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Comments
So right I can kinda dig Moorecook's writing, at least how the ploty bits and character bits translated into the comic. A nice mix of big epic fantasy, fairy tale logic and dream quest kookery. Still it's kinda dissapointing that nobody in the comic really felt fleshed out as a character except Elric, what with the rest of them being there to move him along in his journey in various way.
Ms. Marvel #18: Dammit, Machine Man looks just enough like Wonder Man that I was a bit confused when he first showed up. Though I already love him for just outright saying "Google is your friend" when an obscure villain comes up rather than dumping a bunch of exposition. Anyway, this issue initially feels disjointed, but that's by necessity, since the new arc has a lot of effects on various people, and it also has to advance some of the ongoing plot threads. Overall, though, everything in the issue is good, even if it jumps back and forth a bit. Also, the new villain is a little bit too into his action figure collection.
^^Are you talking about the comic? Because while I by and large agree, the comic's written by Chris Roberson. Not Michael Moorcock.
Malkavian - maybe the current one, but the trade I read was a collected mini series written back in 2004ish and it credits Moorecook as the author.
INUH - just one more week until her new series starts.
So right now I'm kinda baffling about how to fit all the Empowered volumes I just got into my library. The crux of the problem right now is shelf space based on my current organizational schema. Namely same publishers are grouped together, then series are alphabetized and then if necessary books within a series are ordered in chronological order, with exceptions made for books that need additional shelf space due to wonky vertical sizing. Yes, crossovers and events occasionally play hell with this schema.
So what does this have to do with anything you guys might give a shit about? Well it got me thinking about various publishers and their "niches" or overall patterns.
Arachia - kinda the arthouse studio I guess. The books they put out are very well put together and pretty, but it seems they want to hold themselves to a certain standard it often makes it seem like they are well... very technical as a studio even when you can see the artists imprints all over the works they put out.
Dark Horse - willing to publish anything really, bit a strong bias for sci fi and horror, which I can like. Granted a lot of what they churn out regularly is minis so their readership from me jumps and falters.
IDW - willing to weaponize nostalgia for marketing. All those childhood icons from the 80s and 90s? They can give them a comic for you. Still I like it when they publish horror or noir stuff.
Image/Top Cow - very much a teenage boy's idea of cool a lot of time, and so 90s in spirit. Still they put out some gems like I Kill Giants and Chew and Hack/Slash
Vertigo - HBO bait seems the most succinct way to put it. Big weird premises aimed at adults, but still free to play around in the genre excess and aesthetics.
Marvel Comics - crossovers and human characters, which leads to my love/hate relationship with Marvel. I love the shared universe and the big history all it's denizens have together, but sometimes the interconnectedness is to forced and gets in the way of the story like with their big events each year. I wish they would stick to crossovers when it makes sense for the characters to all be working together. And the human characters thing, I love it when they nail fallible and struggling people trying their best to be heroes and having their own personalities and struggles and dreams. This is what makes Spider-man and X-men so powerful for me a lot of the time. I don't like it when they confuse this for making everybody jerks. -cough- Ultimate Marvel -cough-
DC - I guess with DC it's a general sense of them trying to be marketable. Reboots and relaunches to make their characters more accessible, and generally big high concept superhero stories. It just makes me roll my eyes everytime they try to hammer out some rational to the continuity by smashing up bits of it they don't like.
Yep. So excited~
I'm hoping to catch up on Ms. Marvel before then. Not much hope of it happening before she shows up in Avenging Spider-Man tomorrow...or rather, since it's almost 2 AM.
You should try out Nextwave.
Aaron Stack is just about perfect in that one and the best character of a rather impressively funny cast.
Ms. Marvel #19: This issue starts with a scene with the villain, and it's like his motive completely changed between issues. Where in the last one he seemed to be entirely mercenary, in this one he's pretty much just going "I'm so evil! Mwahaha!" On the plus side, Aaron continues to be awesome. A lot of the first bits of this issue relate to the fallout from Civil War. I really like the way this series is handling that, BTW, since it's basically going "yeah, that was really stupid and has some pretty nasty repercussions for a lot of people on both sides."
Ms. Marvel #20: GAH. They switched artists, and the new ones are significantly worse. I think they kept the same person on colors, but there's only so much that can be done with crappy inks and pencils. As for the actual story...I'm of two minds about it. The end of this arc mostly serves to do some really "holy-crap" inducing character development and drop more hints about the overall plot. All that is really good...but it's at the expense of having the actual story arc be kinda shit. The way it ends just doesn't really make much sense, but given that the villain seems to have a new personality for every page I can't really say for sure if what he does is out-of-character...I mean, it's stupid either way, but...meh. At least the overall plot seems to be going somewhere interesting, and it ends on a hell of a high note.
Avenging Spider-Man #9: It's...well, it's okay. It's part one of two, but I kinda feel like they had to slow things down for it to make that happen. The initial character interactions between Peter and Carol are fun, and I like Carol's new Captain Marvel costume better than her old one (mostly; I liked the lightning bolt). Once the action starts off, though, things get repetitive and the villains are just annoying. On the plus side:
Batman #11: ...you know what? I'm not going to go into detail about this, since it's the end of a year-long story arc, and I don't think other people here have read it yet. It's good, though.
Demon Knights #11: There's a lot of comic crammed into this comic. That's always good. Character development, symbolism, exposition, action, hamminess and Arthurian legend. Good stuff.
Ms. Marvel #21: This issue is about half the writers just being plain mean to Carol and half awesome weirdness. Machine Man continues to be awesome in ways you just have to see for yourself to fully process. Also, I love it when comic book things have descriptive names so you don't really have to look them up to figure out what they are. What's Monster Island? It's an island. It has monsters.
Anyway, seven issues to go, six days until Carol gets promoted to Captain Marvel. Hell yeah.
I still miss the scarf, but then again, I just love how dramatic scarves look while the wind is high and mighty. They are an interesting alternative to capes that I wish were used more often
But anyway! I actually liked this issue for what it was. Watching Carol be a total badass and watching Spider-Man being funny. Robyn Hood was kinda eh sometimes and while the concept is really funny (As Alk called it, a keyboard warrior with a jetpack) it took until the very last pages to get there in terms of humor.
The villains were uninteresting and just there for Carol to punch but I can get behind it if only because of the line about blondes
Batman 11: I thought it was a bit lackluster (It's basically Owlman yelling a lot, Batman performing a "I'm the Goddamn Batman, I ain't have to explain shit" trick and pretty much ending in a "Snyder will revisit this later" note which is cool but lacking in closure) but on the whole, it was just as fuck awesome as Batman vs Talon was. I seriously think that Capullo might be the best artist in the business right now. He is really good at depicting action without falling in the trap of annoying and needless close ups or needless decompression. Of course, I'm sure Snyder helps a lot, what with the almost shakesperean dialogue on the part of Owlman.
So yeah, I'm happy with this conclusion. As for the back up, I think it works and it explains what it has to explain, but it doesn't feel that necessary until we see Alfred and Bruce talk about their dead family.
I'm pretty sure Miss Marvel is longer than that. I got an issue 46 with my Dark Reign stuff.
Wikipedia says there are 50 issues, 3 specials and 1 annual.
Well crap. I guess I have some reading to do. If I can even track it down...
ITT: Carol Danvers becomes CU's waifu.
I don't think there's someone who can walk this very earth, read a story with Carol Danvers (A well written one, of course) and not like her.
^ Mystique maybe?
Mystique is from Earth 616. she hardly counts as walking this very earth.
Also, reason #2547 that Doctor Doom is a jackass - He has called Carol Danvers fat on multiple occasions.
Wasn't that Bendis though? I think Doom gets a pass for that.
Fine. We'll just go with other fine displays of him being classy like that time he imprisoned Storm( a huge claustrophobe) in a statue while she was still conscious of her surroundings and used her as a trophy in his throne room.
Edit: And in Avenger Spider-man 9 I kinda noticed some winking at the idea of a Peter/Carol ship. The whole blah blah blah truth or dare mumbling anticts in the plane.
Ok, Alk you're a Rogue fan. Has the relationship between Rogue and Ms. Marvel ever evolved beyond 'she's the bitch who stole my powers'?
Yeah, they sort of have an odd friendship and Carol doesn't really bare her any ill will because she knows Rogue's life got screwed over from the power theft too. They are just kinda awkward around each other.
"Yeah sorry about stealing your powers and leaving you in a coma"
"Um yeah, sorry about driving you crazy for years on end..."
"Truce?"
"Sure... want to make fun of our friends?"
"... Sure."
Huh. That actually works better than what I had intended.
Crossover time, come on grab your friends, we'll head to very Rotten Lands! With Alex the Plant and Buddy the Animal, the fun will never end! It's crossover time!
-sung to the Adventure Time theme song's tune-
Looks like I was mistaken; Comixology has 30 issues of Ms. Marvel.
Which is...still not 50
Ms. Marvel has 50 issues, I know this because issues 47, 49 and 50 have my favourite Marvel covers ever. (I'm semi-back btw, I'll make a thread explaining why I am gone soon).
Right, so I looked through it and it looks like they're putting one volume up every six months or so. The latest one just went up on the tenth, so...:/
Now, as for why they're doing this when there's no way they'd make as much money from me buying the actual print comic as from me buying it digitally...no idea how that works. I'm confused/annoyed.