I would have to concur. If you wanted to know about the characters and plots you can just sit on a wiki all day. It's about the journey, just like you said.

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

Yep. I am pretty familiar with where most of the characters end up, I have read a lot of the "modern" marvel comics. I am having a blast reading the older comics and seeing how the pieces fit together. Its really interesting.

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I assume you use the term 'pieces fit together' very loosely when it comes to the first few years of Marvel history.

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

You would be surprised how many things from the early years of marvel come back in later years.

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Yeah, I've seen in the characters section where it says certain villains make appearances much later down the line. Sometimes it is a little shocking.

Also on the topic of rating comics. I have almost 3 times as many 2 stars as I do 4 stars. A lot of 3 stars, and a small handful of 1's and 4's. I hardly had 2's before I started being a harsher critic. It's just weird to see how low many of these rate from the 60's when I'm being honest about the ratings.

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

Regarding the "does the art effect your rating" issue:

I would say that for the most part it doesn't effect my rating unless it is exceptionally good or disastrously bad. For example; any time an artist looks to Street Fighter II's "Blanca" for inspiration on how to draw Wolverine that's an automatic 2-stars-or-less rating from me lol

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That is exactly how I treat art. A really well drawn book (compared to stuff from the same time) or a really bad art will change a rating, but the story is what matters to me.

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I keep on reading New DC's Flash, because I really like the art, but I don't care much for the story. Same goes for books and films and music. I'm primary interested in artistic style, not so much in content. But it's hard to distinguish. What I would call a masterpiece is a piece of art which manages to fulfill on both sides, so much, that you're not able to tell anymore, what came first and what influences more the other element than the other does in opposite direction, content or art. IMO perfect example of a comic-book which managed this is Asterios Polyp from Mazzucchelli.

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I just gave my first 2 fours in a long time, one to a power man and one to maybe the best issue of Thor yet. I actually re-read the Thor issue. The second half was only ok, but the first half was told in a mythology/fairy tale way that was really well done. (It was Thor Annual #5)

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I recently got through that weird "unofficial" Marvel/DC crossover in Amazing Adventures and Thor. I actually thought the way the characters popped up in all three and told a continuous story was really clever, so I gave the last issue of that 4 stars. The comics they were in kinda sucked, though. =p The JLA one was probably the best of the three.

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