Comic Books

[Xeres]

On 2/9/2020 at 1:32 AM, Heraclea said:

I was a longstanding DC fan until 2012, when Brian Azzarello's vandalism of Wonder Woman and her world killed a forty year fandom and made me drop my DC subscriptions for several years.   I still follow a few artists and get a few books, but nowhere near like before. 

I thought I was the only person who felt like this.  I read comics (WW being my favorite) until the travesty that was #600, which DC didn't even want to do, and to celebrate that many years of being in print, dumped everything and went in yet another "bold new direction" for WW.  It was then I realized I was sick and tired of these bold new directions, and reboots, events - when they happen so often seem more and more uneventful, and just all of the typical comic book tropes which I couldn't stand anymore.  I stopped reading then and since I've sort of kept tabs on what's been going on, and TBH, I dropped comics at a good time because I'm not a fan of what's gone on since from what I have heard.  At all.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Xeres

[FrauleinMental]

On 2/9/2020 at 1:32 AM, Heraclea said:

I was a longstanding DC fan until 2012, when Brian Azzarello's vandalism of Wonder Woman and her world killed a forty year fandom and made me drop my DC subscriptions for several years.

 

On 2/9/2020 at 1:58 AM, Apparition said:

Yeah.  I've been a DC Comics fanboy since the early 1980s.  Identity Crisis in the mid-aughts began weaning me off of it.  The New 52 accelerated that weaning.  I briefly came back for Convergence and then Rebirth, but with the same crew running things that ran Identity Crisis and The New 52, things didn't really change.

These are about what happened to me.  I didn't care for Identity Crisis at all, mainly because I was a huge Zatanna fan and DC retconned her into a near-villain.  I then developed crisis fatigue from the multiple lengthy crossover events with Blackest Night and Brightest Day.  After I read the first few issues of Wonder Woman at the launch of The New 52, I finally dropped the entire DC line from my pull list.  When money was tight in late 2013, I let my pull list lapse entirely.

 

At best, I trade-wait now.  I finally decided if I was going to wait six months for a story to play out in 10-minute increments, I could wait a year and get the whole arc in a bookshelf-friendly format.  Mostly Doctor Strange and Carol Danvers, who were always my favorite Marvel characters.

[00-Snake]

I don't even want to know how much I spend on comic books a month. Outside of the monthlies I pick up (Immortal Hulk, Hellblazer, Conan the Barbarian, The Green Lantern, The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage), I visit lots of Half-Price Books and comic shops that carry older books to scour for cheap stuff. I mainly look for Conan's written by either Thomas, Busiek, and Truman, Vertigo's Fables (anything #75 and before that). late 80s/early 90s Batman (that small time between Death in the Family and the Knightfall stuff I will forever maintain as the greatest in the quality of Batman comics). I have really gotten into Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips indie collabs; Kill or Be Killed, Fatale, Incognito, Criminal, and their masterpiece of the 2010s: The Fade Out.

[Hyperstrike]

I' stopped collecting...I dunno.  It's been so long I've forgotten.
Got sick of Crisis Of Infinite Craptacular Reboots.
I think the last thing I read was Wonder Woman as she killed Ares and became the God of War.

Truthfully, I'd tuned out several years prior and was just going through the motions.
I dropped Marvel/DC like a white-hot rock, and there was nothing truly interesting in 3rd party.
Before I moved out of my efficiency (2015??) I gave away my entire comics collection.

And, since then, there has been NOTHING that could even lure me into a comic shop.

And now, with the *BLEEP!*ery with DC, Marvel and Diamond Publishing, it looks like a VAST number of comic shops are going to be put out of business.

 

[Haijinx]

I'll occasionally look at Gotham titles that are not Batman still.  Just to see what is happening these days. 

 

They tend to be less tied to the giant larger DC events anyway. 

 

Batman has become too flanderized a version of himself.  

 

When the awful All Star Batman seemed good by comparison it was time to give up on that guy. 

[Techwright]

On 2/15/2020 at 3:46 PM, Call Me Awesome said:

I'd thought the same about 20 years ago and found that nearly everything from the 80's & 90's was mostly worthless. ... Apparently the comic market glutted in that era and there's way more supply than collector demand.

I was collecting comics and trading cards about that time. The 1990s were the speculative, collectable era in so many things (glaring a you, beanie babies), and comics were at the top of the list.   As I dimly recall, the glut came from two publishing house realizations: there were a bunch of new, impressionable collectors out there (such as I), and Marvel's foil-enhanced covers (originally a rare treat) were selling well to these new collectors.  The end result was a speculation disaster.  The mainstream comic houses began focusing more on special artwork covers or special effects covers (or both), and less on solid story writing.  Suddenly, you'd have large printings with multiple cover issues for the same story (collect them all!), and the newbie collectors would gobble them up thinking they'd be worth something someday.  It was a cheap move on the part of the comic houses, and a serious rookie mistake on the part of us newbie collectors.  When realization of what happened eventually set in (along with emptied wallets), collecting stopped, and the market more or less crashed.   A similar thing was happening at the same time with trading cards of all kinds.  I'd noticed that overnight small comic and card shops had sprung up everywhere (my roommates and I did one for a while at a flea market), and there seemed to be at least one card-and-comics trading show within 150 miles any given weekend.  Now, my 1-million+ person,  east coast region has about 10 comic shops in 100 miles, and most of those heavily supplement with other merchandise, like games.

 

The 1990s saw a lot of indie comic publishers either begin or hit their stride, leading to more speculation, and emptier wallets.  Image Studios started at this time. (Side note: I just spotted my copies of the first 4 issues of WildC.A.T.S. the other day. Not worth anything, sadly.)  It's interesting that it was from those startups that I collected, not for speculation, but just for a good read.  I was into Valiant Comics (many of the characters were reboots of Gold Key characters), and NOW Comics for it's interesting take on Green Hornet & Kato as a multi-generational teamup of Reids & Katos.

 

That said, although there was a lot of trashy stories being put out, there were still some good ones, and there were iconic ones (not necessarily one and the same).  KnightFall and The Death of Superman were among the biggest.  I personally really got into the X-Men's Age of Apocalypse storyline.

[Apparition]

I mostly read old DC and Marvel comics from the '60s through the early 2000s, and then independents (Boom!, IDW, crowdfunded, etc.), for recent stuff.

[Judasace]

For a long time I didn't read any comics regularly, would just pick up trades every once in a while. I don't think I've read any superhero comics published after 2011 or so, when I checked out whatever DC reboot was current at the time.  From what I've seen of comics today...I don't think I could stomach most of the garbage being put out by the big 2.

 

The MCU was great while it lasted, but looking at what they've got slated ahead doesn't thrill me. I might check out the next Spider Man movie, and maybe watch Dr. Strange at some point. But losing their main characters/actors and the blatant infusing of politics into the movies leaves me pretty uninterested.

 

One pleasant surprise I got a couple of years ago was finding out George RR Martin had picked Wild Cards back up, not that he does a ton of the writing in it himself, but between a bunch of new books and free stories online by both new and old members of the writing team has kept my superhero needs filled.

[FrauleinMental]

11 hours ago, Judasace said:

The MCU was great while it lasted, but looking at what they've got slated ahead doesn't thrill me. I might check out the next Spider Man movie, and maybe watch Dr. Strange at some point. But losing their main characters/actors and the blatant infusing of politics into the movies leaves me pretty uninterested.

The biggest upcoming draw for me is Doctor Strange 2, since I've always been a DS fan.  But I have to admit I'm somewhat less enthusiastic about the rest of Phase 4.

[Judasace]

5 hours ago, FrauleinMental said:

The biggest upcoming draw for me is Doctor Strange 2, since I've always been a DS fan.  But I have to admit I'm somewhat less enthusiastic about the rest of Phase 4.

My only concern with Dr. Strange, and that is that they fired the original director over the horror aspects of the sequel...so it's probably going to be extremely MCU formulaic. Of course, he also totally wasted Mads Mikkelsen, who really should have been saved to play Dr. Doom, so I guess there's that.

[FrauleinMental]

20 minutes ago, Judasace said:

My only concern with Dr. Strange, and that is that they fired the original director over the horror aspects of the sequel...so it's probably going to be extremely MCU formulaic. Of course, he also totally wasted Mads Mikkelsen, who really should have been saved to play Dr. Doom, so I guess there's that.

I think MCU changed course for Doctor Strange when Disney got rights to mutants.  DS2 was originally going to be all about Nightmare's realm, which was appropriate for horror, but now WandaVision and DS2 look like they're going to try some adaptation of House of M.

[Techwright]

On 9/22/2020 at 12:36 PM, Judasace said:

Of course, he also totally wasted Mads Mikkelsen, who really should have been saved to play Dr. Doom, so I guess there's that.

There's always his brother Lars Mikkelsen, who did a fine job voicing Grand Admiral Thrawn.  I still get chills remembering his rapid swap from cool-headed and dangerous to a teeth-clenched, scathing threat to "deal with" the incompetent Governor Price.    If Lars can work in live action as well as he handled the voice of Thrawn, then he seems like one who could play Dr. Doom.

[RufusPentecost]

I'm still reading comics, after all these years, still buying new comics on Wednesdays when I can make it into the shops.  

 

There are a lot of things I like nowadays, but my current favorite writer is Mark Russell, who has a pretty sharp satirical edge.  He mostly does independent stuff, but he has done some work for DC, though most of it is outside their superhero canon.