story is compelling I don't get pissed off like a lot fans when those things get changed up for the sake of said story (when Bendis does it, for example, I hate it just like everyone else because dude has been fukking trash for a long ass time).

Hickman is far from flawless but you've been going on about him and kind of looking for answers as to why he's so well liked when the answer is pretty simple: he creates scenarios that grab your attention, comes up with ideas that are interesting (you yourself said it) and presents his stories in a way that make you care for the next issue and, most importantly, opens up the speculate and discuss what the fukk is gonna happen all the time, which is pretty fun to do.



It's like asking why people like Will Ospray - not that I'm saying Hickman is the comic book version of Ospray - even though he has a particular style that is not for everyone (myself included).

Only part of this explanation I'd really disagree with is the bolded, because I find him a very cold character and scenario writer. His characters have two voices for the most part (smug quippy a$$hole or quirky weirdo) and I can never find myself actually caring about the outcomes of his scenarios or even deriving real stakes from them (whether those stakes concern the fates of the characters within the narrative, or the story's relevance to goings on in our everyday lives). I just can't believe in anything he writes no matter how much I may like elements of it. That's crazy to consider given that I just posted in here about how wildly engaging Giant Size X-Statix (and really, X-Statix in general) was, but I genuinely believe in Milligan and Allred's world and characters more than Hickman's despite theirs in ways being even more conceptual and ungrounded in reality (partially because the weirdness of that world parallels the strangeness of our pop cultural landscape very closely, even more so than it did in 2001-04 to some extent). Given all that, though, I find that the stakes of the former resonate far more with me as a reader than the latter.

I actually think the Hickman/Ospreay comparison works, and not even in an insulting way (though I did just call him the most hit or miss wrestler alive a few weeks ago...). A more apt comparison for me might be the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Lots of moving parts, lots of spectacle, but there's the appearance of more considered narrative structure and character writing, as well as their relationships to the concepts of interest, than is actually there. But boy is there a lot of Abrams-esque Magic Box style writing to speculate upon. There are people who love that, and people who are endlessly frustrated by it.

Count me in the latter group. Creating fake intrigue around your events by dragging your readers around in the dark is an incredibly poor, borderline insulting method of trying to create stakes to me. And thinking than a veneer of (sometimes quite interesting) concepts, outsized spectacle, and half-done character archetypes will cover that is simply lazy to me. TV does this all the time and I loathe it to the point of barely watching TV anymore. I'd just tell them to have some courage and be completely vacant headed and absurd about it (Fast Five as a movie example, Nextwave as a comic example. I loved both of those because they were spectacles that didn't try to use that to hide anything else. They just were what they were).

With all that said, your explanation makes complete sense: if you're into the speculation on concepts more than caring about how they work (not a zero-sum issue, just what one values more), then Hickman seems like good drugs for those people. You let yourself get carried along for the ride and wherever you stop, you stop. I just find Hickman too manipulative and not good enough at the more subtle beats of comics writing (and really character driven narrative in general) for that to happen to me.

If you like him, literally nothing I can write will ever dissuade you from liking him and that's more than fine. But then again, we (and by we I mean everyone who likes his work vs. everyone who doesn't, and the latter group is larger than people here may think) may just be reading for very different things. If you're like me, and get really into how stories work and their relevance to issues beyond themselves, then it all may not work as well.

I dunno though, I'm just some a$$hole reading comics like every other a$$hole here.

 

[Da Rhythm Rebel]

Damn I just realized that the 1st time the X-Men fought Nimrod, Rogue basically was a Chimera as she absorbed Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Kitty Pryde's powers to just barely beat him.

X-Men 194 I think it was.

Hickman is good!

 

[TrueEpic08]

His writing is enjoyable to me. I don’t really see what there isn’t to like. I talked about why I liked his huge Avengers story some in a post a few pages back. High concepts, intricate storytelling that fits together in a way that doesn’t seem too forced, good dialogue, good job of fleshing out characters’ motivations and their moral quandaries, fresh takes on stale franchises (Avengers/X-Men)...

I didn’t read most of your posts where you described why you didn’t like his X-Men run thus far, but a lot of what I did read I felt my response would mostly be “because it’s a comic book.” Comic books are easy reading with visuals, fast pace and a lot of action. No one would want to read Moira debating William F. Buckley for an hour, or organizing protests with grassroots leftist movements.

I don’t apply standard literary criticism to comic books. Hickman’s books are dope to me. If he’s so bad I’m not sure how you would be impressed by any previous Avengers or X-Men writer sans Grant Morrison. What X-Men or Avengers writers are good to you? Cause to me Hickman shyts on every post-Claremont era X-writer except Morrison and maybe Remender and Whedon, and he shyts on every Avengers writer ever I can think of...especially Bendis.

*I* would probably fukking love that, thank you very much. But I'm also a weird a$$hole.

With that said, I love a comic book-ass comic book as much as the next man or woman. Hell, one of the templates for the modern comic book-ass comic book, the Ellis/Hitch Authority run, is a run I consider the single most important of the last 20 years. I just want the ideas to serve the story, work under scrutiny, and not draw attention to how outlandishly clever they are (or, at least, do that AND make me give a legitimate shyt about where you're going with it).

To answer the bolded question for X-Men runs (I was never much of an Avengers fan; the only creative team to truly make me care about the Avengers was the single most significant creative team in the Avengers's history: Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. I can most certainly justify this assertion, by the way):

-Grew up on my uncle's Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne comics, and though the stories kind of hamstrung X-Men comics for a decade because no one wanted to move past their template, a lot of the stories themselves still hold up. Despite my misgivings about the influence of Days of Future Past, it's really a masterpiece of storytelling efficiency and rewriting of a book's central concept. Writers seriously should study how much Claremont and Byrne got done in 2 fukking issues (late 70s to early 90s Claremont is also a great study for how to weave together long running plots with satisfying single issues. It even managed to not get too convoluted until the mid-80s or so).

-The 2001-2004 period was great for X-Men comics (despite the Chuck Austen atrocity that was Uncanny X-Men. Judging from his Wildcats work among other things, Joe Casey on this could have been so excellent). The top tier stuff would be runs like Morrison and co. on New X-Men (I hated how Marvel tried to retcon his concepts out of existence; I'm at least happy that Hickman isn't afraid to work with Morrison's foundation), Milligan/Allred on X-Force/X-Statix (still kind of an unheralded run in the pantheon of X-Men greats. I would put the first 26 issues of this against just about any 26 issues of any X-Men related comic ever, just excellent, funny, invigorating stuff), and Tischman/Kordey/Macan on Cable/Soldier X (in a lot of ways, doing quite a bit of what you're implying with the whole grassroots leftist quip. They got Marvel to publish a comic about post-Soviet hotspots by wrapping it up in a dialogue on Cable's general purposelessness as a soldier. That's fukking brilliant). I could probably write essays on why each of those runs are damn near X-Men classics. And that's not even getting into some of the generally good/fun stuff like District X, Exiles, or Greg Rucka's Wolverine run, among others (one of the best treatments of Wolverine-as-Man with no Name out there). Excellent era for the X-Men.

-The initial Millar run on Ultimate X-Men was good fun, if not necessarily smart fun, merely for the sheer audacity of some of his choices (referencing Wolverine's first-ever appearance by introducing him as a villain, Arms-dealer Colossus, fish-out-of-water homophobe Nightcrawler, one of the better interpretations of Xavier as a morally-dubious manipulator, the foundations of S.H.I.E.L.D. running everything in Marvel, etc.), more than a few of which became real staples of the mainline universe. It read like an incredibly fun, if slightly vacant-headed, action movie: plots you could probably write on a napkin, but executed with both maximal entertainment and slight subversion in mind. We hate Millar now (for good reason), but he's one of the most important comics writers of the 2000s for a reason.

-Joe Kelly's Deadpool, really the definitive treatment of the character for me. I've never fully gotten into the super-comedic interpretation of the character that forgot how deeply screwed up and violent he actually was (or, at least, treated it with the appropriate gravitas), as well as how desperately he didn't want to be that guy despite all the backsliding. Not to say I don't enjoy that version of Deadpool (the first Deadpool movie, Cable and Deadpool, Christopher Priest's work on the character right after this also veers in that direction and is good), but the darker stuff Kelly produced is where it's at for me.

-Both of Peter David's X-Factor runs are, for the most part, great. He turned me off a bit during the second one when he did his usual turn into religion, magic, and hell (as he did with Supergirl, also pretty damn good), but I loved David's take on the characters and their relationships. The mutant detectives angle didn't hurt either, and it's another one of those comics where them doing nothing but talking ends up being extremely compelling stuff. Another one for the "Best X-Men runs of the 2000s" list.

(Seriously, if you can't write a compelling comic where zero punches are thrown, just stop writing. You're fukking awful at it. I personally believe that every aspiring X-Men writer should be given a test: they have to write a spec script built around Wolverine dying, but there can't be any fighting involved in the present, and no more than nine panels of fighting in flashback. A splash page counts as nine panels. If you can't write a compelling story within those constraints, just quit.)

There's probably more "good" stuff I could think of if I really wanted to, but that about covers most of what I think are the "great" X-Men runs, and I'd rank every single one of these above just about any Hickman run ever on the level of entertainment if nothing else. And no, I don't really care for the Whedon stuff or even Remender's stuff like most people do (I think they're good, but I explained why I don't hold them in rarefied air earlier on in the thread. Not going to contest too much if you call it great, though, and I would also rank both above Hickman's work).

 

[MenacingMonk]

OG Darkseid back! And he don’t look like Ronan Lite.

Spoiler: GL

Gotta weed out al these Earth based GLs.

 

[Jmare007]

I actually think the Hickman/Ospreay comparison works, and not even in an insulting way (though I did just call him the most hit or miss wrestler alive a few weeks ago...). A more apt comparison for me might be the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Lots of moving parts, lots of spectacle, but there's the appearance of more considered narrative structure and character writing, as well as their relationships to the concepts of interest, than is actually there. But boy is there a lot of Abrams-esque Magic Box style writing to speculate upon. There are people who love that, and people who are endlessly frustrated by it.

Can't really say I agree with this.

The Ospray comp was more about the "it's easy to understand why others like him". A more apt wrestler comparison would be Shawn Michaels. A wrestler that the more famous he got, the more he got into "big epic spectacle" mode. And if you are a casual wrestling fan or just a mainstream wrestling fan (just watch WWE), Michaels is pretty easily one of the best to do it in the last 25+ years. Even though he's far from flawless, his reputation and catalog of matches with high drama and emotion - to those fans - put him in a level very few could get. BUT, if you compare him worldwide and historically with other elite level wrestler, he'll most likely wont make the cut. That may be the case with Hickman, I honestly don't know because as I said, I'm more of a casual fan (I've read classic mainstream runs, never indy or more obscure, highly rated stuff), if you put him under that kind of scrutiny too.

The GOT comp doesn't work at all imo. Regardless of what you think of how he presents his ideas and then develops them, the dude clearly has an definitive answer for them and he will pay off shyt he laid out in very early issues. He also doesn't rush his shyt, to a fault, for the sole reason to give a legit conclusion to what he set up.

 

[MenacingMonk]

I didn't give a shyt about the future storyline in PoX until...

Spoiler

Apoc and the Phallanx appeared.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

*I* would probably fukking love that, thank you very much. But I'm also a weird a$$hole.

With that said, I love a comic book-ass comic book as much as the next man or woman. Hell, one of the templates for the modern comic book-ass comic book, the Ellis/Hitch Authority run, is a run I consider the single most important of the last 20 years. I just want the ideas to serve the story, work under scrutiny, and not draw attention to how outlandishly clever they are (or, at least, do that AND make me give a legitimate shyt about where you're going with it).

To answer the bolded question for X-Men runs (I was never much of an Avengers fan; the only creative team to truly make me care about the Avengers was the single most significant creative team in the Avengers's history: Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. I can most certainly justify this assertion, by the way):

-Grew up on my uncle's Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne comics, and though the stories kind of hamstrung X-Men comics for a decade because no one wanted to move past their template, a lot of the stories themselves still hold up. Despite my misgivings about the influence of Days of Future Past, it's really a masterpiece of storytelling efficiency and rewriting of a book's central concept. Writers seriously should study how much Claremont and Byrne got done in 2 fukking issues (late 70s to early 90s Claremont is also a great study for how to weave together long running plots with satisfying single issues. It even managed to not get too convoluted until the mid-80s or so).

-The 2001-2004 period was great for X-Men comics (despite the Chuck Austen atrocity that was Uncanny X-Men. Judging from his Wildcats work among other things, Joe Casey on this could have been so excellent). The top tier stuff would be runs like Morrison and co. on New X-Men (I hated how Marvel tried to retcon his concepts out of existence; I'm at least happy that Hickman isn't afraid to work with Morrison's foundation), Milligan/Allred on X-Force/X-Statix (still kind of an unheralded run in the pantheon of X-Men greats. I would put the first 26 issues of this against just about any 26 issues of any X-Men related comic ever, just excellent, funny, invigorating stuff), and Tischman/Kordey/Macan on Cable/Soldier X (in a lot of ways, doing quite a bit of what you're implying with the whole grassroots leftist quip. They got Marvel to publish a comic about post-Soviet hotspots by wrapping it up in a dialogue on Cable's general purposelessness as a soldier. That's fukking brilliant). I could probably write essays on why each of those runs are damn near X-Men classics. And that's not even getting into some of the generally good/fun stuff like District X, Exiles, or Greg Rucka's Wolverine run, among others (one of the best treatments of Wolverine-as-Man with no Name out there). Excellent era for the X-Men.

-The initial Millar run on Ultimate X-Men was good fun, if not necessarily smart fun, merely for the sheer audacity of some of his choices (referencing Wolverine's first-ever appearance by introducing him as a villain, Arms-dealer Colossus, fish-out-of-water homophobe Nightcrawler, one of the better interpretations of Xavier as a morally-dubious manipulator, the foundations of S.H.I.E.L.D. running everything in Marvel, etc.), more than a few of which became real staples of the mainline universe. It read like an incredibly fun, if slightly vacant-headed, action movie: plots you could probably write on a napkin, but executed with both maximal entertainment and slight subversion in mind. We hate Millar now (for good reason), but he's one of the most important comics writers of the 2000s for a reason.

-Joe Kelly's Deadpool, really the definitive treatment of the character for me. I've never fully gotten into the super-comedic interpretation of the character that forgot how deeply screwed up and violent he actually was (or, at least, treated it with the appropriate gravitas), as well as how desperately he didn't want to be that guy despite all the backsliding. Not to say I don't enjoy that version of Deadpool (the first Deadpool movie, Cable and Deadpool, Christopher Priest's work on the character right after this also veers in that direction and is good), but the darker stuff Kelly produced is where it's at for me.

-Both of Peter David's X-Factor runs are, for the most part, great. He turned me off a bit during the second one when he did his usual turn into religion, magic, and hell (as he did with Supergirl, also pretty damn good), but I loved David's take on the characters and their relationships. The mutant detectives angle didn't hurt either, and it's another one of those comics where them doing nothing but talking ends up being extremely compelling stuff. Another one for the "Best X-Men runs of the 2000s" list.

(Seriously, if you can't write a compelling comic where zero punches are thrown, just stop writing. You're fukking awful at it. I personally believe that every aspiring X-Men writer should be given a test: they have to write a spec script built around Wolverine dying, but there can't be any fighting involved in the present, and no more than nine panels of fighting in flashback. A splash page counts as nine panels. If you can't write a compelling story within those constraints, just quit.)

There's probably more "good" stuff I could think of if I really wanted to, but that about covers most of what I think are the "great" X-Men runs, and I'd rank every single one of these above just about any Hickman run ever on the level of entertainment if nothing else. And no, I don't really care for the Whedon stuff or even Remender's stuff like most people do (I think they're good, but I explained why I don't hold them in rarefied air earlier on in the thread. Not going to contest too much if you call it great, though, and I would also rank both above Hickman's work).

Morrison’s New X-Men towers above all post-Claremont/Byrne X-stories to me so I feel you there.

I am surprised you didn’t like Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, as I would put that 2nd with Remender’s Uncanny X-Force in 3rd. It just took too long to ship (probably cause Whedon was too busy making movies) and it was hard for people to maintain interest when they had to deal with early Image-level waits between issues. But when I read the whole thing it holds up well to any X-run. It also was important if for no other reason than it resuscitated the corpse of the X-Men left behind by Chuck Austen, who I’m glad we can agree was the WOAT, and proved that Marvel could put out a quality core X-Men title again after the attempted assassination of the entire franchise by the WOAT Austen.

I loved both Peter David’s X-Factor runs, but I don’t consider that a main core X-title. It was usually kinda in its own space. That Doc Sampson psychologist issue is one if the best single comic issues I’ve ever read.

 

[TrueEpic08]

Morrison’s New X-Men towers above all post-Claremont/Byrne X-stories to me so I feel you there.

I am surprised you didn’t like Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, as I would put that 2nd with 3rd with Remender’s Uncanny X-Force in 3rd. It just took too long to ship (probably cause Whedon was too busy making movies) and it was hard for people to maintain interest when they had to deal with early Image-level waits between issues. But when I read the whole thing it holds up well to any X-run. It also was important if for no other reason than it resuscitated the corpse of the X-Men left behind by Chuck Austen, who I’m glad we can agree was the WOAT, and proved that Marvel could put out a quality core X-Men title again after the attempted assassination of the entire franchise by the WOAT Austen.

I loved both Peter David’s X-Factor runs, but I don’t consider that a main core X-title. It was usually kinda in its own space. That Doc Sampson psychologist issue is one if the best single comic issues I’ve ever read.

I don't hate the Whedon run at all, it's just a matter of what I want from a comic run.

Whedon wrote a great, classical leaning X-Men run with excellent art (it might have shipped quicker if they had other artists besides John Cassaday on it, but I completely understand them not doing that), and as much as I've fallen out of love with Whedon's writing, it's in no way a bad or even mediocre comic. I just found it kind of regressive in light of what Morrison did with New X-Men, given that in a lot of ways, Astonishing X-Men was the beginning of Marvel putting a lid on many of Morrison's forward thinking conceptions of what mutants were and could be. Once I read "E is for Extinction," I was done with serious treatments of mutants in spandex forever. I have the same feelings towards, say, Mark Waid's Daredevil run: no matter how good it was, I didn't really want to see it after Bendis and Brubaker's treatment of the character.

So yeah, I'm not going to contest anyone announcing the greatness of Astonishing X-Men. But I would say it's a great comic with some pretty bad consequences for mainline X-Men stories as a whole.

I need to re-read Uncanny X-Force at some point. I remember really liking it during its run, but then falling out of love with it a bit because the Dark Angel Saga took forever to end, and the ending made me feel a little ripped off.

Don't get me started on Chuck Austen.

I see what you're saying re: Peter David's X-Factor, but I find that oftentimes the most interesting takes on a franchise ends up in those fringe, niche titles, far away from the prying eyes of editorial.

 

[Mr. Negative]

What I Read:

Leviathan Event or whatever: I'm a Red Hood fan.... but come on! And if anybody who's not familiar with my hate for Bendis' dialogue style... here you go. That shyt was horrendous. "To the Batcoptor" huh. Lotta "what?' 'Well' 'But okay so' 'I mean' 'wow. just...wow.'" I'm paraphrasing, but it's not hard. All totally interchangeable outside of art to show you who's saying what, all periods and question marks. If anyone is wondering why I'm not trying to shyt on @TrueEpic08 and his continued reading of stuff he hates, its cause hey I'm reading this

*hey @TrueEpic08 what Ellis Avatar stuff did you like the most? I don't think the Gravel stories or FreakAngels got the attention they deserved. I'll admit FreakAngels was the first Ellis work I read and dropped. I binged the hell out of it last year.



PoX: Cant say anything that hasn't been said. Except I'm REALLY surprised everyone's glossing over how Hickman dismissed Titan (saturn's moon) being wiped out. There's a couple of Eternals that wouldn't be too happy with that shyt.
*Oh, and I can't get enough of Magneto.

Silver Surfer Black: This kid's art is on some other shyt. Is this the first time theyve had Surfer's Board shape shift on his command? That's some cool stuff right there



Gwenpool: I was bored. It was alright from a meta standpoint. I like the idea of the character. Think I've mentioned it before.



Fantastic Four: I only read the last two issues cause Hulk was in it. I might stick around now. Can't recall Ben being so battle damaged. Wonder if they'll have the guts to show him totally peeled. Oh. And Hulk I hope they NEVER change him back.



Punisher Kill Krew: Eh. It was enjoyable for what it was. Punisher shoots giants and trees nshyt, feeds kids pizza, feeds apples to a goat.





Critical Role: I don't expect anybody else to read this. It's a Dungeons and Dragons book, based on the characters from the (as I recently discovered) apparently immensely popular video series where you watch some friends literally play D&D for 3 hours at a time, "Critical Role". I'm not recommending it either. I'm recommending Die for this kinda stuff. I don't like playing D&D. But I like world crafting and classic fantasy trope teams and Dungeons and Dragons character morality alignment philosophy. I also admire a good Dungeon Master's ability to create a good framework for a story, adlib story points where dumb folks ask dumb questions and keep a straight face while doing so.

And so here I am. Enjoying this book.