froggulper

November 10, 2011 7:00 pm Yeah, I agree. I really wanted to like this because I'm a huge Joe Mad fan. Err, I WAS a huge Joe Mad fan when I was a kid. But this issue was just as bad as the Ultimates 3 stuff he did a few years ago. The story felt like a 12-year-old wrote it. It was pointless. It wasn't fun. And the art had all of the excess of the early Image-style with none of the fun. I miss Joe's old style circa '96. Everything he's done in the last decade or so seems so given to excess. More than anything I would compare this to Ultimates 3. People hated that series a few years ago, but now they love this one. Go figure.

November 10, 2011 3:40 pm I love this series. It is hands-down the best comic Marvel puts out. It's been the best for a year now. It's easily the best X-title since the Whedon/Cassaday Astonishing days.

November 10, 2011 3:39 pm From a fan's p.o.v., this is an okay deal. Many readers already feel entitled to download illegal copies of comics they already down. That's a common mindset that's out there. What this really speaks to, however, is the lack of demand for digital comics. Many people here will find that statement fallacious, but the evidence seems to be piling up. Things that are in-demands are not given away for free. Also, neither major company is releasing their digital sales figures. Even when Marvel releases a statement bragging about Ultimate Spidey's "record-breaking" digital sales, they don't even give the actual number. So, really, I think Marvel is hoping to get some more readers hooked on digital by giving away these free copies. Why would they want that? Well, because Marvel will get more profit from digital sales rather than print sales. Why would they get more from a digital sale? Well, because they will insist on a $4 or $3 (or, at best, if you're very very very lucky $2) price-point. Why would they insist on a price-point that seems a bit too high for a small chunk of data? Well, because they've already gotten us used to paying $4 for a 22-page comic. I know a lot of people feel that is "too high" a price, but most of those people still buy many $4 comics a week. No one who buys $4 comics has much of a leg to stand on in the debate. I myself buy some $4 comics, every single week. Do I wish they were $3? Yes, but I'm still buying them at $4, and from Marvel's perspective that's all that matters. "But won't such high price-points for digital comics keep new readers away?" What new readers? There are hardly any, even with all of the $1 jump-on-point comics and free digital comics that have been given out over the past few years. Most of the people hopping on the DC New 52 are just lapsed readers or Marvel fans looking to try something new. So I would enjoy the "free" digital comics while you can. Once/If Marvel finds that they actually can attract a sizable digital audience (they're not there yet, despite the echo chamber of the internet), then you won't get such deals anymore. You'll be paying the same price as you've been paying, only you'll be paying for 10MB of nothing rather than 22 actual pages that don't require electricity and an expensive device to view, 22 pages that can actually be resold to someone else or given away as a gift to a kid. And a consequence of all of this still may be the loss of the direct market, which many digital utopians seem to be anticipating in a way that's very short-sighted.

November 7, 2011 8:26 pm This is my favorite of the New 52, which is kinda ironic because it's the title that has the MOST to do with pre-Flashpoint continuity. (Maybe some of you guys who aren't digging it so much weren't reading Kate Kane's adventures before?) I think Rucka's involvement here would definitely be a plus, but to be honest I never felt that the writing he did on the Detective Comics run was all that great. It was okay, but only rarely worthy of a 5-star rating, imo. It wasn't A-list Rucka. It wasn't as good as Gotham Central Rucka. It befuddles me that so much people who I know loved Gotham Central (more than I did, even) also seem to have liked the writing in his Detective run just as much. I don't get it, because if you're into Rucka then you should be able to tell that what Rucka was doing for DC a couple years ago wasn't as good/focused as what he was doing 5-10 years ago. Rucka has even admitted this himself on a WordBalloon episode: he said that he felt overworked and was taking on too many side-projects to really devote enough time to the ones he cared about most, and he said that his lack of focus shows in the comics at the time, which it does. Still good, but not great. That said, I dunno, I'm digging the Weeping Woman and Chase here. It's not blowing me out of the water (pun intended), but it's pretty cool. It's only been a couple issues; the various plot-lines are still building. Shame about the cover, though. This is like the first JH Williams cover that doesn't do much for me. Is that supposed to be Chase on the cover?

November 7, 2011 2:44 pm In a few weeks Marvel is putting out "Must Have" editions of the three new Ultimate ongoings. So you can get first three issues of this for $4.99.

November 5, 2011 1:27 am I'm not sure why the title of this article is "Game Over". That seems in poor taste, like it's along the lines of "Hahaha, comic shops! Now you have to go out of business! Whee!"

November 3, 2011 9:12 pm It's insane to think that comics that couldn't support a print run would become digital exclusive. You want that AND you want a lower pricepoint? Insane. Madness. This is digital utopianism. How do you expect the creators to be paid?

November 3, 2011 9:10 pm I hope Marvel and DC start releasing exact digital sales figures soon. Until they do, so much of all our pontificating is just speculating. The fact that they have not already disclosed digital sales figures suggests that they are very low. (Actually, the fact that it took Marvel and DC so long to go same-day digital also suggests that there really isn't THAT much money in this, despite the echo chamber of the comics internet hyping digital up all the time.) I mean, a few weeks ago Marvel released a glowing statement saying that the new Ultimate Spidey #1 broke their digital sales records . . . but they didn't say what that record was. Very suspect, but I guess we can all optimistically HOPE that digital brings in some of those mythical creatures known as "new readers".

November 3, 2011 1:00 am I feel the same way. I only gave Gillen one issue to wow me, and he didn't. You're right that he's just the same as Fraction: horribly superficial trendy characterizations like 75% of the time . . . then a tiny bit of good characterization. At least Fraction's creator-owned work is good. I don't think Gillen's a bad writer, but I tried to read a few issues of Phonogram and thought, "Wow, no wonder his X-Men stuff is so bad. This guy's brain is completely colonized by pop culture trivia." I really wish they got a different--dare I say more mature?--writer for the Uncanny reboot. Just please give me someone who doesn't want to turn the X-Men and their villains into airheads and celebrities.

November 3, 2011 12:55 am Yeah, the thing is, we all used to read a ton of comics this "wordy" when we were about 10-12 years old. So, really, the problem a lot of people are having with Perez's writing says more about their short attention spans than it does about the actual writing. That's not to say that wordy writing is inherently good. It isn't inherently good. There can definitely be over-wordy writing. But I think that people are kind of protesting too much about how wordy Superman #1 was. It's not that wordy. I read tons of comics like this, no problem, any given afternoon in 1990. We all did. But now a lot of us have conditioned our minds to only think in short little snippets and half-ideas, because we have jobs where we play around on Twitter all day and act snarky and pithy. So, really, the jokes on us if we can't concentrate long enough to read a comic we could have read, no problem, when we were eleven years old.