Chatterbox- Comic Books

Regarding Erik Larsen's comments, I think it's really weird that he criticized Ms. Marvel's costume. I was at first thinking that he would be criticizing Carol's outfit change- although I'd disagree, that is definitely a change from Ms. Fanservice to practical, which seems to be Larsen's whole argument.

On the other hand, Kamala wears a "modest" outfit for pretty clear reasons: She follows religious/cultural modesty standards (and after initially "wearing"/shapeshifting into Carol's fanservicey costume founded it embarrassing/impractical); she's a teenager living in New Jersey and doesn't really have access to a professional costume- which is to say that her costume is deliberately kind of amateur looking (which granted, has nothing to do with fanservice either way).

I'd also add that it's kind of weird for Larsen to implicitly complain about Kamala's costume not being fanservicey. She's what, 15?

Created a page for Clive Barker's Next Testament.

Feel free to add to it as need be since I've only had the first issue on Madefire...

While I'm all for Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel's costume being practical and less fan-servicey, the first thing her current duds make me think of is "motorcycle daredevil" rather than "super hero."

The only male heroes I can think of in really revealing costumes are Namor, in his traditional one (essentially a pair of speedos) and DC's B'Wana Beast. Oh, and Tarzan.

edited 14th Jun '15 12:47:06 PM by Robbery

Don't know if anyone knows this, but apparently we're getting a crossover between Vampirella and Aliens pretty soon.

Man, just when you thought there couldn't be any more random crossovers that comic book companies would actually want to do, the fates decide to prove you wrong.

Though to be fair, it's isn't super-random when you realize that Vampi is supposed to be an alien vampire, sooo...

edited 2nd Jul '15 6:36:08 AM by TargetmasterJoe

Bump.

Last night, I was trying to remember the name of an indie graphic novel that had an eager, perky girl in her late-teens to early 20's putting on a dark costume and going out to commit crimes. And she has a friend who tells her it's a bad idea.

It's got one of those cutesy art styles. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I'm guessing this is the right place to talk about what we're reading in comics so

Seven Soldiers of Victory by Grant Morrison is one of the weirdest things I've seen

It's uh, something

I thought the graphic novel Blankets was very interesting, although I wish he had stayed Christian up until the very end, and didn't lose his faith to a bunch of fundamentalist, overbearing clowns. Also a tad too melodramatic, but such is the way of modern graphic memoirs.

edited 16th Nov '17 8:54:36 PM by YasminPerry

I have a question for you guys. If you came across a comic book run that you either heard lots of negative things about or you just don't like the direction that the comic is going, do you just not pick up the series or you drop the series halfway through?

I haven't been following anything as it comes out for a long time, so I can't really comment on that-I would imagine myself dropping it till I have reason to believe it might get good again and, assuming it's not somehow entirely disconnected from what came before and after it, quickly skim what I've missed.

As for stuff that's already finished, that depends. If it's a like long-running book or a huge franchise, I'm probably reading specific runs anyway, so there's no reason to get to it. If I'm reading the whole thing from the begining, I guess depends on 1. Whether anything important happens in it. 2. Where is that part of the series placed. If it's like, in between two good runs, I would probably skim it. If it's like a second half of the series, I would just drop it when the good stuff ends. If it's a currently on-going series, I tend to just drop them and wait till it gets good again.

Perhaps not exactly what you mean, but intending to read Alan Moore's Supreme one day, I've been reading some of the Pre-Moore, infamously shitty stuff. Partially to see what he was working with, partially to get in the mood for other things. For me, even bad works can be interesting, if not to experience, then to think about.

I do a similar thing too. I tend to only pick up the comic book runs if it's any good or if it has an important plot element that I need to understand before I get to the next arc.

So Gamestop is toying with the idea of entering the Direct Market for comics.

They're going to be test the market in select stores. They're largely mostly interested in Marvel and DC comics, but are also open to selling Oni, Image, and Boom.

You know what I'd be curious to see:

A Marvel / DC crossover that ended with a Pocket Universe or alternate universe of some sort where heroes and villains from both worlds always existed together. Kinda like what they did with JLA/Avengers near the end, only a permanent world where all these characters now exist together...well maybe not all of them. The exact mechanics of this universe is something I still haven't quite worked out, but I'd love to see big brains from both companies give it a try, especially since a lot of them have worked for both companies and would know the characters well. This universe might be a place where lower tier characters might finally get a chance in the spotlight.

There actually is an Amalgam Universe stuck in a pocket dimension. Not quite what you were talking about. But just the same, there is still a universe with Dark Claw in it.

Amalgam is still around? I had no idea.

I know they came back to it at some point, but I thought that was done.

Double post because I just had a thought:

DC has three Two Teen Superhero teams:

Teen Titans and Young Justice. It also has the Judd Winick run of The Outsiders, which was made up of a few Titans Allumni (well only three: Nightwing, Arsenal and later on Starfire), but that one doesn't really count. I think as a whole DC was best known for the Teen Sidekick trope.

That being said, Marvel, which did not make Teen Sidekick a thing (hell Stan—RIP— made Spidey a hero in his own right because he thought it was dumb) has how many Teen hero teams:

• The original Xmen;

• The original New Mutants;

• Generation X;

• The New Warriors (though I don't think all of them were teens; I'm pretty sure most of them were in their very early twenties);

• The Young Avengers;

• The Run Aways (who aren't really a super team);

• and now, the latest version of the Champions (2016)

Does anyone find that darkly hilarious?

Oh, Amalgam isn't still being published. Disney and Warner Bros don't get along well enough for that. I was just noting that the Amalgam Universe itself actually does exist as a bubble universe.

Regarding teen superheroes: Stan Lee had a famous hatred of teen sidekicks. This is one of the reasons why he killed off Bucky when he brought back Captain America in the '60s. However, while he hated teen sidekicks, he was never opposed to teen superheroes — after all, Spider-Man was 15 when he got superpowers and Lee also liked having Rick Jones follow Hulk and the Avengers around with his "Teen Brigade." This is also generally why all of the original X-Men were teenagers — he liked to juxtapose youth with the responsibility of being a superhero (also, he wanted to target the teen demographic).

This is also generally why almost all of the teen teams in the Marvel Universe aren't made up of sidekicks — because most superheroes don't have them. New Mutants and Generation X were both made up of a younger generation of mutants, while New Warriors was made up of young superheroes that didn't have their own books at the time (some of them, in fact, had been patterned after Spider-Man — including Nova, the Human Rocket, and Speedball).

The first and only Marvel team to be made up of actual teen sidekicks was Young Allies, which didn't last very long (and also coincidentally shares a name with a DC superhero team). Even the Young Avengers weren't sidekicks, despite their name.

You can compare this with DC, whose teen teams generally do contain at least one or two teen sidekicks. This is probably because instead of Spider-Man being the model for teen superheroes, it was Robin. Hence: Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, etc. (Ironically, Supergirl, who was Superman's teen sidekick, was never on a teen team, while Superboy, who was never Superman's sidekick, was on both Young Justice and the Teen Titans.)

Edited by alliterator on Nov 24th 2018 at 11:20:07 AM

...So I was just noting a conversation in another thread about how weird it is that certain heroes don't call on help when fighting a huge threat, and someone justified it by pointing out that it's likely the other heroes are dealing with their own shit at the time...

...and it made me think: if Kang is trying to take over all of time at the same moment that say...Annihilus is attempting to conquer all dimensions (or whatever Annihilus does, cause I'm not super familiar with him), how come they don't end up tripping over each other.

Like, there's an old Spiderman issue where Electro keeps trying to rob certain banks based on some tips, only for the Shocker to keep upstaging him and hitting the bank first cause he's getting the same tips. And they get into big fight at the end cause they both want the money, and I'm like how come this doesn't happen very often?

Superheroes trip over each other and get into misunderstanding fights all the time, but we never see an arch where two villain schemes run head long into each other. A whole story arc about villains trying to steal the same object or rob the same bank or take over the world at the same moment and screwing each other up would be interesting.

I'm too lazy to look for the exact strip it happened in, but League of Super Redundant Heroes did a joke about that. A whole bunch of mystical villains all trying to take advantage of the same alignment of planets at the same time and thus interfering with each other.

I remember during The Kang War storyline, the Master of the World began his own plan to take over the world, because he didn't want Kang to do it first. (Carol ended up killing him, but he recently came back to life anyway.)

Edited by alliterator on Nov 28th 2018 at 11:29:52 AM

I caught up on Snotgirl. I am shocked how little the internet cares about it, considering it's written by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

It's a very weird comic, even for O'Malley. I've been loving it, personally. And I love Leslie Hung's art on it. She is so good.

She really is.

But I have never read a comic without a Wikipedia article before.

So I listed off most of the Teenage teams of both Marvel and DC in an earlier post on this very page, but I forgot about Infinity, Inc..

Though they are really old school, and Young Justice and Teen Titans are obviously more famous.

Also....weird question: can anyone name a red headed male superhero with Flying Brick powers that isn't from either DC or Marvel?

It's just a weird thought that popped into my head and won't go away, so I'm asking you clowns TROPERS I RESPECT.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jul 20th 2019 at 2:06:31 AM

Random return. Checking out the Image Comics series Tech Jacket.

I believe this series either predates Jaime Reyes or happens appeared around the same time (his first series came out in 2004, and I believe Jaime first appeared in Infinite Crisis around that time, give or take a year).

Currently starting the 2014 series, and seeing what the deal is with that one. I do find it interesting how....blase everyone is about all the alien stuff going on, but it's always interesting to see different takes on how people close to the young hero react to their Secret Identity...which is not so secret in Zack's case.