Dragon Ball / heroic adventure fiction / comics

[Buster's Uncle]

to the last two posts, Vish.

Pleasance   -Alezondo is close - the art has the look of the likenesses not wanting to come out, anyway.

[Vishniac]

I made and put the avatar on von, 'cause I caught the name.  He is familiar with the series.

Bet it was Waid and Ross' homage to that dude.  Slovenian is too much of a coincidence - von Bach talked German, but I'm told bad German, and was actually Yugoslavian...

I had to check and...yeah, it was obvious!
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Von_Bach_(Earth-22)

"Von Bach was a Yugoslavian would-be dictator who was fought and defeated by Superman and Wonder Woman."

"Von Bach is modeled after Milan Fras, the singer of the Slovenian experimental music group Laibach."

[Buster's Uncle]

Kingdom Come told a very vivid, visceral story about right and wrong and a world, and the people in it, gone sour -the good guys too- and an apocalyptic struggle ending in redemption.  And one of the most impressive things about it is the depth. You can read and read and look and look at that series many times for a long time without finding everything.

[Buster's Uncle]

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Did anyone not spot that the "End is Nigh" guy was Rorschach the very first time he appeared?   Am I the only one who spotted that Ozymandias was the guy behind everything early on?

[Buster's Uncle]

The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear.

-So far, this seems very good, notwithstanding a title that sounds like a Marvel Comics crossover event about Thanos taking up classical music.

I hope Vishniac sees that joke.  I remember when Jim Starlin used to write comics that weren't stupid.

A good read.  Now I gotta track down the rest of the story in Serpent Mage.

...

I read the collection of the first six issues of Astro City by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson last night.  It was good, but I dunno, I'm not sure it deserves as high a reputation as it has in comics circles.

[Vishniac]

Quoting oneself is something like...what would be the English metaphor...blowing his own horn? 



That's the speciality of Keith Cowing, that self-important insignificantus who loves to post articles quoting him...

I see the objective here though.
And I can say we are at T-9 : Thanos minus 9!  Nine days until Thanos on big screen.
We'll see whether it was worth the wait and the hype. Black Panther and the Russo Brothers give me some hope about it.
On Friday, I have my last oppoortunity to let a Marvel fan friend read the Thanos Quest, Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity story with the Black order so he can prepare. To be fair, I shall add the Marvel 2-in-1 where Thanos faced the Avengers, Spiderman and the Thing, bested them all, before Adam Warlock resurrects to stone him to Death! A masterpiece. 
Better for him to pay the drinks Friday evening to thank me!

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm sure the second coming of Starlin and Thanos to Marvel made a LOT of money - but all that newer crap -Infinity anything; Thanos Quest wasn't terrible- you name was indeed crap.  I was expecting Classic Adam Warlock-level quality, when Secret Wars was better-written, if not nearly as prettily-drawn...

[Vishniac]

What you're calling 'newer' is apparently what came during the 90s.
Better for you not to touch the Thanos appearances of these last 10 years: most are really poor.
It depends on the writer. There are still interesting things to do with him.

When I was 5, the first Marvel episode my mother bought me was the one with Captain Marvel battling the Thing and the last image...Thanos appears with the Super-Skrull and a mystery figure (who'll reveal as Death later); I still have it.
It took me 22 years to buy the following episodes and finally know the Cosmic Cube saga.

Warlock classic I had to wait until I could find them.
As only a few series were published in French, we knew of some heroes only when they interacted in other heroes'series: Warlock, Dr Strange, Hulk, Miss Marvel...
It's only 3 years ago that I bought the Essential Adam Warlock. Well, it was a strange read for sure: like to have some Jesus-Christ wannabe wandering among hippies in another Earth Woodstock era.     No wonder he became the Magus later!

[Buster's Uncle]

I've got nothing against Thanos, blatant Darkseid ripoff that he is - just, Infinity Gauntlet was nothing but a paycheck comic, a formulaic by-the-numbers big annual crossover event designed to sell well -nothing like Starlin trying to do good work- and not making even a good example of that, if you take away Perez and Lim drawing it real pretty.  Ptooeey!  I spit upon it from a height!

---

I actually come here with a funny inspiration; I'm watching YouTube videos re-capping the in-progress Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock -which for a wonder, appears to be very good [and the Comedian is somehow alive]- and the d00d narrating keeps pronouncing Rorschach's real name as "Walter Korvaks".

Well.  Imagine that moment when Rorschach pulls off the mask near the end of issue 12 and shouts "DO IT!" --- and then the godlike cosmic power of Korvac -no doubt a cousin or something- enters him, and Dr. Manhattan can't do it...

[Buster's Uncle]

Incidentally?  I found that there's YouTube accounts that scroll through entire comics, and while trying to track down issue 2 of Doomsday Clock -new characters Mime and Marionette are full of Win and Charisma, for all that fanboy Johns couldn't resist giving them either superpowers or magic tech weapons, unclear which- and have read a recent issue of Thor, in which they appear to be putting Jane Foster on a bus/killing her off, and was pretty good - and a couple issues of Runaways, a team I'd been hearing about online for a decade but never met --- and it's full of Win and Charisma, even though I've seen little superpowers and not a single fight/adventure yet.  I'm sold anyway.

[Buster's Uncle]

-And now I've discovered Read Comics Online -which can't be legit- and have been reading comic books most of the day.

It was bad writing to let half of Age of Ultron meander off into being about other stuff - but the other stuff was actually more interesting.  I was ready to give it a thumbs-down before the time travel hijinks started, and teaming Wolverine with the Invisible Woman is a lot like paring him with a little girl, in practice...

[E_T]

make sure your anti-virus stuff is up to date

[Green1]

My only foray into DBZ was that when I lived in New Orleans I was invited to play in a group that played the Dragon Ball Z pencil and paper RPG.

I do not recall much about it other than it required rolling hundreds of 6 sided dice for various things and you could have hundreds of actions. To save steps, you would multiply dice. For instance, 1000d6 could be 10d6 times 100 so you are only rolling 10 dice.

The guy that ran it was a DBZ fanatic. His game room was a room in a shotgun with each wall covered with DBZ action figures still in the box. Must have been hundreds of dollars worth of plastic crap.

I did not enjoy the game that much. I had trouble with the mechanics and the system seemed to be a bit more complex than I thought necessary coming from d20 systems like Dungeons and Dragons. I also think the copious amounts of reefer had something to do with my ability to learn the system as you would be Cheech and Chong level of stoned just walking in the room.Much less imbibing with them since the reefer was supplied by the host to keep people coming to his game.

What got me about the DBZ stuff was just the ridiculous power levels and insane numbers thrown out. It did not seem to have any sort of bounded accuracy or real struggle or consequences.It was that the main character gets beat up, finds some "hidden" power, and becomes more god like. Kind of like the old WCW/WWF pro wresling plotlines where Hulk Hogan is getting destroyed to the point of needing a stretcher then starts twitching a bit then begins wailing on his opponent.

Way too derivative.

Though, I can see the "mystical" appeal. The ramifications of such power levels and what it means. But somehow I missed that due to the dumb dialogue and character development typical to these kinds of animation.

One Piece does this tons better.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ColdWizard]

In regards to the March conversation, Thor: Ragnarok is out on Netflix (US) for anyone who might be interested.