Stormwatch, Red Son and more

Man I need to update this more often. I've gone on a tear reading through series of books and enjoying reading books that thrilled me in my childhood and shocked by others that I can't believe anyone enjoyed.

I'm currently reading Stormwatch from the beginning. This is a major undertaking not only for the amount of books but cluttered writing that was so common for the time.



Stormwatch started as the first spin-off book by Jim Lee. He started at Image with Wildcats and released Stormwatch shortly after the first five issues of Wildcats was finished.

Stormwatch #1 actually starts really well. Good action, a nice setup and a hint of things to come. Issue #2 and #3 are sort of the run of the mill battle books but for some reason Stormwatch packs in tons of dialogue, something that doesn't make sense when a book is known for the art. At the same time, most of the art is posing and not actually telling a story so I guess it fits.

Issue #4 really develops Backlash and gives us the first real art by Bret Booth who became one of my early favorites at Image and a guy that I followed and bought anything he drew for a while. I enjoyed Backlash as a kid and he still remains one of my favorite characters, once he was fleshed out more in Team 7 he became my favorite Image character. If I ever went to an event with artists there I would often have them draw me a sketch of Backlash.

#5 - 8 all actually tie up some loos ends form the start of the series as well as helping to set up the Gen 13 series of books with the first appearance of Rainmaker in issue #8.

While reading this series today doesn't make you miss it, at the time this was a top notch book and when compared to any of the other Image founders, this book was at the top for story and action. Compared to a Extreme Studios book, it blows them out of the water.


While off from my last break in the blog I finished the whole series of Earth x, Universe X and Paradise X. It was a shocking change in art from Earth X to the other two series as it felt more like an Alan Davis clone drew the Universe ans Paradise books compared to the darker painted art of the Earth X Series.

While the series were interesting to read, it is nothing more than something I would pick up at the library and can't believe that these were higher priced books.

Earth X was good but Universe and Paradise really fell off of the deep end in my opinion with way too much universe traveling for my taste.


I went to the local library with my kids and found that they actually had some TPB's in stock. I was shocked because I live in a smaller town in Utah that is considered to be more of a hick town, so to see comics was a bit of a suprise.

I picked up Red Son and Batman Year One. Both books have been on my list of 'wanting to read' for some time but just had never had the chance.

I was blown away with Batman Year One. Overall just a wonderful story that just feels like it flows so well with art that matches it's gritty style. I recommend this to anyone wanting a good comic book read.

Superman Red Son was a bit of a letdown to me. With Mark Millar writing this and knowing that single issues are usually in the $20 range I knew it had to be something special but overall it just felt okay to me. I think the art in it was a big letdown. Dave Johnson did okay on the book but the art just wasn't what I would hope for from a story that should have looked a lot more epic. I believe they were trying to go with a feel of a communist Russia but to me it didn't hold up to expectations.

The story to me was also a bit of a letdown and I was hoping for it to have some more action or more involvement from the other super heroes from the DC past. Especially the JSA or other groups which never appear to form without Superman around yet the JSA was formed in the WW II era meaning they should have shown up some in this book.

Overall I would suggest getting it from a Library but not worth a purchase.

Earth X Part 1

I just started reading Earth X. I've never read this series (strange for someone that collected a lot of comics when they were coming out) and I thought I would give it a try. I'm 2 issues in and so far it is okay. It isn't something that I feel pulled to and I'm not really in love with the story or characters yet.

When this series came out Alex Ross was HOT. He was just coming off of Kingdom Come and was getting a lot of attention. The Earth X series was his Marvel version basically with two followup books to the Earth X series. Both were never as popular but are next in order to read.

The interesting thing is that ComicBookResources looked back at the book here. I feel a lot of what the author has to say about the book is how I feel about it as well. He at least read it when it came out and greatly enjoyed it, but how does it really stand up? I guess I'll see how I feel about it when I'm all done with all of Earth X but right now it just feels okay.

Empire

I've been reading through my collection and I'll post more about what I've been going through but I wanted to hit on a series called Empire.

I've had this issue book for some time and never read either of the two issues I had in my trade boxes until I read an article recently interviewing Mark Waid. Waid spoke about finishing the series or continuing with a sequel to the book. Waid mentions that it is tough for him to write villains in control in his books and made me wonder what this books was all about.

I've always had a thing with villains being in control or a group of villains that actually know what is going on and so I really wanted to check this book out.



It hit me at that time I had to read this book. I got home from work and I retreated to my reading area to get this first issue out of the way, the first thing that hit me was the cover.




The cover instantly made me think of Star Trek with the Red and Yellow 'Federation' Jerseys and made me wonder who was going to die first.

The first issue takes the view of one of the head bad guys right hand man. It really lets you know who all the players are in the new world and just how powerful Golgoth is.

It was a a good intro into the book and it makes me want to read more about it.

The series only last two issues under Image and was brought back three years later under DC. I don't have any of the DC books but the two Image books are worth picking up and I'm sure I'll get the DC books sometime.

Ascension from the start.

I have been collecting comics for twenty years now and have a huge collection, about half of which is sorted and the other half is not. While sorting through the other half I have been pulling out books I would like to keep and others to reed to decide if it is worth keeping. The other group is going out the door through trade through email or sale through webuycomics. So if there is a certain series you see here that you would like to trade for, let me know – heck if you need an issue of something random, let me know.

So to start I have about two long boxes full of Image comics that I’ll be starting off with. I’ll try to go over the book as more of a series as I go over it and my thoughts on it. While doing individual issues is awesome, I just don’t have the time to be able to do that. I’ll also be sharing my feelings about the book when it first came out, so this is basically starting at Image from the Beginning (at least jumping to different titles from the beginning with many top Image books included). Rules are No SPOILERS or future info information shared. I’ll usually read about 5 or so issues and give my thoughts on what is going on with it.

Ascension kicks us off as the first book to be covered. I remember when this book first came out it had a HOT feel to it. The art looked great and was a book that was burning up the comic shop chatter at the time. I don’t remember anyone actually talking about the books story or what it was even about though, I just remember the art and covers looking great. The series didn’t last over two years but came out about the same time as other image books like Weapon Zero and sort of filled that era of Image titles. This is a series I always wished I read because I was big into the ‘art’ books at the time as a teenager but never did. It was one of those books that I just didn’t have the extra money each month to get or the time. While it appeared to do well, I just didn’t hear enough about the actual story to be willing to pick it up.

I’m missing about 4 issues I think for the full series and I’m not sure where issue 0 starts but I’m going to start there and hopefully that isn’t a bad place to start but I’ll let you know my initial reactions soon as I dive into this.

Welcome Comic Fans

To start, I've been collecting comics since I was 8, I'm now 27. My first comic was Tales of GI Joe 12. My next few comics were a Batman and Captain America book. Uncanny X-Men 279 was my first X-Men book and I have been hooked ever since.

I have well over 60,000 comics now, but my big thing is getting full runs of books, reading them and seeing what I think of the series overall. That's what this blog will mostly cover, is the full runs that I read and then my thoughts on if it's worth keeping in my collection or it's ready to head off to eBay or to be traded into Mycomicshop.com.

I have about 30 Long Boxes of comics that I consider to be my collection. I also buy about 40-50 new monthly books that I get once a month, so I will cover those as I get them in. I'm mainly a mainstream fan but sometimes get books that are off the Beaten path.

The other 170+ long boxes of books that I have I consider to be my trade stock. Only about 30 of these long boxes are actually sorted. I have them in X-Men, Spider-man, Superman, and Batman, Spawn, Transformers, GI Joe, Witchblade, Tomb Raider families and then all of Dark Horse organized. Each month I trade in about 1-2 long boxes worth of this trade stock to Mycomicshop.com for credit and cash. I then use the cash to get my new comics and the trade to finish off full runs of books.

I currently have full runs of Uncanny X-Men and almost all other X-Men books and Mini Series. Transformers, GI Joe, and many other titles. You'll get to see many of these as I review them and I hope that as I read through my comic book collection, seeing if books are worth keeping or trading, that you will be able to enjoy my look at these different series.

I will be judging them on what I thought of them when I first got them if I had read them before, how they hold up today, if the series overall is worth it for me to keep or if it's a certain issue here or there or maybe a run.