SMAX... that blue guy in TOP 10, right?

[Doc Nebula]

amIrigh'?

[Buster's Uncle]

You've stumped me.

-Wait; the Alan Moore thing?  Yeah, no.

[Doc Nebula]

Smax is a character in Alan Moore's TOP TEN.  If you haven't read TOP TEN, you really should.

[Buster's Uncle]

[a memory clicks into place]

Hey, a couple of weeks ago, I finally read the first collection of Astro City.  I found myself disappointed, somehow.

[Doc Nebula]

ASTRO CITY is not Moore.  And I find it disappointing, too.  But I have a hard time separating the personal from the objective with Kurt, so, you know.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, I know.  Maybe when my brain's working, I'll be able to articulate it...

[Doc Nebula]

For me, at least with issue 1, I couldn't read any single panel without being forcibly reminded of some other panel in some other comic where whatever it was that Kurt was doing, at that moment with that character, had been done before by some better writer with some better character. 

That's the major problem I have with ASTRO CITY... it is ENTIRELY derivative.  Every character is based on some other character.   Every storyline is derived from work done by other people.  It's like, Kurt wanted to do stories with characters he did not have access to, so he created ASTRO CITY so he could do all these stories. 

A lot of people have no problem with that.  It bothers me, though. 

Beyond that, though, most of the stories I've read are just.... mediocre. 

Kurt's best work remains JLA/Avengers.  He did a fantastic job with that.

[Buster's Uncle]

I did like that one.

-Though he missed a trick.  When it got to those cute JLA/Avengers annual meetings, there was a reference by Wonder Woman to Cap going back to the All-Star Squadron/Invader reunions, right?  Why not Wonder Woman, too?  Not bound by continuity at that point, so why not?

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm having SERIOUS trouble with my internet this morning, which is why I'm being so sluggish responding...

[Doc Nebula]

I did like that one.

-Though he missed a trick.  When it got to those cute JLA/Avengers annual meetings, there was a reference by Wonder Woman to Cap going back to the All-Star Squadron/Invader reunions, right?  Why not Wonder Woman, too?  Not bound by continuity at that point, so why not?

Because she's just a GURL, silly. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh.  Silly me.

...

'Cause it's funny...

[Doc Nebula]

Sure.  But Cap could kick every single imposter's ass all day long. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Wha'd ya think of the Watchmen movie?

[Doc Nebula]

Enjoyed it until the climax/ending.  They changed way too much of the ending for absolutely no reason I could understand at all.  But the fight scene between Ozymandius and the Comedian was awesome.

[Buster's Uncle]

...The ending in the original was weak, to be fair, and if ever a story demanded a non-matrixed style for the fight scenes, it's Watchmen.  The fights in the book were ugly, by design, because violence is.  I think it would be hard to miss the point of something harder than that.

Also, their Ozzy was just plain bad.  Completely miscast, and completely off-model.

The Silhouette was hot, though.

I didn't HATE it, but I went in with low expectations.