Chad’s Comments (group member since Mar 22, 2018)

Chad’s comments from the I Read Comic Books group.

This week I've read:


Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 2: Friends and Foes - Just OK.
She Could Fly - Disappointing. The first of Karen Berger's new comics book line.
New X-Men: Academy X - The Complete Collection - Terrible, high school melodrama only suited for tween girls.
Superman: Dawnbreaker - Surprisingly good YA take on Superman. This is prose, not a comic.
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs 4 - Mike Mignola is one of my favorite creators. Using these omnibuses to go back and read these again in chronological order.
The Mask Omnibus Volume 1 - Dated but much darker and graphically violent than the movie.
Berserk Deluxe Volume 1 - A rare foray into Manga for me. I dug it.
Polar, Vol. 4: The Kaiser Falls - A homage to Sin City.
Green River Killer: A True Detective Story - Decided to check this out after hearing Mike talk about it on the show. It's disturbing how disconnected the killer is from reality.

Adam wrote: "How is Babyteeth? It's been on my radar for a while, but I haven't had a chance to pick it up and would love to hear anything about it. "

Babyteeth is Donny Cates best work IMO. It's about a teenager who gives birth to the antichrist. All these cults are after her while her sister and dad are just trying to keep her and her baby safe.

Being one of the resident Valiant shills in this group (although Nick probably tops that list.), I went ahead and bought this over the weekend. $60 for every Valiant comic through 2018 on a USB stick. It works out to about 10 cents a comic. Now I've got to wait to May to get it.

https://www.newsarama.com/44546-buy-a...

Nancy wrote: "I wasn't a fan of Aphra, but I seem to be in the minority. Are we supposed to root for her? Is she a scoundrel like Han or she evil because she seems to enjoy working with Vader?"

If we were playing D&D, I'd say her alignment is chaotic neutral. Sometimes she helps, sometimes she's selfish, but she always makes a mess.

Over the weekend I read:

The Magic Order Coipel's art is sublime. The best thing Millar's written in awhile.
Kingsman, Vol 2: The Red Diamond Garbage
Bird Boy Vol. 1: the Sword of Mali Mani A wonderfully inventive all ages tale. Beautifully illustrated
Superman, Vol. 7: Bizarroverse A fond farewell to my favorite Superman run in years.
Cyber Force: Awakening Volume 1 A reboot of Cyber Force. Still not very good.
The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Suite Revisited this before watching the TV series. Very Grant Morrison Doom Patrolly.
Gideon Falls, Vol. 2: Original Sins Still hasn't reached it's potential, given the creative team involved. Needs to pick up the pace.
Batman: Ego and Other Tails A gorgeous darwyn Cooke retrospective of his Batman comics work.

The wife and I went and saw Shazam! tonight. We both thought it was a lot of fun. Zachary Levi is perfect as Shazam. Surprisingly, no Rock appearance but he was listed as an executive producer. There is a mid credits and a post credits scene. I did find it odd to be watching a Captain Marvel movie with the other Captain Marvel movie playing next door. And Djimon Honsou is in both movies as well.

I hope you know what you are getting into if we select My Favorite Thing is Monsters. It's a monster in size as well as name. That thing is huge and dense. It took me a few weeks to get through it.

Will wrote: "Swamp Thing, Volume 5: The Killing Field by Charles Soule"

Will, I don't think this fits this month's criteria. Soule's first comic was Strongman.

Corbier wrote: "Because apparently it's Hellboy Day tomorrow, this comic newbie has picked up Hell Boy Omnibus 1: Seed of Destruction."

Good choice. Hellboy is one of my all-time favorites. I just did a reread of all the Hellboy omnibuses and just started on all the BPRD ones. (BPRD is the main spinoff book of Hellboy.)

How has no one mentioned the Fantastic Four vs. Dr. Doom?

Nancy wrote: "I loved Revival and wrote endless posts about it on my blog. Then I won a contest run by Seeley and Norton and was drawn into the last issue as a doctor! You can see I use it as my Goodreads profile. I will talk about this honor until my dying day. "

That is extremely cool. I am officially jealous.

Adam wrote: "Thanks for the heads up! I'll be at c2e2 that weekend and it might be fun to see it in Chicago. "

Oooh, I'm jealous. I expect a full report back. I've never gone to C2E2.

Interesting. I thought the movie version was far better than any Captain Marvel comic I've ever read. And I've read all except the original 70's run of Ms. Marvel.

So what's everyone think about Captain Marvel now that everyone's had a chance to see it? I know it's receiving some mixed reviews (although a lot of those seem to be stemming from the fact that Captain Marvel is a woman for some stupid reason). While I had a couple of nitpicks, I thought it was great. Brie Larson was amazing. I can't wait to see her in Endgame. I absolutely love how they came full circle with the Stan Lee cameo. Having him rehearse lines for Mallrats was a stroke of genius. I also dug all the female-centric 90's power pop.

I'm not sure if anyone here cares, but DC is having advanced screenings for the other Captain Marvel movie, Shazam! next Saturday, March 23rd. That's two weeks before the movie comes out. Tickets are available on Fandango. www.Fandango.com/shazamearlyaccess I just picked mine up.

Corbier wrote: "Chad wrote: "this is all you need to read"
But what if I wanted to read all the garbage. How can I find what comes before a certain series?"

Here's all the volumes of that run of Green Arrow. The War of the Clans edition you have collects volumes 4-6 into one large book.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/8469...

The users here have created these series pages to make it easier to find the books in a series. You can find them by going to any single volume. There's a link to the series page after the title of a book on the book page in grey. If you scroll down there's also a Series field that lists all the different series a book is a part of.

Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man is fantastic. I recommend the entire run. It's so much fun.

I never worked at a comic shop but I was offered one for $1. I became good friends with my local comic shop owner over the years and he eventually decided to part with it. He was just going to give it to me as long as I kept it open. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out at the time how to keep the shop open and still keep my full time job where I worked 2nd shift. Plus, I was still a dumb kid in my early 20's. I wish I had that opportunity again now that I'm more established.

Corbier wrote: "So, on my list is Jeff Lemire's Green Arrow: War of the Clans but it looks like something comes before that. As a complete comic illiterate, I don't understand how and where to find what comes prio..."

Corbier, this is all you need to read. This is Jeff Lemire's entire run on the title. The previous stories were pretty much unrelated and frankly, garbage. When Lemire came on, he sent the book off on a completely new direction.

Corbier wrote: "Devon wrote: "So what kind of genres do you like?"
I don't know yet. I have lined up the following though:

Beowulf by Santiago Garcia, David Rubin
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, David Lloyd
Green A..."

Beowulf and Green Arrow are great. I'm curious what you think about V for Vendetta. It's very much a product of 80's British politics and can feel dated at times. If you like Beowulf, you should check out David Rubin's The Hero, Vol. 1. It's a modern retelling of Heracles's Twelve Labors. I'm a big fan of Rubin's.