Kingdom Come

Joined: 30 Oct 2007 Posts: 3361

watchmen is so ridiculously great it is seriously in a league of its own

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:35 pm

justinpie wrote:

Marvel has a time-honored tradition of making their heroes delicately explain the minutiae of their superabilities, while DC's more like "I LEARNED THIS FROM SPACE WIZARDS".

So, Marvel's the Larry Niven of Superheroes?

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 3:21 pm

it's like if Niven and Michener had a kid who wrote about the aperture of repulsor cannons, but still managed to make it sound kind of dopey.

Joined: 12 Oct 2005 Posts: 5693

"legendary" comic books tend to be big awful melodramatic shitfests wrapped in tacky symbolism/biblical reference

then comic book people hold them up like HEY THIS IS A GOOD BOOK IN COMIC FORM, COMICS ARE GROWN-UP OKAY so they can keep pretending they're not wasting their lives reading trash

trash!!

Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 5828 Location: Los Angeles, CA

Yeah it's too bad that everyone responsible for the Marvel/DC universes actually takes the stuff they're writing seriously. I am 99% sure that the Crisis on Infinite Earths/Zero Hour/etc etc etc stuff was furiously solving problems that nobody in their right mind cared about.

Though I guess the problem with comic books is that they attract comic book fans, who do care about ridiculous stuff. To some extent it's the comics' own fault, though -- if the DC Universe had responded to Crisis-era complaints about continuity with a firm "Look, we know it's dumb, just ignore the inconsistencies", would it have cultivated a species of more reasonable comics fan, or would the nitpicky fans have revolted? In other words, are huge, horrible multi-title multi-year epics just fanservice?

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:27 pm

You think that soap opera fans sit around wondering about who slept with who fifteen years ago, or who walked out on who thirty years ago, or who used their laser eyes to melt the face off of who last tuesday?

I guess what I'm asking is: who'd win in a fight? Marvel fans or Days of Our Lives fans?

(Or would it just end in slapping and tears?)

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:13 am

trainwreck wrote:

Unless I am thinking of DC characters.

If you're thinking of Captain Marvel et al. they're DC characters.

As for legendary comics not by Allan Moore, Sandman is good stuff and most other Gaiman stuff I've read is too. Some stuff Frank Miller did was pretty great even if it didn't survive the adaptation to movies without losing some of its gravitas. Bone is pretty excellent.

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:27 am

technoatheist wrote:

You think that soap opera fans sit around wondering about who slept with who fifteen years ago, or who walked out on who thirty years ago, or who used their laser eyes to melt the face off of who last tuesday?

I guess what I'm asking is: who'd win in a fight? Marvel fans or Days of Our Lives fans?

(Or would it just end in slapping and tears?)

the best thing about soap operas is that they run so long that someone can start in one, leave, and come back to it ten years later to play a new character

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 1:24 am

I read KC when I was like 13 and I probably missed the gist* of it, but on retrospect wasn't it just about the conflicting values of different generations, whether that of the comic book industry or real life's/playing once more on the Supes vs. Cpn Marvel court rivalry.

Also the Watchmen is incredible. I had my girlfriend, completely uncultured of (and I would say not too thrilled by) superhero comic books (she had read Johnny The Homicidal Maniac and the like) and she loved it so I'm going to put my money on that claim of it being just a book with men in tights.

Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 3841

Once an actor from an australian soap left the show and moved to an english soap as pretty much the same character

don't think anyone could possible notice except the irish, but it was sort of great

ps soaps are one of those things that are a lot different in some places than others!

Joined: 30 Oct 2007 Posts: 3361

to back up eidam

my 50-year old mum read watchmen having never read a comic book before and loved it

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:15 am

my goldfish who is a republican and also a ghost too read watchmen and called it "Explosive - the Moby Dick of graphic novels."

Joined: 14 Aug 2008 Posts: 1786 Location: The fine land

So nobody has made the "Kindom cum" joke yet?

Joined: 30 Oct 2007 Posts: 3361

otie