Don't worry, I'm sure he'll revamp this out of continuity in his non-apology letter.
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HEAVEN OR HELL! DC Comics win/loss tracker.
- Thread starter Daikaiju
- Start date
For whatever faults Johns has, that picture is apparently a decade old and he is not appearing on Van Scriver's YouTube show.
Well it’s about time!
So any recommendations for more recent DC stories? Besides Injustice and the Matt Fraction run on Jimmy Olsen (both of which I loved); I’m generally much more of a Marvel fan and I don’t think Al Ewing or Zeb Wells have any stories that act as an automatic Gimmes
2017 had Dark Nights: Metal, a crossover series that, long story short, involved The Justice League fighting a Mirror Justice League of Evil Batmans. It went in some fantastic (as in fantasy, not just as in "good") directions with the concept of, basically, a universe of bad What If realities. Some of the tie-ins, like the ones that tell the stories of the evil Batmans, are basically a backdoor What If story. It is also one of the few comics to have a (metal) soundtrack.
2020 saw the follow up series, Dark Nights: Death Metal take the basic premise of DN:M and dial it up to eleven. It basically plunges the "real" DC Universe into a DBZ situation wherein Majin Boo uses his human extinction ray every other page, but you know the dragonballs are going to wish everybody back at the end of the day anyway. It is still surprisingly fun despite the fact that it is deliberately bleak. Also: Jarro.
Also related to both: Tales from the Dark Multiverse volumes 1 & 2 are straight up What If/Elseworld stories that all run with the premise "what if x DC comics event went horribly wrong". Like... more than the usual What If horribly wrong. What If Blackest Night turns into a buddy story with Sinestro, Lobo, Mr Miracle, and Dove.
I can't vouch for public opinion on all of these, but I liked 'em well enough.
2020 saw the follow up series, Dark Nights: Death Metal take the basic premise of DN:M and dial it up to eleven. It basically plunges the "real" DC Universe into a DBZ situation wherein Majin Boo uses his human extinction ray every other page, but you know the dragonballs are going to wish everybody back at the end of the day anyway. It is still surprisingly fun despite the fact that it is deliberately bleak. Also: Jarro.
Also related to both: Tales from the Dark Multiverse volumes 1 & 2 are straight up What If/Elseworld stories that all run with the premise "what if x DC comics event went horribly wrong". Like... more than the usual What If horribly wrong. What If Blackest Night turns into a buddy story with Sinestro, Lobo, Mr Miracle, and Dove.
I can't vouch for public opinion on all of these, but I liked 'em well enough.
Every word of that description is what I want
My 'recent' knowledge stops about 2019 or so, but Steve Orlando wrote some good recent stuff. He did a run on Justice League of America and Supergirl that I liked.
Pete Tomasi's Superman and Super Sons were also quite good. There is an arc where Superman and Frankenstein team up.
My standing recommendation for the works of Tom King (Omega Men, Mr. Miracle) and Mark Russell (The Flinstones, Snagglepuss, Prez) are still there, though I expect Russell is more Octo than King.
Pete Tomasi's Superman and Super Sons were also quite good. There is an arc where Superman and Frankenstein team up.
My standing recommendation for the works of Tom King (Omega Men, Mr. Miracle) and Mark Russell (The Flinstones, Snagglepuss, Prez) are still there, though I expect Russell is more Octo than King.
Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
To be fair, Batman/Elmur Fudd is pretty Octo.
I'll vouch for anything Peter Tomasi does
Oh! It is straight up a not-in-continuity Elseworld, but...
DCeased was a 2019 "answer" to Marvel Zombies (unless you want to say Blackest Night was already the same...). The elevator pitch is that Darkseid monkeys with Cyborg to get the Anti-Life Equation going, but messes up, and releases a combo zombie/technology plague. This means that a huge chunk of the human population goes zombie from the start (it spreads through smart phones!), and any "modern" technology is right out for being helpful. So basically the world goes from "normal" to "The Walking Dead" inside of a page or two. And! The "zombies with a twist" concept is that they are all infected with "anti-life", so they are less "brains!" zombies and more "I will do anything to cause as much death as possible" zombies. This, obviously, causes more of an issue as more and more superheroes (and villains!) are infected. If you are okay with the vaguely upsetting concept of "now some of our most beloved characters are literally trying to kill everybody", it is good stuff.
But better than that is DCeased: Unkillables, one of its lil' tie-in spinoffs. Read DCeased first, as Unkillables assumes you read (and thus spoils) the main series. That said, it basically turns into a more straightforward The Walking Dead/Dawn of the Dead situation where a group of survivors have to work together to deal with zombies at the gate and how are we going to keep a group of children safe... but said survivors are mostly Batfamily characters (Gordon, Cassie Cain, Jason Todd, etc) and prominent rogues (Slade, Bane, Grundy, etc). Together, they fight crime! Or at least try to train some kids to be better zombie exterminators. It's good stuff.
And it's all by Tom Taylor, who was responsible for a good chunk of (the comic) Injustice.
Again, if you're not zombied-out, highly recommended.
DCeased was a 2019 "answer" to Marvel Zombies (unless you want to say Blackest Night was already the same...). The elevator pitch is that Darkseid monkeys with Cyborg to get the Anti-Life Equation going, but messes up, and releases a combo zombie/technology plague. This means that a huge chunk of the human population goes zombie from the start (it spreads through smart phones!), and any "modern" technology is right out for being helpful. So basically the world goes from "normal" to "The Walking Dead" inside of a page or two. And! The "zombies with a twist" concept is that they are all infected with "anti-life", so they are less "brains!" zombies and more "I will do anything to cause as much death as possible" zombies. This, obviously, causes more of an issue as more and more superheroes (and villains!) are infected. If you are okay with the vaguely upsetting concept of "now some of our most beloved characters are literally trying to kill everybody", it is good stuff.
But better than that is DCeased: Unkillables, one of its lil' tie-in spinoffs. Read DCeased first, as Unkillables assumes you read (and thus spoils) the main series. That said, it basically turns into a more straightforward The Walking Dead/Dawn of the Dead situation where a group of survivors have to work together to deal with zombies at the gate and how are we going to keep a group of children safe... but said survivors are mostly Batfamily characters (Gordon, Cassie Cain, Jason Todd, etc) and prominent rogues (Slade, Bane, Grundy, etc). Together, they fight crime! Or at least try to train some kids to be better zombie exterminators. It's good stuff.
And it's all by Tom Taylor, who was responsible for a good chunk of (the comic) Injustice.
Again, if you're not zombied-out, highly recommended.
As much as I love Tom Taylor, and his particular knack for Bad Timelines, I was born completely disinterested in zombies.
That said, looking through the Notable Stories section, I found Seven Soldiers, remembered hearing good things about Seven Soldiers, and started reading Seven Soldiers.
This is a Grant Morrison comic.
So ends my review
That said, looking through the Notable Stories section, I found Seven Soldiers, remembered hearing good things about Seven Soldiers, and started reading Seven Soldiers.
This is a Grant Morrison comic.
So ends my review
Please tell me wherever you are reading actually has Seven Soldiers in its proper "order", as, against all reason and norms, "Seven Soldiers #1" is the finale of like 30 different comics, and it should be more incomprehensible than usual if read first.
I still really enjoy about 70% of the Seven Soldiers tributaries. I reread it all on occasion, and SS: Zatanna sticks in my mind.
I still really enjoy about 70% of the Seven Soldiers tributaries. I reread it all on occasion, and SS: Zatanna sticks in my mind.
That’s what I say every time I read a Grant Morrison comic, yes
I’m reading it in the order presented in the app which is apparently all higgledy puggledy like that so presumably the intended order
I’m reading it in the order presented in the app which is apparently all higgledy puggledy like that so presumably the intended order
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Seven Soldiers is fun stuff. Frankenstein is a high point and very Octogood horror action.
It may not come as a surprise to learn that “Frankenstein is in it” was what made me decide to read it
Frankenstein is a top 10 DC character. Seven Soldiers is great. That it comes together at all at the end feels like a miracle.
That reminds me that there was a Creature Commandos series a few years back that is worth checking out
I sort of understand why writers do it, but I get a little annoyed when they interpret the concept of "Anti-Life" as "death and destruction". Kirby's original concept was that it meant the complete lack of free will, and to be subservient to whoever had the Anti-Life Equation. Which I think is a more interesting concept than the tired old "a cosmic force of absolute destruction" or something like that. Still, with a name like that, I understand that it can be an easy mistake to make.
I really liked how Walter Simonson merged the two concepts together in his Orion run (leave it to Simonson to be the only person to really get what Kirby was going for; towards the end Orion gets control of Anti-Life and tries to use it to make the universe a better place, but the nature of Anti-Life is such that it's completely incapable of performing a good act; and a demand for nobody in the universe to harm one another leads to countless suicides when people are trying to prevent themselves from even accidentally harming someone else (cars speeding off the road to avoid hitting a squirrel, that kind of thing).
I'm no fan of the zombie genre (I don't hate it, I'm just not really drawn to it on its own), but this was pretty good.
Anti-Life as a monkey's paw, that I can get behind!
The most amusing interpretation of the Anti-Life Equation I've come across is probably in the mostly mediocre first incarnation of DC Super Hero Girls. There Darkseid uses it to turn everyone in the world into litteral clones of himself. Which I guess is technically a correct way to view the Equation, but it comes across as almost humorously Skeletor-esque.
Got caught up with all of The Nice House on the Lake, or at least what of it has dropped on DC Infinite, which is up to issue 5.
Books got its hooks in me, gotta say. Tones really shifted after the first couple of issues, being much more of a mystery/thriller (with a heaping helping of supernatural horror), as opposed to just being a full on existential terror.
elevator pitch is that it’s Lost mixed with The Robot Monster; a group of friends stop are invited by a mutual friend to spend a week at a nice house on a lake, which leaves them as the only human survivors of an apocalyptic alien attack that aforesaid friend instigated. And after they get over the shock and despair of all that (with varying levels of success), they notice a lot of weird stuff that needs unpacking.
Books got its hooks in me, gotta say. Tones really shifted after the first couple of issues, being much more of a mystery/thriller (with a heaping helping of supernatural horror), as opposed to just being a full on existential terror.
elevator pitch is that it’s Lost mixed with The Robot Monster; a group of friends stop are invited by a mutual friend to spend a week at a nice house on a lake, which leaves them as the only human survivors of an apocalyptic alien attack that aforesaid friend instigated. And after they get over the shock and despair of all that (with varying levels of success), they notice a lot of weird stuff that needs unpacking.
So I've been reading through every comic published under the New 52 banner on DC Infinite (I know its a terrible idea, but I won't let that stop me).
The current series I've been reading is Red Hood and the Outlaws. I think that is the series to read to understand the good and bad of the New 52. It starts with Scott Lobdell making an absolutely trash comic. A lame, 'edgey' 90's retread where the only coherent through line is the misogyny. However, James Tynion IV takes over 2 years in and despite some lackluster art, spends about a year cleaning up the mess left by Lobdell. He turns the All-Caste/Untitled stuff into something resembling a real story, closes off some dangling plot threads, and makes the book feel like it hates women about 90% less. Then they hand to book back to Lobdell.
So you've got 90's retread work, with some good stuff fighting to get through, only for the crappy 90's stuff to come back despite being rejected the first time.
The current series I've been reading is Red Hood and the Outlaws. I think that is the series to read to understand the good and bad of the New 52. It starts with Scott Lobdell making an absolutely trash comic. A lame, 'edgey' 90's retread where the only coherent through line is the misogyny. However, James Tynion IV takes over 2 years in and despite some lackluster art, spends about a year cleaning up the mess left by Lobdell. He turns the All-Caste/Untitled stuff into something resembling a real story, closes off some dangling plot threads, and makes the book feel like it hates women about 90% less. Then they hand to book back to Lobdell.
So you've got 90's retread work, with some good stuff fighting to get through, only for the crappy 90's stuff to come back despite being rejected the first time.
I remember reading most of that when it was coming out. The misogyny was bad. But the book was one of the better looking/illustrated things from the N52 and was kinda pulpy dumb fun. Lobdell's writing is typically ass but it was a gorgeous book to look at. And at some point they yanked the artist on it oh boy.
Maybe she got stung by Bumbleblee.
I’m thinking she ate a bumblebee
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I mean, if he was intentionally implying that people with cherubism can be heroes to, that's good. But somehow...