twiztor Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 just started reading New Teen Titans again. i'm up to 1980-81 on my Batman project, so it felt like a good time to give this a go. MY GOD. so much collectively happens in the first 10 issues or so it is amazing. All the characters (even the new ones) are amazingly fleshed out. You can tell their emotions, motivations, personalities, everything. There's been more character development in these 10 issues than the last 10 years (1970-1980) of Batman comics, and this has been the best decade for that in the Bat universe. amazing. edited to add: this also makes me miss Donna Troy more than ever. Flash/Wally not so much, but he hasn't had too much of a presence yet in NTT. i'm sure that will change before too long. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 1980s Wally West would be a Tea Partier in 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 he's been pretty whiny so far. first that he can't decide if he wants to be a Titan or go to college, then that Raven used her powers on him and made him love her. that's pretty much all he's had going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 he's been pretty whiny so far. first that he can't decide if he wants to be a Titan or go to college, then that Raven used her powers on him and made him love her. that's pretty much all he's had going on.Wait until the (other) Starfire issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 Wally doesn't really step into his own until after the Crisis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 The issue where Wally writes home to his Mom is one of my favorites and of course Commie hatin' Wally in the Starfire issue is just so not what we come to love about him later in his own book. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 Yeah, the letter home is the only real great Wally West thing in NTT. It's Messner-Loebs, Waid, and even Johns that made him my favorite character. Wally West digression time, feel free to skip ahead. Wally West is not inherently the best comic book character. Peter Parker is. Wally became the best character in comics because he was a character in a unique place during a unique time. A long established character that was still a blank slate, given a bunch of great writers, at pretty much the only time ever that any of the major corporate IP comic characters were allowed real, actual character development. Teenage Wally West was a bit of jerk. A hero, but a jerk. Early 20's Wally (especially in the JLI books, which gives us some more great writing in his development) was a womanizer, and immature as hell. By taking that bit of clay, Mark Waid was able to show him slowly and naturally growing up, becoming an actual adult (in a genre that, no matter how much I love it, tends to be aggressively juvenile) in a way that was more real than any other character either of the big 2 has ever (and judging by how much tighter the grip seems to be getting all the time, especially at DC, likely will ever) done. When Mark Waid took the book, he clearly didn't want to write Wally West as the character he had been, but instead of turning on a dime, he put him through a series of events that forced the character to mature. It's brilliant writing, and unprecedented in major super hero comics. And I will never, ever, ever forgive DC for taking it away from me. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 I actually have a real problem with Johns's Detroit union-boy version of Wally, not because I oppose the viewpoint but because it was a case of moving a minority (as regards other superheroes) viewpoint into the majority. WML and Waid kept Wally in a position where he may not have been the right-winger Wolfman portrayed him as, but he could still have been a moderate-conservative. Making him the officialish superhero of the UAW bothered me in the same way that changing the Question from an Objectivist to Zen did, even though I love the O'Neill Question series. You might as well have USAgent singing the praises of Obama. (Incidentally, I love Walker when someone who is clearly on the other side of the aisle writes him as sympathetic but "wrong", whereas it makes my skin crawl when, say, Byrne has him yelling at the Vision to put on pants.) Does that make any sense at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 I fully get what you are saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 That said, I think that with Sven gone I am probably the #2 Wally fan on this site. It was Waid's Flash along with Kesel's DD and Superboy and the Peyer/McCraw LSH) that made me a "grown up" fan of comics in '96. He was easily the most human and "real" character of that era (no matter how desperately Marz wanted Kyle to be) and as many people as I've seen rate "Race Against Time" as the end of Waid's golden age, it was absolutely the one thing I had to get signed when I met him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 I'm a Wally fan, though I wave the banner like you and Fowler do. I think Waid's best overall writing was done on The Flash and ever since then he's been trying to top that. I always liked how after Marz introduced Kyle that DC editorial tried to shoehorn Wally and Kyle into the same roles but the writers just didn't want ot take that same route. They were deliberately making sure Wally and Kyle would in no way be Hal and Barry i nterms of friendship and respect between them. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 And yet, over time they ended up in a very similar position anyway, it just didn't develop the way editorial wanted it to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eivion Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 Has any of Waid's Flash run been collected? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 All of the arcs were collected at one time or another except possibly Chain Lightning and Dark Flash. A lot of the shorter stories never were. All of them have been OOP for ages though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clayton Jones Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 For those of you who read a good amount of Secret Six... did you find the quality of the writing & art dropped off considerably after the first two books? I just finished the Reptile Brain and man... it feels like a different series than what I first fell in love with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eivion Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 Not really in either case. I especially never got the feeling of it being a different series by its end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 Flash was a great comic for something like ten years straight. I like Wally more than most people but I'm more of a Dick Grayson fan. I kind of miss DC sometimes. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Z Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 For those of you who read a good amount of Secret Six... did you find the quality of the writing & art dropped off considerably after the first two books? I just finished the Reptile Brain and man... it feels like a different series than what I first fell in love with. Yeah, I think I would agree with that. The first two books are definitely the best, although I'd still say the series was pretty good until the end. Nicola Scott is definitely a better artist than J. Calafiore as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 I loved the entire run, but I felt it was actually getting better as it went. The last couple of arcs are some of my favorite books of the end of DC era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 Final issue is such a perfect punch in the balls. It makes perfect sense for every character, but still hurts in a way that could only be accomplished with the pending reboot. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 Also, if you guys weren't aware, I have some inside information about King Shark: He's a SHARK! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 Kind of hilarious that that went from a throwaway line to a ctchphrase. I always wanted to see Kon run into him one more time after both of them had become totally different people than they were under Kesel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 I choose to believe King Shark secretly runs a vast worldwide criminal empire that we won't find out about until 2035 because it's that long of a build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LooseCannon Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 So, being out of the country, I apparently missed some huge news from NYCC about a big return to DC Comics....Tiny Titans is coming back. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Natural Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 I'm in the minority and don't think Snyder's Batman stuff has been all that great. I liked his early stuff on Detective but once the DCNu launched I really didn't care for it his stories. The Court of Owls was just so overhyped and Death of The Family was completely underwhelming. James i enjoyed Court of Owls, loved the Lincoln March reveal and the world that it opens up, and i agree that DotF was disappointing, but i still feel like he writes a better than average Batman. Even Gates of Gotham was an intriguing story. I can't really put my finger on it, but it all just seems right. The voice, the stories, they all just seem to fit. Plus, he's got a lot of respect for Nightwing, so that helps tremendously. As for currently, I'm holding off on Zero Year until it's complete and i can read it in one sitting, but i am already looking forward to sitting down with it. and this weekly year-long book sounds amazing. can't wait. The Black Mirror is easily Scott Snyder's best Batman work. I really liked Gates of Gotham, most of Court of the Owls/Night of the Owls, also liked Death of the Family but think it's overrated. Only read the first two issues from Zero Year so far and they are 2/2 in quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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