Mark Waid

Very surprised at how much I liked this new direction for the Hulk (despite always giving Mark Waid's work a chance and knowing it's going to be solid even if not to my specific taste). Should not have doubted MW a bit.

For the first major redirection and reinterpretation of the Hulk since Peter David's merging of the 3 personalities of Bruce Banner, I'm really liking that this book focuses a lot more on Banner, what he does and WHY, and a lot less on the mindless slugfesting that kept me from looking at the book much for a long long time.… (more)

Okay so I took a break from Marvel's Exiles to read this (as I just found my copy)...which is actually very similar to Exiles.

When I originally read this, back in middle school (I think) I hadn't yet read Kingdom Come by Waid & Ross. Well. Not the COMIC. I had read the novelization and it made me sad enough that I didn't think I wanted to read the comic.

(I would read it years later and indeed need tissues)

So when I read this originally, I took everything at face value. It was pretty deep into DC's love of Elseworlds, so it was easy to convince myself the individual issues were like them.

Of the individual character issues, "Kid Flash" was my favorite. Not just because it confirmed my negative feelings towards Wally West, but also Iris was so cool to me. She refused to back down, refused to give in, refused to just...let things work out how they will. She became a hero worthy of the Fladh mantle (for good or ill).

"Nightstar", about the daughter of Nightwing & Starfire finding her own path to udnerstanding the intersection of heroism, sacrifice and mortality, was gut wrenching when I was younger and my own parents had freshly split. Now it reads a little...immature.

"Son of the Bat", about the son of Batman & Talia al'Ghul (yes...ironic considering his current son, Damien) is...honestly kind of a brat. Unlike Nightstar, who clung to an admittedly childish, but sincere belief that her father was an invincible hero and could not truly fathom a world where that wasn't true, Ibn...was a brat. Essentially, back in the late 90s Waid gave us Damien before Damien was a thing.

"Planet Krypton" didn't resonate with me as an early teen, but as an adult almost 20 years out of HS and looking back at the 'what might have beens', Rose's doubts and feelings ring fucking true.

"Offspring" and "Gog"...I just hated. So let's skip past those.

So we get to the core of this mini-series sequel to a momentous comic book event. "The Kingdom". The kind of 'hey so maybe we didn't fix this so much?' question no one asked after Kingdom Come.

It was...okay? Later Hypertime, which this whole mini-series seemed to REALLY be about, would later be importantish to the DCU. As much as anything really matters in DC before multiple reboots.

Overall this isn't horrible. There are still interesting moments strewn throughout and I certainly wish for certain ideas to come to fruition Nightstar let's goooo, but largely this isn't essential reading. Fun, but easy to miss.… (more)