I liked all three of the anime you mentioned. I liked the original Deadpool stuff but now I think he’s just a conduit for humor and ‘Daffy Duck’ style harassment/violence. Don’t get me wrong, I love Daffy Duck, but the behavior was in the proper setting. A superhero that just appears in any random comic and setting just becomes annoying to me. No character arc or story behind him, just appearances for the sake of sells. It’s bad enough with companies do that to other characters (Batman and the TMNT/Power Rangers; Wolverine and Indiana Jones in the Lost City of Gold; or Superman and Archie), but remove the Deadpool stories of late and there’s nothing changed in the comic universe. Again, just my opinion.
You're right about Deadpool being a bit of a joke and a sales driver in the Marvel universe. He's a really overused character. I get that they wanted something like DC's "Deathstroke: The Terminator" bad guy character but they made Deadpool too much of a joke. I thought the Deadpool character and the Terror character (the intelligent zombie character that would kill people and harvest their organs for his own) should have been combined to make a more well rounded character. As it stands, both characters come across as one dimensional. This surprises me a little because a company like Marvel Comics should know how to avoid that problem.
i finished my first manga yesterday. took me about a week, and i ended up having to buy the last volume because it wasnt uploaded anywhere. I was disappointed by the ending. well... more than disappointed. I was pissed. So many loose ends that were not wrapped up. One character gets shot.... never mentioned again (did they die? like what happened?) One of the MAIN character gets conscripted into a terrorist organization, which gets taken down..... never mentioned again. Did this character get away? He was literally a main character for all the beginning volumes. no one even mentions him. OR his story line which was really compelling to begin with. He's basically a lab rat who escaped and was on the run. Another of the main characters was in the house of the person in charge of the terrorist organization. A sniper shot through the window out them and the volume ends. The next volume is a time skip, and everyone is happy go lucky. the only mention of the incident was the targeted person saying "yeah, they missed." NO! HOW??? ugh... Only started reading it because the anime was cancelled after 12 episodes.... and the manga really WAS good... until the last like 4 or 5 volumes..... It had just the right amount of romance (the whole human in love with a vampire thing without being overly dramatic about it) and socio-politics... "should vampires have rights and be treated as human" or "should we round them all up and kill them/experiment on them" which really is the main focus. The anime made it all about their romance and took out A LOT of the political stuff and other character's back stories and arcs.
This past month I dusted off several comic books from my modest collection to revisit, or in some cases, read for the first time. They were all superhero stories, FYI. For comics, that’s my go-to genre. Some of those books aren’t worth mentioning — like any genre, "tough dudes wearing capes" has no shortage of mediocre stories. But a couple of the comics were quite good, if not excellent. Batman: The Long Halloween Saga of the Swamp Thing I’m also currently reading Batman: The Black Mirror. And while it’s not as outstanding as the previously mentioned books, it definitely has its merits. Anyway, I’ve fallen back in love with superhero comics, and I’m definitely planning to pick up some more in the near future.
From this and your response back on page 1 it seems you like a lot of writers I haven't read. I think they're mostly 90's writers, or maybe some started in the 80's? That's Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run. I've heard it was relly good and almost bought it once, but I never did. I think he's the one who decided the Swamp Thing was never actually the scientist who got the toxic goop dumped on him and then jumped into the swamp, but was instead a plant that I think was activated by the toxic goop and believed it was the scientist? Did he also come up with the idea that the Swamp Thing derives his strength from all the swamps of the world, and do I remember right that he can sort of sink down into a swamp in one part of the world and then rise up from a different one on another conitent if he wants to? Or did I make that part up?
I know a fun story about Swamp Thing and how the idea came about. First you need to understand that all the writers, artists and editors were vagabonds—just about every one of them would move from one company to another from time to time. From Marvel to DC to Valiant to Charleton, and on and on. And they all knew each other. Many of them were good friends. Well, Len Wein and Roy Thomas were very good friends, and they used to hang out and drink, maybe they were even roomies at the time, I don't remember. But one night they were sharing a few brews and talking, and they worked up this great idea for a swamp monster. They kept developing it, and it got really good, so they decided they were each going to present the idea to their editor the next day and see if they could get one of them published. Wein worked at DC at the time, and Thomas a Marvel. Well, both of their editors really liked the idea and both companies started publishing swamp monster stories. One was Swamp Thing (DC) and one was Man Thing (Marvel). They were almost identical, except the Man Thing had three face tentacles:
Yes, it was Alan Moore who very cleverly changed Swamp Thing into a sentient plant with Alec Holland’s memories. That rework put the hero in a better position to struggle with his identity/humanity, thereby giving Swampy greater depth and originality. As to Swamp Thing’s powers — I’m not sure. I’ve only just finished the first volume (there’s six), which is comprised of about seven or so issues. I own the next two volumes, though, and I’m sure I’ll learn more after reading them. I wasn’t aware of the connection between Len Wein and Roy Thomas. I’ve heard of Man-Thing, but I was never interested in the character — I generally favor DC over Marvel. I’d like to add Len Wein’s original Swamp Thing run to my collection. One more book to my ever-growing wish list.
I got that one a while back, with art by Bernie Wrightson. It's definitely good, but really feels dated now, in terms of writing and art both. And Wrightson's art shines a lot more in black and white than in color (here it's in color). His better work (though often it's weirdly caricatured) can be seen to far better advantage in the large-format black-and-white horror comics by Warren Publishing, like Eerie and Creepy and Vampirella. But I'm not saying don't get the collection, it's definitely worth having. I guess I just want to temper expectations a bit. And, as often happens in DC publications, Batman shows up now and then.
Actually, I just looked up a bunch of Wrightson's art from Swamp Thing online (can't find the book just now), and it looks better than I remembered it: This isn't even all that good of an example really. I must've been in a bad mood when it came in or something.
My brother always has some comics/graphic novels for me to read whenever I visit. I read through The Human Target volumes 1&2, and a Batman one I can't remember the name of. I'm not really a "hero" kind of reader, but I appreciate my brother finds joy in them. The one he had me read that I immediately bought for myself is We Only Find Them When They're Dead by Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo. I was instantly intrigued because I'm rather picky about the sci-fi I consume, and this was a concept I'd not seen before. It's scavengers who harvest the meat from dead gods to feed people, and one crew is determined to find a living god so they can possibly figure out where they come from and why they're always dead when they come across them. There are three volumes, or books? Maybe? I don't know the terms. But I'm going to read the first one again soon so I can read the rest.
I have always been partial to a graphic novel called "Incognegro", a searing indictment of racial lynchings in the American South in the 1930s. The plot of the graphic novels follows Zane Pinchback, a reporter for a black newspaper in the early 1930s New York City. He goes to the American South to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. He goes undercover as a white person due to his fairer skin to save his brother and uncover the truth.
