Earth X

As good as Earth X?! DARE THEY ASPIRE TO SCALE THAT TOWERING ZIGGURAT!?

It's not so much that I don't like it, it's that it isn't really any good.

Well, okay, but in no way is "Alex Ross Just Does Boring Kingdom Come Again But With Marvel And Worse Art" a brilliant piece of sci-fi in its own right.

Planet Hulk is probably a better book. At least it isn't a thick shroud of dreary self importance draped over the pathetically fragile skeleton of a bad story.

Planet Hulk is terrible.
I highly recommend it to fans of shitty fantasy novel series or people who think Edgar Rice Burroughs was too deep.

Earth X and its sequels can't seem to decide whether they want to be a story or an empty catalogue of costume concepts inspired by already existing Marvel properties. The two visibly compete for page space.

Another Alex Ross project, Marvels, was actually quite good until [SPOILER]90'S Ghost Rider makes the mandatory cameo in the last panel.

Ross didn't write MARVELS.

Should we just give the word 'brilliant' a nice, quiet burial today?

As for MARVELS, pretty much any good idea in that book is from Busiek. Ross was just there to wow people with OMG PAINTINGS before people started to learn just how boring and lifeless his artwork actually is.

Ross ties nicely into my blather about many fanboys having no imagination due to reading too many comic books. The moment in Marvels that crystallizes this perfectly is when he paintcasts Russell Johnson as Reed Richards.

I do like that he painted Randolph Scott as Superman and doesn't seem to realize it.

I think maybe it was Bruce Timm who said "I wish Alex would throw his camera away."

Alright, that's fair.

I mean, all you need to know about Ross is that his last big, hype-fueled project, Justice, just turned out to be the fucking Superfriends, except every character was frowning.

The man has no fucking imagination.

Extra points for giving us a Sherilyn Fenn Gwen Stacey, however.

*faps*

*cries*

I'm pretty sure Ross' only thought when writing anything is "You know Watchmen would have been much better if it had REAL characters in it instead of dumb ones that Alan Moore made up."

I will say it's a shame that Ross' later work has devalued Marvels. He's a fine painter and all, but the sheer repetition of his layouts is numbing. If Marvels was his only comics work outside of covers, I would sing his praises. Anyone who can make Spider-Man look so very much like just some dude in a suit deserves it.
Oh and his Space Ghost poster is kind of wicked.

The only time I've thought Ross brought something to the table that actually elevated a book was Uncle Sam.

Ok, I actually quite like Earth X. I really like the dark artwork and it was what convinced me to buy it. Following Earth X I got into Mike Mignola in a big way, simply looking for a simlar art style.

It's worth mentioniing that when I bought it I barely read comics at all, especially superhero comics. Learning about the Marvel Universe through Earth X was sort of cool (since each chapter had the origin story). Buying it as a TBP was a big strange chunk of information about the Marvel Universe. So for those reasons Earth X always has a fond place in my heart.

Now in retrospect, Kingdom Come is pretty disappointing to me. Marvels has its moments. I don't think the story in either of those two books really works.

So, you both dug it because you have no frame of reference and lowered standards. GRATS!

I think I might be in the minority, but Kingdom Come ruined Alex Ross for me. The story was so monumentally awful that it pointed out the ridiculousness of the overwrought art. By the end it was like reading a web comic where the trying-to-be-clever creator takes a Renaissance work of art and puts comic word bubbles over it. "LOOK, IT'S CLEVARZ!!!"

And I second Brad's assessment of Ross' art, it really is lifeless and bland, and has no business being used in a medium known for dynamic art.

I was gonna post this:



But you trick-ass marks would probably prefer this:

No, I think he's saying you guys are all ass-backwards in your assessments. That's what I was saying with the Bizarro pics.

"Little"? It's 472 pages, not counting spin offs and appendices and shit. Your judgment is off across the board!

Funny books are serious business.

No, I'm saying don't expect anyone to take your opinion seriously when you openly admit you don't know what you're talking about.

The shitty story it's telling.

The perceived quality of a story is irrelevant, in this case. Ken is right.

Hooray for mediocre people.

Nonsense. It's a nice little nod to the era's of the Marvel universe yet to come.

I didn't think Earth X was bad, but it certainly didn't need to be 12 whole issues and in hardcover stock.

My main problem is that it presented this pretty interesting idea "What if everyone was some kind of mutant!" and...did not explore that one damn bit, except that it made Ben Grimm feel good and peter Parker feel redundant. The only thing they ever touch on is that the oil industry plummets because some people can fly. And like Heroes did, the main result of people having powers is that...everyone's an asshole.

I would like to see someone actually explore what this would do to society (And I don't count Top 10, which was itself pretty neat, but was more like a Rifts-esque pan universe than exploration of the concept) Would someone with water powers be able to create massive hydraulic empires out in the desert? With those that have powers allowing them to withstand the cold build cities in mineral-rich but hard-to-live in places like Russia, Alaska or Quebec? Would people with similar mutations like scales or wings or rock skin identify with each other more than those of their parent race or country? Or with those with resource generating/refining powers turn into wage slaves for the manipulative?

Lotta blown potential.

Ross annoys me to no end, but I'd by lying if I said I didn't dig the living fuck out of his KC Fred MacMurray-as-Captain Marvel. For me that's how I'm always going to picture that character.

I love Marvels because it was so different and refreshing in a time when everything had becoming MAXIMUM CARNAGE with the holofoil cover. To this day I still reread it and appreciate it.

I agree that Ross has only hurt himself and any good early work he may have done because of his superfriends/70's obsessions though. His work over the last decade or so has become so paint by numbers it's pathetic.

Compare this lazy work:


to this:

Regarding the art, I still like it. Lots of black scratchy shadows. That sort of thing appeals to me.

Regarding the story, yeah it's fair to say I enjoyed it cause I had no frame of reference. I still enjoyed it at the time.

However, I don't know how anyone enjoys Marvel/DC superhero comics any more. Any criticisms of Earth X (endless iterations of the same characters and dredging up the same origin stories) seems to be applicable to most of the superhero comic genre.

I'll say one other thing for the guy: as I understand it, he designed most of the original lineup of characters for Astro City, and there are some great designs in there. It's enough to make me think he missed his calling as a designer as opposed to an incredibly stiff and unimaginative painter. But maybe Astro City was a fluke, I don't know. His "New Cap" design was pretty bleah.