Why I Read scans_daily

[filkertom]

So that I don't have to give money to the fucking shitheads at DC and Marvel, who seem to be actively working to make me despise characters I've loved since I was a child.

For instance: Having pointlessly killed off Captain America last year, Marvel is "bringing him back" by sticking Bucky in the suit.

Four words, just for the rasslin' fans: Fake Razor. Fake Diesel.

Oh, and he's "packing heat".

Cap.

With a gun.

These guys literally have no idea what to do with a character, let alone an iconic character. The fucking Punisher "packs heat", all right? And, oh yeah, he's a deranged psycho murderer who just happens to kill bad guys.

Avengers Disassembled. Civil War. Identity Crisis. Infinite Crisis. Countdown. Brand New Day. So, so many others. Some of the worst, lamest fanfic ever... except it's canon. Jayzus, how did these talentless, clueless hacks get ahold of the characters I love?

The only thing that looks halfway decent these days is the JMS-written Thor. And, even there, Loki was brought back as a woman. Which I can deal with, I suppose, but.

Anything really good, or rant-worthy, in your comics pile?

ETA: wormquartet reminds us of both good and bad: the amazing Fables, and the ludicrous House Of M.

Comments

[per_solo]

PS238 is still the main thing I read.

I'm waiting for Planetary to put out its final issue, but am now also following "Doktor Sleepless", and other Ellis comics.

The only Marvel I TRULY read and enjoy? Is "Astonishing X-Men", which has gotten so far behind schedule that it's not considered "canon", though in theory, the final issue in the current storyline will fix this (In "Giant Sized Astonishing X-Men #1")

Other than those, I'm really disappointed in comics lately...and haven't felt like a comic reader in a while. Oh, though the new "League of Extraordinary Gentlement" book came out not too long ago, and was pretty good, imho.

Oh, and almost forgot the new Booster Gold series that DC is publishing..it's pretty good, too.

[wolfger.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it. I was going to recommend Doktor Sleepless. Although it's not really in the same genre as any of what Tom's talking about... no spandex fetishists in sight. The last Marvel comic worth my time was Wolverine.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

"Buffy" The new Joss plotted "Season 8" Buffy comic is a gem.

[devospice.livejournal.com]

Where can I get this? I didn't even know it was out until Carrie mentioned it in her LJ a while ago.

[kosaginolegion.livejournal.com]

I remain in love with Blue Beetle, but Countdown's treatment of Piper and Trickster made me ill within about six issues and I stopped bothering. The snark was good but it was just one stupid thing after another.

*grumble*

*goes back to manga*

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

Loki is a woman now?

Crap.

You'll understand my disappointment about that when I post something later...

[mythdude.livejournal.com]

Umm, in traditional mythology Loki has been more of a shapeshifter and one time became a woman to learn Baldur's weakness. I don't see how it's disappointing.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Ambush Bug will be back, starting in July, for a six issue mini-series. Each issue will poke fun at one of the recent DCU crisises, including the last issue poking fun at Final Crisis as it is still going on. Keith Giffen is drawing and Robert Loren Fleming is providing the dialog, just as they did years ago. I am looking forwards to this series.

Details are at http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=145003

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

At least the historical/mythological Loki also spent time in female forms (including as a mare, giving birth to Sleipnir), so there is at least a *little* justification for that.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

And really, the only rant-worthy thing I have is that the USPS sucks and lost a piece of commissioned artwork I purchased from Randy Milholland. He's being gracious enough to re-draw it for me, and I gave him my work address this time in hopes that will help my odds.

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

Like you my hubby was furious over the whole Capt. America stuff. He went on and on about it after seeing it on the Colbert Report. He isnot a happy man.

[nightmarewriter.livejournal.com]

I used to get the Invaders series in the 70's. Back in WWII Cap wore a sidearm (an officer's pistol) with his costume, so I don't find him wearing a gun out of character with him... IN A TIME OF (real) WAR against enemies of his nation, when he was officially part of the military.

That said, he wouldn't wear one as a 'Civilian' hero against mundane (or not) criminals. In that situation, his Shield is weapon enough, IMO. More than anyone else, he would know that carrying a weapon tremendously increases the chance that the weapon will be used, something he wouldn't want. (He who lives by the sword... etc.)

Look at the increasing number of cases of Police using Tasers offensively, gratuitously, and as a first response instead of a last resort, despite the intention of the 'stun guns' being used only when no other means to subdue a suspect are left. And with these cases come a number of deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

A few years back it really looked like Marvel was coming around - the foil covers every 3 issues, the unending parade of multi-book arcs, the major life-changing events on every page, and John Byrne were all abandoned in favor of good writers, good artists, and good stories (JMS brought Spider-Man back from the dead as far as I'm concerned. He may have been forced to end his run with "One More Day," but before that gawd-DAMN he wrote some good stuff.)

Even "Civil War" I personally found more enjoyable than any crossover story I'd ever read (up until the severely anti-climactic "ending.") But since then...hell, since House of M before it, really...it's just been unending. And I knew they'd come up with some lame way of extracting Spidey from all the Civil War nonsense, but I didn't expect anything as insipid and ludicrous as "One More Day," which I can't seem to shut up about.

Anyhoo, as far as good stuff in my comics pile, I'm finally catching up on "Runaways," which I'm enjoying a lot. Still have a lot of "Fables" to catch up on as well. Hero-wise, I'm curious where the new Hulk is going, but so help me, if they make Rick Jones the Hulk again...WHILE Bucky is becoming Captain America, no less...grr. Sorry. Anyway, X-Factor has been awesome, though it's currently ensnared in "Messiah Complex," cuz we all know the best thing to do with a 2-year-old developing book is to take 1/3rd of a year away from it to force it to support an X-Men story. Still waiting for Brubaker to convince me he belongs on "Daredevil." Intrigued by Peter David's She-Hulk. Skeptical about Green Arrow / Black Canary, though the last issue was an effective tear-jerker. Ultimate Spider-Man still doesn't suck. Nothing's convinced me I should start reading Batman again.

....geez. Sorry. I never talk about comics, so when I do, it kinda spills all over everything. I hope your friends list enjoys scrolling past this post. :)

-=ShoEboX=-

[ldwheeler.livejournal.com]

Heh, my comment was even longer.

It goes in cycles. I started getting interested in Marvel again around 1997 or so, when Marvel finished up that horrendous Heroes Reborn experiment and brought the Avengers, FF, etc. back into the main fold ... with Busiek/Perez aboard on Avengers, Waid and Garney on Cap, Lobdell/Alan Davis on FF (of course, Lobdell was bounced in favor of Claremont, who brought in just about every third-string X-Men villain and supporting character he still wanted to play with), etc. And it was good. For awhile.

That resurgence happened at about the same time as DC's resurgence, as well ... with Grant Morrison reviving the Justice League; the whole kill/maim/replace/armor-up trend over, etc. And that momentum petered about about the same time.

Both companies met the combination of the Dreaded Unending Crossover and the Cinematic-Storytelling Approach (the latter applying more to Marvel). Now DC's in an endless state of crisis and Marvel's in an endless state of malaise, and neither universe seems like one in which anyone would particularly want to live.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

If I recall my mythology correctly, Loki's been a woman at least once. Gender means so little to trickster figures.

Hell, Thor dressed in drag in one of the theft-of-Mjolnir stories.

As for how so many characters wound up in the hands of hacks, one of my associates created an entry at TVTropes.com called Running the Asylum (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RunningTheAsylum) that pretty much sums it up.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Of late, I've dived head-first into a bunch of different series, mostly in trade paperback form--Planetary, StormWatch and eventually The Authority, Strangers In Paradise, Fables, Ex Machina...I'm way behind the curve, of course, but I'll live with it.

As to stuff I stay current with, Runaways is still extremely solid--and it's very consciously trying to avoid the idiocy in the rest of the Marvel universe, what with the time travel and the being in LA, where no one else is. And I have to agree with the person who said Buffy season 8. Brian Vaughn and Joss Whedon do good work--and they work well playing off of each other, too.

The Angel: After The Fall comics are interesting. The writer, Brian Lynch, sold me on his style with Spike: Asylum, and his humor with Spike: Shadow Puppets, and he's been doing well so far, I think. We'll see where it goes...

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I've never read Thor and am not doing so now, so feel free to tell me to put a sock in it. However, I don't necessarily think a gender change by itself is enough reason for headdesking -- I'd want to see what they were doing with it. After all, everybody freaked about the new Starbuck, and that seems to be working out well. And back in the day, Camelot 3000 made excellent use of Sir Tristan's reincarnation as a woman to fuel several subplots. Why shouldn't Loki be a woman?

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

And in a slightly related matter, check out scarfman's webcomic Arthur, King Of Time And Space. Tristan is both male and female, depending on which story arc you are reading.

http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com

[mythdude.livejournal.com]

When it comes to comics, I think a lot of people only notice the big story arcs which cause smaller (and well, less popular) books to get swept under the rug, especially when the media gets involved and only focuses on something big. There are a bunch of really good books out there that I think you might enjoy, although who knows how much longer they will last.

All Astonishing Atom: Like may of DC's new generation comics, I initially ignored this one because the lead in adventure from Prelude to Infinite Crisis didn't interest me at all. However, with Gail Simone at it's head the series is amazing. It's funny, and the Atom is back to doing what he does best; scientific adventures with comedy sparsed in between.

Green Lantern: Many people, including myself, were upset over the return of Hal Jordan four years ago and I was looking at the new series with disdain. (Dammit, I love Kyle!) But the series has actually been pretty great, and recently the Sinestro Corp War was amazing. Then again, I'm horribly biased when it comes to Green Lantern. :P

Trials of Shazam: This revamp of Captain Marvel is actually really well done. Rather than making Freddy (Captain Marvel Jr.) into Captain Marvel right off the bat, he has to earn his powers and over the course of 11 issues he still isn't up to full power, and his stories have been really well done.

Iron Man: The only title where Tony Stark isn't portrayed as A. A tyrant like Hitler or B. An idiot who can't keep his own house in order, it's actually really good and the stories they're on right now have been great with Stark experiencing burn out after the past years activities.

Runaways: I've loved Runaways since the beginning and since Joss Whedon took over it's gotten better. It's a story about the children of supervillains who end up saving the world several times, and now are trapped in the 1800's.

The Twelve: This is the beginning to JMS's graphic novel on superheroes from the 1940s being brought into modern times. It has only had one issue so far, but it looks really good especially when you take the humor from some of their costumes into account.

I could go on, but I'll just be quiet now. :)

[lordavon.livejournal.com]

KYLE FOREVER!!

('kay)

[darkwolf69.livejournal.com]

Captain America with a gun.

Ok, why don't we give him Punny's gun. Then Punny can get shot, fall in the east river, and come out with amnesia and super powers. He can become an upright, walk in the light kinda straight arrow hero with these new powers, only he's haunted by the hints of who he used to be, so he can brood from time to time and be all conflicted about it.

Yeah.

That'd work, too.

WTF, Marvel??

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Quiet, dammit! They might be listening!

[mouser.livejournal.com]

http://www.wowio.com has the old Flare/Champions stuff for free in PDF format.

Yea, that's how bad it's gotten. That and webcomics (and PS236) is it.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

I am 23. I cannot remember a time when DC and Marvel comics were not totally unappealing to me. The art styles actually work to push me *away* from the characters. And don't even get me started on the dialogue.

Wait...wait...I liked Red Son. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son) But they lowered the contrast to something that wasn't eye-bleed inducing. They also did beautiful things with alternate history. I wish I could find, well, anything else like it.

This is why, even though it totally plays into the wimpy-girl-comic-fan stereotype, I absolutely love Sandman and shoujo manga.

[sdelmonte]

At DC, Booster Gold has been a lot of fun, though I think that a lot of the unhappy fans read it with a lot of trepidation. Paul Dini's run on Detective is good, too, so long as it isn't connected with any other title. Darwyn Cooke's year-long run on The Spirit just ended but it was an amazing 12 months, and Evanier and Aragones are poised to take over on the book, so it should still be pretty. And Chuck Dixon took over Robin again, so it might be readable.

At Marvel, X-Factor is a wonderful series, but I am holding my breathe that PAD can keep it wonderful given the latest big X-crossover event. I loved Vaughan's run on Runaways, and Whedon's turn has had it moments, but it might be a good idea to wait till he's done and start when Terry Moore arrives.

Outside the main universes, Fables is still very good, though not at its peak. The Buffy and Angel comics are both a lot better than we had any right to think they'd be (even with Joss in charge). And the Gargoyles comic, continuing the old cartoon with its creator Greg Weisman writing, is great but probably of no interest to anyone but Gargoyles fans.

And if there is one thing I want to rant about, it's that the editors and not the writers are running the show. When JMS of all people is made to do all the idiotic things he had to in One More Day, you know that the wrong people are making the choices. It doesn't help that unlike the old days, when writers became editors, most of the editors really don't seem to have the experience or the knowledge needed to do the job.

[cadhla.livejournal.com]

Yesterday's pickup cost ninety dollars.

I am a helpless fangirl.

Please send help.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Are you sticking with superheroes or just in general? The only superhero comics I've enjoyed in the last year are Top Ten and Astro City trade paperbacks, along with the hardcover edition of 1602 (yeah, I'm behind the curve.)

Otherwise, my favorite comics right now is Terinu (http://www.terinu.com/), a sci-fi, space opera style webcomic formerly published in a dead tree edition down in Australia with excellent black and white artwork. I'm also busy devouring Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo TPs (anthropomorphic animals in a mythic version of 17th century Japan, played perfectly straight.)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Bucky has been dead since the 40s, Steve Rogers is still Captain America, Peter Parker is married (as happily as he ever gets) and he's not stupid enough to have taken off his mask on television, almost all of Tony Starks problems are his own inner demons (not his ego)...

http://mightygodking.com/ is my hero and has his own feed: mightygodking_f.

For ideas for Marvel:
http://fraggmented.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-save-marvel-comics-step-one.html

http://fraggmented.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-save-marvel-comics-step-two.html

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

I haven't regularly kept up with comics since the late 90's. I read summaries and borrow things now and then that keep me (somewhat) up to date on what is going on. What I've seen and heard doesn't make me want to pick them up again.

Okay, dirty secret. I still buy Legion of Super Heroes. I've been reading that comic since I was 7. It's gone through good, bad and worse. They keep rebooting the freaking universe, but I can't seem to cut that last tie to my comic collecting years.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

So what do you think about Jim Shooter coming back as writer of the Legion? I like how he is working with what came before in the current series, not just rebooting back to the Adventure Comics days (although those were *damn* fine stories that I can still enjoy today!) Jim Shooter and Paul Levitz are my two favorite Legion writers, so this has me cautiously excited (seeing how poor Stan Lee's recent writing has been, I now take an old-time favorite writer returning to a series with a touch of dread over them possibly falling on their face).

[smegabyte.livejournal.com]

Comics writers have this little problem. They desperately want to make the characters grow and change and evolve...but in order to do that, they have to completely ruin these icons that everyone has grown to love. So, invariably, when the fans scream bloody murder, they have to take it all back and say "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'll never do it again!"...until they get bored again. That's why none of these changes should ever be made in the first place. Death is meaningless when you can magic it away. Dead should be dead forever, not a few months.

"We're going to change everything!"...but the fans don't want change. We don't watch the Simpsons because Homer might turn evil or Marge might be shot in the head by Dimension 43 Marge. We watch because they're the characters that we know and love and they STAY THAT WAY.

Specifically, Selina Kyle went from being Catwoman to being a non-rogue single mother. Way to totally ruin Catwoman, DC jerks. And Red Robin is a restaurant, not a back-from-the-dead ex-hero. And they killed Poison Ivy. And they made Harley Quinn into an Amazon. And they killed the Ventriloquist! And...arrrgh...they're hinting at killing off Bruce. I mean...GAH! Just STOP already!

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

They desperately want to make the characters grow and change and evolve

Not always the case. Sometimes, they don't want the characters to grow and change and evolve, they want the characters to be the same as when they were kids. "One More Day"/"Brand New Day," for example, the reboot of twenty years of Spider-Man continuity, is--as described in the "Running The Asylum" trope linked above--largely the result of Joe Quesada exerting the power to undo Spidey's marriage, which he never liked.

This is just as bad as, if not worse than, wanting to make real change and then feeling pressure to undo it due to fan outcry.

Further, I would suggest that the changes your describe aren't growth or evolution, but massive redirections. Growth and evolution, the natural result of small, gradual changes which make sense, are good. But creators--often writers, sometimes editors--either write stasis, or they write huge "everything will change!" events. Actual growth and evolution is rare, at best.

[gavroche42.livejournal.com]

Fallen Angel - written by Peter David - published by IDW comics (ever since DC cancelled it.) That's my favorite comic right now.

I also buy She-Hulk and X-Factor, because I am a fan of Peter David's writing.

[per_solo]

Thank you!

I wasn't sure what I would think of that one, with the "in the future" bit, but I've been pleasantly surprised so far..

Still just a few more things I'd be happy knowing, but PAD hasn't let me down with it yet.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Right now, I'm disgusted with both DC and Marvel, these guys have obviously thrown up their hands, given up on the notion of "continuity" and are just writing whatever they damn well please.

So I'll probably do like in that recent "Dork Tower" toon (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/dorktowerfeed/142894.html) and stock up on trade paperbacks of stuff I do like, none of it in the main sequences.

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

i stopped reading comic books when i realized they didnt believe in happy endings, ever.. no one was going to win unless they were the bad guys, and the writers didnt give a rats ass about what the characters acted like, and whether it was "in character" or not.

the only thing in your list that makes any sense is Loki as a girl. cause after all, he did that. he was the mother of sleipneir, you know. turned himself into a mare.

[lordavon.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm still pleased Jim Shooter is back on the Legion of Super-Heroes, and that they DIDN'T reboot the continuity from the Waid run.

And Kyle Rayner is no longer Parallax, also pleasing.

But that's about that.