Monday, October 31, 2005
JLA - Great Freakin Book
When I got back into comic collecting in 2001, I had one mission. Fill in the holes on my X-Men comics pronto and forsake all other books. Well, I'm a retard!
What happened in the time when I quit comics (93') and my return almost a decade later, was a shift in power. A shift in the raw creative juices that fuel these stories of the fantastic.
When I left comics in 93' Marvel was king. Sure they had lost some of their superstars to this new upstart company called "Image". But, by that time most people realized Liefeld actually sucked and Jim Lee needed to let his ego simmer down. And by 93' most people were starting to realize that Image was only that, an Image.
DC was doing OK killing off and maiming its main characters, but we all knew that these supposed "life altering" events for batman and Superman would be transitory at best. At their worst they would just be marketing vehicles. I'll let the 12 polybagged white and black (each) issues of Superman sitting in my basement be the judge on this one.
Marvel truly reigned supreme. The stories were real without being disturbing like Vertigo comics. And thanks to Liefeld jumping ship the books actually started to have backgrounds in the art again (my biggest complaint against the man, I defy you to find a background in his panels).
I loved the X-Men of this time period. So it only made sense that when I got back into comics that these would be the books I would hunt down to get me up to speed as to what was going down during my seven+ year hiatus.
And the books were good. Not fantastic, but quality.
What I didn't realize until the whole "Infinite Crisis' thing started a few months ago was that the power of creativity had shifted back to DC.
I recently picked up the relaunch of JLA in TPB format from the mid-90's and it is AMAZING. Now, of course I shouldn't be surprised since it is Grant Morrison doing the storytelling on these books. But when did DC grow-up? I initially thought it was a recent phenomenon with writers like Geoff Johns joining the stable, but I was wrong. It looks as if DC has been solid for quite some time now.
I've always had a soft-spot for the Justice League. I loved Keith Giffen's work on the book back in the late 80's. The books were superhero books in only the loosest sense of the term. This wasn't a Justice League of the universe's greatest heroes, but rather all of the B and C list characters that no one wanted to admit existed. The types of characters that result from a night of heavy bong hits - Booster Gold: Man of the 25th century - Guy Gardner: The horny, crass, obnoxious and annoying Green Lantern, Maxwell Lord: Super billionaire who bought a superhero team. Giffen's writing can best be described as sarcasm injected with a heavy dose of irony. Brilliant, I recommend any of his books.
But the JLA trades I picked up from the mid 90's are grittier and dirtier. They are the original DC characters, but they are real, fallible, yet still untouchable. Just ask for the fist JLA trade at Comics and Whore. You won't be disappointed.
What happened in the time when I quit comics (93') and my return almost a decade later, was a shift in power. A shift in the raw creative juices that fuel these stories of the fantastic.
When I left comics in 93' Marvel was king. Sure they had lost some of their superstars to this new upstart company called "Image". But, by that time most people realized Liefeld actually sucked and Jim Lee needed to let his ego simmer down. And by 93' most people were starting to realize that Image was only that, an Image.
DC was doing OK killing off and maiming its main characters, but we all knew that these supposed "life altering" events for batman and Superman would be transitory at best. At their worst they would just be marketing vehicles. I'll let the 12 polybagged white and black (each) issues of Superman sitting in my basement be the judge on this one.
Marvel truly reigned supreme. The stories were real without being disturbing like Vertigo comics. And thanks to Liefeld jumping ship the books actually started to have backgrounds in the art again (my biggest complaint against the man, I defy you to find a background in his panels).
I loved the X-Men of this time period. So it only made sense that when I got back into comics that these would be the books I would hunt down to get me up to speed as to what was going down during my seven+ year hiatus.
And the books were good. Not fantastic, but quality.
What I didn't realize until the whole "Infinite Crisis' thing started a few months ago was that the power of creativity had shifted back to DC.
I recently picked up the relaunch of JLA in TPB format from the mid-90's and it is AMAZING. Now, of course I shouldn't be surprised since it is Grant Morrison doing the storytelling on these books. But when did DC grow-up? I initially thought it was a recent phenomenon with writers like Geoff Johns joining the stable, but I was wrong. It looks as if DC has been solid for quite some time now.
I've always had a soft-spot for the Justice League. I loved Keith Giffen's work on the book back in the late 80's. The books were superhero books in only the loosest sense of the term. This wasn't a Justice League of the universe's greatest heroes, but rather all of the B and C list characters that no one wanted to admit existed. The types of characters that result from a night of heavy bong hits - Booster Gold: Man of the 25th century - Guy Gardner: The horny, crass, obnoxious and annoying Green Lantern, Maxwell Lord: Super billionaire who bought a superhero team. Giffen's writing can best be described as sarcasm injected with a heavy dose of irony. Brilliant, I recommend any of his books.
But the JLA trades I picked up from the mid 90's are grittier and dirtier. They are the original DC characters, but they are real, fallible, yet still untouchable. Just ask for the fist JLA trade at Comics and Whore. You won't be disappointed.
