[Loki Laufeyson]

judge dredd you can pretty much read most stories on their own. the vast majority of dredd stories are shorts with a grim punchline at the end. but there's also the big long epics like necropolis and judgement day and the like. but you can read pretty much any dredd story on its own.

other 2000ad series that are recommended:

nikolai dante: starts off as light hearted stories about a gentleman theif in future russia, gradually becomes a harrowing saga of war. the transition is done very well, though, as if it was just one man's very eventful life. i guess having one writer all the way through helps with that, though.

nemesis the warlock: alien goat-man/demon/wizard fights against the spanish inquisition/ku klux klan empire of earth. got flagrantly ripped off by warhammer 40000. incredible black and white art

luke kirby/summer magic: young boy learns about magic in the english countryside in the 1960s

slaine: the adventures of an absurdly huge irish warrior who sometimes time travels or something? also, during the 90s, the writer went a bit crazy and made every story about how christianity is evil and unnatural and misogynistic and britain should be a pagan country forever.

firekind: kind of like james cameron's avatar, but infinitely better.

there are tons of other great things that have come from 2000ad, but those are the ones off the top of my head.
i know there's a torrent somewhere (probably on demonoid) that has most of the 2000ad stories up until a couple of years ago all seperated and recompiled into seperate .cbrs for different arcs/volumes so you don't need to worry about issue numbers
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[Sniper Honeyviper]

thanks loki!

[allensmithee]

I know your answers weren't directed at me, but they help me a lot as well! There's some Dredd stuff in The Axe, I think.
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/07/18/the-new-man-of-tomorrow/

Both Ma and Pa Kent are now dead (Pa Kent was finally killed off in the comics a few years ago to bring them in line with continuities in other media).
He's also not married to Lois Lane any more - not as part of the "flashback" comics Morrison will be writing or the "current" comics by George Perez.

On the plus side, maybe he'll start dating mermaids and girls from the future again.
Or Jimmy Olsen.

[allensmithee]

is Jimmy Olsen a secret bad-ass or something?

All I know is that he's got a lot to do with New Gods apparently? I don't know.

He's funny in the DCAU stuff.
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Jimmy Olsen is, above all, unstable. Not in terms of his physical or mental characteristics, but what he actually represents and is used as in the comics. Non-comics stuff tends to find one characterization for him and stick with it (and they're usually based aroud the same idea of a naive but peppy and good-humored young man who idolizes Superman and wants to see truth and justice prevail). But in the comics, it's really up to the writer or the storyline. Sometime he's a bad-ass journalist, sometimes he's a hopeless shmuck following at Clark Kent or Lois Lane's heels. Sometimes he has bizarre and otherworldly romances, other times he can't get a date to save his life.

It's actually kind of appropriate for his character to be written so inconsistently, as his own Silver Age comic frequently had him transformed or otherwise involved all manner of ridiculous situations. But it makes it pretty hard to point to any one or two periods as being the defining takes on the character.

He was one of the first characters to get to know and understand the New Gods/Fourth World - as you can see in that article, Jack Kirby took up the comic and used it to introduce a lot of those concepts, and Jimmy Olsen remained somewhat tied to those characters over the years (but not nearly as much as Superman came to be).

[allensmithee]

that sounds kind of amazing.

thanks!
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[Dracko]

Finally, Hickman has some new drawn and written creator-owned stuff prepped.

[allensmithee]

dracko was asking me to post this in here:

i just read The Courtyard from Mr Moore and that was pretty swell. normally i'm extremely opposed to repeating frames in a comic (ie using the same frames beside each other) but the bookending and the usage of it was fantastic. i suppose it stems from the two tall panel nature of the layouts -- gosh that was so simple yet amazing -- simply amazing, i suppose it would be.

the art wasn't my thing exactly -- the usage was great -- it was almost blunt or frank even, regardless of the dreamscapes of lovecraftian beautygarbage and i was impressed with the drug trip style change, but I think it looked better with that simpler style.

I was impressed that reading it there weren't many layouts or "shots" that really excited me, but thinking about it there's a lot I can recall pretty well: the club scene with the s&m gimp being pulled on a leash, when the main character is walking up to the building to get the drug and there is that mural with depth, the shit in the sink, the picking up the fax. All of these things are very descriptive in my head and i didn't think I would.

the problem is in the colouring and it is the same problem i have with the walking dead's colouring (aside from being a not very good comic to begin with) -- everything looks grey and washed now, not truly achroma or anything like a good black&white picture.

the line-art was fine though, and on those spread pages, boy was it something.

The use of words was really keen was sort of a great concept and something i can't credit Moore for, can i? well, regardless, Machen is a smart man, and then the entire lovecraft circle (jerk) sorta thing going on but set in the future (and from fans of the future) is pretty keen and nice.

Also, I found that in reading Batman & Robin: Batman Reborn that Frank Quitely's art reminds me a bit of Tsutomu Nihei's art. I think it was the inking, especially the semi-grotesque faces.
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[Dracko]

Why do they keep making trailers for comic books?



Bonus points for the Howie and Wilhelm scream, though.

Here's a preview of the first five pages.
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[The King]

Is Holy Terror going to be B/W? Considering their batman replacement is batman in red (Black in B/W), that would be hilarious.

I really hope he didn't have to cut anything, those preview pages make this look like Dark Knight 3.
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[Dracko]

Hell yes.


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[Dracko]

Jim Steranko's Red Tide is being republished in Dark Horse Presents #3. :3


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[Renfrew]

Just started reading League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. it has an unusually low start-to-rape number, even for an Alan Moore comic.

I also just read the first volume of All Star Superman. It failed to set my world on fire.

On the other hand, I just read the first two volumes of Fables and ended up digging it a lot. I guess since I grew up playing King's Quest games and I was the perfect age when 10th Kingdom came out that fairy tale mash ups are just my thing.
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[Dracko]

Bill O'Reilly's Fables
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[Renfrew]

Yeah, I heard the creator has some rather unfortunate views. Thankfully, I haven't seen them in the work yet.
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[option]

Once I saw Bill Willingham turn people away at a con booth because he was busy eating an entire pizza by himself.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Ultimate Fallout is going some weird places. It's a bit hard to really grasp the method to the madness, although it's clear that the people working on the Ultimate relaunch (yes, another one) are trying to make it an actual shift in status quo, unlike the weird burp that was Ultimatum and the first relaunch.

I'm not saying it's anything to keep an eye on - right now, it seems like a lot of things are just being thrown at the wall, and many of them probably won't stick - but it seems I might have actually been a bit too cynical when I assumed that everything would be superhero-comic-business as usual.

[costel]

Severed is, well, promising. It has that undercurrent of dread that could develop into something meaningful, it's layout is gorgeous, but it's writing is just terrible so far.

Carbon Grey is pure visual splendor. It is however, marred by a willingness to separate the mythic narrative from a generic "adventure" narrative complete with terrible stereotypes and tons of cheesecake. It's Manga/Manhwa influences are instantly notable.
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[P1d40n3]

I just finished reading my pirated copies of Empowered, and sweet JESUS CHRIST I have got to buy those books. I've always liked the idea of a superhero comic more than actual superhero comics (All Star Superman, Batman, and The Dark Knight Returns being exceptions), and Empowered has given me a wonderful, sexy, and wonderful superhero comic to look forward to reading.
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[Dracko]

http://www.darkageepic.com/


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[Loki Laufeyson]

[allensmithee]

I'll check out Empowered once I clear out more of my backlog. Thanks P1 and Loki.
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[P1d40n3]

[Loki Laufeyson]

the two short issues are all i have real copies of, because last time i looked, volume one was pretty expensive on amazon and i don't want to start from a later point (even though i've already read all the books)
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

weirdly enough, as much as Ultimate Fallout 06 ended up as non-event (what happened to all that was building in previous issues? Was it all just a preview of upcoming stuff? bleah), it ended with a scene that was almost - almost - the humanizing examination of the Ultimate Nick Fury/Peter Parker relationship that I fantasized for Ultimate Spider-man: Requiem. Granted, my fantasy was far more melodramatic and bittersweet (and perhaps even better written), carefully balanced to show that while Ultimate Fury is capable of feeling genuine love and remorse, he is still an emotionally broken person who desires control and the gratitude of others above everything else. But I'll take what I can get.

(I kind of wish he had at least threatened to kill MJ, although I suppose it won't be long until Millar just writes a few off-hand lines of dialogue that explain how the whole scene was meant to emotionally manipulate her, which certainly would make a lot of sense)

Anyway. On to the brave new future of Ultimate Marvel!

[Loki Laufeyson]

the kid from sentinel (plus his sentinel) and ricochet from slingers/excelsior/loners are going to be in avengers academy, and also the runaways are going to be guest stars in an issue of daken. i think marvel is trying to make me more interested in their comics.
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[Dracko]

Frank Miller, you goof.


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[Dracko]

“I Feel Myself Like a Genius and a Sacred Whore”: A Few Questions for Alejandro Jodorowsky
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[protoblax]

I just read Justice League #1. It's pretty good! I'm kind of excited for this reboot.
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[allensmithee]

My buddy has it all pre-ordered or whatever, subscribed, so I'll be reading his copies of it each release.
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[Loki Laufeyson]

i know i've said before that i like "evertything goes bad" alternate universes, but i'm reading flashpoint and it's just shit
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

flashpoint is generally quite bad, yes, although it has a few interesting ideas (the european resistance, batman, cyborg as primary american superhero, element woman, hardcore plastic man)

I shouldn't have been, but I have to admit I was surprised when the series concluded with a hint at a TERRIBLE EVENT coming which the merging of the three worlds (DC, Vertigo, Wildstorm) is a necessary step towards. There is even a mysterious unnamed woman in a cloak (who has a tiny one-panel cameo in Justice League #1).

Maybe Johns can call this event FIRST CRISIS. That'll show 'em.

[protoblax]

Batman: Knight of Vengeance is cool. I also liked Heatwave's mini-series. There were some cool parts in Outsider, Superman, Lois Lane, and Booster Gold.

Today, I read all 12 issues of the 2010-11 Flash series. #8, the origin of Reverse-Flash (Flashpoint's Big Bad), is one of the more disturbing time travel stories I've seen. Check it out.
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[Dracko]

Notes on the DC relaunch, courtesy of Matt Seneca.
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[Dracko]

Jim Steranko's Frogs


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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[Dracko]

[Tulpa]

Is anyone honestly surprised?
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[Dracko]

Clearly.
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[Renfrew]

The last time I went to the comic book store, I bought the new editions of The Incal and Elephantmen volume 2. Did I do good?
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