Amph ***OFFICIAL*** Comics Thread

I quite enjoy the alternate universe things Gerry Duggan is doing with Doctor Strange: love the Infinity Warps Soldier Supreme mash up, and now his Defenders The Best Defense: Doctor Strange which was great (thanks largely to Greg Smallwood’s awesome art), plus a terrific design and execution of

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a rather ancient Stephen. I loved Duggan’s Second wink to the Norse mythology Odin giving up his eye for knowledge too. He can keep milking that for Doctor Strange as much as he wants, IMO.

I hope to pick this issue up on eBay and will definitely buy the collection in tradepaperback form. The WTH bit with the

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hulk’s head was enough to make me want read the rest, though I was going pick up Namor’s part of the story too.

So glad I remembered to look up Greg on Instagram tonight because I forgot he worked on this.

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I get such a Kung Fu Kane vibe from this art, which is another neat thing about it.

I also think I know how Greg gets those coarse brush shadow textures in Photoshop (I am almost positive it’s a brush he created (but I could be wrong)). Can’t wait to experiment in Procreate and see if I can attempt to recreate something like it when I get around to homaging this issue.

 

Now things are back to normal:

Wolverine The Long Night 1
Winter Soldier 2
Scarlet 5
Marvel Knights 5
Justice League Odyssey 4
The Immortal Hulk 11
DC Heroes In Crisis 4
Infinity Wars Infinity 1
Wonder Woman 61...Aphrodite!
Uncanny X-Men 8
Tony Stark Iron Man 7
Man Without Fear 1
Detective Comics 995
Conan The Barbarian 1
Coda 8, missing out if you're not reading this.
Sandman Books Of Magic 3
Action Comics 1006
And Low(#20) is back in my life. That was a long time off.
And free marvel Previews.

 

Star Wars Age of the Republic Obi-Wan Kenobi was excellent. Art, story and characterizations were on point.

If the Dooku book has a solid artist I might pick that up too. Providing I remember...

 

Given the time period this issue came out, it was towards the end of the series and the concept was starting to become rather diluted at that point. Not to mention that Marvel was going through upheaval due to the bankruptcy.

Yep, that happened. It was a retcon to get around the fact that for quite a while, Alicia and Johnny had been together in the previous run of the book. That would later lead to Johnny and Lyra fighting at USE and in turn, lead to the New Fantastic Four reforming to bring him in, and to Logan cutting Ben's face with his claws. Not long after was Reed's "death". Apologies if this was covered.

 

tHiS WeEk

Barbarella 1, this is a start over with new team.
The Black Order 3
Punisher 6
Alien 3..#3
X-23 #8
Uncanny X-Men 9
Man Without Fear 2
Justice League 15
The Dreaming 5, the new Vertigo stuff is great.
Domino 10, Longshot and Domino.
Batman 62
Avengers 12
Captain Marvel #1. This is one of the worst covers ever.
Thor 9

 

Great segment in Cartoonist Kayfabe called Palmer’s Picks discussing popular anthologies.

 

Got that one, too. Pretty good.

 

It was good and they can never separate Laura and Gabby. Ever.

Looks like some folks have an issue with Jesus Christ coming to Vertigo

I assume many of these folks don;t know about DCs history with religion.



That'd be Lucifer talking to God.

 

Story's not over yet (although I do hope they don't end up separated over the issue in question).

I think real life religion will always be a more sensitive topic then mythology.

 

Some review:

Thor vs. Hulk: Champions of the Universe: This is a fun story where Hulk and Thor gets kidnapped by the Promoter, an Elder of the Universe (that’s new for the story) specializing with the organization and promotion of new, unique and/or cosmically epic entertainment events. She sends Hulk and Thor on a couple of quests to see which one of them is worthy to face Champion of the Universe as a challenge. But there seems like the Promoter has something more planed…

As a Hulk/Bruce Banner and Thor story it really good, all three are being show their best sides and their bad sides/failures are shown but not blow out of proportion.

But as a Cosmic story it fail, the Champion of the Universe is shown doing typical Earth strongman stuff to show of himself (f.ex. one handed pushups with a girl on his back, ripping a phone book in half) and the Promoter makes lots of Earth pop cultural references, dresses up in mostly Earth style clothing and make comments on stuff in a way that feel like the author is trying to say “hey, look at how clever we are *wink* *wink*”, or “look how silly some of the things we are referring to are *wink* *wink*”.

I can say that it’s a good and fun read if you like Thor and/or Hulk but if you care about the cosmic stuff feeling cosmic this book will be rather trying.



Secret Wars: Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows: one of the side stories to the Secret Wars event back in 2015-2016 that has so little references to the rest of the event that you can read it without having any knowledge about the Secret Wars event or Battleworld, but if you lack that knowledge the villain’s motivation will come off even more as being mad.

The story take place in a world where MJ and Peter are married and has a daughter, Annie, but a supervillain called Regent has taken over after defeating the Avengers. Regent’s government is actively hunting people with powers, because Regent is able to siphon the powers of metas he has captured (something that kills them). As issue #2 begins Regent has been in power for around eight years and the world is a lot more high-tech (f.ex. flying cars), but Peter has not been Spider-Man under that period and both he and Annie are using inhibitor tech to hide their powers. Of course something happens that throw Peter back into the fight…

I really like this one, it’s a good story, good art and has some new good design on old characters to show that things have changed. The end is also really heartwarming.



Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (ongoing) vol. 1: First of, unlike what you might think so this is not a continuation on the Secret Wars: Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows miniseries (there are no references to all the everyday high-tech seen in the miniseries, villains that worked for Regent are now robbing banks with nobody commenting that they use to work for Regent, none of the secondary characters that we saw hanging out with the Parkers in the end are mentioned, dead characters are now alive without a comment, etcetera), it’s its own thing with the premise that some of the stuff that happened in the miniseries happened before the start of the ongoing.

The story is once again that MJ and Peter are married and has a daughter, Annie (eight years old), and some time Spider-man fought Regent and left the fight with a version of Regent’s “armour” that made it possible to siphon the powers of metas and he has modified it so MJ can use it to siphon his powers and they can be superheroing together (she as Spinneret) and both help train Annie to use her powers and be a superhero.

To me Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (ongoing) vol. 1 was a disappointment, it does not really build on much of the stuff from the miniseries (which I dislike since I really liked the ending) and more or less all the supervillains we see are written as much less intelligent then they usually are portrayed as being. The Parker family interaction is overall good but the rest of it is just… not. It’s not really bad, it’s just not how I want to see those characters presented.

 

I really liked Renew Your Vows Secret Wars mini (and Regent popped up in the Slott penned ASM after that) and it had fantastic art too but passed on the ongoing.

 

anyway, randomly googling Nextwave cuz I love it, if nobody has read Nextwave seriously stop and read it now

https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-nextwave-agents-of-h-a-t-e-is-one-of-marvels-grea-1727023298







I will fully admit I am mostly excited for Monica Rambaeu in the Captain Marvel movie cuz it may crack the door open a tad for a Nextwave MCU film.

 

Nextwave is a fun read but I dislike that the Nextwave versions of the characters used (that has little to nearly nothing to do with their earlier incarnation) has taken over the standard version - at least regarding Machine-Man and the Bloodstones

 

Wow, that's a deep cut.

I actually own the entire X-51 series (all, what, nine issues I believe?) that was part of the ill-fated, weird "M-Tech" spinoffs (basically robots that were related - however thinly - to mutants, trying to build off the popularity of the X-Men line) in the late 90s. X-51 quite obviously ended abruptly after a couple issues of the old 'sales are dropping, sudden venue change' rotuine - the last issue is literally walls and walls of text that look like a summary script for six or seven issues, and ends with Machine Man going into the Black Monolith from 2001 (because oddly enough, Machine Man first appeared in the Marvel comic adaptation of 2001).

 

Will have to wait on this week's Invaders #1. Had no idea it was $4.99 issue, and more important things needed right now. I'll pick it up whenever Doctor Strange 400 drops.

 

That's not the fault of the series, which was always supposed to be out of continuity - the problem is that Marvel let the the writers go wild because it's out of continuity, but when it becomes popular they change their minds and decide to fold it into the 616.

I really enjoy the Nextwave version of Elsa Bloodstone, but then I never read the DnA version.

 

I've seen Machine Man awhile ago I think he still has the look, not sure about Elsa Bloodstone but she was mostly just an asskicker. Monica seems to change any given writer or era.

 

I think the ongoing is worth your while if you liked the original miniseries. Continuity is a little lose (I like to blame the Secret Wars event creating a slightly altered timeline in the mini that got corrected when the event ended and the ongoing picked up) and I will concede that the Parker family tends to be the stronger part of it, but as an AU spinoff that was never really that well marketed, it's got more going for it then you'd think.

 

Finally read The Batman Adventures "Mad Love." By creators of Batman: TAS, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.

As y'all undoubtedly know already, it's a crazy, twisted story featuring Harley Quinn, Joker, and Batman; mainly focusing on the sick, depraved relationship between Harley and Joker.
It's a quick read; the story and art combine to cause your eyes to read the panels feverishly. I had to remind myself to slow down several times.

It's a good comic, although I find it hard to believe Frank Miller called it "the best Batman story of the decade."

 

So, I was watching Unbreakable last night and the opening title card of the film was this...



Most of those statistics are very outdated. The comic book industry wished it sold 172,000 comic every day in the US and over 62 million each year. Of course it helped when new released of comic books only cost around $1 as oppose to $4 - $5 nowadays. And I'm not sure if the average comic book has 35 pages. I think it's dropped down to 28 pages including advertisements.

However, if the average comic collector ownage stat is still accurate, I'd say I'm an average comic book collector.

 

I thought it was 32 including covers? It may have been 34 pages when comics were still devoting 22 pages per story around the time Unbreakable came out, I don’t know.

I remember when I was doing my zine in the early 90s, one 11x17 page equaled four 8.5x11 pages. Pretty sure the 1 = 4 is the same for comics.

 

DC Comics didn't hit the $1.00 price until around 1990-1991 and Marvel was at that price by 1988. At the time "Unbreakable" came out in 2000, DC and Marvel were both at $2.25. Page rates for standard issues are 32 pages of content, with 22-23 being allowed for story and two pages for letters column, which were still in place in 2000. But then I think one page was often taken up for the Bullpen Bulletins and DC Universe pages. The final part will vary from collector to collector, depending on what titles they are collecting, if they count trades and if they do or do no stop for periods of time. I'd say that I would be close to those numbers, but it would be higher if I had started full time in 1984 and didn't have to stop in 1998 and was able to go full bore like I used to, when I started up again in 2006.

The same thing happened with "The Long Halloween" and "Dark Victory" over at DC. They weren't supposed to be in continuity and don't match up with the material published before and afterwards, but they were made part of the official lore.

 

I just remembered that Bruce Willis' character in Unbreakable walks out of the hospital in a yellow shirt which reminded me of Luke Cage.

 

Well let's see now:

Superman 7
Ironheart 2
Asguardians of the Galaxy 5
Wonder Woman 62
Uncanny X-Men 10
Return Of Wolverine 4
Man Without Fear 3, well, turns out he is afraid and is trying to give it up.
Isola 6, this beautiful book.
House Of Whispers 5
Fantastic Four 6, Herald Of Doom part one....I WANT DOOM TO STAY GOOD.
Detective Comics 996
Conan the Barbarian 2
Catwoman 7
Black Widow 1, added to pulls.