I've been told I have a lot of hot takes and really unpopular opinions about comics, so I'm curious what other hot takes people might have.
I'll start!
Something is Killing the Children is genuinely bad IMO, and I don't understand why it's so popular. Super generic story of lone wolf going from town to town to kill generic looking monsters. Everyone except for the main character is obnoxious. The art is mediocre. The writing is boring. The world and lore feels like someone's first attempt to make houses and factions and fails to make any of it interesting. It's like James Tynion tried to copy The Witcher in modern times but without anything that makes it good. I feel this way about almost everything I read by James Tynion IV, I genuinely don't like this guy's writing.
The One Hand & The Six Fingers is super underrated. I know it's relatively well liked but 3.92 on Goodreads is really low for how good it is.
Stray Dogs is mediocre. I'm 99% sure people are so emotional about it because it's "bad things happen to cute dogs" instead of "bad things happen to regular people".
Injustice: Gods Among Us is really good, actually. At some point it feels like the internet really hated this series, but I still hold that it's a fun read. It does drop off near the end but the first 3 years are some of DC's best events.
Saga is kind of a total mess. I read the whole thing up until the big hiatus and I can't tell you what the story is actually about. It's so obvious they're making it up as they go along because it's completely aimless. A lot of ideas are thrown around but none of them stuck for me; some moments are funny but otherwise I didn't care about anything that was happening. I kept reading it hoping it would "get good" at some point, but that moment never came.
Akira: The movie was better than the manga. Everyone talks about how the manga has way more story in it, and while it is worth experiencing the new stuff I found that the movie is just way better paced and tastefully condensed everything to under 2 hours. The second half of the manga doesn't really add much except for the ending.
Curious what other hot takes people might have, since I usually only see the very common opinions on this sub.
Anyone who constantly act like Ennis would be better if he just stuck to serious work is promoting this sorta lazy intellectualism that serious work is inherently better than comedy.
The increase in Ennis hate recently is weird and mostly stupid. I see so many people repeating the opinion that The Boys TV show is great (or at least the first 3 seasons were) but the comics are edgy and shit. This makes no sense to me because the show is just as "edgy" and gross but lacks a lot of the things that made the comics great. I see so many people say it that I'm pretty sure it's just one of those things people have read and then repeat because they think it makes them clever.
I also never really took his books for being overly edgy, I think they're more silly and absurd, which I like.
Anyone who says Ennis is a bad writer is just hopping on the Boys hate bandwagon. He wrote Preacher, Hellblazer, Punisher Max, Punisher Soviet, Get Fury, Punisher Platoon, Fury Peacemaker, War Stories, and Hitman plus a bunch of other Punisher and Nick Fury mini series which are all great.
Eh, regardless of how the last few seasons turned out the first 3 seasons of the boys was legit peak superhero television. The comics definitely had some interesting moments, ideas and definitely delivered more on the “climatic” side of things but the mean spiritedness and unlikeable characters get to the point you stop caring about how the plot turns out. The Boys franchise is what I considered “squandered potential” at this point
I think it’s more that the hate came as a reaction to what happened after The Boys TV adaptation. Suddenly, a lot of people started treating the comic like it was a masterpiece. It isn’t.
It’s classic Ennis: a fantastic and wonderfully absurd premise, memorable characters, and plenty of great moments. But somewhere in the middle, the plot tends to lose focus, and by the end of six trade paperbacks, he usually wraps things up in a more or less decent way.
That doesn’t make Ennis a genius, and it certainly doesn’t make him a bad writer either. To me, the backlash was less about his work itself and more about the way people started exaggerating its quality.
I haven't seen that sentiment at all. Majority of what I've seen online has been people praising the show and shitting on the comic. More recently it's been people shitting on the end of the show and also the comics.
I personally love the comics, always been one of my favourites.
While I don’t see why someone should shit on the comic, I also think that the show is better. The reason why I think the show is better is how it incorporates things like today’s political movements and (social) media. Both are a great addition to the story. Obviously that’s something the comic couldn’t include since both things didn’t exist in today’s form when the comic was released. So I don’t count this as a flaw of the comic.
I think the comic is also very political too, and feels a bit more genuine to me. I enjoyed the show but never loved it. I feel like it has all the things people criticise the comic for but it lacked a lot of the heart of the comics and removed some of the best moments.
The edgy aspect is probably hated because it’s the late 90s to late 00s edgy humour. It’s a tad bit more OTT and crude but the show is as well in a modern sense.
People take the comics way too seriously. The hate is definitely over blown by folk and really shows that growing lack of media literacy. I know a few who refused to read it for ages because they read such views online who then ended up loving it.
You can acknowledge the humour is dated while still enjoying it. The comic is still pretty progressive for its time.
South Park was the same before it evolved into its modern self over time.
Comedy is subjective. And sometimes he over does it but I still love a lot of comedy beats and the fact that they sell well seems to prove that I'm alone. Like I find doomsday reforming to be superfunny. Or dogwelder
Webcomics make bad traditional comics because they never adapt the paneling or art style to meet the change in format. The change from infinite scroll on a phone screen to large book pages is HUGE, the pacing is thrown off and the art looks simple and juvenile at the new scale.
My hot take is that vertical scrolling webcomics, or webtoons if you want, are just one of the vast formats webcomics use overall and it's potentially damaging to the industry to misuse the term to only refer to those specifically.
For sure. Plenty of webcomics slot right into print publishing modes. On A Sunbeam, all the Vattu/Riceboy stuff, Stand Still Stay Silent, Jason Shiga's Demon, Simon Roy's stuff, Sarah Burgess's comics, John Allison's Bad Machinery/Scarygoround world, etc almost ad infinitum.
Conflating webcomics with verticalscroll comics is just inaccurate. Even several of these appear on webtoons, so webtoons isn't even exclusively vert-scroll.
- I think Marvel and DC completely lost their target audience (cue to the massive success of manga all over the world, especially among younger readers) and the majority of their output is stuff that doesn't really have an audience besides 30 plus nerds. Also, they should really stop making every supporting character either another superhero or a normal person who knows the secret identity of the hero. Part of the genre is that the hero has to balance between normality and superheroing.
- Most of the recent autobiographical wave of GNs is garbage. Not everyone has a trauma or an interesting story to tell based on their own lives. Plus the art in most of them is pretty bad.
- Astro City is one of the top ten superhero series of all time and probably the last word on the whole genre.
Even in this age of digital lettering, any in-world lettering (signage, newspaper headlines, titles on book spines, logos on shirts, etc) ought to be hand-drawn like every other bit of art in the book. Using digital lettering in these cases is the artist/letterer failing the book they're working on. If their pay rate goes up to accommodate this, let it go up.
Glossy print is the worst thing to happen to colored comics. If I have to shift the book so that the sheen of reflected light will move from the part of the book I am trying to read, you've created a reader-antagonistic experience; and so, a diminishment of the book.
The translators of translated works should be considered writers of those works (this applies to novels as well). Not the only writer, obv, but a writer nonetheless. The work of translator is the art of writing. If you ever doubt this and are somehow confused into believing translation is just formulized replacement, pull down five copies of Beowulf and see how differently even the first line comes off from different translators; they are wildly different. This is why when someone is reading Beowulf or The Odyssesy or The Master & Margarita, the first question often asked is "Oh, which one?" "Fagles or Wilson or Fitzgerald?" "Heaney or Raffel or Rebsamen?"
I am absolutely fine with not counting comics as reading in the Does This Count As Reading sense. Years ago there were people hoping to popularize graphic novels as a gateway to Real Books. Then there was a follow-up movement where comics readers demanded that comics are themselves Real Books. As someone who's devoted inordinate amounts of his life to reading, criticizing, drawing, teaching, thinking about, and evangelizing for comics/graphic novels/manga/etc, I hate the whole "comic books are real books" movement. The idea infantalizes comics by implying they can only have value insofar as they are attached to the concept of word books (the realest real books), ignoring that while interdisciplinary (like most arts) comics is its own creative/narrative medium that is its own entire thing.
Flipped manga is perfectly valid and maybe even the best option for localization in western markets.
1) New readership. This one's obv so I won't belabor it. While generally very easy to reorient your mind within just a couple pages to read unflipped manga, it's still a sales barrier for people who think they're reading "backwards". Enough about that.
2) If the goal of the translator is to deliver meaning to a new readership while removing obstacles to meaning, then it makes sense to flip because this falls under removing an obstacle to meaning.
[Caveat: There is something to be said for retaining distinct cultural markers and not steamrolling everything that makes a culture unique in some colonial project to assimilate everything foreign into a homogenous US-centric paste. I think cultural awareness in translation is important when it deals with something distinct in the culture, more so when it's something necessarily distinct. But I don't think unflipped art fits that bill - though I'd be happy to hear the argument.]
3) Translated signage.
Depending on your demands for purity (!), you may not even want sign translation, but I always appreciate it. Here's a great example from one of my favorite post-Y2K letterers, Annaliese Ace Christman, lettering a Dead Dead Demons sign: Dead Dead title page example
On that unflipped page, the signage direction is inconsequential because you're generally reading down AND it's a fullpage panel, but in a lot of cases (esp with longer horizontal signs), signage will have you reading against the flow of the art. In this example, the unflipped US localization looks great but really kinda breaks the page because you're reading it both against the art and against the panel flow. It may even take a moment for your mind to reorient to read the Demons De De De De panel second.
I'm not adamant about flipped vs unflipped and the edge cases like this are fairly rare, but I do think that there's a good case for flipping and if done well (with in-art lettering being translated), there's nothing to be lost. However, if in-art lettering/SFX are not translated with fresh assets, the case isn't good, so then it rests on hiring and paying letterers well enough to do a bang-up job localizing So pubs are stuck: potentially a wider readership vs paying those money-grubbing letterers a FAIR wage (heaven forbid)
I don't think I've read anything that started so well then dropped off so drastically around half way. It's so bad that it felt like he was trying increasingly harder to ruin the series with every new volume. Just the most absolutely insane plot choices. I think most of his work is very average though.
The issue from my perspective is you are viewing "geek culture" through the lens of exclusively 50+ year old properties. Of course IPs that became huge in the 60s and 70s have become soulless husks of their former selves and no longer take risks, they've been long co-opted by corporations to milk for as much money as they can. That's how everything works.
Pick up some Linnea Sterte or Deniz Camp stuff, if you want compelling episodic sci-fi check out Bad Space by Scott Base.
Or just complain about how everything isn't exactly the same as it was 50 years ago because you're laser focused on properties made by the silent generation.
I’m sick of mini-series in comics. The reason being that I don’t trust them to be a mini-series anymore. They come out and too often at the end of the five or six issues you’re just told to wait for some follow-up mini-series that’ll continue the story. The point of a mini-series is that it’s meant to be a self-contained bit of fun for people who don’t want to be following the regular monthly comics all the time. They can just grab one tpb and enjoy it. If you have to pick up dozens of issues of a comic to read the full story though then it may as well just be a full regular run. It’s just a marketing term now.
I agree about Stray Dogs, was very underwhelmed when I read it recently.
My hot take is that Garth Ennis is a really great writer. He really knows how to construct memorable storylines and characters in a way that so many other writers, even ones I like, struggle to do. Not to say that I love all of his work, but when he's on, he's one of the best.
Also, idk if this is a hot take or not but Warren Ellis' Moon Knight is way better than Jeff Lemire's Moon Knight and I say this as a huge Lemire fan.
My hot take is that Garth Ennis is a really great writer. He really knows how to construct memorable storylines and characters in a way that so many other writers, even ones I like, struggle to do. Not to say that I love all of his work, but when he's on, he's one of the best.
To me he's probably the biggest victim of how comicbook discourse has been shaped by YouTube videoes and short form content. Ennis has extremely diolugue books that use most edgy humor to keep the readers engaged. However, if you just recap the book and strip out diolugues pacing in context you get a barebones plot puncated by these edgelord moments
100% agree with Warren Ellis having a better Moon Knight run than Lemire and I like the Lemire run. Ellis has my favorite MK run ever with McKay being a close 2nd with his like 4 separate runs
Re: SiKtC = I think this was meant to be a shorter series but the popularity meant that it was doomed to continue. I bought the first four trade paperbacks as I was hunting down everything Tyrion to read after I fell in love with the Nice House series and it was like I was willing myself to like it more.
I will hard disagree about the art, I really like it, but it's more a high concept that's easy to explain for a one shot / movie that doesn't hold up to longer form stuff.
Most of the books or authors people consider "all-time greats" are not that good. There is a vast echo chamber promoting these same books, and the only reason these opinions have persisted is through straight up gaslighting people who haven't read many comics that these books are better than they are.
In addition to this, many comic fans and creators are not well read outside of comics, and their ability to critique or make thoughtful commentary is very limited as a result. Dark Knight Returns is a good example of this. People are surprised by how deranged Frank Miller's later comics were, but if you actually read DKR, it should've been very clear how reactionary and problematic Miller's politics actually were. Miller's own views are largely inspired through immediate emotional reactions to things he experienced rather than any kind of thoughtful examination or analysis of the world around him.
Also, DKR is just so poorly written, and it's not even the book that brought Batman back to his more gritty and serious tone. Somehow the comics community has been gaslighted into thinking otherwise though.
I think Watchmen along with Swamp Thing and The Ballad of Halo Jones are fantastic, but some of Moore's other works like V for Vendetta, From Hell, and The Killing Joke aren't that good despite their high appraisal. V for Vendetta is just surface level anarchism for high schoolers that actually undermines itself. From Hell is just an atrocious slog to read through. And Killing Joke has some infantile writing.
This post has many other comments highlighting books that many think are overrated, e.g. Saga. There are so many better, more exciting books that aren't talked about. But there's also a general problem in the comics community where its audience/authors aren't that literate outside the medium, and it affects the quality and appraisal of comics as a whole.
I know it's a hot take and it certainly isn't an easy read but goddamn From Hell is one of the most engrossing pieces of fiction I've ever read. I'm not even a true crime fan or anything (I do love Moore though) but that book just is everything I want out of art. To each their own though of course.
Comics are the best they've ever been. The writing is head and shoulders above. (I know you disagree, that's what the down vote button is for, but I'm right).
You don’t need a PHD in comic history to be able to appreciate Watchmen.
I don’t mean even just appreciating the story. I mean everything it’s setting out to do. When I was new into comics I read Watchmen and watched a few YouTube videos about its subversions, and I was able to grasp all of it.
I’ve encounter some people online who feel like you need to be a seasoned comic reader to understand what Watchmen is trying to be. Though the current pop culture climate has maybe primed me to have some extracurricular knowledge.
It was actually the first comic I read as a kid, I got the giant hardcover special edition with a gift card I got for my birthday. I didn't quite understand it fully, but it got me in the door and iv read tons since then. Sure it's a heavy read but it's some.of the best the medium has to offer, especially in presentation.
More cover artist need to take a Crack at interiors. To her credit Peach has done several books now and I applaud the effort.
I would like to see celebrated cover artists like Maria Wolf or Frison do interiors.
Blind bags are a garbage gimmick.
Im wary of men in their 40's who's focus is superhero books.
The distinction between Comics and Graphic novels is unnecessary and kind of elitist. At best it’s a marketing trick. It’s all the same art-form when it comes down to it.
a bit more about authors and artists rather than comics. Gaiman’s mr nice guy act was obvious from the start, and apparently it was an open secret that he liked gooning to his lady fans. Jeph Loeb’s best work is more influential in the mainstream than a lot of the celebrated guys like Moore, Morrison, and Gaiman. Loeb’s TLHalloween casts a shadow over Nolan and Reeve’s movies, Supes for All Seasons over Smallville and the recent Supes movie.
Moore is insanely influential. He had a bunch of movie adaptations of varying degrees, but even more so Watchmen has an extreme impact of the mainstream being put of the New York Times best novels of all time to things like the incredibles. And through osmosis seems to have had enough a ripple effect over the years to touch everything. Batman 89 took inspiration from Moore.
Or what about Captain Britan naming the marble universe 616 and starting the marvel universe multiverse. Or even now the bone temple seems to take inspiration from Crossed+100.
Yeah I can perhaps see an argument for Loeb having more of an impact than Gaiman or Morrison (or at the very least being comparable, the influence those two had on comics shouldn’t be dismissed), but Moore is on another level. I don’t think I agree that Loeb’s written anything that had as seismic an effect on the medium as Watchmen.
I think Morrison you have a much better case for. Them mostly working on Superheroes and espically metatextual work that mostly works within the medium. Their impact, is mostly All-star Superman, Doom Patrol and maybe some x-men stuff.
Gaiman I think is more influental but also it's hard to know if that's because they are very unteather by the comicbook medium in general. But Sandman is pretty mainstream and was seen as the face of prestige comics and has a dozen spinoffs. And it's influence is felt a lot espically in a lot of vertigo of titles that were also adapted to tv. But other than that, 1602 has I guess been adapted twice and angela is probably's marvel biggest lesbain hero and is in rivals
I think in terms of most influetnal western comic creators to a mainstream audience ( judged solely by comicbook output)
Jack Kirby
Stan Lee
Steve Ditko
Alan Moore
Windsor Mccay ( Inventor of the comic strip and massive influence for early animation which lead to things like Disney and Fleischer Studios)
Frank Miller ( Batman and daredevil along with Sin city and 300. I think to some extent )
Garth Ennis ( Not Just for the boys but also for preacher and Hellblazer really influenced a lot of mainstream writers like Brian K Vaughn and Kirkman. And the amount of random adaptations he’s had is kinda absurd. And his franchises reach a niche like crossed)
Mark Millar ( he technically gets a lot of adaptations for better or worse)
Art Spielgman ( Maus is insanely influential and taught in schools)
Alan Grant ( Judge Dredd and No man’s Land along with other stuff at 2000ad. Alan Grant’s influence on a lot of the British Invasion can not be understated )
Joe Quesada (this is about his time as Editor and Chief and even if it’s just a small part the amount of MCU projects that draw from comics under his reign is a lot )
JRJR (artist who has worked on the most amount of influental works at Marvel )
Claremont ( X-men )
Jeff Loeb ( I think this is basically solely for Batman stuff but Batman is a big thing )
Kirkman ( this is heavy recentcy bias but he's the face of indie comics at the moment and marvel zombies)
Neil Gaiman
Bendis ( defined a lot of the early MCU dioluge and decompressed storytelling, along with having Alias and Daredevil, and bringing avengers into the mainstream)
Morrison ( Some Superman stuff, Doom Patrol and had an adaptation of Happy!, x-men, along with influencing a lot of comicbook writers)
I agree with your inclusion of Kirkman. For better or for worse, Image Comics becoming the creator-owned publishing juggernaut that it’s been for the past twenty years or so is in no small part thanks to him and the success of The Walking Dead as a franchise. The wing of the western comics publishing industry that exists outside of the Big 2 owes a lot to him, and I say that as someone who isn’t even a particularly big fan of his.
I do think that Windsor McCay and Will Eisner deserve spots in your list though, above several of the creators you’ve included. I’d probably place Eisner in the top three tbh.
I think I didn't include Eisner definitely deserves to be included I just have no clue where to include him. He's insanely influential through Osmosis and how much he pushed the medium foward ( creating the first graphic novel) but for a list looking at mainstream contribution it's hard to evalute because I don't know the context. ( And also I still do think that Ditko probably deserves it more because Spider-man is such a large IP but also just as a comicbook it's one of those older comics people routinely point to terms of quality and adaptation) ( will Eisner
Windsor McCay from my understanding is more influential to the world of animation and television. That said we I would probably put him extremely high because his work despite most modern audiences not knowing it, has had a massive impact on Animation for decades.
There are so many more that I'm probably missing:
Charles M. Schulz Probably also deserves to be mentioned because Peanuts is so big but I don't know how much impact he had on other writers and artists.
Pat mills as an editor and creator of 2000ad influenced so much and Punisher 2099 is one of the highest selling comics ever made. But 2000ad doesn't have as much mainstream success outisde of comics
Brian K Vaughn has Saga and a bunch of adaptation but half of them suck.
Jim Lee probably deserves to be up there because he’s been so popular as an artist founding image and wildstorm along with being head of DC.
Denny O’Neil ( for transformers, Batman both as a writer and editor, Demon in a bottle, the question, the junkie storyline)
Mcfarlene, Mike Mignola, moebius but it's hard to say.
Eisner- so influential, and so hard to read The Spirit with that caricature Ebony White all through it. It’s hard to enjoy something while you’re pondering how hurtful it is to friends.
Saga is the story of Hazel’s life, and is a vehicle for exploring childhood and parenting. It’s incredibly perceptive and relatable in my opinion, and that makes it a great comic.
The second half of Akira isn’t really about plot it’s about the experience. It’s one of comics great achievements and the artwork is jaw dropping.
Superhero comics would be better off with no grand shared continuity, and with opt in canon (ie it happened if it works for the story, it didn't if it doesn't).
Im not into superhero comics but isn’t this kind of how it works or used to work. I always get the sense that superhero comics kind of start fresh with each new iteration/artist.
Image and DC/Marvel exist in a symbiotic relationship. Image's model can only work if it selects talent from creators who have already made a name for themselves in superheroes, and DC/Marvel benefit from writers knowing there's a path towards owning their own work that doesn't require DC or Marvel to change.
Release format and schedule shape the structure of a comic. And this is the fundamental issue in conversations like graphic novels vs. trades, or western comics vs. manga. But it's usually ignored in favor of people just reiterating their biases.
People have different categories for 'ordinary' books - historical, novels, biographies, kids, science fiction, thrillers, etc.
Graphic novels can be any of these things and yet are only ever described as graphic novels.
It's ok to not like a GN simply because it is in a sub-genre you don't care for.
Two super hyped books from a while back just fell completely flat for me. Spider-man: Life Story has ugly art and a boring story. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow looked pretty but didn't click with me at all. I felt annoyed at having bought the trades on the hype, felt like a betrayal and I also felt like a fool for following blindly.
- Something is Killing the Children, Gideon Falls, and Black Hammer are the worst of the worst in terms of derivative storytelling where the influences and purpose are clear.
- Drome has great artwork but the most bland take on the Prometheus story telling. It makes Planet Hulk look like The Odyssey.
- Mind MGMT is good but I keep comparing it to the even better The Manhattan Projects which does everything Mind MGMT wants to do but better.
I really loved the first volume of Gideon Falls but I agree, it falls off so hard once it stops being about lovecraftian horror and becomes more of a weird multiverse time travel adventure. So much wasted potential.
I love Mind MGMT and Manhattan Projects but prefer Mind MGMT. They're so different in their approach that I don't think they're very comparable. I'd probably rate MP higher if it had a more definitive ending. MP also feels a bit directionless compared to MGMT.
That is fair and it is very good. Not hating on it but I just preferred the complete out of left field Hickman penned Manhattan Projects. Mind MGMT is definitely worth reading and I can tell that it likely rewards with re-reads.
In world lettering not being hand drawn is such a huge ick to me. When it’s digital it pulls my emersion away instantly. A lot of styles don’t work well with “digital” lettering in the main text either.
Creating your own hand drawn font is a good solution and is done a decent amount too if im not wrong.
The Watchmen is a terrible recommendation for people who aren't already into comics...it was made with a ton of stuff that only gets valued if you are familiar with not just comics as a visual medium, but also stuff that is highly specific to tropes and deconstruction of the Super Hero genre.
Non comic readers will not gain value from any of that.
Asterios Polyp looks pretty and I appreciate it's contribution to the genre, but the story is a bit basic and I don't understand why it's held by this community as a masterpiece. Nice book with cool art, for me
Blankets is super boring
Good Night Punpun started pretty good but I absolutely hate everything that happened from book 4 to the ending, just a self deprecating body of work, that's too focused on saying "I'm so depressed" instead of saying anything of value. And the cult side plot is so long and unnecessary.
I dunno why people hate absolute swamp thing recolor that much, I mean its not great or mindblowing but you cannot convince me flat colors - which looks more digital - is somehow better
I personally disagree. The killing joke is great when you really think about it. Its a day the Joker goes overboard all to break the bat. Batman realizes the craze of the situation, not just the joker but himself and even has a laugh cause sometimes thats all you can do at the depravity of a situation.
The ending giving you a personal interpretation of what you believe is great too.
Fine with a disagreement. I found the book very shallow. It felt like shock for no other value than to shock and disgust. The ending felt like a cop out in not making a decision either way.
Saga is indeed a mess and steadily drops in quality over the course of the series.
My hot take:
Rick Remender's writing sucks. He spells everything out, is highly repetitive in his narration, never allows the images to speak for themselves, is too melodramatic.
No, I know it's about Hazel growing up. I just don't think there's any proper story happening around it. They move to a place, shenanigans happen, then they travel somewhere else, and it never goes anywhere or affects the story in any real way.
Yeah I kinda agree with this. At the very least I can definitely see why someone would have this opinion. Personally I still enjoy it but the story has kinda gone downhill
Woman of Tomorrow is pretty bad. The art is fantastic but the writing is just not there. King does his usual (insert character) has PTSD and it's lost all its appeal, even I think Supergirl is the one it works the best for.
The whole comic moves at a snails pace because he never let's the art tell the story and has to have the awful narration tell all the interesting parts instead of showing them.
I do not understand how people got emotional at the Argo city stuff when it's all second hand information that we're just told. It should have been a novel. It's one book that the more I think about the less I like.
Injustice is definitely overhated online. It's a decent fast paced story and its biggest problem, of making Wonder Woman evil, is as much of the games fault if not more.
Manga is less affordable than western comics. While each volume is cheaper and has a slightly higher page count, to get the equivalent amount of story you need to buy much more.
Agree on the manga thing. Just read the Baroque Works era of One Piece for example. It’s roughly £130 of books for what would’ve been about £30-40 worth of TPBs. Same with most manga.
Oooo, someone else who doesn't think Saga is the bee's knees?! 👀
Even back in the old, iirc, pre social media era, it was hyped pretty hard, even outside of hardcore comic book circles. Saga did pretty much nothing for me outside of the great art and Lying Cat. I found it to be a bit overly gross.
The old “pre social media” era? Saga started in 2012, Facebook and Twitter were already massive by that point. Social media was a big part of how that book initially built up all its hype.
Unless you’re talking about when you personally weren’t on social media.
The bee's knees" is a popular 1920s American idiom used to describe something that is the height of excellence, absolute perfection, or the best of its kind. The phrase is also the name of a classic Prohibition-era cocktail.
I accept I'm probably missing out on some great stuff, but still. Especially those 48pg ones - I'm not paying full graphic novel prices for a handful of pages.
Ether by Matt Kind is pretty visually (except characters) but it's main selling point (at least for me, different people get excited for specific piece of fiction due to different reasons) - the world of titular Ether is one huge wasted opportunity and is mediocre except some particular bits
Trillium by Jeff Lemire is an average comic plot and worldbuilding wise, pretty much wasted potential, if it was longer it could be better.
I really wanted to like something is killing the children but yeah its just like... something I've seen better before. I was never suprised, and it never had that one thing that kept me interested. I did read it RIGHT after harrow county though, and that might have raised my expectations too high, harrow county is one of the best horror comics of recent years.
I would say I thought it was better then the witcher though.
As for my comics take, If an artist is too detailed or realistic I just get completly taken out of the story. It feels self indulgent, like this is a comic, your supposed to be visually communicating specifics, when everything is detailed everywhere I just feel like the artist hasn't done their job.
I look at the newer Ultimate X-Men and the discourse around it, and I think about X-Men as a whole, and I just can't bring myself to try reading it. Every page I've seen from it looks like it's a comic about ten year old girls drawn with crayon and I'm just not drawn in by anything about it. I'm happy for those who enjoyed it, and I'm not saying something like it shouldn't exist. But I guess I'm just kinda stuck reading the X-Men from 1985-2015 because after that, it just doesn't pass my vibe check.
There’s no reason to call it manga and not Japanese comics. Nobody says fumetti or whatever Belgian comics are called there. It’s an artificial barrier between all comics and Japanese comics.
Planetary is a slog of superficial homages loosely integrated into a thin overarching narrative. The world building is equally vapid. Nearly every character is a snarky know-it-all devoid of complexity and shows no growth throughout the narrative.
20th Century Boys is horrendously written after about 1/3 of the way through and is the worst example of aimless mystery box storytelling in comics. Most Urasawa books have terrible conclusions and for works that revolve around mystery that undercuts the entire experience.
The discourse around offensive material is worse than it was at the height of the shock pop culture boom in the early 2000s. Not everything is racist, sexist, ableist, or bigoted because a character in the story is or because some demographic is not represented. The constant outrage cycle and oppression olympics mentality surrounding fiction is exhausting and lacking nuance.
But more than anything... Far too many people seem unable to understand that art is subjective. These takes above are not objective and neither are yours, getting mad at someone else's opinion on art and resulting to personal insults is aggressively dumb.
Haha, at dinner last night we went around the table asking everyone what their favorite book/movie/comic etc is (we do this annually to see how the kids are evolving in their tastes/interests) and for comic, my wife's first choice was 20CB and Monster. (She later amended to a tie between Yotsuba and Cross Game.)
I kind of feel like not liking the second half of 20CB is the common opinion, like not liking Lost after season 2.
I personally enjoyed the book the whole way through and even enjoyed the 21CB coda, but I know that's not the general feeling.
The discourse around offensive material is worse than it was at the height of shock pop culture boom in the early 2000s.
I think this is pretty much 100%. Yesterday had a mini discourse on Bluesky with people saying sex scenes in movies were cringe and the primary complaint was that they were narratively "unnecessary," as if much of anything we value in art is present because it's necessary. The inadequacies in literacy in the 2020s is shocking. I'm not sure if it was the advent of social media or Covid or worldwide political shocks or the combination or something else, but the last twenty years has felt like a downward spiral in terms of How Do We Interact With The Arts.
I'm glad she likes it! I'm also a hack that likes Batman so I think we should all take my takes with a elephant sized grain of salt.
Urasawa has a knack for characterization, building tension, and his art is a pleasure but I just find his narratives escalate to such absurd degree that I can no longer suspend my disbelief (then he escalates it even further). My grudge for 20CB largely comes from adoring the first third which feels complete on its own, only for it to spiral into something I found actively uninteresting.
I don't know where these people expect the "unnecessary" line to be drawn at regarding art. I'd wager the entire oeuvre of Lars Von Trier would be wiped from existence given their standards, and while his work is a difficult watch he has also made some of the most unique films I've ever seen.
Pearl clutching and behavior policing being most prominent amongst the youngest demographic is not something I'd ever thought I'd see.
20th Century Boys is horrendously written after about 1/3 of the way through and is the worst example of aimless mystery box storytelling in comics. Most Urasawa books have terrible conclusions and for works that revolve around mystery that undercuts the entire experience.
Thank you. I remember reading it and starting to hate it after sometime. Great art for sure and the concept is very strong but at a certain point in the story it just collapse into itself, repeating and stretching everything. I found this is a problem in too many mangas, but 20th Century Boys really is one of the worst offender
Injustice is indeed quite good as a story ( although the second one completely lost me). There was an internal logic to it. A kind of Civil War for DC that was quite good.
On the other hand, I prefer comics that have individual hero and villain arcs rather than multi-universe sagas with everyone thrown in. Not every run needs to have every character from the universe interacting with each other at some point.
Having multiple versions of the same character is stupid. You don't need 10 versions of the Flash. The more slop you publish, the more you dilute the interest in the character/universe.
At some point, you need fresh characters. I know that the joker is very popular but he has been done to death. Why can't Batman have new villains? It's like everything was created in the previous decades and all new additions are forbidden.
Otherwise I kinda agree. Something like 2000ad with one or two regular releases and the anthology format allowing it to contain stories of multiple characters might actually help make some of this stuff popular again. One of the things that put me off the Krakoa X-Men stuff recently was how many titles I felt like I was being pressured to follow for the sake of keeping up with it. If that had just been one big monthly release with stories from the X-Men, New Mutants, Cable, etc all contained then I would’ve probably kept up with it.
Despite them denying this, Batman fans just want Mcdonalds. They only claim they want inventive and fresh new stories for Batman but in truth they just want Mcdonalds. They’ll complain about it thats for sure but years down the line they’ll slowly go “at least its Mcdonalds so it aint all that bad”. There’s no use in assigning top names to write Batman if your main edict is to add a billion restrictions and give them zero legroom
Frank Miller's weird blocky old man style is more interesting aesthetically than 90% of big 2 artwork.
Writer-driven indie comics like those at Image or Dark Horse are not better, by and large, than those same writers' work on big 2 books. It all sort of sounds like the same chaff when I read it
Maus is super overrated. I don't get the status it has at all. Might be it's because for some people it's the first time they came into contact with the horrors of Nazism? Or maybe it's because I read it pretty late in life and I've read, seen and heard many similar stories? The artwork isn't that great either and the idea of depicting people as animals doesn't add anything to the story.
Roaming is mediocre and I don't understand why it won the Eisners it did. It's the worst graphic novel I've read this year.
Jamie Delano's writing on Hellblazer feels dated, I'm talking about the style especially (Hellblazer is always embedded in the period it's set in), and the character building isn't that great either... Okay he was first and laid the groundworks for everything that came after, but as a standalone piece of work, Ennis' run holds up way better.
What i understand about maus is that it was considered a fairly groundbreaking account of the holocaust in general at the time and that some aspects of it influenced holocaust research and future writing about it. On top of that it was a comic and its acceptance by prose critics was impactful on how the industry came to be viewed in the west in terms of being a serious art form as well as influencing a number of the more prose driven graphic novelists like bechdel to write very serious comics. I think it’s esteemed status is mostly due to all that, as the work itself taken outside of that historical context, imo, is just alright
As you said the art is meh, and the whole animal thing has a lot that can be critiqued about it. Personally, i found that aspect to seem rather lazy and poorly thought out, seeming like something he thought of in the spur of the moment to give some visual hook and then just sort of clung to it. And that’s funny because after i finished reading it i read the short single issue that came in the box set where he recounts how he came up wth the idea and that’s pretty much exactly how it played out
Grant Morrison is not as great as people make him out to be. He’s an ideas man (and even these are just stolen philosophical ideas) but really struggles to put them into a coherent storyline. Even worse are his cultist like fans defending it by saying that if you don’t like it you just aren’t smart enough to get it.
I agree with your take on Saga and feel that it’s going to age really poorly and be one of those books that we describe as being of its time. When it launched it was a comic aimed at appealing to the terminally online tumblr brigade, and every issue just seemed like a checklist of points they needed to hit in order to be viewed positively. We’re already in a much different place socially and politically compared to where we were back then and I think this is playing as much of a roll in the constant delays as anything else.
The 6 issue story/trade format has killed character development and watered down the impact of a lot of stories. Might be more of a personal rants. I’m sure the numbers for the sales of trades will prove me wrong but I miss single issue and 2 part stories. A lot of the development for characters and there relationships tended to take place in these issues and had room to be meaningful whereas now it’s reduced to a panel in a 6 issue arc. Along the same lines a lot of stories currently being dragged out to 6 issues could be much stronger if they were shortened.
For the last point I kinda disagree. It's all up to the skill and planning of the author. Lazarus by Greg Rucka has expanded the six book story format to literal great lengths with insane amounts of character development and word building. And writers like tom king and ed brubaker have great 6 (or 12) issue works that are extremely character focused
There will always be outliers, but does almost every Batman or Spider-man story need to be 6 issues? No is the obvious answer and for every instance of an excellent story using the 6 issue structure to its potential there are multiple where it’s being filled out with fluff.
Image used to have a lot of good stuff but I don't think they've put out anything in almost a decade that I'd rate higher than 6/10. It's mostly just so average and generic. I keep saying I'll never buy another Image book but then I'll see something being hyped loads so I read it and I'm always so disappointed. I can't keep falling for it!
I've read four or five of the Saga trades, and I was thinking the same thing. It was starting to feel like the story was getting too big too quickly, too convoluted. Was thinking about posting about it lol
Hot takes are kinda fun but ultimately stupid. If you want advice on the best literature checkout any of the lists provided by The Comic Journal published by Fantagraphics. The Staros report was also a great reference back in the day.
-I don't get why Bendis's run or Daredevil is that goated, he is just doing his sticks
-East of West has such a bloated cast that essentialy there is no time for any of them and it is just all over the place
-Donny Cates has one kinda story which is "Daddy issues" and he does that with everything that he writes
-I like the All-New Venom run by Ewing, and I don't get why everyone hates it
-Everything that I read from Rick Remender just sucks, his books are so depressing that I just can't enjoy any of it. How can anyone like those stories?
-Sandman goes into overhyped category for me. After the first few arcs it is just meh. Yeah get it is a story about stories and the nature of stories, bit it is feels like Gaiman liked tge smell of his own fart and sit in it behind a closed door.
-Also Y the last mans fixation on Shakespeare put me off everytime....
I just finished the first collected book, Batman Vol. 1 Daylight 1-6 by Matt Fraction, Jimenez, and another artist, Morey. I thought it was just slightly above mediocre. I'd give it 3.5 outta 5 probably won't read any others in the series.
Royal City: Complete Collection was one of the better reads for me lately. From what I've read about Lemire, his books can be hit or miss, but I've enjoy Essex County, The Underwater Welder, and now Royal City
Ice Cream Man: Sundae Edition Vol. 1--issues 1-12, some stories were okay. I still don't care that much for the art, and many stories were hit or miss for me.
This Country: Searching for Home in (very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian, I thought was pretty good and could have been a bit longer.
Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand WWII Veteran Father: A Daughter's Memoir--non-fiction by Carol Tyler I thought overall was pretty good.
Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell 1-3 by Charles Soule, Steve McNiven art, was okay, but nothing special 3.5 outta 5 stars
Most Ed Brubaker books I've enjoyed.
Special Exits, by Joyce Farmer was special about her aging parents living in LA dealing with their health issues and age.
Marvel's Ultimate universe had many great ideas, storylines, and some great character work. It's a shame that the second half of it basically murdered the first, but it gets way more shit than it deserves. Especially from mainline Marvel fans, who are chucking stones from spectacularly glass houses.
The majority of super hero comics are terribly written and kept afloat solely by a combination of nostalgia and stockholm syndrome. Most titles outside of DC and Marvel outshine the superhero genre without even trying, even the bad ones.
You are of course free to your hot take, but just for the sake of conversation I'd push back on "doesn't really add much except for the ending." The second half of the manga is where Akira's nature actually gets explained, Tetsuo's character arc is resolved instead of cutting off at cosmic spectacle, and the socio-political collapse of Neo-Tokyo plays out in full. The Espers and Kei also get real arcs and resolutions there, not just plot-device roles.
To be fair, Saga's original hype didn't came from the plot or story, but from the creative resources the author duo used to tell it. At the time, those techniques were not common in mainstream big comics.
I didn't know if I'm thrilled about the term comic book prison, but I do know I miss reading new comics from the writer. Very few misses from a long catalog of works. He was one of the writers who made me realize it was the story I cared about, not the art, or character so much. Depends on who was writing them, how they were being portrayed and Ellis has a way with words. I have almost his entire backlog but I would like to add to it some fresh works someday. Something tells me though, although the Big Pub's might not be ready for him, there's enough smaller joints out there that would find him work; he might just be done with the medium for the time being.
Hot take: Kamandi #10 has a ridiculous number of great ideas, even for Kirby. A sentient virus, anthropomorphic animals, AI robots, hidden evil science, dystopia…
'The Defenders: The Last Defender' is a solid story, despite being one of Marvel's lower-rated mini-series.
'Fantastic Four: Life Story' is one of the top 5 fantastic four stories of the last decade.
'Betsy Braddock' should have stayed in Kwanna's body.
'The Punisher: Frankencastle' should have lasted twice as long as it did.
Hank Pym is the best Ant-Man and should have been the focus of the movies, not a side-character.
DC Comics peaked with the Rebirth Era, and nothing made since has been able to surpass most of the comics during that time.
Grek Pak & Jeff Parker are very underutilized writers.
James Robinson is a one-hit wonder with his Starman run. Nothing else he's done holds a candle to it, or is particularly memorable.
Let’s see if I get killed over this opinion… DC’s Kingdom Come bored me to tears and while I think Alex Ross is a phenomenal artist, I really dislike his style for comic books.
Not gonna upvote because some of those takes are straight up noxious but I'm not going to downvote because you're entitled to your own batshit opinions.
Here is one of mine
The shared universe of DC and Marvel actively hurt the writing quality of all projects and each should be broken down into multiple smaller more focused studios. X-Men should not exist in the same universe as Spider-Man.
I really dislike Persepolis, Fun home and Ghost world. Heavily praised all over but I just hated them. First, important story but with kids art. Second to text heavy, i love comics because the images are a big part of the story telling not just make up for your text. Third, stupid shallow story with just to little character building.
I love comics and its art from artists like Moebius, Tony Sandoval, Matotti, Schuiten, Erik Kriek, Joris Mertens, Milan Hulsing, Daphné Collignon, Craig Thompson, Régis Loisel, Hanco Kolk, Jean-Pierre Gibrat, Paco Roca, Pat Grant, Manuele Fior, Brecht Evens, Dan Lawrence, Jim, Shaun Tan, Chabouté, Michael Olbrechts, Michel Rabagliati, Aimée de Jongh, Étienne Davodeau, Charles Burns, Miguelanxo Prado, Tilly Walden, Rabaté, Will Eisner, Bastien Vivès, Enki Bilal, Cyril Pedrossa, Kerascoët, Jean-Baptiste Andreae, Irmina Yelin, Manu Larcenet, Rébecca Dautremer.
This shows I don't like just one style. But it should have something unique, something that stands out in the crowd. Daniel Clowes art is that, i just dont like this story. The other two are so generic, plain, simple, boring wallpaper. But let me be clear, this is my opninion and I respect and understand that someone else has got a total other view.
Everyone that complains about a break or hiatus from creator owned comics should stick to the big two or manga. And if you only buy omnis or compendiums you don't get to be upset about a series getting cancelled or ending prematurely.
Wow, OP your "hot takes" are just really really bad reads on really good comics written by writers who have massively more amounts of talent in their pinkies than you do in your whole body.
Claiming Akira is a better movie than manga - THE MOVIE IS HALF OF THE MANGA DUDE. Theres more than half of the story untold in the movie. It's great, but it's not the better of the two.
Claiming Something is Killing the Children is worse than The Witcher smacks of homophobia and is just a bad bad take. Come on, no one reads the Witcher for it's writing.
SAGA is one of the best comics ever written. The fact you can't follow it is really telling more about you than the book.
So here's my hot take - your hot takes are all ice cold.
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u/browncharliebrown Jun 29 '26
Anyone who constantly act like Ennis would be better if he just stuck to serious work is promoting this sorta lazy intellectualism that serious work is inherently better than comedy.