Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Featured

X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1 Rewatch!

by Leave a Comment

October 31, 1992 was a formative day in my childhood. More than just a Saturday, more even than Halloween on a Saturday, October 31, 1992, meant the premiere of FOX Kids’ new cartoon about the X-Men. Now, I can’t say that 7-year-old me had ever actually read an X-Men comic book, but thanks to the release of the X-Men arcade game earlier that year – which I had spent many an hour playing at my local movie theater – I had at least a passing familiarity with several of the characters and their powers. So, primed to see this world I’d spent so much time side-scrolling through in animated form, I plopped myself down in front of the TV that Halloween morning and as soon as I heard the opening bars of that indelible theme song, I was hooked.

From that moment on, I was an X-Men obsessive. I bought the action figures, I played as many of the video games as I could convince my parents to buy (shout out to X-Men on Sega Game Gear!), and of course, I continued to treat X-Men: The Animated Series as appointment viewing for the rest of its 5-season run. For me, like for many other ‘90s kids, these animated versions of the X-Men – their designs, their voices, the sounds their powers made – were the definitive versions of the characters, and they remained so even as, during high school and college, the Internet and a delightful antique contraption called a “CD-ROM” allowed me to explore the uncanny mutants in the comics themselves.

And now, many (many) years later, my nostalgia and love for X-Men: The Animated Series persists. It would seem I’m not alone, either, as Marvel Studios is set to release sequel series X-Men ‘97 later this year, 31 years after that pilot episode aired. In preparation for that highly anticipated revival, I thought 2023 would be a great time for a recurring feature looking back at the original series. Given the often serialized nature of the series, rather than deep-diving into any particular episode – fellow CBH writer Austin Gorton has already done that wonderfully – I want to discuss the show on a more holistic level, exploring one season each month with a few questions in mind.

  • What is the overarching narrative of each season?
  • What are each year’s standout moments and characters (both heroes and villains, series regulars and guest stars)?
  • Where did the writers of each season look for inspiration from the comics, and how faithfully (or not) did they adapt those stories?
  • How successful were the show’s completely original choices?

So without further ado, let’s dive into the inaugural season of X-Men: The Animated Series. Cue that theme song!

[Read more…] about X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1 Rewatch!

Who Watched The Watchmen? The Button

by Leave a Comment

It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

Rebirth had succeeded. It had proved to be a juggernaut that everybody seemed to want more of. DC’s hopes and dreams of winning hearts and minds whilst exploiting the Watchmen IP had never risen higher. While nobody cared for Before Watchmen, they seemed to care about Watchmen crossing over with the DC Universe and its characters. They paid attention to that in which they did not with other attempts to cash in on Watchmen. If DC couldn’t make money off stories about what happened before the events of Watchmen, they were sure as hell going to make it off what happened after the events of Watchmen.

And so the enterprise of Watchmen exploitation had to keep going…for this was what DC had been waiting for. This was the culmination of years of trying. Their predatory impulses had finally borne fruit. The milk they were selling from their cash-cow was a hit. All they had to do was just keep milking it.

Enter: The Button by Joshua Williamson, Jason Fabok, and Tom King.

[Read more…] about Who Watched The Watchmen? The Button

Do a Powerbomb: Life, Death, and Pro Wrestling

by 1 Comment

Considering how similar the two are, you would expect a significant cultural overlap between pro wrestling and comic books. Pro wrestling’s colourful characters, heightened melodrama, and rather simple ‘good vs evil’ storylines should translate easily onto the pages of a comic book, at least in theory, but that hasn’t always been the case. It is easy to see why, though. Pro wrestling is an experiential sport, that works best when you see it live with an audience, one that is losing their collective mind at every move in the ring, as you clap and cheer until you are left with a hoarse voice. Capturing that magic on paper has proven… difficult, to say the least. That being said, when Daniel Warren Johnson drops a pro wrestling comic book, you sit up and take notice.

Johnson is one of the most exciting creators working in comics right now, and has accumulated an impressive body of work in a rather short amount of time. Space-Mullet!, Extremity, Murder Falcon, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, Beta Ray Bill: Argent Star are all worth your time and money. The visuals hook you in as you flip through the pages of these books – the perfect marriage of the hyper-detailed rendering that has become the staple of modern western comics and the sketchy, kinetic linework more commonly associated with manga – but it’s the stories, full of heart and human emotions, that make his work so special. His latest, with regular collaborators Mike Spicer and Rus Wooton, is set in the crazy world of pro wrestling. Advertised as – very ambitiously, if I may say so myself – “The Wrestler meets Dragonball Z” by the publisher, it is a passion project. Not just in terms of a creator taking their rather weird and extremely personal interest/hobby and exploring them in great detail through their work, which it very much is, but in the sense that it is designed to bring you, the readers, into pro wrestling through the inviting medium of comic books. “The goal,” as Johnson puts it in the back pages of the first issue, “is and always has been to invite people in, no matter where they’re at. So if you aren’t into pro-wrestling, damn am I glad you made it this far! And if you are into it,” which I, of course, am, “welcome, old friends!”

Looking back at his work now, it seems as if this was perhaps the book Johnson was always meant to do at some point. Pro wrestling exists in all his stories – from powerbombs in Extremity, his Eisner-nominated limited series that brought him into the spotlight, to suplexes in Beta Ray Bill: Argent Star, his last Big Two project. Death and grief exists in all his stories too, and Do a Powerbomb! is no different. This is a story of loss, and mourning, and the seven stages of grief explored over seven issues.

[Read more…] about Do a Powerbomb: Life, Death, and Pro Wrestling