RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books comics everyone likes ... but you

what highly-regarded comic books or comic book characters do you simply not like, despite everyone else's raving about them?

Didn't think the Dark Knight Returns was all that great. Don't know why, I just didn't get into it.

That Superman annual with the vampires.

A lot of Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis stuff.

Might think of more later...

i actually didn't like the watchmen all that much. good read, but..

i'm assuming its cuz i read it late, after years and years of hearing its hype and admiration. with all that buildup, it just didn't match, or approach, what my preconceived notions were.

not to mention the years and years of reading comics that were ripping it off.

I felt the same way about Watchmen, but recently reread it and enjoyed it a lot more.

Some Elseworlds stories like Thrillkiller and JSA: The Liberty File just bored me.

Hourman didn't interest me, either, but the later issues piqued my interest in the title.

And JLA/Avengers just does not excite me (although I haven't read issue four yet).

i gotta agree with rob on watchmen. i thought it was a decent read, but nothing worth years of raving over and fanboyism.

to be fair, i, too, didn't read it until recently.

i tend to enjoy things from the younger years of any media (more quality, less flash) but golden age comics are an exception. can't stand 'em. so many people drool over that stuff, but for me, every page is a chore. the vast majority of both the stories and art seem amateurish.

at least the art has gotten better.

also, wolverine. i've seen way too much of him. a good song that got WAY too much radio play.

I don't really follow trends or the "What's Hot" sheet in WIZARD. So I really don't know if what I like is something that most everybody else hates.

Mark Waid seems to get pretty solid reviews for his FANTASTIC FOUR, yet it never interested me. I much prefer the ULTIMATE version and the MK 4 versions of the team.

I guess I may be one of the few (if the DCMBs are any indication) who's not demanding John Byrne be shot for retconning the Doom Patrol. I'm no great fan of Byrne's recent work, but even I am willing to give the series a shot. The JLA story in which the DP's debut is being presented is mostly crap, but that doesn't mean I'm condeming a DP book that hasn't even been published yet.

Jim

Dark Knight Returns...it was OK , but I never really liked it.

I hate Garth Ennis Books.

I didn't like Millar's Authority.

I hated Transmetropolitan.

I thought 100 Bullets was good for the first 4 issues , but I lost all interest somewhere in the second trade.

I've only liked a few Mark Waid books-Flash, captain America and metamorpho come to mind. Other than that...bleh.

I don't like the Big 7 JLA very much. I'd rather see a less stable line up that isn't uber powerful. I get bored easily by it.

I don't care much for JSA,Xmen or Avengers comics. To me they are full of pointless fight scenes and they lack in story content. Everyone else likes those so maybe I'm full of crap.

I read Astro City was to "bright" comics what Watchmen was to "dark" comics so I bought an issue. The story was boring, the art was lame. I tried a couple more issues later on: one of them was a little bit better (art still sucked though) and the other one was even worse. I can't figure out what people see in this comic.

They're pretty good looks at what it's like for normal people to live in a city where superheroes are everywhere. Of course, the superpeople are clearly analogues of various Marvel/DC heroes, but that's ok.

I dunno, I thought the art was ok. Nothing brilliant or anything.

It's (as Dave described once) pretty shmaltzy at times, which could easily be a turnoff. It's not like, say a Mike Allred comic, which is retro but really cool. Astro City is just overly sentimental.

I found the first Astro City trade to be near-perfect: the follow-ups, not so much.


And I just read Watchmen a few years ago... and absolutely loved it. In my mind, it lived perfectly up to the hype. I just can't get enough of it.

Was it that long ago Woodstock?

Bendis bores me to tears...

Was what that long ago?

Nah that was like the second time. I had read it about a year before we did that.

Aaaahhhhh.

Brain Michael Bedis on Daredevil. I hate his dialogue, I don't like what he's done with Daredevil (interesting concepts, weak execution.) I don't care much for Maleev's art either.

I also don't like Marvel's "Ultimate" line. To be honest, I haven't liked the direction that a lot of Marvel titles have gone. They're not fun anymore, and the escapist fantasy they were so good at has disappeared. The only ones I enjoy these days are "Iron Man" (which i'd like a lot more if it was more of a superhero title, but they're telling good stories), and two of the Spidey titles - "Marvel Knights" and "Spectacular" (and I hate the deforemed art on Spectacular.)

I actually didn't like Watchmen a whole lot the first time I read it, either.....but a few months later I went back and read it again, and I started to notice things I hadn't before. There's so much information in it that I didn't have the patience to identify in my first reading that it almost felt like I was reading a whole new book.

I think it's something that you really have to sit on(not literally) and take in bit by bit. That's when I really first appreciate what an incredible work of literature it was.

Wolverine and Dark Knight Returns

Those two I don't like one bit.

Wolverine used to be a really cool character, but then he got built up to something completely rediculous. And people keep shouting and roaring about he's the greatest and yadda yadda yadda....

Although I like Batman alot, DKR did absolutely nothing for me, I didn't even find it vaguely interesting.
In other words, I thought it was boring as hell

Every Batman story ever written by Frank Miller. I despise his treatment of the Batman mythos with a vengeance, which is pretty sad, since I like his creator-owned work.

The 1993-1999 Superman comics. I know the Continuity Police assert that this is the only proper way to write and depict Superman, but it's too cookie-cutter, too one-note, too shallow, too gimmicky, and too blatantly stupid for my tastes. That the comics haven't improved much since the end of this era speaks volumes about how stagnant DC's become.

Anything by Bendis. He's all yakking and hype and no substance. He bores me to death.

Post-Marston Wonder Woman. If she's not watered-down and made goofy/girly-girly to the max, she's a character-less cipher whose surroundings and supporting cast change every single time a new creator comes along. What was wrong with what Marston gave her? Oh, yeah, forgot. Anything before 1986 is the Great Satan. My bad.

X-Men. I like the movies. I like the concept. But the comics are too gimmicky and overstuffed for me. I just can't into that kind of overly busy level of convolution.

The various Punisher books. He works fine as a supporting character and in mini-series. But on an regular basis he gets real old, real fast. Building a whole line of books around him was one of Marvel's dumbest ideas.

Image's superhero stuff. Aside from Alan Moore's Supreme, evything that came out of Image at the peak of the McFarlane/Lee/Liefeld period was generic boring crap. I get far more enjoyment out of the humor comics like Liberty Meadows, Player Vs. Player, and Desperate Times.

Anything by Mike Kaluta and Gary Gianni. Their art styles are just too messy and busy for my liking. (Kaluta didn't use to be like this, but as time goes on...yikes.) I'm only buying the second volume of the collected Conan stories that Gianni's illustrating because I like Robert E. Howard's writing; I'm just going to have to overlook Gianni's art on that one.

Swamp Thing. I just don't think he's all that great a character.

There's more, but I won't bore you with it right now.

The Ultimates. Horrible dialogue, pointless childish plots, and 13 issues of nothing much happening. Add the chronic lateness due to an artist who used to be able to pull off a monthly schedule, and used to be a better artist for it. Hitch, while really good, is not amazing. I've seen far better artists pull off far better work and keep a monthly schedule. Any other industry, he'd have been fired by now.

Anything by Jim Lee. A generic, flash over substance art style, to me, he's no better than Rob Liefeld, but everyone loves him. I just don't get it.

I'm sure there are others, but they escape me now.

PowerPack

Greg Rucka. The freaks at the Batman Boreds used to post messages about him as if he were the end all, but I just didn't see what the big deal was. I suppose it didn't help that I think that his editor sucked (the "legendary" Denny O Neil, another overhyped fan favorite) so of course, the direction of the books that Rucka wrote sucked as well. Maybe it wasn't completely his fault.

Anyway, Denny O Neil and Rucka both suck. The end.

Anything by Bendis.

DKR was good but it didnt blow me away, that Bendis' Daredevil

Y The Last Man and Fables.

I don't hate these titles. I just find them boring and uninspired. Occassionally I will buy an issue, usually at the beginning of a new storyline, but I've never been able to summon up more than a lukewarm response to either comic .

Anything drawn by Frank Quitely. *shudder*

H-E-R-O. I have the first six issues that my retailer sold me for less than they'd cost in trade form, and I thought they sucked. Brian Bendis's Ultimate X-men was garbage, but I blame that on Marvel since he was obviously told to stretch it for a trade. Did not like Top 10. In fact, I'm not a big fan of a lot of Moore's ABC line, but I did like L.o.E.G.

I think that is an essential story telling flaw (to a contemporary audience)- that you need to work out the story by reading critiques. Inaccessible.

I think Crisis kinda sucks as a stand alone story, outside of the Psycho Pirate and Flash stuff, and some other select moments. But it's not a stand alone story, so that's why I didn't bring it up in this thread earlier...I'm not sure if everybody really likes the story itself, it's just so important that it's referenced more than any other book.

I didn't like H-E-R-O much, either. A good idea(I always thought the Dial H premise was really cool), but the painfully overdramatized storylines were too much. "Oh my god! I saw Superman! Now I have to kill myself!"

ABC is pure gold, though. Tomorrow Stories was a little bit subpar for Moore but I love the other books.