The 90s nostalgia thread

- "Batman" becoming a showcase for loose-continuity stories by various superstar creative teams like "Legends of the Dark Knight" used to be.

-Chris Claremont writing Uncanny X-Men again (with Alan Davies art)

-"Formerly Known As The Justice League"

- The Return of the BIG crossover (Bendis' Avengers story, Secret War, the DC story which is upcoming)

- "Cable & Deadpool" (shudder)

I didn't realize either that Secret War was a crossover thingie or that Bendis's Avengers story would be. Hm.

I'm interested to hear what you think of the new Swamp Thing, I never really read it back in the day (did read some Hellblazer though) but I'm enjoying it pretty well.

How about Marvel's insistance on FLOODING the market with titles that don't seem to justify their own existance except to satiate the needs and desires of She-Hulk & mutie fans. To be fair, I've heard good things about the She-Hulk series, but that's one instance in possibly twenty series & minis that are slated to come out or already have. And this is with Marvel experiencing old-skool-Image-type delays in getting books out when they're supposed to!

And, lest we forget, it's Cable & Deadpool WITH ROB LIEFELD COVERS. AND, if that weren't enough, he's supposedly plotting (and possibly drawing) another X-Force series (co-written by 90s poster boy Fabian Niceiza (sic, my bad)).

For the record (off the top of my head), the Age of Apocalyse series were: Astonishing X-Men, Gambit & the X-Ternals, Weapon X, Xasperating Mutie Nonsense. Note: one of these titles is made up.

Yeah, that's pretty severely in "what the fuck?" territory, even more so than the last abortion they published with the words "Doom Patrol" stamped across the front.

The problems I'm having are just that the series is necessarily affected by the Tefe series, and by the final arcs of the original Swamp Thing, which made the character all but unwriteable. Swamp Thing at its best was always a careful, constantly tilting balancing act between the protagonist's ever-increasing powers/responsibilities and his very down-to-earth, almost immature, emotional concerns -- the Morrison and Millar arcs threw that balance so far out of whack that it might've been a good way to end the series, since losing that balance is a sensible climax, but makes it really hard to keep going.

None of which is anything I can blame Diggle for, and he might plan to restore that balance, I don't know. If not, then it'll be a different Swamp Thing, which I'll eventually have to get used to.

Speaking of which: saw Man-Thing on the upcoming whiteboard, too.

I meant Joss Whedon when I said Judd Winick! I'm not sure how I mixed that except for the JW.

Gambit and the X-Ternals is probably the worst title for anything ever.

ALTERNATE COVER MADNESS.

True, it's nowhere near as bad as the early 90s. Not yet anyways.

The Andy Diggle take on Swampy is pretty good. Significantly lighter than the ones that came before it, to be sure. Enrique Breccia's art is ace. Wish they'd left it un-colored, though.

Rob Liefeld plotting Cable & Deadpool?
Lemme guess: Splash page, splash page, splash page, double splash page, fight-scene splash page, end.

AVENGERS VS. X-STATIX!!!!!!

X-Calibre was actually not too bad, iirc, or at any rate no worse than the rest of the AoA minis. I won the tpbs (well, loose issues for some, dunno why) for all the Age of Apocalypse stuff in one of those trivia things anotheruniverse.com used to have, though, so maybe it's easy for me to say that -- the stack made a nice bit of reading in a title I hadn't kept up with at a time when I didn't have much spending money. (And it was in Warren Ellis's run, wasn't it? I'm not an Ellis fan across the board, but I liked a lot of his Excalibur stuff.)

Wait a sec - where'd the "Howdy Motherfucker" come from? I didn't even know JB had a middle name.

Also - insular pandering to the direct market and Comic Book Guy clones (hi me) everywhere (cf. a Madrox mini-series?!?!) (Starjammers ongoing?) (that Witches mini?) (whither Night Nurse & Millie the Model?!?!?).

(Although I still confused Sara Pezzini and her sister a lot, come to think of it.)

Nicieza was great on Gambit, a title I never expected to like and wound up loving. (The regular series; I didn't read the miniseries that preceded it.) What I read of his Thunderbolts run was brilliant, but mostly I relied on racmu to keep me up to date on that.

What's he doing these days? He always seemed on the verge of becoming one of those "Wizard hot writers" a la PAD and Busiek, but never quite did.

http://img50.photobucket.com/albums/v152/jaximus/Xforce_hammertime.jpg

OMG PRESCIENT. Skottie is drawing the upcomin' New Warriors ltd and his character redesigns (and art), esp. Thrash and Nita, are f*ckin' terrible and pointless.