Comic Book Resources

You really should go to San Diego once in your life. Even if you hate it, it’s quite the spectacle.

DC is collecting Jack Cross, I guess. Is that the only thing he’s done for them that hasn’t been collected?

They’re also collecting Two-Step. Other than the two issues of the second Desolation Jones storyarc, that’s it, I think.

Superman being a snarky bastard does appeal to me a little, yes, even though I admit it doesn’t fit with his character too much.

I’m sure there’s a Post-Crisis missing in there somewhere. There’s a reason Superdickery exists.

Very exited for a N/T Ghost Rider. It will be the largest upswing in sequel quality of all time, and probably Nic Cage’s best movie since 1987. Here’s hoping, anyway.

Crank 2 was the best film of 2009.

No.

Jack Cross was canceled after two or three issues, I think…

What the hell is a “stag and doe”?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_and_doe

I was gonna ask why you would possibly be interested in “One Moment In Time,” but you went and answered that. I still can’t fathom anyone expecting it to be good, though.

Babylon 5 was indeed amazing.

AND that is why my later, gradual disappointment with JMS’s comic career was so painful.

I thought B5 was amazing up until Season 5 in which the luxuriously coiffed telepaths took over. I think the rushed wrap of Season 4 really hurt the remainder of the show.

And yes, the new Parker comic was awesome, loved the oversized look and study paper stock. That’s a comic to go on a book shelf and not into a long box.

@ BrianDragos:

“Jack Cross was canceled after two or three issues, I think…”

Actually it was a four issue story arc, with the possibility of it being on-going. I guess it didn’t take.

Maybe after the collected version.

@ Chad:

What!!!??!!! No KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I WANT MY KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This week, “One Moment in Time” begins and I’m looking forward to it.

That caught me off guard.

I love how one week we get Batman and Robin #13, one of the best issues of Morrison’s run on the character, and, the next, we get Batman #701, one of the worst.

You say that, but some of the chapters in the initial Batman run a terrible – the return of Ra’s issues are terrible (though to be fair, he could have just been trying to fit in with the style of the crossover), and some other pre-RIP issues as well – like the one with Ryan Benjamin on art, with the guy who sees through his fingers.

I remember a time when I would mock DC for their weird symbolic teaser posters. Now, I just don’t care.

Why?
The only mockable one was the 52 one, and that’s only because of Didio saying it was packed full of clues, and then having the clues be really bizarre, not actually in the picture, type things.
I mean, yeah, who cares, but those that do seem to have fun with them.

ou know, I’m genuinely curious about why Peter and Mary Jane didn’t get married, but stayed together still. That’s something that doesn’t really happen much (planning a wedding, not going through with the marriage, but staying together — not just not getting married and staying together, because that happens all of the time).

You think they actually planned this out from the get-go and it’s all going to make sense in the end?

Is there anything else by Warren Ellis that DC could collect?

Hellstorm and Druid.
Because it’s not like Marvel is going to.

(And Ghost Rider Annual #2 needs to be collected! First Ellis I ever read, and I loved the shit out of it, and was really paranoid lending it to my friends in case a teacher caught sight of that one).

Hey, please tell me what you enjoyed about Babylon 5. What makes it good?

I need a reason to watch it. What makes it better than the Star Treks?

Does Spider type on his laptop, or point his bowel disruptor at you and flip you off?

I’m looking for some pedantic grammatical error I can go on about, or some vaguely-related-to-your-post-but-not-really political thing, or argue about how Maleev doesn’t have talent because “all” he’s doing in Scarlet is photoshopping photos, but I just can’t come up with anything. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a CSBG commenter.

I’m not sure your Hellblazer idea would hold up for a 6 issue arc, but it might make an interesting 3-4 issue arc. What’s the Azzarello JC/Batman slash? (read the blog a thon, right?) And who besides Azz and Jason Aaron is non-English/Scottish/Irish that have written Hellblazer? It’s someone after Aaron’s stuff, isn’t it, because I remember him saying in an interview that he was glad that Azz had been there first (being an American that wrote Constantine), so…

I like Ellis, but it seems he gets bored easily and drops things that are awesome (or his artists have to take on different, paying gigs). I’m hoping for new Fell, but I’m realistic. The girlfriend dug Fell too.

I’ll ask this, even though I asked it on Sunday Brunch before — my gf liked Fell (for the crime and the psychological element of it), liked the UnMen series Vertigo did a few years back, and likes some superhero stuff, although some of the art she seems to like has a manga flavor to it — so what else can I use to lure her to the dark side, if you will, and turn her into a comic geek (she’s willing on this, btw)?

I’ve also found, and probably some other comic geek guys can attest to this, that explaining origins and back stories of superhero comics comes out pretty absurd saying them out loud. I’ve explained to her about, say, Captain America and Bucky/Winter Soldier, and the whole time I’m going to myself, wow, this is so fucking weird to talk about. But she’s willing to get into it because I dig it, so that’s why she’s awesome.

Random Thought! I looked at your review of Officer Downe on CBR, and it occurs to me:

When’s the Officer Downe/Axe Cop crossover going to happen?

“You think they actually planned this out from the get-go and it’s all going to make sense in the end?”

Well, they wouldn’t *lie*, would they?

I’m also looking forward to One Moment In Time, even though I’m really scared of how bad it could be. There are just so many questions that still haven’t been properly answered. But please, when it does come out, don’t go blabbing everything on here immediately, at least not without warning us. (This is addressed to anybody who reads it.) Some of us receive our books kind of late. I’ve still only got two of the Grim Hunt issues.

I tried to watch Babylon 5 a few times in the first season, but I couldn’t get interested in it at all.

I hate the Loki costume, too. (You’re talking about the movie costumes, right?) The others are acceptable. I guess maybe they thought the traditional Marvel designs would look really stupid on film. That’s probably true, but they could’ve come up with something better than that.

What big surprise announcement could they have in San Diego that I would really want to hear and that would make me all excited? That’s easy– No more comics over three dollars!

Since my last random thoughts, Michelle and I finished Babylon 5. Damn, that show was fantastic. When I visited home last weekend, I found the six novels I own relating to the show, the Psi-Corps Trilogy and the Legions of Fire trilogy. I prefer the latter, but that’s only because the former is more three separate stories united by a common idea. I need to reread those

There’s a third trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos concerning the Technomages which is well worth a look as it tackles some of the themes Crusade was developing into (left over Shadow tech for a start)

But if you’re a Babylon 5 fan then you *need* to read To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M. Drennan and The Shadow Within by Jeanne Cavelos which fill in some of the larger gaps.

Oh and the comics aren’t bad either. Comic readers new what was dug up on Mars before the TV Viewers did.

You’ve definitely gotten me jonesing from some Hellblazer. I read up to the end of Ennis’ run and then the Delano issue after it a few months ago and then stopped, but I think I’ll start up again at that point in a couple of days after I finish “The Last Days of Krypton” by Kevin J. Anderson. And reread Superman: Birthright because I know that once I’ve read about the end of Krypton I’ll want to read about the beginning of Superman.

I liked what I saw of the Loki costume. What are your complaints?

I found B5 to have easily one of the worst first seasons ever but then seasons 2-4 were amazing and then season 5 was just awful again.

I’m in the middle of Season 2 of “Babylon 5″ now. It’s okay but nothing special–unlike, say, “Battlestar Galactica” or “Firefly.” B5 seems like a knockoff of “Deep Space Nine” to me, even though they debuted at about the same time.

Travis: The other non-brit to write Hellblazer was Darko Macan, I’ve only read his Cable stuff back when it was Soldier X, apparently he did some Star Wars stuff too.

Actually, Deep Space Nine copied B5, not the other way around. It became more evident as time went on, and the Star Trek people started adopting more and more motiffs that B5 was already doing (the grittiness, the conspiracies, the long-term storylines, the protagonists not always getting along nicely).

But I agree with the general oppinion that B5′s last season saw a huge drop in quality.

@ Sincerely -

Some of the traits that made B5 unique in the 1990s are not so unique anymore, but for what it’s worth it, Babylon 5 was the first TV series to be conceived as a single long story spanning 5 years, planned from start to finish. When Babylon 5 was good (it wasn’t always good, but almost always) It felt like a literary novel on television, with character development and change that wasn’t usual in TV shows, let alone science fiction TV shows.

It was also grittier, bloodier, more morally ambiguous than Star Trek’s future utopia, a little more inclined to hard science and less to technobabble (though B5 also had its “magical” devices and warp gates).

It was pretty heady stuff for those pre-Lost, pre-Battlestar Galatica times.

Actually, DS9 debuted in January 1993, a month before the B5 pilot and a full year before the B5 series in 1994. Moreover, DS9 was conceived in 1991 according to Wikipedia. The two shows may have influenced each other, but it’s hard to say the first show “copied” the second.

Yes, but JMS had pitched the show to Paramount two years before that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine#Deep_Space_Nine_and_Babylon_5

Ah, I see. Well, other than the “crossroads of space” concept–the basic point of most space-station stories–I don’t see a huge amount of duplication between the two series.

The shows went different ways, but if you watch you’ll see it…Sisko as Emissary thru time wonkiness/Sinclair as Valen thru time wonkiness, Bashir as young egotistical top of class doctor/Franklin as young egotistical top of class doctor, DS9 as a symbol of peace and neutrality after the Bajoran/Cardassian war/B5 as a symbol of peace and neutraily after the Human/Mimbari war, Sisko haunted by events of the war/Sinclair haunted by events of the war, Bajorans, the spirtualy enlightlened race/Mimbari the spirutually enlightened race…..

Especially in early Ds9, you can see elements that could have been taken from the B5 pitch. There’s certainly enough you could say there’s smoke…but whether there’s fire is another question.

Mary: Re B5…sadly, S1 of B5 is pretty rough the first time through. I felt the same way…I started watching in S2 so I’d be up on it for the Peter David episode, and got into it, and sometime during S3 I went back and saw S1, and really liked it…

So you just need to get thru S1, so you can rewatch it durring S3 to enjoy it

The weird thing is, I am a huge B5 fan, and I never watched all of Season 1. I started watching in Season 2, and for some reason they always skipped Season 1 during re-runs of B5 here in Brazil during the 1990s. I’ve seen only a couple of episodes of Season 1 that were released in VHS tapes (anyone remember those? Seems like a million years ago that we had VHS tapes).

The myths about Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine are almost as entertaining as the shows themselves…

Betcha after finding out this week the “reason” Peter didn’t get married, that took a big pin to the balloon of those who defended the Mephisto move….

I liked The Spirit. It wasn’t a big piece of award winning work but it definitely had me laughing in parts…..