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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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17 comments:
Geoff: Are the Warlock comics you're reading in a collection or did you get the issues?
Any old-school Marc Silvestri fans see X-Men/Dark Avengers Utopia last week? Man that was ugly.
Mitch lent me his stash of original issues of Warlock, which is kicksass. Mitch is kickass.
Indeed Silvestri seemed to have degenerated even from, say, Here Comes Tomorrow. Although he also did not have any cool stuff to draw -- that story is very street level.
Sorry if I've been MIA lately guys... I'm restructuring my classes from ENGL 101 into CORE 101 for the fall... plus I've been assessing 1200 freshman essays. Hopefully I will be contributing more soon...
But, for the time being...
Wilco's new album- Wilco (The Album)- is excelleng- Probably the most satisfying release this year other than No Line On The Horizon.
Also, the new albums from the Yeah Yeah Yeah and the Sounds are really good.
Oh, and I just got an HDTV and a new surround sound thingy... so, yeah, I'm going to be pretty busy with my entertainment as well.
I think Silvestri was just doing breakdowns on Utopia with 4 or 5 finishers, so it's no wonder it was uuuugly. Any thoughts on X-Men Forever #2? I liked it, but didn't love it. Still better than anything Fraction has done on the Uncanny. I wish they'd promote Jason Aaron from Wolverine up to Uncanny. That guy knows how to write the characters.
It still feels to soon to tell with X-Men Forever. G
I'm sad that Silvestri seems to have fallen so far.
But I gotta say -- if you look at some scans of his recent work that is just pencils, no inks or colors, it still looks pretty great. At least to my eyes. So I blame the inking. (And I realize that if Silvestri normally inks himself then this still means my problem is with him.)
All that said, in my heart of hearts I still think of Silvestri as an awesome artist. It just goes to the core of some of my earliest experiences with comic books.
And, I have not yet bought X-Men Forever 2.
Geoff - that's a good Twitter point on Starlin/Kirby.
Fun fact: in the "Marvel vs. DC" crossover event of the 90s Darkseid confronts Thanos and calls him "pale imitation of Darkseid", something like that. Thing is, whenever I've read the character he's always had more shade, an existential torpor that prevents him from ever really achieving his goals.
You'd never get Darkseid questioning or sobbing to himself. Thanos is a more of an angsty supervillain, in true Marvel fashion. A villain in the Darkseid "I. Am. The. New. God" style would just look silly in the Marvel universe.
Yeah, 4 pencil assists and what, 7 inkers? That's never gonna look good.
Good point about it being street-level stuff - the only thing my eyes lingered on at all was Venom vs. Colossus, which seems like good idea visually - but he/they did have some great Quitely designs to mangle. Like the blobby see-through guy, who is rendered with a frowning skull. And then there's gross stuff like Armor being drawn as a Top Cow sexpot. And the diamond/ice lady with pouting red lips, though I guess the colourist gets some of the blame there, unless Team Silvestri made a note that they should be red.
Mikey: I haven't read it, but isn't Darkseid pretty deflated in the Hunger Dogs? That's what I hear, anyway.
I've been re-reading my old Warlock issues as well lately. The Strange Death of Adam Warlock is one of my all time favorite cosmic superhero stories. It was almost Morrison-ian before Morrison.
And am I the only person that couldn't buy X-Men Forever because of the artwork? It looked like the worst generic 90's Marvel/Image art that they could possibly find.
IFC's 50 Greatest Movie Trailers.
Sorry to harp on this X-Men Utopia thing, but I just looked through Uncanny 512 and the Dodsons just wiped the floor with that comic book, holy hell.
James - I think you're right actually, but that is a good reason to dig out Hunger Dogs to check.
I guess what I always think of is the more modern (now standard) version of Darkseid as simply 'cosmic badass dictator'. Really thinking about it now, Kirby built in some really striking traits into the character at the beginning there. I remember always being surprised at just how pedantic and nasty and bureaucratic Darkseid was.
And really, if you dedicate your life to seeking the (unfindable) Anti-Life Equation then really you do have a whole heap of existential crises all your own. I just can't imagine anyone ever telling Darkseid that the reason he always fails is because he's really insecure and unsure of his own worthiness of success, which Warlock told Thanos all the time in early 90s (while drawn by Ron Lim).
Plus, as 'Darkseid Minus New Gods' teaches us, the angst and lunacy is there all the time, you just have to strip away the gaudy colours to see it.
Everything I love about Silvestri is in that cover of New X-Men - Wolverine in tight-bun denims and a cowboy hat. Someone thinks that that's what 'cool' looks like. Man.
Oops, I meant Uncanny 513. 512 was Yanick Paquette (also quite pretty).
Finally read 7 Soldiers and was amazed how, in the last issue, Morrison merged The New Gods with The Eternals--even going to go so far as to use the word "Celestial." Whether this was intended or not, I found it quite interesting considering I was not overly fond of the portrayal of The Fourth World characters in Mister Miracle.
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