View From The Gutters Comic Book Club

This week on??View from the Gutters??our topic work is our 3-part 50th Episode Special! In part 1 we discuss the ur-event book,??Crisis on Infinite Earths, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Released in 1985-6, the Crisis was one of the first great event books (Marvel in fact rushed Secret Wars out the door just to [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters??our topic work is??Uncanny X-Force, Vol. 1-4, by Rick Remender, with art by Jerome Opena, Esad Ribic, Dean??White, and others. This series features X-Force as the X-Men???s secret wetworks teams, stepping in to permanently eliminate threats to mutantkind deemed to dangerous to be allowed to live. Contrasting our conversation last [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters??our topic work is??Superior Foes of Spider-Man, #1-6 by??Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber. One of the more recent comics we???ve discussed,??Superior Foes is a somewhat comic take (no pun intended) on the traditional team of Spider-Man villains, The Sinister Six??? despite the fact that there???s only five members on the [???]

This week on View from the Gutters our topic work is Animal Man, written by Grant Morrison with art by Chas Truog and Doug Hazlewood. Prior to the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Animal Man was a D-list superhero with less than a dozen appearances in total over the course of the silver age. [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is JLA: Tower of Babel, by Mark Waid and Howard Porter. Following Grant Morrison???s revival of the ???Big 7??? Justice League team in the mid-90s, Mark Waid took over writing duties on the book with issue 43.??Tower of Babel is the critic and fan-acclaimed first [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is Billi 99, by Sarah Byam and Time Sale. It???s a great story from twenty years ago which carries an amazing amount of resonance for the world of today. But since it was a fan recommendation, I???ll just let the person who pitched it summarize [???]

The Long Run takes place outside of our normal continuity of episodes, and features table discussion of an entire work or long selection of a series. In the third episode of this bonus series, we talk about Issues #1-160 of Ultimate Spider-Man (the Peter Parker years). First published in 2000, the Ultimate Universe was conceived [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is??Scud: The Disposable Assassin??by Rob Schrab. Published from 1994 to 1998 (with the final issues only being released in 2008), Scud??is a wild, weird, frenetic??story about a robotic assassin hired out of a vending machine who decides that he doesn???t want to die, and then [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is??Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross. Originally published as a 4-issue Elseworlds story,??Kingdom Come is one possible future of the DC Universe. A future in which conflicts between generations of heroes boil into apocalyptic battles. It is a meditation on the nature of [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is??Loaded Bible, Book 1: The Jesus vs. Vampires Gospels, by??Tim Seeley. Published from 2006-2008,??Loaded Bible is the story of the second coming of Jesus (sort of) in the post-apocalyptic ruins of the United States. It follows his adventures as he fights vampires, conflicts with the [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is??Thor: God of Thunder, Vol. 1 & 2, by Jason Aaron and??Esad Ribic. Collecting the first two arcs of the Marvel NOW relaunch of Thor, this series takes a closer look at Thor not purely as a hero, but as a god. Thor follows a [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is Strange Attractors, by??Charles Soule,??Greg Scott, and??Robert Saywitz. Set in present day New York City,??Strange Attractors is the story of a young graduate student, an aging math professor, and the odd magic they weave protecting New York from collapsing into chaos. It features an elegant style [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is??Supermarket, written by??Brian Wood??and illustrated by??Kristian Donaldson, published in 2006. Set in a cyberpunk-ish near future,??Supermarket is the story of a teenage girl name Pella Suzuki, who mediates on her existence and the city we know only as ???The Supermarket???, in between bouts of fleeing from [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is??The Authority, by??Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. An important touchstone of modern comics,??The Authority??is the banner example of the ???widescreen comics??? movement of the late 90s and early 00s which massively influenced the style and tone of super-hero comics of the last decade (and directly inspired [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is Revival, by??Tim Seeley and??Mike Norton: For one day in rural central Wisconsin, the dead came back to life. Now it???s up to Officer Dana Cypress to deal with the media scrutiny, religious zealots, and government quarantine that has come with them. In a town where [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is X-Men: Longshot. Originally released in 1985-6 as a six-issue miniseries under the title simply??Longshot, this series introduced the characters of Longshot, Spiral, Mojo, and the rest of the Mojoverse to the Marvel Universe. Although Longshot would go on to join the X-Men the following [???]

The Long Run takes place outside of our normal continuity of episodes, and features table discussion of an entire work or long selection of a series. In the second episode of this bonus series, we talk about Volumes 1-7 of Adam Warren???s??Empowered. First published in 2007,??Empowered is a refreshing take on the superhero genre. While [???]

This week on View from the Gutters, our topic work is Erfwold Book 1: The Battle for Gobwin Knob. Erfworld is an ongoing webcomic series first released in 2006. It features the somewhat bizarre adventures of Parson Gotti, a master strategy wargamer who has been summoned into/trapped in a universe which operates according to the [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is IDW???s??Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 1.??Created in 1984, TMNT was at the forefront of the anthro-boom of the mid and late 80s, and have been featured in dozens of comics, cartoons, movies, and toy series. For those who have grown up under a rock, TMNT [???]

This week on??View from the Gutters, our topic work is??The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill, by the legendary Walt Simonson. The arc???currently collected In Thor Visionaries: Walt Simonson, Vol. 1???formed the beginning of Walt Simonson???s classic character redefining run on the title, introduced the character of Beta Ray Bill, and foreshadowed events that continue to [???]