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Secret Wars itself was complete garbage, but I assume we're taking that as read.
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Jul 10, 2014 18:30
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TwoPair posted:Well yes, but it was resolved so fast. Like, Hammer and that rear end in a top hat Army general got that regulator thingy put on Tony's repulsor, but then he figured out how to override it and got it off pretty soon. It had a nice scene where Tony went to an A.A. meeting with his new dwarf buddy (a shame that he's been cast off into character limbo apparently) but it never really showed him having any struggles like considering falling off the wagon. (Oh, one thing that really bothered me about that arc though: Hammer mentions that she found out about Tony's drinking via his suit's biometric data, but how the hell did she get access to that data?) She accuses him of being a drunk and gets the general to demand the bio-metric data first, which does show alcohol in his system. I don't remember if she ever says how she even knows. If she does, its probably a lie because she knows because the Mandarin told her. SirDan3k posted:Zero Hour made no sense to me as a guy who liked the multiverse. You're assuming Hal knew what he was talking about and that it would work. I would have trouble trusting someone when their plan is to murder everyone who has every lived as the step 1. Green Arrow's entire for killing Hal is how Hal brushes off Batgirl disappearing. Hal clearly had lost it by that point. If Hal had a way to bring back the multiverse without murdering everyone I am sure the heroes would have been all for it. Did Hal ever even say he wanted to bring back the multiverse? I thought his plan was to make a "perfect" universe.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:32
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Hal was just trying to fix everything. If he had to break a few trillion eggs to make his omelette then welp. Oh I'm sorry it was Parallax not Hal.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:53
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Dr.Magnificent posted:You're assuming Hal knew what he was talking about and that it would work. I would have trouble trusting someone when their plan is to murder everyone who has every lived as the step 1. Green Arrow's entire for killing Hal is how Hal brushes off Batgirl disappearing. Hal clearly had lost it by that point. If Hal had a way to bring back the multiverse without murdering everyone I am sure the heroes would have been all for it. Did Hal ever even say he wanted to bring back the multiverse? I thought his plan was to make a "perfect" universe. His original plan was to make a perfect universe but he talked about how you can't do that because some people's happiness precludes others so his end goal became a multiverse where everyone had at least a single reality where they were perfectly happy. He was powerful enough at that point he could have rewritten the universe to just fix his life but he decides, no, Bruce deserves to be happy, Clark deserves to be happy, even the Joker deserves to be happy. It was already working when they actually stopped him so we got character left overs and pocket universes. "Batgirl disappeared Hal you have to stop!" "Jesus Ollie I literally just explained how this was going to work wait five minutes and she'll be back" SirDan3k fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 01:58
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I feel like I'm in the minority for really liking Infinite Crisis. The build up was great and it seemed to have the right blend of epic, universe shaking events with small scale personal issues and development. I know he turned into a terrible character but I really loved Superboy Prime turning evil. It felt natural, the kid didn't know his own strength and he just became what he feared. It was tragic that this kid who just wanted to go home to his 'perfect Earth' became the dark, murdering beast he hated himself. His entire tantrum at the end was well written as well, like an immature kid who has no clue how to fix his issues and just tries to bulldoze them. Sure he was whiny, but he kind of had the right to be. Sure, the idea of grim and gritty meeting the old heroes could have been done better, but I'd easily put it above Final Crisis and Zero Hour.
OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 18:34
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Jai Guru Dave posted:Secret Wars itself was complete garbage, but I assume we're taking that as read. Secret Wars was very much written for kids before the age of 10 and in that regard, it succeeds admirably. I don't know if I'd have ever read another Marvel comic besides Spider-Man if not for it. It's aged terribly and it's a Jim Shooter book, but Mike Zeck's art is still great.
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Jul 11, 2014 23:47
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OldTennisCourt posted:I feel like I'm in the minority for really liking Infinite Crisis. The build up was great and it seemed to have the right blend of epic, universe shaking events with small scale personal issues and development. I know he turned into a terrible character but I really loved Superboy Prime turning evil. It felt natural, the kid didn't know his own strength and he just became what he feared. It was tragic that this kid who just wanted to go home to his 'perfect Earth' became the dark, murdering beast he hated himself. His entire tantrum at the end was well written as well, like an immature kid who has no clue how to fix his issues and just tries to bulldoze them. Sure he was whiny, but he kind of had the right to be. Sure, the idea of grim and gritty meeting the old heroes could have been done better, but I'd easily put it above Final Crisis and Zero Hour. I'll back you up there. Maybe it's just because I read the whole trade in a Barnes & Noble back in the early days of me getting into comics and so it's nostalgic, but it all really works. Superboy-Prime, for all his clumsy dialogue, is a just a dumb kid who wants to get back to his world where he's the hero and he's convinced he can do it better than these other people. He's just going about it in the worst way. Also it's better than Final Crisis WHOA SO EDGY
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Jul 12, 2014 00:06
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I went into Infinte Crisis with basically zero knowledge of the DCU's decades of continuity (the only series I'd actually read leading up to it were Johns's Teen Titans and JSA books - I hadn't even read the original COIE) and I thought it was okay. I don't know what I'd have thought of it if I'd had this big attachment to the characters and the setting beforehand. Of course, I was also 14 or so at the time it came out, and I was just getting into DC, so most things I was reading entertained me.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:30
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TwoPair posted:I'll back you up there. Maybe it's just because I read the whole trade in a Barnes & Noble back in the early days of me getting into comics and so it's nostalgic, but it all really works. Superboy-Prime, for all his clumsy dialogue, is a just a dumb kid who wants to get back to his world where he's the hero and he's convinced he can do it better than these other people. He's just going about it in the worst way. At least IC was understandable. I went into it reading Identity Crisis and the OMAC Project and literally no other comics before hand and I still got everything I needed to know out of it. I went into FC blind and holy poo poo I couldn't parse half the stuff that was going on.
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Jul 12, 2014 23:51
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Wanderer posted:Secret Wars was very much written for kids before the age of 10 and in that regard, it succeeds admirably. I don't know if I'd have ever read another Marvel comic besides Spider-Man if not for it. I've heard this story about all these Marvel editors and publishers getting together at a convention or something in the 1980s, and when one of them addressed the assembly they started off with some comment like, "I think we can all agree that Secret Wars was terrible, but it sold, didn't it?" I went looking for a citation for this story, but instead I found Shooter's blog post from three years ago explaining how it came about.
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Jul 13, 2014 00:42
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OldTennisCourt posted:At least IC was understandable. I went into it reading Identity Crisis and the OMAC Project and literally no other comics before hand and I still got everything I needed to know out of it. I went into FC blind and holy poo poo I couldn't parse half the stuff that was going on. Final Crisis is insane bullshit even if you know what's being referenced.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:35
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OldTennisCourt posted:I feel like I'm in the minority for really liking Infinite Crisis. The build up was great and it seemed to have the right blend of epic, universe shaking events with small scale personal issues and development. The thing about Infinite Crisis for me is that it's a good example of what tends to go wrong with big event comics. You've got a terrific build up, a good kick off for the series, and then somewhere around the halfway point it breaks down for the sake of giant fight scenes and a resolution that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a pattern you see repeated over and over again. Event comics tend to have interesting ideas to set them up and then poor execution to wrap them up.
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Jul 13, 2014 16:28
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The thing with Final Crisis is that you just have to take everything at face value and not really worry about asking questions. What's the deal with that bullet that kills Gods? It's a bullet that kills Gods. What's the deal with Vampire Monitor Alan Moore? It's Vampire Monitor Alan Moore. Who are those weird Japanese pseudo-superheroes? They're the best. There's definitely some fat. I think a lot of the stuff involving the Monitors could have been removed. But I have no idea how it confuses people.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:40
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Final Crisis is too uncomplicated for it's audience and it's medium. Comic readers are used to continuity references and side-issues filled with explanations while Final Crisis is all about comics as myths where everything is taken at face value. I like it but it's an odd duck.
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Jul 14, 2014 08:02
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Final Crisis is a worse and overblown version of Seven Soldiers. Same idea, atmosphere, resolution, but done with DC's big guns. Also, being the event comic, it had artist substitutes (I love Mahnke but breaking the consistency of a book is always lovely) and a team of a dozen inkers working on a same issue. Rock of Ages is a better New Gods story. And The Invisibles ending is better at being the poetic dogpile of apocalyptic stuff. On the other hand, Superman Beyond issues are great and work as the B-Side to All-Star Superman.
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Jul 14, 2014 08:52
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SirDan3k posted:Final Crisis is too uncomplicated for it's audience and it's medium. Comic readers are used to continuity references and side-issues filled with explanations while Final Crisis is all about comics as myths where everything is taken at face value. When I first read Final Crisis I had barely read any other DC-universe comics but I had read a lot of other Grant Morrison stuff. It made perfect sense to me 
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Jul 14, 2014 15:07
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fatherboxx posted:Final Crisis is a worse and overblown version of Seven Soldiers. Same idea, atmosphere, resolution, but done with DC's big guns. Also, being the event comic, it had artist substitutes (I love Mahnke but breaking the consistency of a book is always lovely) and a team of a dozen inkers working on a same issue. There are still some great moments in Final Crisis. Ollie becoming a Justifier is a sincerely terrifying and heartbreaking moment. And I think there is a lot of good lead in to the final battle. Superman Beyond is probably the best part though. I actually got emotional when they show the inscription Supes wrote on the tombstone.
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Jul 14, 2014 15:56
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fatherboxx posted:Final Crisis is a worse and overblown version of Seven Soldiers. Same idea, atmosphere, resolution, but done with DC's big guns. Also, being the event comic, it had artist substitutes (I love Mahnke but breaking the consistency of a book is always lovely) and a team of a dozen inkers working on a same issue. Seven Soldiers is surely his best DC work.
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Jul 14, 2014 17:28
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TwoPair posted:I'll back you up there. Maybe it's just because I read the whole trade in a Barnes & Noble back in the early days of me getting into comics and so it's nostalgic, but it all really works. Superboy-Prime, for all his clumsy dialogue, is a just a dumb kid who wants to get back to his world where he's the hero and he's convinced he can do it better than these other people. He's just going about it in the worst way. Final Crisis is alot of things, but I don't think Morrison was going fir edgy when he wrote it. Hell, I'd even dare say he was going for the complete opposite of edgy. I think most readers think there's some sort of hidden meaning in it or that each panel is laden with incredibly dense and layered meaning, when in reality he was just painting with the widest brush possible.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:27
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Oh no, I wasn't saying FC was edgy, I was making a (lame) joke about how edgy my opinion would be about disliking FC. In all honesty though I'll admit there are parts of FC I like, but the whole of it just doesn't come together for me at all.
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Jul 15, 2014 07:34
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Final Crisis read like the creators being completely in love with themselves. How do you fire a bullet backwards through time to kill a New God? Comics! Why does Batman break his stance on not using guns to shoot that same bullet at a guy in a chair, before getting sent back in time by eyebeams to become a bomb? Comics! What are the chances of there being a specific symbol to counteract the Anti-life Equation, despite no one having known what exactly it was for the longest time? Comics! Why are the Monitors now literally vampires, despite no evidence of this beforehand? Comics! How does the entire Monitor plot tie in to the New Gods thing, despite no actual connection being established? Comics! Why does the villain's super-final-really-guys death come about in like a single page when his ghost floats over to Superman and makes menacing remarks before being beaten by song? Comics! How can this machine Superman is building that can only be used once completely fix everything? Comics! Why is the real-super-extra-true final villain introduced in a two issue mini series about the concept of narratives, and then killed with the power of author fiat, and then the author's mouthpiece makes some words about how things are better this way before BLOOP we're back to normal? Comics! It was like a long loving essay on how comics are cool, guys, really, can't you see how cool they are, and isn't narrative grand, and wow let's all marvel at how weird and wonderful comics can be. Plot holes? Shush you, it's comics, that's how things work, and it's amazing, what do you mean it's not amazing. Logic? No, see, comics. Pacing? No, comics. A satisfying ending to a story? No, see, the story IS the satisfying ending, because it's totally a story about narrative being important, despite its own narrative being halfway incoherent and needing to have a two-issue series jammed into the trade to explain where the final loving villain came from, considering he doesn't show up until the last loving pages in the story itself. Basically, it seems to appeal to people who really really find the entire exploration of the meaning of narrative and "experimental" storytelling and metafictional and metatextual analysis engaging. For people who just want a coherent, satisfying story, it basically goes "No, gently caress you. COMICS!"
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Jul 15, 2014 16:00
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Are we absolutely sure Hickman and Morrison aren't the same guy?
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Jul 15, 2014 16:54
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Kurui Reiten posted:Why does Batman break his stance on not using guns to shoot that same bullet at a guy in a chair, before getting sent back in time by eyebeams to become a bomb? Comics! I can't understand why people keep bringing this up. It would be out of character if Batman was using a guy to shoot a human criminal for some reason, like in the batman beyond pilot. But he's shooting the god of all evil here, in a last ditch attempt to stop his possession of the entire human race. SURELY that's kind of a different situation than the ones his oath covers.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:15
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Plus Batman literally says why as he's standing there pointing the gun.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:43
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Which is the worse event, Age of Ultron or Fear Itself? They both seem to be bland events that accomplished nothing of substance.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:46
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Shadowland.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:47
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Rita Repulsa posted:I can't understand why people keep bringing this up. OldTennisCourt posted:Which is the worse event, Age of Ultron or Fear Itself? They both seem to be bland events that accomplished nothing of substance.
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Jul 15, 2014 18:49
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Fear Itself resulted in cool costumes in some Marvel games, so Age of Ultron loses.
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Jul 15, 2014 19:09
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Fear Itself spawned Gillen's Journey Into Mystery.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:00
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Rita Repulsa posted:I can't understand why people keep bringing this up. Yes, I know. What I was saying was that this is exactly the type of plot point that Final Crisis is in love with. When I said "Comics!" I wasn't saying "I don't understand this", I was saying it was a very obvious "LOOK AT THE WEIRD poo poo WE CAN DO IN COMICS" point, like the rest of the weird poo poo in Final Crisis. It's in love with the medium, but to the point where it obscures the story itself.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:45
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Sailor Viy posted:When I first read Final Crisis I had barely read any other DC-universe comics but I had read a lot of other Grant Morrison stuff. It made perfect sense to me Now I get it. Final Crisis is not a DC event. It is a Grant Morrison event.
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Jul 15, 2014 21:47
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Zombie Samurai posted:Now I get it. Final Crisis is not a DC event. It is a Grant Morrison event. This is the secret trick to understanding anything Grant Morrison writes.
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Jul 15, 2014 21:48
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Zombie Samurai posted:Now I get it. Final Crisis is not a DC event. It is a Grant Morrison event.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:09
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OldTennisCourt posted:Which is the worse event, Age of Ultron or Fear Itself? They both seem to be bland events that accomplished nothing of substance. Fear Itself had some nice tie-ins, led into Gillen's Journey into Mystery, and had great art. The event itself was pretty bland, but it wasn't hard to sort of look at it side-ways and see how it could have been improved. You could imagine what it would be like if it was tightened up, trimmed down, and centered more closely on Thor and Captain America, and picture not a bad little event. Age of Ultron though, I don't know, I generally feel like a Bendis apologist around here but even I couldn't find much to recommend it. Totally all over the place thematically, no excitement or suspense anywhere, super forgettable art. There just wasn't a single dynamic or exciting thing about it.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:46
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In the Derailed thread, I was going to defend Civil War against being compared to Identity Crisis. Because, for real, Civil War is 50 times better than Identity Crisis, but that's more about the low regard I have for Identity Crisis. What I realized though is that I think I have a soft spot for a lot of the Marvel Events of the 2000s, from Disassembled to Siege despite the fact that most of them are poo poo. Despite the quality of those events, they seemed to shape a sense of cohesion for the Marvel Universe that was pretty effective. They worked well as spines to hold up everything else. Civil War to Siege in particular just felt like one big story being told across the Marvel Universe despite the core events being mediocre at best. I remember people expressing this back then, but probably the biggest disappointment was how quickly Marvel moved through these status-quos. The division between the heroes got to last for sometime, but I would have been down for a good three or four years of Norman in charge.
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Jul 16, 2014 00:39
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Archyduke posted:Age of Ultron though, I don't know, I generally feel like a Bendis apologist around here but even I couldn't find much to recommend it. Totally all over the place thematically, no excitement or suspense anywhere, super forgettable art. There just wasn't a single dynamic or exciting thing about it.
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Jul 16, 2014 00:44
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Spiderdrake posted:I think the best way to sum up Age of Ultron is that Bendis made big bold claims about how time was broken and time travel and and ... Then nothing happens of note. The crossover didn't even manage to muster up the "big changes!!! omg!!!" thing that all big two crossovers try to do then everyone forgets about. I think you and Timeless Appeal both hit the nail on the head here. Setting aside the specific rhetoric of "big changes/consequences," a lot of the events TA mentions-- even lackluster ones like Fear Itself-- managed to at least feel well integrated into the more tight-knit world-building Marvel's become so heavily invested in. Even if you didn't necessarily like Siege or Civil War, it was hard to ignore them, because they were good at seeding little plot hooks that could snake out and uncoil in other books. Hence the really solid Fear Itself tie-ins like Uncanny X-Men (playing around with the concept of the Worthy) or Avengers Academy (using the plot elements of the larger cross-over to tell a more intimate story about the AA cast). These didn't really feel like rote "red sky" crossovers because they worked organically with the titles they crossed over into, which probably says a lot about Marvel's editorial practices. Age of Ultron, on the other hand, didn't just feel boring. It felt, damningly, extremely skippable. IIRC it was vexed with deadline issues and delays for years, so that might account for why it felt so out of step with the rest of the line at the time, but it certainly didn't do it any favors. On top of that, it's hard to write an alternate timeline/dystopian future event with any gravity because hey, everyone knows it isn't going to matter. Even with the low expectations of permanent death in cape comics these days, I still get enthusiastic about certain Big Character Death plot beats, because they can often work as really compelling narrative kickstarts in the short term (Brubaker's Captain America, the shift to Miles Morales' Ultimate Spidey), but alternate timeline poo poo doesn't even have that to stand on, because the very premise undercuts the promise of interesting repercussions. Exceptions, I suppose, include Age of Apocalypse and Age of X, both of which were bolstered by the inventiveness of their provisional universes, and a commitment to sticking with the premise for a fairly meaty length of time, qualities which Age of Ultron definitely lacked. For all the very justified griping in comics discourse about big, fleeting plot shake-ups, they can introduce a lot of smaller, more satisfying changes, or gesture out towards other events-- at their best (and I think Dark Reign might count here, if you consider it an "event comic") you get the spectacle as well as the satisfaction of following that spectacle's trickle outwards, in other titles, to unexpected, interesting places. In that sense, AoU felt self-contained in a bad way. It wasn't just boring (as, I felt, the main Fear Itself title was), it felt like it didn't matter-- that is, out of the two big things I expect from a really good event comic, it neither provided a satisfying story in itself, nor spun off interesting stories elsewhere.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:00
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Zombie Samurai posted:Now I get it. Final Crisis is not a DC event. It is a Grant Morrison event. Infinite Crisis is a Geoff Johns event. Identity Crisis is a Brad Meltzer event. This is a useless statement.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:52
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Well Identity Crisis will always have the Sue Dibney rape hanging over it. Civil War had a lot of problems, but I can't recall anything close to THAT level of bad in it. I honestly wonder if that scene had been taken out and replaced with something else to ignite the mind wipe of Dr. Light then Identity Crisis would be more fondly remembered, at least a bit more.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:55
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Mr. Maltose posted:Infinite Crisis is a Geoff Johns event. Identity Crisis is a Brad Meltzer event. This is a useless statement. Eh, only if you're flailing to defend Morrison for some reason.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:55
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