Marvel Universe

comics rock. talk about them here. now. or just go to the "corn" section and wack off. i'll understand. i'll just sit here and read my spider-man comics.

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anarky
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Re: Marvel Universe

Post by anarky »

Tom Foolery wrote:Who wouldn't be excited to see characters like Death's Head again? And Death'sHeadII. And DeathMetal. And DeathAngel. And DeathWreck. And Death³.
Please. Do not mention Death's Head in the same sentence as those others again.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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A bunch of Hulk-y goodness. And some other 'H' stuff as well. But mostly Hulk.

Hit-Monkey. A 3 issue mini. A macaque monkey is haunted by a dead assassin, so he steals a little boy's suit and goes after the guys that killed the assassin and the monkey's herd or tribe or whatever. It's by Daniel Way.

The Hood. The original 6 issue MAX series by BKVaughan and Kyle Hotz. I only have the final 3 issues, but it was pretty good. Parker Robbins is a real fuck up of a villain.

Hulk 295. From 1984. By Mantlo and Buscema. It's Hulk vs Boomerang. If that seems a little one sided...it is.

Hulk 334. From 1987. By David and McFarlane. Hulk vs HalfLife.

Hulk 474. The final issue of the original run. By Joe Casey and Pulido. A pretty weak ending to a series. The book rebooted with Byrne and Garney a few months later. But this issue fizzled big time.

Hulk Annual '97. A shape changing alien escapes the ShiAr Imperial Guard and shows up on Earth, where it takes the form of Bruce Banner's illegitimate son and holes up with the Pantheon and Doc Samson. Eventually Hulk and Gladiator come to blows over the kid. At the end the kid just wanders off into the woods. So presumably, that kid is still out there somewhere. Loose plot thread Alert!!

Hulk/Sub-Mariner Annual '98. Banner goes out into the Atlantic to drown himself and gets involved in a feud between Namor and Attuma who has powered himself up with Hulk blood. Decent story with some great Wheatley art.

Hulk Annual '99. John Byrne tried to retcon the Hulk's origin by involving Skrulls. Thankfully it didn't take and hardly anyone references the changes. Good Lee Weeks art though.

Hulk Annual 2000. Hulk is mimicking chimp behavior and looking for She-Hulk to mate with. Terrible story by Jenkins, with great Texiera art of Hulk fighting the Avengers. I laughed at one point because the fight mostly takes place in Central Park. One panel has the Avengers rushing out of the Mansion. The next panel is them exiting a Quinjet to confront the Hulk...in Central Park (Apparently Jenkins is not aware Avengers Mansion is ACROSS THE STREET from Central Park.)

Hulk 24-26. From the 2nd series. Hulk and Ross confront Abomination after he admitted he had poisoned Betty and killed her. Abom is also teaching a writing class at a library. Nope, not kidding.

Hulk 34. The first issue of the legendary Bruce Jones/Romita Jr. run.

Hulk -1 Flashback issue. Flashback story of the relationship between Bruce and his abusive father, including the truth of how Brian really died.

Hulk:Hercules Unleashed. A 1996 oneshot set post-Onslaught. Hercules returns to Earth to find the Heroes are all dead and ends up getting into a fight with the Banner-less Hulk that destroys Fargo, ND. A fun story from Peter David and Mike Deodato which had a lovely dedication to Mark Gruenwald on the last page.

Incredible Hulks 612-617. "The Dark Son" that wrapped up all the loose ends from Planet Hulk/World War Hulk/Son(s) of Hulk. Hulk's 2nd son, Hiro-Kala, has aimed the planet K'ai at Earth to destroy the Old Power, and Hulk and his team (including SheHulk, Red SheHulk, A-Bomb, Korg, and his other son, Skaar) have to intercept before the two planets collide. By Greg Pak and a bunch of artists.

Incredible Hulks 619-621. The Chaos War crossover issues. Hulk fights a deceased Abomination and possesed Dr. Strange amongst others.

Next up I'm going to reread the Loeb Hulk series(knowing the twist this time) as well as bunch of Hulk minis and oneshots. And maybe a couple 'I' issues like Iceman.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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Reread Hulk 1-9. This time knowing Red Hulk is Thunderbolt Ross. It doesn't work. Ross is one of the other supporting characters(that is eventually revealed to be an LMD) but none of it jibes. Issue 7-9 are two split stories, each inflated to fill up 3 issues. All in all, the same disappointment it was the first go round.

World War Hulks: Spidey vs Thor. 2 issue tie in after everybody gets exposes to Gamma by the Intelligencia. This is Hulk Thor vs Hulk Spidey. With a backup story of Hulk Iceman vs Hulk Cyclops.

World War Hulks: Cap vs Wolverine. Same as above, except with Hulk Bucky and Hulk Logan.

Hulk Smash! A 2 issue mini from 2001 by Ennis and McCrea. About one of the many soldiers assigned to Hulkbusters.

Hulk:Broken Worlds. A 2 issue anthology series with stories of Hulks from different worlds. Including House of M, 2099, Microverse, Age of Apocalypse, Days of Future Past, 1602, Mangaverse, and an epilogue to Future Imperfect by Peter David.

Rampaging Hulk. A very shortlived ongoing from 1998 that only lasted 6 issues. It was set right after Jarella died and Betty had married Glenn Talbot.

Hulk:Nightmerica. 6 issues from 2003. Banner gets mixed up with a "family" of failed Super Soldier experiments looking for a safe haven and the corporation looking to profit from them. Meh.

Hulk:Destruction. Peter David revamped Emil Blonsky's origin (and Mercy's as well) in this 4 issue mini from 2005. David also took some unfair potshots at Bruce Jones' now retconned run.

Startling Stories:Banner. From 2001. Not a What If or Elseworlds story perse, but an out of continuity tale of Hulk's rampages having real world consequences and casualties. By Azzarello and John Corben.

Hulk Megazine oneshot. A 100-page reprint issue from 1996 of various Hulk stories from different eras.

Hulk Family: Green Genes oneshot. Stories about She-Hulk, Skaar, the new Scorpion and Lyra the Savage She-Hulk. Also a reprint of She-Hulk 1 from 1980.

Hulk:Let the Battle Begin. A 2010 oneshot written by Dee Snider's kid(or his brother. Or uncle. I dunno) about Banner and his special relationship with his purple pants. Surprisingly good stuff.

Hulk:Winter Guard. A 2010 oneshot focusing on Russia's premiere super team, and the revolving aspect of its members. When one dies, a trained replacement steps up so the public thinks they're the same heroes.

Hulk Team-Up. A 2008 oneshot where the X-Men respond to the Hulk/Red Hulk San Fran throwdown in Hulk 1-6. Iceman and Angel help Hulk defeat giant Harpie robots. Also a backup story with Dazzler and Hulk in a karaoke bar.

Hulk:Gamma Games 1. The first issue of a mini that I guess is based on a video game that was in turn based on the Ang Lee film. I'm not sure. Anyway, the Leader steals Banner's Hulk mojo, but then the last half of the issue is a wordless battle with some kind of minions. I swear, you could take any panel from the last ten pages of the book and swap them with any other panel, and you wouldn't know the difference.

Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk 1. Finally found this issue I needed to fill this mini. The Intelligencia boot up the Cosmic Hulk robot using Red Hulk's energy. Banner and Red Hulk have to team up to stop them. Part of a bigger Hulk event from 2009.

Enigma Force. A 3 part tie in mini to the Dark Son arc. Every time I see Arcturus Rann and his Micro--whatever team, I feel lost because there's this huge backstory from all the various Micronauts books, but it's like they're not allowed to mention half of it. It's like seeing the SpaceKnights show up, but nobody can mention ROM. Except with Micronauts, instead of one character, it's like 10. And since I never read Micronauts when I was a kid, it's jumping into a story 4/5ths through. Anyway, Rann and his team are trying to stop Kiro-Hala from crashing planet K'Ai into Earth.

Ahhh...now I'm all caught up on my Hulk reading. Time to dig into the 'I's. Iceman, Imperial Guard, Iron Fist, Invaders, and on the DC side, some !mpact books, Infinity Inc, and a whole lotta Impulse!
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Re: Marvel Universe

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Did they ever retcon the fact that Bruce becomes Hulk because the gamma rays passed through and destroyed Maestro prior to striking him?

As good as that mini-series (Future Imperfect, right?) was, that finale was utterly brilliant.

Also, unrelated, but Death's Head was intended to be a throwaway, and was supposed to die at Galvatron's hand in his first appearance. Thank God it didn't go down that way.

Also, the auto correct knows the word Galvatron. And so does the text to speech. Speech to text. What the hell ever. How awesome is that?
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Re: Marvel Universe

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There's no reason I can think of why they would've retconned that. Most writers probably just ignore the Maestro part. Yeah, he got incinerated, but his cells may or may not have had anything to do with the Hulk transformation.

But there's something to be said for not overcomplicating heroes' origin stories. Look at the current fiasco happening in Iron Man for what NOT to do. That's being universally panned.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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Yes, but Maestro indirectly causing Bruce to become Hulk made the story circular in a brilliant way. And it was written at a time when Peter David could do no wrong on Hulk. He could have said the Hulk was a transvestite Klingon and it still would have been awesome.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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Finished off the 'G thru I' box (Marvel-y speaking, at least. Still got a huge Impulse run to tackle.) Here's what I read.

Human Torch. A 12 issue ongoing from 2004 starring Johnny Storm. The first arc was pretty decent. Right after he became the Torch and couldn't fully control his powers, Johnny accidentally burned a jock at his high school. The guy kept quiet all these years, but now he's with the FDNY and reluctantly has to ask Torch for help with a strange arson case. The second arc involved shrinking a European town down to inch tall people. Meh. The last arc involved Torch and Ben Grimm fighting Dragon Man on a college campus, and Storm debating on going back to school. Sorta decent writing from Karl Kesel. The highlight was that first arc with Skottie Young art.

Iceman. Only the first issue of his 1984 mini. But some items of note. Bobby Drake is half-Jewish. And it's on his Mother's side. Which makes him Jewish, since the Jewish lineage is always traced from the mother's side. Second, the anti-mutant combative father present in later stories is nowhere to be found. Yeah, his dad's kind of a hardass here, and disapproves of Bobby's super heroing. But he's not the huge bigot later writers turn him into. And third, Bobby hits on the next door neighbor's teenage daughter. Skeevy. I don't know exactly how old Bobby is here, but he's definitely college age, because he's threatening to drop out of his Accounting Major(to his parents chagrine). And the girl is around 16-17. Yikes.

Iceman. The 2001 mini by Abnett and Lanning. Bobby's ex Opal claims she has Bobby's sick son in Hong Kong and the corporation she works for can save him with some of Iceman's X-gene. But its all a ruse by Sublime to make genetic hybrid warriors or something. Bobby teams up with a diminutive old ninja guy and stops them. And(surprise!) in the end it turns out its not his kid.

Imperial Guard. A 3 issue mini from 1997. Set post-Onslaught, Empress Lilandra has inexplicably sent the Guard to Earth to hang out (even though there was a huge invasion storyline happening in the X-Books at the time. The Shi'Ar Empire in under seige, and they're A-list heroes are sitting it out? What??) Anyway, some Kree soldiers are hiding in NYC posing as an anti-superhero movement trying to resurrect the Supreme Intelligence. The entire thing is dumb. The late 90s is littered with crap.

Inhumans. A oneshot from 1995. After Operation Galactic Storm, a fleet of Kree refugees show up seeking asylum in Attilan on the moon. For some reason, the Royal family was in self imposed exile on Earth while the rest of the Inhumans tried democracy instead of a monarchy for awhile(I'm not sure why. Perhaps this was after Atlantis Rising?) Anyway, some Kree actually want asylum, but others assume Attilan is theirs by right and attack. Blackbolt and his family return and save the day from Kree warriors who ingested Terrigen Mists. And the Inhuman council decides to send the Kree on their merry homeless way. Eh.
A much better Inhuman story is Jenkin and Jae Lee's 2000 maxiseries. That's definitely worth hunting down. I also have a couple issues of the 2004 McKeever series, but not enough to read yet.

Invaders Now! A 2010 series from "Dynamite" where Alex Ross draws some covers and in return gets creator credit from Chris Gage's writing and Caio Reis' interior art. The Invaders regroup in modern times to deal with a Nazi bio weapon released by Arnim Zola in WWII and has now resurfaced. Not bad. I'm missing the final issue, so I don't know how it ends.

Iron Fist. Some various IF minis from 1996, 1998, and 2000. The 1998 by Dan Jurgens has some great Butch Guice art in it. The 2000 is a Wolverine team up. Still need the last issue of that one.


And just for funsies, I read what issues I had of the aborted Image United Event. *snort* AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! You suck, Image! What a collection of jackasses. What's especially ironic is in the third issue (also known as the final issue to date) publisher Eric Stephenson writes a short article on what a diligent, hard working guy Todd McFarlame is. Doucherags.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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I'm reading Rise of Thanos, and as EP posted elsewhere - it's God awful. And I mean awful, awful. :lol:

I understand they wanted to milk Infinity for all it's worth, but this is shameful, Starship Troopers sequel bad.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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jjreason wrote:I'm reading Rise of Thanos, and as EP posted elsewhere - it's God awful. And I mean awful, awful. :lol:
I know, right? And me being a hyperbole junkie, you might reasonably expect it to be bad, "but not that bad." But it's truly heinous. Jason Aaron completely doesn't get Thanos.
I understand they wanted to milk Infinity for all it's worth, but this is shameful, Starship Troopers sequel bad.
And it will be a constant reminder that Joe Keatinge had an awesome series all ready to go (they had even solicited it IIRC) and shelved it in favor of this series.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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I don't really think they needed to fully explain where he came from. It only softens him up like finding out about Anakin's whiny youth does Vader - it doesn't help the character to "operate as intended" in any way.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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It's been awhile. I started the 'E thru F' box. Just to note the difference with a book I'm enjoying and one I'm not, I started reading the Earth X maxiseries trilogy by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, and artist John Paul Leon. The two subsequent maxiseries Universe X and Paradise X were by Krueger and artist Doug Braithwaite.
Each series consisted of a '0' issue, then 12 issues, then a concluding 'X' issue. Each series also had about a half dozen 'tie-in' issues following specific characters in the larger story. So all told it was a giant 60+ issue mega story set roughly 20 years in the future of the then current Marvel U (the books came out 1999-2003). Krueger tried to tie Everything in the Marvel U together. So everyones powers were the result of a long hidden recessive Celestial Genome and manifested in different ways, Mutant, Spider, Cosmic Ray, Gamma, etc. Galactus is(and always has been) eating planets with hidden unborn Celestial seeds inside, and the heroes of Earth are protective antibodies literally millions of years in the making. Each issue also focuses on one hero at the beginning and recaps their story thanks to Exposition from various characters. In the first series it's X-51 and Uatu. In the second series it's Gargoyle and Nighthawk.
Some of the stuff Krueger tried was clever and Alex Ross had some nice alternate design choices for future characters. But some of it didn't work. And the big drawback was there was so much tedious exposition that it took me forever to get through all three series. It took me over a month to finish them all sometimes I only managed one issue a day because I was bored with the story.

Conversely, I followed it up with Ex Machina, BKVaughan and Tony Harris' Wildstorm series. I read the first 32 issues and the final 3 (48-50) in less than two days. (I had previously read 37-47 a couple years ago.) It was fantastic. I was only let down at the very end when Mitchell Hundred turns into a villain. He shuns his best friend for trying to kiss him, then murders his other close friend and confidante, before becoming the VP to President McCain. So he becomes anti-gay, a killer, and turns Republican in the final issue. That's villainous right? That's not just me? Anyway, the series is so good, I couldn't stop reading, unlike the Earth X trilogy, which was tedious.
But highest reccommendations for Ex Machina.

Currently, I'm reading John Byrne's FF run. And after that a bunch more FF minis and annuals and such. Will comment in the FF topic.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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The other thing about the Earth X/Paradise X was the cost of the issues. I bought them all at cover price & that shit wasn't cheap. :frus:
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Re: Marvel Universe

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New "Daredevil" series in March 2014. The new "Daredevil" volume, from Eisner winners Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, sees Matt Murdock in his new surroundings of San Francisco.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... e&id=49380
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Re: Marvel Universe

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I recognize they're trying to branch out beyond the traditional NYC base, but taking Daredevil out of Hell's Kitchen is like taking Scott Weiland out of Stone Temple Pilots.
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Re: Marvel Universe

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anarky wrote:I recognize they're trying to branch out beyond the traditional NYC base, but taking Daredevil out of Hell's Kitchen is like taking Scott Weiland out of Stone Temple Pilots.
Exactly. Only a bunch of assholes would do that.

(Also, like putting Frank Castle in L.A.)
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