What I'm Reading

Here's a little November update of books I'm reading. I'll include a little commentary.

I apologize for being behind on my "Best of." It may wait until the end of the year.

Old stuff: Supreme, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 2. Yes, it's an Alan Moore kick.

Current Monthly Titles:
Astonishing X-Men - Whedon picks up where Morrison left off. I just read issue #6 and it was great.

Wolverine - I liked JRJR on Spider-Man but I don't like his stuff on Wolverine as much. Millar's story is a little cliche but Wolverine vs. the world is always fun.

Uncanny X-Men - I'm a little behind but it seems like they're just rolling out Claremont scripts from fifteen years ago?

X-Men - Changing creative teams. It's about time.

X-Men: The End - I'm one issue behind on this. Better than I had expected.

Wolverine: The End - Won't end soon enough.

Ultimate Nightmare - So slow. It's going to be continued in Ultimate Secret?!

Ultimate X-Men - Vaughan is one of my favorites...

Daredevil - Been a little off since the "break." Still enjoyable and the art is superb.

Secret War - Good when it comes out. What happens in this book that it had to come out quarterly? Couldn't they have made it and then released it in four consecutive months?

Marvel Knights Spider-Man - I enjoy this more than Amazing Spider-Man.

Identity Crisis - I have no idea who did it. Some people say Nightwing? My friend says Luthor but I think he's wrong.

JSA - Just started to pick up recently. An Identity Crisis tie-in won't hurt, I bet.

Teen Titans - The time travel stuff works well with this.

Superman/Batman - The Supergirl story started to get a little tedious in my opinion. I look forward to Pacheco.

Green Lantern: Rebirth - Only one issue in. No matter how good it is, it will still be interesting.

Sleeper - Consistantly good.

Planetary - Is this book on a schedule or do they just put it out whenever?

Authority: Revolution - The first issue was okay, it didn't blow me away. I like Brubaker's other stuff.

Ex-Machina - Different. Can't tell if it's good yet but there were a few good surprise endings in the first few issues.

JLA (Busiek) - Sold out at my comics store. Will have to find the first issue.

JLA: Classified - I'll keep buying, depending on the creative team.

Superman - This book hasn't really revealed its story and it's on part 6.

Wanted - One more issue to go. The first five have been excellent.

Ultimate Fantastic Four - Slow. I'm done with this.

Ultimate Spider-Man - I liked this book, but then one day I realized I sort of don't care about it.

Amazing Spider-Man - After all the cosmic stuff, now it's a Gwen Stacey re-write. I'm going to stop buying this.

Fantastic Four - Losing interest quickly. When Waid leaves, so will I.

Upcoming:

Legion - Waid/Kitson writing characters I know nothing about. Might give it a try.

Captain America - I like Brubaker but still, this is the fifth revamp in the last few years?

Ultimates 2 - I hope this book is awesome.

Ultimate Secret - I hope this book has stuff happen in it!

Trade Paperback
Y: The Last Man
Powers
Catwoman: When in Rome

Review: JLA Classified #1

JLA Classified #1
DC Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Ed McGuinness

The cover says "Where is the Justice League?" and that's a good question -- they're not in their own book. But it's not a bad issue.

Grant Morrison is the writer who got me excited about collecting comics again. Just over five years ago, I picked up his JLA run and it revitalized my enjoyment of the medium. Prior to reading JLA, I had not read many DC titles, and I was mostly an X-Men/Image comics fan. JLA changed that with Morrison's iconic portrayals of the heroes and big and strange story ideas.

This issue continues that tradition. The story is a "big idea" and right out of Morrison's storyline since it features some heroes he created, the Ultramarines. Batman shows up in this issue and it's great. Morrison puts a very fun spin on the Batman concept. The McGuinness art is great (I particularly enjoyed when Batman gets a phone call) and probably tops the art from Morrison's original JLA run because it's really kinetic.

JLA Classified is a good first issue for a series. Lately, DC has recently had many good first issues, including Superman/Batman, Teen Titans, Outsiders and Identity Crisis. The first three of these series slowed down quite a bit, in my opinion, after the first few issues. Hopefully JLA Classified will change that trend.

X-Men: The End Annotations?

Is anyone out there doing annotations for X-Men: The End? There are a ton of stories and characters being referenced that I have no idea about.

What sort of demand was there for a story like this? It brings back such obscure characters and refers to such crazy continuity.

Superman copyrights

I understand the plight of the Siegel and Schuster families in trying to regain the copyrights to the Superman character. But I don't think the two creators were really "ripped off" in the beginning by National Periodicals since I don't know that the company envisioned the character becoming such an icon.

Interesting question, however. If you create something for a company, who owns the copyright? And if you sold the creation to them (even if it's at market value), what obligation does the company have to the creators?

The only sad thing about this battle is that it's not really about whether or not the creations are being used properly or reflected in the literature well, it's about who should profit off of them.

One more Marvel comment

I mentioned that DC seems to have more popular "must buy" comics these days. Is that just because of hype I've been reading in the internet or is that true in sales and share?

One more thing about Marvel. Does anyone else notice that some of their characters exist in three different lines? Spider-Man's in the regular Marvel U, then Ultimate and now Marvel Age. I thought Ultimate Spidey was the all-ages, easily accessible Spider-Man. Nope, that's Marvel Age. So then why have Ultimate Spidey? How does Ultimate FF add to the comics landscape? Near as I can tell they're nothing like the FF and even Dr. Doom (who is never called "Doom") is totally different (with a fresh set of horse legs).

I think that's enough of complaining.

State of Marvel and Hype

A friend and I were discussing some comics the other day. It seems like DC has all the hot properties right now -- Identity Crisis, Green Lantern: Rebirth, and JLA: Classified come to mind in particular. Marvel's got big Avengers stuff happening but the other hype seems a little less.

Maybe my tastes are changing but I think that Marvel is in a low period right now. At first, I really enjoyed Straczynski's Amazing Spider-Man, but it hasn't proven to be that exciting to me (and this is even before the bizarre events of the Sins Past storyline). Spider-Man taking on cosmic foes doesn't interest me much and Ezekiel's story definitely fizzled out.

I may also be getting overwhelmed with Bendis. The Pulse isn't that striking. His Ultimate X-Men storyline wasn't that great. Ultimate Spider-Man is starting to get boring for me (and they got rid of Gwen so quickly!) I didn't really enjoy Avengers: Disassembled. Daredevil, previously my favorite of his Marvel works, seems to have lost something since it came back from the Echo hiatus.

Then the X-Men. I love Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon but there are way too many X-Men books out these days. I love the characters, the premise, but when I read X-Men: The End and can't recognize half the characters because they appear in books I couldn't afford to buy, it makes me sad. I'd like to know what's going on in the X-Universe. When Magneto shows up in Avengers, I'd like to know how/why he's alive again in Excalibur and what he plans for the Scarlett Witch. Sure, I know that District X is another part of Manhattan, but can you tell me more? Is NYX the same as District X? Why did X-23 (a female Wolverine) make her comics debut around the same time as the Native (another female Wolverine)? Do Jubilee, Gambit, Nightcrawler and Rogue all have fanbases large enough to warrant individual series, especially in light of the soon to be ended Mystique and White Queen series?

Marvel's X-Line is diluted, the Ultimate line is on its way and soon the rest of Marvel will suffer from Benis overexposure. I know Marvel's run right now by Bendis, Millar (who I haven't yet soured on) and Straczynski but I think they may need a jolt of new creativity. It seems like the current mindset is that Marvel looks at only short term profit lines and do whatever they want to the characters. It seems like they view the fans as people who don't want to accept any changes at all and so they should tell whatever stories they want regardless of fan reaction. They're wrong. Some fans react poorly to any changes but most fans just want to see the characters and continuity treated with respect when you make changes. Fans have spent a lot of time with these characters, so if you're going to tell them that all the stories they invested time and money into are going to be contradicted, you had better have a good reason.

If a character has acted or spoke a certain way for thirty years, fans won't accept an immediate change in behavior. That's why Hal Jordan fans got so upset when he went insane in DC Land. But Peter Parker told Aunt May his secret after thirty years and there was nary a peep. Why? Because it was well done. Comic fans accept Tim Drake and the death of Jason Todd. They've accepted three Flashes. They've accepted Mary Jane instead of Gwen Stacy. They've accepted the removal of Wolverine's adamantium. It can be done. Just tell good stories.

Review: Avengers #503

Avengers #503
Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Finch

I've never been a big Avengers fan. But recently it seems like Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Fantastic Four are having trouble with sales. Ever since the Heroes Reborn debacle, it seems like one of these books is going through another creative revamp.

In store for Avengers is another creative revamp. A new team is on the way consisting of Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, The Sentry, Iron Man, Luke Cage and Spider-Woman. Of course, that means we need to get rid of the old team. On the one hand, I don't think it's such a good idea. On the other, if the current team's sales have been such a problem, maybe a change will be good. Something tells me that by tossing out the traditional Avengers teams, most of the traditional fans will leave the book. But I guess Marvel is banking on the fact that a new influx of fans will come in and outsell the original title. Especially because it's Bendis.

In general, I'm wondering where Marvel is headed with its titles. It seems to me that none of their books are generating the same kind of buzz as DC titles like Identity Crisis and Green Lantern: Rebirth.

But let's get back to the book at hand. This issue marks the conclusion of the "Chaos"/Disassembled stories. I'm not sure how Disassembled tied into other books (for example, the FF Disassembled story seems totally unrelated) but by the end of this issue the title's purpose is clear.

I haven't really enjoyed this story. It's made me question whether or not I will pick up New Avengers (probably not). Something about it doesn't sit well with me. I'll try reading all four issues in sequence but despite the fact that a lot of things happened in this story, it still feels like very little got accomplished. There's a ton of dialogue with Dr. Strange (which feels like a cheap resolution) and I just don't really agree with the events of the story. I think I went into the issue with a negative attitude and so that translates into this review. The artwork by David Finch is pretty good, and I enjoyed the little montages with art from past Avengers issues as well. Also strange about this book was that it dealt with some very heavy continuity, which is an oddity these days at Marvel.

Ultimate Iron Man?

Do we really need an Ultimate Iron Man? The regular Iron Man has enough trouble selling his own book. It seems like the Ultimate line is getting diluted (with Ultimate Elektra currently on the shelves).

Review: Green Lantern Rebirth #1

Green Lantern Rebirth #1
DC Comics
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Ethan Van Sciver

I didn't really start reading many DC Comics titles until after Hal Jordan became Parallax. The destruction of Coast City and the crowning of Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern were familiar to me, but I didn't really know Hal Jordan in comic books like many readers did.

Eventually, I read the story where Hal Jordan goes crazy, becomes Parallax and allows Kyle Rayner to become Green Lantern. It seemed pretty well done, although I can understand why fans of a character wouldn't want to see that character become evil. Since then, it seems like Kyle Rayner has come into his own as a hero. DC seems to have developed the character well and managed the evolution of Green Lantern in a pretty satisfactory way. On the other hand, I thought the movement of Hal Jordan to the Spectre was mismanaged. The Final Night story, where Parallax redeems himself was pretty well done, and other attempts to get Hal Jordan "back" into stories were enjoyable (like when Kyle Rayner goes back in time and meets Hal), but the Spectre evolution seemed strange.

Now, on to Rebirth. I never really liked stories where the outcome is known. In this case, we know that Hal Jordan will be back as Green Lantern. It sort of reminds me of X-Men: The Search For Cyclops, where after Cyclops had died and we knew he'd be back, by the end of a four issue limited series. In some sense, it bugs me. It also bugs me that Kyle Rayner will probably be gone after this story. He seemed like a pretty good character who would still function well in the periphery. Maybe he will, but he might be gone. It's even been suggested that Kyle Rayner will be the Identity Crisis killer. Not so sure if I buy into that.

In the story, lots of mysterious things are happening and they all seem to revolve around Hal Jordan. The other heroes don't know what's happening but they know that Hal is somehow involved. The story is well set up and I wonder in what direction all of the elements will go.

Ethan Van Sciver's art is quite good. I enjoyed his work on New X-Men, and maybe that's why it seems like it has a "Marvel" style to it (despite the fact that books rarely have a style now that all the artists move back and forth). The art is very detailed and very kinetic. This book is an interesting start to the mini series with the predictable ending. Let's hope that it does not disappoint.

Oh, and one question -- does anyone know whose sinister reflection appears in the power battery being held on the cover?

Review: Teen Titans #17

Teen Titans #17
DC Comics
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Mike McKone

After a detour to see the Legion, the Teen Titans move on to an alternate future. While time travel stories and alternate futures can be hit or miss, this issue was more along the lines of hit. The Titans run into a darker and alternate version of themselves in this issue. Since the title has been about the trials of the young heroes as the follow their mentors, it's a good story type to try. Johns does a nice job of emphasizing the darkness of the alternate Titans making you wonder what happened to the heroes to change them so dramatically. Tom Grummett had been filling in on the book quite well, however I prefer Mike McKone's art style just a little bit more. The dark mood of the future is well captured in one of the better issues in this series so far.