Virtual Adept

Okay, as I mentioned in Back in Black, I am now pretty much heavily into comic books. I casually collected comics in the 80’s, but it was too expensive for me then so I quit. Now the hobby is even more expensive, but I have much more disposable income and I’m more interested in the comics since IMHO they have jumped to the “next level” in terms of quality. I mean, you pick up a book from 1986, and compare it to a book from 2006, and there is no comparison. The artwork is much better, the writing is more “adult”, and overall comic books today are just a heck of a lot more entertaining to me. I imagine that a big reason why comics aren’t more popular is the people (meaning, adults with money) still have this image of the comics from the 80’s and earlier in their minds, while the artform has evolved way past that point.

Lately I’ve been reading Decimation stories from Marvel regarding the fallout of the House of M. In DC I’ve been reading preludes to the Infinite Crisis and will start in with the actual event next. I’m also reading back issues of the X-Men books in trade paperbacks. Here are some mini-reviews:

Countdown to Infinite Crisis - this is a large one-shot (like 80 pages I think) which gives a background story leading up to Infinite Crisis, the big 2005 crossover event for DC. This book actually preludes The OMAC Project, which was a fantastic little mini-series. Fortunately DC reprinted this story including it in the trade paperback for The OMAC Project, which makes sense since they are directly related. This story starts off a little slow and strange, with some “flashbacks” and stuff that was a bit confusing, but the ending was a total shocker. 9/10

The OMAC Project (2005) - Clandestine organization Checkmate has fallen into the wrong hands and promises to do Really Bad Things with Big Brother, an invention of Batman to monitor metahuman activity. This was a great read, with some very memorable scenes. There was also a mini-crossover called “Sacrifice” that involved issues of various Superman books and Wonder Woman, which was a great subplot to this story. 9/10

House of M - This is an 8 issue mini-series with tons of additional crossover books from various series. I’m only talking about the core mini here. Issue 1 was pretty cool, with the Avengers and the X-Men discussing what to do about Wanda Blake aka the Scarlet Witch in the aftermath of events from Avengers Disassembled. I had read Avengers Disassembled first, which I consider to be required reading if you want to understand House of M, plus I’d also read X-Caliber 1 through 14, which is somewhat important too because a subplot in that run is related to House of M. Issue 2 of House of M was excellent, and starts the real meat of the story, then 3-7 were just decent, but issue 8 was great. So, starts off great, ends great, but the filling in the middle wasn’t completely fulfilling. This series is pretty much required reading for Marvel fans since the repercussions of this story are felt in almost every comic title that Marvel has. 7.5/10

House of M - Incredible Hulk - This Incredible Hulk story involves the Hulk in Australia living with the aborigines while a mutant regime is on the verge of pulling another holocaust against the humans, and Hulk is, of course, a complete bad ass. While not absolutely essential to the House of M storyline, this story is a very worthwhile read, except for the ending which kind of just stopped. 8/10

House of M - Fantastic Four/Iron Man - This is two 3-issue stories in one trade paperback. The Fantastic Four story surprisingly has very little to do with FF, it’s all about Doctor Doom and his rivalry with Magneto. It’s a good story, especially if you like Doom. It’s not really essential to the main plot of the series, however. The Iron Man story is a better tie-in to House of M because it shows how the changes made in Issue 2 of House of M impact certain aspects of society. Plus it shows that Tony Stark is going to excel pretty much no matter what happens, and Iron Man is as cool as ever here. 8/10

House of M - Spider-Man - This starts off pretty good where Spider-Man is loved by the media and has a loving family with Gwen Stacy and Jamison is Peter’s lap dog. And I did like how Peter’s one weakness in this incarnation was going to be his downfall. But then the ending of this kind of ruined it for me. I won’t spoil it. This is worth reading but did not live up to its potential. This book is not required reading to get the whole House of M, it is a fairly unimportant subplot. 6/10

More mini-reviews to come later…

So, anyway, my collection is now over 1000 books. I have all my issues listed in an online database, so if you want to see what I’ve been getting then take a look at my ComicBookDB page and then click to view my collection. If you want to read more about my opinions about the current state of the comic biz, check out my page on ComicSpace, which is quickly becoming a hot online hang-out for comic fans.