A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
Picking up where we left off, we now come to one of the most important books of modern DC comics, and the book that would reshape Black Adam for good.
The book that continues to inform and define much of the identity of DC even now. We come, of course, to 52
[Content/Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault]
[Read more…] about Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part II
Often, Geoff Johns is associated with Silver Age figures. Classic heroes of the 1960s revivals like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. He’s often identified with triggering the revival or ‘rebirths’ of such figures and re-centering them in mythologies and re-positioning them as pivotal leads of the modern era. Johns is often framed as the figure who loves Classic Heroes, whose work embodies the ‘heart, hope, and humor’ people attribute with such figures. It’s what people point to with his work on titles such as JSA
But that’s merely one aspect, one side of Geoff Johns. It’s a part of the portrait, but it’s not the complete picture. The complete picture requires the other side of Johns. Which is that, simply put, Geoff Johns is The Villain Guy of the DCU. He is The Rogues Gallery Guy, above all else. He writes Superman, yes, but he also devotes entire interwoven epic sagas to his Superboy Prime. He does The Flash, yes, but he does Captain Cold and The Rogues, he does Rogue War, he does Hunter Zolomon, and he does Eobard Thawne. He does Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, yes, but really it’s all a story about Thaal Sinestro as a complicated figure and his relationship to Hal, much like his Flash runs were about Hunter Zolomon/Wally West or Eobard Thawne/Barry Allen. He does Aquaman, sure, but he’s doing Black Manta and centering his dynamic with Arthur. He’s doing Oceanmaster and revamping him as a morally ambiguous figure doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
Geoff Johns is the guy that writes JSA and Justice League, sure. But Geoff Johns is also the guy that writes Forever Evil
There is a darkness growing in the world, an evil rooted in the past that has risen up as a blight on the present. To stem this corruption, Levi Kamei must reconnect with his own forgotten past, and embrace a strange new destiny as the next guardian of the Green.
Since his first appearance in 1971’s House of Secrets, the Swamp Thing has held an enduring legacy as one of DC Comics’ most celebrated monsters. Co-created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson as a “muck-encrusted mockery of a man,” the Swamp Thing has taken on countless forms under seminal creators, most notably Alan Moore who made the creature into a more complex, introspective character, defined through his struggles for identity and a growing bond with all forms of nature. However, the character grew somewhat unfocused after Moore’s run, as subsequent creators built on the creature’s mythology and place in the larger DC Universe. Some more successfully than others.
Each writer would leave their own mark on the character, but it would be through DC’s Infinite Frontier and creators Ram V, Mike Perkins, John McCrea, Mike Spicer, and Aditya Bidikar that the Swamp Thing would finally return to form, tackling issues from beyond the realm of superheroes and delivering a horror-tinged critique of the modern world. This is the story of The Swamp Thing
*SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE RUN TO FOLLOW*
[Read more…] about THE SWAMP THING by Ram V & Mike Perkins | Horror, Hope, and Identity
I love video games. I suppose I always have. Growing up in the early years of economic liberalisation in India, you took your first steps into the world of gaming on bootlegged consoles, manufactured by local companies that had cropped up all over the country to meet the demands of a large population with growing purchasing power and aspirations to live the life their relatives “abroad” and the stars of their movies did, all the while the companies that actually manufactured those consoles scrambled to set up shop in the nation. My earliest memory of gaming is playing Contra and Super Mario on one of these bootlegged “NES,” plugging in those “99999 in 1” game cartridges and setting up the system on those huge CRT television sets that took up an entire corner of your living room.
I am telling my age, aren’t I?
Well, kids, playing video games for as long as I have teaches you a lot of things, especially if you are interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff – how they are made (the tools and technologies that go into making a game and how they evolve over time), the politics of it (because, as with everything else in life, there is politics involved here as well), the economics of the gaming industry (and how it, at times, becomes the primary driving force for innovation) – which, I suppose, you become at least tangentially aware of if you stick with a particular hobby long enough. But, perhaps more than that, it teaches you to see that hobby differently. You learn to notice and appreciate the craft behind it. You learn to see video games as art.
[Read more…] about The Inmates Run the Asylum in Rocksteady’s Arkham Trilogy
It is often said that Watchmen
In the wake of Watchmen, there have been many stories influenced by its style. There have been stories that riffed on what it was doing and ones that reacted against it. There have even been prequels to the narrative spun by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. But there had never been a direct sequel to Watchmen, let alone one that pushed the ultimate button: crossing over Watchmen with the DC Universe.
There had been attempts in the past, certainly. A cameo from Rorschach here. A thematic test image where Rorschach fights Frank Miller’s Batman there. And maybe one or two riffs to make things look spicy. But never anything as concrete as a complete sequel to Watchmen. That was… until Doomsday Clock.
Written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank, Doomsday Clock
A cursory glance at that sentence might make one… unsure. For all that the Before Watchmen comics weren’t uniformly good, there was a degree of draftsmanship to them. Not so much trying to one-up Watchmen as make a cheap cash-in without any sense of taste. But something like Doomsday Clock is… different.
[Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? What Doomsday Clock Gets Wrong