jn2 said:

I miss her.

JennaAngel said:

all the sex obsessed perverts of this site - at the exception of me - will orgnote ya with this avatar
-

if you like Alan Moore, go pick up the Captain Britian trade paperback that was put out in the last few years. it's very good, and a rare glimpse of seeing him doing some honest-to-goodness superhero stuff.

From Hell is also good. infinitely better than the film. the film that is ostensibly based upon the book, but which actually bears no more than a superficial resemblance to it.

miracleman

that was the shit


just had to wait a year for an issue was all but

worth the wait

Batman & Joker's The Killing Joke is great too
From Hell is also good. infinitely better than the film. I've started to brainwash brother, sisters & friends I want this for christmas
*
[This message was edited Sat Sep 6 12:15:45 PDT 2003 by jn2]

AaronSuperior said:

yes densly reasearched

v for vendeda was quite the study

a small killing if you can find it

Don't forget "The Ballad of Halo Jones" from 2000 AD

It's been so long since I've read Watchmen, mebbe it's time I read it again?

But while I don't deny it's impact on comics (in concert with Miller's Dark Knight from the same period), I wasn't particularly excited about the Watchmen then, nor am I a particular fan of Moore. The kinda comics and characters he writes about just doesn't really interest me much. But I'll read it again soon - see if maybe me being older now will be a factor that might change my experience of it.

ian said:

i have those in colected sets

too young to get the originals





i also have something he did

he drew it as well (hes actually quite the artist)


it was a comic strip i think

maxwell the cat or some such shit

scififilmnerd said:

I'm not particularly a fan of his either. It's a case-by-case basis with me.


And I'd argue that Watchmen didn't have that much of LASTING impact on comics. Dark Knight either. Yes, for a time, they did. But what they were doing with the re-imagining of the superhero had already been done with Wolverine in the late 70's / early 80's. For a time there, everything was pretty gritty, but things have shifted back to where they were (with a few exceptions: Punisher, Morrison's New X-Men, etc.).

AaronSuperior said:

what really has a lasting effect

if the mass of crap out now is an effect it must be the effect of Image and the waste that they laid upon the industry


image

.
[This message was edited Sat Sep 6 14:28:01 PDT 2003 by subyduby]

subyduby said:

heh heh I'll handle this, suby.

How about Frank Miller's Daredevil?

shausler said:

Ah I collected the original in 2000AD. It wasn't that long ago was it?

As for Aaron's comments... I'd disagree. Certainly on this side of the Atlantic, Moore was hugely influential. While all the US Marvel and DC stuff was very stuck in a rut with superheroes in spandex, it was more adult-themed strips in 2000AD and by Moore and the rest that paved the way for more grown-up graphic novels and comics. Even his work on Swamp Thing elevated the series to something a lot more credible. I'd even go so far to say that Moore's writing changed the way a lot people view comics.

2the9s said:

i was 16 when stick sacrafices himself to resurect electra

i rode my bike 6 miles to by that jumbo issue

those were the days my friend

ian said:

I agree with that. However, the majority of things put out today are not that influenced by Moore, except primarily on any books he's currently working on at any given moment. The industry is still dominated by the stuck-in-a-rut superheroes and spandex stories.

shausler said:

actually, it's not Image's fault. it's Marvel and DC's fault for turning over so much direction to the hot artists that then proceded to leave, putting them in the lurch.

that, plus the speculator boom of the late 80's and early 90's, and the big 2 doing everything they could to feed it with an infinite number of "collectors' editions" and die-cut foil covers on books that were just crap to begin with.

as well as marvels megalomaniacal act of buying the distributors outrite squashing so many awsome independent self printed books

AaronSuperior said:

Ah I see... I didn't know that. Last comic I bought was a long time ago Shame to hear that though...

shausler said:

And all that Secret Wars and crossover crap. Poorly done shit.

And they got a little mutant-happy too.

rob liefelds rendering of a foot


that killed the industy outright lol

or was that a hoof?

Dammit I just realised that I haven't seen my copy of Watchmen in about 10 years. So I'm gonna order a new copy on Amazon right now! Thanks for the reminder guys

it wasn't just Liefeld, although he is the one inexplicably given a lot of control, who had absolutely no talent for plotting or drawing (though he did come up with some decent characters -- Cable, Deadpool... before they got ruined, anyway).


love them or hate them, it's Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Erik Larsen, and Marc Silvestri combined that caused what happened. egomaniacle artists that thought they could write.


but the blame for all of it lays at one mane's feet: Bob Harras.

at least Larsen still does his thing

i give him that

2the9s said:

I actually liked Secret Wars.

It was Secret Wars II with all its crossovers that started a bad trend which was taken to its extreme with all the pointless Infinity this'n'that crossovers.

Thank goodness those days are over.

Unfortunately there now seems to be an even more disturbing trend - doing storyarcs intentionally designed for trade paperback collections. Trade Paperbacks sell in smaller amounts but have a higher profit for the companies because the artistic people were paid out of profits from the magazines.

I think stories really suffer, when a writer (like Geoff Johns on Avengers) is asked to stretch an intended three or four-issue story into six issues so it will fit a paperback. That way, the reader of those six issues do not get their money's worth, because they have to pay for six issues for a story that could have been told in less.

I know Chris Claremont is lambasted for being "too wordy", but I love him, because I always feel I get my money's worth from something he wrote, whereas comics that are read in five minutes is, like... "Is that it?"

Also, have you noticed how letters pages have disappeared? It doesn't matter what readers think anymore - all that matters is a story that fits in a trade and the editor and writer apparently do not need/want reader input in the direction of the books. And also, a result of this kind of storytelling seems to be a state of status quo. What has really happened in the Marvel Universe that has not been reverted back? Their characters aren't really growing long-term anymore. A writer can do anything he wants, because the next one will just undo it all anyway.

I miss eighties Marvel. I know Jim Shooter was a homophobe, but there was some damn good comics coming out during his tenure as editor-in-chief at Marvel. Also, thinks looked up a bit during Bob Harras' tenure, but under Joe Quesada, everything has just gone whack. I hate Quesada. What an arsehole - he ruined my Marvel Universe.

AaronSuperior said:

That's true.

AaronSuperior said:

Yes, as editor of the X-books he single-handedly ruined the X-Men, that's true.

But as editor-in-chief, it is my impression that he managed to raise the overall quality of Marvels entire output - which had fallen to dreadful depths. (His hiring of Claremont as an overseer in '96/'97 was a smart move that probably contributed majorly to the rise in quality too.)