If this is sarcasm, it just went over my head. I’ll probably sleep on this…
Lapham’s gonna write and draw a new ongoing series at Vertigo.
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=140017
Guess P.Gabby can’t wait for the TRADE, BABY. …or can he?
I saw that, and yes I can. Wagner and Lapham ongoings at vertigo…who woulda thought
(now if they would only ditch them to do grendel and stray bullets…)
Wagner is doing a Grendel miniseries, though. I think the first issue might’ve come out already. If not, it should be dropping soon.
Zephy, I heard Brian Wood’s attached to a new Vertigo title that’s not viking related. WHAT IS THE DEAL!?!
yeah but its some bs hunter rose mini…i want an ongoing that picks up where devil quest or grendel tales left off, dammitt
Stuff I’ve been reading during the holidays:
Punisher MAX: Kitchen Irish - Don’t really know what to say about this one except that it was awesum and messed up and stuff.
Punisher MAX: Widowmaker - Awesum as well, and epic. After reading this, Kitchen Irish and Slavers I’m going to pretty much endeavour buy all volumes. Is Marvel Knights Punisher as good as the MAX-series? Garth Ennis wrote those too, I believe.
Annihilation: Book 1 - lol Nova Corps = GL Corps. Book 1 was nice and fairly straight-forward. Everything was paced well and they introduced all new characters and backstories in a nice manner. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it didn’t really feel like the first book in a trilogy. The whole TPB seemed more like one big prologue. Will the story change, pace and/or develop dramatically in Book Two? Because it didn’t really mark me out, it was just a nice decent, typical space invasion type of story.
By the way, I think Nova would’ve been a better"Sentry" than Sentry himself. They should retcon that emo out of existence and replace him with Nova.
Batman: Year One - I finally got around reading this. I know it’s up there with DKR and perhaps Watchmen but at first, it didn’t meet my expectations. But that’s because I had the wrong expectations. First, I thought it would cover Bruce’s time in Asia and the rest of the world, before he would return to Gotham. Second, I thought it had about as many pages as DKR.
However, in hindsight, after going through it a second time, it’s one of the best ones I’ve read. The art and writing gives it a dark, but “innocent” atmosphere. It defined Batman (and Gotham); gave them a soul that’s been seeping through all the other stories ever since; something that I came to realize after reading Dark Victory.
Batman: Dark Victory - I obviously couldn’t let this slip by after reading Long Halloween. What I like most about LH and DV is the art. Sale manages to make everything so dead, dull, subtle and cold. Loeb complements it with his equally, stern cold way of writing dialogues. I always imagine that if this would be a movie, then the movie wouldn’t have any soundtrack whatsoever, which gives it some kind of genuine, down-to-earth impression. Can’t explain it really.
I didn’t mind the art in Hush first, but after LH and DV, and having an epiphany from reading the recent discussion in the Batman-thread, I can’t get used to Jim Lee’s way of drawing Batman. I mean, I can imagine Lee’s Alberto Falcone for example, being an empty shell on steroids, in lack of a better analogy.
Anyway, Dark Victory was great. While it held one in suspense for a little too long -and then revealing everything pretty much towards the very end - the ending was, damn epic. They also portrayed and developed Grayson’s character really well, and they did that without him interferring all too much in the main plot. I’m also really glad I read Year One before Dark Victory. It established the foundations that the story rests on, which makes one understand it on a significantly deeper level.
The Annihilation books were pretty good I thought, but I can see what you mean about book 1. Book 2 is more of the actual conflict and fighting, 3 is resolution pretty much.
Kitchen Irish was one of my favorite stories for Punisher MAX (though they’re all good!)
I just picked up Earth X with a Border’s gift card i got (they didn’t have too much to pick from), anyone liked it? I haven’t started it yet.
You can’t go wrong with anything that has Garth Ennis’ name on it. The Marvel Knights Punisher stuff is really different from the MAX series, but it’s an outstanding body of work. The tone is a lot more humorous and irreverent, but it’s very entertaining.
I really like Earth X. That’s probably one of my favorite Marvels. It’s one of those things you can read a bunch of times because there’s so much stuff packed in those pages. And that artwork is so amazing. The sequels to Earth X are pretty much self-indulgent crap that aren’t worth reading, but Earth X itself is a high point in Marvel’s bibliography.
Thanks for the heads up, starting it right now 
I want to thank trade paperbacks for essentially ruining Marvel Comics. If you ever wondered why a 2 to 3-part story could be stretched to 5 parts, 6 parts or even 12 parts that’s why. Trade paperbacks. When’s the last time a Marvel Comic even had a single issue story in one of their major ($$$) titles? I’d really like to know because I honestly don’t remember.
I tihnk it’s bullshit. I believe people would buy trades of stand-alones or 3-parters plus a few one-offs just as much as they do full-trade arcs. Look at Dini’s Batman for instance. What really sucks is this idea that EVERYTHING new has to be traded, when half of it is complete shit that should be forgotten. So instead of us getting first time tpb’s of some awesome material in the archives (like say the whole Iron Man “Stane” saga) we get ms. marvel in hardcover
I have a single issue of Sensational Spider-Man from 1996 that’s pretty good.
The solution is obvious: instead of cobbling together trades from single issues, just start doing more direct-to-trade stories. Anyone who still has a hard-on for GOOD serial storytelling (and really, how many of these people are left) can stick with it, and everybody who doesn’t want to chop up and pad out his story ideas to satisfy the requirements for the modern ongoing titles doesn’t have to. They can bypass the direct market and sell them in bookstores, the common man has access to good self-contained stories without the demands of continuity, the publishers and distributors don’t continue to lose money and readers on the dying pamphlet format, bada bing, everyone’s happy.
Yeah.
One thing that is limiting is how single issues are almost always 22 pages. That’s a pretty strict format that writers are forced to adhere to. There’s definitely an art to being able to tell a satisfying story in those 22 pages, but I really have no problem with a “To be continued” at the end of it as long as it keeps my interest.
Just because a story is continued in the next issue doesn’t mean it still can’t be satisfying on its own. Individual chapters of a serialized story can still be dense reads.
I really think people would still buy TPBs regardless of whether it was a collection of six one-parters or an entire six issue arc. It’s just the way of the future. We don’t really need Ms. Marvel in hardcover, but at least… Hmm, can’t really think of an upside to that. Oh, well.
an upside is that when you look at it you think “hey i’m going to save money by not buying that” 
Here’s an article P.Gabby would most likely approve:
Just now finished Earth X (had a busy weekend) and I thought it was really good! I loved the way it had X-51 and Uatu interact after each chapter and speculate, and the growing conflict between the two.
Quick question though, is this in the actual Marvel 616 universe?
Also I’m probably going to pick up the sequels to Earth X just out of curiousity, I won’t expect much though like you said 
I think Earth X is just some alternate future timeline. To quote Alan Moore, “It’s an imaginary story. Aren’t they all?”
If you get the Universe X and Paradise X books, I hope you switch to Geico so you can save a bunch of money.
good grendel article…too bad the incubation years wont be reprinted
"This is an imaginary story… aren’t they all?"
Just call me Uptight Fanboy Jerkass, saving the world from minor misquotes and other harmless errors wherever they may rear their inconsequential heads…