Comic Book Resources

A lot of this is simply a question of personal taste, so I’m not going to get into “JSA is great! Give it chance!” nonsense. I love it, you wouldn’t, and that’s cool.

That said, I’m no Green Arrow fan, and I was quite simply knocked out by “The Longbow Hunters” (which is all I’ve read of Grell’s run). You should give that a read if you’re looking for the Only Good Green Arrow Story. Grell doesn’t write Ollie as a Stock Pissed-Off Liberal like, as you mention, O’Neil and Winick. He’s just a guy in his 40s who’s kind of disillusioned because it’s the 80s and it’s starting to look like the conservatives have won.

Oh, and he fights crime with arrows.

Everything sucks!

OI! Leave Kara alone! PIck on the rest of the JSA as much as you like, but… oooo nice picture.. Save to desktop…
sorry.. where was I?

Oh, yeah, I was going to say that I actually agree with most of your choices and reasoning… Particularly on Iron Man… I kept trying it again and again… there were some good stories (and the same goes for most on your list that I’ve tried) but no consistent hit time and again…

>>So, of course, they have to set them in the present day and star a bunch of octogenarians, Big Boobs McCipher, and a veritable cast of thousands of people tangentally related to every superhero ever. So, really, it’s that Roy Thomas wrote it in the ’70s and Geoff Johns slavishly immitates him to this day.<<

????

I guess you’re talking about Roy Thomas ALL-STAR SQUADRON, which of course was an ’80s title (first ish was dated 9/81). Its predecessor-of-sorts from ’76-’78, the revived ALL-STAR COMICS, was afaik written first by Gerry Conway & then by Paul Levitz.

Iron Man and Wonder Woman. 100+ years of comics between them and the actual number of good issues they’ve starred in wouldn’t fill a short box.

A lot of the characters you mentioned work soooo much better as guest stars than they ever did in their own comics. I’d add Phantom Stranger to that list as well.

Say, that would make a good list. Which characters work better as guest stars than as protagonists?

” Why I Don’t Actually Like the Comics- Never read a great one, really. Even Matt Fraction couldn’t hold my interest in one for more than two issues. I like him more as a supporting character in books like Fraction and Kitson’s Order, Brubaker’s Captain America, and the Millar/Hitch Ultimates than I probably ever will as a headliner when Robert Downey Jr.’s not playing him. ”

Try reading the Iron Man comics by Denny O’Neil/Luke McDonnel ( IM in from the 160s to the 20s ) and Len Kaminski/Kev Hopgood ( IM from the 280s to the 310s ). Both authors did vastly underrated stays on the character that added exponentially to his mythos.

( Though note that both O’Neil and Kaminski had Tony Stark as almost a supporting character in his own book for much of the time, leaving the armor chores to Jim Rhodes. I’m starting to think that Rhodey would be better as Iron Man on a PERMANENT basis– especially at this point, when his closet isn’t an Elephant Graveyard’s worth of skeletons ).

I’m going to call her “Big Boobs McCipher” all the time from now on.

I think the main reason a lot of superhero concepts don’t stand up to more rigorous and stringent examination is that many of them weren’t designed to. I’m willing to bet that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Otto Binder, and Al Plastino didn’t really think people would be examining and debating the creative merits of the Avengers and the Legion of Super-Heroes nearly half a century after their creation. They were making outlandish characters for a young reading demographic, I’m sure they were hardly thinking that they were making “icons” or “modern mythology” or whatever pseudo-intellectual label is applied to superheroes these days.

At the time of their creation, they were a contextual product of the times; superhero comics were still mainly marketed towards children (although Lee was well on his way to changing that by marketing Marvel to teens and the “hip” crowd), so it’s no surprise to me that these creations’ appeal is somewhat diminished for some folks when viewed through the filter of current comic-book sensibilities.

The Silver Surfer is probably the sole exception on the list to the above phenomena… Lee, either before or soon after the character’s creation definitely intended to use the Surfer as more than a superhero, and basically used the Surfer to express his own New Age, quasi-philosophy. Personally, I think that’s the only context where the character remotely works (when writers use him as a Jesus/Buddha/Gandhi analogue in one-off morality plays)… when he’s out doing superheroing in space, it just looks… boring somehow.

Green Arrow under Grell and under Dixon was good. The rest… I can’t find anything. I don’t like the direction since the Kevin Smith relaunch either.

During Grell’s run he did a bunch of great two issue stories, one of my favorites being issues 57 and 58: a story about terrorists trying to irradiate the water supply in Seattle and some Israeli Forces coming to town… Two more are issues 15 and 16: a story about a mercenary from Australia with a death wish and the foreign agents after him… and then 17 and 18: a girl caught up by white slavers is brutally murdered and another mysterious vigilante comes to town to avenge her.

And every year or so he’d do a 4 issue story continuing the Longbow Hunters story with Ollie and Shado. It all comes out as a real saga.

Boy, you’re on a roll today, aren’t you!

I won’t argue about what you’ve written, except to offer my opinion that even though Johns does, indeed, like to pile on the characters (it’s a team book; whaddaya expect?), even at his worst his dialogue has never read as badly as Roy Thomas’ often did. Never.

You’re the same guy from the “Leave Britney alone!” video, right?

I found most Legion of Superheroes stuff “unreadable” but I’m really impressed by the current Shooter run. It has a great balance of action, drama, and hormones and keeps it from going to superdark territory (except for Shadow Lass… ok bad joke).

Personally, I love the X-Men but aside from Whedon’s Astonishing run I cannot find an X-Men story that isn’t saturated with back-of-hand-to-forehead melodrama.

“sucks” count: 5
“crap” count: 4

Say, that would make a good list. Which characters work better as guest stars than as protagonists?

There are hundreds of characters between DC and Marvel that really are “back-up” or “guest star” or “occasional mini-series” quality. Let’s call them D-Level. That seemed to me the point behind Brave & The Bold and JSA Classified, except the first sells moderately and will soon become the Archie Heroes show and the second was canceled.

Sure, occasionally someone like Animal Man becomes a break-out character. Of course, it took an undeniable classic run by one of the greats to get him there. But I did a piece on this for my blog about a month ago, focusing on DC’s Brave New World promotion two years ago. Out of the six series/mini-series they debuted in that one-shot, not a single one ended up lighting the world on fire. When the best result is the Atom lasting two years of low-selling issues, time to rethink what series you try and launch with a major promotional book.

Then again, if you don’t try something you’ll never know what could take off.

I agree with WW and Iron Man. JSA is a fave of mine since forever. What really hurts them is that now they are a group of superheroes on an Earth with 17 other groups. They were much more interesting on Earth-2.

LSH has been rebooted so much but they had such great runs before Crisis.

Did someone mail you a bunch of Myspace surveys recently?

Wonder Woman is the one character I like for no particular reason. I can’t recall a single Wonder Woman story I’ve been blown away by, yet I’m always disappointed when she doesn’t play a more prominent role in JLA stories (other than standing in between Batman and Superman reminding people she’s JUST as important).

And Silver Surfer isn’t “emo.” He has (or at least had) a legitimate reason to be depressed. However, Spider-man is a whiny little pest. It’s sad that his Uncle was shot and killed, but the man was in his 70s, dude didn’t have that much time left anyways.

Yeah, read Mosaic. It’s up there amongst the best GL runs ever.

Hawkman: He sucks.

THANK YOU.

It’s widely regarded as fact among normal human beings and it’s high time the comics community started taking note.

Superman would top my list. I find it interesting that he’s the last of his race, but once I look into things like why weren’t there any Kryptonians off world when Krypton blew up when they obviously have advanced spacefaring technology and were able to pinpoint a planet populated by a similar looking species to send Kal-El to? Yeah, I’m not buying it.

not to sound whiny, but everything* sucks** in comics.
I love them, I love drawing.
but they are really really stupid most of the time.

*except darwyn cooke.

**hawkman does indeed suck. if I were an alien and landed on earth, I’d laud your “pizza”. but if I saw a picture of a man in green pants with a bandoleer with fake wings attached wearing a pissed off owl mask, and someone said “this is art! people pay money for this!” I would laugh my self back to the spaceship.

Whoa whoa whoa…. hold on there.

Hawkman from the neck on up rules! He has one of the most stylistically diffrent masks out of any comic universe…. as long as his eyes are plain white… none of those oversize bird eyes like in Identity Crisis….. It’s just everything below his chin that needs work. he could use some earth tones. he also needs to stop using a mace to beat up bad guys. maces were used to kill armored knights so think what they would do to your average brittle bones crackhead.

And yes, I know his origin is so “fowled” up that I can’t tell if he’s coming or going.

Other than that…. he’s sweet!

Both Iron Man and Wonder Woman have supporting cast problems that hurt their story-telling engines. The “Iron Man” movie was able to keep the focus squarely on Tony, who is interesting. Doing 12 issues a year over time requires interesting secondary characters and IM doesn’t have them. George Perez invented a new supporting cast for Wonder Woman during his run, but they didn’t generate much conflict. Worse, Steve Trevor was never much as a love interest during his long history.

The Avengers and LOSH both were amazing for long stretches. Neither has faired well over recent years of constant re-tooling.

Steve Trevor was used ad nauseam as a love interest for Wonder Woman in pre-Crisis books. In the post-Crisis reboot Perez tried to put him in the book without making him her love interest, which stripped the character of any sense of purpose. So, well, of course he was pretty boring there.

More or a problem, though, is that Wonder Woman’s never really had compelling characters in her supporting cast. Etta Candy comes close, but is a broad comic relief type of character that’d never fly in a modern book unless retooled to the point of unrecognizability (which has been done to her two-three times, I think). Cassie as Wonder Girl was promising but once she was in Teen Titans she evolved into something dull and conventional who ended up never talking to Wonder Woman anymore.

Most Wonder Woman has been left with for supporting cast is the Amazons and Hippolyta, which tends to make her stories drift away from being about anything happening to humans on Earth, and more toward being about what’s happening to the Amazons in Greek Mythology Land. Stories like that are interesting every so often, but if they’re Wonder Woman’s major plot threads then you end up with stories basically ignoring the “went to Man’s World” part of her premise.

Funny thing: in the original origin, Wonder Woman didn’t go to Man’s World to promote peace. She specifically went to Man’s World to make sure the US won World War II, because Aphrodite favored America while jackass Ares favored the Axis powers. She hung around fighting crime after that mostly on principle, while I think actually tasked with spreading Athena’s ethos of female superiority until the book settled into total mediocrity.

Anyway, knowing that makes the post-Crisis revisionist “peace ambassador” version of the character really not make a whole lot of sense to me, and lately we have reams of stories about this being a fundamental conflict in the Wonder Woman character. It’s not really fundamental, though; it doesn’t make sense because it’s an awkward retcon, and those never make sense if you look at them too hard.

I liked the Geoff Johns/Rags Morales HAWKMAN series. They finally straightened out some of the confusing back story and made me care about the character and his well being. Sadly, after Johns and Morales left, DC let the book’s continuity get hijacked again, undermining a lot of the straightening out that Johns did. And the less said about One Year Later and HAWKGIRL the better…

Yeah, all the reboots hurt the LSH, sadly.

Silver Sable good work, with a comitted writer. Someone like, say, Greg Rucka?

“Wonder Woman didn’t go to Man’s World to promote peace. She specifically went to Man’s World to make sure the US won World War II, because Aphrodite favored America while jackass Ares favored the Axis powers.”

Thanks Lynxara, I’ve always been irritated that a Greek Goddess assigned the job of ‘peace ambassador’ flew around wearing the stars and stripes. The original origin explains that rather neatly (well…except symbollically the Polish or Chinese flags would make more sense).

I understand that Wonder Woman sells too many lunch boxes for her to ever change her costume, but I wish she could.

So how many superhero comic books do you actually read that take place in a time other than now? I know it was for the funny and all that, but the JSA team isn’ just filled with old people any longer. And who gives a fuck that they’re not Superman or Batman? On their own, JSA kicks much ass, old guys or not. Whoever Geoff Johns is “imitating” I like this imitation. He should keep it up.

Where’s the fuck’s Obsidian?

I think George Perez tried to explain why Wonder Woman still wore this costume when her series was re-booted post-COIE…my memory is a bit hazy with the details, but something about Steve Trevor’s mother sacrificing her life to save the Amazons or something, and she had an American flag with her and the costume is supposed to honor her…or something like that.

Dr. Fate is a concept I liked but not the comics. The conflict between a boy-turned-man and the ancient god of order that teaches him adds a nice personal touch to the ongoing magic battles. But the Order/Chaos dichotomy is a generic concept made too convoluted by numerous reboots and writers. Plus, Fate doesn’t have any distinctive villains like Dr. Strange. Where’s his Baron Mordo, his Dread Doramammu? This also needs a Moore-style revamp that redefines all magic in the DCU.

“I think George Perez tried to explain why Wonder Woman still wore this costume when her series was re-booted post-COIE…”

Yes, that’s right, under the circumstances, Perez explained it about as well as he could. It is just that when Wonder Woman got to the ‘Man’s World’ and realised how much baggage the stars and stripes carry, she might have found a less controversial costume for a peace ambassador to wear.

“Sadly, after Johns and Morales left, DC let the book’s continuity get hijacked again, undermining a lot of the straightening out that Johns did.”

Mhuh? The Palmotti stuff didn’t change anything, and once Joe Bennett came on board they actually had the book rolling better than Johns ever did – to the point that sales weren’t that bad for the first time since the first couple of issues. Then, as noted, OYL came along and killed the book. Those first fifty issues make for a pretty good stretch of comics, though, with the whole “Hawkman does Hush” mammoth arc – which I don’t think has been collected, which is a shame – being the high point.

Marz’ Witchblade may be the most slept-on book in comics – he basically removed all the annoying Top Cow elements in his first year, turned the book into something closer to the TV series (but without the problems that had, namely a shoestring budget and an unreliable lead actress) then just kept telling good stories. It’s gotten to the point that whenever the rest of the Top Cow silliness intrudes (S&M Nuns, the Darkness, ridiculously piled-on religious imagery) it’s jarring and always produces a bad issue, as Marz just seems like he’s going through the motions on stuff like that.

Of course, the covers are still ludicrous, as they have to keep appealing to the Top Cow core fanbase that bailed on the book when it actually got good.

Hawkman’s a fun character on a fairly basic level: he flies around without a shirt and smashes things with a mace! As long as you focus on those aspects (and the conservative personality that fits in with the mace-smashing), he’s a fun character.

Wonder Woman’s storytelling engine is a mess. She has a good costume and iconic superpowers, and that’s about it. Of course part of the problem is that her status quo keeps getting rebooted in ways that prevent her from having a stable supporting cast or developing strong villains.

Wonder Woman’s storytelling engine was perfectly functional in the Golden Age stories published during WWII. (We’ll forget for a moment the increasingly bizarre fetish content and the generally bad storytelling.) She found German spies and either punched them for converted them into loving America and freedom. The problem with WW is that since her original origin is completely tied to a specific moment in history, she becomes much harder to modernize than other major characters. Just the fact that Perez’s WW sent her into “Man’s World” in 1985 completely changed the context and basic premise of the character, arguably into something less weaker.

Sometimes I wonder if the best way to “fix” WW would be to reinstate her as a heroine who first appeared in WWII with her original motivation, but with the Perez costume, powers, and general lack of ridiculousness. A woman who showed up, helped America punch Hitler in the face, and then hung around for over 60 years after, probably helping to usher in feminism as we know it? Totally ageless and immortal? That’s an interesting character, and more importantly, one with a backstory that would really distinguish her from Superman more than the current backstory does. You’d get something more like Darwyn Cooke’s Wonder Woman, who was much more interesting in her brief appearances in New Frontier than anything else I’ve seen done with the character in the years.

Hawkworld was great. John Ostrander & Tim Truman made the alien Hawkman & Hawkwoman work… just not with the rest of the DCU. I’m in the “who cares, the stories were good” camp, but I know Hawkworld gave some readers headaches. Ostrander built up Katar’ & Shayera’s relationship in a believable manner, and I love the first 25 or so issues.

Grell’s Green Arrow comics made me a fan of the character. If you do track them down, however, be prepared for bland artwork, and many issues that can be read in less than five minutes.

Sometimes I wonder if the best way to “fix” WW would be to reinstate her as a heroine who first appeared in WWII with her original motivation, but with the Perez costume, powers, and general lack of ridiculousness. A woman who showed up, helped America punch Hitler in the face, and then hung around for over 60 years after, probably helping to usher in feminism as we know it? Totally ageless and immortal? That’s an interesting character, and more importantly, one with a backstory that would really distinguish her from Superman more than the current backstory does. You’d get something more like Darwyn Cooke’s Wonder Woman, who was much more interesting in her brief appearances in New Frontier than anything else I’ve seen done with the character in the years.

That strikes me as about right. Although, comparing Darwyn Cooke’s “New Frontier” to almost anyone working on an on-going is a bit unfair. He was able to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end without worrying about continuity. That allowed him to give his cast edges.

The S&M stuff easier to unpackage from the Golden Age version of WW than the Second World War, but it is not exactly disposable. WM Marston had a point-of-view that informed the fictional Amazon culture he created. As good as Perez was, he was not able to create as distinctive a fictional culture as Marston. It makes WW more of a bland, generic hero who is not as distinct from similarly powered female heroes that followed.

> Both Iron Man and Wonder Woman have supporting cast problems that hurt their story-telling engines. The “Iron Man” movie was able to keep the focus squarely on Tony, who is interesting. Doing 12 issues a year over time requires interesting secondary characters and IM doesn’t have them. George Perez invented a new supporting cast for Wonder Woman during his run, but they didn’t generate much conflict. Worse, Steve Trevor was never much as a love interest during his long history.

Were Tony’s supporting cast not composed of his subordinates, his book might be more effective. The good news is that Matt Fraction seems to recognize that having secondary characters who are not employees that must do as they’re told; Pepper effectively runs Tony’s business while he’s off doing his SHIELD stuff, and Rhodey has been given autonomy to be his own hero ( Tony even says that Rhodey is the only other man he trusts with the armor ). Even Maria Hill, demoted to fetching coffee for Tony in Civil War, openly opposes most of his decisions.

Those first fifty issues make for a pretty good stretch of comics, though, with the whole “Hawkman does Hush” mammoth arc – which I don’t think has been collected, which is a shame – being the high point.

It actually is collected. Issues 37 – 45 are in the “Rise of the Golden Eagle” TPB, which is the main storyline. Unfortunately, the follow-up issues(issues 46 through 49) aren’t collected — the trades start up again with the horrid Hawkgirl relaunch (issue 50).

None of the Hawkman issues from 26 to 36 are collected, either. Which is a shame, because this series really did do Hawkman justice. Why the Hawkgirl junk was collected first is completely beyond my line of reasoning.

Actually I should clarify (I’m the above “Anonymous”) — The “Hawkman does Hush” storyline really started in #34, so it really isn’t FULLY collected. I stand corrected.

Actually, Dave Micheline’s ( i hope i spelt that right) run on Iron man in the 1980′s was probably the best in the character’s history. This was around the same time the original armour wars occurred (i read the collected volume in 1989 and i was blown away). However, at the dawn of the 1990′s marvel concentrated EVERYTHING in the x-men books (I believe we had about 16 x-titles at a certain point) and basically neglected their original characters. Captain America, Thor, Avengers and the Fantastic Four were pushed to the background. (At one point Iron man was replaced with a younger Tony Stark from the past after his present self went insane as a result of a mental chip placed in him by KANG. Hard as it is to believe, that particular plot point was never resolved).

This changed with heroes reborn in 1996 which needless to say made everything worse. It was a poor attempt to modernize the characters and ultimately failed (Rob Liefeld on Captain America and Avengers was the worst thing ever, it was however outdone by the Batman and Robin film in 1997)

Thor ,Captain America and Avengers only became top books in recent years…i hope MATT FRACTION can get it right with Iron Man.

There are no bad character just bad writers. Hawkman is an obvious exception of course.

Hawkman doesn’t suck …

Okay, he does, but he didn’t always …

When he was from Thanagar and he was on Earth to study our “police procedures” and he was >wheet, wheet< ing all over the place in the back pages of Detective Comics, he was cool …

Gimme a break. I was like 9. And I’d still rather read an old Hawkman back-up story from the 70′s than a year’s worth of Wolverine or Punisher no matter whose writing him.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am all that is wrong with comics fandom.

Amen to the 80s Iron man Run : 160 – 200. Fabulous stuff, everyone should read it.

All it takes is one look at a Joe Kubert Hawkman page and you know DC will always try to be using him. I think it’s one of the best costumes ever. Plus, he was on Super Friends, wasn’t he?

If I were king, I’d make Wonder Woman a war comic set during WWII and mine DC’s war comics for guest stars. Sgt. Rock. The Haunted Tank. My Brothers with Wings…

Hawkman as a reincarnated Egyptian prince works fine, and he’s fantastic as a ex-junkie Thanagarian in full body armour, BUT as a Thanagarian who has the technology to travel across the galaxy but still flies about bare-chested with a mace…well, I knew that was stupid at seven-years-old.

If I was king, then Wonder Woman would be set in the ‘Sixties, and she’d go back to being a hot kung-fu babe in a purple jump suit.

I recently read about Hawkman’s wings and I still don’t like that he just straps on fucking wings and flies. I do like that he’s a bruiser, though.

I think Spawn could benefit from an All Star Batman and Robin treatment. There is untapped hilarity in Spawn.

“Yes, that’s right, under the circumstances, Perez explained it about as well as he could. It is just that when Wonder Woman got to the ‘Man’s World’ and realised how much baggage the stars and stripes carry, she might have found a less controversial costume for a peace ambassador to wear.”

I don’t know, it all depends on how you see the US. Granted, I should see it as controversial (what with being Arab and all)…but I see it as representing the best of America itself, not the particular policies of it’s government.

I think the issue with her costume is that in WW’s modern backstory she wears a patriotic-themed costume, but is somehow explicitly not meant to represent or endorse America specifically. In her original origin. she wore the patriotic costume to identify herself as a representative of America as a nation, despite not being an American herself.

It is basically something retained in her modern version that, in context, no longer makes sense. Retcons that aren’t very carefully thought out tend to result in a lot of character elements like that lingering. (Current Green Lantern is completely lousy with them.)

“Cassie as Wonder Girl was promising but once she was in Teen Titans she evolved into something dull and conventional who ended up never talking to Wonder Woman anymore.”
Reread Teen Titans 6 / Wonder Woman 196, 215 to 217.

the only thing WW needs is pants.

If you have to cite specific issues where Cassie is talking to Wonder Woman, rather than it being something that occurs over the course of a run and is therefore totally commonplace, then you’re really just proving my point.

LSH sucks because there’s not enough Matter-Eater Lad.

The Avengers has almost always suffered because of the creative team. They pick a handful of characters they like but have no business being in an ongoing series (Hello, Starfox). It’s hard to sell a book about the Earth’s mightiest heroes when it’s really just a bunch of B-and C-listers. The two new series are a lot better than the old one, but are still guilty of the same thing.

Then where the hell are the B and C listers supposed to go? They cannot sustain their own title, so where else to see them but in a group series? I think that if a writer is good, they’ll breathe new life into characters who aren’t as popular as the older, more respected characters. I bet you more people have respect for Luke Cage than they did 5 years ago.

How I am proving your point about Cassie evolving into something dull?

Cloak and Dagger- When people freaked out over Valerie D’Orazio writing them because she wasn’t worthy, I lauged. Not just because of the sexism and what not, but because Cloak and Dagger are not worthy of her, or even existence, really,

…I’m speechless. Bill Mantlo’s Cloak & Dagger is my favourite Superhero-Comic and the characters have still so much potential, but since Mantlo left no other writer got them right.

Wonder Woman is the one character I like for no particular reason. I can’t recall a single Wonder Woman story I’ve been blown away by, yet I’m always disappointed when she doesn’t play a more prominent role in JLA stories (other than standing in between Batman and Superman reminding people she’s JUST as important).

I remember “Who Killed Mindy Meyer” as being very good, but I take your larger point. WW doesn’t exactly have a huge catalog of classic stories to show for her 70 year career. Yet, I would have to say that she is one of the five, or maybe six, best superhero properties in terms of appeal to the general (non-comic buying) audience.

In her own way, Wonder Woman is just as important as Superman and Batman.

Like Micilene and Layton on Iron Man, Perez on Wonder Woman jumps out for being a solid take on an under-used property. However, that does not mean it was perfect and un-assailable. His re-think was more compelling visually than anything. The toga version of the WW costume is great, but the list of truly great stories is short.

“A lot of the characters you mentioned work soooo much better as guest stars than they ever did in their own comics. I’d add Phantom Stranger to that list as well.”

Blasphemy. With the exception of Moore’s Swamp Thing and Gaiman’s Books of Magic, the Stranger’s never worked better than he did for most of his 1970s series, and especially the height of the Wein-Aparo run.

Hawkman’s brought out the best in writers as different as Tony Isabella, John Ostrander, and Geoff Johns. Then one of those runs got FUBARed by the delayed-Crisis-effect of Hawkworld, one got FUBARed by Zero Hour, and one got FUBARed by InfC/ OYL. Kind of odd, really. Legion tends to get worn out before the big events, so the reboots seem like a good idea. Hawkman’s going strong when the big event hits, and gets completely screwed by it.

“In her own way, Wonder Woman is just as important as Superman and Batman.”

I don’t think anyone disputes that, which is why it’s one of the characters that’s cancellation-proof. Unfortunately, I think that hurts the series a bit – writers know that odds are good the book isn’t going anywhere so they don’t really try. And, again, I’m not sure if anyone gets into comics to write Wonder Woman the way they do Batman, Spider-Man or Superman. She’s an icon, but not in the same way. More about Lynda Carter posters than the character, if that makes any sense.

Which, I guess, is why it’s bigger news when she gets a haircut than any story dealing with her.

…’m not sure if anyone gets into comics to write Wonder Woman the way they do Batman, Spider-Man or Superman. She’s an icon, but not in the same way. More about Lynda Carter posters than the character, if that makes any sense.

Well, not a lot of women get into comics in general, nor did many girls grow up on super-hero books. The slice of male Wonder Woman fans that are talented enough to work professionally is probably not that large. So, you get ‘names’ that have essentially cycled through everything else.

That said, I still say the problem is in the supporting cast. WW worked extremely well as a key member of an ensemble cast in both ‘Kingdom Come” and “The New Frontier”. She often great in the JLA. The thing that unites those titles is that they give her well-defined characters like Superman and Batman to react to. In her own title, she has no one.

“Then where the hell are the B and C listers supposed to go? They cannot sustain their own title, so where else to see them but in a group series?”

I’m not saying you can’t have any B- or C-listers, it’s just unreasonable to expect a monthly to sustain itself with nothing but, or a majority of scrubs. No one wants to read The Avengers featuring Captain America and Those Five Guys Over There.

I’m not saying you can’t have any B- or C-listers, it’s just unreasonable to expect a monthly to sustain itself with nothing but, or a majority of scrubs

What I always thought was interesting about the Avengers was that it wasn’t an “All-Star Cast”. Ant-Man (the Hank Pym version) and the Wasp are founding members who have never supported an on-going title themselves. Hawkeye, the Vision and Scarlet Witch were all key members that never had sole careers. That was a major contrast with the JLA in the Silver and Bronze Age.

Funny thing.

When Wasp and Ant-Man disappeared from Avengers as part of the changeover to the Hawkeye/Vision/Scarlet Witch/Cap trio, the letters column lit up with complaints. Ant-man and Wasp may be C-listers now, but at the time readers thought of them as A-list characters who shouldnt’ be taken out of Avengers while they didn’t have their own solo mag being published. Likewise, early on fans only seemed happy with Hawkeye joining, and complained a lot about Scarlet Witch being lame and overpowered.

Some things never change, eh?

I used to read comic books when I was literally 7-8 years old. I now keep them in my basement in a book called “Memories” because….. there not for people 14+. I hope the oldest you people are is 10 tops.

Apparently, in Danny’s case, education is also something that’s not for people 14+.