Greg's Comic Book Club #17: Participation Thread

Hi Greg and undisclosed co-host, I hope the big stress of the last couple of weeks is over and it’s going to be less stress in the next couple of weeks. You have done so much great content in the last month, that we don't hold a grudge against you for missing last month's episode. Don't be too hard on yourself. You have been very hard already (ok, that sounded very wrong...). So without further ado, here’s what I read in the last couple of weeks Required Reading I actually read the first volume twice now in the last couple of weeks, partly because I have seen the first episode of the eight episode first season at my local Comic Con. At first I was very surprised that the main character of The Boys was modeled after Simon Pegg. The Omnibus that I was reading even had an introduction written by Pegg himself where acknowledged the process (more on this in a second). The premise of the book reminded me strongly of the The Tick in a sense that this is a world where superheroes have been established for quite some time. I liked the meta references to other superhero groups like the Avengers or the Justice League that have a rotating roaster when this becomes a full-on audition process in order to become a new member of the seven. The Boys themselves are not really bad guys per se but they feel more like a group that keeps a balance of power with The Seven in check. Overall it’s a great premise and I think I will stick with the series as it progresses… —— Extracurricular activity: The Boys Pilot Episode (light spoilers if you haven’t read required reading yet (duh) —— … now on to the comparison with the pilot episode of The Boys (which will drop with the rest of the season on July 26 I think). The pilot is basically the plot of the entire first volume, with some added storylines and some other things that will be done probably in later episodes. In this version, The Seven are basically part of a privatised superhero army by the Vought company and it seems like they are pushing them to be a highly marketed police force in a sense that they are advertised like popstars or reality stars but do also police work in the field. Being in the public eye the whole time they tend to show their asshole sides whenever no camera is directed towards them. This aspect feels more graspable in the TV adaption and it does hit harder, especially in today’s #MeToo-era, once you are getting to that certain Starlight scene. Overall they are recreating key scenes from the comic like Hughie losing his girlfriend, his first meet-up with Billy Butcher (Karl Urban is awesome in this role), the superhero orgy and Starlight sitting together with Hughie in the park. Elisabeth Shue is great as this super dark behind-the-scenes-operating Vought agent named Madelyn Stillwell (which is a gender-swapped version of James Stillwell who appears in later issues of The Boys) and she has her own big arc throughout the episode. The episode also parallels Hughies introduction to the Billy Butcher character and Starlights introduction to the Seven and I think they made the right choice in casting Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty in their respective roles. But one question remains: Jack Quaid does not remotely look like Simon Pegg (but more like his father Dennis Quaid…) … and at that point Simon Pegg plays his father (who likes watching Remington Steel and TJ Hooker btw.). The first ten minutes were a little disjointed for me when they tried to explain the premise and the world they are living in, but once the story focusses on Hughie and Starlight, it’s getting better and better. I’m quite intrigued about that and I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the season once it airs next month. ——— Other stuff: Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy / Spider-Man: Spider-Geddon I’ve been re-reading Dan Slott’s final big Crossover comic again which is a cool thoughout story about (almost) every previously dead Spider-Man character coming back to life as a clone. Sometimes it is a very emotional comic because it shows how people are dealing with grief and then hope for a new life with their previously dead loved ones. But once it turns out that the actual technology is basically the start of the end of the world, everything goes to hell. It does have the annoyance that you would have to read jump between different comic books in order to get the full story, however if you just read The Amazing Spider-Man issues you still get the main story. In the hard cover edition that I got, all other issues are in there as well, however they were located after the main story, so you would have to jump. This, however, was even worse with Spider-Geddon. Spider-Geddon was supposed to be the big follow-up to Spider-Verse with Spider-Men from all over the Multiverse. However, 616-Spider-Man is barely in this comic at all. It does feature Superior Spider-Man a lot, as well as the Spider-Family from Renew your vows, Peni Parker from Into the Spider-Verse, and interestingly the PS4-Spider-Man does also play a huge role in this comic (it even features several Spider-Cop references!). However, this crossover event feels even more disjointed if you just follow one or two of the involved comic books. I actually needed a big reading list to jump from one story to the other in order to get the entire story of the event. The entire event felt more like a big commercial for the non-main-spider-man Spider-Verse comic books than an actual Spider-Man comic and unfortunately does not live up to the original event. And this leads me to my question of the month… Question of the month: As I’ve read Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy and Spider-Geddon, both storylines are event comics that rely on reading lots of related comic books of characters that are in the event like Spider-Gwen, Superior Spider-Man or Scarlet Spider. Unfortunately the story is spread all over the comic books, so if you would just only read the main storyline comics you would miss heavy story beats and would be puzzled by things that you haven’t read before. What are your thoughts and experiences for that? Do you like crossover events in comics or do you wait until there is a big omnibus version available that contains all related comics? Would you rather prefer something like an editor’s cut that would re-arrange all story elements into a single comic book or would you rather jump from story to story on your own? So that’s it for me, I hope you have a nice and pleasant July Arvel

Arvel Crynyd

Right!!! Birthright is so good. I just finished Volume 4 yesterday. I hope stays good