timbermunki

March 18, 2012 7:16 am Also is Jonathan Lord in the credits meant to be Silverblade? My D.C.Comics-fu is not that strong, I salute the genius of wikipedia.

June 25, 2011 4:26 am The line 'England and her United Kingdom'  is a bit of a clunker, considering that Mike Carey is British, but I was sold on the comic from the title alone.

November 3, 2010 8:20 pm Good article. Most re-read the book, and the Aerial Graffiti follow up. follow up As to flying cars, I always remember Charles Stross's response to why they have never appeared - the failure mode of a ground based car is that it stops moving, not a possibility you'd want in an aircraft.

October 9, 2010 8:01 am I want to hear Doom's Hyper-sound mixtape.

December 30, 2009 10:47 am

I'd recommend The Incredible Hercule. Great Super Hero comics. Funny and great charcter development. I started because I was reading The Incredible Hulk but dodn't know Herc at all, and Amadeus Cho was really annoying when he was first introduced. The thing is his development is fantastic, I've grown to care for him and the relationship between him and Herc is priceless, 

Great sound effects as well and sweet re-cap pages  

March 1, 2009 6:04 am Is hawkeye the equivalent of the Justice League's Martian Manhunter - integeral to the title (and the wider universe) but never really made it as a succesful solo title. For me it's the classic late 60s-early 70s period I go for (available in Essential Avengers 4-6 & Essential Defenders 1, as well as The Kree-Skrull War & Celestial Madonna Tpbs) when he was trying to establish himself outside of the shadows of Cap, Thor & Iron Man, and this Hawkeye is featured in Avengers Forever. He really is the heart of the team, and his role in Secret Invasion & New Avengers #50 proves this.

January 9, 2009 2:15 pm Have to say I'm going to miss Dave Johnson's covers for 100 Bullets when it winds up in february probably as much as the story inside.

October 22, 2008 3:20 pm I'd have put Walking Dead in the mix somewhere, given that it can in my experience serve as an excellent gate-way drug to people who don't read comics - at the moment I've got the first 4 trades lent out to various friends, May be I can get them interested in Ultimates or 100 Bullets. Don't want to scare them off with some hard-core Grant Morrison.

August 7, 2008 7:31 pm

I think I'm getting into the groove with FC's oblique structure, the lack of set-up captions etc combined with the constant shifting of scenes = often at a page break, creating an if only for an instant a sense of uncertainty and disorientation, making it easier to get 'inside' the story.

I get a sense of realism (without the 80s grim & gritty worthiness of actually looking at how super-heros would function in the real world) and involvment using this technique that's been lacking in any of the big event books from either company recently. I think Morrison & Jones have realised that ultimately nothing much will really change, and even if it does it could quite easliy be retconned anyway, so are looking at different ways of handling the narrative, rather than a different narrative. If we're been all meta-textual about it (and with Grant Morrison meta-textuality [is that a real word?] is a rather large elephant in the room) it could be viewed as a comment on the perception of super-hero books to mainstream - this is how comics are viewed without any of the knowledge we carry around.

Whilst it's not new per se, it's certainly new for a mainstream big super-hero crossover book and I for one like it.