Kevin Smith is back

[Tanjential]

nah, i'm always hesitant on new properties and characters cause it's a whole money/space investment thing. I know I'll like it cause I love Straczynski, but that's exactly why I'm hesitant.

as far as indie stuff I really really really really really like

Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles" (which is already completed actually)

Brian K. Vaughn's "Y: The Last Man" (two issues away from being completed)

and Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead"(Kirkman plans on writing this as long as humanly possible)

all of them are amazing amazing amazing fucking books. all 3 are addictive ass drugs for me.

I've heard good things about 100 Bullets. That same creative team that does 100 Bullets did a Batman story called "Broken City" awhile back that got a good amount of acclaim. Since I already like Batman alot, I think I'll pick that story up someday and if I really like it I'll give 100 Bullets a chance.

-T

[Shallow]

nah, i'm always hesitant on new properties and characters cause it's a whole money/space investment thing. I know I'll like it cause I love Straczynski, but that's exactly why I'm hesitant.

as far as indie stuff I really really really really really like

Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles" (which is already completed actually)

Brian K. Vaughn's "Y: The Last Man" (two issues away from being completed)

and Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead"(Kirkman plans on writing this as long as humanly possible)

all of them are amazing amazing amazing fucking books. all 3 are addictive ass drugs for me.

I've heard good things about 100 Bullets. That same creative team that does 100 Bullets did a Batman story called "Broken City" awhile back that got a good amount of acclaim. Since I already like Batman alot, I think I'll pick that story up someday and if I really like it I'll give 100 Bullets a chance.

-T

I thought Broken City was phenominal. I have the first 60 or so issues of 100 Bullets digitally stored on my hard drive. I can send them to you if you like. I jmuped oin the book a little late so I only have single issues of #6 to #10 and #14 to present. The first 5 I have in a trade and 11 to 13 I never found. I'll end up ordering them online someday just to complete the collection.

[Tanjential]

i'll probably just cop them in trade after i cop broken city.

thanks for the suggestion man.

if you get a chance to read invisibles, walking dead, or Y, then do so. won't be disappointed.

invisibles is like an amazing counter-cultural manifesto...pink floyd,one world government/orwellian big brother is watching you type conspiracies, 2012, the beatles, hallucinogens, everything a seeker/counterculturalist could hope for. it feels more important and relevant every trade I read

walking dead is the ultimate zombie movie. follows a group of survivors post zombie holocaust for as long as possible. so damn realistic. what's scarier than the zombies is what such a desperate situation provokes humans to do.

Y: the last man is about a man and his monkey being the last males on earth after a plague wipes out all carriers of the Y chromosome. it's an action/mystery revolving around where the plague came from and why this man and his monkey survived. makes alot of great commentary about society and gender issues and it's abolutely hilarious. also alot of beatles references.


what is 100 bullet's premise?

-T

[Shallow]

i'll probably just cop them in trade after i cop broken city.

thanks for the suggestion man.

if you get a chance to read invisibles, walking dead, or Y, then do so. won't be disappointed.

invisibles is like an amazing counter-cultural manifesto...pink floyd,one world government/orwellian big brother is watching you type conspiracies, 2012, the beatles, hallucinogens, everything a seeker/counterculturalist could hope for. it feels more important and relevant every trade I read

walking dead is the ultimate zombie movie. follows a group of survivors post zombie holocaust for as long as possible. so damn realistic. what's scarier than the zombies is what such a desperate situation provokes humans to do.

Y: the last man is about a man and his monkey being the last males on earth after a plague wipes out all carriers of the Y chromosome. it's an action/mystery revolving around where the plague came from and why this man and his monkey survived. makes alot of great commentary about society and gender issues and it's abolutely hilarious. also alot of beatles references.


what is 100 bullet's premise?

-T

Invisibles I have . Love Grant Morrison. His X men run was great a few years back. His recent Superman mini, not so much thus far.

Y the Last Man I almost jumped on at issue 5 but put it off. I'll eventally get it.

I'll keep an eye ut for walking dead.


100 Bullets is about a lot of things. It slowly unravels. It's on issue 85 or 86 now and there is still so much left to be answered. And with only a dozen or so issues left I can't wait too see what happens. It's film noir so a lot of shit probably won't ever be answered. Not any superhero stuff. You don't really follow any one character but Graves would probably be the main character if you had to choose. I don't want to give too much away because how it all unravells is what makes it so good. If you don't care about spoilers then let me know and I'll describe it in more detail.


Here is the first story arc in case you want to try it out.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QQ9OVMTX

[Tanjential]

Grant Morrison's X-Men run is my favorite x men story ever. though I haven't read nearly as much x men as I have some other characters(also have yet to read all of chris claremont's x-men). His current superman story isn't a mini, it's an ongoing but it's bi-monthly because Frank quitely is very slow(i love his work though). I don't read it though cause I don't like superman unless he's in context with other characters like Batman mainly.
If you liked new x men, get Joss whedon/John cassady's astonishing x-men. it picks up right where Morrison's new x men left off, but it's still it's own awesome thing. Highly recommended.

read Y from the beginning, you won't regret it.

and Kirkman is the next big thing, trust me. in indie AND mainstream comics. once you read some of his work (especially his post-05 work) you'll see why he's one of those writers you want to be in on.

I actually got to meet him and chat for a bit at san diego comicon as well. super nice and funny guy.
-T

[Shallow]

Grant Morrison's X-Men run is my favorite x men story ever. though I haven't read nearly as much x men as I have some other characters(also have yet to read all of chris claremont's x-men). His current superman story isn't a mini, it's an ongoing but it's bi-monthly because Frank quitely is very slow(i love his work though). I don't read it though cause I don't like superman unless he's in context with other characters like Batman mainly.
If you liked new x men, get Joss whedon/John cassady's astonishing x-men. it picks up right where Morrison's new x men left off, but it's still it's own awesome thing. Highly recommended.

read Y from the beginning, you won't regret it.

and Kirkman is the next big thing, trust me. in indie AND mainstream comics. once you read some of his work (especially his post-05 work) you'll see why he's one of those writers you want to be in on.

I actually got to meet him and chat for a bit at san diego comicon as well. super nice and funny guy.
-T

I have Astonishing. I was a big Buffy/Angel fan in the 90s. And Angel season 5 was gearing towards som great storylines until WB fucked it all up. I love Superman origin stories like what Byrne did in the 80s. I generally haven't been too fond of stuff after that. I took me a while to get into it but Smallville has really taken form as a great show.

I forgot that you do most of your browsing from work, so I'm not sure if you can download the file I gave a link to.

[Tanjential]

i can download it at home now though, but i just don't do my comic reading online. i don't want to have wasted your time in not downloading it but i will probably just cop the trades when i feel like that kind of thing. i appreciate it though.

damn you got stracyznski, new x men, invisibles, astonishing, kevin smith's marvel work...you know what the fuck is up man. why aren't you on newsarama and the comicons for that matter? where are you located at ?

-T

[Shallow]

i can download it at home now though, but i just don't do my comic reading online. i don't want to have wasted your time in not downloading it but i will probably just cop the trades when i feel like that kind of thing. i appreciate it though.

damn you got stracyznski, new x men, invisibles, astonishing, kevin smith's marvel work...you know what the fuck is up man. why aren't you on newsarama and the comicons for that matter? where are you located at ?

-T

No time wasted on my part. I found the link online and just posted it here. Comic book torrentz in the cbz files are great for issues that aren't easy to get and issues you want in good condition. I don't have many trades and I don't like opening and reopening single issues for quality purposes so I read a lot on my PC.

I'm really not as into it as I used to be. I followed the X Men from the huge issue #1 from '91 that sold like 5 million copies and soon after that Image launched and what 10 year old superhero fan didn't fall in love with what Image was doing at that time. Wildstorm was my favourite and Gen 13 was a book I would skip morning classes of high school for one wednesday a month (although it got delayed a lot) to ride my bike to the comic shop and get. Then they changed creative directions on the book and it was never the same. Bastards. It was around that time I stopped reading most books. In addition to Gen 13 going downhill fast, Spawn started getting boring, Deathblow was dead (although he's back now), Spiderman was still in post clone depression. Batman's No Man's land started strong but fell apart. X Men was losing focus. Cliffhanger Comics started with a bang but went to shit real fast. I didn't see the point in reading anything. I went from a couple dozen monthly reads to zero.

I'd go to a comic house every so often to browse for back issues (seriously the guy sells comics out of his basement. Cool place. And it's a real old style atmosphere. First name basis with everyone and most customers become friends just because they shop their together). It was there that I heard him pushing Rising Stars on some old time customers of his. I didn't know him then. I only knew of the place because my friend used to have a babysitter on the same side street and he told me about it. But I asked if Rising Stars was worth the purchase. I wasn't a sci fi Babylon 5 fan so JMS meant nothing to me. Stars was on issue 6 and Faiz, the comic house guy, got me the first 5 issues. The book was phenominal and from there I realized what I never thought about before since Image didn't have much of it and most of the mainstream 90s sucked. I realized that rock solid writing was all over the comic world. I was turned on to vertigo from there, and everything new that came out that Faiz thought was good he'd pull for me. Also if a writer I liked had something new he'd pull that too. I only go several times a year to empty out my box. The only books I have ongoing are bullets, Amazing, Wolverine and that may be it. Whatever major project comes out I get pulled (like a Niel Gaiman or Alan Mooore type thing) and whever writers like Azzarello, Bendis, Kevin Smith or JMS get a new book I get pulled too.

I'm in Toronto. I haven't been to a con in a few years. A bit crowded for my taste.

[Tanjential]

toronto canada? (probably a dumb question but many places share names)

damn, i want a comic house. that would be the shit. maybe i'll be the comic house someday.


the con was crowded but I mean I've seen tool, rage against the machine, blues festivals etc and them shits are hot AND in the fuckin sun. the con was in a nice big air conditioned building so as a concert-goer the comic con was a walk in the park.
i actually consider my day at san diego comic con a more succesful venture than my day at the rock the bells festival.


my story's not too far off. when i was like 7 i would collect the spider-man trading cards and read the backs of 'em and they all had loads of information about the stories (i know an ungodly amount of info about the clone saga) and then around age 9 I'd pick up some of the books. around age 11 I started consistently picking up spider-books and half of them were good and half of them were bad (post clone depression) unfortunately the good writers had all helmed ASM/Spectacular at some point (DeMatteis, DeFalco) and marvel gave the head spidey writer position to the new blood Howard friggin' Mackie. I followed Mackie's run for a year on each title (peter parker and ASM) and then dropped comics altogether.

around 2002/2003 I was in a book store in arizona and I saw a hardcover that had the september 11th stracyznski issue and the image of spidey at ground zero by John Romita Jr. just took my breath away...and I had seen alot of JRJR Spidey art in the past so it was new and old at once and inspired me to see what was up with this Straczynski guy(i'm a big star wars geek, but most other sci-fi like trek and bab 5 i'm indifferent too) when I got home. the first two straczysnki arcs were in trade and I jumped on the monthly title with number 40. I followed until a couple issues after they renumbered 'em at 500, so I had like 501 and around that time Kevin smith's black cat mini started getting late. around this time since I saw good writing for the first time (that late 90s spidey crap i was reading was garbage compared to the stuff that brought me back in 03) I copped watchmen, Miller's Batman work, some Paul Jenkins spidey(still wanna get his whole run someday), old essential volumes by stan lee and others

all i was picking up was Jeph Loeb/Jim lee's Hush(good shit if you haven't read it, check it out), ASM by JMS and Smith's spidey/black cat mini. so after Hush finished and smith's mini stopped coming out 66% of what brought me into the shop stopped bringing me in and I was getting more and more into music and pot and less and less of my money was going into comics so I fell off.

then civil war happened last year and comics were on everyone's lips again and i was indifferent until I heard that stracyznski was STILL writing ASM. and I love stracyznski. it was then I knew I had to catch up. since then i've collected all of Miller's daredevil/elektra work (tell me you've read that stuff, possibly my favorite comics work ever), morrison's new x-men, peter david's x-factor, bendis' new avengers, sacasa's spider-man, various classic spidey hardcovers(loeb's "blue" for example, kraven's last hunt, peter david's death of jean de wolfe), Grant Morrison's JLA run (you read jla:earth 2? fuckin astounding), and am currently working on alot of robert Kirkman and Grant morrison's complete batman. i pick up a handful of marvel titles and Frank Miller/Jim lee's bi-monthly ongoing "all -star batman and robin" and man is that an insane series. just insane in every way conceivable. alot of people hate it but I love that shit.

my space is running out, i need to buy a short box but even then, i'm going to have to seriously curb my comics purchases unless i figure something out soon. so i may be less into it soon due to no choice of my own.

i believe i've told you i'm from southern CA, an hour east of LA in the Inland Empire.

-T

[Shallow]

Yeah Toronto Canada.

Hush was okay. Felt a little cliche for my liking. The idea about who the killer was seemed like a bad TV movie and when it was over I didn't feel anything new was accomplished, as opposed to the next arc with Azzarello which I think was great.


Of course I have the Miller Daredevil work. It'd be blasphemous if I didn't. I have it in collecter's anniversary trades since I was a bit young to get it when it came out.

The 9/11 issue was touching and it meant a lot to JMS personally but sometimes real world events don't into comic land. Which is why I guess DC uses fake cities. I mean there is no way a second plane could have hit the towers in Marvel's New York. But it was certainly a great issue and it's not like it changed the story after that.

If you ever make the trip up to Toronto I'll show you the comic house.

[Tanjential]

fuck yeah, that's what's up.

we can assume all the heroes were in a secret war/galactus/other planet battle or all of the above.

but yeah, it's still hard to believe.

azzarello's arc was right after hush? damn

I didn't like the ending of hush, but the first 11 issues were almost flawless to me.

although I didn't like one of the main characters being someone we've never seen before yet who was supposed to have been all important to bruce wayne though he's existed in comics for decades and decades. outside of that, the first 11 issues were the shit. the end was okay, but yeah it could/should have been better

-T