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Moments in Comics You Didn't/Don't Get

 
  

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This Sunday
19:24 / 27.04.07
In a similar vein to threads in other forums, this one's exactly what it says in the subject line. Sometimes there are scenes or moments in a comic that you for whatever reason fail to understand completely or failed completely to understand. You may grasp part of it, but feel as though there's something more to it.

Immediately to mind examples, would be:

The Invisibles and the infamous time maggot pages. I'd already gotten what we were supposed to get, from an earlier issue, but the way it was presented by Wood, encouraged entirely different and weird readings that soured the whole thing for me at the time. Now, Cameron, as we all know, redid it, and it looks just fine and does its communicating job.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface on the other hand, has been redrawn a lot, and one part still kinda confuses me. Is Rahampol's ship/message being commandeered by Spica/Antares in the first chapter? Or is there a whole other level of player involved? Or did I just misread?

and, was Marvels meant to have Phil and family moving in realtime, while everyone else ages in Marveltime? And was that supposed to have some relevance in the story, or was it to somehow make Phil and family more real because, of course, they began as photorealisty paintings instead of pencil drawings or something?

Also, all the dirty bits in Dan Decarlo Archie stuff was intentional, right?
 
 
Mario
19:33 / 27.04.07
I believe MARVELS was designed to exist in real time, more or less. Hence the retro clothing and so forth, and the lack of any real characters from after 1970 or so (with the exception of the last scene)

I'll get back to you on GITS2... my copy is at home.
 
 
Rachel Evil McCall
02:47 / 28.04.07
Doom Patrol: Why do the police on Danny the Street go "Mee maw"? Is it just a funny sound, or does it mean something?

Sadly, I pretty much fixate on that, every time I read that issue.
 
 
electric monk
03:21 / 28.04.07
I thought they were saying "Maw mee", which is a whole different spin I think.
 
 
Spaniel
05:15 / 28.04.07
I can't remember that, but does "maw me" = "mummy"
 
 
Benny the Ball
06:07 / 28.04.07
If it's Mee Maw - then they are re-creating the sound of old fashioned British police sirens - which kind of makes sense.
 
 
This Sunday
06:46 / 28.04.07
I haven't read those DPs in a while, but if the dialogue is run together at all, in an "Mee Maw Mee Maw Mee..." fashion, then both siren and mommy could be ostensibly intentional.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
08:49 / 28.04.07
If it's Mee Maw - then they are re-creating the sound of old fashioned British police sirens - which kind of makes sense.
Yeah, isn;t there an old Exploited song where they make that noise?
 
 
Spaniel
09:05 / 28.04.07
Good points, Benny and DD
 
 
Dan Fish - @Fish1k
10:24 / 28.04.07
I never quite understood the last page of Deadman: Love After Death (The two-issue 1989 prestige mini). Is Connie comatose or something?
 
 
Janean Patience
10:40 / 28.04.07
At the risk of mockery, I'm gonna go for Invisibles v2 #15, or thereabouts. Scorpio Rising.

SPOILERS

King Mob and Robin run around a church basement under the influence of a resonating machine that makes them think their worst possible enemy is stalking them. John A'Dreams in this case. That's intercut with scenes showing Mason being a bad man, taking the team for a ride and pissing on New York. It ends with Mob and Robin giving in, captured by their enemies, realising the whole Invisible cause is a rich man's game and Robin's not from the future, she's nuts.

Next time we hear of it they've captured the machine and are using it against said enemies. Mason isn't bad at all. Perhaps those bits were their fears realised, but what happened between point A and point B? How did they go from being beaten and trapped to getting the resonator for themselves? Hod did one situation turn into its complete opposite?

I've honestly never got this.
 
 
Mario
11:45 / 28.04.07
Janean:

The Mason bit is a red herring. When linked to his (supposed) delivery of the time machine to the US military, it positions us as thinking he's the bad guy.

As for Scorpio... I'm not sure.
 
 
Janean Patience
15:58 / 28.04.07
I thought Mason was a red herring, though it's not terribly clear, and that fits in with what's going on with the protagonists. The rest, though...
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:32 / 28.04.07
In terms of capturing the device I assumed they found it in the base in Dulles and turned it on the bad guys. How they recognised it, fuck knows. A lot gets scrappy around that time in the comic as it's a short while after Grant announced the comic wasn't going to be 75 issues after all, so I always assumed there was some story between the two situations that got lost.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
11:41 / 30.04.07
Glad it wasn't just me that didn't get that bit...
 
 
Janean Patience
12:39 / 30.04.07
A lot gets scrappy around that time in the comic

It's the point where Grant's taken on too much and his writing gets all first-draft and shit, isn't it? "In short, the period was so far like the present period..."
 
 
This Sunday
18:52 / 30.04.07
I always thought the end-of-the-volume sequel was just there to, (a) be a sequel, and (b) rescue/repair/remove Quimper.

The rest is facade.

And Mason on the phone is just play on many of our's deep suspicions of very wealthy semi-wannabe types. Who lie about their age and get involved with much younger and perhaps psychologically damaged women, fund military operations, and have a very big house.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
19:55 / 30.04.07
Many of our's deep suspicions of very wealthy semi-wannabe types. Who lie about their age and get involved with much younger and perhaps psychologically damaged women, fund military operations, and have a very big house.

So there's something wrong with lying about your age and funding military operations now, is there?

Well as the proud owner of shares in Halliburton ('it's an ill wind ...' and so on, was my original contention, and history's proved me right,) I beg to differ. Frankly, you can take a lot of these ideas and stick them where the super-context doesn't shine, mate.
 
 
PatrickMM
02:27 / 01.05.07
There's a part when they first invade where Jim Crow goes and gets some mysterious missile looking thing, which I believe is the Scorpio Resonator. He presumably sets it up, then goes back with the Hanta Virus.

I think that part of the series is spinning out of control to some extent, but it's also my favorite time in the run. Everything is so big and cool, but emotionally down to Earth too. Throw in Robin writing the series and you've got this incredibly layered finale for the volume.

Here's a question, not to turn this into an Invisibles only thread, but which book is Robin referencing when she says she read a book called The Invisibles. Is that the Sir Miles book? My interpretation has always been it's the book we're reading, but is there a definitive explanation anywhere.
 
 
This Sunday
02:34 / 01.05.07
I think it was meant to be both. Morrison's and Miles'. Same it's a comic and a game. Remember, the comic exists in the comic, too. And it's our timesuit, if you buy my BarbEye theory.

And, to steer it away from being absolutely and Invissy thread, and yet still Morrisony: In his JLA, during the Starro/Daniel storyline, was there something this was branching from? It feels so like a sequel, but I've read the whole run so I don't think it was a sequel to anything of Morrison's run.

Maybe it just feels like bigger things are going on, because they should be?
 
 
fish confusion errata
02:47 / 01.05.07
Why were we only told half the story in DC One Million? All the stuff in the future world is told off the page.
 
 
This Sunday
02:54 / 01.05.07
Because every other series DC published about the DCU did a single One Mil issue that month. The whole story involves all of them, the mini gave us the mechanics, and the TPB, the necessaries.
 
 
PatrickMM
06:14 / 01.05.07
The Starro/Daniel storyline ties into Sandman, that's where the character came from. I'm not sure if that's where your confusion comes from, or from something else. As far as I know, it's not a direct sequel to anything.
 
 
This Sunday
06:16 / 01.05.07
I meant more the Starro end, or the Sandman/Starro connection. It just always felt like I was missing something when I read it. Nothing I needed to know, or anything, but like there was some background work, some deep background continuity repair or cleaning that I missed.

Maybe it really is just an ambience thing. Though I'd be surprised if no one else felt it.

Morrison's good at atmosphere, really, and I think, perhaps this time, he just got me.
 
 
TroyJ15
06:52 / 01.05.07
1) The conclusion to Identity Crisis still is a stretch to me because it makes not a lick of sense.
2) Gwen Stacy screwing Norman Osborn is JMS's Spider-Man run is sacrirelige and a big WTF?
3) And even though I'm 100% that Morrison's run on New X-Men is the best run on X-Men on the Ernst=Cassandra Nova thing. (Xorn, doesnt confuse me so much as that).
 
 
Janean Patience
06:57 / 01.05.07
The Starro/Daniel story was a follow-up to a story in JLA Secret Files (I think, I don't own it) which featured some of Grant's Big Seven JLA against Starro. Continuity-wise, it predates JLA #1. You may already know this. Someone more knowledgeable may be able to tell you if said story appears in a trade.
 
 
This Sunday
07:33 / 01.05.07
I did not know that it predates the JLA run, proper, as I deliberately did Morrison's run by the trades, instead of single issues.

That definitely helps contextualise.
 
 
Chew On Fat
08:22 / 01.05.07
Wasn't the only time Daniel appeared in the JLA comic when it showed seemingly the entire DCU in a snowglobe thing and Daniel was putting it back in the chest?

When he says 'Now my debt to you is paid' I took it is a reference to the fact that Sandman's first extended tale owed a lot to various Justice League incarnations. eg He meets J'onn Jonzz in the JL satelite (at nighttime when everyone else is asleep - a nice touch). J'onn helps him with some questy thing and then the big bad in that story is Dr Dee/Dr Destiny, a very early JL supervillain.

So in-story, the JLA helped him recover from his imprisonment and regain his powers and IRL the Justice League references helped the newborn experimental comic garner an audience and allowed it a little room to find its own voice and establish its own universe mostly disconnected from the DCU.

The irony is that the Dream mythos is an offshoot of the DCU, and not the other way around, as shown at the end of the JLA episode cited.

And I don't think this story was written by Grant Morrison. It was a two-issue filler. I don't think Gurgle Monsterson has shown any interest whatever in Gaiman's Endless. For some reason the name 'Chuck Austen' comes to mind, but it might have been Mark Waid.
 
 
Chew On Fat
08:39 / 01.05.07
And I would heartily reccomend you grab any DC 1mil books you see in bargain bins. Just about all of them are fun reads and they do flesh out that series. The Batman books all tie together to make up a mini-saga within the greater saga. The conception of Robin 1mil has a nice logic to it, in that he's a little robot that houses the boyhood brain patterns of a pre-traumatised Bruce Wayne.

The rest of the comics really benefit from the release from continuity the experiment allowed them. Most of them read very fresh and the writers were obviously allowed carte blanche to do what they wanted.

Garth Ennis, of course takes the piss, and Peter David wrote a whacked out tale of an 8 year old girl with cosmic power greater than Galactus. I guess PAD was working through some parenthood issues at the time...

And the Martian Manhunter 1m is as beautiful a comic as you will ever read. There is much comic-book philosophising therein.

'The way of all things is to heal'... Maybe not strictly true, but a consolation that's stuck with me nevertheless...

Here endeth the digression
 
 
Janean Patience
09:12 / 01.05.07
I don't think this story was written by Grant Morrison. It was a two-issue filler. I don't think Gurgle Monsterson has shown any interest whatever in Gaiman's Endless.

Was Grant, cause I only bought the Grant issues. So there.

Apologies for childishness.
 
 
Chew On Fat
09:51 / 01.05.07
Bah, that'll teach me to depend on my fanboy memories of comics I read 10 years ago.

Apologies, was thinking of #18-19 instead of #22-23 as shown here

Ok apart from that one time, Gurgle has never shown much interest in the Endless.....

#sound of hole being dug a little deeper#
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
10:00 / 01.05.07
Didn't you read his 12 issue maxi-series featuring Barnabas the German Shepherd?
 
 
This Sunday
08:04 / 08.05.07
Having re-read the paranoia-run-wild bit in The Invisibles vol. 2 with Robin and KM, I've basically confirmed my memory of it, in that it's empowering, their realizations. By giving in, they go through, and that's why KM drops the gun and we cut away and when we see them again they're fine. There's nothing there, we and they know there's nothing there. So presumably, they just walk away.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
00:09 / 10.05.07
2) Gwen Stacy screwing Norman Osborn is JMS's Spider-Man run is sacrirelige and a big WTF?

Do what I do: Refuse to accept it. It never happened. It's ridiculous, makes absolutely no sense at all, and directly contradicts Stan Lee written continuity. So you know what? Fuck it. I say it never happened. Nothing good at all comes out of that story, so don't believe in it. It was all a crazy fever dream Peter had.
 
 
Evil Scientist
05:01 / 10.05.07
Also known as the "Clone Saga" response.
 
  

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