Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About Comics

The Milksops continue our Talking 'Bout Busiek season with a look at his stellar run on The Avengers. Specifically we dig into issues 19-22, Ultron Unleashed! Thor has words with Ultron, Justice doesn't drink tea, and lots of robots wish they had families. It's action-packed and is a highlight of Kurt and George Perez's Avengers run. We also talk about the hard-to-find Avengers/JLA book and it's i...

Continuing our dive into Kurt Busiek, we look at his critically acclaimed series Untold Tales of Spider-Man. It's a masterpiece of going back to basics with the webhead, finding new stories from the old strategies. In particular, we dive into two incredible issues: UTOSM #16, which shows what Mary Jane Watson thought of Peter (and Spidey) before they met, and also UTOSM Annyal '96, which has the w...

A team of villains who sometimes maybe kinda want to be heroes? One of the great series in recent decades. The Milksops get into Thunderbolts #1 with it tremendous twist ending that caught everyone unaware. We also talk about the series overall. It was born in a strange time in Marvel "history" when many of the big properties were removed from publication. Busiek turned this possible restriction i...

The Milksops begin their celebration / examination of legendary comics writer Kurt Busiek by doing a medium-depth dive on his breakout 1993 mini-series Marvels. With the stunningly realistic paintings of Alex Ross, Marvels was a critical and commercial hit that also proved that the classic Marvel characters and stories still worked in the collectors-edition froth of the early 1990s. The series est...

To prepare for the new Disney+ show starring Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan incarnation), the Milksops do a crash course on her comic books! Despite just having debuted in Feburary 2014 (besides a fast cameo in 2013), Ms. Marvel has gotten a lot of development and appearances in that time. We go over her impressively strong debut, which includes the personality of Jersey City, her interesting conservativ...

The Milksops break from their tendency to talk about 80s and 90s comics to focus on the latest MCU release: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Their take: it's good? We get into what Kevin didn't like about the first one, and why he likes this one better. We also get into: guest character appearances, our assessment of the films visuals and actions, rating its villain, the impact on the st...

Two issues of bliss, two issues of blah -- that's how the Milksops see these issues. We get a fun look at Rogue and Storm's friendly in 185, followed by the double-sized Barry Windsor-Smith pencilled epic of Storm and Forge falling in love with each other! They're each fun, intriguing, exciting issues of the X-Men. And then we get two completely confusing issues where they face off against an alie...

A terrific run of Claremont issues. We have the charming "Young Dragons in Love" where we see Japan bring out its standing anti-Monster forces to stop a lovesick dragon from destroying Tokyo. Rogue loses track of which of her memories are really hers when she rescues an ex-boyfriend (we think) of Carol Danvers. Wolverine takes Colossus out to maybe beat him up for dumping Kitty Pryde and instead j...

In this X-issues we see a lot of cool stuff but also Professor X playing basketball in X-themed athletic wear, which is..... I can't decide what that is. Great? Silly? Fun? In other events, we see Kitty almost get married, and Caliban reveals he can be good. Nightcrawler continues being a doctor, and Rogue is more and more accepted into the team. Scott continues to be married to an almost maybe ki...

Three pretty great X-Men issues where we the mutants deal with getting used to Rogue, meeting Scott's Jean Grey-clone(?) fiance and Wolverine investigating why he was left at the altar! Also Will is so exhausted that he keeps calling Nightcrawler "Wolverine" which is insane! Then we cover Annual 7 which is, depending on your mood, either deligtfully silly meta in-joke fun where ou see the Marvel B...

The mutants return to fight the villain they are most known for fighting: Count Dracula! Wha....? Okay, so it's not a standard X-villain, but this is a better story than the count's previous X-appearance. We then get into the arrival of a terrific legendary X-man: Rogue. And right on the heels of that the (near) wedding of Wolverine and Mariko. In typical Claremont era fashion, the story's plots a...

The big finish of the Born Again saga. We've got: crazed super-soldier who always thinks he's in Vietnam, corrupt generals and police commissioners and police, Matt Murdock cooking amazing burgers, the return of wearing a superhero costume, and oh yeah the Avengers. And epic finish to a story that transformed the character and probably intimidated/inspired everyone writing superhero comics in the...

The Born Again saga begins jumping from character to character faster and faster, but Miller's taut prose and Mazzuchelli's deft art keep everything feeling smooth. Matt is healing, Ben Urich is scared and the not scared, Karen is on the run and then not on the run and Foggy has a bowling ball. We talk about how fearsome the Kingpin is despite his ridiculous habit of beating up scores of employees...

Because of the new Moon Knight television show, the Milksops do a crash course in to the comics portrayal of Moon Knight, a character neither of them know that well! After an admittedly fast and intense few days of reading, we give our first impressions of most of the different incarnations of the characters. But that's tough because the characters has been rebooted many times in very different wa...

Despite some very big limitations and shortcomings, Born Again stands out as an incredible achievement of monthly comic book creation. Each issue is tense, interesting, has surprising developments, humor, character moments, ending in a terrific cliffhanger. Writer Frank Miller is excellent at taking characters you know and exaggerating them to more powerful versions of themselves. Kingpin is not j...

Professor Xavier is a jerk, says Kitty Pryde and X-Nation agrees, or at least the Milksops agree. We are into the beautiful Paul Smith epoch of the Claremont era of the X-books and things are cooking. We've got the final showdown with the Brood as the X-Men meet the New Mutants, Kitty (once again) proving herself to be worth of X-man status, and then a very cool and fun adventure in the sewers as...

The Milksops can't stop obsessing over Frank Miller, so we're going from Dark Knight Returns to Frank's awesome return to Marvel's Daredevil: the Born Again stories. Along with artist David Mazzuchelli, this seven part Daredevil story is one of the greatest Daredevil stories ever and one of the great Marvel comics stories. The Kingpin finds out that Daredevil is really Matt Murdock and so he... ru...

Brood, Brood and more Brood. The X-Men find themselves in an impossible situation when they realize that a hostile alien force has planted eggs inside of their bodies, and the only way to stop the hatching is to die! Luckily they find a simple (not) solution involving the prophet/singer leader of a fleet of peaceful space whales, spirtual bonds that heal bodies, and a rogue dragon who eats eggs. P...

The final issue of the Dark Knight Returns brings a showdown that maybe only Frank Miller was asking for: Batman takes down Superman. We see a very Batman-centered view of Superman: a sellout, a toady, an obstacle. Superman meanwhile saves the lives of millions and is rewarded with an order to capture Batman. We see Gotham collapse into utter chaos when a nuclear bomb takes away all power in the c...

Batman doesn't kill. But should he? Frank MIller's portrayal of the Joker puts this question to the test after the Clown Prince of Crime begins a murder spree in already-collapsing Gotham. Also we see glimpses of Superman, who is forbidden from being talked about on the news. We see the old mutant gang decalre themselves to be the violent sons of Batman. New Commission Yindel makes no bones about...

The X-Men stories are getting so complicated it's tough to summarize correctly. But basically we've got: a quick fight against Dracula (no big), a demon who pulls Illyana into limbo for 6 or 7 years, Professor X remembering that he and Magneto were once allies and then shaking off a coma, and the beginning of a showdown against the increasingly horrifying (to the Milksops) Brood. Kevin is still a...

Issue 2 of this seminal series is the only one that features a wholly original villain: the hyper-violent, extra-brutal leader of the Mutant Gang. Batman gets a new Robin: the extremely fun and optimistic Carrie Kelly. We also see the Bat-Tank version of the Batmobile, and get hints of a SUPER guest to come later in the story. This Kevin's favorite issue and Will's second-favorite. Can the Milksop...

The Starjammers are back and things get confusing! It's something to do with a missing possibly kidnapped Princess Lilandra, and a coup among the Shi'ar, and also some villains called The Brood, and also Scott's dad is back (again), and Kitty hacks into computer and there's a living ship which is a brain-dead space-whale, and also.... we meet soon-to-be X-Man Rogue! In the mailbag, we get correcte...

The Milksops begin their in-depth look at THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, the 1986 Batman story by Frank Miller (and Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley) that changed the character and all of superhero comics forever. We get into: the violence, the density, the intelligence, the fun (yes, this bleak world has a lot of joy in it), the tons of captions, what it was like for Kevin to read this as a wee lad. We als...

Hilarious Correction Department: it's Emma FROST not Emma STONE. Anyway: A rival school for mutants drafts Kitty Pryde, and Storm switches bodies with Emma Frost. Plus a cute fairy tale that charmed Will and kinda was okay to Kevin, plus the Starjammers returns as Cyclops (again?) remembers the story of his father. In our mail, we are shamed for not mentioning the Daredevil cameo in "No Way Home"...