Comic Book Resources

Coming out tomorrow: Unknown #1, Unthinkable #1, and Unwritten #1. I love it when shipping schedules work out like this.

Unbelievable!

On a related note, I remember walking up to the counter at my local store once with copies of Powers #1, Powerless #1, and Supreme Power #11.

It is wrong to point to ‘willpower’ as the emotional aspect of Green Lanterns. Fearlesness is their “emotion”, if fear is an emotion, then lack of fear could be qualified as an emotion.

I have no idea what death would mean, except a complete absence of emotions.

I understand the whole idea of pulling random comics to review. That is something that I struggle with. So many of my reviews turn out positive because I am choosing books I WANT to read and have an interest in reading. I figure if i am shelling out my hard earned money, then I should at least choose books that appeal to me on some level. If i was interested in just blasting books, I would have a review of a Chuck Austen book every month.

I support and respect your zero stars. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, I’m confused by Johns’s “emotional” spectrum too. It’s more of a spectrum of abstracts and feelings. I wonder if Johns actually think it’s an emotion?
J- “Dan Didio! Hey!”
D- “Well, hello, Geoff Johns! How are you feeling today?”
J- “Very willful! What a great idea! I’ll make a comic of it and the rest of the emotions humans can feel! All eight emotions.”
D- “Eight?”
J- “Will, fear, love, anger, selfishness, hope, passion, and death. DUH.”
D- “Death? Johns, I don’t think that’s an emotion…”
J- “SHUT UP, I’M WILLFUL TODAY!”

It’s really more of a motivational spectrum than an emotional spectrum, with death being the absence of motivation. Alternatively, think of each of the “emotions’ as a drive to action.

That said, it’s relatively clear what Johns means, even if he used the word emotional to mean something that it doesn’t quite fit.

Yeah, I remember reading somewhere that one of the writers working on it (Johns, probably, but I can’t be sure) called them “drives” and said that “emotional spectrum” is just an incorrect name that’s too established to really do anything about now. I’m majorly paraphrasing, though.

Don’t forget Umbrella Academy.

When I wrote for Atomic Comics, I got free comics and reviewed them, and it was occasionally more fun than just getting books I always get (see JLA #10). But when I have to pay money, I’m buying what I’m fairly certain I’ll like. I admit (like you), it gets difficult writing how much I like a book every month, but that’s the way it is. I buy enough comics without picking up random issues of things I’m pretty sure I either won’t like or will simply be ambivalent toward. Like “Blackest Night” – I’m sure it will be competently done, but I have absolutely no interest in it. So why should I buy it?

I do miss getting comics for free, though. Every once in a while it’s great to tear into something truly horrendous, like Ultimatum.

I would have thought “death” in this case was a clumsy way of referring to Thanatos, the drive toward self-destruction proposed in Freudian psychology as the opposite of Eros, the impulse of seeking life. Perhaps not so much an emotion as a fundamental drive. By the same token, “will” might be something like Nietzsche’s will to power? And at this point I honestly feel we’ve given this question more thought than Johns ever did before writing his story. Where this whole plot is concerned, I personally am a Beige Lantern or Grey Lantern or Taupe Lantern or whatever damn color we’ve decided represents disdainful apathy.

J- “Dan Didio! Hey!”
D- “Well, hello, Geoff Johns! How are you feeling today?”
J- “Very willful! What a great idea! I’ll make a comic of it and the rest of the emotions humans can feel! All eight emotions.”
D- “Eight?”
J- “Will, fear, love, anger, selfishness, hope, passion, and death. DUH.”
D- “Death? Johns, I don’t think that’s an emotion…”
J- “SHUT UP, I’M WILLFUL TODAY!”

This was funny, but the problem is it portrays Didio as someone capable of recognizing and shooting down bad ideas. If anything, he probably was adding dubious emotions to the list like “iconicy” or something in hopes of milking the idea even more

It’s all a bit of a mess anyway.

The Red Lanterns feel rage..the Orange feel greed. Purple feel love.
The Yellow however, inspire fear, as opposed to being afraid themselves.

The Blue are so high on opium and pot, they’re feelin’ nothin’, man!

Without either defending or decrying the concept, this is what I recall Geoff Johns saying, some months ago, about the so-called “emotional” spectrum: Willpower doesn’t have to be an emotion because it’s the center of the spectrum; it’s neutral. The Guardians on Oa have long been denying the role of emotions, trying to suppress them.

In Johns’ cosmology, the three “hot” colors on one side of the green center are all negative emotions: fear, greed, hate. The three “cool” colors on the other side are all positive emotions: hope, compassion, love. (I personally think one could argue that “hope” is not an emotion, but a motivator, a drive, a perspective.) Anyway, the farther away you get from the center of the spectrum, the more unpredictable the emotions — which is why the raging Red Lanterns (save their leader, Atrocitus) have so little control over their actions. Presumably, we’ll see a similar issue with the Violet Lanterns (Star Sapphires), fueled by love.

Death doesn’t have to be an emotion; black isn’t part of the spectrum at all. (And of course the whole thing is fueled by lifting a line from the decades-old Green Lantern oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night … “)

Throw in the fact that even on Earth not every species sees the same color range… Heck, with the various forms of colorblindness not even all humans see the same color range. And even on Earth, not every culture agrees on what the important colors are (although the European originated ROYGBIV dominates at this point). So we’re expected to accept that a set a related but separate universal power sources utilized by various aliens of various species happened to specifically match the arbitrary naming of a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum used on a subcontinent on a galactic backwater like Earth.

Yeah, I like the idea of rival Lantern Corps, but my suspension of disbelief is really taking a pounding on this one.

Aren’t you the same goober who gave an issue of “The Brave and The Bold” a bad rating for no other reason than that the cover was misleading?

Goober?

Goober. It’s basically just another word for “doofus”, as well as being a type of Southern peanut!

But no. I stand by my statement.

Those Guardians can’t do anything right.

Unrelated to the emotional issue: I got the free AAFES (that’s Army and Air Force Exchange Service) Avengers comic last week. It was also in the same reduced size as the FCBD story. Must be a cost-cutting measure; I wonder if we’ll see more of Marvel’s preview books (i.e., the Secret Invasion recap comic) in the reduced trim.

Am I the only one thinking about buying (or at least flipping through) Bang! Tango just because it got a 0 out of 5 stars? If it got a 1 out of 5 stars I’d probably just ignore it, but I’m intrigued that this comic is apparently so bad it doesn’t even deserve a star acknowledging that it is indeed a comic and that it was printed.

What’s even more interesting is that it’s written by Joe Kelly who ordinarily writes very well (or at least compentently).

Chris Jones–That was me, although my reasons were a tad more complicated than that. Basically, Brave and the Bold is a team-up book where the covers indicate what characters will team-up inside. That cover depicted two characters who don’t actually team up. Since those characters were Green Lantern and Green Arrow, two characters who have a history of working together and have a fanbase as a duo, I took the comic to task for that misconception. But the comic itself was also pretty damn bad. That I focused on the cover was more because that was what I thought would make for an interesting review — what with shitty writing and decent art being pretty typical.

But, yeah, I’m that goober.

I feel like in a way that in itself is misleading, though, because you get people who will be like “He didn’t like it just because the COVER was misleading? What the hell?” and then go and buy it because you didn’t actually say what was wrong with the comic ITSELF. The only thing you say about the story is that it “isn’t that special”, which could mean ANYTHING.

I point this out because I review comics on the side too and that review in particular stuck out as kind of irritating. And the reason I made that above comment is mostly to cite that you have a history of disliking things for what I perceive to be goofy reasons, and that INCLUDES the Bang! Tango review, where many of your grievances come from the fact that things “aren’t explained”, which could have something to do with, as you said, you coming into the story past the halfway point. Your other arguments are valid but it seems like a large portion of your problems are with things that can be addressed by reading the first three issues.

Whether we like it or not, these days comics are meant to be read in bulk, especially if it’s a miniseries. You wouldn’t see a film critic who gave “Empire of the Sun” a bad review because he walked in on it 45 minutes late and didn’t understand what was going on. That movie sucked for completely valid reasons, but if the reviewer cited tardiness as a reason that the movie was a piece of shit, he’d have to find another job. And I’m not saying you should be fired, or anything of the sort, what I’m saying is that your reviews have a habit of not focusing on the actual content of the comic and I think it’s something that you should address.

As is pointed out whenever someone says they don’t understand something when they come in halfway through and then someone takes them to task for writing that, comics are discrete entities, so calling something out for not explaining things is perfectly acceptable. Perhaps for mini-series that’s a bit less of a criticism, as it’s obviously 6 parts and not part of an ongoing, but if companies want to release individual issues, they need to make sure that each issue is at least comprehensible. It’s a totally valid criticism to say that the issue doesn’t make sense because the writer doesn’t explain something. If DC didn’t want that criticism, they should have released Bang! Tango as a complete graphic novel. But they didn’t, so they have to deal with people saying it’s incomprehensible. Chris, you make the comparison to movies. But movies are released as complete – back in the 1930s and 1940s, when movie serials were popular, I would bet the new one recapped the preceding ones. Maybe they didn’t, but then criticizing them for it would be, again, perfectly acceptable.

I would be completely willing to accept all of that, were it not for this thing, on the cover:

4 of 6

Maybe it isn’t released as a whole package, but that’s how it’s meant to be read, and what’s more, that’s OBVIOUSLY how it’s meant to be read. It’s right there on the cover: This is Part 4 of a 6 Part series. I feel like the average reader would go, “Maybe I should start at Part 1″, making this a complete nonissue(so to speak).

And like I said earlier, comics in general, these days, are meant to be read in bulk. And this is ESPECIALLY the case with a miniseries. People who picked it up with Part 1 probably DON’T want to be reminded of what happened last issue, because hey, they READ last issue. I know that with an ongoing, this will sometimes be necessary, but for a minseries, it’s IMPLIED that you read the last issue because it’s clearly stated that there is a finite number of issues and what’s more, three of those came out before this one.

It’s one thing to call the X-Men out on being confusing, because that bullshit has been going on for 40 years and anyone who wants to come in at this point is pretty much fucked. It’s another thing with a self-contained, limited story, because the back story is three issues. Mostly what I’m saying is, the book is giving you every opportunity NOT to be confused and if you are, then you probably don’t know how these things work. A lot of people can claim that, but Chad can’t, because he’s too into it and been doing this for far too long.

I feel like it’s sort of ridiculous for calling it out on something it really has no control over.

Chris–Regarding the B&B review, I didn’t just discuss the cover. I began the review discussing it and ALSO critiqued the rest of the comic. If someone read that review and thought I was simply judging the book by its cover, they would be mistaken.

As for “4 of 6″ being a defence — I agree, to a point. As I said, I take information like that into consideration and know how to read a book mid-story since I have been doing it for a large majority of my life. This particular issue left me completely baffled on almost every level, which almost never happens (I can’t remember when it’s happened ever to this degree).

Beyond that, though, reviewers are reviewing the single issue. Would it be ideal if they had read the rest of the story? Yes. Is it a requirement? No. If this single issue doesn’t do the job then it should be taken to task. It’s not completely fair, but it’s also unfair to demand that a reviewer buy three comics to review a fourth. What’s the solution?

You didn’t JUST discuss the cover, but you did spend the vast majority of the space discussing it-out of six paragraphs, one was a “wasn’t that spectacular” line before a shaky plot synopsis, one was complimenting the art, and the rest were talking about the cover. 2/3rds of the time was spent on the cover.

That isn’t the issue at hand(once again, so to speak), though, and I would say that the solution would be to do the same thing that the reader would do, and either get the first three issues, wait for the trade or don’t review it at all. Acknowledging that you’re reading the issue counter to what was intended does not change the fact that you were, indeed, reading the issue counter to what was intended and basing a large part of your opinion on it based on having your wires crossed.

Where do you draw the line then? Are reviewers only to review the first parts of ANY story unless they’ve read the entire thing? And what if I had enjoyed Bang! Tango #4? Isn’t the issue here really that I dared to review the fourth issue without reading the first three and didn’t enjoy it? Would it be problematic if I’d given it a positive review?

It wouldn’t have been a problem, because that would show that the issue was very open from a position of new readership and that would be something to count in it’s favor.

But-and here’s the important thing-that is NOT a requirement for quality in a story that’s already halfway done. If it is, fine, cool bonus. If it’s not, it’s still not really the story’s fault.

As the saying goes, “Context is everything”.

(I’m enjoying this debate quite a bit. And here’s a link to where I post reviews, just so that all the cards are on the table: http://heroicmonkey.com/DC_Reviews.html)

Greg:
I agree that it should have been a graphic novel if that’s an issue but that’s the great elephant in the room of comics: you can say that about well over 50% of what’s regularly released.

I read an issue of Batman RIP similarly out of sequence and it was horrificly bad.
Mind-numbingly terrible.
Many people on boards here and elsewhere took me to task on my opinion, not just for not having read the whole arc, but for not having read the run. (then you’d get it!)
If you’re going to sell a single issue on it’s own merits, why should I have to get more to enjoy it!
Enjoy it more, fine, but to get anything out of it at all?

My point is that broadly I agree with Chad’s points, but it seems grossly unfair to pick on Bang! Tango, when almost everything else gets a free pass.

Now, if Bang Tango is just rubbish there are better ways to say it.

Chris’s point is fair. Jumping into a mini-series partway through isn’t the same as picking up a random issue of an ongoing. Ongoings are written with new readership in mind and have some status quo (or “storytelling engine” I suppose) that should be easy to pick up after a lifetime of reading comics and absorbing its tropes.

A mini-series is a complete story that’s just been serialized. You don’t know what part of the story you’re getting if you start at a random issue. The better analogy is opening a book to Chapter 23 and being confused about what’s going on. Yes, the book is divvied up into discrete chunks (some authors even serialize their novels online) but the individual chapters aren’t meant to stand on their own.

I skimmed through Bang Tango #4 just now, also having never read #1-3. The story it tells is fairly comprehensible and the art isn’t abhorrent. That alone disqualifies it for a “zero” in my mind.

The new Vulture looks like a Red Lantern reject, except he vomits acid instead of boiling blood.

Nah, he looks like Chamber. Only in crimson instead of black leather.

t’s the best comics critic team-up since Tim Callahan and I began doing our Splash Page column (which will return sometime soon after a brief hiatus — but, if you haven’t, go read our columns on Final Crisis).

Can’t wait for Splash Page to return. That’s always a good read.

Bang Tango is, indeed, just rubbish. I’ve read every issue – it is rubbish.
Except for Howard Chaykin’s covers – they are not rubbish.

I’ve read all the issues of Bang Tango and I’m enjoying the miniseries very much (the music lyric bits are the only thing I haven’t been keen on). Just wanted to throw it a little repect as I’m someone reading the WHOLE miniseries like likes it.

Would you watch last weeks episode of LOST without having seen it ever before, knowing it’s a complex show with backstory important to the story it’s currently telling, and give it a 0 review because eventhough you knew there was a lot that came before it, it was just too confusing?

I haven’t read nor even seen any issues of Bang! Tango, ergo it must suck.