Comic Books

[benji]

The latest DC crossover (Knight Terrors) is doing a bunch of two-issue miniseries featuring characters facing their "worst nightmare":

Spoiler: The Joker's cover  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

In the 1970's, DC had a Welcome Back Kotter comic for some reason:

[chronovore]

I just read Warren Ellis' James Bond 007: EIDOLON . It's a solid, down-to-earth Bond story, taking place in mainly England and Los Angeles, no globe-hopping spy tourism, really. Ellis has fallen out of favor since he proved himself to be even worse towards women than Connery-era Bond. To be candid, I have minor trouble separating the artist from their art, but it was easier at this level of performance. I'll probably buy VARGR next.

[Eric Cartman]

I still don't really get what warren ellis got cancelled for.

He is a talented writer, and he had female fans throwing themselves at him because of it.
That's not remotely the same as a Weinstein, and its not abusing any sort of power or privilege, even if at least some portion of those groupies had ulterior motives to use their relationship with him to bolster their own careers.

The rest of it just seems like he was kind of a shitty romantic partner by cheating on them etc.

[chronovore]

He’s married with kids, but is a grand scale cheater. 

He encouraged many different women to think they were going to be promoted by him, so he abused his position to effectively “casting couch” many women. 

https://somanyofus.com/

I guess this counts as “bringing receipts”

Some of the people in there did actually achieve some fame through contact with him. I am remembering one woman who was very high on his list of followers, who was originally just a photographer who took nude photos of herself in the days before onlyfans, and is now a producer in comic books.

She is at the head of the line lambasting Ellis for his abuse, but I don’t think she would even have a career in comics were it not for her interaction with him.

I’m not saying it’s healthy, I’m just saying it’s more complicated than most people want to treat it.

[Eric Cartman]

I don't discount at least some of those people feel hurt and manipulated, because it seems like he was kind of a dick cybersexing then ghosting them, but 'dont slide into this dudes DMs' and 'dont give this guy any work' IMO shouldn't be interlinked.

It also really feels like a reach to describe what he did as coercion or a PTSD inducing event - in their own words;

The above follows a textbook pattern of adult grooming: the groomer builds up a trust or friendship with an individual while emphasizing the need for secrecy or discretion, often using favors or promises to make the individual feel indebted. Eventually, the groomer achieves the goal of their grooming, i.e. making their target receptive to their advances. To an outside observer, this pattern can seem very close to a bona fide relationship, since, by design, only the groomer is aware of the scope and direction of their scheme.

and like... comparing daily contact to fucking videogame lootboxes and gacha mechanics?

[bork]

In the 1970's, DC had a Welcome Back Kotter comic for some reason:

Kotter looks a lot like Norm MacDonald here.

[benji]

[benji]

Read the Superman Warworld Saga (it's across three books, only the last two actually take place on Warworld) and it's just a lamer and shorter version of Planet Hulk without an ending.

[Eric Cartman]

I'm assuming you're talking about a current DC superman storyline, and not the one from the Byrne post-crisis reboot where he got more believable than android sophias DID and fucked off into space only to get captured and forced to fight in an arena, rebooted his no-kill policies and led to the overthrow of the authorities by the enslaved pit fighters which... is also a shorter Planet Hulk, and also ends with Superman returning to earth, although in supermans case it was wiser and more worldly, not pissed off and looking for revenge

[benji]

After I posted I thought, maybe I should clarify I don't mean when he exiled himself back in the 1980's and the same basic yet better story happened, but then I thought, nah, nobody remembers that.

Yeah, it was the big Superman storyline last year or so, the collected versions came out recently. Another thing that was dumb compared to that old story was how when he left Earth back then he left an actual void, especially in Metropolis. Now there's Jon and Kara and Connor and Steel and who knows how many other near Superman level heroes. Reminds me of how when Bruce disappears for a while now they still act like Gotham should notice and the whole Bat Family talks about how much more they have to work to cover for him. Like Gotham can't really be that crime-ridden, the GCPD hasn't even supposed to have been corrupt for decades now.

[Eric Cartman]

Yeah, it was pretty fucking ballsy to have your main dude just fuck off somewhere else in the post-crisis where there weren't that many other capes around to cover things in their absence.

They did a similar thing with "The Trinity" in Countdown, which didn't work as well in showing a world without the big heroes, but did give some of the B-listers their time to shine, especially the former members of the JLI like Booster Gold and Elongated Man, but that was probably Giffens influence after all the work he'd done making them actual characters in JLI.

As for Gotham, even with its canonically Most-Cursed-Place-On-Earth status, is there anywhere in DC more populated with capes?
They've got more than the fucking JLA space station does. Even outside the Bat-Family you've got a bunch of mystical types like Jason Blood, Ragman, Deadman, plus your unaffiliated vigilantes / anti-heroes like Anarky, Vigilante, Mad Dog, Hitman, Creeper, The Question, the Riddler for a while etc. Plus OG Green Lantern!

[benji]

You're laughing? This inner monologue box was in a Marvel 2099 comic from 1995 and you're laughing?

[benji]

Speaking of which, I finally finished 2099. (Well, the original version, don't know if I'll get to the semi-reboot.) I actually think it goes off the rails when Warren Ellis was allowed to intentionally cross everything over in every other book. I really liked the initial way the universe was introducing stuff that would just be mentioned or be somewhat relevant and then like in another book that'd be the big plot point or the bad company or whatever. Ellis mashed them all together with Doom as the central book. When all the authors quit because the editor was fired this destroyed the entire 2099 universe. The new writers hack together an end of the world situation and then it just sorta stops. Ellis rushed the whole Doom plot too, which makes complete chaos of every other book. Amusingly, all the Wiki's are wrong. The Punisher 2099 doesn't necessarily die. He both does die and escapes into space depending on which book you're looking at. He's off Earth for two issues of his own book when he's killed in the streets of New York City (something he had fled to hide underground before leaving Earth) in another.

Also the villain Ellis creates for Doom (and then just randomly kills before the plot goes anywhere, oh, SPOILERS I GUESS) of course has a big long speech declaring how he wants to take "capitalism" to its "perfect form" which is stripping Earth of everything down to its core within five years, deliberately killing 90% of the population and then fucking off to Mars.

This actually upset me more than being normal left-wank because even though there was some dumb stuff prior regarding the giant corporations in 2099, it was just nuanced enough in a plausible way because the corporations had used the states to gain monopoly control and then established their own borders with each other. Theoretically, Alchemax could go into something that was considered Stark-Fujikawa territory but they had to do it in secret, there was a risk of war, etc. Corporate takeovers involved literal battles and troops. There's a strong suggestion that the current corporate setup is just barely stable, Doom even notices a weak point in them underinvesting in nanotechnology. Ellis sweeps this all aside, has Doom act purely as a state and start nationalizing companies which leads to the villain who leads an unified corporate backlash even though all these companies were at each other's throats and some had allied with Doom five seconds prior. This just doesn't seem implausible in our world, it's implausible in the world that's presented before Ellis starts fucking with it. The entire Doom plotline he creates makes no sense at all, nobody acts in ways that make any sense (Doom declares himself President of the United States and everyone just... agrees? And does what he says even though it's been established that the government has been completely gutted of power by the corporations?) and it reduces all the books to just being them responding to whatever Doom's doing now.

Ghost Rider 2099 is the only book that actually gets an ending. Ravage 2099 is hilariously all over the place, his powers even change just issues after he first gets them which itself comes after a number of issues of him being a hero without powers. X-Men 2099 is a very strange book with no focus at all and I'm pretty sure the entire space of the series involves the characters going in a big circle around the Southwest.

But the best part of 2099, as I mentioned before back when I started it, is absolutely how everyone talks about MEGABYTES and uses floppy disks. Only in one of the very last issues does someone finally upgrade an amount of data to gigabytes. Entire GIGABYTES of the NET get erased FOREVER by the Phalanx. This is otherwise a world where nanotech can build an entire skyscraper in a matter of minutes from random garbage.

[benji]

From Flashpoint Beyond, first panel is from earlier but you need to see the hat the kid was wearing through prior issues:

[Eric Cartman]

...is that rip hunter? (im guessing as that looks like a time sphere)

[benji]

Ya, and the Time Masters. They're as much in the book as regular Batman is. Johns also did another blackboard full of stuff, including a line about how they had thwarted 5G.

[Eric Cartman]

okay but I don't get why Rocket Racoon is there

[benji]

He was on the kid's head. For five issues.

[Eric Cartman]

[benji]

From Young All-Stars:

[chronovore]

Comics author Keith Giffen, of Legion of Superheroes fame, has passed at age 70 from a stroke.

[Eric Cartman]

Damn, real loss.

Probably one of my favourite DC writers of all time, and also one of the most under rated in terms of turning out great stuff consistently and also in terms of respecting canon that had come before, no matter how weird and wacky (which in practical terms is respecting the work of other writers instead of deciding your own shit is way better and ignoring it).

Kinda sucks the biggest recognition he got was Great Darkness Saga in LOSH (and not for blowing up the earth because nobody at DC editorial was bothering to check what he was up to ) when he's got creator credits for Lobo, Ambush Bug, Rocket Raccoon and Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle, as well as revamping the JLA post-crisis to incorporate the new continuity from multiple publishing lines and making a bunch of C-Listers long term fan favorites, as well as completely overhauling a bunch of joke characters in Cosmic Marvel with the Annihilation event (which is a major reason for GOTG success).

[benji]

Though he didn't really work on it, I coincidentally just started the 1989 Mister Miracle:

[benji]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[Eric Cartman]

Very wholesome.

Apropos of nothing, remember the time she nearly shot a porno with superman?

[benji]

remember the time she nearly shot a porno with superman?

I think that issue is also the source of this iconic image:

[Eric Cartman]

Yeah, I think it is - which given the context of the miracle man comic as almost a fish out of water sitcom setup, is not that weird, because he's Bardas old boss and Scott's foster dad slash uncle, so just letting himself in and making himself a drink and chilling on his couch until he gets home isn't super crazy, other than its fucking darkseid

Giffen obviously thought so too, because he upped the ante in ambush bug from darkseid just randomly breaks into your house and sits on your couch to darkseid randomly is your cashier at mcdonalds

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

I'm not gonna lie, I legitimately hope James Gunns Superman reboot end credits stinger is Clark Kent going home after a hard day doing whatever it is just happened in the film, and Darkseid is sat on his couch waiting for him and just goes "Kal El. We should talk." or something

[Tucker's Law]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

I'm not gonna lie, I legitimately hope James Gunns Superman reboot end credits stinger is Clark Kent going home after a hard day doing whatever it is just happened in the film, and Darkseid is sat on his couch waiting for him and just goes "Kal El. We should talk." or something 

Gunn doing that in Superman Legacy would go a long way in making up for how much he shafted Henry Cavill.

[benji]

Great Outfits in Comic History featuring Dick Grayson: