Last Comic You Read

@tsi Remender quietly became one of my favorite writers. Wagner is always a treat. Though he didn't write them, the Grendel Tales series deals with real heavy stuff.

Love Remender's Uncanny X-Force, Fear Agent, Deadly Class, and Black Science.

Scumbag, Death or Glory, A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, Seven to Eternity, and Tokyo Ghost are all a notch below, but I appreciate them as well.

Finally made it through the last (Frank Castle) Punisher series. The one where he took over the Hand. Definitely a mixed bag. The basic premise, in my opinion, was really quite good. Made for a fun 'what if' sort've concept. What I didn't like was basically everything else about it.

I understand why they're treating Frank this way in the comics - that need to make him definitively a sociopath, unredeemable villain character. But I just really hate the retcon they did here. For those that didn't follow along (and some of this isn't really a NEW retcon); Frank was born a violent piece of shit, always loved killing people, did it all the time even while Maria was still alive, didn't really love his family very much, and Maria was actually about to divorce him on the day her and the kids were killed.

Fuck all of that. Super lame, shitty storytelling. I'm, as I've said elsewhere, SUPER fucking Leftist. I fully recognize how problematic Frank is as a character. But this is just the laziest, most character-assassination way of making Frank unequivocably a 'bad guy' to appease modern dipshits that are incensed over the actions of a fictional character because of the actions of real douchebags. To literally take every element of Punisher's backstory and be like 'oh, actually no -he's just garbage and every element of his story is secretly wrong and bad' sucks. It's bad writing and, while I know this isn't the case, feels like it was written by someone that specifically had a grudge against, and never liked, the character.

And I'm -for- pointing out that Punisher is a bad guy. I think they've done that well over and over in the past. This was very clearly targeted toward those people that don't pick up on any subtleties and need it all spelled out for them on a billboard. Unfortunately, it makes for pretty jank-ass storytelling when you're appealing to the lowest common denominator as the foundation of your entire story.

I've been trying to decide which books to hang on to as I purge my bookshelf. Two re-reads from that process and one first-time read:

Batman by Grant Morrison: 3.5/5. This was the first-time read. As with all Morrison, the good parts are fantastic and the bad parts make my eyes roll back into my head. I loved the stuff with Talia and Damien, but nothing else really worked for me. I thought Batman, Inc. with its knock-off Batmen was groan-worthy. Having read all viable competitors, I can say Scott Snyder wrote my favorite Batman run.

Velvet by Ed Brubaker: 5/5. Possibly my favorite Brubaker book. I'm a huge Mission: Impossible fan, and this has all the pulpy spy content that I love. I don't actually own this one, but I'm going to pick it up for my bookshelf. So much for purging, I guess.

Fear Agent by Rick Remender: 4/5. When I first read this in college over a decade ago, it immediately became one of my favorite books. This is my first re-read since then. It's one of Remender's first comics and you can tell. It might be my re-read talking, but I felt like I could see the man behind the curtain. Some dialogue and plot points didn't age particularly well (the book is 20 years old now), but it was more eyebrow-raising than "yikes." The ending still rocks.

"My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2" Emil Ferris. 5/5. Just a great comic. Her sense of design and character is amazing for someone with so few comics pages published later in life. I hope its long delay means it was basically finished years ago and she has no work soonish.

Big chunk of mid 200's Avengers. Stern / Buscema / Palmer era. 4.5/5. Have read half of it before but am rereading and sniping the issues at LCStores and eBay I was missing as I do it. Buscema really is THE Avengers artist even though he didn't even really like working on superhero titles. I suppose his main competition being Kirby & Perez. Hard to say how much is him and how much is Palmer. The Sinnott inked bit before is really solid too. His ability to give a coherency to most anyone's pencils is amazing.

"Watership Down" James Sturm / Joe Sutphin. 5/5. Sturm really is a comics treasure. This well worn classic is just very visceral and moving in this adaptation.

"Maharaja Donald" Karl Barks 4.5/5. These Fantagraphics Barks duck books are so great. Only complaint is I wish they were exactly as they are but soft cover. I hate wasting the space on the shelf for the extra hard cover for a book I'll read maybe twice in my life. Barks isn't quite firing on all cylinders yet in this volume but he's getting close.

"Amnesia" Al Columbia. 2.5/5. I think I'm too old for Al Columbia now. His Hot Topic grimdark is wearing thin on me. Not sure I'm his audience anymore. I thought maybe he could broaden his scope but I guess not. He is an extremely gifted cartoonist for sure.

Too read: Getting a stack ready for Sept / Oct this year. I think we are finally having a Halloween party again this year so not sure how much I'll get to read in anticipation of the season. I hope to get thru another 20 or so issues of my Tomb of Dracula read thru, at least one Annual volume of the Gladstone EC Annuals; prob Vault of Horror bc I want the Johnny Craig stories & maybe the Harrow County book 3. Depends on my Halloween prep.

Excited for the release of 2 new Charles Burns books this year as well as the new "Doofus" book by Rick Altergott. Though I likely will be annoyed by the laters hard coverness as well.

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda: 4/5. I picked up the first few trades several years ago and the story really grabbed me. I eventually decided it was too dense to read unless I was getting in monthly. Recently, I decided to do just that. I reread through to the current issue, #54. The first 30 issues are phenomenal, but I wish the series would've ended 10 issues ago. It's still good, but the plot is spinning its wheels.

Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips: 4.5/5. Another re-read. If you haven't read Brubaker, this is a great starting point. This pulpy crime anthology is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Brubaker and Phillips.

The Night Eaters by Liu and Takeda: 3.5/5. I thought this one was fine. I read the first trade and quit.

White Sand by Brandon Sanderson: 3/5. I've read most of Sanderson's work. This was my first DNF. I didn't find the story engaging and didn't think he used the medium particularly well. I gave up after the first trade.

Die by Kieron Gillen: 3.5/5. I think Gillen is one of the best comic writers around, but some of his work doesn't click with me. As a new-found TTRPG superfan, I wanted to love this. I thought the setting was all over the place and the characters were uninspired. I read the first trade and quit.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan: 4.5/5. Another re-read. Despite being a big BKV fan, I think this is the only creator-owned series of his that I've finished. Like Monstress, the first half is exceptionally strong before the plot begins spinning its wheels. I feel like the final act was an afterthought. Even though I enjoyed the whole series, the pacing is all over the place. I'm concerned Saga is in the same spot. Only time will tell.

Swamp Thing by Alan Moore: 4.5/5. Ironically, this was the first thing on the to-read list I made 10+ years ago and the last item I checked off. It was a worthy book to end on. While I found some of the high-concept stuff to be gobbledygook, the best issues in this run are some of the best issues in comics. The four-ish issue run where Abby is mourning Swamp Thing and Swamp Thing is first stuck in space, whew.

I'm not quite "done" yet, but these were all the things I needed to read. I've got Peter J. Tomasi's Batman & Robin run, Batman: No Man's Land, and Hellboy (cover to cover) left. If I remember, I'll probably pop in to review current runs, as well.

Trese - All 6 TPB's. These are really good horror/mystery books, that work great in b&w. I'd love to see a season 2 of the animated series on Netflix.

Currently going through the Dan Ketch Ghost Rider run.  I tracked down just about everything from #1-30 last month at a comic con for cheep.  That Mark Texera art is on fire like GR's head!