Rambling stream of comics conciousness

Nothing much of any interest to say today -what's fucking new, right? Just a few bits and pieces that have been running around my head of late. Number one: Marvel's actually quite a bit better than DC at the moment isn't it? I mean I'm enjoying my Blackest Night and all, but if you look at Marvel they've got all the cool writers - Hickman, Aaron, Fraction, Remender, Brubaker, Millar, Ellis, van Lente, Abnett & Lanning, Cornell, Diggle. That's quite a list. I'm not saying that the writers at DC are shit, I mean they've got Johns, Morrison and Rucka, but the geezers at Marvel are hipper, funnier, edgier and dare I say it, younger (I think).

The whole Norman Osborn Dark Reign bollocks bores me, but you know...Old Man Logan, Ghost Rider, Cap, The Fan Four, Secret Warriors, Iron Man - those are all top quality comics. I'm not even reading Hercules, Daredevil, The Guardians of The Galaxy, Nova or The Punisher, but I hear they're all brilliant too. They can't fail to be when you look at the calibre of creators working on them. It really is an amazing line-up. In fact I'd say you could pick up just about any Marvel book at the mo and enjoy it - take Doctor Voodoo for flip's sake. Two issues in and it's fucking brilliant. Really. Remender writing a mental voodoo story with all sorts of A list baddies. Great art from some fellah whose name escapes me (sorry) and a lot of it is set in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans which in itself is a fantastic idea. Issue two has all these demons running about in the wrecked city killing the population. It's the perfect setting - Nightmare in New Orleans! Brilliant. Where else are the demons going to go but a disaster-hit city mired in despair and misery?

Meanwhile, nothing much seems to be happening with DC's books. I'm soldiering on with the whole New Krypton saga, but it really isn't much good at the moment and it's costing a lot to keep up to speed with the stodgy story. Blackest Night? It's good, but I reckon it must be a turn off to a lot of people who aren't heavily invested in the DCU. Flash Rebirth has been terrible thus far and seems to have disappeared completely. Wednesday Comics was good. Batman and Robin is brilliant. Nothing else is really getting me excited, although I am enjoying The Mighty which is set outside the DCU.

Anyway, I'm once again trying to force myself to drop some titles and it's the DC stuff which is looking most likely for the chop at the mo. Meanwhile I'm having to force myself not to pick up all the Marvel books.

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Grabbed a copy of 2000AD the week before last. Been enjoying the old stuff so much, I thought it was time for one of my yearly attempts to get into the current incarnation of the comic. Nyeer. It was OK.The Dredd story was enjoyable enough, but the rest left me a bit cold. There's this one story about a war between Heaven and Hell where a naked woman strolls about being asked to give blowjobs to demons. I'm reading it and thinking, fuck's sake, you couldn't give this to a kid to read. Which is a shame really, because the beauty of classic 2000AD as far as I'm concerned is the way that it offered up subversive, independent thinking in the guise of adventure stories for kids. Yes there was violence, but it was over the top, slapstick stuff. There wasn't any bad language or sex and you could happily bung it on the bottom shelf at the newsagents. I know that the market for the thing is 30+ men now, but for me it's lost what made it great. Anarchic comics for 11-year-olds, that's what I want, even if there isn't any demand.