flapjaxx

May 24, 2012 10:41 pm @Conor: That's a decent point. Too bad Liu/editorial couldn't even get his first name right a few issues ago. And the press I've seen doesn't play up the fact that Northstar was the "first major gay superhero". So... really what Marvel is doing hasn't honored or respected the character of Northstar at all. They're just exploiting Northstar to get hype. I wish it was different. I wish Marvel actually cared enough to develop their stories and characters better than they have been lately. We all deserve better than this, I think.

May 24, 2012 10:34 pm The thing with Morrison's Batman run(s) is that you actually have to take on the challenge and grow as a reader as the storylines progress. You have to pay careful attention and remember little details. If you don't want to do that, that's cool. But people who just get lost after the first arcs are always missing out. It isn't all him, some of it's you.

May 22, 2012 3:04 pm They couldn't even get Northstar's first name right a few issues ago. And Kyle barely has a personality (Fraction never even bothered to give the guy a name, did he?). So, I can't really get excited by this. It's just another gimmick, which is a shame because: Northstar deserves better. Homosexuals deserve better (representation in comics). And readers deserve better (than to be propagandized by overhyped political issues to sell comics). Liu is a good writer and I'm sure the title is better than it's been in a few years. (But, how could it NOT be? It was pretty much the worst X-book before Liu came on board, so it had nowhere to go but up.) The View is on ABC. ABC is owned by Disney. Marvel is owned by Disney. So that's why the mainstream decided to care about this, for 15 seconds. All this is is just corporations pandering and using emotional blackmail to try to convince people that this "matters". Real people in real relationships tend not to care about whether or not comics that they don't even read are "representing" them or not. But if Marvel's going to do this, they should have at least gotten Northstar's first name right and let Kyle develop a personality.

May 22, 2012 2:58 pm Yeah, I support digital and read digital comics sometimes. But this is just another utopian article that doesn't get into how reading things digitally almost guarantees that your engagement with and remembrance of the material will be SHALLOWER than if you read it in print. Many studies have shown this. Even people who insist that "I remember more when I read digital" end up performing at lower levels on reading comprehension tests. So all of this rhetoric about "good = technology" and "bad = FEAR of technology" is totally misplaced. Technology isn't perfect, or even "nearly perfect", and there are advantages and disadvantages to everything. Digital definitely does have a lot of advantages, but, really, for the last five years I've seen a million of these utopian pro-digital comics articles, and somehow the utopia never gets here.

May 10, 2012 6:35 pm Yeah, Dodson can draw Black Cat forever as far as I'm concerned, and I'd buy every issue of it. I can't take the sex-factor out of it, but even if you try to just look at it objectively... his style is just a perfect match for that character.

May 8, 2012 7:44 pm Yeah, the Moore nostalgia on this series is almost oppressively thick. Even when Snyder is changing the mythology a bit to switch things up... the whole mood, feel, and prose of the book feels like someone aping Moore circa 1985. But if you're going to crib off something, may as crib off my favorite run of all time. It's still a good comic series, I'd say. Definitely. But I just don't think it's very original.

May 4, 2012 5:58 pm Great questions and answers this week, especially the response from Josh on digital comics. Also, I do think the "rising cost of paper" was played up way too much in the past, and this is why people naturally expect digital to be so much cheaper. The thing is, paper is relatively more expensive, but it's not THAT expensive. Think of how, in the last six months, Marvel has frequently DOUBLED retailer orders on Point One and Defenders #1 FOR FREE. Marvel just said: "Here, we printed twice as many as you ordered, at no extra cost." And publishers (especially Marvel, again) have been giving away free preview comics for years now. I feel like once a month or so I walk into my LCS and see a whole stack of free preview comics. That wouldn't be happening if the cost of paper was so high. On Dark Knight Strikes Again: I had an awful reaction to the art the first time around, and it definitely caused me to reject the story. But after going back a few years ago and trying it again, I feel that DK2 really is one of the best comics of the 2000s. Once you get past the art -- actually, once you start appreciating the art on its own terms -- I think everything in the book works really well. It's the perfect art to tell the story Miller was telling, and that story actually is a lot better than it may look on first glance. I don't think it's as good as the original DKR, but it's damn good. I always recommend people who hated DK2 when it came out, to go back like I did and give it another shot.

May 3, 2012 7:20 pm Avengers Forever so low on the list? I think it was far and away the best of Busiek's Avengers stuff. Glad to see so many of the early classics made it on here. I was afraid #1 was going to be Disassembled, just to give Bendis a spot or whatever. I don't hate all of his Avengers stuff, but none of it is even close to top ten material. Great list overall!

May 3, 2012 7:18 pm Back in the real world, Seattle just had a spell of Anarchist/Occupy riots in which cars were burned, non-corporate property was damaged for no reason, and any sort of political message was lost long ago. Where were these real superheroes then? Because I'm pretty sure some of them would have intervened, maybe protected a few innocent people's private property, and maybe even protected a peaceful protester should one of the cops gotten a little too rough. Frankly, I think this "real life comic book heroes" thing is a disgraceful farce. People are living in a fantasy world, pretending to be "real heroes", and meanwhile their actual society is disintegrating before their eyes. How much unreality can people stomach? This is no different than little kids running around with capes on. I'm supposed to think this is new and different and awesome? It's pathetic. It's nothing more than overgrown babies who haven't grown up. To think that this is "real" in any way is ludicrous. You have to life off of media hype to even entertain this silly stuff. There is a real world out there. There are everyday "heroes" trying to get by, trying not to lose their jobs, trying not to let the government take away their rights, trying not to lose personal relationships due to the stress of urban life. And then there are people lost in media simulacrum who think everything is funny and fine.

May 1, 2012 10:45 pm Yeah, it plays on being an Obama reference but it isn't really "supposed to be him". The character was in Final Crisis #7 and it was a reference to the "Sunshine Superman" who appeared way back in Morrison's Animal Man stuff. But it isn't really that character either. For what it's worth, Morrison expressed disillusionment with Obama a few years ago, in a Comic Con interview. (But maybe he likes him again? Who knows, who cares.) Glad to hear this issue was good.