Jim Doom: The Creepy Christopher Reeve / Richard Donner Fetish! This all just seems ridiculously short-sighted to me. Maybe it’s more than “DC creators honor their childhood by reinventing Superman according to how he was when they saw movies as a kid,” but that’s how it comes off. And I didn’t grow up thinking Superman…
Jim Doom: Killing half the Guardians! I actually really really disliked it when Adam Warlock killed off half the Guardians of the Galaxy, but then when I thought about why I disliked it, I really liked it! This series has been so good that I had grown to truly care about the characters in it,…
Jim Doom: the “real” conclusion to Batman R.I.P. The thread uniting Batman RIP to that two-part story that led into Final Crisis #6 was pathetic. At best, I’d call it weak and underwhelming. At worst, I would call it a dishonestly hyped, poorly executed rip-off. Honorable mention: Bigshot writers swinging and missing: I have tons…
Jim Doom: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning! I don’t know if I should call this a tie since it’s two guys, but I don’t know where you split them. Guardians of the Galaxy has been great, and War of Kings was amazing. I hear from Doom DeLuise that Nova and some of the other Kings…
Jim Doom: Tony Daniel I don’t know why DC decided one of the most important periods in Batman’s history was the right time to let someone practice writing comic books. Daniel’s plots are predictable and his dialogue is groan-inducing. My best guess is that they needed someone to tread water while Grant Morrison’s big picture…
Jim Doom: Ivan Reis! Blackest Night is as good as it is because of him. He makes everything as huge, horrific or heroic as it needs to be. He can handle zombies, superheroes, different faces, gorgeous superheroines, realistic or creepy landscapes, scenes on Earth or on some other planet, intimate conversations, massive battles and basically…
Jim Doom says Ethan Van Sciver I do not get the excitement around this guy. He’s like a slightly more successful Tony Daniel – all post-Image muscular rigidity and no soul. The stiffness and lifelessness of his figures was made much more obvious when DC stuck him on Flash: Rebirth, a book in which people…
Better late than never. That’s what I will keep telling myself as I trudge through this, likely alone. I don’t necessarily disagree with those who think that the middle of February is too late for a previous year retrospective. But I look over to that left column and see all those other Years in Review…