Transitions

8 COMMENTS

This is a decidedly strange-feeling week in the world of new comics. We’ve got some long-time favorites either ending (Daredevil: End of Days) or moving into their final days (Locke & Key only has two more issues left, and both Age of Ultron and X-Factor and entering into their last arcs)… while other books are either just ramping up (Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is making its debut as a monthly comic), or are getting new beginnings (this week gives us the first issue of Robert Venditti’s writing stint on Green Lantern, and Kick-Ass is back in Kick-Ass 3… making Dave Lizewski the first guy to make it three rounds wearing a green rubber suit who didn’t spend rounds one and two kneeling in front of a hole in a men’s room wall).

So while there’s a big feeling of change in this week’s books, one thing that has remained the same: it is Wednesday, which means new comics. Which further means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it is not just a week of big hellos and goodbyes. We’ve also got the latest issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man (which, almost six months into this arc, if proving still generally and surprisingly fun to read), a new Jim Starlin Stormwatch, the second issue of J. Michael Straczynski’s Ten Grand, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how this all works: before we can talk about them, we need time to read them. So until we can accomplish that goal…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Categories: Site Business

June 5, 2013 by Rob

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8 Responses to "Transitions"

The Hirsch Effekt

Jun 9

Ten Grand is so good, isn’t it? I don’t really care what anyone says, I still love me some JMS. Haven’t read his Before Watchmen stuff yet on which your opinion seemed to go downhill the longer it went on…but, man, from the glorious Babylon 5 to his fresh ideas for spider-Man back in the day to Midnight Nation to the first two issues of this new series now, the guy just rocks. Haters be damned.

Also nice to see that somebody else is still keeping up with Stormwatch. The change in #19 pissed me off initially (I have no experience with prior incarnations and actually liked the New 52 team) but #20 was just good enough to keep the thing on my pull-list. I’m on the verge of dropping the book basically every issue since about #5 – but here we are and I have the complete run. Still think the two-parter fill-in by Paul Jenkins was actually the best. Gravity Miners & Hawksmoor talking with Hiroshima…I wish this book consistently gave me weird stuff like that every month.

Reply
- Rob
  
  Jun 9
  
  Hi, The Hirsch Effekt –
  
  Ten Grand has been pretty interesting so far; I’ll try to get to a review of Ten Grand #2 sometime before Wednesday’s new comics. I’ll always give Straczynski’s comics an honest shot, precisely because Rising Stars and Midnight Nation were so good. But yeah: his work on Before Watchmen just missed the mark, but to be fair, most of those books other than Silk Spectre and arguably Rorschach (provided you can lose yourself in the plupy 70s grindhouse feel and not worry too much about the fact that it’s Rorschach) really kinda shit the bed and died whimpering.
  
  The biggest problem I, and a lot of people, have had with Straczynski’s comic work over the years is blown deadlines and dropped books – Superman walking around the world might have been great, had he not stepped away right in the middle of it and denied us his real intended ending. And it’s easy to forget that, as much as I loved Rising Stars, the man had huge shipping gaps where he went off to work on other stuff. Hopefully, with the recreation of his Joe’s Comics imprint, that will be a thing of the past.
  
  And I will always give Stormwatch and Jim Starlin a day in court… but yeah: the sudden completely new team is still proving a little hard to swallow. But if Starlin can hook into those big, weird ideas that have always been Stormwatch / The Authority’s best stock-in-trade, it might turn out okay… but then again, we’re talking about the writer who brought us the K. G. Beast; best to keep our expectations somewhere in the realistic range.
  
  Reply
The Hirsch Effekt

Jun 9

Hi Rob,

I guess with JMS it’s good for me that I’m rather late to the party, as I’m one of those few mythical new readers brought in by the New 52. I’d of course watched Babylon 5 before and also bought the occasional comics TP, but as far as diving into the monthlies, with continuity and all, that started in September of 2011 for me. So I never experienced Straczynski’s missed deadlines firsthand. I’ve read up on stories about him, where some paint him as very unprofessional and others cut him slack because he apparently had health issues…I don’t know. He’s not disappointed me yet, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for saying Grounded could have been great, though! I don’t really get why everyone acts as if it was the worst idea ever. Yeah, execution was awkward and him leaving mid-arc didn’t help but I always like to give credit to someone daring and failing spectacularly. Props for trying something really different.

Oh, I’m with Stormwatch to the end now. Which can’t be far away, right? Then again, maybe they want to have one Wildstorm book around no matter what, just like they seem set on having at least one lone black lead. Which would now make Stormwatch and Batwing, of all titles, the books you cannot kill.

Reply
- Rob
  
  Jun 9
  
  Hi, The Hirsch Effekt –
  
  I think the biggest problem facing Grounded was that, rather than selling it as “Superman makes a point to get back in touch with the common American’s troubles rather than battling cosmic-level villains,” DC went with, “Superman walks across America.” One of those just sounds fucking ridiculous, and all but writes its own jokes (God knows I have written more than one).
  
  And Batwing has really taken a turn for the better since Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray took over the writing. If you’ve dropped it, give it one more shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
  
  Reply
The Hirsch Effekt

Jun 10

Nah, I’ll pass, thanks. I don’t even doubt Palmiotti and Gray, I’m sure they’re writing a fun comic. But having indeed followed Batwing because it was something different, I don’t need it pulled closer to the Bat Family. Actually it was too close already for me in some instances, with arms dealers in Africa leading back to The Penguin in Gotham and so on. Also, I liked to read about David Zavimbe. I mean, it’s not like I lost sleep over this, but telling me the guy I read about for 18 months was “always only second choice”? Well, f— you!

So, yeah, they gave me an excuse tp jump off and I took it. Since I started getting some Marvel titles as well with the Now! initiative, tis comics thing is getting expensive. I’m actually glad in a way if I can drop something these days…

Reply
- Rob
  
  Jun 10
  
  Fair enough; God knows comics aren’t the cheapest habit in the world. I spend more a month on comics than I used to on cigarettes, and until recently, I was a two pack a day man, and that’s in Boston, Taxachusetts. The Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office looks like an uncontrolled breeding ground for longboxes.
  
  But if you were intrigued by the African setting and civil war background of Batwing, do yourself a favor and at least flip through Joshua Dysart’s 2008 – 2010 Vertigo book, The Unknown Soldier. Light superhero action it ain’t, but it was one damn good series.
  
  Reply
The Hirsch Effekt

Jun 12

Right, and I’m not even on that big a budget. I really spend too much money on this suff, just like I do on music. I’m a rabid collector and always go for the special edition pack with bonus DVD, posterflag and the occasional silly coffee mug, so it’s not like I don’t already spend a lot on my entertainment and commercial art.

I may have a slight advantage in pricing, as the standard for an imported US comic over here is about 2.70 Euro (and I have to get those; don’t get me started on the horror of German translations), but with a big enough pull-list I’m able to get that down to 2.45 or something. And that’s where I begin to talk myself into even more: hey, if I bring my own coffee tomorrow instead of getting the ridiculous latte macchiato in the cafeteria, I basically have enough to get a new comic book, right? And if I do that two times a week, that’s 8 more comics a month, right? Man, the length sad addicts are going to go to justify their behaviour.

Is that the Unknown Soldier that now leads Suicide Squad? I already dig that guy. Never heard of this series before, but looks right up my alley. I’ll take a look, thanks a lot!

Reply
- Rob
  
  Jun 12
  
  As a guy looking right this second at this week’s delivery of two new Criterion Edition Blu-Rays over homemade coffee to save a few bucks from Dunkin Donuts, I can relate, The Hirsch Effekt.
  
  And no, it’s a different Unknown Soldier. Going from memory, it’s about a doctor who gets badly injured in the Ugandan civil war, recovers with a limited ability to feel pain, and decides to take it upon himself to attack the warlords using asymmetric warfare. It is very much a war comic rather than a superhero comic, and the setting with its child soldiers and wanton violence is really dark. It’s exciting, but not a feel-good read, but it was very well executed.
  
  Reply