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B: During Dark Reign, Namor joined Osborne's Cabal, turned against it, and looked to Scott Summers for salvation on Utopia.
C: Ever since working with Emma Frost in the Cabal, Namor has wanted to have intercourse with her, also mentioned above.
http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/24574027688/dresden-codaks-x-men-reboot
Ah, Aaron Diaz. I used to like that guy's work before I found out he's a massive pretentious douchbag.
His ideas are very cool, but he doesn't know how to execute them properly. His mess of a webcomic can attest to that.
Though I have to admit that his X-Men reboot is legitimately inspired and offers lots of potential. I'd be stoked if someone actually managed to make this a full story.
We all know that's never going to happen. Diaz is the archetypal idea guy like you said. There will be some character designs and ideas, but never anything more.
(that said there's someone out there doing a webcomic of Diaz's DC reboot)
Where? Google is failing me.
So I finally found Nextwave.
And it's like...
like watching the gods make love.
with punching
and explosions
but mostly punching
Jubilation!
Aaron Stack is glorious.
The Invincible Iron Man 518: With Tony Stark's life in shambles, any claim to Iron Man completely removed from him, he begins planning his counter-attack on the Mandarin and his team set to destroy him in the eyes of politics and the public. A lot happens in this comic and it's pretty interesting to see, especially how it's the reverse of what the previous arc was with Tony getting back on his game the Mandarin's meticulous plan seeming to fray at the edges.
Also, opening each issue with 'Tony Stark has been sober for [x] days' is a nice touch, highlighting the personal issue Stark has been having that led up to this.
Action Comics 10: Coming back from the alternate universe story we deal with the introduction of Nimrod the Hunter who seems to be basically Kraven for Superman so far.... kind of. This is actually a pretty basic story about it looking like Clark Kent was killed and Clark can't reveal himself without also revealing he's Superman. It's paced better than a lot of previous episodes with some nice interactions between Superman and the JL, including a pretty endearing part where he asks if any of them want a pair of hamsters that were homeless after he apprehended the serial-killing owner. It's a nice reminder that Superman at his basics is a good person. It's certainly not perfect and it's nowhere near the brilliance of Morrison's All-star Superman but it is on the incline.
The Defenders 7: This issue is a lot of fun, including the on-and-off paramour of Spider-man's Black Cat. The issue is pretty rocking as The Defenders head to Wakanda to see if they can seek Black Panther's aid in discovering more about the Concordance Engine and the enigmas surrounding it. Fraction has a talent for blending the weird and the fun here and it comes through melding a plot that both has Black Cat in a super-science heist and the Defenders on a soul-bending vision quest.
Hack/Slash 16: My favorite exploitation comic starts its new arc with Vlad's past and his family. As Cassie looks for a way to help cure Vlad and reveal more about his past. While there was fun in the last arc, it was bogged down by the pathos of Sam Haine and Cassie barely doing anything while not-Nancy Drew did most of the heavy lifting. Here, that's left aside to focus more on the action and more on the interactions of Cassie and Vlad. It's a good thing to see.
Animal Man 10: The only thing this comic was missing was Ride of The Valkyries playing on certain pages. It's not perfect, the presence of Constantine, Xanadu, and Zatanna seems pretty much like just publicity for the fact that Lemire is writing for Justice League Dark as well, but the stuff dealing with the rot is as always, imaginative, fun, and a perfect melding of superheroes and horror.
Swamp Thing 10: This is another issue that's giving us some breathing room as a lot of it is spent focusing on flash backs and character interactions. There's still a lot of creepy imagery and it ends racing break-neck into a new plot but even at the slow pace it does a good job further fleshing out the world of Swamp Thing for new readers.
Elric - The Balance Lost 10: I really like Elric and I really like this comic. It's Chris Roberson running with the ideas of Elric's multiverse and telling his own epic story. It's imaginative and adventurous and deals with big ideas. One could even think of it as Fantastic Four with magic instead of science. I know I've ranted about how much I like Elric and I think this comic is actually a good trial and jumping on point. It's not as great as a good deal of the original stories but it's still worth checking out.
Uncanny X-force Volume 1: The Apocalypse Solution:
I've never really agreed that superhero comics have been too dense to get into, as someone who thanks to life circumstances has loved them but had to dip in and out depending on circumstances. With the internet, constant jumping-on points, and people all too glad to explain to you who Thanos is I think that it's a pretty simple thing to get into comics.
But if there's a franchise that it's the least wrong to say that about it's the X-men. Avengers might be more in the public mindset but X-men and its spinoffs have always been a by-volume dominator of the comic stands, having multiple books and dozens of characters. When done right, this level of expansiveness is pretty great. Writers like Jason Aaron have been able to and are doing great things with the connected world of the X-men. This comic itself ends up informing a lot of stuff that happens in Aaron's Wolverine & The X-men and if you happen to be reading both of those it's a really rewarding read and Aaron never penalizes you for not having read X-force.
Unfortunately the door swings both ways. It's led to hackeneyed nonsensical plots that were a staple of the later Claremont years and -god help us- Rob Liefeld. Many plots have been retconned and ignored if only for the readers sanity. X-men sometimes requires even the most dedicated readers to nod and smile.
One of the good things about Uncanny X-force is that it doesn't take too much knowledge of X-men to go in. All you really need to know is Apocalypse is bad and Wolverine has set up a team of dark-and-edgier people to stop him. But wait! Maybe things will happen that complicate things to make things more emotionally poignant!
The great thing is that that's exactly what Uncanny X-force does. I've often be very against X-force and the general principles of the 'proactive superhero'. In the interminable 'Cry for Justice' James Robinson accidentally highlights how dumb the entire concept is. "It's always the same. They commit the crimes and we react." Green Lantern says. Um, yeah Hal. That's kind of how it works. You can't really send someone to prison when they haven't committed a crime. X-force has always been an 'ends justify the means' comic for people who think comics need to be dark and kill people maaaan (excluding a very weird point)
Under writer Rick Remender though, this is the first time where it really actually sits and considers what this means. These violent solutions they're planning are a lot harder to deal with than simply slicing the throat of a supervillain. This comic takes the violent things these so-called heroes do and actually stops to consider them. It's something a lot more of the darker-and-edgier comics need. Hell, when a comic takes a character like Deadpool and makes a turn of conscience believable and emotional you know you've got something magical.
Also, it's a pretty book. While I'm not a big fan of having to give most of the crew edgier costumes the colors do provide a good contrast. Artist Jerome Opena and colorist Dean White know how to play off each other.
This is a great comic, a good jumping off point, and manages to bundle emotional truth with a lot of fun action and art that can become downright creepy sometimes. If you like X-men you really need to be reading this.
I'm guessing one of those down right creepy scenes is Deadpool gleefully feeding a starved Angel flesh he is cutting off his own arms?
That was more macabre humor though it counts. The backstory for famine was what really took the cake for me.
One thing I love about Uncanny X-Force is how later in the run it highlights Wolverine's whole hypocrisy towards their wetwork. Cyclops is giving him and a set of volunteers/buddies orders to kill some serious bad dudes? Baaaad. Wolverine rounds up some of his buddies to go out and kill some serious bad dudes, totally fine. Until he starts to realize it's still bullshit.
Yeah, it actually looks at what the x-force is doing and how it affects them as characters. I still like that scene later on where Wolverine starts lecturing Deadpool about being a gun for hire and selfish and he just goes 'Yeah, but I never killed a kid.' and storms out.
So I am reading Action Comics #10 and it features Superman in his jeans/t-shirt costume, but then he goes to visit the Justice League (which, again, I though the JLA didn't form until waaaaaay after this stuff?) and he's wearing his faggy space armor and then later in the comic he's back to his old costume...wut?
Having one character appear in two different titles in different time-periods is a recipe for disaster.
So I read Schism and I want to know what I need to read guys
Oh, also, I'm reading Avengers Academy and I want to say that while this book's great, Gage really doesn't know how to write gay people. It's annoying how Striker suddenly is gay after realizing that all his flirting with girls is fruitless. Which doesn't make any fucking sense. Even if you never have had sex with girls, it doesn't mean you don't want to have sex with girls. I could get behind him being bisexual, considering that Lightspeed herself is, during her whole reveal thing, but making him gay without previous subtext and when all he did was trying to get in another girl's pants rings to me as false.
About Striker - it's more that his aggressive flirting with girls was a way to convince himself and everybody around him he is straight since that time he was molested as a kid and the idea of him being gay himself freaked him out. But eh, Hazmat, Finesse, Mettle and Hank Pym are the shining stars of the book.
Schism - Wolverine picks a ridiculously bad time to argue with Cyclops over how the kids should spend their time. Annoying villains take over the Hellfire club and turn it into the Heckfire club because seriously, fuck kid geniuses. But for all it's faults, it managed to do what Civil War failed miserably to do. Characters parting ways over differences in ideology, but not declaring to attack each other on sight for siding with the other team. And at least the Fortress side and the School side had valid points each. From a story telling side it gave the various X-books a kick in the pants giving a catalyst for new stories.
Fair enough, I suppose. I still feel that they are not making that clear enough, really.
Dat speech in issue 26.
just...dat speech.
Re: Schism: Yeah, I was thinking about Civil War in a good way while reading it. I'm with Wolverine, though. It helps a lot that Scott has always seemed like the douchiest of the douches.
As for the Heckfire club, I can get behind it, though. I mean, by now X-Men has become more silver age-y than ever (Oh hay flamethrower-wielding Frankensteins) so it fits. They're annoying past the concept, though.
So, I've just finished Thor: The Mighty Avenger. A truly beautiful series. This is comic in its purest form: just awesome yet poignant superheroic and romantic stuff, no traces of irony anywhere. It is clear that the folks who worked on this enjoyed what they're doing as much as I did reading their brainchild. A short but sweet run. I was disheartened to see it gone.
So anyway here is part one of my comic recommendations, self-contained stories and just really great creator-owned series.
Common Grounds: There are great comics that raise the superhero to heights of myth and legend, gods and monsters that walk among us. Then there's Common Grounds, which brings them down to earth so they can go get a cappuccino. Set in a chain of the eponymous chain of coffee-shops that cater to the long-underwear crowd, the comics examines the little moments in-between cups-of-joe where people think about their lives, meet with old flames and bitter enemies, and gather to support each other. From heroes and villains connecting over bowel issues to strangers finding comfort in shared experiences, from immortals giving advice on life and love to mere mortals, to giant beasts lamenting the inumanity of man, Common Grounds is at its heart about the struggles of people (albeit people who wear capes).
Atomic Robo: Sometime in 1920, Nikola Tesla built a robot with "automatic intelligence." Imbued with sentience and dubbed "Atomic Robo" by the press, the robot undertook special missions for the U.S. Government against the might of Nazi super-science in exchange for citizenship. In the present day, Robo is an accomplished adventurer and scientist, founding TeslaDyne and its Action Scientists to travel the world, study strange things, and beat the tar out of mad science monstrosities. While Aromic Robo shares many surface elements with Hellboy, the great distinction between the two is that where Hellboy mutters "...adventure." in a somber and weary tone, Atomic Robo shouts "ADVENTURE!" in the most joyous and excited of voices. Brian Clevinger (of 8-Bit Theater fame) not only has a talent with "funny lines" and witty dialogue but also possesses an acute understanding of the mechanics of a fun, exciting adventure. Scott Wegener's cartoony, sharp-edged lines bring to life everything from horrors beyond the universe to the drab locales of World War II. Read Atomic Robo, because it's so much glorious fun.
I Kill Giants: Barbara Thorson is a problem child. An abrasive loner subject to ridicule as "that girl who kills giants" by her fifth-grade class, Barbara is labelled psychologically troubled by her counselor, and treated like a misfit for her ritualistic ways and archaic words. But that's fine for her as she sits in her strange little world of magic and myth, content to prepare alone for a coming danger only Barbara can see. But when she makes a new friend in Sophia, the new girl in town, Barbara's carefully-placed traps and walls of safety against the giants come crumbling down. Do titans truly walk among us? Is Barbara just breaking down from trauma? What's real? What isn't? And what does baseball have to do with anything? Written by Joe Kelly, illustrated by J.M. Ken Niimura, and published by Image Comics, I Kill Giants is an eclectically-drawn tale of connection, grief, frustration, and love, full of kinetic action, questions that linger, and wonder.
Infinite Kung-Fu: In a land of Chinese myth and legend, over-run by murderous revenants and ruled by the deathless Emperor, there is kung-fu. On the run from aforementioned zombies and the Centipede Army he deserted from, the soldier Yang Lei-Kung accidentally burns the body of a meditating hermit on the cusp of enlightenment. Indebted to the man he "killed", Yang Lei-Kung is tasked with finding one of the Eight Immortals to help return the undead hermit to his original form. Along the way, he must fight alongside the soul fist-master Moog Joogular, defeat tyrannical commanders, train with the famed Shaolin monk-warriors, and accomplish a thing far beyond his wildest imaginings. Scripted and illustrated by consummate Hong Kong film fan Kagan McLeod, Infinite Kung-Fu is drawn in a black-and-white, flowing style reminiscent of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, full of life, energy, and motion. In kung-fu fiction or the comics medium in general, there's nothing quite like Infinite Kung-Fu.
Shazam! And The Monster Society Of Evil: Billy Batson is a homeless orphan, scrounging for food and living illegally in a dingy apartment with a bullying teenage "landlord", only getting by with the help of his only friend, the kind-hearted bum named Talky. But one day Billy spots and follows a mysterious figure into an abandoned train station, where a big red locomotive ferries them to the lair of the thunderous Wizard. The Wizard, having chosen Billy as his replacement in the fight against evil, grants him the power of six gods, arranged in a single, earth-shattering word. With a cry of "SHAZAM!" Billy's desparate life is changed forever as he transforms into the amazing, square-jawed demigod known as Captain Marvel. Armed with his new-found power and aided by a talking tiger, Billy Batson needs all the help he can get when he contends with the villainous and charismatic Dr. Sivanna, his own sister, evil from beyond the universe, and the fruits of his own foolishness. Jeff Smith of Bone fame writes and draws this tightrope act that lands beautifully, juggling modern sensibilities, golden age imagery, actual pain and pathos, as well as humor while still grounded in the basic understanding that the whole thing is just plain ridiculous. Jeff Smith hones down the very core idea of Shazam - the myth of transformation - and seeds it into the entire comic, while at the same time bringing a sense of stylized, simple innocence to the art. Full of charm, humor, empathy, and joy, Shazam! And The Monster Society Of Evil is a great read for any age.
Elephantmen: Two hundred years from today, the brilliant and deranged Kazushi Nikken of the MAPPO Corporation creates a brainwashed private army of superhuman super-soldiers, formed from the wombs of hundreds of captured African women, their eggs fertilized with animal DNA. But when the United Nations catches wind of this and sends a force to liberate, investigate, and end MAPPO, the world is changed forever when this new breed of humanoids are rehabilitated and made to live alongside the humans they dwarf. A spin-off of Hip Flask, Elephantmen is a moody, dark, yet sometimes hopeful series that follows the unstable, violent lives of wounded beasts who must walk amongst man - such as aforementioned detective Hip Flask the hippopotamus detective, Ebony Hide the elephant Information Agent, Obadiah Horn the rhinoceros entrepreneur, and Lieutenant Trench of the L.A. Police.
The Arrival: In a nameless impoverished nation, a nameless immigrant separates from his nameless wife and child to seek a new life in a nameless new world across a vast, nameless ocean. Finding himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages, the nameless immigrant must find a place to lay his head, food to eat, and employment. But he is not the only one confused by all the strangeness, as the land he immigrates to is not America, not Europe, not China, not anywhere on earth at all. "Written" and drawn by Australian artist Shaun Tan, The Arrival is a wordless, beautifully-illustrated photorealistic tale within tales of struggle and survival in the world of violence, upheaval, and hope.
Why is Skaar in the Dark Avengers? It didn't make sense when they did it sixth months ago and it doesn't make sense now.
Because Hulk knockoff, that's why.
Dark Avengers: Being boring Avengers just like the other Avengers since 2012
Oh come on Juan that's not fair. Most Avengers books have been boring since 2004.
Well, yeah but the Dark Avengers didn't come on the scene until this year, didn't they?
As in the Thunderbolts!Dark Avengers, not the Osborn ones.
To be fair, Dark Avengers was less boring during Dark Reign and we got New Ways To Die and American Son out of it.
But yeah... Bendis.
And Utopia, that while it wasn't necessarily an excellent story, it was okay and set up fairly important things for every X-book.