Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I just can't get excited about comics anymore

  I tried getting wow'ed about the NEW 52!!!! but I have to admit that it fell flat for me. That's probably my own fault because I didn't want to buy in to tons and tons of comics in order to follow a storyline. The books I bought?

Dial H - I loved the wacky idea behind this book. I actually enjoyed that I had to READ the book to understand what was going on but the art......ARRRGH the "art" on this book is such a pain to look at. But I keep on going with it right up until it gets canceled!

Men of War - What a mishmash of crap. The art was mediocre and the storyline was more about 'close encounters' with meta-humans in a war setting, something that might be interesting, but wasn't even remotely close to being readable. I bailed on issue 6 of 8.

Resurrection Man - Knew nothing of it and I took a chance. Stuck with it for 6 of 12 issues.

Birds of Prey - I liked the First Birds, wasn't that jazzed about the Second Birds (which lasted 15 issues before this reboot) and I have to admit, I'm just not emotionally vested in these characters anymore. I will probably drop this book.

Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps - Never wanted to get into Red Lanterns or the Multi-colored Lanterns (with Kyle). I enjoyed the books buy it started getting into "Ya think THAT was something? Watch THIS!" and at the end of Jones run we got the First Lantern, Parralax, Black Lantern Corps, Nekron and everything was wrapped up soooo quick and tidy. I found myself staring at the book and wondering why I wasted my money. I'm dropping both of these.

G.I. Combat - The War That Time Forgot and the Unknown Soldier features in this book were boooring. When they finally brought out the new spin on the Haunted Tank (and the War Wheel) I found myself actually Whooping with joy to read the book. But they canceled it with issue 7.

All-Star Western - I'm a Jonah Hex fan. Followed it through Hex, read the Vertigo, watched the movie, and I have been a fan of All-Star Western. I'm not so sure about bringing Hex into present day Gotham but I'm not in control of things around here. What worries me is that All-Star Western doesn't show up on any September solicitation lists. So they will bring Jonah to modern day Gotham for two issues and leave him here? Can't the guy catch a break? At least it will give Susan Hillwig another time travel story to write.

I'm not a guy that wants to buy 12 Superman books a month or 27 Batman books a month or 8 Justice League books a month to enjoy a story or understand what is happening. Heck, when I was a kid, I bought DC over Marvel because I COULDN'T get every issue of a series. DC was more contained and was easier to pick up and read. But now...now.... sheesh, every year is the NEXT BIG THING THAT WAS BIGGER THAN THE LAST BIG THING and frankly, I don't have the emotional time nor the money to invest in it anymore.

I'll reread what I have and keep buying Jonah Hex books, but folks, I'm tapped out. I'll keep blogging about Hex and what else lies in my collection, but until something worth my money comes along, I'm sitting on the sidelines with the current books.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you,sir.
I feel the same and I haven't
got that kind of money either.
AND;no,no,no,no,
Mr Hex do not belong in 2013!
To me it's the "old" west or not
at all.
And I've read the TRUE story of
Mr Hex's end as told by Mr Heath
& co.
Cheers!
/Mr Anonymous

Anonymous said...

p.s. the name of the story is "The Last Bounty Hunter" written by
Mr Fleisher in Jonah Hex Spectacular Fall 1978 and I've read a review of it on this here site posted Wednesday
July 4 2007.
/Mr Anonymous

Anonymous said...

"DC Special Series" No 16

Susan said...

I'm pretty sure J&J aren't callous enough to do to Hex what Fleisher did 25 years ago, namely leave him in the future. Wait until the October solicits come out, I'm sure ASW will be back on the list. If not, I'll...crap, I don't know how to fix this if it happens again, especially since I'm reading fewer New 52 books than you are. Plus I didn't think of how to fix the last screw-up until 20 years after it happened!

SallyP said...

Well, now that Jonah is in his future, our present...I can't wait for him to get back to the old west.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I've given up on All-Star Western myself. It was the last title I subscribed to as my list slowly got smaller and smaller as time went by.

And the more I think about that damn movie, the more I hate it.

Still love reading your blog though. I can tell we have a lot of the same comics.

Steven Satak said...

Well, it's February 2014 and I just picked up a copy of All Star Western from the 'Just In' shelf at the local comic shop/game store.

The last time I saw Hex, he'd been dropped into a post-apocalyptic whatsis. Lost ALL interest in him then.

I leafed through the pages of issue #27. Thought to myself 'Superman and Hex, eh? That oughta be a short encounter.'

Well, I am a quiet but steady fan of Kurt Busiek's writing, as well as that of Neil Gaiman. And I saw elements of Busiek in Issue 27 of ASW. I liked it. I liked what they were doing (and NOT doing) with the character. There were some slips (how does he smoke with an open cheek? Or keep from drooling all the time? Or drink whisky without it running out all over his chest?), but I suspended disbelief and read on. I consider it worth the four bucks I eventually forked over.

Astro City, Dead Boy Detectives and All Star Western are now the ones I wait for. I stopped reading comics quite a while ago due to the price and the absolute lack of any worthwhile storyline. Astro City was about it, before that dropped off the radar for a while.

Now they have this endless treadmill of "The NEW New 52". I am sorry but you just cannot tell that many good stories. Most of it is garbage, on a par with the junk I had to read in the early to mid-1990s (and subsequently threw in the shitcan a couple years back). The really good writers are kinda rare, and you have to keep an eye peeled for them. Walt Simonson's Thor, for example. I never read Thor - just more Avengers crap with fake Norse mythology thrown in. Then I picked up an issued whose cover intrigued me and BOOM!

ASW was like that. Glad to see it there and looking forward to the next issue.