So, uh, comics then...

[Wholly Schmidt]

Has anyone read "Rising Stars"?

I'm not a comic book guy. I'm more an "Everything I Needed To Know About The X-Men I Learned From FOX" kinda guy. To anyone who is a comic book guy, I'm sure that's horribly offensive. But that's not me. I really love the X-Men, Spiderman, Batman especially, but I never hung out at comic book stores, never followed any series, and the only big names I could think of if you asked me about people related to comics are Stan Lee, Todd MacFarlane, and Kevin Smith. So anyway, I'm not a comic book guy.

But a friend of mine has the first to collections (issues 1-8 and 9-16) of this comic Rising Stars that was written by the guy behind Babylon 5. You guessed it, I'm not a Babylon 5 guy either. But anyway, I really really like these comics, and eagerly await the final 8 issues (17 and 18 are out I believe, but I'll wait till they're all out and read the last 8 together). So has anyone else read these? Comic book people, non-comic book people? What are your thoughts? Am I just stumbling into a wonderful world of which this is but a taste, or have I stumbled onto a rare gem in the world of comics? Likely somewhere inbetwee, but I'm just here to solicit opinions. And ramble.

[Brad Grenz]

Rising Stars is one I'd like to check out, but my comics budget is so small I have to be really, really picky about what I buy. I stick to trades for the most part and shop by writer more than anything else. I really need to catch up on the new Akira trades... Most stuff I buy is written by Alan Moore or Warren Ellis or Joss Whedon (the Buffy guy, he's doing an 8 issue miniseries called Fray which is pretty cool). But I drop so much coin on computer upgrades, PC and videogames, DVDs, Gas, Food, Movies, CDs and records that their usually isn't much left for comics.

Brad Grenz

[DennyA]

Rising Stars is definitely good. JMS has also made Spider-Man interesting for the first time in a while.

Actually, the best Spider-Man series is Tangled Web, which looks at the lives of the people around him. Pretty amusing. A day in a super-villian bar, the kid of a lame supervillian, etc.

I gotta pare down my pull list now that I have a kid on the way. The serial aspect of these things makes them hard to drop, though.

[Chris]

JMS also just wrapped up Midnight Nation, which I feel is better than Rising Stars, though that could change by the time that comic is finished. There are a lot of great things to find in comics, the Sandman collections offer some fantastic stories based on mythological concepts. Marvel's Ultimate Spider-man is an updated take on the character and is a lot of fun to read. There are plenty of other titles out there, sample a few and see what you can find.

[Dean]

I bought the first Rising Stars collection while on a mad comics buying spree a couple of months ago. At first I thought it was Children of the Damned meets Watchmen (which it is). I liked the story just fine, the attitude was pretty cool, but the art was pissing me off because so many of them looked too similar that I couldn't tell the artist guy from the poet guy.

I did two more comics buying sprees, then decided that comics are too fucking expensive. I can go through $40 of comics in an afternoon. The same amount on prose entertainment (i.e. paperback fantasy and sf novels) would last me a month.

So now I've found a new guilty pleasure. I go to Barnes and Noble, enjoy the air conditioning, sip a coffee, and read comics all afternoon. I liked the second Rising Stars collection much more than the first, though now that they've got a new artist with a much more photo-realistic style I'm still not liking the art. At least now I know there's a reason why two of the main characters look so alike (aside from the "he can only draw one brooding, dark haired guy, but the story calls for two" explanation I was going with earlier).

Has DK2 #3 ever come out? I'm mildly curious. And does it suck as bad as the first two?

[Thierry Nguyen]

DK2 #3 comes out July 31st.

[Dirt]

About damn time.

[Chris]

Ughh, Miller's art in this series makes me ill. I don't think I'll get number 3 due to that. It's a shame because I really enjoyed his character designs and artwork in The Dark Knight Returns.

[Dirt]

Yeah, the art definitely leaves very much to be desired. Supposedly, this miniseries has lost DC money.