So, back on Boxing Day I bought a bunch of single issues from the big 2 with plans on getting back into superhero comics. I picked up series'/characters I thought I might like, would read them and then decide what I liked and actually start a subsription to it. I've just finished reading the last two and these are my thoughts:
Aquaman #15: I had stopped reading comics around the time Geoff Johns was hitting it big and was thought of as the greatest thing since sliced bread, so I'd never got to read any of his stuff to see if he really was any good (though I have since watched Smallville episodes that he wrote, which were all quite good to be fair). I liked his work here, even though I was jumping into a big story I thought it was easy to pick up what was going on and get a sense of who everyone was, the story was quite exciting too. The art is also great, quite detailed but still easy on the eye. Out of everything I read this was probably my favourite.
Avengers #2: The writing tends to jump around a bit from flashback to present and there and back again, but the story itself was interesting with a cool concept and some funny moments. The art isd good, but the colouring seems overly dark to me at times and could be quite off putting.
Batgirl #13: The art was excellent in this, everything looked so sleek and there was some nice panel layouts, can't have any complaints about the writing either (bar one use of the phrase "for the lulz", could you honestly not have used "for kicks" or something?). Yeah, otherwise strong in the writing department too. The most recent issue is #15 but this was all they had in Forbidden Planet that day, I've popped in since to pick up 14 and 15 when I've been past it, and while they now have 15 in they don't have 14 yet.
Batwoman#15: Dreadful really. Not keen on either the writing or the art, but I think the writing was the worst offender of the two. An overabundance of captions that were there to try and pad out what seemed a flimsy filler issue that really gives no sense of the situation or characters.
Daredevil #21: The art didn't really do much for me and I think something a bit more stylised might've been better, at least in terms of layouts. The writing is reasonable enough and while the specific plot that finished up in this issue wasn't overhwelming there seems to be a better and larger plot at hand that fuelled this story and will continue beyond it.
Green Arrow #15: It felt like quite a low end story, you know it's not important and none of the characters introduced for it are particularly memorable. The art was kinda up and down at times, it looked decent at points but quite silly at others.
Green Lantern #15: Johns here again and again some very interesting stuff going on, I found it a little more difficult this time though with it being a new Green Lantern, but I think that kind of reflected that the creative team, the character himself and the readers are all just getting to know him. Impeccable art one this one too.
Hawkeye #6: Upon the first couple pages I was hating this, I thought the art was woeful and the writing hit and miss. But as things go on it felt like the art kind of fitted the type of story they were telling (though the layouts were a bit frustrating/confusing on a couple of ocassions), the writing was funny but featured some odd grammatical/sentence structuring/shortening and replacement words. Again though, it sort of fitted it at times. Just a weird vibe from the whole thing.
Justice League #15: This is actually the start of the story that's in Aquaman #15...but I didn't know that until after I'd read Aquaman. However, as I mentioned earlier I thought the plot was laid out well enough in Aquaman and this just allowed to see for myself how it started (and it is still well written in this issue too...Yes, it's Johns...AGAIN!). Of course there's another fine art team surrounding Johns on this series too and I really can't fault anything about it too much. The Shazam mini-chapter in this issue too was great, a lot of fun.
Nightwing #15: A big arc involving the return of the Joker (Batgirl #13 was actually a prologue to this arc), so it's an intriguing start of a story to say the least. The art is good, with a really cool sort of flip cover thing to it, although I have to say that there was one particular panel of Nightwing, when he's told someone he knows has just been killed, and the face he's making is hilarious. It's less tragic shock and more "Duhhh, what?".
Scarlet Spider #12.1: I have no idea what the .1 is all about. I only picked this up because I always really loved the Scarlet Spider character design that I first remember seeing back in the 90s Spider-man The Animated Series. This didn't have that costume though (or Ben Reilly, whom I thought it was going to feature as Scarlet Spider), but that didn't take away from it at all. I got a really good sense of Kain's backstory and character and thought overall it was quite a decent comic.
Amazing Spider-Man #700: A big end of an era issue as a new series is starting in its place (Superior Spider-Man). It felt suitably big in terms of what was at stake. I'll admit the plot seemed a bit of an odd one, but it was there more to set up the new series rather than act as a proper end to this one I felt, there were a couple of really nice moments though. I'll be checking out Superior Spider-Man to see how that's going to go.
Superman #14: I couldn't take the villain seriously at all for some reason. For one thing his mouth is closed in such a way that it looks like he's sucking on a lemon, his dialogue isn't the best either and for some reason I hear him saying it all kind of like the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Other than that it was an all right issue and I probably will read more to get to bigger and better things.
Wonder Woman #15: Didn't care for the writing here, characters seemed to have either accents or spoke nonsense repitition without punctuation, you only ever seemed to get bits and pieces of full sentences, but not in the same quirky way that Hawkeye did it. My only prior experience to Brian Azzarello was 100 Bullets, of which I read the first 3 trades and only liked maybe 5 issues of, and this hasn't really changed my opinion on him much. I'm pretty sure I remember not caring too much for his style of dialogue at times in that series either.
All New X-Men #4: I was kind of at a loss over which X-Men title to pick up, dear God there's so many! I opted for this one and while it seems there's an interesting concept going on it's in amongst a raft of other things and seems like it's being needlessly complicated. I don't think Bendis' choice to fill as many words as possible into a page at times helps and is kind of indicitive of what's happening with the plot.
Out of all that I think I'm going to stick with Aquaman, Batgirl, maybe Daredevil, maybe Hawkeye (though I really need to see if the next issue is a bit more consistent), Green Lantern, Justice League, Scarlet Spider, Superior Spider-Man, maybe Superman and an X-Men title (still not sure if it should be "All New..." but will most likely be). And I'll be getting Batman, I didn't bother picking that up to try because it was a case of 'it's Batman'.
This has been an interesting experience for me because I'd always considered myself more of a Marvel fan, but I wasn't drawn to a lot of the series and there were quite a few of the big characters that I didn't even pick up to try, even if I liked the series before (eg. Thor).
