Herfirstcreampie

KM, where did you get the impression that ASBAR was ‘suitable for all ages’? I don’t think anyone’s said that. I remember arguing precisely the opposite here before, that it was interesting to see a book that was fun without necessarily fitting the blogosphere’s definition of ‘fun’ (suitable for all ages, and preferably written by Jeff Parker).

. For a few issues, nothing happened, and Allred’s not a good enough writer to make “nothing” worthwhile.

I disagree.
I haven’t read the current series, so he may have lost his touch, but the best parts of the Madman Gargantua are the parts where nothing is happening and it’s just Frank musing about his existence.
I felt the original series fell apart when he had too many balls in the air, and so Warren and Marie slipped into the background and sub-plots felt underdeveloped when they came to the fore.

Hack/Slash- Another “filler” issue but a damn inventive one and a reason why I love this series so much, despite not being a fan of horror/slasher films normally. Sorry to hear others haven’t been able to get into as much, because it’s become one of the first series I read every month it comes out…

Madman Atomic Comics- I’m with you in thinking that something was off about this issue. After 3-4 issues of slow moving plot, it felt like Allred was trying to catch up too fast in one go. I’d flip the page and suddenly wonder if two pages hadn’t stuck together in the middle, because the action and revelations almost seemed non sequitur from one page to the next. We STILL didn’t get to see Frank and Jo’s long awaited reunion, and the Atomics involvement didn’t excite me much because I never read their series. I pre-ordered the new trade for it, but of course, it’s running way late. Oh well, I still have a great amount of respect for Allred as a creator and he has enough collateral with me as a reader to keep sticking with the book. Allred has hit some bumps in his storytelling before, but always manages to find his level before too long.

The eulogy for his dad in the back of Madman #5 was very touching too. How cool is it that Ken Kesey used to work for his Dad at the VA before going on to write One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?

In short, Brubaker is banking that we’ll see the Wrecker and Razor-Fist as tonally jarring, enough so that it will work as a big story beat. Mr. Fear and the Enforcers, the latter of whom are somewhere between garish supervillains and gangster archetypes, are in terms of their power levels and methods positively subdued next to the Hood’s army. Unfortunately, Fear’s rather garish 1960s-issue costume seems to have blunted the effect, something that the opening of the issue perhaps tries to remedy by keeping Fear out of costume as long as possible.

My general (and generous) take on Brubaker is that he’s always trying to make each single issue work as something more than an arbitrary excerpt from the arc; sometimes he does that properly, and sometimes he miscalculates, but I think he always aims at having a major twist or a beat in each “single” or “pamphlet” or whatever the hell we’re calling monthly periodical-form comics these days.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guilty pleasures. Like I said above, I’ve enjoyed most of the issues myself. I don’t think it is a good comic, and I wouldn’t recommend it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying it.

So long as we don’t see “I enjoyed it, so it was good” rear its ugly head, I’m cool. And Omar certainly did not go there.

I mean, I don’t grudge the people who ‘get it’; but I do wonder at the assumption of some that the kind of brutal pulp genre ASBAR is homaging is just good old-fashioned suitable for all ages/genders/races/intelligence levels fun…thus if you don’t get it, you’re clearly just a spoilsport with no sense of humour. Uh-huh.

The same basic argument often gets made for Marvel Zombies, and it drives me equally nuts there too.

It sounds like you might be arguing a point nobody is making, Omar. Not everything has to be a career-defining classic- ASBAR is just a couple of respected creators with nothing to prove having some B-grade fun, and taking the readers with them.

I’m not trying to argue against nonexistent people claiming this is a career-definer, I’m saying that, for a series that no one thinks of as a career-definer, ASBAR seems to generate a disproportionate amount of debate. Given that it is exactly what you describe it as, why can’t its fan detractors (myself included) become indifferent to it?

As for merit. Is anyone really expecting a classic from Jim Lee? I mean, really? I get upset at the declining quality of the Sin City and Martha Washington series’ because it’s Miller and Gibbons. But Lee? This series is probably the best book he’s been on in his career.

(I keed, I keed!)

But really, for all the heat this comic is generating in discussion boards, and even with its very impressive sales, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to think of this as an essential read or a true classic in the future. Miller’s earlier Batman work still overshadows it, and Jim Lee’s art isn’t really going to be reevaluated on the strength of this series.

Love it or hate it, I think it has to be admitted that the intensity of reactions to the series now are hardly reflective of its likely placement in comics history, or even in superhero comics history.

I don’t think it’s a good comic, though.