Comic Book Resources

Sure, V For Vendetta was fine…but Sonic Disruptors told basically the same story about a musically inclined rebel fighting a future dictatorship, without being so preachy about it.

I love that cover even though I hate C & D

Saga of the Swamp Thing was great and all, but I liked it better when it was called Toxic Crusaders the animated series. Lloyd Kaufman is truly an allegorical genius of our time.

Say I’m in a store and I’m buying a Thor comic. Everybody in the store…the owner and his regular Wednesday disciples…are all talking about Green Lantern. I happen to like Ego the Living Planet better than Mogo, also an Alan Moore creation. I’m not here to bash these guys but I do venture my opinion.

I get a wave of responses like these. “That’s like saying Rob Liefeld draws better than George Perez!” “That’s saying you enjoy Alex Ross more than Michelangelo!” “That’s like buying Civil War Frontline instead of Transmetropolitan!”

I have been put in my place; my opinion is not wanted here. I probably don’t even buy that Thor comic.

Why would you express a contrary opinion in a comic book store if you *don’t* want to provoke a savage argument from a bunch of nerds?

Besides, Ego the Living Planet was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – why not just counter with that?

Didn’t Bill Mantlo also come up with shape-shifters infiltrating and trying to take over the earth waaaaaay before Secret Invasion?

Hey the comments section is still doing that thing from a while back where it looks like I can comment as the last person who said anything. I mentioned this a while back but I had hoped the bugs were worked out. No luck, I take it?

Just ever so tangentially on this topic…

I just read Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer storyline “The Fear Machine” recently, and I was just wondering for people who’ve read both that and From Hell… How much do you think the latter was influenced by the former? I mean, I know Moore must have been aware of Delano’s work at the time; he hand picked him to take over Captain Britain, after all. Both stories have masonic magic rituals, the eternal struggle of masculine versus feminine, even the role of architecture in cultural dominace. I’m not saying that From Hell was anything but a seminal work, but everything has its influences, right? Any thoughts?

Didn’t Bill Mantlo also come up with shape-shifters infiltrating and trying to take over the earth waaaaaay before Secret Invasion?

Yup, the Dire Wraiths storyline that run through the bulk of his ROM: Spaceknight series in the early/mid 1980′s…

Sam:

It’s more likely both Delano and Moore were influenced by similar outside source materials.

The second book in French comic book series “Basil & Victoria” also used the same basic idea as From Hell, that the prostitutes were killed to cover up Prince Albert’s illegitimate child and that the killer was Queen Victoria’s physician. I think “Basil & Victoria” came out around the same time as From Hell, though of course they both got their ideas from the same sources, mainly from Stephen Knight’s “Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution”. Anyway, “Basil & Victoria” is a great read for anyone who loves French comics and stories set in Victorian London.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the Gotham by Gaslight Elsewhere one-shot with Batman vs Jack the Ripper.

Annnnnd I’m a big fan of BIG NUMBERS.

Go ahead, make our day, try to find a substitute for THAT one!

Shang-Chi had already dealt with Jack the Ripper waaay before the Cloak and Dagger Graphic Novel in Master of Kung-Fu 100 if you want to add another comics Ripper into the mix.

And Captain America fought Jack the Ripper, summoned through time by the sorcerer Terdu, in All-Select Comics #7 back in 1945.

Sure, Skizz was great and all, but E.T. did it better.

Too obscure?

Sure, Big NUmbers would have been good, but it can’t hold a candle to a little gem called *…batteries not included.

Mantlo’s appendix to the Cloak & Dagger comi.. excuse me, graphic novel, was impressive. I like how he talked the various discredited theories from Cloak&Daggerology.

If all this is a response to Greg’s Promethea post, I don’t get it, seems kind of like overkill. Is it that sacreligious an opinion? I never read Promethea or Dr. Fate so I have no dog in this race, just curious.

I think he’s just ribbing a buddy.

And he got him good.

DCD’s example is an especially good one these days. It’s one thing to venerate Watchmen and Swamp Thing. It’s something else entirely to take Alan Moore’s (creative, fun) one-use ideas from the couple of Green Lantern stories he did way back in the day as the foundation for the whole Green Lantern mythos. Mogo was a much, much better idea off in the background of the DCU that might exist and means that there are more things in DC’s heavens than are dreamt of in your monthly comics than he is a location visited as often as a bus-stop and made a centerpiece of the Corps’ functioning.

Lee & Kirby’s wacky cosmology generated in the 60s generally remains wacky offscreen cosmology, and is much more effective for that. We know that Ego and the Living Tribunal and that whole crowd are out there; we don’t need regular check-ins with them.

I think he’s just ribbing a buddy.

oh yeah, i know it’s not meanspirited or anything. just wanted to know why original opinion was so worthy of ribbing, since i never read either book.

Too obscure?

Probably…

There are about 10 2000AD readers on this blog…

11!

“Probably…

There are about 10 2000AD readers on this blog… ”

Well, I can’t be counted as one of them. I read the trade from the library.

Jack the Ripper is also in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures first part, Phantom Blood… Guy gets around so much, he is even in manga.

*looks at cover*

Jack the Ripper was black…?

At this point, I feel like I’VE fought Jack The Ripper…

Bill Mantlo was the Chuck Norris of this age of comics. He did everything first and better.

Skizz really was a blatant ET rip-off and one of Moore’s weakest works