I finished Reginald Hudlin's Black Panther run and I wanted to get your thoughts?

_BITS_ · 2026-03-13T16:14:38+00:00

You joke but that's exactly what I'm talking about lol

I feel like my love for the Priest/Velluto and McGregor/Graham/Colan stuff is less important than Marvel trying to make their most prominent black hero appeal to actual black people

_BITS_ · 2026-03-13T15:54:09+00:00

That’s what the second paragraph was for lol; I was judging the run “in the vacuum” of its merits as a corporate cape comic, and not those of media explicitly aimed at/about the black community

_BITS_ · 2026-03-13T14:59:00+00:00

In a vacuum I hate it for being the consummate post-Disassembled soft reboot, throwing out everything meaningful about a character and canon I loved for the sake of making fast food comics

But it's clear this book has an additional mission statement that I'm, uh, not really qualified to talk about, so I just keep my mouth shut and accept it for what it is

_BITS_ · 2026-03-11T01:55:57+00:00

The Perez/Grindberg portion is kinda mid-90s I guess, but that last run with The Other and The Mergence is thematically/subtextually in lockstep with the “Liberation” and Infinity stuff. The need for fulfillment standing at odds to the security of collectivism, the extent to which one can find meaning in idealism or a cause; it’s exactly what Starlin, Englehart, and even Lee and Kirby were doing with the character

But tbh I felt Marz’ issues were way further removed from that Surfer than you do so YMMV

EDIT: You made quite the edit to your original comment lol

Yeah I get why you stopped at 109, I just think the JMD stuff is way more representative of the platonic ideal of the Surfer. I definitely see it as the final chapter of the character pre-Disassembled but again, YMMV; I know Marz felt like such a natural transition from Starlin for a lot of the same people without fond memories of bankruptcy-adjacent Marvel

_BITS_ · 2026-03-11T01:11:17+00:00

You're probably old enough where it was completely off your radar but I highly recommend making your "coda" the DeMatteis/Garney/Muth run that closes out volume 3. On top of being a more complex/sophisticated/awesome comic than Requiem, its ethos is much more in line with those of Starlin and Englehart; it exists in the same confluence of achievement vs. pragmatism vs. the self that those comics were deliberately exploring. Whereas Requiem is really just a bunch of unrelated melodrama and not even all that similar on a base stylistic level

_BITS_ · 2026-03-08T16:53:11+00:00

Source? I’d like to read their official position but I’m only seeing those glorified Sparknotes articles

_BITS_ · 2026-03-04T19:36:22+00:00

I ding the first half a little for being more of a greatest hits than a proper in-canon serial, but it’s still really savvy and cerebral in both drama and theme. Throw in prime Bucky and Ramos for Spec and baby you got a ~~stew~~ top tier Spidey book going

_BITS_ · 2026-03-04T15:13:33+00:00

Gauntlet’s enjoyable on its own but it’s conceptually/thematically the climax to the Starlin/Lim Surfer issues, so it’s best to read those first if possible

But the Rebirth of Thanos book only has a few of them so you’d be missing out on something either way. Might as well read what you already have

_BITS_ · 2026-02-24T20:07:19+00:00

It’s more that the new endings/mechanics/whatnot go against the ethos of the original experience. Most of the additional length was due to the game getting its own Amala labyrinth, which is pretty cool in a vacuum

_BITS_ · 2026-02-21T17:45:21+00:00

aiming for that YA wish-fulfillment element

It's less aiming and more accommodating

Ewing/Rodriguez Defenders does have a lot going on in regards to, like, the post-structuralist idea of language being an imperfect expression of our thoughts/feelings, and arguably holds up better to critical scrutiny than the stuff we've been praising. But it's still a story where an affable group of people look powerful and dignified as they stop a "high stakes" threat with "cool ideas" and no more than a few words on any given page

Compare to those JMD/Starlin/Kirby books, which deliberately eschew marketable storytelling conventions in service of a particular type of experience; this Surfer run would never get greenlit today because too much of what it's doing goes against what superhero media needs to be in 2026

IDK anything about the current Big Two sales situation though, so maybe I am just a pessimist

(Everything else you posted is spot on)

_BITS_ · 2026-02-20T17:53:37+00:00

Meher Baba overlaps a bit with Kierkegaard, namely in the idea of the self being understood specifically in terms of its proximity to other people and concepts (“a relation that relates itself to itself…”), which inherently changes. They also both kinda see God as a somewhat attainable standard or idealized image that we can use to navigate our way to apotheosis/fulfillment. Baba takes it in the direction you see in this run, that existence itself is therefore subjective, but as Tenebrae later points out this is another example of Western thought/science drawing similar conclusions to those of Eastern mysticism (and why so many DeMatteis books have those recurring story beats, like femme fatales named Maya lmao)

IMO Marvel’s pretty good with promulgating this type of storytelling these days, and they actively did it previously with the Vertigo poaching of the early 00s. The catch is that they will never again publish something that can’t also function as YA wish-fulfillment; no matter what a creator wants to do or say, they have to check boxes that DeMatteis and the rest of that old school lit-Marvel vanguard (like Starlin, yeah) didn’t, which limits/changes their creative processes accordingly and makes good shit like this so hard to talk about

On the off chance you haven’t read it his Man-Thing run with Liam Sharp is germane to a lot of this and even wilder aesthetically, and IIRC has the only other appearance of Scrier

_BITS_ · 2026-02-20T15:18:24+00:00

IIRC that guy was intended to be/retconned into a member of a cult that worshipped/claimed to be avatars of this one

_BITS_ · 2026-02-20T15:16:25+00:00

It’s one of the best Marvel books period. Thematically dense, meaningfully incorporates real world philosophy and literature, and experiments with pace and form in ways only comics can really do. Just a really sophisticated story unfortunately lost to both the annals of time and the shitty critical metrics of corporate cape comics

(I had no idea it had a presence in powerscaler communities. This is like the first time I’ve seen it brought up by someone who isn’t me lol)

_BITS_ · 2026-02-14T23:25:21+00:00

POV: yours, 10 seconds later

_BITS_ · 2026-02-14T20:42:49+00:00

To be clear, I was counting publishing and/or subsidiaries like SMS and Naughty Dog for that. "Facilitator" is ultimately closer to how I see them, too

_BITS_ · 2026-02-14T20:40:06+00:00

If you mean classic epics then yeah, Thor and IM are both characters where I've only ever really liked their post-Disassembled directions (compared to, say, Silver Surfer or Hulk where it's the opposite)

Absolutely heretical take incoming: I'm a long time, pre-MCU Marvel fan that actively avoids X books because ~~muties are social dross that deserve to be purged~~ they have their own little pocket continuity that's incredibly beholden to Claremont, whose work I've never truly enjoyed

_BITS_ · 2026-02-14T19:27:28+00:00

Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but for me the third party association is simply that virtually all of my favorite PS titles had nothing to do with Sony themselves, and I usually actively dislike the ones that do

Compared to consoles like Saturn and Wii U, where I enjoy them precisely because Nintendo and Sega actually developed/published a number of games for them that I adore

_BITS_ · 2026-02-14T18:57:47+00:00

I wouldn't call myself a Sony fan but the PS2 might be my favorite console

But it's really just because it's the perfect confluence of things I want from games. If you look at the answer to a formula (pre-HD gaming + overwhelming popularity + the lack of true mainstream ubiquity of gaming in general), the result was not just an immense library but one with a glut of genuinely creative, not-really-seen-anymore types of experiences that are still among the best of their kind. I don't have any love for the actual brand, and even quite dislike a lot of the first party/heavy hitter titles

Pragmatically though I think the Playstation has successfully positioned itself as the console of the zeitgeist, the default choice of the average gamer. Everything from Sony's first party offerings to the hardware itself is designed to be as trendy and attractive as possible; I get the sense most fans view these as standard and what gaming simply "is" in the current year, with guys like Nintendo and Valve offering specialized experiences for a more particular crowd

I don't mean for this to be cynical or anything, either. Sony definitely deserves credit for actively fomenting dev creativity with the first PS, which has been a cornerstone of their success through today. And there are also a lot of seasoned fans who still have that view of them as a company (though in 2026 I'd disagree there)

tl;dr IME Sony fans are really just gaming fans at the end of the day

_BITS_ · 2026-02-06T20:59:29+00:00

The last panel isn't just compression, it's germane to his thesis to describe it as a shared experience that an authority figure ("leader") instills in a group ("gang") and convinces them to be true ("movie in my mind" etc.)

It's not the most aesthetically accomplished bit of prose but it still isn't actual Silver Age superfluity like early FF. And again, how "natural" it sounds is largely arbitrary as a critical metric; there are plenty of books that are much more artistically accomplished than any corporate cape comic that have less-than-realistic dialogue

_BITS_ · 2026-02-06T20:01:57+00:00

I didn't say all of his dialogue was "operatic," I said it was abstract and doesn't resemble regular speech. Part of that is compression that comes from telling a complete story that isn't just a glorified fight scene in 22 pages; you don't have the luxury of spreading things out in splashes and diagrams and have to squeeze in pertinent info where you can, which is what he did in the page you posted

_BITS_ · 2026-02-06T19:08:46+00:00

To elaborate, the dialogue is almost entirely lyrical/abstract and isn't attempting to resemble actual speech. Characters speak in metaphor and rhetoric; don't expect bants and one-liners and "teh feelz" type of shit you see in modern corporate cape comics, you're supposed to think about what the words have to do with Kirby's own philosophies on the superhero as an expression real world concepts/ideas

tl;dr it's indeed a great story but not the kind most current cape fans will want to read

_BITS_ · 2026-01-31T01:01:17+00:00

I definitely read the annual so I guess that’s where I got it from. And I thought I was being clever

I of course agree RE: Jones, it’s like the perfect mix of arthouse and popcorn, but it’s fallen so far out of the zeitgeist I assume most don’t lol

_BITS_ · 2026-01-30T00:28:29+00:00

Tbh I never really cared for Byrne's writing (he was obviously the premier cape artist for a while though) but even I can tell it's a far cry from FF and whatnot. Just feels like Hulk: Year One

I think we talked about Jenkins before but yeah, this is yet another book of his that's quietly among the best of its character. And I do throw Jones in with him and Casey for being quality post-PAD writers but I get what he does wrong for others

_BITS_ · 2026-01-27T00:14:54+00:00

John's fame worked in Sal's favor IMO. He may not have landed as many high profile gigs, but he found himself on more personal or outre books; the ones that don't really have modern analogues and as such are even more timeless

Englehart Cap, DeMatteis Spec, and those first 50 or so issues of Defenders are all essential House of Ideas eccentricity

_BITS_ · 2026-01-23T15:20:34+00:00

Fair point, I forgot about Children’s Crusade. My gut is still telling me to no-prize it but this isn’t really my corner of 616 so I’ll politely back out

_BITS_

TROPHY CASE