Oy vey. I had completely forgotten about that one. That version is indeed totally not good.

Love Cosmic Odyssey. Jim Starlin, the man who pretty much built Cosmic Marvel, finally getting his mitts on cosmic DC and going for broke. And Mignola's artwork matches the crazy epicness note for note.

I also dig that archetype - I think most people do - yet I hate Gambit.

I think I remember you talking about this haul. Any interesting surprise discoveries as you've been going through it?

I like the slight southern lilt he gives Floyd - it's almost a riverboat gambler version of Deadshot, and it feels right.

Waid's Flash is a truly great run, I'll grant you.

The "Smile" word balloon aims that gun directly at TKJ. Awesome.

Faiza Hussain is awesome - she's in some ways a predecessor to Kamala, in that she's a superhero fangirl of Pakistani descent, and a potential legacy character. It was pretty clear she was being lined up to be the new Captain Britain, if not the new Black Knight (she is the current wielder of Excalibur) but I suppose…

Love Perez' Wondy - definitely one of the best postCrisis reboots (I even prefer it to Byrne's Man of Steel), and probably the most important of her runs after the Golden Age.

"Wonder" is at least three dots in Auspex.

To me, she's one of the most important figures in the history of the medium. In a just world, there would be at least one "Jenette Kahn was awesome" for every five "Dan DiDio sucks".

I'm compelled to reinforce @ponsonbybritt:disqus's three points above - they are all exactly right. I'm gonna be less nice and diplomatic than PB and say that you're letting your nostalgia get in the way of seeing what's actually there.

This is EXACTLY the comic I've been waiting for - guest writer/artists doing "fanfic" (aka one-off stories). Okay, I did imagine it as an issue of Ms. Marvel and that it would be all Kamala's own fanfic, but CLOSE ENOUGH.

Agreed.

One of my metrics for years when having conversations with people about Watchmen was whether they picked up on the noneponymy (I think I just made up a word) of the title. That Snyder completely failed to pick up on this - or even worse, and very likely, that someone probably pointed it out to him and he dismissed it…

To me, the early to mid nineties are when all the greatness of DC moved directly to Vertigo and the like, and the DCU proper went to shit. Not that there weren't good books like Starman here and there, but at that point the Crosshatch Holofoil Age had begun.

Marvel's Thunderbolts is also an intermittently fun spin on the idea.

One of the base strengths of the concept is that, as they're C-list
villains, anyone could die, giving a fresh injection
of real stakes and unassured outcomes to the standard team book
formula. Even later on, when it became increasingly clear that Floyd,
Boomer, and the Wall weren't going anywhere, it's a credit to
Os…

"Too many comics"? You have NO idea.

Ugh, Millennium is terrible. Not only is it not representative of that era, it's one of the first contrived, utterly needless post-Crisis crossover events that ended up doing little more than interfering with individual runs. (I do have a soft spot for Invasion!, tho.)