New Comic Magazine hits the stands

[STARBOY]

At long last Mike Conroy and his team have produced a successor to Comics International called "Mulitiverse" at £2.50 (don't like the name to be honest) Although it deals predominately with US comics there's still a few items of news on UK books (sadly some of it not good with news of lots of intended "Best offs" being cancelled/put on the back burner, then again news of a new graphic novel shop opening soon in Glasgow) - very nice looking package and good to see a regular fan/magazine back on sale (I really missed Comics International) Lets just hope it meets its deadlines. Well worth a read for those interested in comics from US, Europe and UK

[Lew Stringer]

I mentioned it a while ago on my blog. I hope Peter and Digi aren't the only people here who follow my blogs.
http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... verse.html

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2010/12 ... -snow.html

[STARBOY]

I'm also a regular reader of your excellent blog Lew, just noting Multiverse is now in the (specialist comic) shops for those not up to date with the comics/blog reading during the holiday as I had thought it was due out in November & thought I had missed it.

[stevezodiac]

At the risk of sounding like Uncle Albert - back in the olden days the US comic universe was easily manageable with no more than two titles to a character. Now when I go into Forbidden Planet I am befuddled by the sheer number of titles available as well as all the different publishers. How does one follow US comics nowadays? Even if you just stick to the silver age characters there are still dozens of titles. There should be some decluttering of the lines. Also I bought the last two issues of Marvel Legends but found that my two favourite characters Cap and Iron Man just didn't interest me any more. There was no warmth to the writing. It was too clinical and came across as laboratory produced. I preferred the simplicity of the past i'm afraid. As a 54 year old I suppose my opinion is typical?

[STARBOY]

I have to admit to liking Captain America now (despite Bucky now being Cap etc), very well written and illustrated (especially the Epting artwork) Iron Man I cant get into at all as you say no warmth to that character. I did like the Ultimates line but thats started to get a bit muddied up (to me at least) - I still prefer the old Cap stories by Englehart etc and the run with Romita, Colan and Sal Buscema excellent stuff all very dated now but it was fun. The Dark Avengers are good (great art) - X-Men Ive given up on I think Prof X has snuffed it again. Overall though some great comics out there if you can get a chance to read them - some utter tosh as well (as always). The FF is very good at present especally the ones being reprinted in the Pannin CE titles - and seemingly one of the four is to get killed/maimed - yeah right!!) but Im gled I was brought up on the late 60s - 75 titles so much fun.

[Lew Stringer]

At the risk of sounding like Uncle Albert - back in the olden days the US comic universe was easily manageable with no more than two titles to a character. Now when I go into Forbidden Planet I am befuddled by the sheer number of titles available as well as all the different publishers. How does one follow US comics nowadays? Even if you just stick to the silver age characters there are still dozens of titles. There should be some decluttering of the lines. Also I bought the last two issues of Marvel Legends but found that my two favourite characters Cap and Iron Man just didn't interest me any more. There was no warmth to the writing. It was too clinical and came across as laboratory produced. I preferred the simplicity of the past i'm afraid. As a 54 year old I suppose my opinion is typical?

I've been following American comics since the 1960s but I've cut back a lot recently, basically because I've seen it all before. They can dress up the plots differently but the basics are the same.

The only current Marvel comics I buy are Spider-Man (good writing from Dan Slott), Captain America (great scripts by Ed Brubaker), Avengers Academy, and the new Spider-Girl series seems interesting too. I was following the Hulk, Avengers, and a bunch of other titles but I think I've gotten to the age where either repetition or poor writing has put me off.

I pick up four of the Panini reprints every month though, just as a cheap way of keeping in touch with developments. (MWOM, Avengers Unconquered, FF Adventures, Essential X-Men).

I don't buy any DC comics now. They mix superheroes with a vicious writing style and it just doesn't work for me. (A silly villain like Dr.Light becoming a rapist for example.) It's like they're trying to be grown up but from the perspective of a 13 year old boy. (Horror comics of the 1950s handled things with much more maturity.) I think they've completely missed the point of what Watchmen and The Dark Knight were saying. As for their incredibly over-long Blackest Night/Brightest Day story arcs; life is too short to care.

I'd say I'm not the target audience but I don't think American comics know who their target audience is these days. Hardcore fans with enough disposable income to buy 150 comics a month perhaps?

I tend to buy reprints of old material now, and this year has seen a lot of books showcasing old American comics. Long may they continue.

[stevezodiac]

US comics should take a tip from the likes of the Bash Street Kids, still in class 2B after 50 odd years, it makes the continuity simpler. I know it is hard to keep a character fresh after 40 years or so but I prefer the alter egos to still be Barry Allen, Hal Jordan and Steve Rogers etc. Once someone else takes over the cape you might as well kill them off. (although those three don't wear capes). 60s band the Swinging Blue Jeans are still playing live but with no original members - so they are not the Swinging Blue Jeans. Is Ray Palmer still the Atom or has that character vanished? - haven't seen him for years.

[Digifiend]

Ray Palmer as the Atom is in the recent Blackest Night story arc.
http://www.comicvine.com/atom/29-2352/

As for Bash Street, they should've changed their form number decades ago. 2B refers to the second year of Junior High school, right? Nowadays, it would be year 6 of primary school, so the code should now be 6B.

[tony ingram]

US comics should take a tip from the likes of the Bash Street Kids, still in class 2B after 50 odd years, it makes the continuity simpler. I know it is hard to keep a character fresh after 40 years or so but I prefer the alter egos to still be Barry Allen, Hal Jordan and Steve Rogers etc. Once someone else takes over the cape you might as well kill them off. (although those three don't wear capes). 60s band the Swinging Blue Jeans are still playing live but with no original members - so they are not the Swinging Blue Jeans. Is Ray Palmer still the Atom or has that character vanished? - haven't seen him for years.

Ray Palmer is still the Atom, and occasionally shows up in the odd backup feature. Hal Jordan and Barry Allen are both back, too. DC currently seems to be trying to reinstate a lot of the Silver Age mythology (completely undoing John Byrne's 80s Superman revamp for instance).

[chrissmillie]

Nothing wrong with change as long as it's good change (after all, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan aren't the originals, with the JSA members still around and popular today). Wally West was a far more rounded character than Barry Allen, with a more interesting personality and social life. Plus Barry died in one of the greatest deaths comics has had. I saw no clamour for him to return. Hal Jordan was a poor death and a badly written Spectre (despite the terrific Doug Moench writing him). Yet, Green Lantern (given there's already a multitude of the Corps) should have been the easiest to re-write.

I hold my hands up to being wrong about Bucky returning. Ed Brubaker - who's really a crime noir writer putting a mask on his characters - has produced some real quality. His Cap Bucky seems more to me like the 60s Steve Rogers Cap than the one that's been around for the last 20 years. A man out of time, trying to figure out his life in this new America. Rogers basically gave up his civilian life a good few years ago. I was quite happy for Steve to remain dead - and they still haven't said how Thor could talk to a dead Steve if he wasn't actually dead.

With US comics, there's no use producing them for kids if they're only distributed to comic shops. For many comics, the writing is spot on for adults and the art has never been better (especially with regard to colouring). For me, the big problem is the length of story-arcs and sheer proliferation of titles. Having something that brings together 7 years of arcs is plain silly. No point buying a comic 2 years in with another 5 to go. And which one do you go for? Way too many comics.

Unfortunately, these story-arcs are either the brainchild of Bendis (Marvel) or Morrison (DC). Bendis is great on the more 'soap opera' characters of Daredevil or Luke Cage but it completely falls down when tackling bigger-than-life characters like Captain America or Thor. Morrison, meanwhile, is terrific on weird, dark stuff but overcomplicates (to a ridiculous degree) on basic superheroics, so as to be unreadable.

[philcom55]

The thing that drives me mad about the 'story arcs' now being produced for most US comics (generally intended to be collected as graphic novels) is that they are misadvertised as 'six-part stories' when they nearly always end with a huge cliffhanger!

Though I don't follow many superhero titles from DC or Marvel anymore, however, I'm a big fan of Vertigo's excellent Fables which has been drawn by the British artist Mark Buckingham for most of its run.

- Phil Rushton

[felneymike]

Somebody i "know" vaguely on the internet had a short strip published in a US comic called "I Am An Avenger", so i thought i'd get it today. There was about 15 titles about The Avengers but not the one i was looking for!

Then again, if they didn't have so many titles would they ever have found room for an artist who was previously only self-publishing to contribute a strip?

[STARBOY]

The Blackest Day series by DC has run across about 50 plus titles (probably considerably more) it's out of control and I doubt many comic readers would actually enjoy such a long drawn out story arc. I hate the way a lot of characters have been brought into the so called "real world" making them rapists, murderers, abusers, alcoholics etc I thought comics were about escapism, heroes and good v bad.... and ideally for kids (so old gits like me could also read understand and enjoy them lol) thats what happens when fanboys become writers IMHO . - Don't get me wrong some excellent strips out there as previously noted (Daredevil, Cap America, Iron Fist, FF, The DARK Avengers, Gary Franks run on Superman and Jonah Hex are always pretty good reads. Like Lew and others I buy less and less most out of habit that are barely opened. Last year I started reading old books from the 70s from the back issue shop ones I missed first time around like Kamandi, Warlock, Weird Worlds, Freedom Fighters etc some real rubbish but a lot really good fun (and cheap about 50p each).

[Lew Stringer]

I hate the way a lot of characters have been brought into the so called "real world" making them rapists, murderers, abusers, alcoholics etc I thought comics were about escapism, heroes and good v bad.... and ideally for kids (so old gits like me could also read understand and enjoy them lol) thats what happens when fanboys become writers IMHO

You're right. I've long felt that some writers are just writing superheroes for themselves, so to justify that they try to make the situations more adult. Sadly it comes across as emotionally and socially stunted material written like a 13 year olds idea of the adult world.

They're not all like that of course. Some are just having fun with the idea of writing superheroes and I think we're slowly getting back to that and away from writers who badly and inappropriately imitate the grittier aspects of Frank Miller and Alan Moore's work.

Perhaps one day Superman will be enjoyable to read again, but not while they keep trying to, literally, ground him in reality. I'm sure others will disagree but I've read Superman stories from every decade and I don't think the comic has really been much cop since the very early 1960s. He's a ludicrous character and the only way he works is to play along with that IMHO, not to fight against it and try in vain to make him more realistic.

This isn't nostalgia talking. My era of reading Superman was the 1970s but I still think the 1950s/early 60s stories are the ones where the concepts and characters worked best.

[Digifiend]

Panini and Titan could double their Marvel and DC Collectors Edition ranges and there'd still be plenty of titles they wouldn't have room to reprint. It's almost impossible to keep up with the superhero comics. Even if you stick to one character or team (X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man and Superman are examples), there's still often half a dozen titles to buy every month, it's insane. And Blackest Night was in 50 titles? That'd be an expensive one to collect then.