Every comic you've read in 2014


Missy

Recommended Posts

With the new movie coming out, I've been inspired to (re)read Brubaker's Captain America. I've read most of it before, stopping somewhere around the renumbering.

I've split it into 4 nice little parts:

Prequel: Red Skull Incarnate, The Marvels Project

Part 1: Winter Soldier (Winter Soldier arc, Red Menace arcs, and Civil War tie-ins)

Part 2: Death of America (Death of Captain America, The Man With No Face, Road to Reborn)

Part 3: Bucky Cap (Reborn, Two Americas, and all the Bucky Cap arcs)

Part 4: Captain America renumbering, Captain America and Bucky and WInter Soldier spin-offs.

I've just finished the first part.

It doesn't hold up as well as I remember it. A lot of the first 6 issues hang on the mystery of who Winter Soldier is, and once you know that, it's just kind waiting for the characters to catch up. Once they do, they don't really know what to do with themselves. Nonetheless, there's some really nice character work setting the stage for what's to come, exploring almost the entire history of Steve Rogers and almost every relationship he's ever had (Iron Man, Falcon, Sharon Carter, Nick Fury round out the modern relationships, along with Bucky, Namor, Human Torch, and even France to round out the 1940 relationships). Red Menace is a nice little story that brings a ton of ongoing elements together effortlessly without really making it an essential huge part of the overall arc, there's not a ton of forward momentum in that arc, but there's some, and it still acts as a nice detour. I never noticed this before, but Cap and Bucky never speak before Cap is killed, they never have the conversation they should have.

Really enjoying this series but really the best part comes up next. I wasn't too fond of the Reborn stuff last time, but maybe it'll hold up better now.

I doubt I'll be able to finish EVERYTHING before the film comes out in April, but I think I'll get pretty close.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 338
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

New Avengers #1-14: The Illuminati all have the Infinity Gems...and no one in the rest of the Marvel U knows about it. They spend their time rescuin dying realities in an effort to save their own. It sounds cool. It is, partially. It just feels like it's going nowhere, and other than the relationship between Black Panther and Namor, that's exactly where it goes.

Uncanny Avengers #1-16: This is a comic of two halves. 1. It has a good premise that feels a little forced. It is made to feel epic but Mutants, even X-Men and Brotherhood of Evil Mutants mutants, have been Avengers since almost the very beginning. 2. It feels too much like an X-Men book to really be an Avengers book. The art: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO JOHN CASSADAY?! If this is what it looks like when he is trying to meet a monthly schedule, then I never want to see another monthly book by him. Alternatively, Daniel Acuna has really improved. Maybe it's after several months and every cover plastered with awful Cassaday that makes Acuna look so good, but his work has gotten really nice. No one can make Havok's costume look good though. It's a subtle change to his classic costume but it went from being one of my all-time favorite costumes to an ugly one.

Trades: 5

Comics: 81
Omnibus: 2
Graphic Novels: 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tales of Suspense #88-98: The big Marvel split title, the last year or so before they increased their release schedule and it became Captain America in 1968. This is a seriously awesome book, with Stan Lee at the height of his powers, Gene Colan turning in amazing work on Iron Man, and Jack Kirby and Gil Kane putting in stellar work on Cap. Iron Man gets a lot of goofy losers thrown at him, as is typical for Iron Man, but Cap has a run against the Red Skull, and everything is just a ton of fun. Also, the storytelling is fairly decompressed (storylines run three issues or more) but a lot still happens per issue, and you definitely got your twelve cents' worth. Great stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vampirella #1-26: The first solid chunk is Eric Trautmann (who wrote some great stuff featuring JSA and Kobra for DC back when DC didn't suck) showing the world (DC) that you can reinvent a character by both forging new ground and paying tribute to their long and storied history. Touche! Then Brandon Jerwa goes and pushes things farther. Great stuff. Another example why Dynamite is probably the best publisher right now.

Trades: 5

Comics: 107
Omnibus: 2
Graphic Novels: 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wonder Woman #0-27, 23.1, 23.2-The last of the New 52 I decided to try. "Just a few issues," I said, "and I can say I tried it." I have never been an Azzarello fan. But this is incredible. It is the ONLY thing in the New 52 that rises above mediocre. Chiang's art is superb and the fill-in guys they get share a style, but are also great in their own way. Its visual style. Its story (sort of similar to a comic I worked on a long time ago) is great. The way it plays with mythology is great. I'm all in on this.

Trades: 5

Comics: 137
Omnibus: 2
Graphic Novels: 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Strange Tales #130 and 131 - What an utterly odd book this is. The two features are so tonally different that I can't for the life of me figure out why they're together; they don't compliment each other in the slightest.

The opening feature in both issues is the Human Torch/Thing team up (after the Torch solo feature, which did not work at all), a largely humorous strip where the characters argue while solving relatively minor crimes. Featherlight and inconsequential but nevertheless enjoyable. #130 is the Beatles story I spazzed out over recently, and it's as goofy as I thought it was going to be. The art by Bob Powell isn't awesome; it's very cartoony and somewhat Ditkoesque, but it's sketchy and boring. The writing, though, saves it; Lee obviously loved writing these two going at it.

Then comes Doctor Strange, with Steve Ditko at his Steve Ditkoiest. The trippy visuals and ongoing story serve to give this some weight, and it's halfway decent. Dormammu and Mordo team up to ruin Strange's day, sending magical assassins after him as Strange travels the world. Fun stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, I've decided to obliterate my Graphic Novel count from last year by breaking out my euro books over the next little while.

The Great Adventure of HP and Giuseppe Bergman: the first ina series of surreal sexy graphic novels by Milo Manara. No one draws women like Manara. No one. This is bonkers but really fun.

African Adventures of Giuseppe Bergman1: More of the same, but even weirder.

African Adventures of Giuseppe Bergman2: the best of the bunch, probably. Super weird, but just gorgeous. Beyond drawing beautiful women, he's one of the greatest living storytellers comics has.

Indian Adventures of Giuseppe Bergman: this is off the rails and crazy. Far too much experimentation with form veers this from the true feel of this series. Too bad.

Urban Adventures of Giuseppe Bergman: Probably the second best of them. Good return to form.

A Skeleton Story #1-5: these are euro books, but still regular issue size. This would be far better served as an animated film than a comic. That's what it looks like anyway. Probably what it started out as. Not very good.

Indestructible Hulk: Agent of SHIELD- And so begins what could easily be the best Hulk storyline of all time. Wow. Waid is fucking killing it. This is how you reinvent a character, DC. Banner is finally doing something instead of moping about how he can't kill the monster. Yu's art is stunning, and I've never been a big fan. This is great though. I can't wait for more.

Fatale book four: Pray for Rain-The grunge band thing is a little much. I love the Pearl Jam reference, but a lot of this feels heavy handed. It is interesting this comic with the focus on The Yellow King lately. An interesting companion piece, maybe. Still probably the worst volume in a pretty darned good series.

Batman: Li'l Gotham-kind of fun. The boys and I read this together. They enjoyed it. I honestly felt the story was kind of stupid with some unnecessary "jokes for dad." The art is another story. Wow. Looks amazing.

X: Volume 1 Big Bad-I was worried about this for two reasons: i) this 90s reboot thing has really fucking sucked for comics lately(Extreme, Valiant, etcetera), and ii) I ordered both volumes before getting to read the first. This one is grim. Brutal and mean. I liked it. If you aren;t a fan of extremely dark superhero stuff, you'll hate it. But it looks great and reads quickly. Makes me want to go back and read the original omnibuses.

The Creature Commandos: this is a fun omnibus trade collection. A few of these were some of the first comics I ever read. They don't hold up a hell of a lot, but I'm glad they were collected. The crossovers with GI Robot hold up extremely well though. Amazing!

Trades: 9

Comics: 142
Omnibus: 3
Graphic Novels: 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Starting tonight or tomorrow (depending when I get out of the restaurant), 2014 is the year I read every floppy Michelle and I have, in alphabetical order. Starting with 1 Month 2 Live #1.

Out of curiosity, how is this going?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

AXA vol 1-3: These three graphic novels are the first of several in the Axa series. Think Red Sonja meets Barbarella with Shanna the She-Devil's outfit played by Brigitte Bardot and you have the idea. The character walks around topless a lot because to her, nakedness means "freedom!" in her oppressive culture in the futuristic dome city she lives in. but she roams the countryside naked getting into all sorts of post-apocalyptic trouble. It's good and the art is great, but it is done in a strip style (three rows of three panels) for each graphic novel. Each volume collects two graphic novels. I have the others, but I'll stop for now so I don't get more bored.

AXA Island of Noah: this is a comic book issue (25 pages) of a rebooted thing 2000AD tried to do in the early 90s (I think) and it isn't very good.

Black Terror #1-14: post Project Superpowers, Dynamite released this series based on the character named Black Terror. It tries very hard to be an Alan Moore kind of thing and it isn't very good.

Bring the Thunder: this trade collects the four issues of the series that Alex Ross created with his art school roommate that Dynamite printed during the Project Superpowers days. It reminded me heavily of the Shadowman proposal I worked up for Valiant that I thought had something missing. Overall, mine was better by far, but I'm not Alex Ross, I guess.

Trades: 10

Comics: 157
Omnibus: 3
Graphic Novels: 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Starting tonight or tomorrow (depending when I get out of the restaurant), 2014 is the year I read every floppy Michelle and I have, in alphabetical order. Starting with 1 Month 2 Live #1.

Out of curiosity, how is this going?

A little slowly, I kind of got into finishing some books without pictures that I got for Christmas, but I did, pick up a few more issues and read them last evening.

2099 Unlimited #4-10: Pretty weak stuff, with the exception of some Early Warren Ellis/D'Israeli kind of weird Tech Sorcerer Supreme thing and the Gene Colan drawn Spider-Man 2099 rundown, which is fantastic. Doom 2099 is just a bad, bad design.

Action Comics #1 and 2 (New 52): As an Elseworlds Superman, this would be fantastic. Clark is young, vibrant fun and smart. Luthor is great, just completely callous and slamming Red Bull. Rags drew some really nice stuff, too. Having Superman actually stop a train is wonderful. I can see why I didn't continue, though, the story just doesn't really feel like the sort of origin that Superman should have in the main universe. I may revisit the opening arcs in trade.

All Star Western #1 and #9 (New 52): The first random split in the runs I have, will not be the last. The opening issue is fun, I like the dichotmy of Hex and Arkham, and the art is fantastic. Obviously, Palmiotti and Gray have a strong grip on Hex, but I was really impressed with how well they handled Arkham. Nighthawk and Cinnamon show up in the later issue, but I can't even care about them when they're Hawkman and Hawkgirl, so meh.

Alpha Flight #40 (Nov. 1986): The first of my random thrift store finds. This is a weird, weird, weird one. Marrina's skin is pregnant with alien spores, so she runs away from Namor, who she loves. The rest of Alpha Flight goes to help her, but Vindicator decides that straight up murderin' is a better solution.. Box is stuck in his armor because he got the bends from phasing out of it underwater, I guess. Aurora is concerned because she can't love a machine. Art is actually pretty nice, especially on Namor. The team actually feels like they're underwater. The story is almost Bob Haney levels of nuts, but since it ends with a Namor/Marrina wedding and the formation of a new underwater kingdom, I guess it was supposed to be happy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wolverine by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri volume 2: This is my era of Wolverine, and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me that Silvestri is the definitive Wolverine artist. He's done more issues than anyone else (which I'm 99% sure of), did it brilliantly and was doing it twice a month.

Captain America: Hail Hydra: Jonathan Maberry's story was pretty good. It's an interesting survey across history (from Mesopotamia til now) and redoes some Cap history to further entwine Hydra in his origin but it suffers from not being immediate. Though it is interesting to see the battle between Cap and Hydra play out from the forties to modern day. The problem with this series is the art. Each issue has a different artist and each one is awful.

Trades: 10

Comics: 162
Omnibus: 4
Graphic Novels: 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here we go again:

Animal Man 1, 2 and 9 (New 52): Jeff Lemire is the best thing DC has going for it right now. I prefer the later Steve Pugh art to Travel Forman, but that's just me. I bought the trades of this series, based on the strength of these three issues. It's Animal Man, there's not too much more to say than it's really fucking good.

Irredeemable Ant-Man #2: In a just world, this book would have gone on for years. Kirkman's Eric O'Grady is a horrible, awful, strangely lovable guy and Phil Hester's art actually fits for once. In this one, Eric's buddy gets killed and he gets the suit, good fun.

Armageddon 2001 #2 (of 2): As bad as I heard this one is, I was actually a little let down. It's not that bad. Sure, the change of Monarch's identity from Capt. Atom to Hawk is mind bogglingly stupid, and makes zero sense, but this was the first real leak DC ever had to deal with, of course they were going to fuck it up. That said, the only things that worked in this book were Wally West was pitch perfect and I didn't hate Dan Jurgen's art as much as I usually do.

Seriously, though, fucking Waverider? Ugh.

Aquaman #1 (New 52): I actually got this one for free at C2E2, they were just handing them out on the buses. I think I actually already owned the trade at that point, but free comic. It's a good book, plays with everyone's expectations of Aquaman, art is nice. Plenty has been said about the Johns run on Aquaman recently, so I guess that's that.

Avengers vs X-Men #1-4: Marvel's answer to Countdown. No one is in character, the plot is mindboggling, and you have to read a thousand fucking tie-ins to understand anything that is going on. That and nothing happens. Plus Jason Aaron (a guy a usually like like) is really stroking his own literary cock trying to make everything sound epic. Just a waste of an event.

Note to Cyclops and Tony Stark: If you're fighting Captain Fucking America, you're on the wrong side. I'm sorry. But you are. Cap is the most altruistic, reasonable hero Marvel has. If your solution involves fighting him, you are the villain. Sorry.

Avengers: Age of Ultron FCBD Preview: ROM: Space Knight crashes to earth, Spider-Woman goes after it, gets captures by a bunch of nerd villains, (including the new Spider-MODOK) and the Avengers save her. Then ROM turns into Ultron and Tony Stark is replaced with a scared five year old girl. The End. Very Bendis-y, but Bryan Hitch can sure draw pretty.

Avengers #360: I have no fucking idea what just happened. Wait. Hercules tames a dinosaur in two panels. That part was neat. But there's these villains from alternate timelines, and a bunch of really shitty Avengers that I've never heard of, and the Vision gets put back into his Red and Green Body from the White Body, I guess. Then the Avengers get into fight, and Cap shows up, which I take is meant to be a big deal. The singe most inconceivable comic book I've ever read, thanks Bob Harras. Steve Epting's art was super, super 90's here, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Prequel: Red Skull Incarnate, The Marvels Project

Part 1: Winter Soldier (Winter Soldier arc, Red Menace arcs, and Civil War tie-ins)

Part 2: Death of America (Death of Captain America, The Man With No Face, Road to Reborn)

Part 3: Bucky Cap (Reborn, Two Americas, and all the Bucky Cap arcs)

Part 4: Captain America renumbering, Captain America and Bucky and WInter Soldier spin-offs.

Finished Part 2, Part 3 and am halfway through Part 4.

Part 2 Death of Captain America is really the high point of the entire run. The legacy of Captain America, the continued redemption of Bucky and his winter soldier days, a really strong supporting cast with Black Widow, Falcon, Sharon Carter, and even the asshole, Tony Stark. The metaphors and the tie in of the book to the current day foreclosure crisis, unemployment rising, and economic downturn. An absolute despair and Brubaker plays with all these elements beautifully making it a political thriller without losing the superheroic aspects of Red Skull villainy, infiltration of Hydra Bases, and the general tight chicanery.

Part 3 Reborn is where Brubaker begins losing some steam, there's a great stand alone Bucky Cap story before Brubaker has to spin his wheels and prepare for Reborn, and it really does seem way too quick. It feels like they had JUST buried Steve not too long ago. The Reborn story is interesting, and wraps up most of the plotlines related to the Red Skull, while leaving a dangling carrot in his daughter. After Reborn we get some pretty good Bucky Cap stories, focusing on his redemption. Overall the return of Steve ends up causing a lot of uneven work in Brubaker before we finally end up in Fear Itself wrapping up the Sin storyline in what was really an excuse to get Steve back in tights.

Part 4: Steve is back in the flag tights, and all the creeping in of the superhero elements is full bore here, we're back with legit other realities and machine people and insanity bombs, and it all feels like Brubaker has definitely lost his step. Or maybe he just got tired of the political thriller nature, but the story just feels like such a left turn, with random characters from Steve's past showing up as full blown supporting characters, instead of falcon and Sharon Carter, we randomly get Diamondback and Dum Dum Dugan during one arc. The first side story in Captain America and Bucky, a retelling of Bucky's life is pretty solid, but the second story about 50's Cap is bland and ridiculous with robot clones and all kinds of crazy tomfoolery, I guess I just wasn't prepared for such a right turn, I mean it was always there with the Cosmic Cube, and the crazy robots in Europe, and mind control, and clones. Anyways, I haven't finished so I'll reserve judgement about the relaunch, and I still have the Winter Soldier run to read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.