superman.nuMary Immaculate of Lourdes NewtonSUPER FRIENDS DVD!Holliston School Committeefacebook    
  •   forum   •   COUNTDOWN TO MIRACLE MONDAY: "IT'S REAL!" •   fortress   •  
Superman Through the Ages! Forum
News: Superman Through the Ages! now located at theAges.superman.nu
 
*
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 08:54:57 AM


Login with username, password and session length


Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Infinite Crisis #7 Why?!  (Read 39670 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Gangbuster
Superman Squad
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 589



« Reply #64 on: May 12, 2006, 06:21:11 PM »

I've already told you that my opinion is objectively the best opinion. So shut up.

How are the showcase books, by the way? I was thinking about buying some for my 6th grade class...
Logged

"Trying to capture my wife, eh? That makes me SUPER-MAD!"

-"Superman", 1960

Super Monkey
Super
League of Supermen
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 3435



WWW
« Reply #65 on: May 12, 2006, 06:42:33 PM »

Quote
How are the showcase books, by the way? I was thinking about buying some for my 6th grade class...


They are brilliant of course, but I think that the book wouldn't last very long in a 6th grade class.

I would buy one for yourself anyway.
Logged

"I loved Super-Monkey; always wanted to do something with him but it never happened."
- Elliot S! Maggin
nightwing
Defender of Kandor
Council of Wisdom
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1627


Semper Vigilans


WWW
« Reply #66 on: May 12, 2006, 06:43:02 PM »

The Showcase books are excellent, IMHO.  Superman and Green Lantern came out on really nice, heavy-grade white paper and still look the best out of all of them.  For my money, the best read so far is "Superman Family," nearly 500 pages of classic "Jimmy Olsen" stories with a few Lois Lane tales thrown in there at the end.

This Jimmy was a revelation to me: before Turtle-Boy, Elastic Lad, etc, Jimmy was a savvy, resourceful and courageous young cub reporter, and his stories are tons of fun.  If he'd been consistently written as such a competent young fellow I don't think Kirby's drastic re-imagining would have been necessary in 1970 (or so).  This is all the more surprising as the book was directly inspired by the TV show, where Jack Larson's portrayal of Jimmy put the character on the cultural map...and frankly Larson's Jimmy was pretty much of a boob.

The stories are short and sweet, and show much more range and variety than anything you'll find in modern superhero books.  Think Archie Andrews meets Hardy Boys and you're halfway there.  I don't know what modern 6th graders want out of a book, but when I was in 6th grade, I'd have loved this stuff.

After that, I recommend Green Lantern for solid sci-fi stories and an amazingly cohesive evolving mythos for Hal Jordan.  "Superman" is actually a bit of an acquired taste, as at this point its still halfway between the epic grandeur of the 60s Weisinger mythos and the goofy insanity of the 50s.  I'd call it children's stories but half the time it almost seems drug-induced.  The really choice stuff is still a volume or two away.

The only other one I have is House of Mystery, which is a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it would be a great chance to show kids the wonderful diversity of art styles that comics could once boast, with work by geniuses like Alex Toth, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Jack Sparling, Wally Wood, Bernie Wrightson, Joe Orlando and Sergio Aragones.  On the other hand, the stories are really hit and miss and range from effectively creepy to merely peculiar.  There's nothing I'd call really scary, though...which is kind of a drag.  On the other hand, there's nothing remotely gorey or gruesome, either.
Logged

This looks like a job for...
Klar Ken T5477
Council of Wisdom
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1338


Metropolis Prime, NYC, NY USA


WWW
« Reply #67 on: May 12, 2006, 06:43:28 PM »

The Shopwcase Books are great!  I picked up the GL and Superman editions. Some line droppage but nowhere near as much as the old Signet Superman.Batman paperbacks from the 60s.  

Good thing GL tells us that his powewr ring cant work because "such and such" is yellow!
Logged
Gangbuster
Superman Squad
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 589



« Reply #68 on: May 12, 2006, 06:57:03 PM »

Quote from: "Super Monkey"
Quote
How are the showcase books, by the way? I was thinking about buying some for my 6th grade class...


They are brilliant of course, but I think that the book wouldn't last very long in a 6th grade class.


That's why I was thinking about the Showcase ones, instead of bringing my Archive Editions to class. 2 cents a page vs. "Hey, where's the gold in this thing?" seems like a much better idea. Plus, If I buy a bunch of Showcase editions for my classroom, I can claim it as school expenses and then secretly read them anyway.  Cool

I was thinking specifically about getting Green Lantern and Justice League.
Logged

"Trying to capture my wife, eh? That makes me SUPER-MAD!"

-"Superman", 1960

Super Monkey
Super
League of Supermen
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 3435



WWW
« Reply #69 on: May 12, 2006, 08:03:41 PM »

well, as long as you try to minimize the damage, it might work out ok.

just plan for a whole lot of ripped pages is all.
Logged

"I loved Super-Monkey; always wanted to do something with him but it never happened."
- Elliot S! Maggin
JulianPerez
Council of Wisdom
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1168



« Reply #70 on: May 13, 2006, 06:49:51 AM »

Quote from: "Nightwing"
Standing in line is nothing. Watching 10-20 minutes of freaking COMMERCIALS after paying 10 dollars to escape TV is an outright kick in the nads. {/quote]

I'm not trying to mitigate or apologize for the self-interested greed that goes into jacking up comics prices beyond what is reasonable by comparing it to things that go on elsewhere. I am saying that across the board in the entertainment industry there's a sense that people will pay more for less. And this isn't INFINITE CRISIS's fault, and righteous rage against this shouldn't manifest as a passive-aggressive sentiment against that book in particular.

(The notable exception is in music - you can buy a single song on pay download services for less than a dollar. )

Old Yiddish proverb: "the grave calls if you drink. The grave also calls if you do not drink."

Quote from: "Nightwing"
It certainly is funny that the great classic comics of yesteryear were printed on cheap pulp paper for 10 cents a book, while the junk of today is preserved forever on high-gloss, archival quality paper. Just like it's funny that a thieving moron like Todd McFarlane could get rich on comics while geniuses like Wayne Boring and Bill Finger died in poverty and obscurity. In other words, the unfunny kind of "funny."  


Also, there's the pricy computer coloring. I didn't hear anybody complaining about Four-Color printing. And the glossy computer "lens flare" sheen given to everything makes everybody look like their heads are made of plastic. Astonishing how good something like say, Marvel UK books or the Malibu line, who used solid colors instead of the "dot" coloring scheme, but did not go for computer colorization, look today. I can't help but feel the industry missed a boat there with the Malibu color model.

Is McFarlane STILL a millionaire? I would imagine that now worthless home run ball of his set him back a bit, and I haven't heard about anything he's done lately (with the notable exception of bothering Warren Ellis, and while I consider that angry Irishman to be a talentless wanker, a broken clock still tells the right time twice a day).

There was a story, supposedly, that people in the Marvel Bullpen said that Todd McFarlane only had a vocabulary of 200 words, and 100 of them were "f***".

Didn't Neil Gaiman describe the legal strategy that McFarlane used on him as "Ha ha, I tricked you?"

Quote from: "Nightwing"
The problem with Roy and Chris, I think, is that they'll never say in five words what they could say in 500. I still remember reading Chris' X-Men, where a character could get punched in the face and deliver a four-paragraph soliloquy before hitting the pavement.


Roy the Boy's Caption Boxes work when he does them right.

At the start of his career, we see nonsense llike for instance, this line from "Kree-Skrull Wars:" "The Doomsday Button. What matter WHICH hand touches it? Even if it is...PROTESTANT?" Hey Roy, here's an idea: could you maybe ratchet the fruity philosophical musing back a notch? I'm too busy watching the Wasp and Goliath devolve into apes.

Later on, though, we see Roy the Boy's technique develop in extraordinary ways: in the CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE MEDUSA EFFECT one-shot (which I wholeheartedly recommend), we see him describe Madrid, Spain and Berlin, with the caption boxes being quotes from travel guides, which really describe the locations very, very well.

Also, there are occasions where Roy's prose is downright poetic and power-packed, like this quote from INCREDIBLE HULK #135:

"THE 41ST CENTURY! No longer is the earth a green-bedecked jewel, it's once-bright face is pockmarked with bomb-blasted craters. Yet on this dying world. ONE MAN now raises his voice in joyful TRIUMPH...!"

The BEST use of caption boxes in comics history has to be by Steve Englehart in his DETECTIVE COMICS - and Stainless was pretty liberal with his word count. Steve used the caption boxes to create atmosphere and things that are detectable to the other senses, like the musty, antique smell of Wayne Manor.

"Any night in the dark he could die..."

"But NOT TONIGHT!"

As for Chris...well, like everything else, his caption boxes on IRON FIST were packed with descriptions whereas his X-books tended to waste space; Claremont seemed to know that a comic book, whose panels are basically flat, could never duplicate movement (which is what a Martial Arts book is all about), so he used caption boxes to describe the whizzing of blows.

The last thing a writer likes to hear is that his old stuff was better, but seriously, Claremont peaked on IRON FIST. His MS. MARVEL had its moments - particularly the issue where she hunts Sabretooth in the subways, and the battle with the underground race of lizard men. But it never got more cornball cool than it did with IRON FIST.

As for Roy...that guy keeps on getting better and better. His AVENGERS in the sixties was great, his ALL-STAR SQUADRON and ARAK, SON OF THUNDER was a delight, as was his recent things like the Kirby SECRET CITY and MEDUSA EFFECT.

I firmly believe that Thomas's best work is ahead of him instead of behind.

Quote from: "Nightwing"
And I agree he did a lousy job writing female characters, which was doubly annoying as he seemed obsessed with them (apparently he thought he was great at it).


When it comes to women, Roy Thomas is the Bono of Marvel Comics.

Haven't you ever wondered why Bono's never done a solo album? Because that means he wouldn't have The Edge's guitar to bail his ass out.

Same thing for Roy. Englehart saved Wanda, who was something of a distraction in his AVENGERS run, by having her become a stronger and more confident woman who learned magic and come GIANT-SIZED AVENGERS #4 (1974) actually DICTATED TERMS to a guy like Dormammu. Yowza! Ditto for the Roy Thomas created Valkyrie; it was up to Englehart to bring her back into the Marvel Universe and make her possibly the most interesting character in DEFENDERS.

Quote from: "ShinDangaioh"
Right. I understand what you are saying. However, there are things that are different from a standard comic universe.

Sparkplug. This is a girl who was raised and still believes in the Nazi ideals. She actually was doing her best to save a person she believed to be innocent and refused to accept the truth about his role in the death camps and chewed out the goverment agents who shot and killed him for resisting arrest. In US comics, a Nazi is always a villian. Not this time. Sparkplug is a heroine.

There are a few other things that are new to the Heroic Universe, but that is the biggest one right there.

The tight plotting to the stories is there. It's no worse or beter than a lot of other comics from yesterday or today.

As to the complaint that Flare is derivative? Of course it is. It was based on characters used in the 3rd edition Champions RPG as background bits. The Champions game itself was based on the Marvel universe.


Wasn't the Tick also based on a Champions game? And the Wild Cards novel?

I did like the idea that the Valkyrie/Sparkplug had fought for the Nazis and later became an American heroine. And I did like the flashback issue, and how it went into ideas of mass psychology. However, it doesn't feel like enough.

Mathematician Douglas Hofstadter described creativity, in "scientific" terms as it were, as being a series of dials that represent the parameters of a situation. Doug gave the example of a guy going to a busy restaurant, and tells his friend, "gee, I sure wouldn't want to be a waitress in here tonight." The man in the restaurant just used creativity, because he turned two dials: one on his role being a customer and turning it to employee, and on his gender, from male to female.

A World War II heroine who works for the Nazis instead of the good old US of A is one interesting dial to turn, but not enough other dials were turned. For instance, Flare is a fashoin model. Wasn't that the occupation of like, Halo, Big Bertha, Supergirl, Starfire, and Jem and at least two of the Holograms?

Also, it's about a sexy blonde woman that beats up monsters and robots with a vaguely retro flavor. Now, if that's your concept, you have to do everything in your earthly power to prevent comparisons to that Richard Levins superfemmes book with Lady Liberty and the She-Cat. But when you've got a superstrong flying blonde woman with a connection to World War II, it's SCREAMING "Miss Liberty."

Quote from: "Nightwing"
how do you know it wasn't the artist's idea to draw in those obscure Lanterns rather than Johns'?


The answer is I don't know, but considering Johns's current JSA run hinges on plot points from the 1980s INFINITY INC., and involves the Wizard of Ys showing up for the first time, literally, since he first appeared back in the sixties, and he brought back the Puzzler, a Golden Age villain that never even had an Earth-1 incarnation, and a big hero of IC is Black Lightning...would it really be the biggest jump to conclusions ever made?

Also, Stanley and his Monster had dialogue. Under the full-script method used at DC, this implies that it was Geoff Johns's idea they be put in there.

Quote from: "Nightwing"
Glad Bizarro's murderous act was off-panel, but just the fact that Bizarro kills tells me this isn't the book for me. And anyway how embarassing would it be to be killed by freaking Bizarro?!


You can blame Alex Ross. When he did Bizarro in JUSTICE, it was as a terrifying Frankenstein-esque monster made all the more frightening by the fact he didn't know what he was doing. This seems to be the interpretation of the character that has been popping up in recent times, including in Gail Simone's VILLAINS UNITED and INFINITE CRISIS.

Quote from: "SuperMonkey"
If history is anyway way of juding these things, unless you are reading a Alan Moore book, it is nearly always the artist's idea to sneak in little easter eggs for fans to catch.

Also, it seems that JulianPerez have not been clicking on links like the rest of us, since most of the important pages have been scaned and post on-line since issue 1.

So, we have all seen every single death and the few good spots here and there.

Like when Alex said...

"There are recorded rumors of Superman's activities before his appearance in Metropolis" - IC No. 7

So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss our opinions. There is no need for us to try and justify spending 27.93 (3.99 x 7) on that thing, I mean with that money I could have gotten about THREE Showcase books from Amazon and help charities and this site in the process.


That's not entirely true. For one thing, my JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and JONAH HEX Showcases were $16.99 plus tax. That's not bad, but not exactly the greatest bargain in the world for a book without color, especially considering that you could get ESSENTIAL THOR or ESSENTIAL GODZILLA for $14.99.

For a REALLY astonishing bargain, check out the AVENGERS: 40 YEARS DVD, which on DVD has 525 issues of Avengers, pretty much all of them, from Stan Lee to Thomas to today for $29.95.

Be warned, however: it does not contain the Giant-Sized issues, which is a gyp - or the WEST COAST AVENGERS book.

But yes, there IS a problem with taking a book piecemeal, one that renders a view based on it as misinformed at best: read like that, no context is given to what is going on. Context that makes something poignant or makes something make sense or "click."

In the aforementioned example of the death of the Freedom Fighters, it would be easy to assume the whole thing was a grotesque and pointless massacre. That is, if all you saw were the pages of the deaths and not the pages before, where Geoff Johns showed the Freedom Fighters as essentially likeable and valiant heroes, with caption boxes that made Uncle Sam, previously a throwaway character in crowd scenes, as a grandiose figure with every entitlement to the name. Thus, when the deaths happened, not only were they sudden, shocking and tragic, but also they were tear-inducing, because Johns characterized the Fighters so WELL.

Thanks to Johns, it transcended a throwaway death into the best moment the Fighters had since Roy Thomas.
Logged

"Wait, folks...in a startling new development, Black Goliath has ripped Stilt-Man's leg off, and appears to be beating him with it!"
       - Reporter, Champions #15 (1978)
DBN
Last Son of Krypton
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 274



« Reply #71 on: May 13, 2006, 09:27:32 AM »

Quote
I recently just got INFINITE CRISIS #7, and I must say, overall I was pleased - it was like the last three pages of a really good story...for nearly an entire issue.

AS I HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE ISSUE, I thus am entitled to an opinion on it. (take note, Nightwing and Super Monkey!)


I have read the book along with the rest of the mini-series. Honestly, I found it to be a highly inconsistant piece of garbage.

Complaints about the mini-series:

1. You mean to tell me that after all the hype and build-up in the pre-IC issues, that the entire point of Donna's space was just to blow off one of Alex Luthor's fingers?

2. Kal-L and Alex Luthor's deaths. They were killed off in ways that would make Tony Soprano proud.

3. The continuity glitches for Kal-L and SB Prime. I thought Johns was supposed to be a continuity cop.

4. SB Prime can move planets, yet Kon-El, Krypto, and Bart Allen can make him bleed.

5. The art. 'nuff said. Only the Ordway, Perez, and Reis pages seem to be finished. Why does Powergirl look like a transsexual?

6. Destroying Oa will restart the universe. Yeah, okay, then why didn't it happen when Kyle blew up the planet during a fight with Hal Jordan?

7. The raping of the characters of SB Prime and Alex Luthor. These characters sacrificed everything to save the universe and they get treated like this?

8. The JSA seemingly get their memories of Earth 2 restored and Kal-El gets the shaft once again. I though Didio said that IC would make clear that the current Supes is one in the same with the E1 Supes? Guess there was a miscommunication between Didio and Johns.

9. The new Earth is pretty much the same as the Post-Crisis Earth with a few changes. Been there. Done that. See Zero Hour for details.

10. Batman picks up a gun and almost uses it on Alex Luthor. Yeah, like I'm buying that.

11. A lame Batman villian kills off a guy that created a Paradise Dimension. Not buying that either.

12. Red sun radiation affecting SB Prime. Did Johns even bother to read SB Prime's previous appearances where he wasn't affect by red sun radiation?

13. How does SB Prime manage to freeze Green Lanterns that are already shielded again the cold of outer space?

14. How does SB Prime manage to talk in space?

15. Kon-El's death. Okay, why didn't Powergirl, the Martian Manhunter, or any of the other heroes on the scene take out the tower? Why did it specifically have to be Kon?

16. How does Nightwing manage to walk away from an explosion that kills a half-Kryptonian?

17. The world is going to hell, but Hal Jordan talks about baseball?
Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

CURRENT FORUM

Archives: OLD FORUM  -  DCMB  -  KAL-L
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS! Dilber MC Theme by HarzeM
Entrance ·  Origin ·  K-Metal ·  The Living Legend ·  About the Comics ·  Novels ·  Encyclopaedia ·  The Screen ·  Costumes ·  Read Comics Online ·  Trophy Room ·  Creators ·  ES!M ·  Fans ·  Multimedia ·  Community ·  Supply Depot ·  Gift Shop ·  Guest Book ·  Contact & Credits ·  Links ·  Coming Attractions ·  Free E-mail ·  Forum

Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
The LIVING LEGENDS of SUPERMAN! Adventures of Superman Volume 1!
Return to SUPERMAN THROUGH THE AGES!
The Complete Supply Depot for all your Superman needs!