RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Comics I've been reading 2012 edition

Read all of Invincible over the last few weeks. Damn good comic. There are some not so great moments but its the most consistently entertain comic I've read in a while.

Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis
Infinite might be my favorite DC crossover event of the last few years. I've read it before but I think this is the first time I understood it.
Final Crisis isn't as good. Its too confusing for me. Once I read more comics associated with it I might like it more.

Powers
Read the first issue. Bendis likes to use a lot of words. I want to catch up before the FX show may or may not debut but I'm having doubts about it for now.

Invincible is ok.I couldn't really get into it though.I read the first couple of TPB's and that was it. I did however,read the Atom Eve mini-series a couple years ago and enjoyed that.

Infinite Crisis was pretty good overall and I liked the story.What I didn't like was the mess that followed after and the lack of clear definition from DC on what was changed.Superman in particular was affected in how Clark Kent was perceived and it took years after IC for Johns to produce "Secret Origin" to clear up the questions just before they ended up doing the relaunch which wiped all that away anyhow.

Final Crisis was crap.Even in TPB form as a completed story it doesn't gel.Plus the weekly "Countdown" series that preceded it made it even more confusing.

I read the first TPB of Powers and it just wasn't my cup-o-tea.

I want to read through all of the DC crisis stuff soon. At least all the Batman family related stuff.

I also read All Star Batman recently. Its like a really bad movie. You should hate it but you end up loving it.

Irredeemable and The Boys. I think I've already wanked off to the titles in several other threads so there's no need to do it here again.

I also read Kick-Ass 2. It's still as good as the first, but I dunno, this time around it sort of fell bland. Like it was just extending the story of the first one unnecessarily. Also, the ending kind of makes it look like Millar is planning on a Kick-Ass 3. There's a law of diminishing returns at play with Millar's works.

Superior. It's decent, and a good read in one sitting. But I think they really need to stop with the deconstructions, as it's frankly getting old. Start building new IPs.

Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece - Because I is Azian, dudes.

The Cape. This is an okay read, as it's not really a superhero story (how superhero can you get with just the ability to fly, anyway?.)

Crossed: Psychopath - I'm not really offended by the violence/gore/sex in Crossed. But it's kind of detracting as it seems like the whole series was relying too much on shock factor. Besides, Walking Dead shows that you can build a story around these things and still showing gore without going over the top.

All-Star Batman isn't all that bad really.It's out of continuity so Bats can be as Goddamn nutty as he wants to be.The only real problem I have with it is that it hasn't or,more likely,never will be finished.

I like Infinite Crisis, but it could've been so much more. It, like a lot of Johns work, just doesn't offer me a satisfying conclusion. He built a great story in those first four or five books, but then it seems like he just decided to rush on through to the conclusion. It takes what could be a great adventure and makes it only a little better than meh. Also, still pissed about the dialogue changes between the comics and the collected version.



I've read this one more times than I care to remember and I still don't get what happened. I'd like to think it was editorial and the story originally pitched had little to do with what we actually got. The sketchbook, for example, had characters or versions of characters that didn't even appear in the story (save the Forever People, Highfather, et al being seen in one little panel about Apokolips becoming New New Genesis at the end). Shilo and Sonny's big role in all of this was to tell people to paint their fucking faces for christ's sake. I really thought that Shilo and Sonny would follow in the footsteps of that guy in the wheelchair who became Metron and become the new Mister Miracle and--I'd have guessed--Orion. Instead, they told people to paint their fucking face and got brushed off by Mister fucking Terrific of all people. WTF? I hated Final Crisis.

I loved Final Crisis. It was an ode to the DC Universe in all its crazy confusing glory. It's like reading 500 issues a DC series and trying to make sense of it as one story: it starts as one thing, then it changes, then it goes back to what it used to be but there are contradictions, etc. I liked the ending too, which could have been the last thing DC published and would feel right.

Infinite Crisis started out great but like everything else Johns has done it came apart at the end. Johns introduces some interesting themes/cool ideas, stuff happens, then it ends.

That said, and speaking of Final Crisis, Johns' Legion of Superheroes: Crisis on Three Worlds FC crossover with George Perez was great (if you know the characters). It had little to do with FC (beyond showing where Superman went off to in the middle of the story) but it was just a cool, epic superhero story.

I liked ASBats as well. As the story went on, you start to get the feeling that their Batman is not really that different from main continuity Bats. He's just portrayed in a more realistic light.

I mean, if you put the in-continuity Batman in his situation, you'd have the same results/reactions/thought processes. The interactions with that reality's Justice League is spot on (Weren't a lot of in-continuity stories written around batman's paranoia over superhumans? The OMACs were his creation, after all). Batman's always been that nutty.

I think people just overreacted on the "are you dense" meme. A lot of them probably didn't even bother to read the comic and just jumped on the hate bandwagon.

I will admit that humanity being shrunken and freeze-dried on a tray or, you know, whatever it was that happened towards the end there was pretty fucking epic.

I think the thing about Final Crisis is the people that really understand everything about the DC universe love it and the people that don't understand it don't get it.

Finished the first hardcover of Powers. The second half was worse than the first. I don't think I'll read anymore.

Started on the Walking Dead again, which is probably why I didn't care for the way Bendis drags everything out. Kirkman's "big shit happens every issue" style of writing is so much better. I still love Ultimate Spider-Man and his run on Daredevil But I'm not going to try any of his older stuff now.