Ken Aldred

One common criticism of digital comics is that they can’t be speculated on and never have an opportunity to go up in value or be traded. Someone, somewhere, had to create a situation to try and change this ‘limitation’, sooner or later. For most of us, enough versions of Superman 1 exist already, physical and digital, not to need another. I’ve always liked digital as a calm reading oasis away from the frenzy of the physical copy market, so the blockchain machinations here really don’t matter to me. I’ll stick with 50p trade paperbacks from Humble Bundle.

I didn’t realise they’d picked a new Dr Who back in May, at least I’ve just read an article from back then. Shows how interest and publicity have declined.

Great Wonder Woman run, Birds of Prey too.

I agree. You can’t really expect it to fit in with the commonplace art techniques and styles used in occidental comics, and as a manga reader I think a lot of it is really quite nicely done.

And she's really good. I like a lot of her material.

I'm already missing the air of mystery that the default Blank Man avatar provided me with.

Good point. Frazetta, LB Cole. Not multiples of the same issue, but the same basic idea.

Third issue.

Todd McFarlane’s Baseball Batman from Marvel’s What The? comic.

Yup. That’s what I like about the variant cover section in trade paperback collections.

You posted a 2000 era cover. Here’s an absolutely hideous variant from around the same period. It’s not all bad.

Yup. I’m one for variety, and so I go for all Ages, including modern. Nice art, regardless of technique.

The Black Label material can be a bit more extreme than the mainstream version. I see it as a bit of a replacement for Vertigo, but with a much greater emphasis on super-heroes, which Vertigo largely avoided. Batman as well as Sandman.

I read moderns in trade form, the best way for the extended storylines that are now common. You also get the variant covers as well, and one or two might grab me, but most of them I’ll just glance at quickly and move on. Alternatively, you could interpret the variant bundle in its entirety as catering to different artistic tastes, and it’s nice to see. Completists aside, for many I’m sure experiencing them this way would be enough, and at minimal cost, or without feeling overwhelmed by volume. There are many good stories being published in the modern period and some very talented modern artists. To reiterate, as this is a common thread, when I go back to the material from my childhood, 70s Bronze, there’s a really large amount of dross there, and many of the classics don’t hold up as well now, and I find the halcyon, perfect olden days viewpoint to be a bit of a fallacy. I agree with some of the others here; buy what you like, regardless of its Age, but try to be open-minded about the process and don’t judge moderns so harshly, or miss out on some of the best.

Great series. Just liked that particular image.

I chose it because it’s one of Matt Wagner’s best covers in terms of composition. It didn’t even occur to me that there could be an additional subconscious factor involved. Perhaps.

Remembered his magic baseball bat.

I wonder if it was drawn specially for the issue? Sivana looks like he's dressed for cricket rather than baseball.

Had to be at least one in this title.

Classic Doom. Probably my most replayed game of all time. Only on Ultra Violence difficulty, though.

I agree. I found the best way to appreciate the third game is to think of it as a whole as the aftermath of the Suicide Mission, with the team members going in different directions afterwards, sometimes varying because of the decisions you've made, rather than fixating too much on the conclusion. Makes it all far more poignant. Still, a classic series.

That reminds me of an "are you kidding?" experience in Demon Souls recently. First play through, at the beginning, very low levelled, you encounter a pack of wolves which is quite manageable, not much of a problem. Returning to the section on New Game Plus, the same pack jumps on you, surrounds you and annihilates you within seconds. Sure, you can adjust tactics and soon it's not too bad, but the difficulty spike between run-throughs is hilarious.