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  • Murphy
  • Member Since May 8th, 2009

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Recent Comments:

Venom #1: Turn On the Dark Spider-Man [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Mar 10th 7:12 PM: Aaron -

For me, it might be that I wasn't young enough to be around for the origin story of Venom, so when I became aware of the character he was just this big feral monster who hated Spider-Man, and whose appeal was mainly the impressive visuals his power set allowed. I like the power-corrupting take but haven't seen it done with Venom to my satisfaction yet. I'm hoping this might be the series to do it, but was a little sad not to see much back-and-forth talk between Flash and the symbiote in issue 1.

'Steampunk Palin' Comic More Insane Than You Imagined (ComicsAlliance)

Jan 20th 7:55 PM: Jim, while I appreciate the enthusiasm you and your creative team brings to the project, I can assure you I did not take the book as intended to be serious.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #40: The End of Season 8 Is Here [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Jan 19th 5:30 PM: Yes, sorry. More specifically I should have said something like "knocking her back to regular super powers instead of super . . . super powers". What I meant was she's still a Slayer, but she can't fly or have comic book super strength anymore.

And yes, I'd have to go back to single digit issues to find the last time I enjoyed an installment of the book so much. But it was enough to give me hope to keep going.

Brightest Day 17: Longest Day [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Jan 12th 4:30 PM: There was a little bit cut out from an earlier draft of the point I was making here, but my argument to that is this - the current format of Brightest Day is better from a business standpoint. It's inferior from a creative standpoint, because it's not allowing new talent to flourish the way Marvel's multi-part small events are, and it's creating extreme fatigue with many readers bored of the event after a few issue and only continuing to read because they're told it will all matter in the end. As a reader I'd prefer the stronger creative work. But I can respect that DC is choosing the stronger business strategy.

'Superman: Earth One': Different Clothes, Same Hero [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Oct 28th 1:19 AM: Superman: Peace on Earth was a large size standalone story written by Paul Dini with art by Alex Ross about a decade ago. There's no wiki page for it but if you do a search on wikipedia for "The World's Greatest Superheroes", the collection that it's been reprinted in, that should give you some more information on it.

'Kick-Ass 2' #1: A Straight to Paper Movie [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Oct 22nd 12:28 AM: Part of the reason I'm so negative here is that I don't think this comic needs to exist for there to be a second movie. The first film was a big enough hit, Millar's into making more movies, they might as well just jump straight to the next film.

You'd said you didn't read the book before seeing the movie, and I actually think I would've enjoyed the movie more if I hadn't read the book. And seeing this first issue just sort of go through the motions, I'd rather just go straight to the movie sequel not knowing any of what happens here, and maybe it'll at least be a fun summer popcorn movie that stands up well enough on its own.

'Kick-Ass 2' #1: A Straight to Paper Movie [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Oct 22nd 12:24 AM: I actually agree with you there. This should either be a comic that's introspective or a comic where there's no introspection at all and it's just flash and action. Millar clearly enjoys the second option better, and does a better job writing it, but every single time Dave gets all thoughtful about how tough his life is it pushes the comic in the wrong direction for the sake of making feel "real". He should just have fun with the more outlandish parts of it and leave the deep stuff to other books where it's a better fit.

'Superman' #701: Starting Off on the Wrong Foot (ComicsAlliance)

Jul 19th 5:13 PM: My point isn't that it's only that one scene. My point is that we see three black characters in this book who interact with Superman. The first is a drug dealer. The second is the first voice to express a preference for a bad idea. And the third is the one positive character, the cop Superman interacts with.

The demographic figures for Philadelphia that turn up as a result of a quick search show it to be a city with a population that's about 43% black and 41% white. So it begs the question: why are almost entirely all the people we see Superman helping when he visits Philadelphia white? It's not a comfortable question to ask but is staring me right in the face, so I might as well voice it.

Zombies and Draculas and Robots (Oh My): Marvel Zombies 5 #4 / The Death of Dracula One-Shot (ComicsAlliance)

Jul 6th 12:56 PM: Stephen-

In this case I made the choice to refer to Marvel and not Gischler specifically because for an event this big, Gischler's not making the calls by himself. Editorial staff are approving and suggesting what to do and how to do it and I don't have the necessary knowledge of the internal decisions leading to the big X-Men/vampires event to be able to say who is responsible in what proportions, so I don't want to lay it all at Gischler's feet. He certainly didn't walk in one day and pitch "it's like X-Men meets True Blood" and then get total freedom to plot out the story however he saw fit. I admit it's not an ideal description to just go with "Marvel", but without knowing exactly who made what decisions it's what I chose to go with.

You Will Believe a Man Can Fly and Still Be Boring: Superman #700 [Review] (ComicsAlliance)

Jun 25th 5:45 PM: All right, the way I see it, the appeal of Superman is that here's a guy who has all the power in the world and he decides to use it to help others than to use it for selfish reasons. He asks for no glory, he simply sees that he has these tremendous abilities and uses them for the benefit of others because it's the right thing to do. He's also a wish fulfillment to the max character, because who wouldn't want to imagine themselves being invincible, or super-strong, or best of all to be able to fly.

That being said, he's not as exciting as other characters to me. Partially that's because Clark is such a good person that there's never really any conflict over the idea that he could do anything other than use his powers for good. He's the sort of guy you'd absolutely want to have as a best friend, but not necessarily the sort of guy you'd want to hear stories about.

Basically what I've described above is "With great power comes great responsibility," which some other company did better with its own character. And come to think of it, if you look at Invincible it's essentially a combination of Superman's powers with Spider-Man's personality. So I'll ask - is Invincible a good book because of the powers, or because of the character?

But please, tell me what you find so intriguing about the character, because you asked me why I didn't find him so interesting but didn't give me much of an explanation for what appeals to him for you, other than his long history in comics.

And as a side note I'm finding it kind of hilarious that you're calling me out on not reading the book and only caring about the pictures, because honestly one thing I always try to correct about myself is I'm far too forgiving of books with good writing and bad art and mostly uninterested in books with average writing and beautiful art.