JeffromOhio

February 4, 2013 1:48 pm I understand the ironic tone of the article, and I have much the same opinion about comics today, especially from the Big Two. It seems like every book that has interested me in the past five years has been canned. This is especially true of the New 52; I went from having too many books on my pull list, to having a tentative one or two. So, the gist of the article is that the Powers That Be in comics seem more interested in pursuing the readers and fans who are more casual in their zeal for creators, which almost certainly means much, if not most, of the comic fans who are online are not the audience they want to depend on. The implied answer to the question "they must know what they're doing, right?" seems to be "probably not." It all depends on the sales figures. It's no secret that comic sales figures are a fraction of what they were 10, 15, 20 years ago. In the '70s and '80s, books would be canceled for the sales figures of many of today's successful books. So they try to pump up sales of the entire line by forcing crossovers that can be jarring to even the most devoted fans, spreading big name characters across multiple titles, and relaunching titles and lines every few months. They hope to draw back in the multitudes of yesteryear. The numbers of readers indicate it all may not be succeeding. But it's an impossible problem - make the books accessible to a broader audience, and alienate the most devoted fan core; or focus on the devoted fans, and the books become impenetrable to a casual reader. The loss of shelf space and spinner racks in convenience stores and newsstands helped close off comics from a once-enormous audience; electronic comics might have opened up another audience, but it doesn't seem they've caught on with any but those who were comic fans already. So, maybe DC is, indeed, trying to run off a lot of us. I'll include Marvel, too, because of its cyclical bouts of madness. But DC seems to be going through its Mr. Hyde/Wolfman phase at the moment, jettisoning books and creators, then bringing them back, and resurrecting concepts and characters only to quickly abandon them or alter them beyond recognition. That's not to say there aren't good books; most of the books I'm reading right now are DC. I've been more of a DC fan for a number of years now. But it does seem that a lot of decisions are being made without regard for what the hardcore clamors for. Then again, maybe it's not a matter of attempting to get rid of us; maybe it's just a matter of them finally deciding we're not that consequential to them. Personally, I think it's a bad mistake; there must be a happy medium between pleasing the core and attracting the more casual fan. But, hey, they must know what they're doing, huh?

January 25, 2013 9:54 am Mignola and Chaykin's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" adaptations are among my very favorite book-to-comic efforts. The team managed to translate Fritz Leiber's very distinctive prose into visual terms, and captured the essence of The Twain.They also manage to evoke the atmosphere of Lankhmar, the City of Seven-Score Thousand Smokes, which is as much a character as either of the titular heroes. Mignola's work is evocatively baroque, Chaykin's writing is spare, yet dreamy. This may be something of a cheat, but I'll also cite the Roy Thomas/John Buscema run on "Conan the Barbarian," especially now that Dark Horse has collected them. I know that Barry Windsor-Smith has a strong following, but Buscema's take on the Cimmerian is as iconic, to me, as that of Frazetta. Thomas also managed to make Conan distinctly his own, while still respecting and revering Robert E. Howard's work. To keep it more about graphic novels than just a run on a comic, I'll name The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 12, that Dark Horse published. It collects together the "Queen of the Black Coast" storyline, and is pretty much the apex of the Thomas/Buscema collaboration.

August 16, 2012 1:06 pm The Thing was, and still is, my favorite comic character. My favorite venue for him, by far, was Marvel Two-in-One. It's a pretty nutty comic; Grimm teams up with or fights a whole slew of Marvel characters, but I especially liked how they featured so many second-stringers and never-weres in the title. He even teamed up or fought himself more than once. MTiO remains one of my very favorite comic series. I think Jonathan Hickman's treatment of the character has been masterful. Fantastic Four #605 may be my favorite single issue of a comic book, ever, and in my mind neatly ties up both the Fantastic Four and MTiO.

July 11, 2011 12:53 pm @thehangman  I second that. I'm loving this book, even though I don't usually like when books start to get so dark in their storytelling. That last panel in issue 2 made my jaw drop, literally, right after I said "WOW!" It's been a long time since a comic did that.

July 11, 2011 12:38 pm I've also enjoyed Fear Itself, as well as some of the tie-ins, like The Mighty Thor and (especially) Journey Into Mystery (a fantastic book!).

I like Flashpoint even more. I've been eagerly reading all the Flashpoint one-shots and minis, and I can't get enough. I don't care how it fits into continuity or canon. I also don't care that it'll all go away in the Fall. All I care about is that it's a really good read right now. Batman: Knight of Vengeance #2 - that last panel made me go "WOW!!!" and I can't remember the last time a comic did that. Deathstroke fighting the Warlord as pirates on the seas over a drowned Europe? More please! The creators of these comics must feel loose and free with these books, because it all has a fun, take-no-prisoners style that, while assuring it won't make it into anything close to continuity, ensures some really cool comic-book reading right now. And that's comic books at their best. It's what made me love the medium way back in the '70s, when dinosaurs roamed the aisles of the convenience store where I bought my first funny-books.