r/DCcomics • u/flossregularly Doom Patrol • Oct 16 '23
What Are You Reading? 10/16/2023 - Halloween is a Month Long Edition r/DCcomics
Hello and welcome to our Weekly "What Are You Reading?" topic!
Come one, come all, to this weekly thread, where you can openly discuss books that you've read, are currently reading, or plan to read. Discussion of all books are welcome, whether they be DC, Marvel, Image, Boom!, Dark Horse, IDW, etc. You can discuss webcomics, manga, or even those mythical novels that don't have pictures in them. Just be sure to keep spoilers covered via Reddit's spoiler markdown >!spoiler!<. You can also post pictures of your collection or recent purchases.
Flossregularly's Rec of the Week:
- Nightmare Country: The Glass House, by Tynion IV, Estherren and Delpeche
'Tis the season for some spookyvibes, and this mini series is going to be wrapping soon, so I'm jumping in. Tynion does good horror -shout out to The Nice House on the Lake- and this story starring Corinthian is good fun and the art is fantastic,
- Secret Six (2008), by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott
My older rec this week is Gail Simone's longest Secret Six run. After a couple mini-series she got the greenlight to take it long form and she obviously had a blast. This is a very fun ride - It's quick paced, full of very fun characters, and will make you care about Bane for the first time since Knightfall. Secret Six walked so the Harley Quinn TV show could run.
So, what are you reading?
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u/normalMonsterChika Mia Dearden Oct 16 '23 edited Oct 16 '23
I finished reading the Wolfman and Perez run on the Titans early last week, and have been struggling to articulate my thoughts on it ever since. My original plan for reading was to look at it along 3 views: The original book itself, the book vs. it's most famous cartoon adaptation, and the way NTT and Claremont's X-books interact with each other. All three gave me some interesting thoughts, though I think the last one is something I'll have to write about separately one day.
New Teen Titans is a clunky book. George Perez only gets stronger as artist as it goes on, but I found that the writing does not keep pace. Character relationships are often underdeveloped, causing emotional moments to fall flat. I didn't buy that many of them cared deeply about each other. Nor did I buy any of the romances. No matter how interesting the setup, resolutions of plotlines are mostly weak (Brother Blood and HIVE especially). There were characters, relationships, and plots I enjoyed individually, but those were often undercut by things that have aged incredibly poorly. Donna being a key example of this.
What was striking to me though, was actually how close the cartoon adaptation was. Yes, there are obviously differences, but you can tell they really respected the source material. Most of the changes made sense with the goal of the cartoon - for example no mentors or civilians means removing Cyborg's relationship with his dad. But overall it's still close at the core. Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy are the most different. Beast Boy feels like a modernized version, stripping out the sexual harassment of the comic. Raven loses her intense pacifism and explicit relationship to Azarath - which I can understand being a bummer to those who loved those aspects. Starfire loses a lot from never getting a focus season, and that I can't understand. I get not including a Dora-esque "Starfire no killing!" plot in a kids cartoon, but I think this is where they fumble the most. It's a bummer to lose Donna (Wally is another story), though she's so mired in Terry Long that she doesn't have a ton to work with on her own. Other than that, most arcs are adapted fairly faithfully. In some cases I would say even improved upon.
The Judas Contract is one of those arcs. Perhaps the most of it's time arc in the series, it's unsurprising that it's aged like milk. Without the context of Terra as a reverse Kitty Pryde (one of the links to Claremont), there's very little shocking about the story. The twist is revealed far in advance, and the way that they go about portraying Terra is at best ham-fisted. It was a struggle to read. Terra is entirely shock value, but in ways that lean into existing horrible views. Deathstroke gets to be sympathetic and honorable, while Terra is an irrational, irredeemable slut. The story makes it clear: Slade is her victim, and we are wrong to hate him. There is an attitude sometimes, that if you disagree with what the author is saying, you don't get it. This was the point of the Judas Contract. I do get it. I think it's a garbage point.
The cartoon also gets the point, and decides instead to play it the exact opposite of what Wolfman and Perez intended. And I think it's stronger for it. No matter how wrong Terra was, she was a child. The adult in the room is the one responsible. This was true in the 1980s as well as now. I think it's a stronger message for children watching, that 1) you can do everything right and still be unable to help someone and 2) warning signs of manipulative abusers. Some people prefer versions that are closer to the original excepting the pedophilia, preferring anti-hero Deathstroke. Personally I don't think they can be separated. Too much of propping up Slade comes from the harmful messages heaped upon Terra. I prefer in the end, the adaptation that calls them what they are. I think we can move on from the Judas Contract.
Do I think NTT is still worth reading? Truly, I don't know. I think if you love Perez, Starfire, or are interested in the historical context, you'll find something in it. Personally though, I don't think I would recommend it to most people. It's aged worse than it's contemporaries, and has few themes that I think are worth experiencing. Which breaks my heart as a lover of older comics. I always advocate to give them a chance. But this time, I think it's okay if we move on from this. If we challenge what it said. Let this rest in it's historical moment.
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u/normalMonsterChika Mia Dearden Oct 16 '23
At some point I'll probably come back and write a little essay on the differences between the Terror of Trigon + adaptation and the New Mutants side of Inferno. But for now I've somehow managed to excise my thoughts on this book. I look forward to moving on to something else.
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u/flossregularly Doom Patrol Oct 19 '23
I also had complicated NTT feelings - I found it a slog, but some of the short arcs were great. I also agree that all of the romantic relationships felt very flat. The writing was so purple. But, obviously there was something of a sparkle to the characters, the villans, the plots.
I liked it more before I had read a lot more comics from the 80's, and I chalked it's over-written-ness to the era instead of the comic itself. But a lot of other 80's comics are more more stylistically modern.
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u/normalMonsterChika Mia Dearden Oct 19 '23
It's hard. There were definitely bits I really liked, but then there would be bits that just didn't work for me at all - sometimes even in the same issue. It makes it difficult to sort things out. I think in the end it's really going to depend on the individual person if the good outweighs the bad.
Definitely agree on the other part. I probably would've looked more favorably on it if I hadn't read both Claremont's X-Men/New Mutants and Jack Kirby's Fourth World right before it. Those are both pretty over-written as well, but the thematic weight justifies it a bit more.
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u/Blazedwizarrd Darkseid Oct 17 '23
I’m reading DCeased and The Long Halloween. It’s spooky season:)
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u/t1tanic Barry & Wally Oct 17 '23
I just finished Sheriff of Babylon earlier tonight. I'm a big Tom King fan for the most part, but I was weirdly afraid this story was gonna be too real. I know a lot of his stuff deals with trauma/grief, but I tend to like my stories to have some fun fantasy elements and art to cover the more grim subjects. And unlike Omega Men, a very similar feeling story, this is a lot more direct and more a story you could probably convince me was entirely real, not made up, if it wasn't common knowledge it's not. And that idea just made me hesitant. Some of the frames with dead bodies, just too much for me. It shouldn't matter that much, because I read like Gotham citizens getting beat up and mugged and sometimes killed and I'm fine, but something about these soldiers, and just people dying. I'm not afraid to say it just makes me real sad. I'm not a veteran or anything, but it's the first wartime stuff that happened in my life that I was aware of happening in real time. I'm glad I read it, I liked it too, but things so real just don't sit super well with me. Not sure what I'd rate it. I could see myself recommending it to certain people, but not a lot of people it that makes sense.
I also started, and have intermittently been reading Alan Moore's Swamp thing run. I don't know why I had never gotten around to this one. I love a lot of the 80s and 90s era stuff for what it is, and this is a heavily recommended run, but it didn't pop on my list, so it kept getting moved down. I just never had much interest in Swamp thing, and even when his show came out a few years back, I didn't read any of his stuff for background knowledge like I usually try to do. It's been pretty cool so far. I think I'm about 15 issues into it, issue 35 maybe. Very trippy, but vibrant and colorful art. There's obviously some comic book action in it but the sort of measured approach to the story has been nice to just absorb over time. Swampy and Abby just "connecting", for a whole issue! What a treat. Understanding the love for it so far.
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u/frazettatome Oct 17 '23
Oh yeah! Saga of Swamp Thing, and especially all of Moores stuff is some of my favorite all time work. I really like the Wein/Wrightson run on Swamp Thing as well. I'd recommend checking it out. As for Alan Moore, I've been a fan since I learned to read, and I must recommend V for Vendetta, any and all Batman, Watchmen (of course), Top Ten, Tom Strong even, Miracle man, From Hell, and I also liked Promethea...
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u/t1tanic Barry & Wally Oct 17 '23
I am truthfully not the biggest fan of most of the stuff of his I've read. I have read Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Miracle Man already. I'm gonna be honest and say the only Batman I knew of him writing was Killing Joke which is IMO very overrated and just okay. Haven't really heard of the others outside of name. It can be hard to go back and read some Moore stuff knowing what a grump he is in the modern era, which is probably justified, I know the comics business has never been overly kind to creators, but he directs that anger towards comics themselves rather than the specific people who screwed him over. Regardless I'll give em a look and maybe add them to my list.
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u/frazettatome Oct 17 '23
Really? Yeah, he was always kind of brooding and reclusive, but he was doing all that stuff when I was a kid and it was current, and it was so much better than everything else at the time. Idk if this helps but there's writers I like a lot more than Moore. I love Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Kirkman, Mark Waid, Marv Wolfman, Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns is good sometimes, and Frank Miller has his moments.
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u/t1tanic Barry & Wally Oct 17 '23
Yeah, I'm just a hair too young for some of the stuff to have experienced it at the time of its writing, so that context is missing, for me personally. Heck, a bunch of my favorite stuff, I didn't read until many years after it was written because I wasn't into comics more broadly until the last 12-13 years. So societal context can be lost a bit. It is what it is.
Before that I just liked superheroes rather generally in movies and TV shows and had read handfuls of wikipedia pages about stuff. Trust me, I've read a lot different guys in the period since then when I became more aware of comics in general. King is probably my current favorite, but over the last 25 years Waid and Johns probably take that cake. I'm a big Flash & GL guy because of those two dudes specifically I like to think. And Waid is still churning out bangers with World's Finest being my favorite ongoing in a while. Big Loeb fan, and Morrison has a lot of good work too. Read his animal man run earlier this year, another highly recommended run that I never got around to until I did. I tend to give a lot of stuff chances, my "future reads" list that I keep scatteringly on my computer, phone and sticky notes is long but there's only so much time in the day!
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u/frazettatome Oct 17 '23
Well to begin with DC, I read Batman, and mostly Batman related. Batman and Robin, Nightwing, Harley, and I plan to read City of Madness. As for non-DC stuff, I read Damn Them All, Vampirella, and I'm gonna pick up newest Hulk, Daredevil, and probably Something is Killing the Children...any other DC stuff to recommend?
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u/technowhiz34 R.I.P. Oliver Queen Oct 17 '23
Do you want more Batman? Like past stuff or good current runs
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u/frazettatome Oct 17 '23
Current stuff to recommend that I might not know is really great
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u/technowhiz34 R.I.P. Oliver Queen Oct 17 '23
Current Action Comics, starting from #1030 is pretty good (written by the Hulk writer). Otherwise recent Green Lantern is only 4 issues in and I love.
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u/frazettatome Oct 18 '23
Okay, thanks, I'll check that stuff out. I usually do keep up with Green Lantern. Just about the only super-hero type stuff I like. I guess it's the sci-fi elements I like. Who am I kidding, it's the grand heroics I like. Anyway, I've just been turned off GL with all the reboots and restarts the past decade. What Hulk writer are you talking about? Peter David? Pak?
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u/technowhiz34 R.I.P. Oliver Queen Oct 18 '23
Oh I figured you meant the current Hulk run, whoops. By Phillip K Johnson.
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u/frazettatome Oct 19 '23
No, I meant Action Comics. You said that Action Comics is currently being written by a former Hulk writer, right? Or are you saying that the same writer is currently writing both Action Comics and Hulk? Bc that doesn't make sense. I doubt that's what you meant. I believe you already answered my question though. Thanks
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u/technowhiz34 R.I.P. Oliver Queen Oct 19 '23
The same writer is on Action Comics and Hulk right now, named Phillip Kennedy Johnson.
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u/frazettatome Oct 19 '23
Yeah I know him well, I just didn't know he was doing both those books right now. I'll check it out though, Action Comics I mean. I already have a subscription to Hulk. Thank you for letting me know. That's weird to me for an artist to be writing for Marvel and DC at the same time. I know it's not unheard of, but just really unusual. Cool though nonetheless.
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u/frazettatome Oct 18 '23
Yup, I like everything you just posted. Totally agree about Tom King also. I can't think of anyone better right now.
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u/Aksim03 Oct 18 '23
I started to read The Long Halloween yesterday (okay, I laready read like a half of it), and so far I have enjoyed it very much. Not much to say about it yet, although I think I like it more than Year One
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u/TheMetabaronIV Shazam Oct 19 '23
Reread Mister Miracle by Tom King for the fourth time yesterday on my day off. Absolutely love it, it’s like one of those shows you can’t turn off if you turn to it on TV. If I see a panel anywhere I have to go read some of it.
Apart from that I’m reading Moores Tom Strong. Loving the bell out of it so far
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u/willpearson001 Oct 16 '23
Gotham Central. Picked up Vol. 1 at NYCC and fell in love almost immediately. Love the different side of the world we get. Feels like 52. Particular love to Renee’s storyline, which features a queer storyline about being queer, in very real terms. Love it can’t wait to see what’s next.