Amph The Great Soontir's and Glorious Chissman's comic talk shop. (ITT get yelled at by a crazy person)

Lets face it.

This place stinks. Really stinks. None of you people even bother to talk anymore. And even when you do it's about something lame. You are all so lame. Stop being lame.

In an effort to unlame this place, me and my trusty (REMOVED) are going to talk comics. Yes, just in general. No, theres no rhyme or reason, we are just going to talk. Usually it will revolve around me yelling at you people for not getting some obscure title and Chiss telling me to cool down. Or him saying how much he enjoys a series while I berate him and insult his mother. Of course all of you are allowed to chime in and talk about whatever the hell you want to, as long as it's comic related.

For instance, I say that no matter how good Brand New Day is it isn't worth what we had to do to get there and if you buy it you support terrorism. Rebutle?

 

I respectfully disagree that buying Brand New Day equals supporting terrorism.

Overall, Brand New Day seems to be successful so far. The story quality is up from the dreadful "LETS GO FROM IRON COSTUME TO CIVIL WAR TO SHOOTING AUNT MAY TO BLACK COSTUME" cycle that Spider-Man had been in since around the time he joined the Avengers.I agree fully with the premise that "One More Day" was a horrible idea that was horribly executed. It's best summed up by the immortal line: "It's magic, we don't have to explain it." However, we seem to have gotten a much better direction out of it than where the books had been prior to it. Did the marriage NEED to go away? Absolutely not. But...it is what it is, and right now what it is, is solid storytelling.

(Off topic, I never thought I'd be the BND defender, but someone has to counter Soontir)

 

Yeah but come on. You still aren't picking up Captain America regularly. And what does that say about you, other then you are a terrible person?

I can't condone buying BND on principle. It's rewarding Marvel for an incredibly stupid idea. When the years go on they would remember the bad press, instead they will remember the revenue from it. It's just asking them to do it to us again. Why are you helping America drop the soap 'tian? Why?

 

I did pick up the first volume of "The Death of Captain America" and enjoyed it a lot. Besides, I buy few comics regularly nowadays anyway. Really wouldn't mind getting my hands on the Brubaker omnibus of Cap though...

I'm not denying OMD was a stupid idea, I'm merely looking at the comics as if they existed in a vacuum. If you take the OMD stuff out of the picture, what you're left with is a pretty good comic. I know I'm not going to convince you otherwise, and as for myself, I'm tradewaiting anyway. But I did buy the first Slott/McNiven arc, and have kept up with the Guggenheim/Larroca arc in stores, and have been impressed. Mind you, I haven't read Spidey regularly since "Sins Past" and all that mess went down.

 

LIKING MARK MILLAR SHOULD BE CONSTITUTED AS A WAR CRIME

I have 10 bucks that says his and Hitches FF gets delayed by the third issue. Any takers?

 

Gah, it's late. I thought that said "LICKING MARK MILLAR SHOULD BE A CRIME..." and thought, "Well, that seems rather harsh. I wouldn't want to myself, but still..."

I'd probably take that bet. That's one reason I may not tradewait actually on that. One issue in and it's good, not great though. But if I tradewait the rest, I may not get that until 2011.

 

Bagley could break both his hands and still be 3 times as fast as Hitch. I wonder what the hell is going to be in the second half of Trinity, if the first half of all the issues is the main story with Busiek and Bagley. And do we really need weekly featureing those three? Hell, Batman is in like 9 comics a month as it is.

But it does let James Robinson come on for Superman. And if you haven't read his Starman issues you should be ashamed of yourself. Well more ashamed of yourself in the case of Chissman.

 

And you have a great chance to read Starman because it's finally being collected in its entirety. Yay!

As far as BND, I've got very mixed feelings. I never read comics growing up, so the only Spider-Man I really know is the Spider-Man who's been around since JMS and Paul Jenkins were writing him. There's been a lot I liked about that Spider-Man, and quite a bit of silliness, especially lately. And when the new format and the new creative teams were revealed, I was thrilled. But then -- OMD. Gah. I absolutely hate not only the major continuity change but also that absurdly stupid way they went about it. That said, taken on their own, I hear that the new stories are quite good. I just have a lot of trouble dealing with the editorial nonsense. With any luck, in a few months there'll be a Sentry-style story, oddities'll abound, this neocontinuity will be straightened out -- but I doubt that'll happen. I liked Spider-Man. I suspect I'll enjoy this new old-style Spider-Man. But I absolutely loathe the connective tissue between the two.

 

On bringing up Sentry, am I the only one who feels that he should have never been brought into regular Marvel continuity? His first appearance was decent, and his mini with Jae Lee art was good, but all of his appearances after that have been middling. He is supposed to have the power of "a million exploding suns" but he can get sucker punched by Boobtron and then rendered useless by a glance from Strange. He's like Superman on crack.

 

BND is the lamest idea since Sentry

 

Flare I love you.

Do you love me too?

Circle one

Y N

 

I think Sentry's mini was fine, but I think he's terribly poorly used and agree he shouldn't've been brought into the regular books.

I've got a question. In Morrison's New X-Men it was established that Emma Frost has had her breasts worked on. Shortly after that she was shattered in her diamond form and Beast went to the trouble of putting her back together. Among all the diamond shards, were there a couple lumps of silicon, or do they somehow turn to diamond too when she transforms?

 

The entire Spider-Man arc has been wandering aimlessly since the death of Ezekiel. At least leading up to that there seemed to be a fairly consistent storyline going, some kind of arc they would slowly develop but unfortunately just fizzled out. Since then they can't seem to find a proper arc to stick to and just seem content to beat the snot out of Spider-Man without really exploring the possibilities of the arcs they abandon. The biggest tragedy of OMD and BND is not the lame direction they are going in but the many possibilities for the storylines that were already existing that were either ignored, under-explored or utterly abandoned entirely...and for what reason?? To placate Joey Q's obsession with destroying the Parker marriage. It just feels like awkward management and they were really just making it up as they go aiming for the most spectacular events possible without paying anything off. The sensationalism is almost heartbreaking and mind boggling.

 

I think the Silcon turns into diamond too. Emma is too much of a control freak to overlook something like that.

Why aren't more of you people buying Jonah Hex? It is literally everything you could want from a comic book. He fights nuns, wrestles gators, and kills everybody.

SO AWESOME

 

I have the first Jonah Hex trade (and the old Lansdale/Truman version), but haven't read it yet. The reason? Despite good reviews for this particular book, pretty much everything by Palmiotti and Gray is pure crapola, and after being burned by Daughters of the Dragon and Heroes for Hire I haven't been able to bring myself to read their writing again.

 

Why do I even follow Marvel anymore? I can't think of anything good

 

X-Factor. Moon Knight. Captain America. Daredevil. Iron Fist.

And because as lackluster as many of the books are, they're still more fun than most of what DC's doing.

 

I feel the opposite. I've enjoyed what DC has been doing more than what Marvel has been doing, by and large. Only "World War Hulk" and "Messiah Complex" come across as good Hulk and X-Men stories respectfully. Daredevil isn't too bad either. But yeah, in regards to Spider-Man, I think you can tell when Quesada started to put his hands in his title and it would be after the Totem arc. I'm not to fond of Marvel for doing what they've done with the marriage and am glad DC has never done that with Superman.

 

I've been saying, over and over again, for about the past 2-3 years now, that I've REALLY enjoyed reading DC material far more than I have Marvel material. I mean, I will give Marvel some credits:

- I am a hopeless addict of the Ellis-written "Thunderbolts" series.
- Their first "Dark Tower" mini was a good series, but HOPEFULLY the upcoming original story will be a thousandfold better.
- "World War Hulk" was a fun read.
- Connected to the previous comment, I am sticking with the new "Hulk" series, based on how enjoyable the first issue was.

But I recall my turning point, which was the week that "Infinite Crisis" seven came out, along with the first issue of "Civil War", and reading both on the same day. Sure, IC was wrapped up WAY too quickly, but the entire series felt like a fun roller-coaster ride of action. Whereas with CW, I ended up feeling not much else outside of how upset some of these characters I thought I knew were acting VASTLY different from my recollections.

 

As I told Soontir, my thoughts on Civil War can be summed up as such: "Good idea, suspect execution." I like the whole registration idea, and the fact that for once there isn't some mega-villain behind it all. However, that series did more to make Iron Man seem like the greatest villain Marvel has nowadays, when it's clear that the powers that be at Marvel didn't intend that at first (why they didn't expect it though, I'm not sure). I guess my main issue with CW is that essentially, it's a story where the good guys lose. We follow Cap and his team for seven issues, and in the end...they lose. Regardless of who was right in the argument, that's still a somewhat unsatisfying ending.

 

The biggest problem with CW is that no one understood how the Registration act was supposed to work. Every single series had a different interpretation of how it worked. It's like the writers never got together and said "Registration? Yeah sounds good. Lets do it" and then went off in a million directions.

Masty, you got to read Jonah Hex. I will admit that a lot of what Jimmy and Palmoritti do isn't exactly A game. But Uncle Sam and the Freedom fighters and Jonah Hex are just so damn good it makes your teeth hurt. If you have a soul that is.

So is Ultimates 3 trying to be "So Bad It's Good" like All Star Batman and Robin and just failing incredibly?

 

You could apply that same principle to House of M as well. They had the idea "No more mutants" but the X-writers didn't seem to want to touch that idea with a 10 foot pole besides plopping Sentinels down in the yard. At least, until Endangered Species and Messiah Complex anyway. Hopefully Secret Invasion is a tighter story, but I've seen IGN interviews that leave me to worry...

 

If you're not reading Annihilation and the surrounding series, you suck. Seriously.

Where to start? Why not start with the fantastic covers by Aleksi Briclot. By far my favorite series of covers on any series of comics, bar none ever. I started to get the series due to the pure awesomeness of the covers.
[image=http://www.playbackstl.com/images/stories/paneldiscussion/0607/annconqquasar01pg00.jpg]
[image=http://image.comicvine.com/uploads/news/2007-11-13/25205_1000.jpg]
[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7d/Annconq.jpg/394px-Annconq.jpg]

Secondly, there's the sheer cosmic level of the stories. When Galactus is able to lose a straight out slugging match, you know that powerful people are involved. Plus: Galactus is a good guy. Really. Or at least when compared to the bad guys. Thanos, Galactus, virtually every Herald of Galactus that ever was, Adam Warlock, Quasar, Rocket Racoon, Drax the Destroyer, the Nova Corps Worldmind, Ultron, Ronan the Accuser, Super-Skrull, and more - and those are just the good guys. Some of these characters can destroy entire solar systems. Some are "merely" able to destroy just about any single individual one-on-one through sheer "I kill people good" type ability. I didn't even know 90% of these people going into these stories. I love 'em now. Love 'em.

And finally, despite some rough patches (the Super-Skrull mini, sigh) the stories are pretty nicely written overall. Darn epic, if you ask me. As Star Wars fans, you all owe it to yourselves to RUN out to your nearest comics store and buy these books.

 

I bought Annihilation volume 1 once upon a time and really liked it, pretty much for the same reasons listed above. I will have to eventually get around to getting the rest. A thought though: is it mere coincidence that the best stories from both major companies lately have been space orientated? Both Annihilation and the Sinestro Corps War were amazingly good.

 

I've been reading Annihilation and Annihilation: Conquest in hardcover. I agree, good stuff.

As far as House of M, I agree that it was a good concept that they did poorly to essentially ignore for several years. On the other hand, in-continuity it hasn't been so long. In the comics, Civil War takes place only a couple months after House of M, and lasts something like 6 weeks, I think. So though it's been a long trip for us readers, for the characters it's only been 3 or 4 months, and those have been very eventful months indeed. Still, I'm glad Carey finally got the ball rolling and finally did something with the idea.