Comics!

The only good part maybe? Nah it wasn't that bad. But he's definitely become a boring politically autistic turd lately.

If you sacrifice writing for your agenda, you're a fucking hack.
 
What side of the fence was he on? I totally agree with you, but one side has much less of a voice than the other in this country. So i personally would can it pass if he was pushing right wing agendas through his books, although i probably wouldn't read them. But yeah, that shit has no place in the comic book world and definitely does not belong there.

edit: think i'm gonna look this shit up(the whole Rucka politics thing, not his books), sounds kind of interesting tbh.
 
If you sacrifice writing for your agenda, you're a fucking hack.
I agree about that.
The only superhero comic I've read from Rucka is Gotham Central which I liked, his independent stuff I've read is great I think.

One of the worst mainstream writers nowdays is Brian Wood. Lots of his stuff has been hyped the last couple of years, but they've pretty much all been bad, like his Star Wars, his Conan, The Massive, etc.

The best superhero writer ever is Grant Morrison, some poeple, like Alan Moore has probably reached higher peaks but not consistently.

BTW @CASSETTEISGOD , do you read anything besides American (action-esque) comics? This is not ment to sound condecending btw, just that I think you would like alot of the (more adult oriented) euro scene. :)
 
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BTW @CASSETTEISGOD , do you read anything besides American (action-esque) comics? This is not ment to sound condecending btw, just that I think you would like alot of the (more adult oriented) euro scene. :)

American comic books are actually a rather recent thing for me, I have always been more of a manga fan, starting from childhood. But I also like many British comic books of course. Always happy to get some cool European recommendations though!
 
Vertigo have some awesome stuff as far as non-superhero shit goes. Maybe even the best.

And i'd take a prime Frank Miller over any of those two, especially Grant Morrison. Who is a complete hit or miss. Don't get me wrong, his a great writer, but some if his books are all over the fucking place ... to a point where the more casual readers wouldn't even be able to folow his shit ... and im jsut talking his superhero works. I dare anyone who's not too into the comic book world to try and read through his Batman run.

i fucking love We3 though <3. Oh and Frank Quitely <3 x2

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Yeah, picking up his Batman run halfway in or reading it abit casually has to be impossible, but I think it is great through all of the books it spans through, and All-Star Superman is the #1 Superman comic ever.

Never read We3 but I've picked it up in stores several times and almost bought it. But I've always went for something else so maybe I should finally get it :p
 
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e and i think you'll enjoy it for sure, definitely one of his best. And yeah, All-Star Superman is definitely one of, if not the best Superman comics. I have both volumes in hardcover. I'm also a big fan of his New X-Men.

Yeah, especially Batman RIP ... i remember most people who where following the series didn't even know what the fuck was going on, lol. But yeah, i liked it.
 
Love his Swamp Thing, classic stuff. :/

So... I've been binge reading the new Marvel Star Wars comics (got all of them, but haven't been keeping up on the reading) Not entirely sure what to make of it, some of it is great, like the Han Solo mini series for example and I also love Doctor Aphra, a cool character with flaws that makes her interesting and fun to read about.
Some stuff is just too awkward though, waaay too much out of character stuff and Whats up with the gunpowder weapons? Does not fit, at all. And some stories are down right embarassing, like the Princess Leia issues about her gathering the alderaanian people. Leia is actually portrayed really bad in general imo.

I think I liked the old canon more, but that may be me being used to characters like Jacen, Jana, Mara Jade, etc.
 
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On the subject of french comics... got quite abit of Enki Bilal stuff yesterday. Classic stuff. Traded in DC New 52 single issues for them. Well worth it :cool:

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So, I've been doing some Star Wars comic binging since last weekend. I reread Crimson Empire and the X-Wing: Rogue Squadron comics (after rereading the first three novels :tickled:) and now I've decided to keep indulging myself and begin to reread one of my favorite comic series of all time: Star Wars: Republic.

Now, I know that plenty of people have a distaste for the prequels for reasons that range from understandable to ridiculous, but this series, along with several others, portrays the era in ways that I think the prequels didn't take advantage of. Honestly, I never found the films to be too bad (hell, Revenge of the Sith is one of my favorites in the saga) but they could have done some things better. First, the characterization is pretty well-rounded. When John Ostrander and William Haden Blackman (and a couple others) wrote for this series (and several other acclaimed ones), they offered fleshed-out and believable interpretations of the characters that were shown in the films while still making them enjoyable. Even the characters that were new at the time like Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress receive fantastic arcs of their own that have very satisfying conclusions.

Also, the action is also really great. If you liked some of the grand scenes of warfare at the end of Attack of the Clones and the ones featured in Revenge of the Sith, you will not be disappointed. The scale combined with Jan Duursema's excellent art design, perfectly display the brutality of the Clone Wars. There is a real sense of grit to much of it which helps immerse the reader into the setting.

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However, it doesn't just improve on the source material there. It also manages to make the politics interesting. I know. Remember Chancellor Valorum? That guy that was apparently important in the The Phantom Menace that was only mentioned and then never mentioned again? Well, he has an entire storyline with Bail Organa in this series...and it's awesome. Honestly, what makes the politics work here is due to the fact that they are framed through a lens which actually makes them intriguing. Politics isn't foreign to Star Wars (hell, there was more in A New Hope than your average space fantasy flick during the '70s) but, like any good story, it needed good writers and that prerequisite was fulfilled.

Now, you may be wondering, "Holy shit, Talos. What's with this somewhat lengthy review that just came out of nowhere?". Well, that's a good question. I'm sure some of you are probably familiar with the series titled The Clone Wars (not to be confused with Genndy Tartakovsky's microseries) which aired on Cartoon Network that was cancelled before it managed to reach the Battle of Coruscant in Episode III. As a part of the new canon after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, that series effectively replaced Republic. Meaning, that Republic (and many other stories) have been relegated to a non-canon Legends status. This kind of puts this comic series and most of Dark Horse's other contributions to Star Wars in obscurity. The retcon happened in 2013 when I was in my sophomore year of high school. I was already familiar with much of the now-Legends material long beforehand and I was a huge fan of them. While I do like the films, a lot of the reason why I remained a Star Wars fan was due to the stuff released by Bantam, Dark Horse and Del Rey. Because of that, I thought I may share some opinions and a recommendation regarding an excellent comics experience from the previous continuity.

There is also my rather negative opinion of The Clone Wars TV show that I have to admit. In earnest, I find much of TCW to be sanitized, monotonous and boring. Some of the action is pretty good but nothing even comes close to approaching Republic (or Tartakovsky's fight sequences in Clone Wars), the Confederacy of Independent Systems is completely nonthreatening and never really achieves that many victories (and if so, Pyrrhic ones at best), General Grievous is reduced to an incompetent coward in comparison to his Legends counterpart, the same could be said for Count Dooku as well, Quinlan Vos is reduced to a generic surfer dude with a lightsaber, Anakin doesn't even remotely resemble how he is in the films, every Jedi that looks like they could have an interesting storyline end up dying anyway, and the symbolism is so utterly ham-fisted and predictable that I honestly wonder how anyone could think that Dave Filoni is a good writer. He isn't. He's probably one of the most overrated writers/directors in sci-fi/fantasy since Whedon. There's plenty of other things I'd mention (like the pointlessness of Ahsoka Tano as a character and especially as Anakin's apprentice) but this is already a really long post as it is.

So, I'd recommend this comic series without hesitation. Buy it.
 
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Fantastic!

Now, I know that plenty of people have a distaste for the prequels for reasons that range from understandable to ridiculous, but this series, along with several others, portrays the era in ways that I think the prequels didn't take advantage of. Honestly, I never found the films to be too bad (hell, Revenge of the Sith is one of my favorites in the saga) but they could have done some things better.

I feel the same, to a degree. I think one of the biggest issues plaguing the prequels was Jar Jar Binks, who tarnished any semblance of depth or artistic integrity in those films. It's hard to appreciate an epic battle sequence (Battle of Naboo) when you have Jar Jar Binks essentially acting out his own version of Earnest Defeats The Trade Federation.

Just embarrassing.

Other details such as the inherent difficulty in making a film that isn't cringeworthy when the central figure is a child actor (The Phantom Menace) or the 1138 battle droids, who are supposed to be in some capacity an imposing military force, walking around acting like characters from a National Lampoon's military spoof.

That said, and it would seem against popular opinion, I actually quite liked Hayden Christensen though not totally. I felt he pulled off many of the more brooding, dark scenes quite well. I had no problem with the whole cast really, but Hayden Christensen tends to be viewed as the weak link.

I won't respond to every bit of your post (because honestly I'm not as steeped in Star Wars as I used to be, Warhammer 40k fandom will do that to you) but you mentioned the books, especially the Del Rey prints. Are these the ones you mean?

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I haven't actually read them yet, I assumed they'd just be novelizations of the original films thus not of much importance, was I wrong?
 
Fantastic!
Thanks!

I feel the same, to a degree. I think one of the biggest issues plaguing the prequels was Jar Jar Binks, who tarnished any semblance of depth or artistic integrity in those films. It's hard to appreciate an epic battle sequence (Battle of Naboo) when you have Jar Jar Binks essentially acting out his own version of Earnest Defeats The Trade Federation.
That's a pretty apt description of his role in that battle. :tickled:

Yeah, an opinion I've always held in regards to the prequels (even when I was much younger) is that if they focused more on the world and the characters that aren't meant to be a joke, then TPM would have been a much stronger film. There's even a novel by James Luceno called Cloak of Deception which does just that by being a set-up novel for The Phantom Menace.

Other details such as the inherent difficulty in making a film that isn't cringeworthy when the central figure is a child actor (The Phantom Menace) or the 1138 battle droids, who are supposed to be in some capacity an imposing military force, walking around acting like characters from a National Lampoon's military spoof.
To be fair, that was somewhat mitigated with the other armor and infantry they added like the droidekas, the super battle droids, the spider droids, the Vulture-class droid starfighter in Revenge of the Sith, and others. With Jake Lloyd...yeah, it probably could have been handled differently.

That said, and it would seem against popular opinion, I actually quite liked Hayden Christensen though not totally. I felt he pulled off many of the more brooding, dark scenes quite well. I had no problem with the whole cast really, but Hayden Christensen tends to be viewed as the weak link.
He was actually really good in any scene involving pure emotion. Pretending like Hayden was the only one that fell victim to the direction of the dialogue has to be deluding themselves. If anything, the two actors that played prominent characters that got out mostly unscathed was Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid.

I won't respond to every bit of your post (because honestly I'm not as steeped in Star Wars as I used to be, Warhammer 40k fandom will do that to you) but you mentioned the books, especially the Del Rey prints. Are these the ones you mean?

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I haven't actually read them yet, I assumed they'd just be novelizations of the original films thus not of much importance, was I wrong?
I didn't just mean the novelizations but the actual Expanded Universe material that covers events that aren't featured in the films. That being said, the OT novelizations do have some "extra stuff". I actually quite prefer the PT novelizations to those because there is just more story to the prequel trilogy that would warrant an entire novel.
 
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I agree about the Legend status of the old canon for sure. I've read alot (ALOT) of Star Wars comics and one thing I really liked about the whole thing has been how alive it feels, stories that (to an extent) are cordinated and places into a continuum. When everything I read can matter in later stories and things really are definite. When they suddenly doesn't matter anymore it kind of takes the air out of it.

The Star Wars comic that I probably like the most is The Thrawn Trilogy, and I think it is for two reasons. First it is a novel-adaption which makes the story very non-comic booky. ALOT of SW-comics suffers from the writers being used to super heroes and general thropes of DC and marvel, which makes alot of the characters, and stories just super heroes in space (the Disney reboot is really plagued by this). The story is well thought out with interesting characters that really fit the Star Wars saga.
The second thing is the art style which also is a big problem for alot of especially modern SW-comics. The super flashy and vibrat colors and gimmicky character portrayals just feels really off. It can work in pre-equals because of the tone of those movies but stories with the classic crew of Luke, Han etc should have this dirty archaic feel to it which the original , which the original trilogy gets from not using computer generated effects. The comic version of Thrawn Trilogy captures this perfectly.