RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Top 5 Comic Creators today

jeremy get the cock out of your mouth, you misquoted again.

he can't even spell BASAMS right.

He gets upset when I make fun of the other gays.

Jermery does like cocks, thats for sure!

his love for cocks is insatiable!

It's funny that not only is WB stuck in the mid-80's, he's stuck in the mid-80's complaining about the late 80's.



I agree with the second part.



Well, that figures.

Did wondy just wank and cry over bad words in comics and then call me a sock fucker?

I don't know, I really never read his posts either.

Really? I didn't get that!

Fuck you

How dare you compare me to oakley?

Oh you got that!

Alan Davis
Arthur Adams
Darwyn Cooke
Mike Mignola
J Scott Campbell

Based on my current pull list, it would look like my faves are Johns, Rucka, Tomasi, Morrison and Dini.

No one wants to know who you jerk off to.

I'll give it a seven, Rex. You could've done better had you not gone with the painfully obvious.

Does that mean you're gonna go cry to the gays and beg them to come here and defend your honor?

Is Honor supposed to be my daughter or something?

If anyone still disagrees with my labelling this the Dark Age of comics...

THE DARK AGE: Grim, Great and Gimmicky Post-Modern Comics, by Jack C. Harris(exerpted on google books)

...you can always debate the issue with editor Jack C. Harris. In addition to others I've cited, including Joe Kubert, Alex Toth, Paul Smith, Keith Giffen, and centerpieces of the dark 1985-forward era, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

Sorry to interrupt the gay jokes. Carry on.

So you're using other people's words to back up your points.







I win again!

In addition to my own clearly stated views on the subject, I'm citing professionals who work in the comics field and are knowledgeable about it.

And in the examples of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, I cited examples of guys who created Dark Age material, and commented on the ramifications of their own work (Moore), and who wrote stories that editorialized about the dark trend (Moore's "Pictopia" in ANYTHING GOES # 2, and Morrison's ANIMALMAN 21-26).

Late 80's and ongoing. Comics have slumped into a very dark, cynical and pretentious age, and have never come out of it. Where for my money, there's a lot less worth reading.



I've been clear in my many posts citing CEREBUS that I like the series up through JAKA's STORY(vol 5) and that after that I think Sim lost it. Sim lost half his readership, including me, when he went on his misogynist kick.
Please don't slander me by misrepresenting the facts otherwise.

We're watching you.

The Dark Age ended with Morrison's JLA. There are still people who write comics like that, but they're outdated leftovers, much like the people who still drew like Curt Swan and Carmine Infantino in the early 80's (like, you know, Swan and Infantino themselves). Lazy writers used to refuge themselves in corny plot devices, then it was sex and violence in the 90's, and now it's gore and cussing. The problem is the same and it has always existed.

The trend for the past decade, I think, has been producing high-concept comics that are actually focused on a central idea instead of drifting aimlessly. I'll take six issues of an Ultimates arc over six pointless Avengers comics from the 70's any day, but that's me. This is not to say that the great majority of comics doesn't suck. Hasn't it always been that way? I think, historically, only 10 to 14 year old kids have been able to read every comic that's published every month and not want to puke.

Now, potty mouths and the occasional dismemberment may seem "dark" to you, but to the current generation of readers they are relatively tame stuff. What appalls you makes most people laugh, and I guess that's only natural since, well, you're old. It's not like these things are central to the stories, either. Preacher, from what I've read, is actually a touching love story. If you want to focus on the guy cutting his dick off and shoving it up his arse, that's your loss.



Oh, so you DO have reservations about Cerebus. I don't know how I got the impression that you didn't.

Risk. Heh.

I wish that were true. On what objective criteria do you toss that out there as fact?

The Image-style story cliches (big guns, overdrive-testosterone, profanity-laden stories) of the 90's have given way to an only slightly variant retread of the same in the 2000-forward era.
If anything, the new decade presents work that is even more dark and morose.

Prime examples are Brian Azzarello, Bendis, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, who find endless morose ways to throw sadim and pointless shock-value gore (PREACHER: SAINT OF KILLERS, raping corpses and dismembering people alive for sheer sadistic pleasure) and other trans-gender perversion and sadism (Morrison's specialty, JLA: EARTH 2 being one example) into their work, that is praised by fanboy wankers as "genius", when in truth it is shit, excrement, garbage, completely unworthy of the paper and ink it is printed on.

And their lite-version imitators, such as Jeph Loeb, and guys I never warmed up to like J.Michael Stracynski and Peter David, who churn out the same unrelentingly serious and dark stuff that is monotonopus to read. (And yes, yes, I know Peter David did SUPERBOY and SUPERGIRL and a few other things, but his style is still laden with "attitude" and cynicism overall.

Then there's the school of somber pretentious wankers churning out "old-school" style stories with five times the padding and a fraction of the talent. They are hollow echoes of the 70's and 80's greatness, at best. And more often, just pretentious overblown butchery of what made these characters great in the 80's and prior ( Busiek's MARVELS and ASTRO CITY, Waid's KINGDOM COME, and any of the fan fiction disguised as professional work I've ever sampled from Geoff Johns. )

The new books do, in fact, suck ass.
Royally.
Monumentally.
They suck, they are garbage, praised as if they were gold. They are ugly, unpleasant, their characters and dialogue, even in the best scenes, are tainted and destroyed by so-called "realistic" elements (i.e., dark and cynical, and in the Vertigo mold, paired with double-live gonzo violence and gore).

And only a fanboy who is indoctrinated by 20 years of reading this cheap, shoddily-written comics-subculture shit could possibly see it as "realistic". To anyone who ISN'T a comic book fan, it is laughably silly and pretentious.





Ah, the obligatory contempt for the old masters. Swan and Infantino had more talent manifest in a single page than the modern clowns have demonstrated in two decades.
No one draws like Swan or Infantino. George Perez is the only creator I've ever seen list Swan as an influence. And Perez is not a Swan imitator, he only used some of Swan's storytelling devices.
Likewise, who is an Infantino imitator ? Name one.

Swan and Infantino are skilled and distinctive artists. Should they NOT have continued drawing in the style that they developed, that was not imitated, that they were distinctly known for ? Ridiculous.

And even so, Infantino continued to experiment and develop (even if his late-70's and forward style was not as popular, it still demonstrated considerable skill and a unique vision. Can one say the same of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and their many indistinguishable clones? )
Likewise, an artist you didn't mention, Gil Kane. I think Gil Kane, despite staying within his long-established style, really expanded that style nicely in CONAN, SWORD OF THE ATOM, ACTION COMICS, and a number of other titles in the 70's and early/mid 80's.
Likewise Steve Ditko. Despite that I much prefer his early 60s work, Ditko did a lot of experimental work, exploring the concepts of Ayn Rand and objectivism in THE QUESTION and MR. A, as well as in three decades of other stories in THE CREEPER, HAWK AND THE DOVE, THE DESTRUCTOR, and many other series.

Lazy writers use the same cheap gimmicks, foul language, violence, gore and perversion elements over and over, and call themselves geniuses and visionaries for it.
That would be Morrison and the other new guys.

The old school writers developed characters that thrilled and inspired us. They DIDN'T NEED to shock us with perversion and gore, because they were capable of invoking deeper emotions, and of inspiring us with well-developed characters we admired.
I despise the characters as portrayed by the newer writers, so when they do something perverse and/or kill them off, I'm actually glad to see them die.

Lazy writers take a one-issue story, or even one that could be told in 10 or 12 pages, and stretch it out for 6 or 12 issues. That would be Morrison and the other new guys.




That's a dressed up way of saying they're producing pretentious comics.
I thought of starting a topic here to discuss what I term "de-constructionist comics". It's been done to death countless times since WATCHMEN, and I'm frankly bored with the worn-out concept. I was bored with it in 1990 !



I'll take the 70's AVENGERS, any day. And I've specified the issues I recommend.




Certainly, there was a good ratio of material in the 70's and 80's that was bad as well.
But I think there was a far higher ratio of good material. Fun at the very least.

The new books are not fun. They are dark and morose, with unlikeable characters. They struggle too hard to prove something. I rarely see the stories in new books as actually trying to tell a story. It's more a case of a writer drawing attention to himself and away from the story, screaming between the lines, "Look how witty and clever I am."



It seems dark, because it IS dark.



The current generation of readers are overwhelmingly NOT reading comics. They have largely abandoned the medium for other forms of entertainment that offer better storytelling, and more value for their money.

Over the last 25 years, many longtime readers like myself have largely abandoned the comics medium, in disgust over what passes for entertainment in the modern era, and the vandalism unleashed on the characters we grew up with and love.

Movies, books and television offer variety and humor as well as action. Comics overwhemingly only offer unrelenting seriousness and darkness.




You're talking out your ass. I don't believe that for a second.

Muslims kill people for warm charming portrayals of Mohammed in a Dutch newspaper.
People are offended that department stores won't let employees say "Merry Christmas."
Gays run riot in defiance through Christian churches, and may have even burned one in Alaska, simply because a majority of blacks and hispanics in California voted on November 4th to oppose gay marriage.

And you don't think the profanity-laden deeply offensive obscenities in stories by guys like Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis offend anyone?

Please. Be serious. I challenge you to prove no one is offended. You can't.
I've been on the side of a large group of readers who are offended. A large group that has countered the views you (and snots like you) have rationalized for the last 8 years, here on RKMB, and on the previous DC boards.

Basically, you want to mock and caricature me for not sharing your depraved taste in comic books. Despite that I represent a large faction of alienated readers.



Old is a relative term. I'm 45.

I find your conclusions about PREACHER absurd. That series is a celebration of cynicism, sadism, perversion and violence. I again remind you of SAINT OF KILLERS (vol 4, if I recall correctly), where a bunch of thugs are gang-raping corpses, and severing limbs off other still-living victims for their sadistic pleasure.
"touching"?
"makes most people laugh" ?

Hardly.


I don't know how you could have missed the context I specified.

I actually did a search on RKMB going back 7 years, under the user-name Wonder Boy and the search-word Cerebus, in all references to CEREBUS over the years, any time I recommended the series, I qualified it with "up through JAKA's STORY" virtually every time, out of the 30 or so posts that I found in my search.

I base that on the fact that, unlike you, I read a shitload of current comics. "Well," Wonder Boy will say, "I once read an issue of The Authority!" I'm not talking about 10 comics from 2001, WB. I'm talking about 25 comics from 2008 this month. It's indisputable that I'm more qualified to asses the current state of comics, if nothing else simply because I'm reading them, but I get the feeling you'd dispute that anyway. "Why, I once read a depraved Preacher volume!"

"I've read more than enough to know I don't like it," you may say, and that's fine, but by saying something like that you're conceding that there's no way for you to be able to keep up with the latest developments in the industry.

I used to be pretty angry at the state of modern comics too, you know. But since I started ACTUALLY READING the stuff I was complaining about (like Geoff Johns' Green Lantern, which I'd previously decided sucked because GL: Rebirth did), and I realized it wasn't all that bad. You haven't read the Sinestro Corps War, obviously, and no one expects you to. But I have, and I can say that it's as good if not better than the Great Darkness Saga. Even though a G'nort says "oh poop" halfway through it (which is the probably the point you'd declare it filthy and disgusting).



Again, none of that stuff is central to the stories. Ok, imagine a guy from the 40's who is shocked at the depiction of tits. He picks up a comic from the 70's (OH NO, IT'S AN ISSUE OF THE AVENGERS!), and he's absolutely disgusted by the size of women's bosoms. He decides all comics are depraved because he can't get past a detail like that. You're that guy, Wonder Boy. Only with gore and cussing instead of titties.



You forgot depraved.

What, you mean people who weren't fans didn't look at comics in the 70's and laugh at how silly they were? You mean you could read the dialogue of a Silver Surfer issue aloud and nobody found it corny and pretentious? Dialogue in comics these days is good or as bad as it is in TV, mainly because a lot of the same people are writing both mediums.

Comics are getting more mainstream attention this decade than they have since probably the 40's. Look at all the comics-based and comics-inspired films and TV shows that are coming out, using an unprecedented amount of accuracy for the source medium. I honestly don't know if that's good or bad, though your "anyone who ISN'T a comic book fan" comment seems to indicate that you think the mainstream knows better. So, yay!



I love Swan... in the 50's and 60's. In the 70's and 80's his work started looking awkward, and the little work he did in the 90's was simply embarassing. Look at Action Comics #700 or his sequence in the Superman Wedding Special. Not only does it look out of place with the other artists, which wouldn't really be his fault, it looks like he was trying to adopt a modern style and failing miserably. Had he kept his old style unchanged at least the stories would have looked dignified, but I guess there's a chance the editors are to blame here.

A lot of other artists had the same problem as Swan up to the early 80's, from what I've seen in the Superman comics of the period. I don't mean that they were specifically imitating Swan, I mean that they still used that generic Silver Age style that worked so well in its time but looked utterly ridiculous when trying to be something else. At least all the Neal Adams clones didn't look so lost.

The same thing happened with the writers. A lot of them were still using the "Oh no Lois -- I've turned into shellfish!" type stories from the Silver Age, which had become so formulaic they weren't even fun. Those are the worst comics in the universe for me: the Superman titles from the late 70's to the mid 80's. The stagnancy and mediocrity of that era offends me much more than your average gang raping ever could.



Right, because he was the exact opposite of Curt Swan: he did know how to update his style and it still looked decent even shortly before his death in 1996.



Lazy writers are the problem, I agree, but it's simply illogical to declare that ALL modern writers are lazy and awful while the "old school writers that thrilled and inspired us" were mostly a wonderful and handsome bunch of chappies, as if something in the water had drained all the talent from the population. It's a lot more likely that you're simply bitter and outdated, which is a phenomenon that HAS been known to happen to people.



I'm just going to point out the irony in you exalting old writers for being able to invoke deeper emotions and then criticizing new ones for taking more time to tell a story. I haven't seen better character development than the one William Messner-Loebs carried out over 40 issues of The Flash, which were then followed by even more amazing character work by Mark Waid in the mid 90's.

It's true that there's an annoying tendency these days to stretch stories to make them fit in TPBs, but in general I think it's a good thing that writers have more space in which to tell more ambitious stories. Morrison's 12-part ASS (oh filthy me!) is a recent example of decompression put to good use. The premise could have easily been used for a 22 page story, but the 12 issue format gives it more scope and emotional resonance. Which, yes, is something that Morrison is able to convey even though he showed robot animals tear apart a person in another comic a few years ago. I know it seems far fetched and unlikely, but it looks like him writing a gore scene as an incidental part of a comic didn't decrease his talent, even though every rational person knows both things are inextricably linked.

I'm being sarcastic. They have nothing to do with each other and you're nuts.



So are Grant Morrison and most good writers! Which is why Morrison's expressed mission in writing JLA was to put back together what the 80's had pulled apart. His DC One Million crossover was even more obvious in that intent. And this was in 1996. Since then other writers have followed and thanks to that we have wonderfully fun comics like Madman or Godland or Astonishing X-Men or Runaways or the Umbrella Academy or, fuck, most of Moore's ABC line.



Ah, now you're entering a fully subjective field, which I always love in a debate. You say the new books aren't fun, but what is fun and what isn't is up to each reader, not some guy in a message board they've never met. And we can safely say that the same things you find disgusting are considered fun by great majority of people: take a look at the top selling videogames for evidence.

There's a reason why you thought modern comics were fun in the 70's and 80's and aren't now: you were young then, and the comics were aimed at you and your peers. Now comics are aimed at a different generation with different tastes and... I shouldn't have to explain this to you. Why am I explaining this to you? This is excruciatingly obvious. Which, of course, means it'll fly right over your head.

Now, you can (and will) bitch about what young people like, but you may not dispute that they like it. I'm sure at some point when you were a Wonder Actual Boy you must have encountered an older person who disapproved of something you were doing, like for example listen to that savage twist music. Well, you're that guy now. Only with gore and cussing instead of titties.



In other words, yeah, it seems dark to you.



Yeah, like pretending to shoot and run over people in Grand Theft Auto (this is "the GTA" you have heard your friends' grandchildren mentioned). I'm sure if DC did a comic about a guy who shoots and runs over people it would be a top seller. In fact, I think I read in LITG last week that the top selling book this year wasn't Secret Invasion or Final Crisis, but an adaptation of some violent war game.



If that was all I found in the comics I'm reading, I would give them up too.



Oh, I'm sure people are offended. People were deeply offended by Elvis, too. Mostly old people. In both cases.

I'm sure you didn't get this at all, but most of the violence in Preacher was used for comedic purposes. Steve Dillon is a genius at depicting that kind of stuff, and it's even more obvious in Ennis' Punisher series. It's true. I laughed. My friends laughed. People at the comic store laughed. With the very same thing that made you cry.



I love that you actually do say stuff like that. It's so charming, like one of those old fashioned monkeys with cymbals.



And the oldest people modern comics are aimed at are in their early 30's. Again, it's only natural that you should be so hopelessly out of date!

This doesn't mean all comics are bad. It means they're NOT FOR YOU. There's a difference between both things which I'm sure you'd struggle to understand if you ever tried.



What does that have to do with the romantic aspect of it? This is like saying Casablanca can't be a love story because there are Nazis in it. The Nazis killed people, so that prevents the whole movie from having anything to say that isn't "let's kill us some jews".

There are countless examples of graphically violent movies with sincere romantic angles (Takeshi Kitano comes to mind), but I don't expect you to be able to appreciate any of them.



Again, both things are subjective. You're the last person in the world anyone would ask if they wanted to know what kids like these days.



It was mainly because there was no such context in the post I quoted. You said you had no reservations about Cerebus, which I found a little odd. You can't expect me to have read all of your posts... I don't think anyone has.

Best response ever.

And I actually read all of that (slow day at work).

Hey Dad, get off Wonder Boy's lawn1!!

CARICATURER!

All previously answered, and then ignored and misrepresented in your asshole-ish mocking response Mxy.

Best answer ever, TheTimeTrust. (and you're a weasel to cheerlead Mxy's insults, strawman attacks and general snottiness)

Well, let's analyze my response and see how much of that you've actually answered in the old post you quoted:



Do you disagree with that, WB? How would you debate it? Or is that how far you got into my response before realising there's no way you can debate my arguments and deciding to quit in the most pathetic way you could think of?



How would you argue that the gore and shit are central to the stories, WB? I don't see that in your post. All I see is "there's gore and cussing". As I've proven with my arguments, that simply isn't enough to put off most of the audience these days.



Well, WB? Could you read an issue of Silver Surfer out loud in the 70's and have people not laugh at you? Your point, I'll remind you, was that current comics would seem stupid to anyone outside fandom. Has that not always been the case? Sometimes it was justified, sometimes it wasn't, but the fact is comics have always been seen as childish. If this were to change, it would probably be because...



Do you disagree with this? Why? How?



Well, Wonder Boy? Have you read those Superman stories Swan did in the 90's? I find no mention of them in the post you quoted. I can provide links to the artwork if you want.



Do you disagree? Do you think those comics are actually pretty good? What are your reasons? I've exposed mine. (tee-hee) (oh, don't get so excited!)



How is that "snotty", WB? I'm admitting that you were right on that subject. That's a courtesy you've never extended to me... unless, of course, we count your capitulation as your very special way of conceding my victory.



HOW on earth do you argue with that, WB?! I'm really, really, honestly, genuinely curious to know how the hell you justify that inside that (frankly fascinating) mixed up little brain of yours.



I just read your post all over again and I can't find anything that serves to counter that assessment.



Again, I'd like to know in what way you disagree with that statement... of course, you probably can't because you haven't read any of those comics, have you?



Since you've completely disregarded every one of my arguments as being wrong, I'm going to assume that you did look at the top selling PC games. Otherwise, it would be irresponsible of you to declare that I'm wrong, wouldn't it? So, what did you find? Nothing with gore and cussing, I take it?



With your tacit disagreement of everything I've said, I guess you're also claiming that current comics AREN'T aimed at a generation you don't belong to. Nope, they're all aimed at 50 year old guys who behave like they're 70. Which explains all the Hannah Montana references.



Do you?



WHOA, no one ever took offence with what you considered entertainment when you were young?! EVER?



So now it doesn't seem dark to you. Who can keep up with you, WB?



...and this is still true, even after you've quoted an old Alan Moore interview for the fifth time. It's really baffling how repeatedly quoting old Alan Moore interviews fails to alter reality. I can't understand why the universe hasn't suddenly rearranged itself to make you right (after all, you did just quote an old Alan Moore interview), but sadly it's clear that you're still wrong.

If you can't rely on old Alan Moore interviews to change the universe, what CAN you rely on?



Which is to say, you're reading the wrong comics, boyo. Or not reading them, I guess.



And they still are. The new Preacher mini by Ennis and Dillon is amazing, and people love it.



And I still do. I still love you, Wonder Boy. Even when you're mean to me.



And this is even truer now, since you're like a month older!



Nope, nothing in your post that challenges that.

Wondy, this is the third time I've had to read your post in search for answers that aren't there. Please. Have some mercy.



Ok, go into a comic store and ask how many people laughed at something in Preacher. Ask how many people felt touched by a moment in Preacher. Then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

Note that I said "comic store" and not "community center where you play bingo every friday". Don't get lost in the way now.



I'm still waiting for you to show me what context you were talking about. Do you want me to quote what you said again? I'll understand if you can't take the embarassment.

Yes, it's impossible that TTT simply agrees with me. It's far more likely that he's a ruthless villain who jumps in whenever someone good and fair is being treated unjustly.