Hannibal Tabus Buy PIle, 4/24/03 (not posted on comicsnsuch.com 8^)

CG crossover madness with Crux and Solus, Marvel gets intriguing with Thor and the Avengers, Vertigo does it again with Y: The Last Man, in Lucifer angels talk and in Global Frequency Warren Ellis rocks. That's just the way the Usenet post gets copied without consent, over on the Buy Pile.

As always, comments, questions, concerns or even insults are accepted happily. Oh, and one possible spoiler for any Green Arrow/Green Lantern fans (so cover your eyes, kids) ...

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... that wasn't Abin Sur that I was ranting about last week, by the way, pointed out to me first by Tom Handy (thanks Tom).

Auf wiedersen!

-Hannibal Tabu

Fantastic Four No. 68: I missed the last one which

Is Mr. Waid's treatment of Doom reminding anyone else of his aborted EMPIRE series?

[The Crossovers #4]

Unfortunately, Mr. Rodi's work sometimes has that problem. I thought the

It's not aborted. It's in the latest Previews.

-Ralf Haring 'The mind must be the harder, the heart the keener, the spirit the greater, as our strength grows less.' -Byrhtwold, The Battle of Maldon

My comics pusher Steve and I discussed how let down we were after literally gasping at the end of the prior issue. This isn't unthinkable, it's just uncommon.

I can kind of see Johanna's point about the possible overlay from Empire, but Doom has had a kind of schizophrenic identity for as long as I've been reading, which is since the mid 80s. Sometimes he's this noble madman, sometimes he's this severe megalomaniac set on death and domination. The best, most balanced show of Doom I've seen in years was in the Priest short on Marvel Double SHot or whatever it was called, which I read over and over again, soaking up the texture.

My beef with Doom, in a way, is my beef with Captain America. Decide what it is you're gonna be and commit to it, without the prevarication and whining. Doom's still tiptoeing around Reed like some mischievous ten year old. If you have a whole country and more money than God, a conflict between Reed and Doom should look more like Priest's Enemy of The State II than anthing else.

The more I think about it, the more I wish I'd bought it. I may go back for it. That part where he tells Saveen he can make more money as a good guy than a bad guy was so wonderful.

Every time I see African gods portrayed in DC, they're always these shirtless also-rans with no real oomph or flavor to them. It was that way in War of the Gods, it was that was in ... hell, I forgot the other one. Anyhoo, I don't have much belief I'll be impressed by anything I see here either. I like Simonson a lot

* * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * *

I agree with your assessment of this month's FF issue; maybe #68 was such a strong outing for both Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo that we would be let down by anything less than sensational. I still think Wieringo is sometimes too 'light' for the really dramatic scenes. For some reason, double page splash of Franklin goes to Hell did not appear all that dire to me. It looks like he just got stuck on a ride at Universal Studios. Also, there is no improvement on the armor's appearance. For cripes' sake, I hope it is not permanent. I just don't understand the 'droopy drawers' look going on there. I'll take the 'skirt' look any time over that.

Another thing that is bothering me is Doom's motives, or what we know of them so far, for doing all this. He sacrificed the love of his life just for another shot at the revenge angle? That just seems too weak to me. It also makes it look like Doom has given up on science because he concedes that Reed will always better him in that arena. I am not advocating that Doom be any less than Marvel's penultimate villain but I think by taking away that spark of humanity that has peaked thought from time to time, Waid makes him less intriguing a character. I have trouble accepting that Doom would be so brutal in his treatment of the Valeria character...for gosh sakes, this is faithful old Boris's granddaughter! Even if he no longer found her attractive as a lover (and am I the only one who is suspicious of why she appears that elderly?), she was practically the only 'family' he has left. I would give him credit for at least that much loyalty.

Back in my dot-com days I had a saying: 'The problem with doing something amazing is that people start to expect you to do it on command.' Blerg!

Hahaha, that's actually a really good point, I hadn't even thought about that. I mean, knowing Franklin is powerful enough to create a whole freakin' duplicate planet, every time he gets in trouble I just roll my eyes. Short of walking up behind him and putting a bullet through his moppet-like head, the kid is too dangerous to toy with.

I am still an advocate of bringing the Doom 2099 look to the present day. I've never seen Doom look better than that.

... when you say it like that, it does seem pretty lame.

I mean, if Doom weren't obsessed with Reed Richards, how much more impressive do you think he could be? Clearly his inventions have significance in the global economy or Latveria would be shut off like they do Cuba. He's mentioned in some books that he's been a billionaire. The US still affords him every courtesy

Genre conventions prevent him from doing this. And if he tried it, it would fail. You simply can't expect that sort of realism from a book like Fantastic Four.

This is really weird....did the rest of the thread get wiped out?

No. When it went company specific, it ended up in company specific newsgroups. I doubt any DC people wanna read about FF, and so on, et cetera.

My very small attempt at playing nice with others. >8^)

-Hannibal Tabu

Shame.

-Hannibal Tabu