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Pwolf
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Re: Comic Books

Post by Pwolf » Mon Nov 08, 2010 7:46 pm

Rising Stars by JMS.

One of these days I'll finish Midnight Nation >.>

Also Too Cool to be Forgotten was really good.

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dwchang
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Re: Comic Books

Post by dwchang » Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:15 pm

Pwolf wrote:One of these days I'll finish Midnight Nation >.>
I told you to read that when? 2007? And now it's 2010. :down:

I'm not speaking to you anymore! :evil: :evil: :evil:
-Daniel
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Re: Comic Books

Post by Brad » Sat Nov 13, 2010 8:14 pm

Okay. Update time.

In the past week I have read:

Batman: Year One
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: The Killing Joke
JLA JSA: Virtue and Vice
World of Warcraft Vol. 1-2 (Yes, I do play WoW and am interested in the lore)

All 3 Batman books were really awesome. Dark Knight Returns is soooo dense. Took longer to read than probably any other (comic) book I've read thus far. But yeah, I was really happy with them. The JLA JSA book was entertaining, but unfortunately I was fairly lost for a lot of it, since it has a huge number of characters that I really had zero familiarity with. I got it because Challengers is hosting "book club" style discussion night for it next week so they were selling it for 20% off, and it looked interesting. The WoW novels are... eh.. they're not bad overall. It's a mixed bag of good and bad. Like, at some points it's like "Alright, this is awesome, and it sheds a good deal of light on the in-game story" along with a lot of moments that are total let-downs, like "Okay, this really big conflict/fight is about to happen, it could be epic, but, let's end it within a single panel and move on......"

Here's what I have now and intend to read over the next week:

Batman: The Long Halloween
Green Lantern: Rebirth
Green Lantern: No Fear
Astonishing X-Men: Vol. 1
World of Warcraft: Vol. 3-4

I'm probably gonna read the Green Lantern books first to give myself a break from Batman. I'm definitely interested in the X-Men series but I kind of want more volumes of it before I start just in case I really get into it. I was going to buy some more tonight but they didn't have volume 2. As for WoW, while I'm not wholeheartedly into it, I figure I may as well finish it off.

I also have several books that belong to André that I intend to delve into, including:

Watchmen
Wanted
The Boys Vol. 1-7
Irredeemable Vol. 1-3
Incorruptable Vol. 1
Assassin's Creed Issue 1
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Re: Comic Books

Post by Brad » Sat Nov 13, 2010 8:41 pm

Okay so, I got about 20-ish pages into Green Lantern: Rebirth, and I am so damn lost. I do not know who any of these people are. Here's my knowledge of the Green Lantern universe:

This guy Hal Jordan is an air force pilot who finds a crashed ship with a green guy in it who gives him a ring and tells him that he's now the Green Lantern. There's a different Green Lantern for every sector of the universe. The ring can basically make any imaginable form out of pure energy (basically). I don't know anything about any back stories of any other supplementary characters or happenings or whatever.

So yeah, I'm thinking this series might be a bit too far ahead in continuity for me to really enjoy to it's fullest. So if I'm looking to get "caught up" on Green Lantern (at least to the point of being able to read these Geoff Johns books, where do I need to look?)
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Re: Comic Books

Post by godix » Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:39 pm

I dunno what green lantern to start with, but I do know you picked the wrong one. Green Lantern writers like to totally change everything every couple years or so, even more than is normal for comics. Hal Jordon has one of the more fucked up and confusing histories, and you walked in on the end of it.

Edit
Wikipedia's background section on rebirth explains at least some of what it was about. Although even then, they're skipping a lot of the green lantern confusion, like the planet Oa being destroyed then brought back or an entire race of people (except one) dying and being brought back.
Last edited by godix on Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Comic Books

Post by LantisEscudo » Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:42 pm

Annoyingly, most of the prerequisites for Rebirth are the gigantic crossover events, which are pretty continuity-heavy themselves. Hal Jordan's fall really starts in Death of Superman and continues through Emerald Twilight. The next big piece is the gigantic universe reboot of Zero Hour, though I'm not sure how necessary it is for your understanding. Then comes The Final Night and Day of Judgment, though I skipped Day entirely, it's enough to know that Jordan becomes the Spectre.

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Re: Comic Books

Post by Brad » Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:23 pm

Well I just watched the animated film Green Lantern: First Flight (which was, awesome). I'm going to go ahead and assume that as far as continuity is concerned, it doesn't exactly fit nicely anywhere in the canon universe. But it did give me a fairly decent overview of the guardians, the lantern, etc. Unless that was all just useless knowledge when compared to the comic-verse.

I'm starting to wonder if stories like this are purely made for comic book fans alone, and not really for new readers.

EDIT: I just found this article. Can any of you vouch for it's validity?
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Re: Comic Books

Post by dwchang » Sun Nov 14, 2010 4:48 am

Brad wrote: World of Warcraft Vol. 1-2 (Yes, I do play WoW and am interested in the lore)
Nothing to be embarrassed about. I actually love the Warcraft Universe as well and it irked me that they continued the story of War3 in an MMO since I wanted to know what happened, but didn't want to get absorbed into an MMO.
Brad wrote:All 3 Batman books were really awesome. Dark Knight Returns is soooo dense. Took longer to read than probably any other (comic) book I've read thus far. But yeah, I was really happy with them.
I think you will really enjoy The Long Halloween and Dark Victory then. They take place in the same "universe" as Year One.
Brad wrote: The JLA JSA book was entertaining, but unfortunately I was fairly lost for a lot of it, since it has a huge number of characters that I really had zero familiarity with. I got it because Challengers is hosting "book club" style discussion night for it next week so they were selling it for 20% off, and it looked interesting.
Yeah I had a feeling that was going to happen. The JSA isn't really "top tier" to most casual fans (that's the JLA after all...you can think of the JLA as the Avengers in the Marvel U). However, Geoff Johns (same writer for GL) did a great run of JSA. I, like you, didn't really know much of the JSA, but after a two or three year run, I enjoyed it quite a bit and learned to like characters like Stargirl, Power Girl, Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Flash, etc. The book you read is a good one, but it's hard to follow if you don't know these characters.

Brad wrote:I'm probably gonna read the Green Lantern books first to give myself a break from Batman. I'm definitely interested in the X-Men series but I kind of want more volumes of it before I start just in case I really get into it.
Good idea. Hopefully Whedon's X-Men run will interest you enough and it'd suck to not have the subsequent issues.

Anyway I'll reply to your GL question in a separate post...
-Daniel
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Re: Comic Books

Post by dwchang » Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:09 am

Brad wrote:Okay so, I got about 20-ish pages into Green Lantern: Rebirth, and I am so damn lost. I do not know who any of these people are. Here's my knowledge of the Green Lantern universe:

This guy Hal Jordan is an air force pilot who finds a crashed ship with a green guy in it who gives him a ring and tells him that he's now the Green Lantern. There's a different Green Lantern for every sector of the universe. The ring can basically make any imaginable form out of pure energy (basically). I don't know anything about any back stories of any other supplementary characters or happenings or whatever.

So yeah, I'm thinking this series might be a bit too far ahead in continuity for me to really enjoy to it's fullest. So if I'm looking to get "caught up" on Green Lantern (at least to the point of being able to read these Geoff Johns books, where do I need to look?)
I think the link Godix posted is probably the best one. It's a very short summary, but should give you enough info on what happened. With that said though, I'll try to summarize 10+ years of GL history in the next few paragraphs:

As you already know, there's a Green Lantern in each "sector" of space (we're 2814). Hal Jordan was chosen to wield the ring by Abin Sur who crash landed on Earth. He was chosen b/c he has "the ability to overcome great fear." Keep this Fear (and Will Power) stuff in mind since they are a key element in Geoff Johns run. It's all part of this "emotional spectrum" thing that he introduces in Rebirth. Anyway during his origin tale, he's trained by the best Green Lantern, Sinestro. After their training though Hal finds out that Sinestro has basically enslaved his race by using Fear to make them obey. Sinestro had the most "peaceful" sector and now Hal knows why. Hal outs him and Sinestro becomes Hal (and the Green Lantern's) greatest villain. Eventually Sinestro finds a yellow ring and for awhile all we know is that green can't touch yellow (i.e. it's the weakness). This is finally explained during John's run. All you need to know is Sinestro has as yellow-based ring and fights the GLs a lot.

All goes well for awhile (well a long time...Hal Jordan was the GL for like 30+ years worth of comics), but as Lantis noted, after the Death of Superman, he started to go crazy. During the Death/Rebirth of Superman, Cyborg Superman and Mongul (all you need to know is this is Mongul is some evil alien) destroyed Coast City (Hal's hometown) killing 7 million people. When he revived Coast City using his ring, the Guardian forbade him and so he went rogue. After all, he thought he was doing something good after all those lost lives, etc. Oh and since it isn't mentioned by anyone yet, the Ring basically responds to Will Power and can create anything the user can imagine. Obviously Hal is very powerful if he can revive an entire city purely using his Will Power.

The books that detail Hal's spiral into madness are called "Emerald Twilight" and as the Wiki article notes, he kills many Green Lanterns and eventually destroys the power battery and the Guardians. He also finally kills Sinestro, something he never did (after all heroes don't kill). Actually he doesn't destroy the Power Battery...he actually absorbs it and becomes Parallax. During the carnage, one of the Guardians (Ganthet) gets away and gives a human (Kyle Rayner) a new ring and a lantern. Kyle is now Earth's Green Lantern while Hal is Parallax. As Lantis also indicated, next comes a cross over (Zero Hour) where Hal/Parallax tries to reform the Universe into his own image (remember he thinks the Guardian's inaction caused all this injustice), but is stopped by the JLA, etc. He ultimately redeems himself by sacrificing himself to refuel our Sun.

Now I'm not too sure about this part, but later on Hal becomes the Spectre who is literally an Angel of Revenge (from God). He gets his own comic book series where he basically punishes criminals, etc. Again, I don't know too much about the Spectre. Flash forward to ~2004 when Geoff Johns is asked to "reboot" the Green Lantern universe...

Green Lantern: Rebirth is basically DC trying to get the fans to "forgive" them for Emerald Twilight by redeeming and reviving Hal Jordan. The fans were obviously very pissed off when Hal Jordan went rogue and became a villain. They also never fully accepted Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern because of this. Geoff Johns was (and still is) the DC darling so they decided to give him full control of the Green Lantern Universe and try to make it a successful one. Rebirth is the start of his run and Johns introduces a lot of new elements, explanations and lore. Basically he did to the Green Lantern universe what he already did to the Flash and JSA universes (i.e. made it relevant and "top tier" title).

Hopefully this is enough to get into Rebirth and hopefully Rebirth will be enough to get you into Geoff John's entire GL run. It's rather lengthy, but you're in a good position in that the big event Geoff Johns had been building up for 6 years (Blackest Night) finally concluded and as a fan I'm very pleased with what he's done these last 6 years. Let me know if you need any more details. I haven't read Rebirth in awhile, but I think that's enough to understand the past events, motivations, characters, etc.

Edit: I forgot to mention there's also John Stewart and Guy Gardner who were also former Green Lanterns. Basically Kyle saved the Green Lantern Corp/battery at some point prior to Rebirth which is why John and Guy are relevant again. Also I took a look and the reason Kyle is coming out of the Sun is because he's retrieving Hal's body. Remember Hal refueled the Sun and sacrificed it. I'll take a look through the books and make sure I got everything...
Brad wrote:Well I just watched the animated film Green Lantern: First Flight (which was, awesome). I'm going to go ahead and assume that as far as continuity is concerned, it doesn't exactly fit nicely anywhere in the canon universe. But it did give me a fairly decent overview of the guardians, the lantern, etc. Unless that was all just useless knowledge when compared to the comic-verse.

I'm starting to wonder if stories like this are purely made for comic book fans alone, and not really for new readers.
No, the cartoon is a pretty good 'synopsis' of the story and lore. The irony is, Rebirth was actually done for new fans, but after writing all that, I can see how it'd be difficult to start with. I guess Rebirth was written for "new" fans of GL in that, the fans that left 10+ years ago and were pissed. At the same time, I hadn't read a single GL book when it was released, but it got me interested enough to read Emerald Dawn, Emerald Twilight, etc. as well as continue with the run.
Last edited by dwchang on Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:29 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Comic Books

Post by Pwolf » Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:20 am

dwchang wrote:I have a boner for GL
nerd

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