Comics, etc.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I liked the SWORD concept from Astonishing, but I couldn't even get through the first issue of SWORD thanks to what I interpreted as a confusion about whether the book wants to be "serious" (as comics go) or silly.

Does it get better, or do you enjoy the humor? I can appreciate silly, farcical comics, but for me it's hard to do so with characters and a universe that are so often depicted as very serious.

Speaking of Henry McCoy, I've been loving his character in All-New X-Men and

Spoiler:

New Avengers. I really loved the idea that Xavier knew Beast was the guy with the right combination of intelligence and conscience to safeguard that level of power.

It's supposed to be silly. Death's Head is in it and Lockheed is an alien secret agent? It's ridiculous.

And Beast is awesome all over. I like what they've done with his character in just about every book he's in.

ugh, Comixology is all sorts of hammered now. I had login issues and resetting my password is becoming an extreme exercise in frustration.

Hemidal wrote:

ugh, Comixology is all sorts of hammered now. I had login issues and resetting my password is becoming an extreme exercise in frustration.

I still haven't been able to actually check out using their website.

oilypenguin wrote:

It's supposed to be silly. Death's Head is in it and Lockheed is an alien secret agent? It's ridiculous.

That's cool, different strokes for different folks. In Astonishing (and later Secret Invasion and Spider-Woman), SWORD was depicted as bad-ass and a very realpolitik organization with an ultra-serious job. I think it's understandable that I expected that from its own title.

Kind of like Hickman's SHIELD: The foundation had been laid for a cool, serious title, but what was delivered was a left turn. SHIELD is cool despite not being the SHIELD book anyone could have expected, and it took me some getting over my disappointment to learn to enjoy it.

Anyway, I may give SWORD another shot. I'm not against funny teams in general; I suppose I just expect the X-Men to stay serious and the Great Lakes Avengers to stay funny.

Regarding Hank McCoy: On the one hand, it's interesting that they took this kind of boring character with lame powers and gave him lasting interest by saying "Well, what if we changed him? Like, made him really look like a Beast or something?"

On the other hand, all they have explored there is kind of similar ground covered by Ben Grimm since the day Lee and Kirby came up with them.

Which reminds me again how awesome Hickman's run on Fantastic Four was. I'm going to do well if I wait a full year before I re-read it.

Stengah wrote:
Hemidal wrote:

ugh, Comixology is all sorts of hammered now. I had login issues and resetting my password is becoming an extreme exercise in frustration.

I still haven't been able to actually check out using their website.

Made a slew of purchases last night, but all my downloads errored. As long as they're attributed to my account, I'll download them later.

If you are interested in picking up those free Marvel books, then head over to the site and enter your email addy so they can send you a link when they are ready for you.

I grabbed ~100 off the app. None downloaded but they're in My Comics at least.

cyrax wrote:

Insert recommendations below.

So I have read Avengers, Savage Wolverine, and Hawkeye and all of them were great in my opinion and I might be buying some more issues of all of them.

So far, I'm enjoying New Avengers a bit more than Avengers, but both are great. NA has picked up the

Spoiler:

Illuminati

storyline, and it's awesome.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

So far, I'm enjoying New Avengers a bit more than Avengers, but both are great. NA has picked up the

Spoiler:

Illuminati

storyline, and it's awesome.

I just opened the first page of that and saw the spoiler text, then I decided I should walk home from the coffee shop before it started raining, going to jump in now. I am now properly hyped with expectations.

I also really liked savage wolverine. Haven't read the second yet, but will probably get to it this week.

Are you guys taking advantage of Marvel Unlimited? i.e. Are the comics you guys have been mentioning on that service? I'm willing to take the leap as I currently buy singles from comixology as long as there's some good variety there.

peedmyself wrote:

I also really liked savage wolverine. Haven't read the second yet, but will probably get to it this week.

Gonna have to check that out, what with the recommendations.

Kam: Do be warned that NA didn't completely kill with issue 1. 2 was very good, and 3 reduced me to a drooling vegetable.

DSGamer wrote:

Are you guys taking advantage of Marvel Unlimited? i.e. Are the comics you guys have been mentioning on that service? I'm willing to take the leap as I currently buy singles from comixology as long as there's some good variety there.

Some are, but there's a six month lag, so most of what we're discussing is not yet. Which is like waiting for trades. If they iron out the minor kinks, it will be an amazing offering.

Edit: If anyone is using Unlimited, I'd be curious to hear about how many great complete runs you've seen on there. All of Secret Invasion? Annihilation? Amazing Spider-Man 1-?. That kind of thing.

Ah, ok. Well, I'll just hit up Comixology, then. I don't mind buying singles, honestly. I already buy a ton of them as that's my favorite way to read comics now. So it sounds like the New Avengers and Savage Wolverine are pretty recommended? I've read some of the post-Avs.X stuff, but not much of it. Right now I'm reading the Superman: The Black Ring trades. Was kind of curious when I found out that there was a run of pre-New 52 Superman comics out there. Otherwise DC is largely dead to me.

The other random thing I'm reading right now is "Transformers Regeneration One". I know someone just laughed right now, but it's pretty cool. I was a fan of the early comics, read them as a kid. This series picks up where that one left off, which I think is kind of clever. There's something else clever that they do but it's a spoiler. Anyway, off to go look at the New Avengers.

If you haven't already read Bendis's New Avengers, you could do worse that signing up for Unlimited and immediately spending a month or two to read all of that. His run was very good, and introduced the storyline that I spoilered above.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

If you haven't already read Bendis's New Avengers, you could do worse that signing up for Unlimited and immediately spending a month or two to read all of that. His run was very good, and introduced the storyline that I spoilered above.

Ah. Great. I have huge gaps in Marvel. Mostly because I was a DC guy for years and years. That ended with Final Crisis and finally put down completely with the New 52. Since Final Crisis I've been catching up on a lot. I read some of this stuff in real time, but there are a lot of interesting events in there. House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, etc. But I'm happy to be introduced to things I haven't yet discovered.

I went into Savage Wolverine not expecting much, which may have helped, but I thought it was top drawer.

Something else I just finished is the last Punisher War Zone. Punisher vs the Avengers. It was fun if you like the Punisher.

DSGamer wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

If you haven't already read Bendis's New Avengers, you could do worse that signing up for Unlimited and immediately spending a month or two to read all of that. His run was very good, and introduced the storyline that I spoilered above.

Ah. Great. I have huge gaps in Marvel. Mostly because I was a DC guy for years and years. That ended with Final Crisis and finally put down completely with the New 52. Since Final Crisis I've been catching up on a lot. I read some of this stuff in real time, but there are a lot of interesting events in there. House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, etc. But I'm happy to be introduced to things I haven't yet discovered.

Sounds like you are the target audience for Marvel Unlimited, then. There are tons of guides online to how to read through the various Marvel events of the last 12 or so years. I *think* you start with Secret War (singular) and then do Avengers Disassembled, then House of M, then New Avengers. New Avengers then kind of acts as a spine for the crossovers for several years, as well as being a damn fine book in and of itself. You basically read it and when a crossover happens, time out and read the crossover's limited series. Other series are optional.

That's New Avengers vol 1, btw. We're on vol 3 now.

I've read Secret War and Avengers Disassembled and House of M. I've just missed stuff in there. I've caught a lot of the big events because I read trades. But I've missed some of the good stuff that happens in specific comics like Avengers, X-Men, etc.

Finally able to download those Marvel comics from my purchase history today.

Saw a Facebook ad for Comixology today. Apparently they're going to do a sale on Marvel #2's at 99 cents each. It's not live right now, most likely due to the snafu that was the free #1's, but the ad said the sale ends Sunday night. It may shift some, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up!

soonerjudd wrote:

Saw a Facebook ad for Comixology today. Apparently they're going to do a sale on Marvel #2's at 99 cents each. It's not live right now, most likely due to the snafu that was the free #1's, but the ad said the sale ends Sunday night. It may shift some, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up!

Ahahahaha, that's brilliant. #10s will be $9.

oilypenguin wrote:
soonerjudd wrote:

Saw a Facebook ad for Comixology today. Apparently they're going to do a sale on Marvel #2's at 99 cents each. It's not live right now, most likely due to the snafu that was the free #1's, but the ad said the sale ends Sunday night. It may shift some, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up!

Ahahahaha, that's brilliant. #10s will be $9.

Pretty smart though, seriously. Give people a free taste, then get them used to paying by making the first time very easy for them, then set the hook!

Well, Marvel's Superior Spiderman is $3.99 in the app, and it's been getting a release every 2 weeks. As someone interested in it, shelling out $8 a month for it seems excessive, to say the least.

But, they did give me the first taste for free, so maybe they'll hook me...

If it helps, I'm caught up with it and I'm not sold on it yet.

It's interesting but I'm waiting for things to get back to normal (as they inevitably will).

Spoilers for those that give a crap (and this is interesting enough to give a crap about):

Spoiler:

Let's be honest, it's super obvious that this won't be the status quo forever. Peter will be Peter again. With that as a given, it's just a matter of seeing how badly Doc can screw up his life. I love Dan Slott and his work on Amazing but this concept has such a limited shelf life that I'm having a hard time committing. I'm not against him trying it and he's earned my trust to continue to read but I don't know how long this can last.

Yay for writer's doing new things but as Loki so astutely pointed out in the last issue of JiM he was in, we won't let him be anything new, not really. So why try?

trueheart78 wrote:

Well, Marvel's Superior Spiderman is $3.99 in the app, and it's been getting a release every 2 weeks. As someone interested in it, shelling out $8 a month for it seems excessive, to say the least.

But, they did give me the first taste for free, so maybe they'll hook me...

The Marvel Unlimited deal is just such a better value for anything one doesn't absolutely have to read day one. I'm still strongly considering it despite its shortcomings. I used to only read paper trades, so I'm used to the wait.

Regarding books that ship twice monthly versus once monthly, etc.: I've been enjoying both Avengers (twice) and New Avengers (monthly), but NA has been much more substantial. Lots of Avengers issues have been episodic/origin issues that haven't really rocked. Hopefully, as the major plot gets going, the book will take off and move the story along with every issue.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

Well, Marvel's Superior Spiderman is $3.99 in the app, and it's been getting a release every 2 weeks. As someone interested in it, shelling out $8 a month for it seems excessive, to say the least.

But, they did give me the first taste for free, so maybe they'll hook me...

The Marvel Unlimited deal is just such a better value for anything one doesn't absolutely have to read day one. I'm still strongly considering it despite its shortcomings. I used to only read paper trades, so I'm used to the wait.

Regarding books that ship twice monthly versus once monthly, etc.: I've been enjoying both Avengers (twice) and New Avengers (monthly), but NA has been much more substantial. Lots of Avengers issues have been episodic/origin issues that haven't really rocked. Hopefully, as the major plot gets going, the book will take off and move the story along with every issue.

Yeah, Unlimited may not provide the greatest of reading experience, but the value if you like reading comics is awesome. I have spent the week catching up on Amazing Spider man (beginning of Spider Island til Ends of the Earth), Young Avengers (30+ issues) and reading a bunch of old Captain Americas. I feel like I have got my subscription paid for in just the last week since the ipad version launched

trueheart78 wrote:

Well, Marvel's Superior Spiderman is $3.99 in the app, and it's been getting a release every 2 weeks. As someone interested in it, shelling out $8 a month for it seems excessive, to say the least.

But, they did give me the first taste for free, so maybe they'll hook me...

As I mentioned upthread, I signed up for a mail order subscription - 12 issues at something like $24.99, so it's a lot cheaper that way. Additionally, you get both the print version and a code for the digital version! (Also, I only really want digital, so if anyone is interested in going splitsies for the print copies, let me know!)