That'll teach me to watch "Network" before posting!

Oh, wait. That's the Wedding Planner, not the Special.

But my question is: Was it a good fun read in and of itself? Was the story good in itself, with its won dramatic beats that made the issue valuable on its own apart from being a tease for the upcoming storyline.

I'm sick of comics that insist upon my purchase because they begin a new storyline, only to be greeted with pointless dialog that only inches the story forward at a snails pace.

In short, I'm sick of "writing for the trades". Give me a page turner that makes me enjoy the issue as is, and then give me a cliffhanger to further encourage me to come back for the next issue... But don't give me a book of cutesy dialog and in jokes, and then expect me to care when you throw in a twist to your non-story at the end of the issue.

Sorry for the venom, there. But that whole, "It's the beginning of a new story line" thing doesn't work on me now. If I pay for a book, I want the story now. If its the first chapter, I want to be amazed by how cool it starts off.

If the Wedding Special Starts of the story in a way that will shock and amaze me, keeping me guessing as to what will happen next, then I'm there.

As for "Besides, if you believed everything you ‘heard’ about a comic, you’d only read what everyone else likes… and who wants that?"

You know if I took your word for it, I would be reading what YOU like.

But anyway, I trust reviews and word of mouth for a reason. I could waste a lot of time reading or watching things I don't enjoy, if I didn't do my research first. For example, I know what to expect, If a review tells me that a comic "takes a classic approach to Captain America, while approaching his place in modern society with a critical eye." I would probably pick that book up. I wouldn't merely pick up a book because someone said, "It's cool. You'll like it."

Now having said that, if someone would please publish a book about a Monkey in love with a Robot written in alternating arcs by Morrison and Busiek with art by Alan Davis and/or George Perez, I really wouldn't care if it was decompressed filler full of pointless dialog designed to pad the trade paperback.

I would buy it regardless.

Especially if it made several references to obscure plot lines only I remember from Batman and the Outsiders.

(not sarcasm at all, I really would buy it! I may be the only one.)

Okay, I'm done.

I feel better now.

It's a very good issue and uses (shock) humor very well,. I was totally thinking it would be a throw away Bachelor Party-ish special, but it turned out to be the beginning of the next big storyline.

Besides, if you believed everything you 'heard' about a comic, you'd only read what everyone else likes... and who wants that?

But his Hawkman and Green Lantern series are somewhat similar. Take a character who has become muddied and basically boring and turn him into an ass-kicker (both characters already were, but had become associated with other more confused characteristics, such as Hawkman's origins).

Geoff John's Hawkman was an incredibly unique take on the character that allowed him to embrace all of his previous incarnations and more. Even better, the follow-up issues by Palmiotti didn't detract from Johns' run.

On GL Johns, has taken Hal Jordan through the wringer where he has to earn the respect of everyone... and he pretty much ignores it. In the end, Hal Jordan simply is the best Green Lantern. I totally agree that Hal Jordan sans ring is like hanging out with a friend of my dad's, but ring on and he's great.

His Teen Titans was like re-reading the Marv Wolfman/George Perez books, revamped. He nailed the characters and even added new ones. Like his run on the Flash, it got very overly angsty and violent toward the end, but all in all, the McKone issues are amazing.

I really don't get what people don't like about Geoff Johns' work since all in all, he has been the most enjoyable and consistent super hero writer in the past decade. I think that DC has embraced him so much because his run on JSA with Goyer was full of so much Universe building, making a modern DCU that DC Editorial had been promising for so long. Even Morrison's JLA failed to do that.

He's also more or less bullet proof in his technique of taking a character who is broken and fixing him... which is why he should probably take a whack at Aquaman.

Personally, I haven't read enough of McDuffie's previous work to consider myself a fan, but the Wedding Special was good enough (without being spectacular) to convince me to give his run a shot.

As far as Annihilation... I refuse to participate in any epic space story that doesnt involve Reed Richards...

I mean... He couldn't take time off from hunting the Young Avengers to at least observe the Annihilation Wave and somehow respond to such a cosmic at potentially threating event?

Gah, I hate Civil War! I see it as Marvels response to Identity Crisis... "Well, we can make our characters jerks, too!"

McDuffie on JLA? Is he replacing Metzer?

I'm really amazed at how little his Action Comics run has come up in this discussion- do people actively dislike it, or is that people think of it as Donner's run?

I just want a fun team book with characters I can like. Unfortunately, I don’t see any on the shelves at my comic book shop.

I don't know you well enough to tell you if you can like these characters or not, but if you're looking for a fun team book, you might consider The Order, The Metal Men, or even Marvel's Starlord miniseries. Those should all be on the shelves at your comic shop.

What bothers me is that no one ever seem to bother trying to think about how open-ended series or stories might have different strengths, and lend themselves to or at least enable different modes of storytelling.

Like...?

I tend to think that most of the arguments against Johns read asd critiques of the "endless series" mentality that he brings, and thus as part of a general antpathy towards serial fiction without an endpoint.

I can see exactly why those arguments are made: books, movies, etc. have endings, and can achieve a kin d of thematic and narrative closure comics can't. What bothers me is that no one ever seem to bother trying to think about how open-ended series or stories might have different strengths, and lend themselves to or at least enable different modes of storytelling.

Of course, that's an argument that swims upstream where Western literature is concerned...

At the same time, I generally can't stand his Green Lantern stuff. The Sinestro Corps has been great, hands down the best "big event" that I've read in a long time, but the rest of the book has been pretty bad. There are two basic problems that have essentially made this title so bad. First, Johns is constantly shoveling it down the readers' throats that Hal is the best Green Lantern ever and has never done anything bad (the 90s weren't his fault, honest!). Second, he completely fails to realize that Hal is incredibly boring once he takes off the costume. He has a very shallow one-note personality that makes for incredibly bland reading when he's not using his powers to fight something. It's not a recent thing, either, Hal's had this problem for decades. But Johns fails to realize this and apparently believes that everybody finds Hal as fascinating as he does. It makes for a really irritating book that apparently inspires very long rants from me on other people's blogs. I'll stop now.

I just want a fun team book with characters I can like. Unfortunately, I don't see any on the shelves at my comic book shop.

And I also really liked his Flash run. His "Rogue wars" farewell arc disappointed, but the initial Zoom arc was the best — a story that the series built to quite nicely. And I wouldn't say all of his villains were indistinct: He fleshed out Captain Cold, Mirror Master and Zoom very well. I'm not reading his Green Lantern ongoing, but the Sinestro Corps one-shot rocked, and the very premise of the Sinestro Corps is simple but brilliant.

There were a lot of done in one stories there a lot of character arcs that thought in the long term, and Princes of Darkness is one of my favorite stories ever, something with a ton of build to it.

I realize I might get a few disparaging comments for saying all that, but I mean it.

The comics were just about everything I wanted to see. And I'd put it up against something like Ultimates as a way you could do mature comics with mature characterizations and not going to extremes of language and gore and meanness. Of course, SINCE then, he's tossed a lot of this stuff in senselessly. But I really felt that way at the time.