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Comic Books Comic Book • Page 173

Discussion in 'Entertainment Forum' started by Melody Bot, Mar 13, 2015.

  1. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    If you wanna dig into the classics, the main writer you wanna look at is Chris Claremont. His style is very verbose, but his stories are basically all of the X-Men's most iconic classics. The two best stories to look at would be the Dark Phoenix Saga and God Loves Man Kills.

    Speaking of Claremont, his New Mutants run is some of my favorite classic Marvel work. There's a big Epic Collection trade that just came out or is almost out that covers the whole first stretch of the series, which I definitely recommend checking out.

    For more modern runs, my favorite is probably New X-Men by Grant Morrison. Really cool, big, epic story that's a lot of fun. Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, and Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron, are the other two modern X-Men runs that deservedly get a lot of love.

    I also gotta mention Brian Michael Bendis' Uncanny X-Men run, which gets a lot of hate, but which I personally loved. Centers on Cyclops, who is at his lowest and trying to lead a sort of mutant revolution. It ran parallel to Bendis' All-New X-Men (starring the time-displaced original X-Men), but you can also just read the Uncanny trades and be fine. All-New was a lot more crossover-dependent and not as good.

    As for current... Marvel just wrapped up a big storyline where the X-Men and the Inhumans clashed over a cloud. It didn't really work out all that well creatively, to say the least. lol. But, they have a big brand overhaul called ResurrXion that looks really cool. If you have any interest in dabbling in single issues, check some of these titles out when they hit shelves: RESURRXION SPOTLIGHT SAMPLER previews upcoming X-Men and Inhumans titles - ComicList
     
  2. Henry

    Moderator Moderator

    Claremont is way too wordy. Reading him is like reading a novel.
     
  3. St. Nate

    LGBTQ Supporter (Lets Go Bomb TelAviv Quickly) Prestigious

    I like the cyclops who ran an island better than the one who led a revolution.
     
  4. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    Some people like reading novels. I mean, I don't, but some people do!

    But, yeah, depends on the story. Some things I've read just fine, while others are pretty exhausting.
     
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  5. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    Bendis' Cyclops is forever my fav. I just feel like I consistently agreed with all his actions and speeches, and felt for him when nobody was on his side. Revolutionary Cyclops hit the sweet spot of caring about human life, but also not being scared of violence to protect those who needed it.

    I also binged that run a week after the election, so I tend to picture him using his concussive eye beams on Nazis, lol.
     
    St. Nate likes this.
  6. DeRRek

    Trusted

    Thanks a lot Tim. That's more than enough to keep me going. I will definitely check all these out. I love cyclops so sounds like uncanny x-men might be up my street. Also like the sound of wolverine and the x-men and grant morrison's run too. I have only read arkham asylum by Morrison but I really enjoyed. Pretty weird but I thought it was great. Have you read old man Logan?
     
  7. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    Cyclops from Astonishing X-Men through the moment just before Bendis took over was probably some of my favorite stuff with the character ever. I loved the idea of Schism so much and thought tons of great stories came out of that. Cyclops as revolutionary was great in the hands of Aaron and Gillen.

    But Bendis made the X-Men unreadable for me.
     
  8. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    I have. My feelings on the original story are mixed, since I think it's a really cool take on the character, but there are things in the story I personally don't love. There's a lot that I really like about it, though. That Logan is the one who lives in the main continuity now (due to interdimentional comic stuff), with an ongoing Old Man Logan series that, based on the little bit of it I've read, is really good.

    What don't you like about the Bendis Cyclops? He's such a fascinating, engaging character.
     
    DeRRek likes this.
  9. scottlechowicz Mar 15, 2017
    (Last edited: Mar 15, 2017)
    scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    Bendis' writing. I'm really not a fan of how he writes. I think revolutionary cyclops is all those things you mentioned, but Bendis doesn't write my preferred version of that character.

    And I hated the time travel story more than just about anything. I stuck with Uncanny and All New for as long as I could stomach it, but at 3.99 per issue I only made it about 12 issues in before I loathed myself enough to finally quit buying a book I hated.

    Edit: How long did Bendis get to write adult Cyclops, anyway? I'm getting the events all screwed up. Was it like a year? Or 2?
     
  10. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    Meh, whatever. lol. Bendis is fantastic when he has the right character (far more inconsistent when it comes to team books), and his handling of Cyclops was wonderful as far as I'm concerned. Great character study surrounded by fun comic book shenanigans.
     
  11. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    I love Bendis and I'm only about three volumes in on ANXM and Uncanny but I'm loving both. Maybe more than any other X-Men books I've read apart from Uncanny X-Force.
     
    Tim likes this.
  12. DeRRek

    Trusted

    Cool, well I'll get on online tonight and have a look. any suggestions on best one to start with? As far as keeping in with storylines etc. What would be best?
     
  13. Colby Searcy

    Is admired for his impeccable (food) tastes Prestigious

    Is Claremont worse than Bendis? Bendis seems to be pretty wordy from what I've read.
     
  14. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    Ultimate Spider-Man was fantastic. He wrote some solid Jessica Jones comics. And House of M had really interesting ideas, but wasn't particularly well executed.

    Outside of that, there isn't a writer that infuriates me more than Bendis. I find him to be pretty much unreadable.

    And the X-Men are my favorite thing about Marvel so it was a huge bummer when he took over. I gave it as fair of a shot as I could. I was rooting for him, because in my opinion the X-Men were in a fantastic spot when he took over. And I wanted that to continue. But i hated just about everything about it :/

    But I've pretty much abandoned Marvel entirely in the last few years, so maybe it's just me. I guess I just don't connect with what they are putting out anymore. Excerpt Vision, which was 10/10.
     
  15. Colby Searcy

    Is admired for his impeccable (food) tastes Prestigious

    Only Bendis I've read is Miles
     
  16. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    Claremont gives you more prose, essentially. Bendis gets crazy wordy with dialogue, that's where the word count rises. Claremont, writing in that kind of 80s or 90s style, gives you a lot of information from thought bubbles or an omnipotent narrarator.
     
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  17. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    If that had been my experience, I'd be a huge Bendis fan haha.
     
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  18. Colby Searcy

    Is admired for his impeccable (food) tastes Prestigious

    Gotcha, I haven't read much older comics from 80s, 90s, or 00s so this makes sense.

    Honestly not too interested in his other stuff but that's mainly because it seems daunting and I'm not familiar with MU very much.
     
  19. Henry

    Moderator Moderator

    In my experience, if you read Claremont without any of the images, you'd still know exactly what was going on. He very much tells the whole story via text.
     
  20. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    His Uncanny X-Men was 36 issues (including "#600"), and his All-New X-Men was 41 issues. I think it all came out over roughly two and a half years?

    I love Bendis' dialogue. He does such a weirdly good job of putting a lot of words in a character's mouth while still making it feel like light reading. His decompressed style is I think why his team books are less consistent, and it also causes much of his stuff to read better in trade (maybe I'd like his X-Men less if I read it monthly), but I love spending time with his characters. I said this the other day, but I'd eat up an X-title from him that 100% avoided action and was just straight-up soap opera, lol.

    For Old Man Logan? To get the whole story, read the original Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar. Then read the Bendis "Warzones!" miniseries from the Secret Wars event (premise: all realities have imploded and formed a patchwork planet called Battleworld). Then read the current ongoing series by Jeff Lemire, which starts with Old Man Logan ending up in our world.
     
    DeRRek likes this.
  21. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    Fair enough! I have the exact opposite reaction to his dialogue haha. It always feels false to me. It's the same problem I have with Aaron Sorkin on the film / tv side.

    And I love the soap opera stuff from X-Men. Which is why I had a glimmer of hope when he was taking over.

    I honestly think my reaction would be tempered if it weren't for the time traveling X-Men sticking around. If they had popped in for an arc, I'd have been ok. But I absolutely hate that they stuck around. it seemed like such a regression to all the cool steps forward the characters had made.

    Shifting gears, any thoughts on that brief run by Ed Brubaker several years back? I was not a fan when it first came out, but I recently revisited it and it actually clicked a little better.
     
  22. Tim

    grateful all the fucking time Supporter

    I don't mind them sticking around. I tend to really enjoy younger X-Men, and seeing Kitty Pryde lead her former elders was a fun dynamic. I get why the pseudo-reboot would be frustrating, but I think literally bringing the original team into today's chaos has a lot of potential. I like Marvel's recent "have their cake and eat it too" approach, which loosely resembles the old school DC legacy approach, though it certainly does need some streamlining (which I think will happen with whatever "Generations" is; some think it's another event, but I think it's another rebranding).

    Speaking of those time-displaced X-Men, while I think the upcoming story of them working with Magneto could be a cool dynamic, the biggest thing I'd love to see is them working with Old Man Logan. OML is already all over the place, but someone from a dystopian future mentoring a team from a more innocent past has a lot of potential.

    As for Brubaker's X-Men, I honestly forgot that he even wrote X-Men, lol. What's the premise of his run? I love his writing, so maybe I'd dig it, even if it's not one of the more well-received runs (I've already made my love for Bendis' run known, lol).
     
  23. as_we_learn

    Tomorrow's Just Too Late Prestigious

    Bendis' Daredevil, as much as I enjoy it, is wordy as fuck!
     
  24. Henry

    Moderator Moderator

    Is there a plan to take Carol out of space? I can't stand these last few books.
     
  25. scottlechowicz

    Trusted Supporter

    I don't know how spoiler-y you want me to get, so I will spoiler tag important stuff.

    So, his run began with Deadly Genesis, which was a mini event for the X-Books. Basically, it retconned Giant Sized X-Men #1, to include a team of X-Men who were killed, including Cyclops' third brother Vulcan. It turns out that Prof. X mind wiped Cyclops because he was so upset about the death. The truth is exposed because Vulcan is not dead and returns. To sum up in an unspoiler-y way, there are dark secrets that Prof. X tried to cover up that are coming back to haunt him and Scott is at the center of it.

    Brubaker's run flows from that. Vulcan travels to the Shi'ar Empire to take revenge for the death of his mother by the Shi'ar. It is a 12 part arc. It is far more superhero-y than most of Brubaker's stuff. And it features a lot of Summers family drama. And I love the Shi'ar, so that is always a plus for me.

    It isn't great, but it certainly wasn't the trainwreck I initially thought it was haha.