For some reason I've been reading them lately. I started off with early Spider Man and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't terrible. In fact it was quite good. It was no Blackhawks, but the art was good and the terribly corny quips and misfortune of Spider Man were surprisingly entertaining. 50% of the time he's being shown up by other super heroes or losing a fight. Speaking of fights they were much better than I was expecting. They weren't over in a flash, and Spider Man rarely beat anyone with ease. Maybe that's not good for a superhero? It made things more interesting, though. Plus his ongoing feud with the journalist (the journalist getting more and more insane and violent as it goes along) was really entertaining and a great dynamic.

I then had the misfortune of reading modern Spider Man. Some french porn star kidnapped a policeman friend of Spider Man while someone who's super power was to pimp out cars (seriously?) was involved in some side story that went no where. The art was reasonable for a flash-looking digitalally coloured comic book, and the quips were okay, Spider Man was still a complete loser, but the supporting cast was absolutely terrible (including the villains, and whatever the fuck the blind superhero was meant to be). They had no character, and 50% of the non-action story was about the characterless policeman. Lame.

I then read the 1996 Captain America reboot. Containing possibly the ugliset art I've ever seen that 90% of the time is unbelievably poorly done. 10% of the time it works well on double spreads where the digital dickheads bothered to colour in properly. And why the fuck are they colouring digitally in 1996? Give us a few more years before you ruin comic art, please! In these few moments, while everything still is disgustingly ugly, the art is excellent. The battles were terrible too. There were few, and whenever they came around they were over so quickly and unspectacularly. Often it led up to a battle as if it was going tob e something epic, then it lasted literally one or two frames. GTFO.  I was surprised by the quality of the characters, though. I liked Captain America despite him being a fucking arsehole, and Bucky was likeable despite turning into girl next door geek fantasy porn star three quarters of the way through. Oh, and the writing was actually engaging too. Oh, and Doom was awesome. MF DOOM referencing him constantly is understandable now. Badarse motherfucker.

One other annoying thing is Nazis as villains=good. The KKK with snake heads instead of cones as the villains=terrible. The Nazis coulda been pulled off a little more realistically, though. They're constantly hating on blacks. I think you'll find that Nazis (while treating them badly) didn't exactly hate blacks, in fact to a degree they were respected for their physique, but America (Captain AMERICA, are you listening?) had a pretty kicking BLACK SLAVE TRADE going for a very long time, and even when that was over they still treated blacks like shit. rofl@the black patriotic soldiers. Yeah, maybe so, but they were treated far worse than white soldiers were in the second world war, and that's for sure.

Finally I read a Green Lantern. Sinestro Corps or something. It was the second out of three parts, so probably not a good place to start, but as it was I was disappointed. The art is extremely polished, yet at the same time extremely boring. The battles don't look like battles at all, but a bunch of body builders posing. There's no fighting, they're just glaring toughly. The writing was just as boring, and the story had no pace. The battles had no build up or climax, though at least they weren't over in a flash. I reserve any real judgement about it, though, until I read it in order. Not that I plan to. IGN 10/10? 5/10 is generous, and yeah, that's by game ratings where 7/10 is mediocre. The background of Sodomy Yat was cool, though. WTF was an even gayer boyish version of Superman doing in it, though? Sinestro has a fucking awesome moustache, though. Well, if you can call it a moustache...

Oh, actually, there was another one. Some viking was going around with a journalist (get the fucker over colleges and journalists America, Jesus). Not much to say about it except that in a few scenes we saw lots of superheroes together, and what better time to discuss this bullshit? Whenever any of these comics gathered all the other superheroes (except in the case of Spider Man where they came across as actual characters) it felt like an ad for them. They did absolutely nothing in the stories except stand around and pose. Pointless and annoying.

robio said:

Sorry, doesn't enrage me. You didn't read anything that I ever considered good or a classic. Hell, most classics are pretty "meh" in my eyes these days. With a few notable exceptions, the writing in comics has only recently (last 10 years or so) reached a point where the stories and storytelling are really going to be able to hold up over time.

And as far as the Sinestro Corps crap, well the Green Lantern stories of the past 5 years have been some of the most overrated crap I've ever come across. I think DC fans were just ready to cheer for something other than Batman and GL won the luck of the draw.

Oh well, you can't blame me for that as I wasn't the one that made any of the selection choices! Feel free to give me some recommendations, and I would say there's a reasonable chance I'll hate them if only due to the art! Then we'll come back for round two.

A young Jew? He should consider himself lucky that he wasn't black!

I'll look these up eventually. Thanks!

And trust me there's a good chance I'll hate the writing too. I thought V for Vendetta was utter bilge, and not just because it was utterly retarded and naive. It was terribly written too. Alan Moore's beard isn't bad, though, I'll give him that.