Would you suggest I read The Contest before Challenge of Artemis?
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I think it would make more sense and flow better, but I’ll admit I’ve read things out of order when I had to.
In Middle School this kid checked Fellowship of the Ring out of the library and was taking so long to read it I just read Two Towers and Return of the King before he even finished. It was actually kind of fun trying to piece it all together.
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That was all I needed. I will be reading The Contest first via DCUI.
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Enjoy! It’s a lot of fun, and the art is classic 90’s.
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That is what I want to hear! I flipped through The Challenge book and was happy to see that 90s art. I am oddly a fan of that style. Outside of a comic or 2 in the 80s that my grandmother bought me it was 90s comics that got me interested.
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What a chex-mix week of books that was…
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August had a total of 158 issues read. There was a strong start to the month, but once classes started things petered out again. I read a bunch of Animal Man for reasons, and boy are his Silver Age stories… I was going to say weird, but they’re honestly mostly just boring. They’re not terrible, but they don’t have the same fun wackiness as some DC Silver Age books, and it didn’t seem like they were trying to do anything different with it. Clearly just a case of a one off character doing pretty well and then writers scrambling to come up with some stuff. I do love how Buddy seems to keep “Spring of a tiger and sock of a gorilla” as a catchphrase to some extent, though. Things really start to get good when Morrison comes into the picture, though. I’m not a fan of a lot of their work, but Animal Man just clicks with me in a lot of ways. There’s a ton of out there, meta stuff that heavily relies on big, heady concepts like COIE and the Phantom Stranger, but that never gets in the way of the down to earth family stuff. It also handles the message really well, too. Animal activism becomes a huge part in the book after the first arc, and Morrison doesn’t really try to shy away from preaching about it, but instead they built that into Buddy’s character arc. Buddy becomes so obsessed with it because it’s important to him and he feels like he should be able to do something with all of his powers, but his friends and family just feel like they don’t have conversations anymore, just lectures. And slowly Buddy starts to adjust and it’s just built into his life from there. I think that’s really cool.
Other highlights: I hate how much I like Superman: Son of Kal-El. I knew this would be the case because Tom Taylor has a good track record with doing that to me, but still, I never thought I could like a Superman book about Jon this much. Plus, between this and Nightwing, DC’s current favorite Tom is doing a lot of cool stuff with evolving the universe. There’s this great conversation between Dick and Clark in Nightwing #83 that really makes it feel like the DC Universe is in a new era, but not in the major status quo way, more in the natural character evolution way. I really like when there can be big changes that are subtle and make the characters feel like humans instead of IP.
Oh, also, I had to get Comixology during August for school, but I didn’t get it until the last couple days, so while it’s a new piece of the pie chart, it’s a very small one.
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OH! Forgot…now, no spoilers for you digital kids, but the latest issue on INFINITE FRONTIER out Tuesday WAS CRAZY! In a gorgeous two-page spread, there were characters covering so much DC history. There was SIVANA, CAPTAIN CARROT, LADY QUARK, 90S EDGY, CRAPPY FATE, and MAGOG just to name a few. That’s commitment to the past right there. And in one of the digital INFINITE FILES on here, CHROMA popped up. FREAKIN CHROMA IN ALL HIS NOT FAMOUS YET MCFARLANE GLORY! Best Mini of the year, in my humble nostalgia-biased opinion…
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Updated
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I am totes jelly, as the kids say or USED to say because that was so yesterday, of your charts. Have fun with COMIXOLOGY, there’s some good finds up for borrow.
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| August 2021 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Teen Titans (2016) #27-28 | 2 | 8/2/2021 | The Terminus Agenda |
| Deathstroke (2016) #43-44 | 2 | 8/2/2021 | The Terminus Agenda |
| Teen Titans (2016) #29-34 | 6 | 8/9/2021 | |
| Teen Titans (2016) #35-41 | 7 | 8/10/2021 | |
| Teen Titans (2016) #42-47 | 6 | 8/15/2021 | |
| Teen Titans Annual (2019) #2 | 1 | 8/15/2021 | Completed |
| Total Justice (1996) #1-3 | 3 | 8/15/2021 | Completed |
| Detective Comics (2016) #943-956 | 14 | 8/16/2021 | |
| Detective Comics (2016) #957-968 | 12 | 8/18/2021 | |
| Batman: The Adventure Continues (2021) #1-5 | 3 | 8/22/2021 |
I completed Teen Titans and then started on Detective Comics in the Rebirth Era. I’ve slowed again because of purchasing this house and just being busy doing other things.
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updated
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So, I’ve been gone a while. I blame Tomasi.
Green Lantern: 7 issues from 2009, pre-Blackest Night
Writer: Geoff Johns
In Rage of the Red Lanterns, Laira’s death stings in a way that works sort of well as a moment, but does make the arc itself a bit of a shaggy dog story.
In Prelude to Blackest Night, Larfleeze is pretty great, though I feel like it didn’t need to be four issues long just to establish that he exists and get into a fight with him.
1,689.
Green Lantern Corps: 9 issues from 2009, pre-Blackest Night
Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
You know, Tomasi is really pretty impressive. Short of maybe Jim Starlin or Brian Q. Miller, I haven’t seen a writer fit this much dumb into a single issue so consistently.
So, there’s the over-the-top edge factor of this Kryb plot. There’s the Zamarons, who seem to be knocking over the Guardians’ dumb strawman arguments and making really hair-splitting arguments for why they’re technically not brainwashing anyone like we’re supposed to like them, but then they’re obviously brainwashing people and Johns has been writing them as much more clearly creepy and antagonistic. And there’s the Guardians pulling a Prequel Jedi and forbidding relationships… between Green Lanterns. This is because the Sinestros are attacking Lanterns’ families. Including non-Green-Lantern family members. So in other words, they’re forbidding only relationships with the people most able to defend themselves and most likely to be targets in their own right. This is supposed to be a bad decision, but I don’t think it’s supposed to have literally no rational relationship to the reason it’s implemented at all.
That’s in the first issue here.
Then-
God, there’s just too much dumb.
OK, first we have this:
(This said by the one who uses the gas in question)
Then we have this (spoilered for being mildly terrifying):
And anyway, I think what’s supposed to be going on at a certain point in this arc is Amnee Pree, who is pregnant, begins beating up Kryb, who is Edgy Sinestro Corps Member Killing Lantern Families #87: Child Theft Edition, with what appears to be intended to be a giant construct of her own unborn child. Except… she’s fairly alien-looking (that’s her dropping that singular specimen of Tomasi dialogue in the blurred image), and the construct is very obviously a human child, so what’s with that?
oh, yes, and also, she’s beating someone up with a construct of her unborn child, what the ■■■■, tomasi
Also, what’s with all of the out-of-place song references all of a sudden? A Star Sapphire quoting “Somebody to Love” (the Jefferson Airplane one, not the Queen one; which, like, points for taste, but-) and “Love is a Battlefield” is one thing, but now Mongul is quoting “Sympathy for the Devil” for some reason?!
Like, yeah, I guessed your name, but what’s puzzling me is why the hell this is happening.
I also forgot how… smoothly the Kyle/Soranik ship was introduced. And I mean that as sarcastically as possible. “With my magic love powers, I have discerned that you two, who have expressed no romantic interest in each other at all to this point, are each other’s true love.”
Anyway, “It’s blazing combat time!” Perfect battle cry. Very natural. 10/10 Guy Gardner dialogue. What are you, a toy commercial?
The only thing more shocking than the reveal that Sinestro is Soranik’s father (Actually, what purpose does that even serve? Like, I saw Star Wars too, but it sort of cheapens her arc of having to struggle with a title she doesn’t want and fame she’s not comfortable with by making it all part of Sinestro’s evil plan) is that he’s… THE PHOTOGRAPHER WHO TOOK HER GRADUATION PICTURES! That fiend! Do his machinations know no end?!
Regarding Sodam Yat’s weird perpetual lead poisoning, I’m not sure how Tomasi thinks bloodstreams work, but I don’t think it’s how bloodstreams actually work.
UUUUUUUUGH.
1,698.
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I had more fun reading this than the latest issue of BATMAN. Thanks, friend.
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Well, they do call him the Boy Fiend, so I don’t know what else everyone was expecting.
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Hm… I’m gonna say this joke works better with context and help everybody else out here.
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I’ll always be upset that Grant Morrison never had Jack Biceps show up to fight Flex Mentallo.
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Yes that is a smiley-face next to AMAZING SPIDERMAN because that’s the issue that retconned one of the absolute worst stories in the history of all funnybooks. The 90s Clone saga actually made me quit reading books for a spell(only to be brought back in with a trip to Barnes and Nobles and the first tpb of Ultimate SPIDERMAN, ironically enuff, but as awful as the clone mess was, it wasnt ANYTHING compared to the SINS PAST(?) storyline. The one where NORMAN OSBORN put a goblin mind whammy on Gwen Stacey and… thats all I’m gonna type about it. Doesn’t matter. In 20 pages, and after like 80+ issues of “blah”, that was all undone and all is better. At least, for a bit, Ben Reilly’s coming back like bell-bottoms and things could get ugly…again.
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