I figure we swap co-host for a week. It would be fun.

Ok so the Mr. Mind transformation works but spidey getting pissed for someone shooting his aunt after he has been betrayed and manipulated for the last few months doesn't work? And lets just settle this.....there is NO WAY IN HELL that JMS is working the main plot of this book. Its a movie tie in. JMS hasn't really written Amazing since Spidey joined the Avengers. Spidey's book has been tied to tightly into the civil war and lead up stuff to have really allowed JMS to show off his ultimate author powers. I don't know why Quesada just doesn't admit that he's been writing the book and just putting JMS's name on his crap.How was that book supposed to end? It was obviously going to have a circular ending from the beginning.

My top 5

5. Akira - Its long, ecclectic, but so much more philosophic and social commentary like then the movie. Really the movie is just a taste of all the gooey goodness in this trade from across the sea. The only reason that this isn't higher on the list is because the trades are really expensive and really hard to find all together. I know I had to go to six different sources to get all the volumes.

4. Planetary Vol.1 - I'm with Billy on this one

3. Top 10 Vol. 1 - A really great take on the Super Universe idea. The best thing(which is really in vol. 3 i think) is when super mice fight the super cats. Super hilarious.

2. Fables Vol. X (all of em are worth picking up. Homelands I think is my favorite)

1. Midnight Nation - JMS at his best. The article(?) at the end is a great read for people interested in the life of the author. This an entire story start to finished in one Volume.

I'm guessing you're implying a double standard?

I definitely thought Mr. Mind's transformation worked within the confines of the DC Universe and the story that was being told.

I thought that the first issue of Back in Black was unconvincing despite having a more realistic premise. The execution just wasn't there. It committed the worst sin of all. It was boring.

(About JMS Last issue of Amazing Spider-man) How about Spidey was out of character, and no one did a fact check. They got Aunt May's maiden name wrong. Also he stopped wearing the black outfit because it scared the #### out of his wife, and since when could his webbing last SO LONG to keep that sack hiddden??? It was a greater sin then boring, it was off in every manner. This could have been done way better, but this was sloppy, and I love Spidey. If JMS is not writing these stories, he needs to get his name off these books. Of course I'll never forgive him for turning Gwen Stacy into a ##### (despite what people want to say about how it retro-fits).

Mr. Mind was done lax, but it was a decent execution.

FYI Free Comic Book Day Amazing Spider-man was one of the best issues I've read in a long time. Spider-man. I liked it because it was light. I really liked the opening story of Marvel Knights Spider-man, it was darker, but Spider-man was still Spider-man.

If you think this makes me an excitable comic book fan, you should see me talk about Superman.

Swap co-host? We have a different co-host every week! Billy's the only guy who's been on the show consistently. The rest of the slackers can't commit to actually doing more than a week at a time. I just don't know what their deal is.

I meant I want Billy on our show, and I'd be happy to do a Battle of the Century, and that isn't much of a swap (now that I had time to think of it), but I think its fun (whidch along with light, seems to be my new favorite word).

I thought the issue was a copout - but like a LOT of great stories with crazy hype buildup, it's HARD to end them. They backed themselves into a hole where they would be unable to give us a conclusion worthy of our overhyped imaginations...

But this flt like a bunch of puzzles pieces randomly strewn together on the floor rather than clicked firmly into place. "We have to tie all the storylines up, so let's just do it randomly!"

I did like some of it, though - especially the 52 universes bit - and I'm THRILLED that the WSU is now officially in the DCU :)

THE UNIVERSES:
Earth-2: Pre-crisis JSA
Earth-3: Crime Syndicate
Earth-4: Charlton: Blue Beetle/Captain Atom, etc.
Earth-5: Fawcett: Shazam!/Marvel Family, etc.
Earyh-10 AKA Earth-X: Freedom Fighters
Earth-17: Atomic Knights
Earth-22: Kingdom Come
Earth-50: Wildstorm Universe

Also: Top 5 trades:

Honourable Mentions: Bone: Out From Boneville, and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut ('nuff said...)

5) Essential Defenders: B&W, pretty cheap - classic old-school Defenders tales, including the evil Yandroth!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

4) Crisis on Multiple Earths (vols 1-4): The original JLA/JSA x-overs, an annual event from the late 60s onwards. These crossovers were absotively amazing! Among my fav DC collections.

3) Dark Phoenix Saga: One of the best all-time X-Men stoylines, it's Clairmont and Byrne at their peak. And it includes the first appearances of Emma Frost, Shadowcat AND Dazzler. some of the best action X-art ever, and the emotions of the characters is suitably melodramatic without being overly cheezy. One of the first and best 'dark' superhero comic stories.

2) Kabuki: Circle of Blood: David Mack is one of the best artists in the business, and this is a masterpiece of storytelling. Part Elektra, Part Shi and Part Ronin all rolled into one. The cover alone is worth the price, and the use of panels to fram the story is almost cinematic - it reminds me of some of the late-70s/early-80s Heavy Metal storytelling and artwork.

1) Elektra: Assassin: David Mack owes his chops to the paintbrush of Bill Sienkiewicz (you loved his Luke Cage and Elektra cards in the Marvel Knights set and his AWESOME Batman, the Dark Knight in DOR...)

Frank Miller puts the ultimate Elektra story together, one of the pioneer 'mature' comics that launched the entire field of spandex comic books for adults. A very Vertigo/early Punisher feel in a series that was very, very obvously Frank Miller. the entire eight issues are painted in colour by Sienkiewicz.

IMO, the best work Miller ever did, and you'll see where his Sin City style came from. It was right on the heels of Ronin and done around the same time as Dark Night Returns and DD: Born Again, but it surpasses them all, IMO.

Completely forgot about that one ... definately an honorable mention. I loved the Zim stuff, and this stuff is arguably better [the voice work on Zim is a big part of it's charm].

Also, cool that I was able to guess most of them [only one I didn't 'get' was the Atomic Knights one ... that's also the only one I haven't heard of ... care to elaborate?]

Picture what would happen if the States were destroyed by an H-bomb in the 80s and a group of knights in irradiated medieval armour patrolled the wastelands like Wild West outlaws to oppose an evil Baron who ruled with an iron fist.

That was the Atomic Knights. There were like a dozen Pre-Crisis Silver Age stories in Strange Adventures, and they've popped back into DC now and then throughout the last twenty years or so - like in the Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Blüdhaven mini-series :)

I wonder if that sort of story will tie in further with Captain "Monarch" Atom. We knowhe has the power to travel throough the bleed (as per the Ion maxi-series). I'm interested in what they will be coming up with.

I thought that Fitzgerald was the original name and they screwed it up back in the clone saga when they made Ben Reiley?EDIT: nope I'm wrong Check out the Aunt May Wiki entry to see what happened. Looks like they corrected it in the second print runs.

He abondoned the outfit because it scared his wife and had become associated with a dark side of his life and a psycho. Right now I'm sure he's banking on that association. Really though would it have made you feel better if he had gotten it out of a dusty box somewhere? I think the trip to the church bell was much more effective visually.

Pete (and Ben Reily) made about thirty different kinds of webbing in his life time, and we've known that some of them have been used to frame him. The never dissolving type used by Osborn when he suffocated that gangster right before Osborn tried to make him the new goblin. Certainly we've also seen him storing clothes and such for battles that took days to finish with the webbing still up. Back when he was still packing web shooters he always had a few different types with him. Really though would it have made you feel better if he had gotten it out of a dusty box somewhere? I think the trip to the church bell was much more effective visually.


How could you call it boring....he threw a jeep at someone!

Gwen Stacy is a #####....yeah a dirty #####. Of course that "event" was less about Stacy being a ##### and more about Osborn being both evil but also so charismatic.

I'm not saying that JMS isn't writing it, I'm saying he's not plotting it, which is really where his strength has always been. B5 is one of the greatest shows of all time not for individual episodes but for this 5 year long overarching plot.

The worst part about people(not just yourself, this is a gross generalization so I can smack as many people collectivly as I can) that keep calling this issue terrible is that they never comment on the very drammatic fact that when Peter goes to torture the gun smugglers he doesn't have his mask on. Its not spider-man out to get these people, its peter. I think there has always been an ability for peter to psychologically seperate the times that he's "lost it" on a bad guy because he always had the Peter Parker security blanket of his family and friends that he could go to. With the events of civil war Peter is far more vulnerable, but now he's able to turn that into a strength. This isn't Spiderman gone black, its Parker.
I personally didn't want the story to go this way. i was having more fun reading about happy go-lucky New Avengers Spidey. Finally a shot in the lime light and other people that knew who he was and could support him a way that wasn't possible before. It got even better when he revealed his identity cause its seemed to make him more an Avenger, more a real hero when people knew his name. Right now I kind of wish he had stayed on the Intiative side, and right now Stark had given him control of the New York Initiative team. But then that wouldn't tie into Spidey 3 would it....:speechles
Agreed!!
Excitable Comic Book Fan is actually one word. If you love comics then they aught to excite you. If they don't then your just collecting a lot of kindling.:grin:

And here Marvel jumped through hoops to tie-in to Spidey 3 and the movie was something of a letdown. Not at the box office, of course. But creatively it was certainly less satisfying than the first two movies.

That's not as bad as the gamespy(?) fiasco. They tied their entire site design into pimping Spidey 3, then two days after release they issue out their review of the game giving it a 6.5 out of ten. So a not so free site hardcore pimps a game they don't like for like a solid month. I mean that is just like a huge screw you to their readers.

Of course against that is the deep desire I have