Amph ***OFFICIAL*** Comics Thread

Thanks a lot! Should I start with present iterations and work backwards or start from the Golden Age?

That would be this?

 

That's the one drawn by the guy who did Invincible?

 

Congrats on finding apps abroad that allowed you to get back into comic books. It's a wonderful slice from home, I'm sure. I've been a subscriber to Marvel Unlimited for nearly two years, but I've only read a handful of comic books from their library. However, my brother is making full use of my account, so I'm glad it's money not being tossed away.

I remember when I stepped away from comic books for about 12 years, between 1994 and 2006, as I started my career and worked my way up the proverbial corporate ladder. 2006 was a great time to step back into comics, as Marvel Civil War and Planet Hulk debuted and DC's Green Lantern was becoming one of their most popular heroes with Geoff Johns taking the writing reins of the character, probably second popular only to Batman in the DC realm at the time.

Right now, I'm on a year plus hiatus from comic book reading, but I still have a pull list with my local comic book store. My pull list consists of Spider-Man, X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue, Batman, Harley Quinn and Saga.

Before you read The Avengers vs. X-Men, I'd recommend reading House of M, followed by Messiah Complex and then Second Coming (there's a small X-Men: Schism story (which is basically the X-Men Civil War) that comes before AvX) as Avengers vs. X-Men is the bookend to the House of M.

 

Old Man Hawkeye 7 - this would have been much better had Marco actually illustrated more than 1 page and the cover. Such a pivotal point of Clint’s story loses a lot of its power thanks to the fill in artist.

 

Marvel doesn't do huge reboots like DC has, so you don't have to worry about that. DC has done them in 1985-86, 1994, 2005-2006, 2011 and 2016. Though the 1994 and 2016 ones weren't really reboots. I'll explain.

-1985 saw the launching of "Crisis On Infinite Earths" which lead to a number of reboots between 1986 and 2009. There was "Man Of Steel", "Batman: Year One", "Batman: Year Three", "Batman: The Man Who Laughs", "Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper", "Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn", "Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn II", "The Atlantis Chronicles", "Aquaman Special", "Aquaman: Time & Tide", "The Flash: Born To Run", "Wonder Woman: Gods & Mortals", "Green Arrow: The Wonder Year", "JLA: Year One", "Robin: Year One", "Batgirl: Year One", "Nightwing: Year One" and "Teen Titans: Year One". Other origin changes were covered in the "Who's Who" ongoing series that ran from 85-92.

-In 1994, DC would publish "Zero Hour: Crisis In Time". A five issue series that didn't fully reboot everything, but did make some minor tweaks for certain characters and was a new jumping on point for readers, which was followed by a month of zero issues, before the books resumed their original numbering. The following year, all DC annuals featured the "Year One" banner. While Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman didn't change the origin, they instead just added new material or covered the revised origins of some of the villains. Green Arrow would tweak the origin again, same with Robin and Catwoman.

-The 2005-2006 "Infinite Crisis" series restored the DC Multiverse which had been destroyed in the first Crisis series and allowed for changes to continuity. Before and afterwards, changes were made to Superman, Green Lantern, the Scarecrow, Wonder Woman and Green Arrow. "Superman: Birthright" was designed to simplify the origin and bring it more in line with "Smallville", while "Superman: Secret Origin" was designed to incorporate more Silver Age elements back into the origin and clear up some continuity confusion brought about by BR and how the origin change was implemented. "Green Lantern: Secret Origin" altered the backstory in order to accommodate new material that debuted with the "Rebirth" mini-series. Green Arrow's origin was just another tweak to the origin story, while Wonder Woman's origin was pushed back to the same time period that Superman's was established, rather than at the seven year interval established in G&M.

-2011's "Flashpoint" reset all continuity and largely dumped what had been set up. This was to invite new readers in and to serve as backdrops for the new films. "Rebirth" was a tweak as it allowed older material to be re-integrated, while "Convergence", "The Final Days Of Superman" and "Superman: Reborn" brought back the Post Crisis version of Superman and Lois Lane and merged them into the timeline, so that they always were part of the new rebooted universe.

 

Yah he's pretty solid, I've literally only seen covers and random panels from Invincible but it's awesome to see Ryan Ottley on Spidey.

 

Marvel has had two "soft reboots" in the past 6-7 years; meaning they've started pushing other characters (mostly younger characters) and new super hero teams and began branding the era of those comic books as "Marvel Now" or "All New, All Different Marvel." The "All New, All Different Marvel" has alienated many of the old timers, like myself, in hopes of attracting new readers and refreshing the Marvel Universe with the younger characters. Thus, I've just been sticking to the X-Men and Spider-Man comics.

 

Yeah, the All New Marvel relaunches were epic fail for me, how the heck Alonso approved Hydra Cap still boggles my mind.

However, the legacy relaunch has not been successful for me either, yet. Desperate tie ins to the movies and stuff like Infinity Warps and Marvel Zombies.

In a way, it’s good. Saves me money. Though I am glad Doctor Strange is returning to earth.

 

Thanks a lot!

As a kid, Spidey and The Hulk were my Marvel favorites, probably due to TV. Superman and Batman for DC, probably for the same reason. I watched the first 3 Avengers films, but I haven’t kept up, except for Deadpool. Unfortunately, D2 seems to have finished here in Japan. A student of mine from China had an Avengers book, maybe TPB or graphic, novel that he treasured. He lent it to me to read, but I never got around to it as it’s such a complex world.

SW fan I am, I stumbled upon IGN’s greatest DC/Marvel/comic heroes and villains at the time of the Green Lantern movie. As they said Green Lantern was the closest to SW in DC, that really intrigued me and did some digging. It turns out George Lucas and DC both were influenced by The Lensman. The movie was such a disaster I didn’t bother to watch it. Hopefully, Johns can do a better job with GLC.

I always wondered how GL and the Bat would view each other. They both focus on fear, but in different ways. Their relationship in JL: War was great and maybe I should fork over the ¥1400 For JL: Origin.

I’ll start with House of M and go from there as you suggest.

 

Personally I had some problem with many of those events, but that's me and you @The Legions of Lettow may like them. I would recommend Immortal Iron Fist, the current Ms Marvel, anything with Marvel Adventure as part of the title and … ops, that the time. I'll continue this later, of to work I have to go.

 

Thanks. X-Men and Spider-Man will be top priority. I’ll check out the pre-All New first so if I get to it, I can put it into context.

 

Thanks. X-Men and Spider-Man will be top priority. I’ll check out the pre-All New first so if I get to it, I can put it into context.

Sorry. Time ran out for editing.

Thanks! Wow, that’s a lot of changes.

I was here 2001-2005 for the PT. I remember canon issues, whether within the film series, such as Lucas creating continuity issues with Qui-Gon Jinn and Jango Fett, or between the films and the EU. Someone brought up that LFL was still more careful with canon than Superman and Star Trek. I believe the word “‘mess” was used for these two franchises. That was more than 10 years ago. And yet the Bane Trilogy, which I love, screwed up continuity with, IIRC, the Bane comics, and certainly with the 7 lightsaber styles. And TCW, which I also love and it’s back, while supposed, IIRC, to observe continuity with CW and smooth thIngs with the EU, screwed up continuity with Maul, etc. And succeeded, IMHO.

For LFL and GFFA fans especially, canon seems important. And post-Disney LFL recognized this, while pissing off a lot of the fan base. I agree with LFL, and I’m glad they kept Filoni. That said, I do miss TOTJ and the The Thrawn Trilogy. Thanks to Luceno in Tarkin we have a better idea canonically of how old the Sith are.

Star Trek’s canon and continuity are different. Roddenberry is far more stubborn than Lucas and I don’t care for his definition of canon. CBS got it right with recanonizing TAS. All films and TV series are canon, the Roddenberry Canon Purists (akin to Vulcan Logic Extremists?) be damned. And TOS did set precedent with time travel and the Mirror Universe, hence the Kelvin Universe and Discovery. This can work for Trek, but not for the GFFA, I think.

So Marvel Comics has had soft reboots, while Feige has done a great job with the MCU movies (I haven’t watched MCUTV) with continuity. Yet, with Marvel properties so spread out, there’s great discontinuity. Interestingly, he said recently that when he made Ironman he didn’t have a master plan, just wanted to make a great movie, and Captain America’s shield was a joke by the FX department he left in. Now Disney owns Fox and Feige started on the X-Men under Donner, I wonder how things will shape up. And Kinsberg has worked on X-Men and FF and for Disney with SW... Sony and Marvel Studios did work together to produce finally a good Spidey film (well, I didn’t watch 2&3 after Raimi 1, nor the 2-film reboot).

Thanks to your explanation I’ve learned a lot about DC Comics continuity—and discontinuity. I think I read the first reboot was because of Marvel catching up, or was that just because superhero comics were lagging and the transition from Golden to Silver Age and a subsequent reboot was Marvel’s competition. Well, I certainly prefer what I know about Green Lantern and have seen in the movie and JL: War to like this version of Hal Jordan to Golden Age HJ. Apparently DC was influenced by The Lensmen like Lucas, so IGN was excited about the movie as it said it’s fhe closest to SW in DC. I hope Johns gets it right with TGLC—he should, he knows the material better than anyone from what I’ve read, will have more control, and knows what went wrong. Speaking of the Green Lantern, I liked his interaction with Batman in War, though it was more focused on personality differences, not ideology. TGLC and the Guardians apparently have different views on fear than Batman. Hmmm, Green Lantern vs. Scarecrow?

DC owns all of its properties, yet, unlike Marvel Studios isn’t trying to create a shared universe of film and TV like Marvel or a completely unified multimedia shared universe like LFL. Since DC Comics has set the precedent of reboots and Elseworlds, I find WODC more interesting than MCU, which I do like. So I can like Gotham (sadly, only 3 seasons on Netflix Japan; and no Krypton) and The Arrowverse (only Green Arrow and The Flash here, the Dark Knight Trilogy and the former DCEU. I look forward to both Leto Joker and Phoenix Joker and maybe a Flashpoint (at least the idea as I haven’t read any of the comics yet.

You provided a lot information and titles. I got a lot of reading to look forward to. Come on, DC Universe, no delays and Japan Apple apps better, like SW movies uncharacteristically, be on the same schedule as in the US. Not even Scrooge McDuck has trees that had money growing on them. But I may fork over ¥1400 for JL: Origin.

 

Honestly, I think it's pretty clear in terms of the MCU and what happened at the climax of Avengers: Infinity War we're looking at it's own galactic reboot, but the way Marvel comics does reboots wherein most all of the events happen but there might be a wee bit of a nip and tuck here and there to continuity for clarification sake. But not full scale universe resets that DC loves every few years.

 

Missed it in Japan. Waiting for DVD here in Japan.

 

This week:

Hunt For Wolverine Weapon Lost #4
Star Wars 52
Project Superpowers from Dynamite Comics #1.
The Immortal Hulk 4
The Astonishing X-Men 14
Batman 52, gonna be an interesting trial.
Captain America #2, Alex Ross cover
Justice League #5 but the title has Legion of Doom written over it.
X-Men Gold 33
X-Men Gold Annual 2
The Curse of Brimstone 5
Infinity Wars #1. I asked the store dude who he thought the mystery character was and he said he already knew because he read it and thought it a great surprise.
Seven To Eternity #10, it had been so long since the last issue I thought maybe it had ended with an issue that was not an end.
Marvel Free Preview
DC Nation 3

 

The problem with canon with something like "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" is that you have to deal with an ongoing narrative in films and television. Lucas didn't have the time to follow everything in the EU and wasn't going to bend the films to fit the narrative in. And now with Disney, they had to gut so much because it would stifle the films going forward. If Lucas hadn't sold everything, the same would have happened with the ST and the spinoff films.

As to Superman, the problem was that "Birthright" was a valiant effort, but executed horribly. Not the story, but integrating into the DCU. "Infinite Crisis" was necessary to allow the changes to be executed and "Secret Origin" had the benefit of being thought out better and executed as such. That's why when "Superman Reborn: Aftermath" came out last year, Dan Jurgens kept SO as the base origin, but still kept elements of Grant Morrison's run.

Stan Lee's approach with his artists was to keep the base of what was in place and just pick things up from there. Later retcons would place fill-ins as Captain America, like Jeffery Mace and thus allow the 1950's Cap stories to be in continuity, while Steve Rogers frozen in ice and Bucky's death, gave us a different story narrative. Julie Schwartz's approach with DC was different, as he wanted Gardner Fox and John Broome to outright reboot the Flash and Green Lantern, by changing everything from the ground up. Jay Garrick was replaced by Barry Allen and Alan Scott was replaced by Hal Jordan. The creation of the Multiverse to allow Jay and Alan to co-exist alongside Barry and Hal. A perceived confusion from some fans and by writer/editor Marv Wolfman lead to the first Crisis, in an effort to simplify things.

The problem with DC afterwards was not so much bringing back the Multiverse, but the efforts to try to update the characters were mixed.

The problem with the GL film wasn't so much Johns or Greg Berlanti, but the whole approach was wrong. They were trying to copy Marvel, but they were doing a lot at once and it was too problematic. The bulk of the story was borrowed from "Emerald Dawn" and "Green Lantern: Secret Origin". Unfortunately, the two ideas weren't meshing right.

Well, in terms of titles, you should choose to read what is relevant for you to get caught up and not everything. Something I used to encourage, but have since realized isn't entirely necessary. If there's things that you want to read, then we can figure out a list for you.

 

Infinity Wars, the mysterious Requiem is who i thought it would be:

Spoiler

They didn't for a later reveal, it's Gamora. I figured it would be her or Nebula. She cut of the head of Thanos, and now she just stabbed Star Lord through with the sword. Moments before she says, "No one ever dies" so of course it won;t be the last of either character.

 

Here are some more Marvel titels I recommend (non of them are fresh since I wait for the TPB:s but you should be able to get them) Master of Kung-Fu: Battleworld, Contest of Champions, The New Avengers followed by U.S.Avengers, 1872, A-Force, Red Wolf: Man out of time, Spider-Island: Warzones!, X-Men '92

If you have no problems with even older titles I have some more to recommend

 

Thanks. My Marvel Unlimited library is growing.

Nearly lost it when I saw that DC Universe was $75 a month. But John Campnea corrected and said that’s the yearly rate for pre-subscribers. Hurry up, DC! I’m surprised by all the free titles—and I hope the artists aren’t getting screwed. But my Marvel list is already much bigger.

 

Actually, Star Trek and Star Wars are pretty similar in that the neither ever really had cohesion between the movie/TV and the tie-ins. In Star Trek, tie-ins are never considered canon (that has gotten gray, with the people who worked on the Abramsverse movies kinda saying that they thought the Abramsverse tie-ins were canon but they couldn't actually make it so and the DSC tie-in are in a limbo where there's this double-talk that they're both canon and yet not canon somehow). Under Lucas, Star Wars basically did its own thing as far as the movies and TCW show were concerned. You do have the occasional connections and coordination (the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Day of Honor" was made to tie-into a series of novels by the same name and there were a few cases where the novels department clarified that certain one-shot TV characters were not coming back and so could be exclusively novel characters, while the Star Wars movies/TCW were borrowing from Legends long before Disney was).

That's the thing I have to shake my head over. Some "Bring Back Legends" people seem to think that had LucasFilm not made the reboot, that Legends would've continued and that the timeline would've remained. Had they not decided it, the new movies and stuff would've effectively rebooted the timeline by merely existing. I mean, if TFA had been made as is with Legends still intact, that wipes out pretty much everything with the big three from the Thrawn trilogy on down. R1 and Rebels re-write the history of the Rebellion from the ground up, which takes out a huge chunk of stuff. TLJ overwrites Dawn of the Jedi with new Jedi origin info and reaffirms everything that TFA did. Solo invalidates anything about Han's backstory and that Lando trilogy, not to mention the Falcon's history. Between that and the number that that TCW did on the original Legends version of the Clone Wars era, we're more than halfway there to a reboot, but in a much messier way, with materials where parts could be canon but others can't, creating a huge mess.

Thing is, I think we got used to the idea that the movies didn't overwrite the tie-ins much because of pre-planning. The prequel era wasn't touched on much before 1999 because Lucas requested that they leave it alone. So, when he started filling in the gaps with the movies, it didn't step on the toes of very much, so it seemed like they were co-existing and with the "they're all canon" branding, they seemed like one whole. I think, had LucasFilm allowed the novels and comics to fill in the prequel era pre-1999, we would've realized early on that the movies were not beholden to the tie ins and might've been less surprised when TCW and Disney just ignored them.

(Like you said, Legends was going to go the moment new movies were made. We just hadn't been in a position before where that would mean that the tie-ins had to go en masse.

 

Well, the DC library may not provide more recent comic story lines, so in that absence, I highly recommended checking out/searching Comicstorian's YouTube channel as he retells very recent and the most popular comic book stories from both DC and Marvel. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/user/comicstorian

 

THIS WEEK:

Superman 2
The Amazing Spider-Man 3
The Sandman Universe #1, I have to look up the info to be sure but I think the Sandman himself is not to have an ongoing series but will appear in a batch of other series.
Port Of Earth 8
Plastic Man 1, 2, and 3 because I didn't even know this was out so I missed one and two.
Quicksilver No Surrender 4
The Dead Hand 5
X-Men Blue 33
Wonder Woman 52
Relay 2
Old Man Logan 45 with its throw back cover of Bullseye stabbing Logan like he did Elektra
Domino 5, this series has been so much fun.
Daredevil 606
Catwoman 2
AND Fantastic Four #1. This is my actual very first FF issue ever. Excellent Ribic cover.

 

The F4 are still relevant?

 

Hmm, looks like Doom is done playing hero but is not going back to evil? I liked hero Doom.