MetaSuperHeroics

August 6, 2010 11:29 AM

Superhero reconstruction vs. deconstruction - Kurt Busiek's Astro City (soon to be a major motion picture) versus Warren Ellis's Planetary ("arguably one of the greatest comic books of all time").
posted by Artw (71 comments total)

I never got into Astro City. But yes Planetary is the greatest comic of all time.
posted by thecjm at 11:31 AM on August 6, 2010

Of course, if you were reading it in floppies it was one of the latest comics of all time.
posted by Artw at 11:35 AM on August 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

Fucking false.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:37 AM on August 6, 2010

I love how Planetary charts Cassaday's career a lot more than it does Ellis'. 27 issues over 12 years, with the artist going from relatively unknown to highly demanded.

Seriously, though, I'd write a love letter in blood to Planetary if I had to. I never knew that self-referentiality could occur on such a scale. The issue deconstructing the entire 80s British invasion and Vertigo? Genius. The first half of the run, before the giant hiatus, was Ellis before Ellis became ugh, Ellis and decided to spend more time putzing around as a wannabe novelist and spewing out new series after new series without any indication he would ever get around to finishing them. They said it best on Somethingawful, a few years ago, albeit in reference to Desolation Jones:

But the damn thing is "Part 1 of 6" and the comic comes out every other month. So this one single self-contained story that will equal about 138 pages total will take over a year to read. What the hell? Meanwhile, over the next year Warren Ellis will update his LiveJournal about 365 times, fawning over a different camwhore each time.

Also, if you're into Planetary, this is the best annotations site ever, even if it has frames
posted by griphus at 11:40 AM on August 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

Planetary was bad, but Astro City wasn't much more timely. The Dark Age (which is what the review is about), 16 issues, took five years to be published. I'd despaired of ever seeing volume 4.
posted by bonehead at 11:43 AM on August 6, 2010

...whoa. Uh. I'm sorry. I'm not entirely sure where that came from, but it was from somewhere dark and unpleasant. Ahem.
posted by griphus at 11:44 AM on August 6, 2010

Metafilter: I'm not entirely sure where that came from, but it was from somewhere dark and unpleasant.
posted by Rangeboy at 11:51 AM on August 6, 2010

I'd be in general agreement regarding the unfortunateness of Ellis the guy who writes genius comics transforming into Ellis the internet self promotion guy who barely writes comics.
posted by Artw at 11:55 AM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

The issue deconstructing the entire 80s British invasion and Vertigo? Genius.

Loved it. But I think it's a narrow second to the Stormwatch issue (#44, in the Ellis run) where we get Jenny Sparks' history over the 20th century, done in the prevailing comic styles of the era. The 1980s segment done in Watchman-style is such an elegant little twist of the knife. Ellis has his themes and he does revisit them all the time.

That said, my favorite thing about Planetary is how it managed to make the Fantastic Four into something both sinister and incredibly cool.
posted by sobell at 11:55 AM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

The 1980s segment done in Watchman-style is such an elegant little twist of the knife.

Have you read Moore's run on Supreme? It's the same thing but with the more psychedelic aspects of Moore's style (rather than the sociological) and with a Superman-analogue.

And, yeah, the Four were amazing and a complete fuck-you to objectivist leanings. Somewhere on my old harddrive I have a Photoshopped image of them in human form walking toward their spaceship subtitled Who Is John Galt?
posted by griphus at 12:00 PM on August 6, 2010

I have been wanting to see these characters show up again. He did a dang fine job of making me want more.
posted by monkeymadness at 12:05 PM on August 6, 2010

Planetary was bad, but Astro City wasn't much more timely. The Dark Age (which is what the review is about), 16 issues, took five years to be published.

Busiek's writing was delayed by... mercury poisoning? Gamma rays? The Blight? Anyway, he had some terrible health condition; it's not just slackassedness.
posted by jtron at 12:05 PM on August 6, 2010

The 1980s segment done in Watchman-style is such an elegant little twist of the knife

The art and design was Watchmen style, but the content was the crazy ugly violence for its own sake that characterizes the trend in comics Watchmen (and the Dark Knight) inspired, but not Watchmen itself. I was left a little confused -- either Ellis couldn't tell the difference between Watchmen and its imitators (which I doubt), or he made a bad call with the art that undermined its satire by suggesting the wrong target.
posted by Zed at 12:15 PM on August 6, 2010

Astro City and Planetary are both awesome, but that last "Dark Age" installment of Astro City that just wrapped up was terrible. It's like it was doing all these great things over the past few years, and then it stopped being interesting. Most of the trade paperpacks of Astro City are top notch, though.
posted by deanc at 12:18 PM on August 6, 2010

I had no idea Astro City was going to be a major motion picture. That will be one of those "don't get your hopes set too high" movies because it'll have to be so great to live up to the books.
posted by immlass at 12:19 PM on August 6, 2010

Busiek's writing was delayed by... mercury poisoning? Gamma rays? The Blight? Anyway, he had some terrible health condition; it's not just slackassedness.

Well, Ellis's dad did die while he was writing Planetary, putting a bit of a dent in his output. It's been argued that that's what Planetary was about, though personally I'm not convinced.
posted by Artw at 12:25 PM on August 6, 2010

Buying Planetary #27 felt to me like reaching the summit of some nerd mountain.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:25 PM on August 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

When I started reading Planetary, the second volume wasn't even out in paperback, and I was in high school, crushing very hard on one of my best friends and glorying in having just finally gotten broadband internet at home. The conclusion was one of those moments that should have never happened. It was like finding out Deep Throat's identity: Something that should never actually happen, because it removes one of the inarguable facts that I Know about the universe. Planetary will never end. Every issue takes a little longer, and the last one was supposed to stay out there, Coming Soon until the end of time.

Which is to say, in the mythology of the world that exists only inside my mind, the end of Planetary - the fact that I actually have four complete collections on my shelf, that I reread them all from start to very end - is a reminder that nothing should not be discounted. Sometimes you find out great secrets, and sometimes the impossible shows up for dinner.

It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read a whole lot of Astro City.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:31 PM on August 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

Buying Planetary #27 felt to me like reaching the summit of some nerd mountain.

...and attempting to figure out what the hell happened in it like losing footing and falling off, tumbling for a few hundred feet, grabbing a handhold, climbing back up, getting swiped at a yeti, falling off again, nearly reaching the summit again, and then realizing you're actually on acid on top of one of those hazards at a minigolf course.
posted by griphus at 12:31 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Steeljack story arc in Astro City is the best superhero comic ever put to print. Heartbrealing, uplifting, great character devdelopment, just amazing in every way.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:32 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Planetary was like so much of Ellis' stuff; an interesting beginning, a fantastic middle, and a somewhat disappointing end, where Ellis presumably realized he had to end the monster he started, and just couldn't live up to the expectations he set. The first appearance of one of The Four was fantastic: like an evil version of the Star Baby from 2001. It felt like the enemy was set up as something inhuman, or transhuman on a cosmic level. But then the villains turned out to just be evil and rather lame versions of the Fantastic Four, and they seemed to get weaker and lamer as the series came toward an end. It wasn't that the victory over the Four was too easy; it was that I couldn't believe in The Four as being the threat they were supposed to be.

But hope springs eternal. I'm enjoying FreakAngels quite a bit, and some of the recent revelations and character development has been fantastic. Maybe this time the series won't just peter out.
posted by happyroach at 12:48 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

...and then realizing you're actually on acid on top of one of those hazards at a minigolf course

You know what? I haven't read it yet.

I know, I know.

My intent when I bought it was to sit down with the whole thing and read it all the way through from the beginning. And I just haven't done that. But I've been intending to do so for so long now that's it's like having a comic book savings account: just knowing it's there, waiting to be read in its entirety -- that's more satisfying, I think, than actually reading it.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:59 PM on August 6, 2010

Planetary started awesome... ended a disappointment
Astro City and yes some of the early stuff is very very good and some of the later stuff is stiff good especially the one-offs. But there's been a bit of slow decline.
There's a lot of those epic series that end badly - Preacher was another and I fully expect The Boys to go the same way.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:06 PM on August 6, 2010

Have you read Moore's run on Supreme? It's the same thing but with the more psychedelic aspects of Moore's style (rather than the sociological) and with a Superman-analogue.

Meh, I didn't think it was that great. I don't know, I just don't think Supreme is that great of a deconstruction of a Superman-analogue that people make it out to be.

The Superman-analogue in Astro City, Samaritan, is done very well though.

I really should get around to reading Planetary though.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:08 PM on August 6, 2010

I shamefully don't have time to read the links right now, but just wanted to say that Astro City is one of the best comic book series out there. It's run for many years, and some parts of it are a bit longer than they need to be (Dark Age, cough), but taken as a whole, Astro City is consistently wonderful storytelling, and there were a few years in the 90s when it and a small handful of other titles were all that kept me reading comics after everything else had turned to crap. Viva la Astro!
posted by Kevin Street at 1:50 PM on August 6, 2010

Nthing Ellis having a bit of a history with projects that start out with a bang, and then take forever to finish with an ending that turns out to be disappointing. Transmetropolitan was much the same, with a resolution of the storyline that depended on at least two characters being in a certain place at the exact right time pretty much by chance, and a finale that was basically Ellis saying fuck you to Hunter S. Thompson for committing suicide, something that he had already said on his Bad Signals mailing list (and never minding that Transmet was basically HST 2099). Ministry of Space was a three-issue mini that had the last issue delayed for quite some time, and as people were waiting for the last issue, some of the regulars on Ellis' old Delphi forum were saying, gosh, I'm really looking forward to the last issue of this, I just hope that the big secret isn't that the British space program was funded by captured Nazi gold, because that would be kind of lame. And guess what? I think that, with some of these projects, he's caught between not wanting to let people down with a blah ending (Neal Stephenson has also been criticized in the past for lame endings, but Stephenson seems to genuinely not give a shit about that) and having other things that he'd rather work on.

So, yeah, Planetary. I'd kind of forgotten about the series when I saw the second-to-last issue, and then I thought that that was the last issue. It's not bad for a deconstruction of various comics and pulp tropes, although I think that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does it better.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:20 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

and a finale that was basically Ellis saying fuck you to Hunter S. Thompson for committing suicide, something that he had already said on his Bad Signals mailing list (and never minding that Transmet was basically HST 2099).

Really? The last story was a bit of a muddle, but I rather liked the epilogue.

As for HST 2099... Well, there's that, but there's also Bug Jack Barron, and I'd say that BJB is actually a bigger part of Transmets DNA than HST.
posted by Artw at 2:28 PM on August 6, 2010

There's a lot of those epic series that end badly - Preacher was another and I fully expect The Boys to go the same way.

I don't think that Preacher ended badly; it hasn't aged well for me, but that's something different. The Salvation arc was pretty superfluous and mostly just repeated tropes and thinly veiled versions of characters from the rest of the series, so that could have been cut.

The Boys, on the other hand... well, it is what it is, and it really hasn't pretended to be other than what it is. You have at least one gore, gross-out and/or scene of sexual degradation per issue; Garth Ennis is remarkably consistent with that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:29 PM on August 6, 2010

Oddly enough, I haven't read BJB, and probably should.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:33 PM on August 6, 2010

My problem with Ellis, whom I do find otherwise entertaining, is that he's the Boy Who Wants To Show You The Nasty Thing and Get The Girls To Squeal. It's a one-trick tick, gross-out porn, which gets tiresome after a while.

He's a good writer otherwise, but his impluse to squick every other panel is tiresome. Preacher and especially Transmetropolitan suffered for it. I think Planetary is one of his his strongest works because it has the least of the stupid skull-fucking noises. If he'd grow out of the 10-year old poop jokes, or at least learn to use them sparingly and thus effectively, he'd be a much more interesting writer.
posted by bonehead at 2:43 PM on August 6, 2010

As for HST 2099... Well, there's that, but there's also Bug Jack Barron, and I'd say that BJB is actually a bigger part of Transmets DNA than HST.

I'd propose that you guys are both right -- Transmetropolitan is Bug Jack Barron as written by HST. There really isn't any question that Ellis was biting HST's style, but the hero-journalist-in-a-near-future-science-fiction-world-gone-mad owes much more to Spinrad. I can't speak to the series' resolution, as I stopped reading the book about halfway through, but I will admit it seems a little more prescient now than I thought it did in the late '90s, when a future where people gave a shit about a writer (!) seemed kinda ridiculous; now it seems to me that Spider was kind of a super-blogger, or (more depressingly) sort of a punk rock, left-of-center Glenn Beck. (More depressingly still, I would say that the hold Ellis seems to exert over some of his online acolytes is downright Rush Limbaugh-ian, but I am distressed by sycophantic behavior in all its forms, and Ellis won't lead anyone into anything more horrible than writing bad Warren Ellis pastiches and getting a Suicide Girls membership, so I guess it could be a whole lot worse.)

W/r/t the actual subject at hand, I have to admit I...um...haven't read Planetary. I have, however, read most of Astro City, and find Kurt Busiek way more my speed than Ellis in general. Frankly, too, superhero comics are in much greater need of reconstruction than deconstruction. It's been deconstruction for so long deconstruction now almost looks like construction.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:55 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

He's a good writer otherwise, but his impluse to squick every other panel is tiresome. Preacher and especially Transmetropolitan suffered for it.

Preacher did suffer for it, but that's hardly Warren Ellis's fault.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:56 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, that's me embarassed. I frequently get those two mixed up. Ennis does have the same problem however.
posted by bonehead at 3:00 PM on August 6, 2010

Heh. If the two of them are discussed it's always only a while before that happens.
posted by Artw at 3:21 PM on August 6, 2010

I haven't tried any of these since $50-$60 for a graphic novel is not the sort of money I am willing to pay any more after being let down by Preacher a decade ago (should have been my first clue, really) and Y: The Last Man more recently. But I'm not going to torrent them either so...I suppose that's good? Is it better I not view an artist's work because of price? They're certainly not in any Australian library I've ever seen.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:27 PM on August 6, 2010

On the Ennis derail...

I will risk nerdwrath by saying that I think Ennis is overrated, at least based on what I've read (which is, admittedly, limited). Now, I loved most of Preacher, but he fucked it up by letting his juvenile sense of gross-out humor take over and by turning Starr from a credible, dangerous villain to a dork who was constantly the butt of everyone's joke. I read the first (and maybe the 2nd?) volume of his run on The Punisher and found it lacking in anything compelling besides the ol' ultraviolence; same for his Marvel MAX Fury miniseries, which I thought was terrible. I did enjoy Just a Pilgrim, even though it wasn't anything great. Based on what I've read, I have little desire to read anything else of his because I don't really care for 1) over-the-top violence for its own sake without any compelling narrative/thematic import; 2) gross-out humor for its own sake ... etc; or 3) superhero hate for its own sake. I've heard that a lot of his Battlefields pieces are fairly standard but well-told war stories, which I'm sure are good but don't light my fire.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:51 PM on August 6, 2010

turgid dahlia: Let down by Y: The Last Man? I'd love to hear your reasons for saying that; while some of the story arcs weren't as strong as the others, I loved that series, and the ending was so wonderfully tragic that I still tear up just thinking about it. It broke my heart, yes, but it never disappointed me.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:53 PM on August 6, 2010

I am sorry I just really really wish Mr. Ellis would either friggin' finish newuniversal or hand it over to that bright young Mr. Gillen already I know this makes me some kind of weird heretical Marvel zombie but I really like Jenny Swensen
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 6:22 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

What IS up with that one? I remember it getting to the point where a plot was happening, then a bunch of spin offs (I remember getting a Simon Spurrier one) and IIRC a lot of talk about it being a big new thing, and then nothing.
posted by Artw at 6:45 PM on August 6, 2010

That one was a longstanding casualty of Ellis having a nasty HD crash, and I've never heard anything about it since. The Spurrier one-shot didn't do much for me, but the Gillen one (newuniversal: 1959) was genius.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 7:26 PM on August 6, 2010

Really must get around to reading Phonogram some time...
posted by Artw at 7:42 PM on August 6, 2010

I just don't think Supreme is that great of a deconstruction of a Superman-analogue that people make it out to be.

Supreme is great because it's not just a deconstruction of Superman. It's a weird combination of deconstruction and fawning fan-boy homage. It's perfect to mention in this thread because it's stands right in the middle between Planetary and Astro City.
posted by straight at 8:02 PM on August 6, 2010

Preacher isn't the best beginning-to-end series Ennis has done, and it's not the beacon of his brightest and best moments. He didn't have to work at Preacher, it was always sort of there, and in its worst moments, was on cruise control.

No. The most challenging and engaging series penned by Ennis is Hitman. Hitman is everything Boondock Saints wishes it could be, but isn't. Tommy and Nat are the best "best friends" since Frog and Toad. Hitman makes Tarantino and Scorsese wish they could write comics. It's obvious from the first panel of the first issue that everything is fucked, it's all going to end in fire and tears, and fuck it, the damn book is about the bonds of friendship, the depraved glory of eccentrics, pride in where you're from, no matter how awful it is, and saying terrible things about people you don't like. (Bueno! Excellente!)

It's one long, glorious wake where the departed gets to hoist a glass right along with you.

After Hitman ended, Ennis has just been fucking around, tho his early work on the Punisher can hold its own against anything prior or since. The Russian! (President of Spider-Man fan club, Smolensk Chapter!) Mr. Bumppo! (A new definition of "living weapon") Harry Heck! Well, he was so cool, he was cool in the really terrible movie, too.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:15 PM on August 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

So, yeah, when I say Busiek's "Steeljack" saga is the best damn superhero comic put to print, bear in mind I have read a metric fuck-ton of comics. Be sure to listen to April March's "Stay Away From Robert Mitchum" while reading it.

You should also read his "Untold Tales of Spider-Man" run.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:27 PM on August 6, 2010

Hitman is awesome, and come to think of it the most consistant thing from beginning to end thing that he's done, excepting the short stuff.

I'd disagree about his Punisher though - the stuff where he does his comedy Ennis routine is okay, but it really gets good when he ditchs that and settles down to being grim. Unremittingly grim. It's like a poetry of grim. It's a horror story, and Frank is the monster.
posted by Artw at 8:38 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Supreme is great because it's not just a deconstruction of Superman.

*shrug* Some of the multi-verse stuff was interesting, but I got bored with the throwback stuff. Which in turn if you read his Tom Strong stuff, all the fanboy throwback stuff is done much much better and I throughly enjoyed it in there.
posted by P.o.B. at 8:55 PM on August 6, 2010

Artw: I've only read the comedy Punisher. And Artw/Slap*Happy: I've heard that Hitman is the thing to read, but, alas, it's not collected (is it?) or easy to get. I guess I could "find" some digital scans of it, but I hate reading comics on a computer -- that's how I read Miracleman, and despite it being an amazing series, it is really hard to slog through because of the medium.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:57 PM on August 6, 2010

Kieron Gillen related thread
posted by Artw at 9:18 PM on August 6, 2010

Artw -

The first run on Punisher is the beginning and end of the series, where Frank has to identify with and defend his community (the slum apartment building), and it redefined the character in the best way possible. The problem then occurs when Ennis wants to write about something else, but forces the book he's on to fit... after that first arc with Harry Heck and The Russian, he just flails about. He gets it back for a brief, shining moment when he feeds plastique stew to The Hulk, but yeah, it's bleak and nihilistic. Ennis is always at his best when the nihilism is just assumed to be there so he can move past it.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:37 PM on August 6, 2010

Double post!

Saxon Kane - Find a big comic store within two hours drive. Tell them you'll pay them $25 for the run of Hitman, bagged and boarded. Save twenty bucks off the two theoretical TPBs.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:43 PM on August 6, 2010

As far as Garth Ennis goes, there's a huge chunk of his work I've just never read because I got sick of his Tarantino-meets-the-Farrelly-Brothers schtick about halfway through Preacher*, but I find that I do like his more compressed stuff. The Rifle Brigade books are some pretty damn lowbrow humor, but they crack me up to no end, and (although it seems to have a lot of detractors) I am an unabashed fan of Crossed, which...man, if there's anything funny in that book, that is the darkest dark humor I have ever encountered.** It's a surprisingly grown-up book for something that seems like it should just be a gorefest; it IS a gorefest, but there's depth and...oh, hell...friggin' pathos, somehow, all without getting sentimental that bullshit way that Ennis seems to do whenever he writes about...um...soldiers and drinking, pretty much. It seems to mostly be noted for its gruesomeness, but it's actually much more restrained than it really could be, given the subject matter. I dunno. Anyway, I like it, but I like horror comics a lot, and I don't usually see one that good.

*I have a theory that almost no comics run can get past forty issues without some serious suck creeping in, based largely on the epic Vertigo runs of the '90s. Preacher, The Invisibles, The Sandman, Shade (and, if this counts, Starman...holy shit, SO Starman) -- all of these books seemed to lose their way at about the halfway point, and while none of them became out-and-out terrible (or not permanently), I would argue that all of them were only inconsistently good in their back halves. This isn't a strictly contemporary phenomenon, either: Tomb of Dracula is probably my favorite comic book ever until about halfway through its 70-issue run, when suddenly you've got fucking terrible "comic relief" characters like Harold H. Harold in there and Dracula being depowered and involved in weird cosmic conspiracies that don't make any real sense and just all this crap that's basically only happening because at this point Wolfman's written something like 1500 pages of this fucking thing and clearly just is desperate to keep himself interested in it. Point being, 70 issues is too many. Forty, though...I mean, Ennis and Delano each wrote about that many issues of their respective initial Hellblazer runs, and those stand up well; that's about how long Morrison did Doom Patrol and JLA, and how long Alan Moore wrote Swamp Thing. I think that's just enough time to tell all the stories you really want to tell without having to seriously break your brain open for new ones. Just a thought, though.

**Okay: There are things in Crossed that, were Ennis doing them in Preacher, let's say, would probably just be gross-out humor, but somehow they are just not funny in this comic. A lot of this may come down to the artist, but Crossed's protagonists make for excellent straight men/women, I guess. The art is quite good, and the more I think about it may deserve much credit for fleshing out characters who -- due to the relatively limited scope of the project -- don't get the chance to reveal all that much of themselves, but in whom you do get invested quickly.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:14 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

The Marvel Knights slapstick Punisher turned me off of Ennis, and comics, for a while (Though the bits with Spider-Man, Daredevil and Wolverine made me chuckle). Ennis' OMG THE HORRIFICALLY BLEAK AND PSYCHOPATHICALLY MORAL Punisher MAX brought me back to both.

Anyhoo, back to topic: I've mellowed on Ellis, but still never warmed to Planetary. In many ways it verges on greatness, but I can't get past the interpretation that it's ultimately a huge fuck-you-I-don't-need-you to superhero comics from a guy who is still relying on superhero comics to pay the bills. I don't begrudge paying the bills, but the empty evangelism annoys me and taints the work.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:31 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I would second the importance of distinguishing between Marvel Knights Punisher, which is solid comedy Ennis (albiet with some great moments) and MAX Punisher, which isn't. Marvels branding of the trades hasn;t confused matters somewhat.
posted by Artw at 12:44 AM on August 7, 2010

IMHO if you've not read the war stories stuff you've not really read Ennis. It's almost like the he's a different writer (ie he turns the sick humour stuff right down) and the best of it gets close to the best of Moore and Morrison - like Condors and the recent Battlefields stuff
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:30 AM on August 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I never got into Planetary because I read about how the FF were the villains on wikipedia, and I was like, what? Nah, I just don't see it. And then, of course, Marvel had to go and make Reed a dick in canon. But I never saw it, because the FF were always concerned with things well outside Earth. Or was that it? Was it that the FF should have been using their powers to handle terrestrial matters rather than spending most of their time in another galaxy/dimension/time period?

I've always heard good things about Astro City, but it's never occurred to me to look for a TPB. Maybe I will. Still not sure if I should bother with Planetary, though.
posted by Eideteker at 9:26 AM on August 7, 2010

May I trouble the comics scholars in this thread for a recommendation? I've loved all the Astro City that I've read. Part of why I like the series is that it feels like a less, well, adolescent take on the superhero format: female characters are interesting and fully developed; there's lots of action but not a sickening amount of violence; and thoughtful takes on gender, race, and poverty are all mixed in there along with the ridiculous alien wars and supervillains.

What should I read next that's similar? I was thinking about starting Planetary based on this review, but the comments here make me think that it's maybe not as subtle as I'd like.
posted by cirripede at 9:32 AM on August 7, 2010

Oh, I'd absolutly read Planetary, as for all the snark it's pretty fantastic. But I'd also give Tom Strong and Top Ten a try.
posted by Artw at 10:13 AM on August 7, 2010

I love Top Ten, but I think Tom Strong was not Moore's best work. It was enjoyable for a while, but I found that the conceit got a bit tedious after a while. I guess if you are really into old pulp and Doc Samson-type stuff it would keep its interest for you, but it eventually felt to me like it was treading water.

As far as Planetary goes, I actually think the first few issues were not as great as what came in the middle (still haven't seen the newest/last book). Once the conspiracy elements started coming together, I thought it was a lot better than the first episodes which seemed pretty scattershot. I love the 2nd and 3rd TPBs, while the 1st seems to me to be Ellis finding his footing.

Definitely will take this thread as a recommendation to read Astro City, though.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:42 AM on August 7, 2010

Thirding Top Ten. Brilliantly realized, thoughtful, and very, very fun.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:05 AM on August 7, 2010

Top Ten, absolutely. What makes Astro City so wonderful is that Busiek draws from classic movie tropes as much as he does comics. He goes so far as to "cast" celebrities in roles - Fred MacMurray, Robert Mitchum, etc, to where you can hear the character's lines being spoken in their voice.

Top Ten draws from crime fiction and police procedural dramas in the same way, and something strange and wonderful happens to both genres in the process.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:08 AM on August 7, 2010

With both Top Ten and Tom Strong you probably want to avoid the non-Moore spinoffy stuff - it's not horrible but it doesn't live up to the originals either.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on August 7, 2010

Top Ten

If you read that, then the Moore-written prequel comic The 49ers is beautiful, and Smax is gloriously silly fun.

I like The Boys. I'm really really really really really not sure why.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:50 AM on August 7, 2010

I never got into Planetary because I read about how the FF were the villains on wikipedia, and I was like, what? Nah, I just don't see it.

Seriously? If you have a problem with the comics trope, "Our villain this month is an evil version of a good character!" (via magic doppelganger, alternate universes, whatever), that disqualifies about 43% of all comic book stories ever written.
posted by straight at 12:30 PM on August 7, 2010

My understanding was not that they were goatee versions of the FF, but supposed to represent something unwholesome about the whole FF concept.
posted by Eideteker at 1:24 PM on August 7, 2010

I remember seeing an interview, possibly linked from somewhere around MeFi, where Moore said he actually made Tom Strong for kids. Moore's uuhhh sensual sensibilities are a bit much(?), so if you get past that than it makes a lot of sense in that light.

Top Ten is put together really well and is a very enjoyable read.

female characters are interesting and fully developed; there's lots of action but not a sickening amount of violence; and thoughtful takes on gender, race, and poverty are all mixed in there along with the ridiculous alien wars and supervillains.

cirripede, you might also want to give Invincible a read. It's 'Superman intentionally came to Earth and had a kid'. So the story follows the young man as he gets his powers and learns to use them, and of course bigger and bigger things happen while he tries to balance out his normal life. It's a Peter Parker/Superman story. It has everything you mentioned and a bit of gore, but not for the sake of it.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:33 PM on August 7, 2010

"Our villain this month is an evil version of a good character!"

DAMMIT THE WHOLE THING IS A METAPHOR FOR THE STRANGLEHOLD SUPERHEROES HAVE HAD ON COMIC BOOKS AND HOW THAT HAS RETARDED THE MEDIUM'S DEVELOPMENT AND HOMOGENIZED THE ADVENTURE GENRE BASICALLY THE FOUR AREN'T AN EVIL FANTASTIC FOUR THEY ARE THE FANTASTIC FOUR BUT THE POLEMICAL ASPECT SORT OF PETERS OUT AROUND THE TIME THE AUTHOR STARTED WRITING ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:23 PM on August 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, I will say one Ennis story I really enjoyed, for all its goofiness and juvenile humor, was The Pro.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:37 PM on August 7, 2010

The Pro

Amanda Conner should draw more comics. Her run on Power Girl recently was wonderful (sadly, now that it's passed to a different creative team it's developed the usual sub-soap opera "drama" plot nonsense that plagues superhero comics) and while everyone does sort of look the same, at least they have expressions. And when she does cheesecake it makes me laugh.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 3:01 PM on August 7, 2010

Alvy, I know that's what he's attempting, but it just doesn't work because Planetary is at bottom just another superhero comic book. Just like the knock-off Avengers in The Authority has no real bite because The Authority is just another superhero team and you can turn the trick around and bite them right back as in that Superman story where he fights the Authority knock-offs.

So no, it's not The Fantastic Four. It's just the FF with goatees from Ellis's slightly-twistier-than-usual mirror universe.
posted by straight at 9:42 PM on August 7, 2010

Saxon, I was let down by Y primarily by the weaker "filler" storylines, and because the finale wasn't as incredible as the first few issues suggested it might be. It's my own fault for expecting something truly amazing, without recognising that there are only so many ways that such a thing might be resolved. My problem with Preacher, however, I can succinctly summarize: that guy was a fucking douchebag.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:29 AM on August 8, 2010

I was thinking about this recently and it reminded me of something I enjoyed in the past. Hero Squared is great campy fun. It has a compare and contrast narrative of fantasy intruding into real life and it makes for a good read.
posted by P.o.B. at 11:27 AM on August 15, 2010