Ongoing Comic Books Thread

[GordonBlue]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Superman’s son is bisexual.



I don’t stay current on the happenings but this seems like a fairly big step.

forgive the canoe link but a conservative artist is not happy.

https://canoe.com/entertainment/supe...6-49df821bf477

A colorist who works on Superman comics announced he is cutting ties with DC Comics because he isn’t a fan of the changes being made to its characters.
“I’m finishing out my contract with DC,” Gabe Eltaeb said during a recent podcast,

“What really pissed me off was saying ‘Truth, Justice, and A Better World,” he fumed. “##### that, it was Truth, Justice, and The American Way.”

“They call us bigots and racist and sh*t, I would ask them, find me in the #####ing mainstream, not on the fringes, one #####ing book, one #####ing T-shirt, one movie that says that leftism is bad, and conservatism is good,” Eltaeb ranted in one last tangent. “Find it for me, they #####ing won’t, they’re not letting people have a voice, they’re the #####ing bigots.”

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I recently finished Jason Aaron’s run on Thor. The whole thing from start to finish was very enjoyable and I’d highly recommend. From Thor to lady Thor to Unworthy Thor and King Thor. It was all strong. He writes Thor so well.

And before that I read J Michael Straczynski’s run. It’s also great but he quit halfway thru and I haven’t read the Kieron Gillen volume that finishes it. I’ve heard it’s pretty good despite him picking it up and trying to finish all the loose ends.

I’m currently almost finished Star Wars (legends) Dark Times. By far the best Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Thoroughly enjoyable. I’m on issue 25 or so of 32. Excellent stuff so far. Takes place right after order 66. Vader features a bit but not much. Got some legit downer twists and turns but is also fun at times. Great mix of showing the real death and destruction caused by the empire while still giving you heroes to cheer for. It also pretty much never relies on any of the core characters or lame ties to the OG trilogy. It’s all new yet feels very familiar at times. It’s got that post war anything goes Wild West kinda feel to it. I’m pretty sure it directly follows Purge but I don’t remember thinking that book was this good. I may have to go back and revisit it.

I’ve also read the first third of Snyder’s Batman run. It’s quite good but not amazing. But now that I have all the volumes I’m excited to finish it.

Age of Ultron was terrible, avoid at all costs.

Read almost all of Brubaker’s Captain America run. Right up to and including Reborn. Solid stuff.

Was not a fan of Priest’s Black Panther run. Read the whole thing. Thought it was all pretty meh from start to finish.

[KTrain]

Some of my recent reads:

Jeff Lemire's Mazebook. If you're a fan of his more personal, non-superhero (Essex County, Underwater Welder) stuff, this one is great. Written and drawn by him. It's really well done.

A lonely building inspector still grieving the loss of his puzzle-loving daughter receives a mysterious phone call one night from a girl claiming it's her and that she's trapped in the middle of a labyrinth. Convinced that this child is contacting him from beyond this world, he uses an unfinished maze from one of her journals and a map of the city to trace an intricate path through a different plane of reality on an intense and melancholy adventure to bring his daughter back home.

I've just about finished Injustice: Gods Among Us. I brushed this one off for a while because I thought it was just a video game spinoff but it's been excellent. I can't keep up with the regular timeline DC and Marvel stuff so I really enjoy the self-contained stories.

The series takes place in an alternate reality, where Superman descends into villainy following his family's death at the Joker's hands. The Justice League is split by those that put their trust in Superman, establishing the totalitarian One Earth Regime, while Batman forms an insurgency out of the other half of the League to fight back against the Regime.

I heard that Fables is coming back in the spring so I did a complete re-read of all 22 trades. It still holds up as one of my favourites.

Another Lemire comic that's currently coming out is Robin and Batman. It's only 3 deluxe issues but it's a lot of fun. Lemire teamed up again with Dustin Nguyen (Descender and Ascender) for the art and it's beautiful.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Hey I just bought volumes 16 and 17 of Fables because I want to finish it. For some reason I got to 15 and stopped like 5 or 6 years ago.

[Johnny Makarov]

Cubs in Toyland for Fables is one of my fave stories ever.

It was so incredible i got goosebumps reading it and couldn't sleep so I read it again until 5am.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

After a 3 year hiatus Saga has finally returned for what’s supposed to be the 2nd half of the story. I honestly thought we’d never see this so I’m quite pleased. I’ve only read the first volume and then stopped because I figured we’d only get half the story. I’m gonna be reading the rest of the trades asap. Although it could take a few years for the next 50 issues to be published so no hurry I guess.

[KTrain]

I was super tempted to pick up the issue but I’ve been collecting Saga in trades so I’ll just wait for the next one.

I’ve gone on a bit of a 80s/90s Vertigo kick lately and read a bunch of Hellblazer and Books of Magic. I needed a break from super hero stuff so the horror/magic has been a nice departure.

[Brendone]

Any recommendations for getting an old collection appraised? I’ve got a few boxes of comics that haven’t seen the light of day for 10-15 years, and I should probably find out what they’re worth, if anything, so they’re covered under our insurance.

[KTrain]

I think you'll have to determine what you mean by "old". 80s+ isn't really considered old in comics because of the quantity that were produced during that time. If they are only 80s+, I'm sure you've got a few gems but a lot will only be worth a couple bucks each.

I overheard the guys at my shop (Redd Skull) say that he's stopped doing appraisals because it isn't really worth their time. You could probably put together a list yourself and check the online price guides to give you an estimate yourself.

[Brendone]

Most of my collection would be from the 80’s, but I loved Amazing Spider-Man and Iron Man, so I back collected a lot from the 60’s and 70’s as well. Amazing Spider-Man #5 is from 63, but it’s not in great shape. It was my uncles and my Grandmother threw it out along with a lot of others. Fortunately they had a “dump pile” on the farm and she had just tossed them a few weeks before we came to visit, so I found the bag pretty quickly and saved it. Pretty sure I should have grabbed the Golden Classics as well, but I wasn’t interested in them (Johnny Appleseed, etc). Just saved the Marvels

[KTrain]

This book could be a lot of fun. I loved these cards as a kid and still have my collection (minus a couple holograms) so I doubt I'll grab the book.

It still blows my mind that Lee did all the illustrations for these during the peak of his popularity. "Peak" might be the wrong word since he sat at the top for a long time.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491822911392391178

[Finger Cookin]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless you're Amazon, in which case you should totally #### up comixology for no other reason other than you can. Subscriptions will no longer be possible for anyone not based in the USA, the app is being discontinued and folded into Reader or Kindle or something, and most accounts are that the replacement readers are a big step back from comixology. The whole move is baffling, frankly. Considering Amazon bought comixology 8 years ago.

https://support.comixology.com/hc/en...Up-Information

EDIT: I guess the app is being updated, but the comixology reader is going away so the net effect is still bad.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I’ve been dreading this since it was announced.

The amazon Canadian marketplace is garbage so we have to still use the USA marketplace. Plus none of the sales apply to the Canadian store so digital comics are full price. But even the fully optimized USA website is garbage compared to the super slick comixology website.

Amazon is all around trash these days.

There will be a new app for reading but it sounds like it’ll be garbage too. No series sorting, no wish lists, no archiving books.


I guess this means I’ll exclusively use marvels app for purchasing and reading via iOS. Too bad. I had a lot of smaller publisher’s books on my comiXology wish list. Thankfully I’m almost done the backlog of books in my comiXology app so I’ll be done with them for the foreseeable future once this update happens.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Looks like we’re getting ####ed even harder than I thought. It appears something odd is going on with marvel iOS app.

For the last few years, any book I bought direct from marvel via iOS App Store and all comics purchased via comiXology would both show up in my marvel app.

Now, not only is there no comiXology storefront in the marvel ios app, I get a cannot connect error, but my libarary is about half as big and only includes my original iOS in app purchases and none of my comiXology purchases.

#### you amazon. The local brick and mortar stores are thanking you. But I’m choked because digital comics were so cheap it allowed me to read dozens and dozens of titles I would have never otherwise read.


Looks like a sync issue for the missing comics. Still no storefront in marvel app on iOS though.

[KTrain]

While I’m not proud of it, I’ve taken to the less-than-legal websites to read back issues because the non-Marvel stuff is so hard to track down on the subscription services.

I’ve never been able to justify purchasing single issue digital comic. I’d rather have the physical copy for a buck or two more.

I still buy about $20 a week in physical issues and then bump that up periodically with some trades.

Outside of stand alone story mini-series, I have a tough time keeping up with the regular Marvel and DC stuff as it all seems to be big event stuff. DC is doing a much better job than Marvel with getting good creators to do mini-series that aren't tied into anything else.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Looks like we’re getting ####ed even harder than I thought. It appears something odd is going on with marvel iOS app.

For the last few years, any book I bought direct from marvel via iOS App Store and all comics purchased via comiXology would both show up in my marvel app.

Now, not only is there no comiXology storefront in the marvel ios app, I get a cannot connect error, but my libarary is about half as big and only includes my original iOS in app purchases and none of my comiXology purchases.

#### you amazon. The local brick and mortar stores are thanking you. But I’m choked because digital comics were so cheap it allowed me to read dozens and dozens of titles I would have never otherwise read.


Looks like a sync issue for the missing comics. Still no storefront in marvel app on iOS though.

There's been a comic guy/store in the US who scans every single comic that comes out on Wednesday for the past 20 years and torrents it the same day.

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

There's been a comic guy/store in the US who scans every single comic that comes out on Wednesday for the past 20 years and torrents it the same day.

While I read a lot of scanned stuff (not torrents, but there are websites that make it easier to browse) I still like to support the artists and writers I like.

Like going to the theatre for some people, reading comics on paper is just different. Costly. But different.

It's definitely hard to justify $5 for a comic you can read in 5 minutes.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

In a shocking turn of events, amazon ruined digital comics and everybody hates it. I ####ed up and forgot to turn off automatic updates so now it’s on my iPad and is impossible to roll back. I have about 50 trades left in my 2 year long odyssey to read every digital book I’ve ever purchased. Once I’m done, I will never make another comic purchase from Amazon. The app sucks so much I may have a hard time to go back and re-read any old issues/trades. Thank god marvel kept their app using the old format so I can at least buy some digital comics from time to time.

https://www.comicsbeat.com/amazon-co...-analysis/?amp

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Couple recent highly recommended series I read.

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. Irreverent, weird, gross, prophetic. Read the first 24 issues and loved it. Between this, the Authority and Planetary, Warren Ellis likes to write some weird ####. I’ll be buying more. Just not digitally. Thanks Amazon. #######s.

Lazarus by Greg Rucka. Game of Thrones meets post apocalyptic Hunger Games type society. This series is awesome and Rucka is one of my favourite writers.

[Finger Cookin]

Lazarus is an all-time favorite of mine, unquestionably. The series is still going, despite some big delays related to the pandemic as well as some personal challenges faced by the creative team. The second act, subtitled as Lazarus: Risen and published as oversized issues, is concluding in July with issue #7. The third and final act will start to unfold sometime in 2023 once some issues are finalized, once a format can be agreed to, and once a schedule can be attempted.