Yay Writting Time!

Woop woop! Okay so NOW I will do the comic book roundup I mean to do like one to two weeks ago. So here we go!

Hickman's Future Project!- After reading the nightly news Hickman rockted up onto the pedastle of being one of my favorite comic book writters working in the indusry ever. When he got picked up by Marvel though I started to worry. Marvel has a tendency to misuse some of its talent. Jason Arron is mostly languishing under the thumb of marvel and Matt Fraction hasn't really produced anything that I've found to be paticularly interesting. So I worried about Hickman because his voice was to vital, bright, and interesting to have him pushing the X-men around their shitty island or something like that. Oh and David Lampram there is a man who needs to write so much more and he needs to write so much less for Marvel. ANYWAY so I was worried. Then the first Fantastic 4 Dark Reign trade came out and I was relived. He got the fantastic 4. They were fun, high science fiction, high concept, people who ran around and did awesome things. The art direction ranged from great to downright creative and the whole book sang with a vibrant energy. Hell even watching their kids fend off Norman Osbourn was a mighty treat.

So with a smile on my face and excitment in my heart I waited paciently for the next trade. Now for whatever reason none of the local stores opted to carry his run of FF. To make matters worse I forgot to look the damn things up. I actually assumed he wasn't writting the FF anymore. I heard rumblings of the human torch dieing and lets face it unless you are playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance the human torch is pretty annoying. Then a shiny new Trade was on the shelf in eye catching white. The fantastic four had been reborn as the future foundation and some monies later I am delighted by this change in events.

Turning the comic over in my head I realize that I don't have much to say about it other than I am excited to read more of it. Spiderman is on the team now but instead of being a smart ass wanker who bitches about how shitty his life is all the time he instead is taking his rightful place as one of the marvel universes geniuses. A lot of people forget that Parker posseses genius level intelegence and this is a god damn shame. So I am glad they are playing that aspect of his personality up more rather than his pointlessly turbulant social life. On that note the family aspect of the fantastic four is being toned down and replaced with more a adventure science fiction fun thing. I like it. I was going to do a long thing where I compare it to planetary and all of those observations are valid but I would have to sit here and do lots and lots of plot summary and I don't feel like it so I am moving on.

The Anihilators! Now this was a fun little comic! It is the continuation of the SPACE epic that is being written by Abbet and Landing. After the Thanos imperative passed we now have time to take a break and relax for a bit which is nice. Space was getting more than a little bit strained let me tell you. The Annihilators is the new series that is filling the void left behind by Nova and Gaurdians of the Galaxy, and the mega event books. Urisingly it actually manages to fill all three of these roles simultaneously which is pretty freakin awesome. The team consists of all the space badasses put together in one place to deal with whatever major threat there is to deal with. Essentially they are the new Gaurdians of the Galaxy except they are all badasses. They are also most approriatly named the Team with to Many Hammers. The book itself is light hearted, fun, and it kicks more ass than anyone could ask for. Not a whole lot more needs to be said on it other than hooray.

I would like to take this moment and the next fifteen minutes to point something out though. The Annhilators isn't a great comic. By that I mean I will not stand shoulder to shoulder with Maus, Watchmen, Joker, or any of the other giants of the medium. No but it will stand shoulder to shoulder with Black Ring (something else I read but don't have time to write about), Warren Ellie's ThunderBolts, and oh I dunno Old Man Logan. That's a good one. There is the war over style over substance and this book along with the others I named definietly fit under that category. However, what these books do is elevate the idea of style over substance rather than make it a criminal "guilty pleasure" sort of thing. This is an argument that happens most often with movies but I feel that it is just as, if not more applicable, here. There is nothing inherently wrong with will crafted pieces of pure entertainment. It is when we start getting into poorly crafted pieces of entertainment that things start to become troublesome. Where all bets are placed on being shocking, or EXTREME like in KickAss or Nemisis. Or when you try to provide to much wide screen action without enough setting like in Secret Invasion. A large part of this argument is subjective. I recognize this. I also recognize that as a result there will be no definitive end to this argument. Still there if I am going to consume something that is going to be more style than substance than I want some seriously high quality style. Just because it is superficially entertaining doesn't mean it has to be deficient in things like plot, character development, or good things.

Amen.

Also at some time in the future I am going to make this exact same argument except all my examples will be movies. Transformers is going to be one of those things I am going to shit ALL over.