it's hard to say. background info definitely enhances. how is your knowledge of marvel characters in general?

check out hickman's avengers 1-3 and new avengers 1-3... if you dig them you'll love the run... if you're hopelessly lost then yeah it'll be tough

I was fairly knowledgeable about 25 years ago.

and if you decide you dig it let me know and i'll give you perfect reading order and torrents if you want

Ok thanks. I've got so much stuff piled up for reading at the moment.

Jar Of Fools last night

and been reading Melody


and Mickey Z's "RAV" - totally digging this


Have you ever read any Spain Rodriguez stuff?

i feel like the word 'reading' somewhat overstates the action required to go through a comic book

may i suggest 'flipping through'

disco king to thread

lol what an arcane thought

still takes more mental involvement then watching a movie

i don't see how

you mean because you need to concentrate on tugging on that page and flipping it

tbh i used to love r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ flippin' through comic books when i was a kid, mostly because i draw\paint and was always fascinated by that style.

keeping up with a zillion-edition plot arc was too much hassle though, so i mostly kept to one off books and such. does anybody have nice recommendations for some of those?

A lot of comics I've read have quite a lot of exposition as well some challenging ideas

Just don't

Almost finished with Stray Bullets. I don't want it to end.

omg STRAY BULLETS

I dunno, this just reminds me of when people say stuff like "books are better than movies because they make you imagine the things which takes more work than just having them shown to you." Like yeah literary appreciation comes from imagining what Dumbledore must look from from the text description.

Different mediums have different conventions that affect how they convey the content. Just like there are things that prose can do that movies can't, and things that movies can do that theatre can't, there are things unique to comics.

I think we use the word "reading" because comics do share this weird relationship with literature by virtue of them both having text on pages. Almost seems like they are kinda a subset of literature, rather than something completely apart. But a comic isn't just prose with pictures.

Comics and film both have sequences of images, but with film, you're sort of dragged through all those images 24 frames a second, whereas with with comics, past and present are all there on the page before you, coexisting. This kind of allows artists to create meaning and composition not just within the diagetic space of a single panel, but with the juxtaposition of different images representing different times and spaces. Of course, one of the most famous examples of this is Moore and Gibbon's Watchmen. Used a nine-panel grid, and one of the issues was actually symmetrical.

Another thing that I think comics and cartooning do well is playing with the idea of subjective interpretations of reality. The entire world presented in a comic is in the style of the artist who drew it. It's a little different from movies, in which the director and cinematographer, in presenting what they want us to accept as reality, can construct their world by deciding what's in and what's out of the frame, and giving focus where they want to, because at the end of the day, the filmmakers have to work within reality and film things and people that exist in some form. They just manipulate how they are presented. With comics, every single detail in the presented reality is a quirk of the artist, and one artist's world is going to look different from another's.

There are some cool resources on comics. Comics criticism is still in its infancy, and we don't even have a solid foundation of terminology to discuss the form's conventions in the way that people who talk about poetry or theatre or music or film do. But there have been some good books here and there on it. Also, I've been loving this relatively-new YouTube channel on comics. It's like "Now You See It," but for comics.





There are a lot of self-contained comics that are outside the serialized nature of ongoing mainstream comics.

Within mainstream comics, there's a lot of OGNs and miniseries. Like, for Batman, I'd recommend arcs from the series Legends of the Dark Knight. Pretty much they had rotating creative teams do self-contained 4-issue arcs, and a lot of these are collected in neat trades. I'd say check out Batman: Shaman and Batman: Venom by Denny O'Neil, as well as Batman: Gothic by Grant Morrison. For other cape stuff, maybe Kyle Baker's Plastic Man run, Batwoman: Elegy by Rucka and Williams, Superman: Red Son, and Superman for All Seasons. I think the trade collecting the entire recent Omega Men series should be out that month, give that a try. I don't think it requires any background knowledge (it has the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, who is now actually the White Lantern, but you don't have to know a thing about his history or anything other than what the book tells you about him to get the story).

I've liked most of what I've read from Ed Brubaker. He does a lot of pulpy hardboiled crime stuff. I was reading The Fade Out but never finished it, and will probably just buy the trades so that I can read them all in one go because it's a mystery and you kind of have to read mysteries all at once so that you don't forget clues.

I feel like you'd like Adrian Tomine's stuff. Check out Summer Blonde.

Oh, and everyone should read Batman: Mad Love and pretend that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist. Also, people should read John Ostrander's Suicide Squad run and pretend that that Suicide Squad movie doesn't exist, but that's, like, 70 issues or something so I wouldn't expect people who just want short stories to read it. But Mad Love is a self-contained graphic novel. It's done in the style of the '90s cartoon by the creators of it and set in that universe. And while it's pretty light and tongue-in-cheek, it's not a kid's book, either.

as i mentioned, i didn't mean much in the way of criticism - i like comics - but this analysis was enjoyable to read. there are certainly some devices that only comic books are able to utilize, and good storytelling that comes through in comics is inspiring.

interestingly though, a good, compelling comic is so impressive because, after all, it's based on cinematic rules, but it strips the creator of most techniques and movements that are possible in cinema - but not in a medium that relies on fixed frames. it forces one to be able to extract and refine only what is most important to really deliver a good story.

the first video embed you posted provided an interesting take on some of that.

i just ran a quick google image search on that and it looks awesome. i'll look into it.
just curious - how'd you know i was going to like it?

I have the 66 issue Ostrander run in floppies (with all the crossovers... Manhunter, Firestorm, Checkmate, Captain Atom.) Red it a few years go (in conjunction with Ostrander's Firstorm and Manhunter runs) and it was amazing. One of my fav comics experiences.

While pleasantly surprised to see it critically panned, it's kind of upsetting to read about how it's just "shattered August box office records with a towering number one debut grossing an estimated $135.1M in its first frame" and "generated the third best opening weekend for all of 2016 behind fellow comic smashes Captain America: Civil War ($179.1M) and Batman v Superman ($166M)."

With films like Synecdoche, New York pulling in only $4.4M, capitalism ensures that we're doomed to see these cinematic tumors metastasize.

definitely, but i don't know why you act surprised.
this issue has become malignant at least a decade ago, with all the spiderman re-re-re-boot prequel of a re-makes trampling any chance for something new, interesting or innovative. fortunately there are still gems to be found occasionally, but at least statistically it's becoming less and less probable to get even one great movie per year.

My surprise was at the poor reviews, as I had assumed it'd get the usual treatment where it's inexplicably regarded as brilliant.

as soon as I saw the version of the Joker in SS I knew that movie was about to be shit even for a comic book movie

But I'm not the only one ofc

Disco:

I really like the quick spin off alternate reality graphic novels with major DC characters in them. The last one you recommended me was All Star Superman where within the first "chapter" Lex has effectively doomed Superman

What I really liked about it is that it didn't go down the "hero is faced with challenges but defeats enemy in the end" route that too many hero stories go down.

This is what's great about for example, Watchmen, too

and kind of the ending of The Dark Knight for a pleb example

to call suicide squad a movie is giving it too much credit

There are a lot of great comics that are cinematic, but I don't think that being cinematic is a prerequisite to being a good comic.

I dunno, it might have something to do with some of the things I've seen you post about, like your ex or your current situation with being back in your home country. Tomine's style kind of explores personal insecurities and melancholia. Also, he's Asian-American and you went to China so I guess there's kinda a connection there, I dunno.

I haven't read the entire run yet, but the issues I've read have been good. I work my way through old series slowly because I read a few issues and then get distracted by something else and then come back to the series.

One of the few good things to come out of the film is the fact that DC is finally collecting the series in trades. That's a lot more convenient than tracking down floppies in dollar bins and torrenting (especially because I don't have any sort of tablet and reading off a laptop is hell). I'll probably read it all now.

Man, I also loved that '80s Captain Atom series. I remember Nightshade being a supporting character in both series, and there being something of an inter-departmental rivalry between Waller and Eilling. I also remember that Millennium crossover.

I've never read Firestorm or Manhunter (I have a trade of the Archie Goodwin stuff but am yet to get to it).

DC was killing it in the late-'80s, so much good stuff there.

I think it had a huge opening weekend because of pre-sale tickets. When people start to realize it sucks, I think we'll see a steep decline at the box office, just like with Batman vs. Superman, which was still profitable, but failed to meet WB's expectations.

So much of the stuff I'm hearing about WB's DC adaptations sounds dreadful. Apparently, they hired, like, six screenwriters to pen competing treatments for the Wonder Woman film, and then picked the "best parts" of each into some Frankenscript. The original director dropped out due to "creative differences," so you know they just hired some yes-person who will have the project shat out by WB's deadline. The guy doing Aquaman dropped out after the Batman vs. Superman reviews.

Hasty reshoots were ordered for Suicide Squad to add more jokes and levity after people complained the super-bad Superbat film was "too dark," and the film got a new edit that, according to reviews, made the plot incomprehensible (not that I think it was ever going to be a good movie to begin with, but it probably would had at least had basic scene continuity). I'm probably not the only one who noticed that it wasn't until the BvS reviews that the Squad marketing took on a neon glow with uptempo '70s rock songs. Even the latest Justice League trailer features Batman and The Flash cracking unfunny jokes as |Icky Thump" plays in the background, so you know it will be a lot of fun.

I think part of the problem is that, due to the success of Marvel Studios, studios are planning out these movies, like, fucking decades in advance, and making movies not because somebody somewhere has a story that needs to be told, but just because it's part of some 15-year franchise-building plan. And deadlines are strict due to various marketing obligations, so these things are gonna get pumped out hell or toilet water.

Also, people like what's familiar, so you just get rehashes of Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Independence Day, and everything is an adaptation, reboot, or sequel.

I think BvS and Suicide Squad (I haven't seen the latter, I'm just going by common themes I'm hearing about in reviews) are getting shit on because, not only are they dumb movies, they are incompetently made dumb movies.

Like, Avengers isn't a good movie, but at least the story structure makes sense. At least you understand why characters do what they do, even if it isn't for very profound or complex reasons. At least you can say, "well, that was a movie, I suppose." I didn't enjoy it much, but I didn't feel like ending my life, either.

With something like Batman v. Superman, it feels like it was edited by having a blindfolded person pick tableaux out of a hat. Shit is introduced that has nothing to do with the movie at hand, because it will tie in to something three movies down the line. Character motivations are inconsistent. The plot hinges upon the actions of the villain, which make no sense, and one can't even parse out which of the events that transpire are intentional on his part, and which are pure coincidence. The alleged main character is not a character at all, just some passive object that is there to look sad as other characters discuss him, because, as it turns out, Zack Snyder's interests always lay with making terrible Batman movies rather than terrible Superman movies. This film has all the problems of the Marvel Studios movies, and then additional ones that make it impossible for even somebody who can enjoy okay films to enjoy these ones. They fail on pretty much every level a film can possibly fail on.

Oh god, Leto's Hot Topic Joker.

I'm just disappointed that Batman didn't match.



Yeah, those succinct stories sheltered from the wider continuity can be pretty good.

Have you read Batman: Black & White? It's an anthology of 8-page black-and-white Batman stories by various creative teams. First volume is the best, but they are all good.

The late 80s were a fucking majestic time for superhero comics

Yeah, the thing I was reading did say that the figures for Saturday had fallen off by about 40% and that Sunday was likely to go another 20% in that direction.

Regardless of profit forecasting and performance relative to studio expectations, the fact that a blatantly terrible movie can generate thirty times as much in a few days as a genuine contribution to culture can make in a lifetime more or less guarantees that resources aren't going to be allocated away from the Suicide Squads of the future. As long as social media campaigns and billboard advertising are enough to bring in numbers like in the above, it'll always be easier to simply tune the marketing of a by-the-numbers cinematic turd when genius minds come in much shorter supply than the writing teams that serve our levity on explosion-strewn platters.


To me, it's apples and pears.

If we're discussing the standards for what constitutes an acceptable contribution to the world of film in terms of whether the story makes basic sense, we're already beyond fucked. In any case, this ignores the vast quantity of superior examples with no obvious narrative structure at all.