What is SHIP (tell me tell me)? (11/7/07)

HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS #6 (OF 6)
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS #3 (OF 5)
Y THE LAST MAN #59 TEH PENULTIMATE ISSUE

Y (is this over yet, god)
Astonishing X-Men

Last week, when I had the flu, I enjoyed reading the Daredevil Annual, when he had the flu.

Criminal, but that's it

For me:
CRIMINAL #10--mmm, crime
NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI #5--the Seekrit History of Something
BIG QUESTIONS #10--actually got this already, Nilsen is so damn good

Not one of the better weeks I've seen lately.

Not one of the better weeks I've seen lately.

I'd like to contest this (though the concept of "personal taste" dictates otherwise):

ASTONISHING X-MEN - AKA "Scott Summers Gets It Together"
BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER - Yet I suspect no vampires will be slain.
HELLBOY: DARKNESS CALLS - Joyce Carol Oates Approved!
LOBSTER JOHNSON - Paula Fox Approved! (But not really)
IMMORTAL IRON FIST - Will Danny choose "Friendship!" or "Finish Him!"?
METAL MEN - Richard "Sluggo" Baez Approved!
OMEGA THE UNKNOWN - Dave Eggers approved!
THE ORDER - EPIGRAMS GALORE!

IN NEWS EXTRANEOUS TO THIS THREAD: HOURMAN = PRETTY NIFTY!

yeah, this is like the biggest week I've ever had. far too big. like 13 books, plus the two from last week. crap.
ATOM
INFINITY INC
METAL MEN
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST STARLORD
ASTONISHING X-MEN
CRIMINAL
FANTASTIC FOUR
IMMORTAL IRON FIST
IRON MAN ENTER THE MANDARIN
SUPER VILLAIN TEAM-UP MODOK'S 11
THE ORDER
plus BATMAN and the Daredevil annual from last week.

Add Criminal and Omega, actually making it a big week for me (4 books lol).

Is it wrong that I look forward to Criminal for movie recommendations almost as much as the actual comic?

This damn week!

I'll skip a meal this week in order to read the following:

Astonishing X-Men
Uncanny X-Men (okay, now that the exposition is out of the way, let's see what Messiah Complex has got going on for realzies)
Infinity Inc.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Omega The Unknown
New Avengers: Illuminati

RIP BATMANG

Lobstuh Johnson
Hellboyardee
Metallica Men
Awfuck I might have been suckered into buying Robin
Criminal Modok Duck Fist

ROBIN #168
VINYL UNDERGROUND #2
ASTONISHING X-MEN #23
OMEGA UNKNOWN #2
SILVER SURFER IN THY NAME #1
THE ORDER #4
UNCANNY X-MEN #492

Looking forward to: Astonishing X-Men (WOO!) and Uncanny X-Men (Wow. Looking forward to two x-titles. Good week).

HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS #6
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS #3
ALL NEW ATOM #17
JONAH HEX #25
METAL MEN #4
METAMORPHO YEAR ONE #3
MIDNIGHTER #13
Y THE LAST MAN #59
FANTASTIC FOUR #551
HOWARD THE DUCK #2
WORLD WAR HULK GAMMA CORPS #4
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #21

Atom, Lobster.
Waiting for a new arc to give Iron Fist a shot, but from what I've leafed through I might be better off just buying teh trade.

What is vinyl underground? Is it about record collectors?

i think it's about britishes

It's the new Vertigo ongoing and it's basically a coke-addled gossip rag heartthrob + an autistic, drug using psychic team up in the UK to solve occult crimes.

Like Medium meets Gossip Girl meets the Libertines.

Yeee, it's a lot more like rehashed Philip Bond/Peter Milligan/Grant Morrison Vertigo jawnage, but without much charm, and Cameron Stewart doing everything he can to make it at least look nice.

There is nothing on the list that catches my eye. I'll probably give in and get the last two Preacher trade paper backs to finish the series.

RIP BATMANG

-- Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 5 November 2007 23:13 (2 days ago) Link

AS IF

If anyone wants my copies of the first three Preacher trades, feel free to pick them up at my dad's place in Bristol, RI...

That's why it's the FINAL Crisis. Everybody DIES. But the LEGENDS (coming soon from Len Wein & John Byrne) live FOREVER (or as long as Disney keeps lobbying for extended copyright)!!!

Oh, I forgot! Iron and the Maiden #4! Prettiest cyberpunk comic book eva!

Criminal = good as always
Y = dumb
Omega = kind of obtuse
Astonishing = okay I guess

New Avengers: Illuminati = the very safest twist Bendis could possibly have pulled off
And the sheer quantity of ads in this week's Marvels is disconcerting!

I am :( that you are not enjoying Y, Jordan.

I could hardly tell a couple of the characters apart this month, or remember what their deal was. What I originally liked about it = interesting scenario and good joeks. Now I just don't care enough about most of the characters to be way into it.

(it was pretty awesome when the gas mask was finally useful though)

N.B. No Y spoilers! (I'm still on book, like 9)

Funniest thing in comics this week: that Marvel back-up thing where they ask creators which character that would most like to date or whatever. I think it's Brian K. Vaughan who says "Kitty Pryde, because I like a nice Jewish girl" or something, and then is credited thusly:

Brian K. Vaughan (Jewish), Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina

lol marvel

Dear DC,
The first part of the Ra's Al Ghul story in Robin was pretty fine (Peter Milligan & Freddie Williams), and despite myself I kind of like what you're doing with the Damian character, and I really like the ambiguity around Batman's thoughts re: Damian. But if you think I'm going to buy Nightwing, you are on crack.

I feel the same way about Kitty as Vaughan does. Thank god my wife isn't jealous of fictional comic book characters!

Actually, does Vaughan also say that? Cause in the Astonishing issue, Bendis is quoted as saying that (with the same cute; (Jewish) next to his name).

It's not Vaughan, it's Bendis.

my bad

but still!

I thought Vaughan wasn't Jewish

--Chuck Tatum (Jewish)

The Forward wrote a long piece about the Israel military plot in Y, including a paragraph about Vaughan's Jewish wife. Since they don't out Vaughan as Jewish, I'm gonna guess he ain't. Link here: http://www.forward.com/articles/11732/

Off the Jewish topic a moment: I thought Astonishing was WOW. I don't wanna spoil any of the twists, but those last couple pages totally blew me away. We have one more, or two more issues or this? (An Astonishing and a Giant-Size, I think?) I can't believe this ride is at an end. :(

--Mordechai Shinefield (Jewish, duh.)

I have to say I find it really gratifying when a modern X-writer can depict Cyclops as someone I want to root for as opposed to watch get repeatedly punched in the face.

The Unfunnies -- What the fuck is that about?

dan, are you talking about the whedon stuff? i thought about getting back into those, but picked up the last issue and thought "they're STILL dealing with that danger chick and the breakworld stuff?" I think i like x-men in trade (morrison's especially, as far as stuff in recent years) but it's just too slooooow for me to read as a monthly.

Astonishing is so worth it. You're right, Ian, the payoff it kinda slow. But what a payoff it is!

I have to say I find it really gratifying when a modern X-writer can depict Cyclops as someone I want to root for as opposed to watch get repeatedly punched in the face.

Oh so you mean like basically every X-Men writer since Morrison? Morrison pretty much single-handedly made the character awesome -- mainly by drawing on the more problematic decisions of Claremont and others -- and so it's kinda lame to give Whedon credit for making Cyclops awesome since soooooo much of the heavy lifting was done already.

What the hell are you talking about? Is there anything in what I wrote that implies that Whedon is the only person who has written Cylcops well since early-Claremont?

Has Scott Summers been moping for the last 20 years? The guy used to be the leader and I guess has not been right since he got beat by Storm with no powers way back in the 80s.

Cyclops pretty much spent the entire Morrison run crying into his wine spritzer. That issue where he goes to the Hellfire club and gets drunk with Wolverine is pretty funny.

I finished the Morrison X-men last week. Over all it was pretty good especially the opening arc, but the last few issues about Phoenix was all over the place. It is kind of weird that only half of the X-men even show up in the book, as Storm only shows up in one issue for a few panels. I guess they might have been in the other titles.

Yeah, sorry Hi Dere, was a bit cranky when I wrote that.

Earlnash -- yeah, the characters were all off in other X-Men books. That's just the way it is now, though in recent months it's been kind of a free-for-all since the crossover is on, and Carey pretty much eliminated his entire cast and the Astonishing cast has taken over both core books. Storm and Angel are back too.

I figured out from Morrison's X-men game plan, which was in the book, that Colossus was currently 'dead'. I had read that Storm is now married to Black Panther and has something to do with the Fantastic Four now.

How long had Emma Frost been cool with the X-men before Morrison's run?

I knew that back in the 80s that Kitty Pryde had been part of the Excalibur series and I had seen that Angel had gotten changed into that machine looking bird at some point in X-factor. Angel and Iceman had been pretty much MIA during most of the X-men I read until X-Factor happened.

I didn't understand the whole Nightcrawler clone thing that the Beast was doing in that last arc. That was the only time Nightcrawler showed up in the Morrison run.

Rogue is the only regular 80s X-men that I didn't see at all in Morrison's run. Considering the history of the character back then, I bet it is totally convoluted by now.

Looking at the X-men wiki, the last major storyline that I read was the Fall of the Mutants. Going by that, I bet the X-men had been kind of meh for at least a few years before that one, as X-Factor was into its second year. I remember that things had gotten a bit staid a bit before that title got started. The Wolverine solo title started about then and even though it really had not thing to do with the other X-men titles, I kind of thought it was good.

Emma Frost had been cool with the X-Men for a while -- she and Banshee ran the X-affiliated Massachusetts Academy in Generation X through the 90s. Grant was the first to have her formally join the X-Men, though.

During the time Morrison was on the book, the characters more or less fell into this pattern of custody:

Morrison on New X-Men: Cyclops, Jean, Emma, Wolverine, Beast, Xavier, Magneto/Xorn

Claremont on X-Treme X-Men: Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Kitty Pryde, Cannonball, some other characters who really don't matter at all.

Joe Casey, and then Chuck Austen on Uncanny X-Men: Nightcrawler, Angel, Iceman, Havok, Polaris, some other characters that really don't matter.

Rogue is indeed totally convoluted now, but even though Mike Carey has complicated her even more so, I think he's also brought her back to her original appeal quite a bit in the time he's been on X-Men.

As of right now (ie, during Messiah Complex, though not necessarily after it), these are the X-Men: Cyclops, Emma Frost, Beast, Wolverine, Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Storm, Nightcrawler, Charles Xavier, Warpath, Caliban, Iceman, Angel, Cannonball, and Hepzibah.

Rogue is currently abducted by the Marauders, who also include ex-X-Men Gambit, Sunfire, Mystique, Lady Mastermind, and Omega Sentinel (who is possessed by Malice.)

Speaking of the reconfigured X-Men U... do we know yet where Astonishing figures in chronologically?

Finally read Y, Jordan OTM. I actually had a hard time telling Yorick and Hero apart. Ended on an "Okaaaaay?" note, but I'm hoping it's just setup for the last ish.

Point though for choking the monkey on the cover.