Thursday, December 04, 2008

Favorite Things: Day Four

Well, I've gone three days and not descended into anything too geeky, well today, let's not just cross that line, but blow by it at mach 12. I give you the pinnacle of 1990's fan service, JLA/Avengers


Produced at one of the rare times when the two major comic companies weren't in a pissing match about who can make the less coherent "event", they rounded up the two perfect creators, writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez to produce the end-all, be-all teaming of the biggest supergroups on the planet (short of Damn Yankees). Astoundingly, it pretty much meets or exceeds all expectations. While Perez's hyper-detailed art is ostensibly the biggest draw, Busiek's handling of such a gigantic cast of characters makes the book just sing. Really, if you enjoy your super-heroes, this is high-concentrate crack (now finally available in paperback).

4 comments:

Matt said...

Believe it or not, I only just recently read this the first time with its trade paperback release.

It is pretty staggeringly awesome stuff--you said it, the height of 90s fan service. But the 90s were a decade when "fan service" meant that you might also get good entertainment instead of just weird Mary Sue borderline fanfic.

What blew my mind most of all was the fucking plot--Krona, the Shaper of Worlds, Eternity making out with the DCU??? Unreal. Busiek is an unheralded genius of trippy cosmic pop comics.

x-man75 said...

Huh, this must have been during my hiatus from comic books in the mid-late 90's... I think it's high time I hunt this TPB down!

Jason said...

Matt: The thing with this book is that, there's literally just about everything you'd want out of this particular team-up in there. Hell, you get Batman throwing down with Batroc ze freaking Leaper for Christ's sake!

x-man75: Actually, this book just came out in trade two weeks ago. Prior to that it was only available in it's Absolute Edition, which, though being pretty awesome, cost a lot of money.

x-man75 said...

Did you say Batroc fought Batman?!?!? Well, if I wasn't sold on this trade before, I sure am now! Batroc is one of those characters that can always bring a smile to my face. I used to love reading about Cap trouncing good ol Batroc! I wanted to beat the hell out of Batroc most of the time!