I’ve recently re-thought about the comics I am buying, and a lot of them no longer fit into the realm of getting a good return of enjoyment.
Avengers (and really any Marvel Comic)
The recent relaunch of the Avengers group of books had me excited, but not at $4 each. Its kind of odd. At $2.99, I would have bought 1 or maybe even 2. At $3.99, I’ll buy none.
Legion of Super-Heroes
I like the Legion of Super-Heroes, the team. I enjoyed seeing them in the JLA/JSA cross-over. I bought the issues of Action Comics which followed up on that story. And I bought the new LSH title. Until I realized I was paying $3.99 an issue. Its kind of easy to miss when you are buying a bunch of comics every week. I know the price will go down, but its the principle of the thing. And then there is the fact that the stories were kind of dull and felt like retreads. Mind controlled Ultra Boy creating random destruction? Boring. Saturn Girl worried about her kidnapped kids? We already did that. One of them was sent back through time and became Validus. Besides, I wanted to read about the Legion, not their kids.
Adventure Comics
I read this for the Legion of SuperHeroes stories in the back. But this book ticked me off starting with issue 4. Instead of the Superboy story that had been running through issues 1, 2 and 3, we instead got a story of Superboy Prime. And then issue 5 we got Superboy Prime and a Superboy back up. Issue 6 nicely concluded the Superboy story, but with no Legion story. I should have dropped it at this point. I can no longer remember what happened in the book at this point. There was some strange Planet Krypton stuff for a few issues. And some weird back up story which made no point. Felt like a waste of paper (and money). I stayed until the Legion came back. But then they added the Atom feature (how pairing this with the Legion makes sense I don’t know) and the price went up to $3.99. Time to go. Way past time to go. Anyone want to buy issues 7 to whenever?
Justice League of America
The current team just does not feel like the Justice League. Kind of the same way the Detroit era team did not feel like the JLA. To me the League needs to be Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and a bunch of other heroes of their era. Wally and Kyle were fine while Hal and Barry were gone. But now I would expect to see Hal, John, and Barry. Filling the team with nothing but grown up Titans, Infinity Inc and barely heard of characters just does not work for me.
Titans
This book has the same problem as the current JLA comic. It features the wrong characters. Sure, Deathstroke and Chesire are villains who fought the Titans, but they are not Titans. And thanks for turning Speedy/Arsenal into a junkie murderer. Why would I want to read this? Anyone?
Green Arrow
Speaking of heroes turned murderers, the last run of Green Arrow was awful. It should have been cancelled at issue 14. A year of promoting another character (Cupid) at the expense of the main characters is just plain wrong. So we start the new series with Green Arrow shooting a guy’s nose off. Yeah. Not on my pull list.
Justice League Generation Lost
I was buying this. For 3/4 of its run. Then DC advertised the solicit that Jamie Blue Beetle was going to die. No, that he was dead. And Max killed him. I think they must have thought the parallel of Max killing a 2nd Blue Beetle was good story. I’m tired of writing in deaths of characters for "the good of the story". Recently Dan Didio was quoted in an interview that the new Blue Beetle was an example of a new character that fans have gravitated to. And now he’s dead. You can’t tell me Didio didn’t know that when he made that quote.
What is the point of new versions if they are just killed off? The Atom Ryan Choi is dead. Blue Beetle Jamie Reyes is dead. Aquaman Joseph Curry is MIA. Magog is dead. Why should I care about any of these new characters if they are just going to be cannon fodder?
Outsiders
Speaking of Didio, I hold him personally responsible for the death of Blue Beetle Ted Kord, the awful idea of Max Lord being out to kill all superheroes (instead of control them, which was his goal when introduced in 1987), the death of Rocket Red and any number of crazy moves / deaths in the past 7 or 8 years. So any book he writes is immediately dropped. Why would I support something written by him? I would not.
Birds of Prey
Now this is a book I usually like. I was thrilled to read that the cast was coming back under the writer who gave them such a great backing. Then they decided to do a story called "The Death of Oracle". After Blackest Night, DC needs to give this death thing a rest. After hearing about Jamie’s fate, I just said no to this story.
Batman Inc.
I usually stay away from Batman books. I know that the body count is going to be higher than I want. But I still remember Batman from my youth where he figured out the criminals next crime before it happened and there were no deaths, so every once in a while I go back in. I liked the idea of Batman working with Catwoman and the Batmen of the World idea. Looking back, I liked the interaction between Batman, Catwoman, and Unknown. The squid was cool too. I liked the new young Mr. Unknown. I think putting him in a Batman costume was weird. The problem is the way the original Mr. Unknown died was unnecessary. And it was right at the beginning of the story which soured the whole tale for me. End of experimenting with this series.
Green Lantern
What? One of DCs best selling books. I’ve been reading GL since the Rage of the Red Lanterns. In general, overall, I liked the story of the various lanterns and Blackest Night. I’m bummed we lost Tempest, but overall it was pretty good (Having Donna Troy destroy her own zombie kid was over the top). Reading the story of the entities in Green Lantern, a story that went on too long, made me realize I was reading the title for all the other characters. Hal Jordan is just plain boring as a character. Time to go.
Flash
Like Green Lantern, I realized the good stuff in this title was all the new stuff. The good versions of the Rogues from the future. The Rogues themselves. But Barry is dull as a doornail. Can anyone explain to me why we’ve sidelined Wally who is much more interesting? Maybe it depends on the writer. I wasn’t that into John’s run on the Wally Flash title either. In any case, Issue 6 was a fine jumping off point as it ended the first story and I do not care enough about the history of Capt Boomerang to pay to read it.
In general, some are too expensive, some have the wrong cast, some are too gory (I am sick and tired of heroes dying), and some have main characters that I find boring.
You’re an idiot.
“Avengers (and really any Marvel Comic)
The recent relaunch of the Avengers group of books had me exicted, but not at $4 each. Its kind of odd. At $2.99, I would have bought 1 or maybe even 2. At $3.99, I’ll buy none.”
So, buy one. Don’t worry about all of them.
“Justice League Generation Lost
I was buying this. For 3/4 of its run. Then DC advertised the solicit that Jamie Blue Beetle was going to die. No, that he was dead. And Max killed him. I think they must have thought the parallel of Max killing a 2nd Blue Beetle was good story. I’m tired of writing in deaths of characters for “the good of the story”. Recently Dan Didio was quoted in an interview that the new Blue Beetle was an example of a new character that fans ahve gravitated to. And now he’s dead. You can’t tell me Didio didn’t know that when he made that quote.
What is the point of new versions if they are just killed off? The Atom Ryan Choi is dead. Blue Beetle Jamie Reyes is dead. Aquaman Joseph Curry is MIA. Magog is dead. Why should I care about any of these new characters if they are just going to be cannon fodder?”
He’s not dead. You should have kept reading.
“Batman Inc.
I usually stay away from Batman books. I know that the body count is going to be higher than I want. But I still remember Batman from my youth where he figured out the criminals next crime before it happened and there were no deaths, so every once in a while I go back in. I liked the idea of Batman working with Catwoman and the Batmen of the World idea. Looking back, I liked the interaction between Batman, Catwoman, and Unknown. The squid was cool too. I liked the new young Mr. Unknown. I think putting him in a Batman costume was wierd. The problem is the way the original Mr. Unknown died was unnecessary. And it was right at the beginning of the story which soured the whole tale for me. End of experiementing with this series.”
One slight story point soured you on an entire book? You’re fickle.
What are you reading? I’d rather you post a blog entry about things you like, rather than running things down for silly reasons.
I am not an idiot, I have my standards.
Avengers/Marvel – I won’t pay 3.99 for a monthly comic. Period.
JL Gen Lost – Considering that Magog stayed dead for months I think it was a logical conclusion.
Batman Inc – again, I have my standards. If a character is going to die in a story, just have them die. I do not want to see gory stuff.
They are silly to you. The rise in prices to $3.99 made me re-evaluate what I was reading and realize I was not enjoying most of it.
Hey Steve.. why don’t you go away, or better yet just don’t read the blogs if you don’t want to listen to somebody’s opinion. You have proven yourself the idiot with your response.
Can’t disagree with you more on the Avengers books. I’ve been an Avengers fan since the early 80′s and I’m pretty excited to have so many Avenger books out there. Secret Avengers and Young Avengers in particular have been really good reads. Now, I’m not a fan of $4 a pop, but instead of dropping old books I simply don’t buy many new ones.
Of all the books you listed on the DC side of things, I only pick up Titans, mainly because I like Deathstroke. Have you tried Teen Titans or Secret Six? Both of those are currently good team books IMO.
I’ve been an Avengers fan off and on since #225 of the first run. And all through West Coast Avengers. Every once in a while, I just drop the book. (Same thing seems to happen with Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.) I think I’ll use the advice of another poster and pick up some back issues cheap.
the avengers book actully are not t;hat bad for find it nice to have spider woman and luke cage and doctor strange finaly be avengers. legion never read them and also do not touch any of the super man titles. teen titans more like titan terror and have to agree about characters like blue beetle being cannon fodder so much for dc universe being truely diverse plus a waste of max lord as a villain. birds of prey. actully find it nice to not only have gail back with the birds but death of oracle is more then it seems.
I may have to give BOP another look.
Birds of Prey is fantastic. It’s a fun, intelligent book full of great characters. I’d definitely recommend picking it up again.
I’m guessing the author of this thread also goes by “angry comic fan” on myspace?
http://www.myspace.com/angrycomicfan
seems like the same guy, just a bit tamer on this site.
Nope. never been on My Space.
My only current comic reads every month are The Boys, and the next chapter in the CROSSED series. I gave up comic books about spandex heroes a long time ago, when it all became event driven, and not story driven.
I wish they would go back to character driven stories once in a while.
That’s really why I dropped all monthly comics a while back and haven’t really missed them a bit. Since they went to event-driven disasters, there’s no point to it. I realized that it was taking me longer and longer to actually read my comic orders, they’d sit around for weeks on end and I’d only sit down to read when I had so many piled up that I felt I had to pick one up before I got any further behind. Add to the fact that, paying $3.99 for a 22-page pamphlet? No thanks. There are a couple that I keep up with in TPBs, but otherwise, I really don’t miss the comic grind a bit.
If it makes you feel any better, the “Death of Oracle” storyline isn’t about killing Barbara, it’s about killing what Oracle has become and returning Babs to her roots as the woman behind the computer screen.
Which seems like a strange thing to do. She was a member of the JLA during Morrison’s run. Why backpedal?
Superfriend, Oracle’s decision to backpedal occurs when she finds that her public and more obvious role places her and her Birds in some very immediate dangers. In order to operate more effectively, it looks like she’s returning to a more “behind the scenes” approach to super-heroics. If you like Gail Simone’s writing, then dropping this title based on the “death of…” title was a bad move, the way I see it. You’re missing out.
A lot of your information is several months out of date. Legion and Adventure Comics (and most other DC books) have been $2.99 since January. And, as mentioned, Jamie Reyes came back in two issues. Until the title ends, there’s no reason to believe that anyone killed or grievously harmed will remain that way. Especially when its companion title, Brightest Day, is centered around an entity of life.
and yet DC had shown in the last panel of the most recent issue of JSA a female red beetle in the company of the jsa all stars.
You’ll also note that you see both Liberty Belle *and* Jesse Quick, who are the same person. Who else do you see? King Chimera, whose superpower is creating illusions. I’ll lay long odds this “Red Beetle” is just one of Chimera’s illusions.
Doc – I actually wrote this a while back and put it in the auto load section to be published later.
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As for death, there were way more than 12 characters who died in the lead up to Blackest Night. I bet it will be a long time before we see Elongated Man, Tempest, Damage, Ryan Choi or Magog again. Even longer for Ted Kord, Dimitri Pushkin and Vic Sage.
What a negitive article.
There’s never any ‘articles’ on this site, only opinion pieces.
I respect your comment. Articles are on the News / Home page. This is my opinion. Occasionally I have issues with the front page and post news here too. What exactly would you expect to or like to see in a blog?
Luckily, I only have to download the comics. In Colombia, they’re so expensive that I’d have to sell one of my kidney to buy some issues.
Glad to hear you’ve found a more acceptable way to access these. I’ve not talked with many who are using the download service, so I don’t know much about it.
i got to disagree on most of this
Avengers – yep. totally agree. i gave up after Secret invasion
LSH – Legion is the best team book out there right now (though as you point out the competion is horrible)
Adventure was floundering but it’s good with the legion trainees and Phil’s art rocks
JLA and titans – totally agree. JLA should be the crown jewel of the DC line. not league of infinity titans. titans is just horrible
GA and Outsiders – i gave up on them long long ago. just bad
JL-GL – is a good book. you could tell by how Jaime died identically to Ted that it wouldn’t last.
BoP – is good but i’m not sure what hawk and dove are there for other than some place to show hawk.
Batman inc- i can’t stand Morrison so i’ve given up on bats after RIP.
I love GL. he’s my fav and can’t knock him
Flash – i agree Barry is dull dull dull. and wally has disappeared. so sad.
Better books to drop
superman -under walk america is done. it’s lame
ww – everything will be wiped back to status quo eventually.
Fantastic 4- or whatever they’ll be with out Johnny. i see spiderman and wolvie are join. do they need them? really?
Legion – DC needs to get one book going and selling well before branching out. (The same holds true for JSA. Just because you want to tell more stories does not mean the market is there). I just found the main Legion book to have too many subplots I was not interested in. Its sad when the only story I cared about was the Earthman one.
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Morrison – I loved his JLA, so I thought the idea of a Batman team book might be cool.
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Hal and Barry, despite being the main GL and Flash when I grew up, have been gone so long I feel reading about them is forced. I miss Wally and Kyle feels lost in a sea of Green Lanterns.
Personally I prefer the Villans Titans – it brought me back— the rehash of the same 80s titans for the 100th time- with what seems not alot of character growth- made me drop that title– and its those same titans that keep ruining the dynamic they had going in the teen titans title– ditch cyborg and beast boy (who seems to be there just as an excuse to draw a different animal every page.)
And I do have to say the fact that you are turned off by an issue or a story run title of comic makes me wonder,like stated above– what do you read? I understand the 3.99 comic- but I pick all my comic books up about 2-3 months later from the dollar bins- and then occasionaly fill in a missing issue for cover price.. (I recently picked up a whole years run of Batgirl, Red Robin, Batman and Robin, Detective, Birds of Prey and Gotham City Sirens) all for under a 1.25 an issue)- (I took the year off from comics to save some money)
That is a great idea. I might just take that approach and stop buying new comics all together. That is what I decided to do to keep my JLA collection complete, is buy the issues in the future. I like that idea so much I might use it to start buying the current Avengers run.
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I like the cast of the 80′s Titans. I’d like to see them add Kyle Rayner, Roy Harper, Supergirl, and Tempest to the 80′s team. If people like Deathstroke, then fine give him a title, but call it something else. I’m not sure Roy Harper can be saved as a character at this point.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but dropping books because of how they are solicited?! That’s just silly. Misleading readers that characters will die has been going on since the Silver Age. “In this issue, Batman DIES!” Besides comics are notorious for their revolving doors of death. Hardly anyone stays dead forever. Marvel even brought Uncle Ben back at one point.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or a comic by its solicitation. Solicitations are primarily to get retailers to order the books (or customers to ask their retailers to order the books for them). Like it or not, death is an attention-getter(FF #587, for example). Of course publishers are going to strongly suggest that characters are in mortal danger to move some issues, but actual stories rarely accurately match how they’re solicited.
Yes, I, too, was disappointed when it looked like Jamie bought the farm in JLGL. It felt DC’s diversity initiative wasn’t paying off how they’d like, so now they’re slowly getting rid of all their minority replacements and bringing the originals back. Jamie was by far the most successful of those replacements, so his death would be like the death of diversity in the DCU. Not really, but symbolically. However, unlike you, I kept reading and found out IT DIDN’T HAPPEN! Guess it’s not really a spoiler if you’re not reading it.
I don’t think it’s really fair to drop a comic for something you are afraid might happen. Books should be judged on their own merits, not how the editorial team chooses to sell them.
I dropped the book not just because of how it was solicited, but also because the writer said in an interview there would be something poetic about the parallel of having Max kill two Blue Beetles. I remember Didio saying at one point that during 52 he wanted to save Vic Sage as the question, but the story needed to be served, so they wrote his death. To me, this felt like the same scenario.
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And why should I pay for things I do not like.
You know, it’s possible that your growing dissatisfaction with so many books might just be a sign that you are in fact getting too old for this s#!t. Nothing to be ashamed of.
I’ve stopped reading all comics. Between high prices, bad writing and questionable art, it’s become apparent that the medium is no longer for me.
IMHO the last decent comic was KINGDOM COME. After that the industry should have turned off the lights and closed the doors…
Even in your follow-up, you aren’t talking about what actually happened in the book, but what was said in interviews or happened in other books. You never claimed you were dropping Justice League Generation Lost or Birds of Prey because you didn’t like them. You said you did it because they said/implied they were killing the new Blue Beetle. If you’d given JLGL the benefit of the doubt, you’d have seen that Jamie is, in fact, not dead. The creators were just toying with the readers to make us think he was. We experienced the heartache and loss with the other characters, but got to move on with the story in the end. Likewise with Oracle. She faked her death so that The Calculator and other villains would stop going after her.
Nothing says you have to buy comics. Privately, you can drop titles for whatever reasons you want, real or imaginary. But when you publish a diatribe like this, you make those reasons public, and encourage others to model your behavior. Thus, your standards should be higher. Personal opinion or not, it is irresponsible as a writer to spread disinformation instead of getting the facts.
The only behavior I have tried to get other people to follow is dropping JLA because the book has the wrong cast. My hope is that if sales are poor enough it will force a change. That had its own blog weeks ago. Here I am expressing why I am dropping so many books in such a short time frame and seeing how other people view the industry.
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JL Gen Lost – The writer said killing Jamie would be a cool parallel. DC solicited the book as “Jamie is dead.” Magog, who was blown up earlier in the same series, certainly seems to be dead. I’m tired of DC randomly killing off heroes. I think my decision to drop the book because they said they had killed off yet another hero is valid.
Superfriend, I am 100% with you on the JLA situation. The justice league needs at least 3 of the big 7 to be the real league. But as far as GL & the flash goes, I love those books. The prices have pretty much driven me to the point where I only buy trades & silver-bronze age key back issues. I do think you should give gen lost another try, its the closest we have to a good team book besides suicide squad @ DC.
I also did the same thing Stewbacca mentioned. That is, differentiating between content and price. I love, LOVE,
I also did the same thing Stewbacca mentioned. That is, differentiate between content and price. For instance, I love, LOVE, love, the Hulk. But I was not going to pay $3.99 for 22 pages of content. Even more so, when four of those 22 pages were saved for “recaping”. So I dropped it from my pull list and waited for the trades to hit Ebay. I waited a while, but ended up getting the Planet Hulk Hardcover for pennies on the dollar. Then I won a World War Hulk trade, as well as the first six issues of the new Red Hulk series. After that, I had to wait a bit longer; but in the end, I won a huge lot that included all the Hulk comics I was missing and their respective crossovers. 33 books, for which I paid $33.25!!! End well… I’m halfway through them right now, and I’m enjoying the heck out of them. Probably because my patience paid off.
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Regarding Flash…
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I honestly think that he may not be the Hero for you. The only writers that have done him justice are Geoff Johns and Mark Waid. And you go on to mention that you didn’t like it when Geoff wrote Wally, soooo… you kinda answered your own question. And as to why Wally is gone? Well, he ran his course. He did everything. He survived everything. And he learned everything there was to learn. After 249 issues (to Barry’s 245), he was/is the expert Flash. So much so that when Mark Waid came back to the book in issue #231, there wasn’t really anything “interesting” or “new” that he could do with the character. And the sales reflected it. Like the song says “it’s all been done”. The genius of Geoff was that he recognized how good The Rogues are. So instead of “rebooting”, which is standard operating procedure when a book runs its course; he kept The Rogues and brought back the one person they all hated with a passion and wanted to kill. You can’t replicate that kind of hate with a new version of the Flash. Plus some of them were friends with Wally at one point. So much so that they had been tempered and even went by the motto “The Rogues don’t Kill”. But with Barry… Oh, they hated him! They wanted to kill him! Kill him fierce!
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And that’s why I like the current Flash. In terms of personality he is no different than Wally, or any other “do-gooder” out there. But the Villains… the Villains are so good, you can’t help root for them!
Flash: I liked Wally under multiple writers, including Mark Waid. I agree the Rogues work best with Barry, but Waid and other writers of Wally generally ignored them and created other threats. Seeing the Rogues – and their counterparts from the future – was cool. But not cool enough to overcome the fact that Barry written by Johns is boring to me.
Super Friend: Please just quit this hobby entirely. Or at least quit blogging. You really have nothing to contribute.
Over 125 blogs, thousands of posts here and at other sites, reports from conventions. No, nothing. Have you read any of my other blogs? You might like one or two of them.
Right now, I refuse to buy anything Marvel. Between Civil War, The Initiative, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and everything else, it just all got so thoroughly politicized — by Marvel’s own admission to some degree. And that’s not why I read comics. Even if I agreed with the slant they put on things (which I didn’t), if I want political commentary, I’ll read the #$%@^$%^!$ editorial page. When I pick up a comic book, I’m looking for some escapist adventure.
I realize that Marvel has largely completed this years-long load of fertilizer, but honestly, it’s too little, too late. I respect characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, etc., but I don’t really care enough to re-involve myself in their current adventures.
Right now, the vast majority of what I read is from DC and IDW. And I’m content with that.
Agreed. Civil War was what killed the Marvel Universe for me. It was right then that I started dropping Marvel books wholesale, books that I had read for decades, that now, because I had to read tons of things I had no interest in just to get the “whole story”, I figured there was no point in bothering with at all. I love Spider-Man. I love Iron Man. I love X-Men. I want to be able to read those books and enjoy them. I don’t want to be forced to pick up something I don’t enjoy, featuring characters I don’t like, just to get a couple of panels of story that relates back to the titles I actually enjoy.
Plus the fact, I really started to hate what Marvel was doing to the characters. Edginess for the sake of being edgy is not a good tactic. I’ve read these things since the early 70s, they were fine the way they were. The “we’re going to make universe-spanning sagas the norm so you have to buy all the books” nonsense killed reading comics for me. At one time, I was getting about 40 books a month. Then that dropped to 20. Then to 10. When it hit 5, I gave up entirely. It just wasn’t worth my time to go to the LCS.
Its kind of funny. Its often the events that make me think about starting with Marvel again, only to realize – as you did – that I have no idea where one story ends and the next one begins. I’m not sure I could make sense of them enough to read the trades.
Trades are one of the reasons they went with events in the first place. They had to cut everything up into 6-issue chunks for the trades. They wanted to be able to stick a label on it. Thus, the “arc” was born. Soon, they expanded that into larger arcs, then multi-book arcs and finally giant sagas that were only designed to make people buy more books to keep up with the story. It wasn’t bad with something like Secret Wars, back in the 80s, it was a once in a long while thing. Now, it’s 5-6x a year! It feels like there’s nothing going on between events, it’s finish one, start another.
I’m just tired of it. I don’t miss comics a bit.
THANK YOU for your opinion of The Flash book these days. I LOATHE how DiDio bumped Wally West aside for Boring Allen. 20+ years of solid character building was done with Wally!