The good old days

Dirk Deppey, in his Journalista! column, recently wrote two great pieces about the rise and fall of "NuMarvel." Jemas certainly made a large number of extremely dumb decisions, but he did pull Marvel out of debt and supported some great, creative ideas during his tenure. I certainly do miss him and his jerk-off antics.

I also heartily recommend Deppey's review of the opening issues of the X-Men Reload "event." Like me, his primary conclusion is that Astonishing X-Men is the only X-title left that's worth a damn. Oh, here's my favorite quote from the article, regarding one of my favorite punching bags, Chris Claremont:

Don't get me wrong: If you're fourteen years old and susceptable to the combination of high adventure and turgid soap opera in which Claremont excels, his X-Men stories are almost guaranteed to be your cup of tea, at least until you discover dating, adult responsibilities and better writing. The fact remains, however, that there are distinct limits to Chris Claremont's abilities as a writer, and a sustained exposure to his work, month after month after month, will eventually rub your nose in them.

Yes, Claremont is the father of modern comic writing. He made one-dimensional characters into two-dimensional characters. But his peak passed quite a few years ago. It's been time to move on for quite some time now. Anyway, read the whole article.

Ah, hell. I'll just go ahead and recommend The Comics Journal website as a whole. They're not half the elitist assholes they used to be.