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fandomsecrets2012-10-11 06:38 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-10-11 06:38 pm
[ SECRET POST #2109 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2109 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 023 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Comics question!
TY. <3
Re: Comics question!
I've been following a Batman-centric read-through of the previous continuity (read: it's mostly Batman, but major events that don't necessarily involve Batman, like the death of Superman, are included, as well as stuff like the 80s Giffen run on JLA with all the funny B-listers like Blue Beetle/Ted Kord and Guy Gardner.)
That particular chronology is really comprehensive, however -- if you like I can just point out the good stuff, because many of the crossover events (like Bloodlines) are crap, and after a while you start noticing "standard Batman stories" like "bad guy breaks out of Arkham for the third time this week, Batman beats up a few goons and drags bad guy back."
Re: Comics question!
HRRRRNNNNNNGH this took forever to type up
A few notes:
Nearly everything in the chronology was written after the 1986 reboot; however, the chronology that CC has written is set up so that many, many stories, written after the reboot, occur before Crisis on Infinite Earths. The chronology works on the assumption that Batman has been in business 10 years before the Crisis, but most of those "early years" stories are drawn from Legends of the Dark Knight, which began as a tie-in with the 1989 Batman movie and was intended to tell stories from Bruce's early years (before becoming a standard, present-day series along with Batman, Detective Comics and Shadow of the Bat sometime around 1993.)
Also, this list only goes up to about 1998/1999, as that's how far I've gotten, publication-date wise, in my own reading. But it's a good start.
And lastly, just about all of the comics listed here and on the chronology can be found in a series of torrents titled More Than Complete DC. You can find the relevant torrents here and here. They don't share all the same trackers so consider downloading the .torrent files from both to add the relevant trackers. Also remember that these are big fuckoff huge collections of anything and everything DC's ever published, so only download the issues you're actually looking for. Many of the major crossovers with lots of tie-ins are collected by the scanning group DCP and these collections can be found in the torrents.
Here's my recommended reading list, as follows:
- Batman: Year One (I think it shows its age now, and also Frank Miller, but it's still pretty much the definitive origin story for the previous continuity)
(There's two Hal Jordan-as-Green Lantern stories called Emerald Dawn and Emerald Dawn II -- neither are completely in continuity and a GL fan friend of mine hates them, but you may want to consider reading them anyway. Elements of these were retconned by Green Lantern: Secret Origin (GL #29-35 in 2008.)
- Batman: The Man Who Laughs (debut of the Joker)
- Batman Chronicles #22-25: Do You Understand These Rights? (direct sequel to the above, focused around Joker's first processing into the legal system)
- Legends of the Dark Knight #76-78: The Sleeping
- Batman: The Long Halloween (probably the best Batman story ever, IMO)
- LOTDK #91-93: Freakout (Garth Ennis is a sick, sick puppy)
- Batman: Night Cries (beautifully illustrated comic showing the painful crumbling of Commissioner Gordon's marriage)
- Batman: Dark Victory (followup to Long Halloween, the mystery is more obvious and not quite as compelling but it nails the tone better)
- Catwoman: When In Rome (meant to be a companion piece to Dark Victory)
- Robin: Year One
- LOTDK #74-75: Engines (I've tried to limit how many Legends stories I include in this list but this is a personal favourite.)
- Batgirl: Year One
- Batman Chronicles #9 Part 1: Photo Finish (Robin and Batgirl take down a burglar trapped in a mall, great stuff)
- The Saga of Ra’s Al Ghul (predates CoIE, but is almost completely in-continuity and is the first canon appearance of Batman's most dangerous villain)
- Nightwing: Year One (Bruce and Dick have it out, Dick leaves to become Nightwing and Jason Todd is brought on)
- Crisis on Infinite Earths (hugely epic and perhaps a little dated by now, but serves to basically erase several decades' worth of continuity and merge the rest into a single universe. Notable for the death of Barry Allen and Supergirl.)
- Legends (the first major event since CoIE, basically Darkseid and the Stranger have a Book of Job-style argument over whether it's possible to turn civilians against superheroes, results in the formation of the "funny" Justice League)
- Justice League/Justice League International/Justice League America/Justice League Europe (Most of this is the "funny" JL and was written by Keith Giffen. It was meant to be a humorous counterpoint to the darker/edgier bent that Marvel was taking during the late 80s. It's mostly a bunch of funny B-listers plus "angry dad" Batman, as opposed to the more well-known lineup of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman etc. It's great stuff, there's lots of amazing dialogue. Feel free to ship the hell out of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold -- I do! The name changes can be confusing so here's how it breaks down: Justice League begins at #1, goes for 6 issues, renames into Justice League International which begins at #7, goes until #25 and splits into America (begins at #26) and Europe (begins at #1.) This incarnation of the Justice League more or less comes to an end during the Breakdowns crossover, which concludes in JLAmerica #60 and JLEurope #36. There's also plenty of annuals and quarterlies to go around.
(There's a crossover event here called Millennium which drags in several heroes and groups -- I think it's kind of lame, feel free to skip.)
- Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing
- Martian Manhunter (great mini about Manhunter's origin)
- Batman: The Cult (criminally underrated mini that I'm convinced was partial inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises)
- Batman #424: "The Diplomat's Son" (chilling issue revealing something a little bit broken about Jason Todd/Robin II, often placed on "best single issue" lists)
- Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (you may need to read this a couple of times to really get what's going on)
- Cosmic Odyssey (art by Mike Mignola, what more do you need? It's a crossover event and has no tie-ins, thank fuck)
- Batman: The Killing Joke (controversial for what happens to Barbara, and rightly so, but still a very good story)
- Batman #426-429: A Death in the Family (Joker manages to do what comic fans spent years wishing they could: kill off Jason Todd!)
(I want to note at this point that there's a major crossover titled Invasion in which a coalition of evil aliens storm Earth. Batman is involved, of course, as is Justice League International; the end of the story involves the detonation of a Gene Bomb which results in the creation of new metahumans. I think it's fairly decent, but you can take it or leave it -- either read the mini by itself, read the tie-ins or skip some, read others, whatever you wanna do.)
- Superman Vol. 2 #44, Adventures of Superman #467, Action Comics #654: Dark Knight over Metropolis (an important story showing the trust Clark has for Bruce)
- Batman #440-442/Teen Titans #60-61: A Lonely Place of Dying (Debut of Tim Drake as Robin III. Teen Titans issues form the 2nd and 4th parts of this story)
(Around this time a character named Anarky pops up, he's basically this brilliant, socially-conscious kid who dresses up and plays vigilante. Batman busts his ass numerous times. His first appearance is in Detective Comics #608-609 if you want to read. He pops up from time to time, usually when Alan Grant wants to make a political point.)
- Detective Comics #618-62: "Rite of Passage" (Tim's parents are kidnapped, his father is crippled and his mother is murdered)
- Batman #452-454: Dark Knight Dark City (Riddler flips the fuck out and gets really menacing as opposed to his usual harmless but insufferable asshole thing)
- Robin v1 (5-issue miniseries about Tim Drake's training to be Robin)
(Crossover called War of the Gods occurs here. It's meant to be sort of a love letter to Wonder Woman but drags in everyone else. Okay if you like Wonder Woman.)
- Robin II (Tim/Robin gets another miniseries! There's this great scene where he has a run-in with Joker who loses his shit and is all NO I KILLED YOU then starts ranting to himself all like IT'S OKAY I'LL JUST HAVE TO KILL HIM AGAIN THAT'S ALL)
- Armageddon 2001 (the other big crossover event for 1991. Good story with a crap ending. Basically a guy from the future living under the villain Monarch discovers that Monarch used to be a superhero, and contrives to get himself sent back in time to figure out who exactly becomes Monarch. This story goes through several of the annuals, which means he tests Batman and Superman multiple times as they have multiple comics. Unlike other events, the tie-in issues are actually important. The suggested reading order can be found here: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?290702-DC-Major-Post-Crisis-Events-Tie-in-List
I definitely suggest you save Justice League Europe for last, since that follows directly into the 2nd part of the 2-issue mini.
I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but be prepared -- it was a real cop-out on DC's part because Monarch's identity was leaked and they panicked and changed it at the last minute... only to later make the original pick turn out to be Monarch anyway. But it's still a good story and well worth reading.)
- Shadow of the Bat #1-4: The Last Arkham (Most of the SotB stories are decent if a bit standard, but this premiere arc introduces the disturbing villain Zsasz)
- Batman: Birth of the Demon (tells Ra's al Ghul's origin, a good read)
(At this point in time DC started setting things up for Knightfall, which was a VERY long arc that had repercussions for Bruce and everyone else for quite some time.)
- Batman: Sword of Azrael (origin of Jean Paul-Valley, aka Azrael, aka the hated AzBats! Personally I like him.)
- Batman: Vengeance of Bane (origin of Bane)
- Batman: Gordon’s Law (Gordon tries to keep Batman sidelined and nearly gets killed for it)
- The Death and Return of Superman (exactly what it says on the tin -- I'm not following Supes so I don't know who all the characters are but they all play a part, and post-Breakdowns Justice League is here too. The actual "Death" part of the story is like a bad Silver Age story but the funeral and return are quality. The whole thing has been collected in TPB.)
- Green Lantern #48-50: Emerald Twilight (The end of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, the beginning of Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern)
- Knightfall (hoo boy -- this is a truly gigantic arc that stretches out for many, many issues. Technically 'Knightfall' refers only to the first part of the story, but it's commonly meant to refer to a trilogy of arcs that include Knightquest and Knightsend. Sometimes it also includes Prodigal and Troika. There's never been a full collection of every tie-in issue (the Robin and Catwoman ones are usually left out) but most of the TPBs contain all the Batman-centric comics save for 'The Search' in which a crippled Bruce Wayne looks for his doctor and Robin's dad, both of whom were kidnapped. Rather than paste the reading order here I'll just refer you to the reading order link I named above. To briefly summarize: Bane hatches a plot to break Batman, breaks everyone out of Arkham, confronts a tired, beaten-down Bruce in the Batcave, and snaps his spine. Jean-Paul Valley assumes the mantle of Batman while Bruce recuperates/searches for his missing friends, but AzBats -- still dealing with the brainwashing he suffered at the hands of his father -- grows steadily crazier and more ruthless until he crosses the line and kills the disturbing B-list villain Abattoir which coincidentally results in the death of Abattoir's victim. Bruce finds his friends, manages to get himself healed, comes back to retrain himself under Lady Shiva, then goes and forcefully takes the mantle back from Valley.)
(Sometime during Valley's tenure as AzBats is the utterly forgettable crossover called Bloodlines. It was basically a shitty attempt at creating a bunch of new, "edgy" superheroes for the 1990s. Unfortunately, other than Hitman and a few others, the only time these losers ever actually show up again is when they're getting killed off. Skip this awful trash.)
- Batman: Prodigal (immediate followup to Knightfall; Bruce decides he's not completely ready to retake the mantle in full, and fucks off to do stuff and leaves Dick Grayson in charge. This has been collected in a TPB.)
- Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (sort of a soft-reboot of continuity to introduce the sliding timescale. The core issues span #4-#0 (yes it's counting down to zero) and there's a huge number of tie-in issues. Wondering whatever happened to Monarch and Hal Jordan? Wonder no further.)
(At this point, the Azrael comics begin. Now, I really like this series, and I like Valley's attempts to uncrazify himself to varying degrees of success. Bruce feels responsible for him... he also wants Valley out of his hair.)
- Batman: GCPD (4-issue mini focusing mostly on Harvey Bullock and the rest of GCPD. Sort of an early precursor to Gotham Central.)
- Underworld Unleashed (you may want to consider skipping this one, but I kinda like it. Basically Neron, self-styled King of Hell, attempts to make Faustian deals with a number of superheroes and villains, not all of whom turn him down. DCP has a collection, but refer to the reading order if you want to download individual issues.)
- Vengeance of Bane II (Bane tries tracking down his dad.)
- Detective Comics #693-694 (Ordinarily I wouldn't include standard Batman stories but I actually had these two issues growing up (I didn't collect comics because I couldn't afford them at the time, but mom grabbed these for me) and they're kind of fond memories for me, particularly since they made up for when I read a Knightquest issue at precisely the wrong time in my life.)
- Batman: Contagion (A deadly virus is overrunning Gotham City. Great, great stuff. Collected in TPB but that doesn't seem to be in the torrents I linked -- refer to this page for a reading list if you can't find it anywhere else)
- Batman: Legacy (Direct followup to Contagion. Ra's al Ghul has been largely in the background for quite some time and has not made a serious play since the 1970s, publication-wise. This particular story marks his roaring back into the forefront and proves himself once again Batman's most dangerous enemy. Collected in TPB but not on Joshua13's torrent.)
- Batman: Bane of the Demon (overlaps some with Contagion and Legacy, and is basically about Bane's interactions with Ra's.)
- Batman: Bane (direct followup to Legacy, Bane tries holding Gotham hostage with a floating nuclear plant.)
- Hitman (This series was penned entirely by Garth Ennis and is sick filth and funny as hell. Tommy Monaghan is a killer-for-hire in Gotham who got superpowers during the Bloodlines event and uses it to take down metahuman bad guys for money. He also throws up on Batman's shoes. Great, great stuff, definitely worth a read. Ran for 61 issues, ties in with a number of events. I'm still reading it -- like I said, I'm only up to about 1999, publication-wise)
(At this point the Justice League's current incarnation as three separate teams dissolves. But the band gets back together with Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare #1-3.)
- JLA #1-4: "New World Order" (basically Grant Morrison's classic tale about the formation of the A-Lister Justice League -- the lineup most everyone's familiar with -- and is basically the beginning of Batman's "badass" phase.)
- Final Night (Another major crossover, complete with DCP collection. I really recommend this one -- Hal Jordan makes his last appearance for many, many years and it's amazingly sad. Basically this weird entity called the Sun Eater starts, well, eating the sun. The superheroes can't do anything about it, and Kyle Rayner secretly seeks out Hal Jordan for help. The ending is genuinely amazing. Also, Supes loses his powers for a while.)
---
Annnnnd this is right about where I left off! I realize this probably went on a LOT longer than you'd probably have wanted, but I can vouch for the quality of all these stories.
Re: HRRRRNNNNNNGH this took forever to type up
Ty for the torrent link; I was wondering where to find all these. LOL
BTW you mentioned the Civil War storyline earlier above I think; would you be able to summarize what's wrong with it? I have heard really bad things about it but nothing concrete enough to pass on, and he's been considering starting there since it is relatively recent, which, the impression I've gotten is that it would be a bad idea.
TY again <3
Re: HRRRRNNNNNNGH this took forever to type up
That being said, Civil War kind of sucks, but what do you expect? Marvel have always been transparently leftist to a fault (it's why they always kill off Captain America when a Republican is president) and Civil War is no different, though it's more disappointing because they claimed it would be an even-handed look at both sides of the issue being presented (should superheroes register and unmask and become sanctioned by the government?) The problem was that the pro-registration side (exemplified by Tony Stark) was skewed towards the villainous, with comparison of the Registration Act to slavery, and portrayals of most everyone in government having some sort of sinister agenda, including the President, who says that the only votes that matter are the ones the coming November, not the ones 50 years from now when the US is a totalitarian state in a world-wide civil war as a direct result of the Registration Act. Tony Stark, who is otherwise one of the more well-rounded characters in a universe full of largely badly-written characters, is reduced to little more than repeating "it's the law it's the law" rather than presenting any cohesive argument.
The only characters portrayed in a good light are the anti-registration superheroes, and Marvel claimed Civil War was going to present a balanced view of the issue. Who else do we know is blindly partisan yet makes claims of being balanced? It could've been an opportunity to show the good and bad points of both sides but was turned into a commentary on US foreign and domestic policy circa 2006 (including the line "unregistered combatants." Fuck me raw.)
Re: HRRRRNNNNNNGH this took forever to type up
That sounds like a clusterfuck, and really OOC for Tony from what I know of the character (which is admittedly more towards the movies than the comics0. o.O Pity, as it sounds like an interesting idea but it sounds like the execution really sucked. :-\
I swear I'm not the OP for #19
Marvel's editorial board needs to be lined up against a wall for the shit they've pulled over the last 30 years. Probably the only character Marvel has that's consistently written decently is Deadpool, which is hilarious because A) he was a more interesting ripoff of DC's C-list villain/anti-hero (depending on whether he shows up in Teen Titans or Suicide Squad) Deathstroke and 2) Rob Leifeld came up with him. I mean, Deathstroke's name is Slade Wilson for crying out loud.
I think what I also hate about Marvel is their pandering. The Spiderman 9/11 issue, holy fucking shit. You haven't seen anything until you've seen fucking Doctor Doom shedding a tear through that mask of his. DC has made a point of avoiding this, and their reasoning is that worse stuff happens all the time, everything from alien invasions (see: Invasion!) to outright complete destruction of cities (see: Death and Return of Superman) so to dedicate focus on real-life disasters would cheapen them and lessen their impact, and feel like pandering (see: Spiderman 9/11 issue.) It also brings up the side issue of how to deal with these real-world issues -- does Aquaman or Superman show up to stop the tsunami? But that would make it feel fake and kind of disrespectful, wishful thinking, because the tsunami still hit the real-world Japan.
Marvel has the opportunity to really make some great comics, if they would just. Stop. Pushing the writers around. And maybe be a little less transparently pushing their personal political views. And maybe get rid of Spiderman, that asshole.
Re: Comics question!
There are some really good titles in the current DC lineup but as someone who was reading before and after the reboot I'm not sure what I'd recommend to someone new. Does your partner have any particular characters or teams they're interested in? It's generally easier to pick a character or title and find out the 'essential/quality' storylines than just leaping into current continuity and trying to figure out what you like and don't like.
Re: Comics question!
Lessee, I think most of his knowledge of comics characters have come from the various animated shows. I know he has said he especially likes the Avengers line-up and X-Men. Wonder Woman, he loves. In general he really wants to find more comics with non-stereotypical women protagonists, and knowing where to start there is especially difficult. (I understand Birds of Prey is good there, and the fairy tale based comic series (Fables?), but I'm not quite sure what else is good to start with that.)
TY! :)
Re: Comics question!
(Anonymous) 2012-10-12 05:30 pm (UTC)(link)All are very easy to jump into.
Also Marvel is getting a New 52-style reboot in the next few months, so that might be a good starting point.