[Comics] What Comics are you Currently Reading Thread

Hailey Knight · Dec 1, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
I thought he didn't remember his kids, just Linda?

Actually, this calls back to my not knowing enough about Wally

. And I guess I probably shouldn't 100% believe someone saying they remember everything if there's been a memory-tampering situation going on.

He may or may not have mentioned his kids. I'd have to re-read through the issues of Titans which are following his story, and the first story arc has been all about 1. Linda Linda Linda and 2. reestablishing the friendships between the different members of the Titans. But he remembers things that aren't Linda, such as all his Titans friends. Zapping each of them restored their memories of him and of their adventures together in pre-Flashpoint.

Covar · Dec 1, 2016

This thread is the first time I've ever heard anyone say that Wally got a good send off when Johns decided that he wanted to write about Barry all of a sudden. Not only did we get a bad Flash book until the new 52, but the brief Wally moments we did have it in was him being a shitty father giving all his attention to his daughter because she had super speed (after stealing her brothers super powers) and neglecting his son because he didn't. Not even exaggerating. None of that even got paid off either because we had to focus on mopey sad sack Barry Allen.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 1, 2016

Covar said:
This thread is the first time I've ever heard anyone say that Wally got a good send off when Johns decided that he wanted to write about Barry all of a sudden. Not only did we get a bad Flash book until the new 52, but the brief Wally moments we did have it in was him being a shitty father giving all his attention to his daughter because she had super speed (after stealing her brothers super powers) and neglecting his son because he didn't. Not even exaggerating. None of that even got paid off either because we had to focus on mopey sad sack Barry Allen.

Oh. I I didn't read any Flash past Rebirth (the Flash: Rebirth that brought Barry back, not the current one). I thought he didn't show up at all after that. Shows how much I was paying attention even before nu52. Sorry.

Hailey Knight · Dec 2, 2016

Squirrel Girl's Ant-Man arc finished, but more importantly, next month she's up against Taskmaster.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

I feel like an idiot, but after a couple months of being re-subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, I just realized I can read that whole Annihilation thing you guys were recommending before, and it turns out Marvel Unlimited has reading orders for the comics in the storyline to make it easy.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 3, 2016

Zero Esc said:
I feel like an idiot, but after a couple months of being re-subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, I just realized I can read that whole Annihilation thing you guys were recommending before, and it turns out Marvel Unlimited has reading orders for the comics in the storyline to make it easy.

Booyah! See in a week or two or however long it takes you to read it. You're in for a helleva space opera. Though to be fair, some of the character-focused mini-series are hit and miss (lookin' at you, Wraith). Even the misses aren't bad. They're just not as good as the hits like Nova and Silver Surfer.

Just...try powering through the War of Kings stuff. That's the only point where the hit/miss balance leans heavily on the miss side. It gets better again after that.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Booyah! See in a week or two or however long it takes you to read it. You're in for a helleva space opera. Though to be fair, some of the character-focused mini-series are hit and miss (lookin' at you, Wraith). Even the misses aren't bad. They're just not as good as the hits like Nova and Silver Surfer.

Just...try powering through the War of Kings stuff. That's the only point where the hit/miss balance leans heavily on the miss side. It gets better again after that.

Weird; a lot of people seem to love War of Kings.

I'm looking at the chart that I think Banana had posted a while ago

Judging by the individual issues sections, Marvel's event pages are missing some stuff. For example, their Annihilation page begins with Drax the Destroyer and doesn't include Thanos #1-#12 at all. I'm guessing I should trust this chart first and foremost. Annihilation: Conquest's page is just the main event series and two tie-in issues. So I'll bookmark this chart and use that as a reference for navigating Marvel Unlimited.

Also judging by the individual issues sections ... I won't be finishing this for a while.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 3, 2016

Zero Esc said:
Weird; a lot of people seem to love War of Kings.

I'm looking at the chart that I think Banana had posted a while ago. Judging by the individual issues sections, Marvel's event pages are missing some stuff. For example, their Annihilation page begins with Drax the Destroyer and doesn't include Thanos #1-#12 at all. I'm guessing I should trust this chart first and foremost. Annihilation: Conquest's page is just the main event series and two tie-in issues. So I'll bookmark this chart and use that as a reference for navigating Marvel Unlimited.

Also judging by the individual issues sections ... I won't be finishing this for a while.

Yeah, I don't know. War of Kings was my least favourite part and that's generally a shared opinion by most, I think. For me, it's I think it's because it got mixed with Inhumans and X-Men stuff, which required a lot of other back reading. Whereas I found the other stuff more accessible, especially for someone who wasn't a big "cosmic Marvel" reader. I just thought it was messy compared to the other more compact stories. It felt like they were trying to apply the same event logic as they did with other things like Civil War, with more filler miniseries rather than the focused and self-contained character miniseries. Maybe it was the way it was collected, because before it was Annihilation Vol 1-3 and Conquest 1-2. The War of Kings trades were all over the place. Maybe it'll read better on Marvel Unlimited. Plus, I never found the main villain very interesting, even when Ed Brubaker wrote him in the X-Men issues listed on there.

To be honest, some of this stuff is skippable. The pre-Annihilators stuff is probably skippable. And I wasn't all that crazy about Annihilators itself, but that might be just me. It's kind of anticlimactic after the galaxy-spanning space operas. I didn't even know there was a Thanos series before Annihilation. The trades I had (and any similar volumes) started with the Drax miniseries.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Yeah, I don't know. War of Kings was my least favourite part and that's generally a shared opinion by most, I think. For me, it's I think it's because it got mixed with Inhumans and X-Men stuff, which required a lot of other back reading. Whereas I found the other stuff more accessible, especially for someone who wasn't a big "cosmic Marvel" reader. I just thought it was messy compared to the other more compact stories. It felt like they were trying to apply the same event logic as they did with other things like Civil War, with more filler miniseries rather than the focused and self-contained character miniseries. Maybe it was the way it was collected, because before it was Annihilation Vol 1-3 and Conquest 1-2. The War of Kings trades were all over the place. Maybe it'll read better on Marvel Unlimited. Plus, I never found the main villain very interesting, even when Ed Brubaker wrote him in the X-Men issues listed on there.

To be honest, some of this stuff is skippable. The pre-Annihilators stuff is probably skippable. And I wasn't all that crazy about Annihilators itself, but that might be just me. It's kind of anticlimactic after the galaxy-spanning space operas. I didn't even know there was a Thanos series before Annihilation. The trades I had (and any similar volumes) started with the Drax miniseries.

Maybe the chart includes extra stuff for the purpose of providing the backreading, so people won't feel lost? I don't know. Since I've never read any of it before and I don't have trades/omnibuses, I can't really know in advance what to skip or not. The only thing I know I'm skipping so far is What If? Annihilation Reached Earth, but otherwise I'll probably just read all of it. I'm in no hurry.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

I'm setting up bookmarks for myself so that I won't have to hunt down mini-series individually if I just want to keep reading. Looks like I'll be reading the entire Nova series and get to see why people love Richard Rider so much.

But woof, Nick has a point. That's a lot of X-Men and Inhumans to get through.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
To be honest, some of this stuff is skippable. The pre-Annihilators stuff is probably skippable. And I wasn't all that crazy about Annihilators itself, but that might be just me. It's kind of anticlimactic after the galaxy-spanning space operas.

Now that I'm getting into the meat of making these bookmarks, I see what you mean. The pre-Annihilators stuff is to jump back and familiarize oneself with previous stories of Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill because they'll be part of the Annihilators, which just seems like a new team-up of favorites at the time ... you know, before Avengers vs X-Men made a fresh mess of things.

So you think Thanos Imperative is a better place to stop?

ThatNickGuy · Dec 3, 2016

Zero Esc said:
Now that I'm getting into the meat of making these bookmarks, I see what you mean. The pre-Annihilators stuff is to jump back and familiarize oneself with previous stories of Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill because they'll be part of the Annihilators, which just seems like a new team-up of favorites at the time ... you know, before Avengers vs X-Men made a fresh mess of things.

So you think Thanos Imperative is a better place to stop?

Yeah, I think you could do that. Annihilators was an interesting idea that I thought fell flat. It's cool to see the cosmic powerhouses form a team, but they're not exactly the most interesting characters. Thanos Imperative felt like a proper bookend to the saga.

Then again, it's only two, 4-part miniseries. You could probably plow through those in, what? 15-20 minutes?

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Yeah, I think you could do that. Annihilators was an interesting idea that I thought fell flat. It's cool to see the cosmic powerhouses form a team, but they're not exactly the most interesting characters. Thanos Imperative felt like a proper bookend to the saga.

Then again, it's only two, 4-part miniseries. You could probably plow through those in, what? 15-20 minutes?

You only spend 2 and a half minutes per comic book issue?

ThatNickGuy · Dec 3, 2016

Zero Esc said:
You only spend 2 and a half minutes per comic book issue?

Depends on the comic. I never really timed it.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Depends on the comic. I never really timed it.

I'm usually 12 minutes per issue; 15 to 20 if it's more wordy like a Squirrel Girl issue or anything before decompression became the norm for the medium, so 2 to 2 and a half minutes sounds a little swift.

I don't time myself either, but each section of my bus ride is 15 minutes, so I can usually tell if I start and finish an issue in that time, or in a Peter David Hulk case, I usually won't have finished it

.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 3, 2016

Zero Esc said:
I'm usually 12 minutes per issue; 15 to 20 if it's more wordy like a Squirrel Girl issue or anything before decompression became the norm for the medium, so 2 to 2 and a half minutes sounds a little swift.

I don't time myself either, but each section of my bus ride is 15 minutes, so I can usually tell if I start and finish an issue in that time, or in a Peter David Hulk case, I usually won't have finished it .

Heh, yeah, PAD's Hulk got wordy at times, didn't it?

Well now you got me thinking how long it actually takes me to read a comic. I think you're right. 2 1/2 minutes is probably way too fast. Might be closer to 5-10 for me. Longer if it's wordier like Squirrel Girl or my recent read of Sandman Overture. Heh, ESPECIALLY Sandman.

Hailey Knight · Dec 3, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Heh, yeah, PAD's Hulk got wordy at times, didn't it?

Well now you got me thinking how long it actually takes me to read a comic. I think you're right. 2 1/2 minutes is probably way too fast. Might be closer to 5-10 for me. Longer if it's wordier like Squirrel Girl or my recent read of Sandman Overture. Heh, ESPECIALLY Sandman.

Definitely Sandman takes longer, and yet it always feels like the book is over too fast.[DOUBLEPOST=1480775471,1480774977][/DOUBLEPOST]Eh, this Thanos series seems like "if you need to know Thanos's deal" and I don't. I think I can just skip to Drax.

With my reading time being what it is, you can see why it'll take me a while to read all this

. Nonetheless, I'm excited. Kinda wish I didn't have writing of my own to do this morning, but I'll have plenty of time to read later while doing the laundry.

Hailey Knight · Dec 4, 2016

I'm up to the beginning of the Annihilation: Nova mini-series.

But damn, that prologue was brutal. Kinda wishing I was reading this before Hickman's Fantastic Four. The Annihilation Wave here is unfathomable and scary, especially during the big attack, but also in that quiet-feeling snowy aftermath with Nova, but in Hickman's stuff it's half a minor threat, half a joke.

BananaHands · Dec 6, 2016

The saddest part of all this is, while it's an amazing and emotional ride - it's going to ruin anything GotG put out after Thanos Imperative.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 6, 2016

BananaHands said:
The saddest part of all this is, while it's an amazing and emotional ride - it's going to ruin anything GotG put out after Thanos Imperative.

I read somewhere that Bendis and Loeb made a power play behind the scenes to end the Cosmic Marvel stuff as we knew it so they could do their own Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy. Bendis especially wanted his name on the title for when the movie came out.

I don't know if that's true, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. Both of them obviously have a lot of pull at Marvel.

BananaHands · Dec 6, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
I read somewhere that Bendis and Loeb made a power play behind the scenes to end the Cosmic Marvel stuff as we knew it so they could do their own Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy. Bendis especially wanted his name on the title for when the movie came out.

I honestly don't know if that's true or not, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. Both of them obviously have a lot of pull at Marvel.

Not at all surprised. A lot of the behinds the scenes stuff I hear about Bendis paints a picture of a whiny baby who is in love with Kitty Pryde and Luke Cage. I'm almost glad Civil War II and Clone Conspiracy is flopping so two of my least favorite writers are less likely to have the control they currently have.

We need more Ewing in Marvel. He's been playing with Cosmic Marvel in Ultimates and it's amazing - especially the Galactus vs. Status Quo stuff.

Also New Avengers was a helluva run.

Hailey Knight · Dec 6, 2016

BananaHands said:
The saddest part of all this is, while it's an amazing and emotional ride - it's going to ruin anything GotG put out after Thanos Imperative.

I stopped reading that stuff after a couple issues. I wasn't familiar with Bendis when I started that, but his shtick got pretty old just after that much. Then Civil War II came out and so on. Bendis sucks. So there's nothing for this cosmic stuff to ruin.

I finished Annihilation: Super Skrull last night. I'm interested in seeing how all this comes together in the main series. It's clear to me between Hickman's FF and here that Ronan was wasted in the GotG movie. That said, that mini-series has been my least favorite so far because I really cannot stand that artist. He draws like I did back in high school, putting lines everywhere for the sake of texture without attention to how much of a mess that makes. And whoever decides where text goes in panels, be it the writer or someone else, has a habit of putting part of a sentence in a panel and ...

... ending it in the next one. I'm guessing for dramatic effect, but there are times where that works and times where it doesn't, and he didn't seem to care which was which and just kept doing it.

So far Nova's mini-series has been my favorite. It's where the Annihilation Wave has felt most threatening and alien, probably because the characters present know very little about it, while from some other characters' POV it's just any other invading force, only a very big one.

I'm surprised I've read this much already, but it's pretty engrossing even through my least favorite of these.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 6, 2016

Zero Esc said:
I stopped reading that stuff after a couple issues. I wasn't familiar with Bendis when I started that, but his shtick got pretty old just after that much. Then Civil War II came out and so on. Bendis sucks. So there's nothing for this cosmic stuff to ruin.

I finished Annihilation: Super Skrull last night. I'm interested in seeing how all this comes together in the main series. It's clear to me between Hickman's FF and here that Ronan was wasted in the GotG movie. That said, that mini-series has been my least favorite so far because I really cannot stand that artist. He draws like I did back in high school, putting lines everywhere for the sake of texture without attention to how much of a mess that makes. And whoever decides where text goes in panels, be it the writer or someone else, has a habit of putting part of a sentence in a panel and ...

... ending it in the next one. I'm guessing for dramatic effect, but there are times where that works and times where it doesn't, and he didn't seem to care which was which and just kept doing it.

So far Nova's mini-series has been my favorite. It's where the Annihilation Wave has felt most threatening and alien, probably because the characters present know very little about it, while from some other characters' POV it's just any other invading force, only a very big one.

I'm surprised I've read this much already, but it's pretty engrossing even through my least favorite of these.

Yep, like I said, some of the stuff throughout the whole run is hit and miss. Super Skrull was always firmly in the Miss category. I wasn't crazy about Ronan's either, though it wasn't as bad.

Once you hit the main Annihilation series, all bets are off and shit hits the fan because it becomes a non-stop roller coaster. It's worth it to push through the not-so-great mini-series so you can get to the big finale.

Hailey Knight · Dec 6, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
Yep, like I said, some of the stuff throughout the whole run is hit and miss. Super Skrull was always firmly in the Miss category. I wasn't crazy about Ronan's either, though it wasn't as bad.

Once you hit the main Annihilation series, all bets are off and shit hits the fan because it becomes a non-stop roller coaster. It's worth it to push through the not-so-great mini-series so you can get to the big finale.

I'm sure I'll be missing Super Skrull once I'm slogging into the X-Men Shiar Empire stuff. Do you know if it spoils anything for Morrison's New X-Men run? I have that omnibus in my closet but haven't started it yet and I'd rather put War of Kings on pause to do so if it's going to give away any of that run.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 6, 2016

Zero Esc said:
I'm sure I'll be missing Super Skrull once I'm slogging into the X-Men Shiar Empire stuff. Do you know if it spoils anything for Morrison's New X-Men run? I have that omnibus in my closet but haven't started it yet and I'd rather put War of Kings on pause to do so if it's going to give away any of that run.

There's some Shi'ar-related politics in War of Kings, but as far as I can remember from Morrison's run (where the Shi'ar appear briefly), it's nothing that should spoil it.

EDIT: And I just realized I spelled Shi'ar with the apostrophe without even thinking about it. I'm not even a big X-Men or Shi'ar fan and yet I still knew that. NERRRRRRRRRRD!

Hailey Knight · Dec 6, 2016

ThatNickGuy said:
There's some Shi'ar-related politics in War of Kings, but as far as I can remember from Morrison's run (where the Shi'ar appear briefly), it's nothing that should spoil it.

EDIT: And I just realized I spelled Shi'ar with the apostrophe without even thinking about it. I'm not even a big X-Men or Shi'ar fan and yet I still knew that. NERRRRRRRRRRD!

Thanks; I didn't think Morrison's run was too interested in the space stuff, but thought I'd ask just in case.

Now get in your locker.

BananaHands · Dec 6, 2016

I'm tempted to read the entirety of X-Men Messaih Complex - but will it just make me sad about the current state of X-Men?

Hailey Knight · Dec 7, 2016

Annihilation: Silver Surfer, love it. I really wanted to finish it already, but I was passing out early last night. I'm not sure if this or Nova are my favorite for Annihilation minis; they're both great, but in significantly different ways. Nova was more the daunting ground view story, while Silver Surfer is getting into the cosmic scale wide view.

I'll likely start the main event sometime tonight.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 7, 2016

Zero Esc said:
Annihilation: Silver Surfer, love it. I really wanted to finish it already, but I was passing out early last night. I'm not sure if this or Nova are my favorite for Annihilation minis; they're both great, but in significantly different ways. Nova was more the daunting ground view story, while Silver Surfer is getting into the cosmic scale wide view.

I'll likely start the main event sometime tonight.

Hailey Knight · Dec 9, 2016

I finished Annihilation last night.

I gotta say the first half was a bit of a letdown. The minis spend all this time building up these characters, then thrusts them together as if the stuff they went through before was just fill-in info because they were just going to be the good guy force in this big battle. The time jump to get there was jarring. I would've rather spent time seeing how some of these alliances formed. Ronan tells Richard that he would call him brother if he were Kree--I would've liked to see how that relationship went about, because all we get is Richard's voiceover that Ronan is great to have on your side in a war. Richard and Star-Lord also have a pretty solid rapport formed ... maybe we should've had a Star-Lord story instead of Annihilation: Super Skrull. A lot of stuff gets told that I would've rather seen than just big bug killfests or less important minis.

The minis do setting up, but then we skip a bunch of story so Richard can fill us in after the fact, and some of what we skip sounds WAY more interesting than Annihilation: Super Skrull.

But the second half is a lot better once the story drops the war and several of the elements from the minis come into play in a stronger way. Less one or two page spreads to show what we already know--the Annihilation Wave is a lot of bugs--and more character-centric scenes and plot moments which went in surprising directions.

Thanos seeing Death and understanding what was happening was a highlight. I kinda wish everything hadn't fallen on Drax to fix, but them's the breaks.

I read the first issue of Annihilation: Heralds of Galactus, but these seem like mopping up books and I have a feeling I'll be able to glean what else happens in other issue if it becomes relevant, so I'm gonna jump to Nova #1.

ThatNickGuy · Dec 9, 2016

So what you're saying is Super Skrull was your favourite part of all this?

BananaHands · Dec 9, 2016

I think I'm going to sign up for Marvel Unlimited tonight and brush up on X-Men and maybe re-read all this Cosmic Marvel because Zero has me all pumped up on it now.

BananaHands · Dec 9, 2016

Wait. Change of pace. Stumbled on this. Figured I'd start with the first family.

evilmike · Dec 9, 2016

BananaHands said:
Wait. Change of pace. Stumbled on this. Figured I'd start with the first family.

I'd suggest v1 #334-#349 as well. (Basically, all of Walter Simonson's run on the book.)

Yoshimickster · Dec 9, 2016

What kind of sadistic ass-hole would make "Night of the Monster Man part two" NOT Batman Rebirth issue 8?! They monster-men look straight out of Akira too all fleshy and what-not, GRAH friggin' DC.