All in All

There hasn’t been many comments on comics for a long time, I fear this is due to my slowly getting bored with them, partly perhaps through declining standards and mostly through apathy on my part.

On the Vertigo side of things, I’m still reading Hellblazer and enjoying Andy Diggle’s take although sadly his run is coming to an end soon – I just hope he’s replaced by another British writer, I’ve said it before but as he’s a quintessentially British character he needs a British writer and to be based in the UK. The stories that relocate him to the States never quite work.

Fables remains one of my top reads, but I fear Rose Red is about to die sadly. Jack of the Fables is also good, but sometimes the more frivolous aspect of it annoys me a little.

Top Vertigo read is Vinyl Underground, which is scandalously under appreciated and has been cancelled from the next issue. I guess I can see why it hasn’t done well though – firstly it does swear a lot which always seems to upset the readers in Middle America, but more importantly it is a very English story which whilst hitting all the right notes for me just probably doesn’t translate to the larger US market. Face it, they won’t know who Calum Best is (who at least in a small part must be the basis for the central character, and I bet Best wishes he was that cool)

On the main DCU/spandex front I fear there are more misses than hits at the moment. I am a huge Titans fan, after all that was what got me into spandex comics in the first place, but having spent my time reading the Wolfman/Perez Titans, I have very little empathy towards the current team line up on Teen Titans (and I hate Miss Martian with a passion, horrible pointless character). I also had so much hope for Titans (grown up), and do like Winick’s writing mostly, but so far this has been lazy crap. Okay, so it seems they are aware of this and have had to instigate major changes after just 3 issues, but I worry that it will all be too late.

Wonder Woman’s good again. JLA improving but suffered badly from the rather bad crossover just when the new writer started. JSA is just a bit too slow for my liking.

Didn’t bother with the new weekly, Trinity. Probably though disappointment over Countdown. Checkmate dropped before it was cancelled, Manhunter close to being dropped.

The other two I’m reading are the big Final Crisis event and Batman, both by Grant Morrison. All I will say is that I am enjoying them both, and finding them extremely well-written, well-written enough for me to find myself finishing them and wishing I had the next issue already.

BUT, I guess one of the reasons why I very rarely post on messageboards is my frustration at the comments about both of them that I read. I’d probably be banned within posts if I responded to some of the comments.

I guess its difficult writing comics in this age of internet, messageboards, and immediate response. More than anything I fear that patience levels are dropping – pre-internet you never heard of people moaning between issues, you waited for issue 5 and were hit by the payback and realised that the story was actually great and intricately written. Now, it seems people want everything to be within that one issue otherwise it doesn’t make sense or, is slow, or is simply rubbish. How would Watchmen fare if it were released monthly these days? I'd bet it wouldn't receive the praise it does.

Comments on Final Crisis and Batman's RIP storyline seem to be getting a lot of these criticisms when it doesn’t take rocket science to see where the story is going and appreciate the intricacies. These are two of DC’s biggest properties, do people really think they would vigorously promote and publish these stories if they were incomprehensible? I also get really pissed off with the comments about needing to be on drugs to understand them, simply because Morrison has mentioned in the past that he dabbles.

I’d hate to be a comic writer. These characters have been around longer than a lot of the readers, who can be any age, any nationality, and of any viewpoint (especially in the US where I would say 85% of the audience is). You’ll never please everyone, and the occasional anonymity of the internet makes the nay-sayers more vocal and on occasion aggressive.

Music update next!