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
[Jack Kirby cover art; Vince Colletta inking Thor #155; Joe Sinnott inking Fantastic Four Annual #6]
If you missed our 1968 entry on The Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel solo series, check it out!
As a Marvel Cosmic menace and a classic instance of pulp cosmic-horror, Annihilus is fairly unique. Occasionally approaching the threat level of Thanos, the dire bug lord can be just as existentially terrifying to sentients everywhere, especially in 2006’s Annihilation, but he’s as much cosmically powerful warlord as insect horror trope—both spaces that, of course, the much more well-known Brood occupy successfully. Still, while the Brood’s depictions have often played both aspects to the hilt, Annihilus’ storytellers generally haven’t emphasized the horror of his being, whether that’s the alienness of his biology or his motivations (the clearest exceptions here being Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning in the Annihilation event and Jonathan Hickman in his Fantastic Four run 12 years ago). The guy’s got a lot of untapped potential when it comes to skin-crawling thrills and chills.
Mangog is perhaps more horrifying for appearing so bizarre, chimeric almost, and mindlessly brutal—and properly mammoth. He’s also simply much more cosmic horror than particularly cosmic, beyond, that is, his origin; here, too, there’s still untapped potential in Mangog’s status as a cosmic player. Since his debut, the fullest realization of this alien monstrosity’s brutal terror and the most impressive battle against him are to be found in the epic story arc that is the beginning of the end to Jason Aaron’s spectacular Thor run (see The Mighty Thor #700-705, recently followed up on, rather underwhelmingly, in the current Thor title from Donny Cates). Of course, there’s very little prior competition even his original story is deeply flawed in its resolution, as was so common in the Silver Age, with a lame and quite literal deus ex machina (However, it’s been 20 years since I read Dan Jurgens’ 2000 Mangog/Thanos* epic in Thor vol 2 #20-25, which probably still holds up for some quick fun, but it’s not going to have the pathos or intensity of Aaron, Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson; *it’s really just a Thanos clone, though, so…).
The clear challenge with nemeses like these is that rolling them out onstage means the stakes must be high, apocalyptically dire; otherwise, they should be offstage or they lose the edge to their terror—though why not have a one-off, fun and cruelty-free version of these two brutes in something like a Squirrel Girl Beats Up Marvel Cosmic or Gwenpool Gone Space Merc?
It is often said that Watchmen
As part of this ongoing series on Watchmen, other critics have covered rights issues, backstage business, and DC’s treatment of Alan Moore in far more depth and detail than I could ever hope to, so I’ll leave that side of Watchmen with them. It’s all somewhat cursed and always will be, which at this point feels almost as important as the creative work itself was on release. Yet for me, the most prominent “curse of Watchmen” within the comics industry has been the insistence on never letting Moore move on from a comic he disowned decades and decades ago. [Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Venom by Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman
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