Top Five Mondays 12/31/07
Some of you may have noticed on the sidebar, we have our “Top Five of the Moment” listed. These are the five books that are most clicking with each Pants writer. It may or may not represent the best books we’ve read all month, year, or just what we’re digging that week. We generally try to update it with books from that week, but there are no hard and fast rules. Inspired by an email from one of our readers, we’re going to post every Friday with the most recent Top Five from each member of the Panteon, and hope for your comments on our lists, or maybe even your own “Top Five of the Moment.”
Also, just as the Wednesday Number Ones feature is generally our spot for folks to talk about the comics of the week, we hope that Top Five Fridays is where you’ll come to talk about what’s going on in comics in general. News in the comics world, thoughts on comics you’ve recently read, talk about comic-related movies that release this weekend and more are welcome in the comments thread for Top Five Fridays.
This week, the Top Five Books of the Moment are:
Nick Budd
- Thor
- Captain America
- Proof
- Blue Beetle
- X-Men First Class
Dave Farabee
- Queen & Country: Definitive Edition Vol. 1
- Captain America
- Thor
- Daredevil
- X-Men First Class
Dan Grendell
- Blue Beetle
- Captain America
- Fantastic Four: Isla de la Muerte
- Punks the Comic: Winter Special 2007
- Thor
Randy Lander
- Captain America
- House of M Avengers
- X-Men First Class
- Proof
- Marvel Zombies 2
David Martindale (D3)
- The Escapists HC
- Run mini comic by Chad Thomas
- The Umbrella Academy
- X-Men First Class
- Incredible Hulk
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1. Ultimate Spider-Man - Maybe I’m just happy to read a good Spider-Man comic after the One More Day debacle but this Goblin arc and Immonen’s artwork have been outstanding.
2. Action Comics - I liked Shooter’s first issue on Legion of Super-Heroes but Action Comics was the best Legion-centric issue this week.
3. Thor - Nice to see this getting some love on the lists. Last issue was a big dud but things are back on track here with the neat Loki twist and Coipel’s art looking as amazing as ever.
4. Usagi Yojimbo - The current Sparrows storyline is one of the best in a while. How is Sakai still so good after all these years?
5. Captain America - Winter Soldier has been built into such a strong character the idea of him as Cap actually doesn’t sound as unfathomable as it might have when he was introduced. Brubaker is the man.
31 Dec 2007 at 5:38 pm
QuoteHey guys, any chance of a hearing a quick roundtable on the conclusion of One More Day as a break topic in a future podcast? I’m sure I know where you all stand (pretty much the same place as the rest of the fan population), but after reading the Newsarama staff tear it a new one today, i couldn’t help thinking “oh man, i bet the Comic Pants guys have some hilarious things to say about this clusterfuck”
31 Dec 2007 at 8:50 pm
QuoteI haven’t read One More Day but I have no problem with the story or retcon and I’m glad they are ditching the marriage (for now).
No top 5 per se, but I bought some books this week, and I really liked them.
Diggle’s Hellblazer continues to be really good horror comics and this one is just nasty. Can’t wait to see where this story goes.
I’ve never read a ton of DCU books but Brave and the Bold would make me start if I knew the characters were always written this well.
Bru/Epting’s Captain America has been at such sustained excellence for so long that I’ve gone from not believing I’m enjoying Cap so much to taking it for granted that I’m enjoying Cap so much.
01 Jan 2008 at 12:09 am
QuoteHonestly, I’m just trying not to think about One More Day right now. I’m in a bit of denial. I suppose if I don’t think about it, Peter Parker never made an actual deal with the devil to erase his marriage and happiness to save a woman so old she’s likely to die of natural causes soon anyway.
01 Jan 2008 at 1:27 am
QuoteI suppose I just don’t have the anger toward the event since I haven’t felt any connection to the Marvel U Spidey in some time. I dropped all his books right after The Other ended, and started picking up OMD only because I thought the Brand New Day line-up looked promising and figured I should read the lead in (haven’t gotten around to reading the latter 2 parts, since my “local” comic shop is a 90 minute drive and i haven’t had the chance to pick up my books in a while). For that reason I’ve just sorta been able to step back and chuckle at how awful the whole thing is, but yeah if I’d still been invested in the character, I’d be pretty pissed.
01 Jan 2008 at 1:41 am
QuoteWhen it really comes down to it, it isn’t that Spidey’s not married anymore that bothers me. I’ve read great married Peter stories, I’ve read great unmarried Peter stories, so whatever. What bothers me is that it was done so badly, so ham-fistedly, and took the entire married continuity with it. I mean, just have MJ get tired of being in danger and leave, for god’s sake. The whole “magical rewind” nonsense is worse than Superboy punching the wall.
01 Jan 2008 at 2:48 am
QuoteI see a couple have Blue Beetle on their top 5 list. Never really read much about it from this site until now. Anyway, I’ll look up some of the trades that are available, if it’s that good.
01 Jan 2008 at 3:51 am
QuoteWhat do people think about re-boots to begin with? Marvel doesn’t do a good job of it. DC at least makes the effort every once and a while and I think to a certain extent it is a good idea. Marvel had the ability to do so with their world changing House of M storyline and instead of returning to a world with far less mutants they should have “reset” to a time where there wouldn’t be a need for Civil War or Hulk Smash or whatever.
I think the marriage idea is fine but to end it they really do have to rip it out whole cloth. Otherwise, we have Spiderman, the divorced super guy. Or maybe Spiderman in a trial separation. Sure, that is more “realistic” but maybe I am asking too much to say that I don’t WANT that level of realistic in my comics. Who wants to read about a fantasy version of a superhero divorce??? Real divorce situations suck and are either soul sucking dramas when depicted in film or dark comedies. Spidey is neither. If they can’t find a nice way to reboot it, find a stupid comic book way to do it and hope people forget about it when hopefully we are returned to fun and interesting Spiderman stories.
Marvel’s problem is they CAN’T leave it alone. I think Kirkman was hitting pretty close to home with his Marvel Zombies when he had Parker STILL whining about becoming UNIVERSE-EATING ZOMBIES after…well, eating the universe. It was funny but also fairly poignant. The problem I bet with OMD is that it will be One More Year of moping. Ugh. Unless he has his memories erased, too…in which case it will be One More Year until someone uncovers this and he finds out what he did and THEN starts moping.
Marvel needs a nice reboot…let us forget Civil War, House of M, even the lamer portions of WWH. Just leave Annihilation alone since it was barely involved with earth and even that was to mostly point out that earth supers were dumb and self-centered.
01 Jan 2008 at 1:30 pm
QuoteI don’t think there will be moping. Peter’s been moping through this whole marriage, seemingly. Even the happy moments seem bittersweet.
I’m fine with reboots. I think a comic is only as good as its last issue, and if the last issue was good then I could care less how we got there. And I think Brand New Day will be good.
01 Jan 2008 at 3:26 pm
Quote>>The problem I bet with OMD is that it will be One More Year of moping. Ugh. Unless he has his memories erased, too…
This was indeed the case. I think the intent is to put Spider-Man back in a fairly classicist position and just move forward with some adventure-type stories.
For my own part, I read the final issue of OMD (the only issue I’ve read), and while it struggled to reach its dramatic contrivance, I thought there was actually some decent writing in there. I’m not hugely into continuity, though, so my take is that, if they wanted Peter back in his swingin’ single days, I’d have preferred they just do it by, as John Byrne puts it, editorial fiat. Essentially, just change it. No contrived explanations, no Crises, no laughable Prime Punches…just change it. One month he’s married, the next he’s a college kid again. It’s not a method that works for most of today’s older readers who’ve come to see these stories as chronicles of lives, not isolated adventures, but I’d prefer it. I hate watching convoluted retcons in action. Really hate it.
As for Brand New Day, I’m planning to give it a shot. Spider-Man’s my favorite superhero, but it occurs to me I’ve only ever followed his adventures closely for two spans - Roger Stern’s run when I was a kid, and the Michelinie/McFarlane run when I was in high school. Recently, I’ve only picked up any Spidey books if they’re self-contained, like Vaughan’s miniseries or Slott’s Spidey/Torch number. In any case, my preference is for a younger Spidey, as I think that’s the character at his most iconic and potent.
Honestly, I hope Marvel takes the opportunity of having a young, unmarried Spidey again and uses it to really push the book at younger readers. They’d be fools to’ve made a change so upsetting to their older readers if they didn’t intend to bring in new ones, and with their new online component, there’s at least the potential to tap the kid/teen audience again. If I like BND, that’s cool and all, but I’d much rather have a new generation discover the character at his most relatable.
01 Jan 2008 at 3:33 pm
Quotefirst of all, kudos for the reasonable discussion on OMD.
However - and I’m by no means a continuity person - has it been explained how this will effect other Marvel comics? Will Spidey still be a part of the Avengers? Will his personality change noticeably? (Maybe a little more wide-eyed).
I’m curious, because it seems like a huge sweeping change that will affect their entire line.
01 Jan 2008 at 4:45 pm
Quote>>However - and I’m by no means a continuity person - has it been explained how this will effect other Marvel comics? Will Spidey still be a part of the Avengers? Will his personality change noticeably? (Maybe a little more wide-eyed).
I think that’s all up in the air right now. As someone who’s been really enjoying Thunderbolts, heavily featuring Big Poppa Goblin, I hope Spidey’s changes reverberate more subtly in the rest of the Marvel Universe.
01 Jan 2008 at 5:08 pm
QuoteMy take on One More Day is that any benefits it gives Spidey are simply the equivalent of another Ultimate universe. Will it bring in new readers? Sure, but Ultimate Spider-Man already did that. Older readers may not care about Ultimate Spider-Man because they’d rather read about the 616 Spider-Man, true, but many of those same older readers are the ones who care about the continuity that One More Day is ruining.
I know a lot of people who started with Ultimate Spider-Man and see it as their personal definitive version of Spider-Man. I don’t know how the sales are now, but I’m guessing they’re still solid and if they’re not, they sure were pretty damn solid for a long, long while. That’s the proper way to do it - keeping both the new and the old, the continuity lovers and the youngblood, without really ruining things for any particular group to get there. I mean, really, when Marvel tried to “refresh” Peter by separating him from MJ several years back and going for a back-to-basics approach, it really did not have the same fire that Ultimate Spidey had.
And I’ll bet you anything that Brand New Day won’t be nearly as successful as Ultimate Spidey was. The fact that it’s picked up a lot of deserved hatred isn’t going to help things, either.
01 Jan 2008 at 6:49 pm
QuoteHas editorial fiat ever been used for such a major plot point? I know in the good old days stuff changed issue to issue, artist to artist, writer to writer. There was a new look for interiors of the Baxter Building, Xavier Mansion, whatever as befitting the current team. That’s cool. I would be fine with an “ignore the last few years” with a wave of the hands in front of my face but then again, I don’t read Spidey except on an issue or arc basis (and even that has been a while). These things are numbered which implies a level of continuity at this point. Maybe they should stop the book and start with a new issue #1. Not restart the story (newly bit, etc.) as as been noted this was done with Ultimate Spiderman but just the implied #1 means “new book, new storyline” and move on.
Maybe they would use this as a chance to get him out of the Avengers, too. How did that happen?? I didn’t read many mainline Marvel books until Runaways caught me a few years ago and boy howdy did I find it funny that a loner like Spidey and a rogue like Wolverine were with the shiny Avengers. I know it was for marketing purposes only, no doubt, but still…turning the old Avengers into a “best-of-marvel-team-up” book is just so…wait a minute, that’s what the original group was all about! Dang! Got me again.
Still, back to basics Spidey would be nice.
01 Jan 2008 at 7:33 pm
QuoteI think reboots only work if you do them line wide and do them completely. If you just do it with one thing, you’re left with a bunch of “well how did this old story play out now?” confusion. If Peter never married MJ, why did he ever stop wearing the black costume? Initially it was because MJ was afraid of it after Venom threatened her. How did it happen now? There are a thousand other little story points just like that.
DC has never done it right either. After the first Crisis, they rebooted some books but not others leading to the same types of conflicts. The later reboots tried to keep everything and merge it into one cohesive whole which is impossible.
Marvel can fudge over minor continuity points like which war Tony Stark become Iron Man in, but I don’t think Marvel will get away with anything this big. For every new fan they bring in, they risk alienating at least one existing fan if not more.
01 Jan 2008 at 9:03 pm
QuoteWhat I find puzzling is that marvel is so hellbent on ignoring who their readership is today. Sure, it would be nice if kids could read Amazing Spider-man and relate to Peter (though I’d wager that most people don’t view Peter as a peer when they are first introduced to the character), but the problem with that is it assumes that there are lots of kids who read Amazing Spider-man, which there are not. Like it or not, comics are mostly read by adults now, and as such they don’t appreciate their characters being tampered with to appeal to a small minority of the audience. Don’t get me wrong, I think all Marvel universe books should be all-ages friendly, and do not condone “real-worlding” things up with rapes and murders. It just confuses the hell out of me that they would alienate the majority of their readers in order to chase a demographic that by and large doesn’t even read their books.
P.S. Sorry about hijacking the talkback guys. I just thought you might have some funny things to say about the situation.
02 Jan 2008 at 1:52 am
QuoteThere’s an excellent discussion of the OMD atrocity on newsarama:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=141416
My favorite point made is this — Joe Quesada decrees that smoking in comics is bad for kids, but it’s okay to make a deal with the devil??
02 Jan 2008 at 8:12 am
QuoteThat’s a funny point, but Quesada is also OK with killing, zombies eating human flesh, and all sorts of stuff, so it’s nothing new.
02 Jan 2008 at 3:55 pm
QuoteSorry to steer the discussion away from Spiderman, (I do find it fascinating) but I was wondering what the difference between Queen & Country: Definitive Edition Vol. 1 and the regular tpbs are? I noticed that Dave Farabee had it listed in his top 5. I love Q&C and have the individual trades pretty much up to date. Is it worth buying over again or should I just keep buying the normal trades?
Thanks!
02 Jan 2008 at 5:06 pm
QuoteI’ve just read the One More Day interviews with Joe Q. over at Comic Book Resources and i feel a lot better about this whole thing.
I started reading Spider-Man comics when i was 9-10 years old back at 1991 ( i think), when Spidey was already married, so i have a soft spot for them being together. But after the latest story, i feel that i should never again take comic book stories so seriously. It’s just entartainment. Plain and simple.
So, my thoughts in this are: “WHATEVER THE STORY AS LONG AS ITS FUN, DO IT!”. I think that everybody agrees with me on that. We all want fun stories. And that would be more feasible if stories featuring Icons (like spidey, superman, batman, etc) where more standalone. Something like the Simpsons. i don’t know if that would work, though.
Anyway it’s just a story, and if this doesn’t work out, then there’s always a way out of it. I just don’t care that much anymore.
For me Straczynski’s run on Amazing ended when Romita Jr. left. I don’t care about the rest of the stories. And nothing changes those issues, they are still there for me to read and enjoy.
There are so many bad Spider-Man stories that ruined the continuity, like Spider-Man emergening from that cocoon thing in Spectacular Spider-Man, with organic webs and talkings to spiders, “The Other” where they did the EXACT SAME THING, but bigger just to market it better. I find “The Other” much worse that the OMD story, because of the fact that they ruined Peter David’s and Mike Wieringo’s run on Spider-Man with that crappy story…
03 Jan 2008 at 7:01 am
Quote@ James Doe
You forgot to mention Spider-Man biting off somebody’s head.
One of the commentators at CBR offered up a pretty good idea for a story which would have dissolved the marriage with out involving, you know, Satan: Mary Jane simply can’t cope emotionally with Peter’s double life as a superhero. She tried her best over the years, but MJ just can’t do it anymore. Period.
In that scenario, neither MJ nor Peter looks like a selfish asshole, but rather human beings with normal emotions and a psychological threshhold as far as what they can accept.
Sometimes a relationship simply doesn’t work out despite the best intentions of all involved, and I think that would’ve been a much more interesting angle to explore.
And the separation could’ve been amicable for the eventual reconciliation 2 years from now.
03 Jan 2008 at 11:23 am
QuoteI’m planning on ordering the Escapists HC (one of the favourites stories this year). Are there any extras in that?
Also, 2 weeks ago I read the 2 first volumes of Empowered, by Adam Warren. That’s was pretty fun, and the artwork was great. Certainly worth its $$$.
03 Jan 2008 at 2:44 pm
QuoteThere are some sketches from Steve Rolston and Leandro Fernandez, but that’s about it. Notably, it is missing the introductions, one of which in the original trades was by (I believe) famed non-Army Ranger Micah Ian Wright.
If you have the original trades, you should be good.
03 Jan 2008 at 3:17 pm
QuoteNope, no real extras in Escapists, just the issues and covers. Still well worth the money just for that.
And I agree with you about Empowered, by the way. I love that series. Warren’s doing great work there.
03 Jan 2008 at 3:20 pm
Quote