@TaumpyTearrs:disqus : The great thing about "Untold Tales" is how seamlessly Busiek weaved the continuity into the brand new stories he was writing. Each issue takes place at a certain point in the first dozen or so issues of "Amazing Spider-Man", but there's no need to read those stories to understand anything in…

I'd start by recommending the orignal Silver and Bronze Age stories. Marvel used to collect them in a black and white phone book format called "Essential Spider-Man". More recent stories are more hit and miss. Here are some good ones:
From the '80's: "The Death of Jean DeWitt", "The Black Costume Saga", "Gang War", the…

I'd start by recommending the orignal Silver and Bronze Age stories. Marvel used to collect them in a black and white phone book format called "Essential Spider-Man". More recent stories are more hit and miss. Here are some good ones:
From the '80's: "The Death of Jean DeWitt", "The Black Costume Saga", "Gang War", the…

Ennis definitely gets Superman better than most comic book writers (just look at Straczynski's "Grounded" to see how hard it is for some writers to comprehend such a simple, iconic character). The best part is that the issue of "Hitman" in question was a result of an editorial mandate that required Superman to appear…

Ennis definitely gets Superman better than most comic book writers (just look at Straczynski's "Grounded" to see how hard it is for some writers to comprehend such a simple, iconic character). The best part is that the issue of "Hitman" in question was a result of an editorial mandate that required Superman to appear…

The best way to create any tension in a Superman story is to put people in danger. Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, average citizens in Metropolis, Lex Luthor's hired goons, pissed off Kroloteans; Superman wants to save all of them. To raise the stakes, put more than one person or group of people in danger at the same time, in…

The best way to create any tension in a Superman story is to put people in danger. Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, average citizens in Metropolis, Lex Luthor's hired goons, pissed off Kroloteans; Superman wants to save all of them. To raise the stakes, put more than one person or group of people in danger at the same time, in…

Duh, because he's Jewish, obviously.

First, Dan Slott didn't write that issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Fred van Lente did. (I am a very big fan of Mr. van Lente's books, but he definitely sometimes is a bit too edgy. See for example Taskmaster #3, with the Andean village where every man, woman and child is Hitler.)

I dunno, while Alan Scott may have had to worry about his enemies wielding wooden baseball bats, Green Guardian has to worry about aluminum bats.

@bagpipe Johnny: Not at all; once the connection to the Justice Guild's reality was severed, a new connection to a different alternate reality would open. Perhaps a reality inhabited by anthropomorphic ducks, dogs and other animals. And perhaps in that reality too there are heroes, perhaps a "Terror that flaps in the…

There is nothing inherently wrong with nostalgia, so long as you can recognize you are indulging in it. DC's editors and writers (especially writer Geoff Johns and publisher Dan DiDio) seem particularly myopic in this regard. They view themselves as restoring a cherished past that was trampled on, not realizing that…

There was more to the Great Crash of 1996 than hologram foil-embossed No. 1 issues. There was Marvel's decision to take over Heroes World in 1994, when it became the exclusive distributor for Marvel, followed by every other major publishing going exclusive with Diamond. There was Ron Perelman's overleveraging of…

Here's my take: nerds are considered social outcasts because they flaunt their intellectual pursuits and/or their socially unacceptable hobbies; geeks are socially inept individuals who are often mistreated by others. The etymology of the words bears this out: "nerd" was a word coined by Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr.…

On the other hand I am enjoying the Fear Itself tie-ins. The main book is moving a little too slowly for my tastes, but the FF, Avengers Academy, X-Men and especially the Thunderbolts tie-ins are a great read. Jeff Parker managed to weave the story of Juggernaut transforming into one of the Serpent's Worthy into the…

I really enjoyed Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown, but I avoided every other Flashpoint tie-in like the plague, even before DC announced the reboot. Most of the changes to the new timeline felt arbitrary. For every "Thomas Wayne becomes a darker Batman after Bruce dies at the hands of Joe Chill!" there…

Has DC ever told a story about where supervillains get their henchmen? In the Marvel Universe, The Taskmaster (a.k.a. ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Tony Masters) is payed lots of moolah by Hydra, A.I.M., U.L.T.I.M.A.T.U.M., and even the U.S. Government to teach martial arts, marksmanship and basic physical fitness to would-be…

@trekinosis & Chris Adams: You could make a very compelling argument that all of Peter David's published work, with the exception of the Apropos of Nothing series, is some kind of Fan-Fic. (X-Factor is the most egregious example; Layla Miller shows up in one Bendis series and the next thing you know she's a regular…

Why are we treating Q like a linear being, when he clearly does not have a linear existence. Other than the events of "Deja Q", all of Q's appearances are happening at the same time from Q's perspective. The Q from "Encounter…" and the Q from "All Good Things…" is the same Q, behaving in the same manner. Its Picard's…

Are we going to consider Q's appearances on Voyager canon? I'd really prefer to treat it (and everything else on that waste of network programming) the way Starfleet seems to: ignore it. Pretend it never happened. (C'mon, how else can you explain that Janeway gets promoted to Admiral by the time of Star Trek: Nemesis,…