vacur005
Name: Daniel Vacura
Bio:
Reviews
All reviews by vacur005
vacur005's Recent Comments
Pick of the Week #794 – Kang The Conqueror #1
August 23, 2021 12:11 am I would have said candy without substance, but bland Jell-O works. I don’t even think it’s that subtle and I’ve noticed with quite a few GOSH comics that Josh and Conor talk about where they feel like empty calories. They’re fun, but ultimately not memorable. They really liked War of the Realms, however, there was no emotional depth until the second to last issue where it was too little too late for a lot of people. The Thunderbolts: King in Black mini-series was fun as another example of that, but didn’t have much depth. If a story doesn’t have emotional depth with the characters, I don’t care in the long run. Being fun isn’t enough for me. The details and characterization matters most.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #793 – Rorschach #11
August 15, 2021 4:30 pm *Just focusing
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #793 – Rorschach #11
August 15, 2021 4:29 pm Yeah, I agree with you. Mitch Gerads started a thread on Twitter saying, “Hey, Tim got more interesting!” Then Marc Andreyko said, “You mean he got interesting:)” and then Mitch Gerads responded, “Trust me, I wanted to make it more obvious how boring Tim used to be but I didn’t want to deal with people who take these things too seriously. ;)” That thread is frankly pretty terrible where it makes me think less of those creators since you aren’t treating the Tim Drake fans and Tim Drake as a character well.
The people who agreed in that thread whether it was just random people or other creators baffle me. Someone being bisexual doesn’t make that person inherently more interesting. If you thought Tim was bland, fine. However, saying that him being bisexual makes him more interesting is insane. Are you just focus more on his sexuality now and have more male relationships? That feels less organic and is signaling hard that he’s bisexual. Don’t make it the focus of the story. I don’t find bisexual people more interesting and it comes across like it’s a side show if you do and only focus on that aspect.
Plenty of other TV shows, movies, books, etc. have done a better job of having characters come out. However, comics for the most part does a terrible job at it. It’s never believable and Alan Scott is probably the best one even though he was only gay in the Earth-2 series where then the prime Alan Scott had to be gay as well. It makes more sense to take asexual characters and have them come out honestly if pre-existing ones were going to be used like Cassandra Cain as an example. Negative Man works very well in the Doom Patrol TV show. Tim Drake wasn’t a good choice just like Bobby Drake wasn’t a good choice. I’m reminded of Bobby’s and Kitty’s future child from an issue of Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men with Carmen Drake. I hope it’s not as bad black Wally West which was a disaster and fundamentally changed his personality and background. We will see though.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #793 – Rorschach #11
August 15, 2021 11:54 am That Chip Zdarsky story with the way he handled Jason was great and I still can’t believe how good it was. Compare that portrayal to Three Jokers where it is just so much better or any Jason story since the start of the New 52 and even older than that honestly. Chip Zdarsky doesn’t want to take over Amazing Spider-Man or Batman because then editorial would get involved more. He would need to hit certain numbers and he’s happy not doing that which is why he said he prefers for Daredevil to hit 50,000 issues sold at most so editors leave him alone. He said he has plans until issue 50 for Daredevil. I know he’s contracted to write 24 Marvel issues a year and I’ll take great mini-series by him with those characters. He has talked about that with Sal on ComicPop more than once. I love the Marcus To art so much.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #793 – Rorschach #11
August 15, 2021 11:39 am I expected it to happen due to previous Urban Legends issues, but I still am not a fan of Tim coming out as bisexual where I also don’t buy it. DC decided to make Tim bisexual because the company knows that it’s easier to take a popular character and change his sexual orientation just like Marvel did with Iceman. The way Bendis wrote the reveal of young Iceman coming out with Jean looking into his mind by accident and telling the young version is still really offensive where it didn’t give Iceman agency. That of course led to multiple not so good Iceman series by Steve Orlando. DC obviously did it it with Alan Scott already where at least Scott’s children are back. Constantine is bisexual. Feature him instead along with other existing characters if the company really wants to promote LGBT characters or create new characters which Tom Taylor did in his Suicide Squad run that everyone else ignores. DC is afraid to create new characters since if they don’t become popular and don’t stick, then people won’t really care and it will be seen as a failure.
Alysia Yeoh who is a transgender woman from the New 52 Batgirl run and later Batgirl of Burnside has disappeared. DC and Marvel both don’t trust the audience enough to create new LGBT characters and don’t really want to feature the ones they already have. That’s why changing Tim’s sexual orientation is taking the easy way out. It requires no effort on DC’s part. It’s much harder to create new characters that last and matter and DC is also too lazy to feature the LGBT characters it has right now. A character’s sexuality shouldn’t be the focal point, but DC doesn’t seem to care that much. People are retroactively claiming that Tim Drake was interested in Conner which is why he was so upset about his death. I have not seen Geoff Johns say that and I think of Boy Meets World with Cory and Shawn loving each other as friends. Then Scrubs as well with JD and Turk where none of those characters are bisexual.
We are at a strange point where people really want to force teenage boys and men to be part of the LGBT community in fiction. It happened recently with the movie, Luca, too. In Tynion’s Detective run, Tim was going to give up being Robin to go to college in the first arc so I’m not sure how old he is supposed to be now. I’m with Josh where Tim has been the one who knows what he wanted. I really don’t appreciate creators saying that Tim is now more interesting or this makes him interesting period like Marc Andreyko and Mitch Gerads. I’m still surprised that Gerads’ favorite Robin is Damian. A lot of current creators just don’t appreciate Tim honestly. Taking the sexuality part out of it, I don’t understand that mindset with Tim at all since if you don’t care for the character, I don’t find your commentary on the issue as useful.
Go To Comment
Special Edition – The Suicide Squad
August 14, 2021 10:03 am In the MCU, there is death and destruction often which is even shown in Civil War with mentioning events in other movies while showing the brief clips. It’s just glossed over for the most part and you aren’t meant to focus on it. The MCU would not be a great place to live in unless you suddenly forgot a lot of third acts. Asgard was destroyed which was a genocide in Ragnarok along with half of the ones left being killed to start Infinity War who are still dead because it was before the snap. Ragnarok had so many jokes which undercut the stakes of Asgard being destroyed. Trying to include The Suicide Squad in that doesn’t make sense where you wanted it to be something it wasn’t even with what happens to Corto Maltese.
Calling Marvel tolerant doesn’t work honestly. WandaVision just showed Wanda torturing people including children where the finale had the line “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them” to excuse it. That was also glossed over and laughable. The MCU is obviously better than the DCEU, but calling DC toxic where really it just applies to Snyder’s movies in the DCEU isn’t being fair if you have seen multiple MCU films.
Go To Comment
Special Edition – The Suicide Squad
August 14, 2021 9:47 am Yeah, I honestly couldn’t finish the review and it was 9 minutes shorter than Wonder Woman in 2017 which had a much worse third act. I remember how praised that movie was back then in that review. It was 2 minutes shorter than Black Widow which Conor heavily praised. The length criticism is frankly ridiculous. It wasn’t a very good review whether I agree with what they said or not.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #792 – The Me You Love in the Dark #1
August 9, 2021 10:17 pm Writers can write forever and still do well. Thats why I brought up that pro athletes have much more finite careers which is a big difference. I never said this is the end of Bendis where he’s still fairly young by writing standards. That’s not the issue where he just isn’t as good as he used to be. He can always be good again. I strongly disagree with the idea that he isn’t focused on his comic book work since he’s not striking deals like others such as Rick Remender and Jeff Lemire who are also able to still write comics well consistently.
Brian K. Vaughn just isn’t writing much and keeps making deals which is annoying with the much longer than 1 year Saga wait. James Tynion has sold a couple of shows, but just keeps making comics too. Hopefully Bendis figures it out again. I think scaling back and just telling a more focused story would help. It’s why I brought up doing a Green Arrow series instead and I don’t want him to become the new Batman writer in December. Now if it was like Batman: Universe in tone and quality, I would change my tune.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #792 – The Me You Love in the Dark #1
August 8, 2021 4:59 pm I never said Bendis was too old and I said his Marvel work doesn’t matter right now. I have no problem saying Batman: Universe was great, but everything else hasn’t been at DC. I don’t get excited for a Frank Miller comic at this point either, but still love the old work. I said Bendis should just write a Green Arrow series. I can acknowledge his past greatness while also saying he’s not a very good writer at this time. He was falling off quality wise at the end with Marvel which some people brought up. Look at the Miles Morales series after Secret Wars where his last great issue was Ultimate Spider-Man #200. It really took a dive after issue 7 with the return of Peter and Norman. A lot of people thought the change of scenery might help where that didn’t seem to be the case.
There are plenty of other professions where people were great in the past and they’re not great today. People get that with pro athletes and other writers and directors. Pro athletes obviously have much more finite careers. With his sensibilities, he doesn’t know how to pace a monthly comic at this point. Event Leviathan with the reveal no one cared about in the final issue was terrible. Maybe taking a break would help like Johns stopping writing Shazam to just focus on Stargirl season 1 as the show runner before coming back to it. We don’t know though.
Go To Comment
Pick of the Week #792 – The Me You Love in the Dark #1
August 8, 2021 1:26 pm I’m very surprised that Justice League Infinity #2 wasn’t covered honestly or at least mentioned by Conor. When you were both talking about how fun and great Justice League #66 issue was, I feel like that applies much more to Justice League Infinity than the Bendis run. I only gave a shot to Justice League #66 because of the Phil Hester art since the story has been so bland and uninteresting while having great art throughout the run. That continued with the fantastic art, but the story just is not that good. I think the pacing of the story hasn’t been good at all and I don’t think Bendis should be writing Justice League. He should just write a Green Arrow series at this point and his Justice League series with the characters he is using while tying it into other work by him feels like a big vanity project.
The problem with new Bendis comics is that his DC run has been so disappointing for so many people where most agree his best DC work by far is Batman: Universe. That’s genuinely great, but everything else has been such a bust for most people that his great Marvel work doesn’t really matter now. It’s what you have done for me lately and he hasn’t delivered. I know you two have been much more positive than most about Bendis at DC, however, I don’t think it’s an age thing where it’s just the quality of his work that doesn’t excite people. I would add that James Tynion’s Justice League Dark run was also much better than this current Bendis Justice League run. The show in development with JJ Abrams producing it might not be good if he gets involved in writing it, but we will see. Jason Aaron did put Ghost Rider on the Avengers which seemed to be what Josh was alluding to since it’s not just heavy hitters. Then Blade has been on it, but that’s also a bad run at this point.
Go To Comment