It wasn’t that long ago that Marvel cinched some great press from the likes of ABC and (if I recall) CNN when they killed off their star-spangled hero. While Wolverine’s popularity easily eclipses any of Marvel’s other heroes in their collection, and Spider-Man is more of a flagship than the flag-bearer himself, Captain America’s demise…
DC comics is expanding their Vertigo imprint with an imprint of its own. I caught wind of Vertigo Noir in this month’s Previews, and I must admit to being slightly curious. Vertigo is more or less the only DC stuff I’ve ever picked up, and as I’ve posted before, I loves me some crime stories….
The thing about Nick Fury is that he always works better when he’s lurking around in the background. The trouble with that, however, is that it makes him an incredibly compelling character; one that you would like to see more of. Fury is a character that’s built to fill in holes, smooth over rough patches,…
I’m responsible for the Book of Doom this week, and as all three of my regular titles came out last week, I’ll be venturing into somewhat new territory, here. While I was really curious about the comics adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and while Doominator tried to vicariously spite my fellow Doomers and having me…
After being one of the (few) shining moments as The Comedian in Watchmen, Jeffery Dean Morgan is looking to capitalize on his newly minted fame. So how do you follow up a revered Vertigo adaptation? Why, with another revered Vertigo adaptation, natch. According to a tweet by Andy Diggle, Morgan is “a lock” for The Losers movie, which starts filming this summer.
So you’ve seen the Watchmen movie, and maybe you liked it, and maybe you’ve read the graphic novel, and you surely liked that. But where do we go from here? DC is certainly on the ball with their “After Watchmen” recommendations, offering up a plethora of choices to suit your fancy. Whether you liked the superheroes, the mature take on the genre, the doomsday scenario, or the political atmosphere, there are a lot of books out there to keep up the pace.
This week I’m going to recommend DMZ, by Brian Wood and Ricardo Burchielli
The Incredible Hercules is one of my favorite books out right now, and I was hoping this “jumping on” point would be the best opportunity for the series to do all the talking for me. As I write this, I haven’t heard the reaction from the others, but I doubt I’ll have succeeded in proving…
I mentioned, not long ago, my unexpected love for The Incredible Hercules, and along with it I mentioned that I probably won’t be able to actually convince anybody to pick it up, so what better way to force people to read something than by making it my pick for this week’s Book of Doom.
I know other Doomkopfers have already praised Criminal up and down in the 2008 year-in review (2007, too), but I’m new here, and feel like I ought to send another good word to the creative team. It’s the kind of book that was written just for me. My first experience with writer Ed Brubaker was on his continuing run on Captain America, the first post-2000 take on the character that was actually any good. When I found out he was starting some creator-owned series I was interested, and when I found out it was called “Criminal”, I was a guaranteed buyer. I love the cop & criminal genres: detective stories, film noir, heists. They’re 20th century westerns. A battle between the black hats and the white hats, only their roles are so often interchanged.
Anyway, Brubaker is built for stories like these.
I imagine it’s probably a futile effort to convince anyone to start picking up Hercules.
That’s probably why Marvel tricked me into subscribing to the book. But, I continue to subscribe because, damn! it’s the funniest funny book I’ve ever read.
Picking up Hercules, initially, feels a lot like getting one of those men’s bodybuilding magazines. For someone with a pre-Cap Steve Rogers frame like me, it especially feels like I’m trying to compensate for something. I mean, here’s Herc, bare-chested, hairy, and enormous. And he wears a skirt that sometimes, depending on the angle, comes a bit too close to exposing his mythic peen.
Marvel annoyingly—and perhaps wisely—transitioned The Incredible Hulk title into The Incredible Hercules, shortly after the Grecian’s appearance in “World War Hulk”. I’m not sure why, exactly; I don’t know that there was a lot of previous demand for Herc to have a solo title. All I can assume is they wanted Hulk to have a new title, with a new #1, that the character isn’t strong enough to support multiple ongoing titles, and the company wanted to milk suckers like me who didn’t realize the changeover would last quite a bit longer than temporary.