Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Any recommendations

Wasn't it on this thread that I got the rec for "Four Eyes?"

Got my money's worth. Still reading it.

I believe I recommended that!

Still reading it too and finding very enjoyable!

I recommend Dark Wolverine. Daken is definitely not his father's Wolverine. He's got better fashion sense for one thing. (Except for the mohawk, and yet, somehow it works.) Daken's a very dark character who'll "do anything or anyone" to get what he wants. There's something kind of sympathetic about him, though, although I can't explain it. I'm enjoying this a lot more than I've ever enjoyed a Wolverine comic.

Preview for DW#75.

Preview for DW#76.

Also caught up on Incognito #4 & #5 and once again am just completely blown away at how talented Ed Brubaker and Sean Chen are. The series continues to impress, and Brubaker seems to have a handle on the superhero meets noir fusion better than anyone else (since almost no one else gets it right).

Best of all are the articles in the back, the two here written by Professor Jess Nevins, who has written articles in the past for Criminal and Incognito. The articles are two pages, loaded with information and as fascinating and interesting as anything else I read all year. #4 dealt with "Operator #5" a pulp hero from the 30's I've never heard of and found fascinating, particularly because the series generally always had invasions in the US from foreigners resulting in massive casualties and destruction--something that was a major fear during that era. #5 deals with Fu Manchu, who I *am* familiar with--or at least, I thoguht I was but now feel like I've finally gotten some real history on the character/concept. What it really does is give some incredible insight into the "Yellow Peril" archtype of villainy in the pulp era that stretched on beyond WWII though never quite as ruthless as it was in pre-WWII days (and during of course).

I highly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves intelligent, moral, decent or generally cool in anyway

Of all the 70th anniversary books, I've enjoyed the Captain America & Sub-Mariner ones the best.

hey any recommendations for heroic characters? seems like books are really bloody lately...(LO3W, Ultimatum,) I even read a description of Storm as "not afraid to kill" or something...which is the opposite of how she was written before...

i'm into new avengers because at least there is a debate going on about what a hero is.

are there any books out there now without guns, and without heros that kill?

Wednesday's comics. There is killing a small bit but done off panel.

Well, there is a Hawkman so it's not ALL off panel, lol.

Seriously, I was hunting for this thread to recommend Wednesday's Comics. This is a comic best read with someone; kid, sweety, neighbor's dog.

I'm getting to Wednesday comics eventually in the stack of comics I've got. I'm savoring it because from what I've seen already it looks fantastic.

DB, heroes acting heroic? Without needless bloodshed and violence? That's tougher than it sounds since I've had to actually think about it quite a bit. Best options: Nova, Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hercules, Supergirl, Superman, and Booster Gold. That might be it, believe it or not.

Thor hasn't been killing anyone, but he hasn't been afraid to kill his enemies since 1970.

I'm not a gamer, but I am a Peter David lover, so I read Halo: Helljumper 1 (of 5) and liked it a lot. Very reminiscent of James Cameron's Aliens, but with more character depth. The art is a bit drab for my tastes, but it's not the first time PAD has risen above the art.

I thought both were excellent as well.

thanks cobie, i will try amazing spider man...i like how he's written in new avengers. i get thor, that amount of bloodshed dosn't seem excessive, i think only two people have died the past ten books.

I wouldn't. I really wouldn't...

As I'm going through my pile, I found a one-shot I picked up some time ago but can't remember when it came out, SGT Fury & his Howling Commandos. Not sure if anyone else got this.

Now, as I've said before, I basically began reading comics by reading all of the Marvel Silver Age. This included the original SGT Fury & his Howling Commandos run by Jack Kirby, which are all stories that I consider some of the greatest to ever be published. If you ever want to see Jack Kirby at his finest doing something other than superheroes, I highly recommend that.

Thus, I have a natural love for the Howlers and enjoy reading about their WWII exploits. Growing up, Dino was my favorite, but probably I like them all equally now, with perhaps Reb and Gabe being equally as much faves as Dino.

The one-shot was actually rather good. And it was completely done in the spirit of the original Silver Age series. What I mean by that is essentially there is over the top action from first page to last page with only several panels seperating the sequences and usually those panels were hysterical scenes so you really don't catch your breath.

The dialogue is all one-liners, usually with the Howlers breaking 'em off on one another and adding an additional layer to the obsurdity of their exploits--which are usually Fury's exploits as he does things that maybe even Captain America couldn't do, which stays true to the original Kirby series.

Some of the plot points are things I saw coming a mile away but I didn't really mind it too much. For instance: The show a Golden Age Black Widow, which wasn't too surprising. Zemo shows up and Baron Von Strucker does at the end. The final sequences reference Captain America. All these things almost always work their way into a Marvel WWII stories, and have since the 1970's--still, they aren't too distracting.

But I love a good war story, I love a *fun* story, and I love sequences with characters really riffing off one another and that was certainly the case here. The dialogue read like a Giffen/DeMatteis JLI story but with Fury and the Howlers in WWII.

I wish they'd make it an ongoing or at least a miniseries.

Based on this CBR review , I decided to take a chance and pick up the first issue of Boom! Studio's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? For those who've never heard of it, this was the book that the movie Blade Runner was loosely based upon.

While I do like Blade Runner, I've never been a really huge fan as it seemed to me to have more style than substance. While there are a lot of great visuals and concepts, the story and the characters never set my intellect on fire. Really, it wasn't all that great or distinctive a story, IMO.

So over the years I'd heard that the movie was very much not representative of the book like so many other movie adaptations, but the thought of actually reading the book was something that never really came to fruition.

So I read the review and was fascinated by how this project was actually going to use every single word that Dick used in his book (rather than some writer's selective use of them) accompanied by traditional comic book panel layouts (as opposed to spot illustrations you might expect in similar undertakings) and was intrigued enough to give it a go.

I just read issue one, and it was outstanding! Nothing much happens actionwise in this first issue, but it's just LOADED with imagination and fascinating sci-fi concepts as you are invited into this fully realized world. The visuals aren't exactly groundbreaking in and of themselves, but they do what a project like this should do and enhance what you're reading with them.

I suppose I could save the money I would spend on a 24-issue project which costs $3.99 a pop by just buying the novel for a portion of the total cost, but I really feel like I got my money's worth here. It was a much longer read than a normal comic, and each issue also has a bonus article like Brubaker's Criminal or Incognito, the first one by Warren Ellis.

That was some nice value for my money! I've already got #2 and look forward to reading it when its turn comes (I'm about a month behind in my reading and read each comic in the order I bought them almost without exception). I wish all $4 comics provided as much thought-provoking entertainment!

Please phrase your dissent in the form of a recommendation in order to remain on-topic. Thank you.

The Management

Nevins has written several books laying out details of all the characters and background stuff in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books. He's also got websites listing many of the classic pulp and Victorian-era heroes. He knows his stuff.

All the above are recommended.

Another really refreshing comic I just read (hopefully you read my write-up of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at the bottom of the previous page) was Immortal Weapons #1 featuring Fat Cobra.

Immortal Weapons features the other five Iron Fist equivalents introduced during the recently ended (and excellent) Immortal Iron Fist series. Each issue is written by a different writer and has a serialized Iron Fist backup by the team who was doing such excellent work on the ongoing.

Fat Cobra is a sumo-inspired character and probably the most popular of the five among fans. The writer is Jason Aarons who is the writer of Vertigo's Scalped, one of my favorite books on the market. The story centers on the long-lived Fat Cobra hearing his origin from a guy he paid to write his biography. Seems Cobra's been so long-lived and partied so hard that he forgot a lot about his own history.

It's a terrific story from start to finish with some beautiful art--even though there are about four different pencillers, each handling different sections of the story. The story runs the gamut between hilarious and tragic and all points in between. It's an entertaining standalone that requires absolutely no foreknowledge of the character! Quite a feat!

The Iron Fist back-up is entertaining as well. While it's not a complete story, it doesn't rely on whether you picked up the ongoing at all and looks to be an engaging street-level story.

I don't know if subsequent issues will be this good because of the different creative teams, but I can definitely recommend issue 1 to anyone looking for a good Kung Fu saga that's new reader-friendly. It's $3.99, but there's plenty of extra pages for the money, unlike most $4 Marvel comics.

Looks like those of us that are addicted to the crack that is the zombie sub-genre in comics have another must-read comic being published! This one is a miniseries published by IDW called The Last Resort and is written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (GrayPal). If you've enjoyed a lot of what GrayPal have done in the past, I don't think you'll be disappointed by this effort.

The premise of The Last Resort is that a zombielike plague has hit a fictional tropical island resort. In the first issue (only one out so far), we're given a glimpse of how this plague begins. The rest of the issue sets up our cast of potential victims, and we get to meet them as they prepare to board a plane which will eventually have to make an emergency landing on the resort island in question due to some really bad weather conditions.

The first issue sets up really well as what would be the opening act of a really cool horror movie. We get enough of a flavor for the characters to start rooting for and against each of them surviving to the end. The tone is mostly humorous. Even the zombie attack at the beginning is a little (literally!) tongue-in-cheek. I wouldn't say it's setting up as a laugh riot, exactly, but kinda in the same way that many horror films are fun while still delivering thrills and chills. I mean, you know that most of the characters are gonna bite it, so it's fun to anticipate which ones and how gruesome it will be, y'know?

The art is kinda cartoony and realistic at the same time. So far I think it works pretty well. The content is most definitely of the R-rated variety with gore, language and sexuality all being prominent. What's a zombie story without all those things?

Anyway, issue one ends with the plane only just arriving at the resort and ends with the plane itself in dire peril. So it doesn't really get down to counting down the victims by the end. I suspect that will begin in earnest next issue! I like that it took the time to paint the broad strokes of the characters, though, and I look forward to the carnage that's to come!

Try some trades therough your local library first. Some of Amazing isn't that bad, I just cannot support the book after what they've done to him over the last few years.

Is this a mini? If so, how many issues of carnage can we expect?

'Tis a mini, indeed. Not totally sure about how many issues, though. I'd guess four or five, though. They don't plaster this on the covers like they used to.

Here's a preview they had of issue number one, though.

Looks interesting enough.

I'm just glad somebody's reading some of my reviews!

to Dev

Oh, and here\'s an interview with Palmiotti about that project.

And the revies for issues 1 and 2 .

(These links and the others for Last Resort, courtesy of CBR.)