Forum 2.0

The Micronauts #53 & 54: Homage, Plagiarism and other Crimes against Humanity

The most striking element of issues 53 and 54 of volume 1 of The Micronauts is the old Star Trek cliché of an alien world where the inhabitants dress, talk and behave like Depression-era Chicago gangsters. In this case it is a prison world, called …

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Subtractions by Fractions

I see over on the Baron's Original Sin thread, people are yet again pondering why yet another Marvel crossover has characters we used to love, and who used to work well together, snarling at each other and having pissing competitions regarding who is

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Appreciating the Little Things - The Micronauts issues 51 - 52

The beginning of the end of Mantlo’s Micronauts.

 

I had a lot of fun reviewing the first 50 issues of Bill Mantlo’s Micronauts comics, but as happens in many comics discussion threads, I dropped off along the way and never did get around to finish

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Journey Into Mystery Vol 1 - The Weekly TPB

(Collects Journey Into Mystery #622-626)

Writer: Kieron Gillen

Artist: Doug Braithwaite

Journey Into Mystery was relaunched in 2010 with issue 622. In it, Kieron Gillen took the reborn ‘Kid Loki’ and made him the star of a highly entertaining, and r

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For those who arrived late... The DC One Million Blogs

There's been a few changes around here since I started my epic series of blog posts on DC One Million, the September 1998 mega-crossover.

 

The bigeroonie is that what used to be blog-posts have now largely slipped into the ether.  New discussions of

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The Trial of Atom-Smasher and the winding down of JSA volume 1 (JSA #76)

I was trying to keep up with the Baron’s Justice Society thread, but a long break at Christmas away from my comics and/or a keyboard made me fall behind, and then I found it very hard to work up the enthusiasm to get back into the Johnsian Sturm und

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Justice, Society, and America on the Slippery Slope (JSA # 45-51)

Some final thoughts on how DC’s JSA comics addressed the early years of the ‘War on Terror’.  This third column will focus on how the Princes of Darkness storyline looked forward to what it would involve in the longer term.

 

JSA #41 – 51 (published

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The Justice Society of America Vs the War on Terror (JSA #41-42)

Or

 

The Interpretation of Art

 

Or

 

The Art of Interpretation

 

So begins a fascinating set of interconnected storylines that DC published in JSA, between December 2002 and September 2003. JSA was a comics series that gave us the latest incarnati

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The Justice Society of America - With Ra on Our Side. (JSA #43-44)

In my last article The Justice Society of America vs the War on Terror, I argued that issues 41 and 42 of JSA, published in late 2002, added up to a rather rueful look at the build-up to the war in Iraq, which would begin in 2003. The message only co

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Pray for a Resurrection - DC One Million Epilogue, part II

This is the penultimate post in a series examining Grant Morrison’s "DC One Million" crossover of 1998. Somewhat puzzlingly, its rich crop of new characters and concepts were infrequently used between their appearance in September 1998, and the infam

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Aztek - the Ultimate Man

(These are reposts of a 'discussion' I originally begun on July 22, 2009.  Aztek is something of the black sheep of Morrison's DC superhero work, not getting much love, so I thought it worthwhile giving him a bit more exposure on the old webz.  It's

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POW! ZAP! BLAM! Comics definitely aren't for regular people anymore...

Here is the first of three links that I thought worth sharing, on where "mainstream" superhero comics stand today.

 

It's from the Wall Street Journal, and is ostensibly a review of a book about comics creators called called Leaping Tall Buildings, b

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Back to Fabletown.

As referred to on Cap's blog, here are some of the posts that I put up as I read my way through Bill Willingham's Fables epic.  

 

I saved them before all the Vertigo Discussion group was closed down.

 

Having read 70+ issues, I couldn't take any mor

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Batman: Gothic

[An analysis of Morrison's first official Batman story.  I originally posted this in a since-axed Morrison Group.  I posted it on July 15 2009 and have to report that I am still making my way through Morrison's output.  See the Morrison Reading Proje

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Animal Man (1988)

Animal Man

Issues #1-5. (Sep 88)

 

[Another installment in our ongoing Morrison Reading Project.  This was originally posted on 21 June 2009 (and had to be moved here when the Groups were about to be shut down).  Some discussion on the first 5 issues

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The New Supergirl

Looking at Lee's list now, the one that interests me most as a concept is Supergirl.  Sad to think that when Supergirl launched in 2005 to such hype and fanfare, she quickly went from being an oversexualised laughing stock to a badly managed, largely

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Reading Siege

So I've started reading Siege, the Marvel event which ran through the Winter-Spring of 2009-2010.

 

I thought I kind of owe it to myself to read to the end of Siege, as I'd bought into Marvel Comics in a big way, from Civil War all the way through t

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Six Decades of Separation - Adam Strange

I thought it’d be interesting to follow the Adam Strange concept over the years by focusing on one or two stories in each decade of his existence.  Principally, I want to examine what makes him ‘tick’ as a character – what can we get from an Adam Str

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(Not Just) Morrison's Doom Patrol

More of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol

- Including  a Guided Tour of Doom Patrols Past led by Mr Morrison himself.

 

This is a revival of a series of posts on DC’s favourite team of lovable misfits that I left off in October 2009.

 

We’ve already look

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ROM - Spaceknight!

I recently got my hands on a run of Rom comics from 7-24 plus a smattering of other issues.  I can add these to my copies of #40-60 plus a few others that I already had.

 

So far, I’ve read up to the end of issue 18, which went a little bit like this

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