froggulper
Name: Ann Fuller
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Reviews
I read this issue against my better judgment. It’s not that I hated the first issue — I thought it…
Read full review and commentsThis is continuing to impress me. The story seems like somewhere Animal Man has never gone before. Yes, he went…
Read full review and commentsBruce Wayne dressed in a suit and making a generic speech at a podium. Playboy Bruce Wayne casually chatting up…
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froggulper's Recent Comments
An Image Problem
December 5, 2011 12:57 pm Great article, Jim.
The Image Era was strange. It brought a lot of people into comics, but slowly it ushered most of them out and alienated a lot of longtime fans in the process.
Some of the best comics of the '90s were Image comics. Bone was published by Image for a while. So was Astro City. So was Alan Moore's Supreme, which imo was and is better than any Superman comic published since 1986 or so.
On the other hand, there was absolute crap, most of it written by artists or friends of artists who had little writing talent or experience in the industry. Some of it was exciting, though. The first few issues of Youngblood, Wildcats, and Spawn were exciting...even if they were poorly written or over-written. I didn't read many issues of them but enjoyed them for the exciting things they were when I was 12.
Y'know something, though? Usually the people I hear complaining about bad '90s Image comics are the people who bought into them a lot and now seem to have some kind of guilt about it. I never bought long runs of comics like "Bloodwulf" or whatever, so I don't know how it feels to look back on them. I bought a few Image comics I would call crappy, but I barely remember them. I think the anti-'90s Image stance is kind of revisionist history. At the time, if you knew what good comics were, you were way too busy reading titles like Sandman and Marvels to really be all that preoccupied with generic Image titles. At least, that was my experience.
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BATMAN ODYSSEY VOL 2 #2 (OF 7)
November 30, 2011 10:55 pm Ha! Very well written review.
I haven't read an issue of this yet. I hate to say it, but the more reviews I read of it (positive and negative), the more inclined I am to order the collection when it comes out. It just sounds so f--ing crazy and unique. No way I'd pay full price for it, though.
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ULTIMATE COMICS THE ULTIMATES #4
November 29, 2011 9:17 pm I haven't read this issue yet, but I think I know who you're referring to as the Big Bad. Yeah, I remember seeing him in issue #1. I thought we were supposed to infer that he created The World--err, I mean "The City". Soo...I'm not sure how much of a reveal it's supposed to be. But I definitely kept that character in mind. I mean, he created The City. I didn't necessarily match that up with "Big Bad" status, but I was waiting for the other shoe to drop whenever the character was going to reappear or be mentioned again. Hm.
Yeah, Ribic is great. He did do an arc in Uncanny X-Force earlier this year. Interestingly enough, that arc featured The World. And before that he did the "Dark Reign: Wolverine: The List" one-shot written by Jason Aaron...which featured Marvel Boy (created by Morrison; currently being used by Bendis), Fantomex (created by Morrison; currently being used by Remender), and...The World (whose analog "The City" is being used by Hickman).
I tell ya, these new bigshot writers at Marvel...all they ever do is rip off Morrison's New X-Men... ;-)
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HOLY TERROR HC
November 29, 2011 9:08 pm DKSA is a lot better if you don't compare it to the aesthetic of DKR. DKR is obviously Miller's greatest work (Elektra Assassin is a fairly close second for me, though). DKSA does not come close. But DKSA was pretty innovative, and it has its own aesthetic that's very freewheeling and excellent in a classic "cartooning" sort of way. I also really, really hated DKSA #1 when it first came out. But I reread that issue and the rest of the series a few years ago, and found that when you give it an open mind, and stop thinking of it as a sequel to the best Batman story ever, it becomes very interesting and enjoyable. Miller was not trying to match DKR on DKR's own ground; he purposely switched aesthetics and decided to do something different. Once you understand his aesthetic (sorry to keep using that word!), I think you'd see that Miller did a very high-quality job on DKSA. It's just a matter of understanding what he was going for. I honestly think it's the most influential comic of the '00s. I see its influence in everything from The Ultimates to Darwin Cooke to some things everyone from Bendis to Morrison has done. DKSA is just so broad and interesting in how it ties together superheroes, media, politics, and DCU-spanning techno-dystopia...I just love it.
No interest in reading Holy Terror, though. Whatever "aesthetic" Miller might have been going for here, it seems very shallow and I don't think he put much into it. Unlike DKSA, which is a lot more complex than it seems.
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WOLVERINE #19
November 28, 2011 2:05 pm When this story-arc was first solicited I kind of looked askance at it and thought "...Maybe I don't need to read Jason Aaron's Wolverine anymore." But I picked up the first two issues of this for free with some LCS store credit I had, and it's a solid story.
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Josh Flanagan’s ‘Astro Van’ Available on Kindle & Nook
November 21, 2011 2:15 pm Congrats, Josh! Hope you are pleased with sales and write more!
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CANCELPOCALYPSE: Who’s Next? UPDATE: DAKEN Has Been Canceled
November 20, 2011 10:29 am Note how many of the canceled titles are $2.99. All of them.
Deadpool MAX sells fewer copies, but it's a $3.99 and it just got renewed for a second "season" of twelve issues. Plus a holiday special.
More evidence that $3.99 is not a "greedy" price for a comic. This is the price of doing business now, in our dwindling hobby.
Some costs would be saved if a title became digital-only, but as Conor has stated, there are additional costs there as well (paying Apple, Comixology, paying people to convert the files to various digital presentation styles). It might be feasible at 2.99, if you could get over 10,000 downloads (far from a sure thing). Otherwise the creative talent would need to take a huge cut in pay to make the enterprise feasible.
P.S. So Daken got canceled, huh. I guess this puts to rest any of the "sexism" accusations about X-23 getting canceled. Or, it SHOULD put them to rest. It won't.
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X-23 #17
November 18, 2011 8:41 pm Move it to "just digital"? Do you really think more people would buy it digitally than buy it in LCS's? The cost of paper is not so much. Marvel gives out a ton of free preview comics every week. Last week they DOUBLED every LCS's order of "Point One" for free. And "Point One" was an oversized issue. It's not paper costs, if that's your underlying rationale for suggesting this be "digital only".
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CANCELPOCALYPSE! Marvel Cancels GHOST RIDER and Ends BLACK PANTHER [UPDATED]
November 17, 2011 3:30 pm So is it Marvel's fault that female-lead titles don't sell? Many people are making it out as if Marvel just doesn't care about females. It's a shame, but the titles don't really sell, at least not the way Marvel goes about doing them. On the other hand, Wonder Woman and Batwoman are selling great for DC and are among many fans' favorites of the New 52. (They're MY favorites of the New 52, too.) High quality products generally win-out. Marvel just doesn't get behind anything that isn't Avengers, Spider-Man, or X-related. I personally liked the X23 series (her female writer included), but it's kind of tacky to point to that series' cancellation as misogynist or something. It's a little-known character written by a little-known writer, and the series got almost no good press from the comics internet media. Then the series gets cancelled and this same comics internet media gets all indignant and sanctimonious.
The last I knew, there weren't many females or minorities working for iFanboy. Should we call that prejudice as well? Of course not. All of this is really just the demographics that we're dealing with. It isn't a conspiracy against women and minorities. Unfortunately the numbers don't warrant these titles continuing. The only way to make them profitable would have been to charge even higher cover prices for them. But much of the comics internet media thinks that everything should be priced much less. It shows how out of touch with reality a lot of pundits are.
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CATWOMAN #3
November 17, 2011 12:41 am It would be interesting to know how this series would have been received if Winick chose to go under a female pen name for this one. I bet quite a few people complaining of Winick's "sexism" would be championing how wonderfully "liberated" Selina is.
I'm not judging. I haven't even read these comics but am kinda following the controversy. From what I hear, yeah, I wouldn't really like this series. And what I heard about the end of issue 1 seemed a little too sexed up for no reason. But the constant cat-calling (pun intended) of "sexism in comics!" is kinda over the top lately. From what I know, this series might be a little sexist, but only a little. There are a hell of a lot more prejudicial things to complain about than this series.
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