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I know that particular Dr Strange was weak, but drat it, I stand behind Midnight Sons being :metal101:
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Aug 14, 2013 04:12
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E the Shaggy posted:I know that particular Dr Strange was weak, but drat it, I stand behind Midnight Sons being :metal101: It's divisive, I'll give it that. I think that people who aren't Dr. Strange fans are going to be more forgiving of its flaws than people who are Dr. Strange fans, though it's still about as 90's they come.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:31
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E the Shaggy posted:I know that particular Dr Strange was weak, but drat it, I stand behind Midnight Sons being :metal101: Totally agree, I forgive a lot of things for being Midnight Sons.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:48
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Random Stranger posted:And yet he gets stuck with a lot of short, weak runs. For pointing out terrible runs there was the period in the sixties where they tried to superhero him up by giving him a face mask and secret identity (this will be important later). That was followed by a crazy period where people were trying to tell an epic story with him but the writers changed every single issue. Englehart was cool but he was kicked off the book right after Dr. Strange's wife screwed Benjamin Franklin (I did not make that up). There was the heavy metal Dr. Strange period in the mid-eighties where he was using black magic and turning evil. But the worst for me was when they decided to 90's him up and go the XTREME route. I actually liked both Englehart and the black magic Dr. Strange. 
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Aug 14, 2013 12:10
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prefect posted:I actually liked both Englehart and the black magic Dr. Strange. Englehart is one of the best runs, but I just wanted to mention the weird ending.
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Aug 14, 2013 12:30
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Random Stranger posted:Englehart is one of the best runs, but I just wanted to mention the weird ending. That whole storyline started because it was the Bicentennial in the US, and Doc wanted to show Clea some American history. (And it wound up with Doc witnessing the destruction and re-creation of the universe.  )
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Aug 14, 2013 12:35
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Majuju posted:I stopped reading Runaways after Whedon had them time-travelling within two issues of taking over the book. Yeah, where did that come from? The only way that would've made sense would be if there had been a time machine and time travelling characters present in the book from the very first issue.
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Aug 14, 2013 13:02
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If I remember right Whedons run also had a lot of delays even though it was a short run, which really didnt help my enjoyment of it.
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Aug 14, 2013 13:46
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prefect posted:That whole storyline started because it was the Bicentennial in the US, and Doc wanted to show Clea some American history. (And it wound up with Doc witnessing the destruction and re-creation of the universe. Just one year after he witnessed the destruction and re-creation of the universe! He can't seem to keep the universe in one piece.
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Aug 14, 2013 13:58
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Random Stranger posted:Just one year after he witnessed the destruction and re-creation of the universe! He can't seem to keep the universe in one piece. Did I get the order of things wrong or did I forget one time that happened? I'm thinking of Sise-Neg.
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Aug 14, 2013 15:16
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prefect posted:Did I get the order of things wrong or did I forget one time that happened? I'm thinking of Sise-Neg. Sise-Neg was the end of the Marvel Premier series which led into the second Dr. Strange series. But when Dr. Strange was time traveling and Englehart was abruptly pulled off the book, the next round robin of writers effectively went back to that same well. Technically it was just the earth that was destroyed and recreated exactly as it was before in that second story, but it's closer enough.
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Aug 14, 2013 15:39
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SiKboy posted:If I remember right Whedons run also had a lot of delays even though it was a short run, which really didnt help my enjoyment of it. Yeah. Whedon's run's problem was that it was 12 issues worth of ideas shoved into 6 issues and took at least a year for it to come out.
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Aug 14, 2013 18:28
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Okay since the last one proved popular enough back to the LAW. Just for you keeping track, the first issue had Blue Beetle on the cover. This one has the Question. At no point in this series does the story focus on the person who is on the cover of the series. Right so issue two opens with a recap and an explanation of the main badguy the Avatar. He's got a load of magic artefacts that let him open portals, summon demons and use magic axes to capture people. Also he's got a whole Indian Mythology thing going on. But more on that later. Oh he also regularly surrounds himself with children, hates the military industrial complex and sees himself as a hero and the military as villains. He's transferred Capitan Atom from the axe he was caught in to a crystal prison. The more Atom struggles the faster his energy drains. Cap is also being used as a battery to keep the Justice League imprisoned on the moon. Que evil cackling. Up next The Question and the Blue Beetle try and track down the Avatar, and well this happens.   *Sigh* you stay classy 1999. The story then cuts back to Sgt. Steele and Peacemaker Project. Who are they you ask? Well kids, the down side of buying another comic company is you get all their IP. And invariably that means you get your own set of grizzled soldiers who served in World War 2, a macho super spy and a good guy spy organization. Seriously every universe has it's own Nick Fury derivative. He's one of the most popular comic archetypes after Superman and Batman. right so Steele is introduced to the head of the Peacemaker Project, a woman called...you know what. I'm just going to put this page here.  Immediately hitting on the new guy, that's real professional Justine. Oh yeah I forgot to mention, when Steele was taking the train to Peacemaker Project HQ in issue one, the compound was being attacked by Avatar's demons, and Steele's metal hand got destroyed. This serves two plot points. Now Sgt. Steele needs a new hand. And in every single issue Peacemaker HQ seems to be invaded and attacked by demons. I realize it's hard to keep out guys who can cross dimensions, but this is a bit sloppy guys. Okay, I have to post this next bit since it is genuinely one of the coolest parts of the entire book, where Judomaster makes his introduction.    Yeah Blue Beetle's fought alongside Green Lantern, the Flash and Superman but seeing a guy remove a nail without a hammer and his mind is blown. So The Question, JM and BB escape using the Bug and decide to fly to Peacemaker HQ. We cut back to Nightshade. Remember how Fate's exorcism/ tearing off her dress left her as a featureless Eternity look-a-like? How do you think they resolved that? Like this.  Bra-vo LAW. Bravo. Okay I've nearly posted half the issue at this stage. Time to give the cliff notes of the rest of the issue. Steele goes down to meet up with Peacemaker's medical head, an Indian scientist named Doctor Bhattacarja, who gives him a fully workable robotic hand. Justine keeps hitting on Steele. Steele's friend tells him he should totally sleep with her, regardless of the age difference. Since it's the 90's, man. Judomaster is amazed at how the world has changed since he's last been in it. It's full of flying bugs, satellites and the Internet. Ted asks "Have you been frozen for decades in a block of ice...being worshipped by Eskimos...something like that?" The crew fly to Peacemaker HQ, because Sgt. Steele sent them a message, or something. Nightshade wakes up from her coma with new shadow/dimensional hoping powers and no emotions after her clothes yanking experience. The group meets up in Peacemaker HQ and decide to immediately set out for the Avatar's HQ in India. Blue Beetle acts like he's a friend of Nightshade, but as far as I knew, they never met one another before this series. I guess, much like Question, they are just friends since they are all Charleton characters. The team decide to organize a strike on the Avatar's island HQ/ Orphanage (yes he has an orphanage as his HQ. To house all the children he keeps kidnapping.) so it has to be a rescue mission as opposed to a full out military strike. Then we get the real headshaking bit. It turns out the Avatar has a mole inside Peacemaker. And take a guess who it is? That's right it's the only other Indian character in the book, Doctor Bhattacarja. The series ends with Sgt Steele (with his fancy new hand) going down to Director Justine's quarters and immediately getting invited in for sex.  Yeah, that's a good way of field testing it. What's that line from Something, Something Darkside. "Yeah you might want to practice on a hotdog or something first, so you don't tear your dick off." And thus ends issue 2. So some bad and some good/funny stuff. I'm starting to almost change my opinion about this series being awful. However the next few issues quickly switch back to boring.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:37
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I'm not sure if this counts since it technically isn't a real run as much as it is a part of a run, but I'd nominate Bendis's Avengers work as being real drat bad near the end. Dude ran pretty much all the Avengers stuff for years entirely through Dark Reign pretty well, then stuff kiiinda just started falling apart. I'd say the beginning of the end was the Fear Itself tie-in books where he did that godawful cut-in interview poo poo like I was watching a loving reality show, but apparently some people actually liked that, so whatever. Instead I'll cover what came immediately after and was completely godawful, Osborn's Return arc. The whole thing reads like Bendis was sitting around one night and thought up a Dark Avengers story, then thought "poo poo, I wish I could've told that back during Dark Reign..." then thought "gently caress IT, I'LL DO IT ANYWAY". This story stretched across both Avengers and New Avengers and was awful in both of them. I'll tackle Avengers in one post and New in the other. So Avengers is the side of the story where the Avengers get their poo poo wrecked by H.A.M.M.E.R... which isn't a thing anymore, it's just a group of villain organizations calling themselves that. So first things first, Norman gets broken out of the Raft, courtesy of a joint effort by Hydra, the Hand, and AIM. Then Osborn puts on his power suit and starts manipulating the media. So the Avengers are holding a press conference post-Fear Itself because Tony says it'll help build the public's morale, then suddenly:     The gently caress is this? Okay, so Osborn actually had a little mini (that was actually good!) where he got put in some underwater secret prison so the government could make sure he couldn't plead insanity or somehow lawyer up and dodge jail time any of the normal ways rich supervillains like Osborn and Lex Luthor do. So he was held without a charge. BUT the end of that mini ends with Osborn going and turning himself in and going into the Raft. Then he gets broken out at the start of this storyarc. But it doesn't really matter, because the end of Siege still involved him being caught on TV having a mental breakdown in Green Goblin facepaint as he crashed a tiny kingdom into Oklahoma! And the start of the Osborn mini has everybody agree that they could hit him for treason or like five other crimes at any time, they just wanted their case to be airtight, so why don't they just do that now? But suddenly, because he showed up in a power suit, the Marvel public goes full retard and starts turning on the Avengers. It's like the start to Grounded or something. I expected someone to ask Iron Man why he didn't cure their cancer. That's the start to issue 20, the rest of the issue has *This is the start of Bendis putting his toys back in the box and resetting the Avengers, so Vision just up and repairs himself after Tony fiddles with the pieces off-panel at the start of issue 19 Let's move on. This is the preview at the end of issue 20 for issue 21:  This is Storm's only appearance in issue 21:  Get the storm indeed. Goddamn, I've seen poo poo on Superdickery that lied less about the contents inside than that. Nothing else really happens in issue 21 except all the Avengers get their asses kicked some more and they all get taken captive by Osborn. Oh, except Vision. Issue 22 is just the Avengers being tortured by HAMMER. There's only one interesting scene where two HAMMER guys get shrunk down into Red Hulk's body to get a blood sample and we find out Rulk's immune system can eat a guy. Oh, and this happens:   First reaction is to say him catching that punch like it's a bad anime is stupid, but the story actually explains how he did that later. What is stupid is Norman somehow making him glitch out in panel 5 of the first page like he just hit Vision's ctrl-alt-delete. That is never explained. So chalk up Osborn's powers to now include magical voice computer hacking. Like I said, I don't want to make this one post like a page long , especially since I've got a bunch of images, so I'll come back with part 2: The New Avengers side (a.k.a How to ignore your own work) and the end of the Avenger side.
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Aug 15, 2013 19:52
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TwoPair posted:I'm not sure if this counts since it technically isn't a real run as much as it is a part of a run, but I'd nominate Bendis's Avengers work as being real drat bad near the end. Dude ran pretty much all the Avengers stuff for years entirely through Dark Reign pretty well, then stuff kiiinda just started falling apart. I'd say the beginning of the end was the Fear Itself tie-in books where he did that godawful cut-in interview poo poo like I was watching a loving reality show, but apparently some people actually liked that, so whatever. What's the general consensus on Bendis's work on Avengers? I've not read New Avengers beyond the one story arc where the Collective shows up and re-empowers Magneto, and I've heard a lot of people slag him off for his Avengers stuff, but if he managed one hundred straight issues of it I can't imagine it have all been bad. quote:The gently caress is this? Okay, so Osborn actually had a little mini (that was actually good!) where he got put in some underwater secret prison so the government could make sure he couldn't plead insanity or somehow lawyer up and dodge jail time any of the normal ways rich supervillains like Osborn and Lex Luthor do. So he was held without a charge. BUT the end of that mini ends with Osborn going and turning himself in and going into the Raft. Then he gets broken out at the start of this storyarc. But it doesn't really matter, because the end of Siege still involved him being caught on TV having a mental breakdown in Green Goblin facepaint as he crashed a tiny kingdom into Oklahoma! And the start of the Osborn mini has everybody agree that they could hit him for treason or like five other crimes at any time, they just wanted their case to be airtight, so why don't they just do that now? But suddenly, because he showed up in a power suit, the Marvel public goes full retard and starts turning on the Avengers. It's like the start to Grounded or something. I expected someone to ask Iron Man why he didn't cure their cancer. I liked "the 24-hour news cycle goes after the Avengers" angle a lot better when Kurt Busiek did it, myself.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:28
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Frankly I never really liked the whole "Dark Reign" direction in the first place. Mostly because the whole bit with Osborn's rise to power never made any amount of sense.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:37
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muscles like this? posted:Frankly I never really liked the whole "Dark Reign" direction in the first place. Mostly because the whole bit with Osborn's rise to power never made any amount of sense. Well you know, he was made provisionary director of the Thunderbolts under heavy surveillance because of that time Tony decided to... mind control him into shooting an atlantean guy... for no reason. And in that position, he shot someone in an all-out war with people dying all over the place. So the president put him in charge of literally everything in the entire world. To the point that he had the power and ressources to disband and rebuild SHIELD. Never mind that when he was initially mind-controlled by Tony, he was in a Hannibal Lecter jail for his crimes as the Green Goblin.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:42
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muscles like this? posted:Frankly I never really liked the whole "Dark Reign" direction in the first place. Mostly because the whole bit with Osborn's rise to power never made any amount of sense. Yup, the Dark Reign era was too dumb for me. I was happy when the Heroic Age came after Siege and things got better, but then it went back downhill.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:42
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They acted like the whole thing was a MOBA and because Osborn got last hit he got all the credit.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:50
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From Disassembled through Siege I thought it was a fun ride. The initial start to the Heroic Age had some promise but I think it just sort of meandered here and there. I'm kind of hoping Hickman's been given the keys to set up a new Marvel era or whatnot.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:55
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Metal Loaf posted:What's the general consensus on Bendis's work on Avengers? I've not read New Avengers beyond the one story arc where the Collective shows up and re-empowers Magneto, and I've heard a lot of people slag him off for his Avengers stuff, but if he managed one hundred straight issues of it I can't imagine it have all been bad. I liked New Avengers and Mighty Avengers a lot at the time, Illuminati is excellent, Dark Avengers is real good. He did a perfectly decent job making fun comics for a long time, but he eventually ended up retreading a bunch of the same poo poo and every character began bleeding together into a snarky Bendis-mass full of confusing motivations and plots. New Avengers V2 has its moments, but his mainline Avengers book was super bland and forgettable (and started out with JRJR at his worst to boot). In the end, he practically became a parody of himself and just went through the motions, creating nothing but the most generic superhero comics outside of Ultimate Spider-Man. He's not a bad writer, as all of his current books are really good, but he stayed on for far too loving long and never really had a long term vision like Hickman seems to. Age of Ultron and his Avengers Assemble run are the shittiest bookends to his Avengers career. I really hope X-Men turns out better. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 21:44
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Metal Loaf posted:I liked "the 24-hour news cycle goes after the Avengers" angle a lot better when Kurt Busiek did it, myself. Don't be this guy. muscles like this? posted:Frankly I never really liked the whole "Dark Reign" direction in the first place. Mostly because the whole bit with Osborn's rise to power never made any amount of sense. Dark Reign is a pretty good example of a couple of different things. One is that Bendis has a habit in his superhero work of wanting to do something and then doing it without paying too much attention to the necessary legwork. He'll go on a slow burn for a half-dozen issues then wrap everything up in six pages. It's like a guy who's on a pretty even keel six days out of the week and then on Friday drinks enough Red Bull to kill a yak. The other is that Dark Reign in general suffers from the traditional superhero-universe perspective. We know, as readers, that Norman Osborn is a murderous sociopath on the best day of his life and that every bad thing a superhero says about him is completely true. We know that putting Norman in charge of anything more powerful than a taco stand is going to end in tears. The thing is that we got a lot of that from the protagonists and we got a lot of confirming information from the villains, but we didn't see anywhere near enough of the man-on-the-street perspective. Remember, we live in a nation where Oliver North is provably guilty of treason and yet managed to parlay that into a reasonably successful career as a talking head and author. Modern Americans are both cynical about our leaders and yet very easy to mislead. Osborn is crazy but he's also undeniably charismatic, which is a thread in his characterization going all the way back to the Stan Lee days, and I found it all too easy to believe that he could go on television and carefully media-manage his way into a position of authority. Then he manages to turn the Skrull invasion into a personal PR bonanza and it's onward and upward from there. It's not as well-told a story as it could be but there are elements of plausibility within it. The issue is that we never saw Osborn's rise to power from the perspective of someone who didn't already know he was a loving lunatic. The closest we came is arguably Victoria Hand in the original Dark Avengers run, and she saw him--by his deliberate design--as a smart, driven guy in a position to do some real good if he could get around his issues long enough to do it. Remember, in the period of time when Osborn was leading his "Dark" Avengers team, they were arguably more successful in fighting genuine threats and taking out villains than any of the actual active superhero teams were at that point.
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Aug 15, 2013 22:12
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Wanderer posted:The issue is that we never saw Osborn's rise to power from the perspective of someone who didn't already know he was a loving lunatic. The problem with that is Norman Osborn has been so publicly evil and insane that there isn't anyone who would care and wouldn't be aware of this. Imagine if Donald Trump tried to run for office again and his running mate was Sarah Palin. Now multiply that by a thousand. That's how the public should be reacting to Norman Osborn. Besides, could you really take a man seriously if you had pictures of him doing this?  No man in America can hold any major government position after being publicly seen and photographed straddling that large of a phallic object.
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Aug 15, 2013 22:27
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Wanderer posted:Don't be this guy. Yeah, sorry.
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Aug 15, 2013 22:39
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Gatts posted:From Disassembled through Siege I thought it was a fun ride. The initial start to the Heroic Age had some promise but I think it just sort of meandered here and there. I'm kind of hoping Hickman's been given the keys to set up a new Marvel era or whatnot. This is me to a T, it felt like Siege was the end of the entire arc he had planned and everything after that was thrown together just to get books out until the actual end of his run, which was devoted to putting all the toys back where they were when he got them.
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Aug 16, 2013 00:05
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Random Stranger posted:The problem with that is Norman Osborn has been so publicly evil and insane that there isn't anyone who would care and wouldn't be aware of this. Imagine if Donald Trump tried to run for office again and his running mate was Sarah Palin. Now multiply that by a thousand. That's how the public should be reacting to Norman Osborn. On 616, Richard Nixon killed himself after being revealed as one of the leaders of the Secret Empire. Aliens are real. Tony Stark was the Secretary of Defense for a while. You have to figure the MU's tolerance for batshittery is higher than ours. Norman going on a talk show with an understanding interviewer who's been briefed to only throw him softballs would do a lot to turn around his image.
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Aug 16, 2013 00:11
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Wanderer posted:On 616, Richard Nixon killed himself after being revealed as one of the leaders of the Secret Empire. Aliens are real. Tony Stark was the Secretary of Defense for a while. Thanks to the sliding time scale, that is now George W. Bush.
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Aug 16, 2013 00:32
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Red Skull was also Secretary of Defense for a while but in the american government's defense he had the incredible disguise of changing his name to Dell Rusk.
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Aug 16, 2013 00:37
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Hey, he didn't change his name. He re-arranged the letters. You'd have to be some kind of Batman level genius to decode that one. Or anyone who ever played the Dragonlance RPG. Right, so back to the L.A.W. Issue three (with Peacemaker on the cover.) The Past is Always Present! Oh God bless you Bob Layton and the inventive names you've come up with for comic stories. The series opens up with Ted Kord having a flash back to his youth fighting alongside the first Blue Beetle.   Ah don't worry Ted, it's just a dream. DC would never let you really die a gruesome death. After that the entire issue becomes super boring. Most of the L.A.W. team are flying to the Avatar's HQ, while Judomaster bores everyone with stories about his time during World War 2 and his teen sidekick, Tiger. Nightshade on the other hand is visiting her ambassador uncle. She discovers that a bunch of the guests in the party are secretly demons disguised as humans who she can sniff out with her new powers. She banishes them before teleporting her uncle to safety in Peacemaker HQ. The highlight of the issue is Steele's reaction to Nightshade teleporting into their HQ.  A bit dramatic? Is there a correct protocol for using teleporting powers? Anyway the Avatar launches a surprise attack on the L.A.W. team. Somehow he knew they were coming. There's a long, boring fight scene, mainly because it's two jets fighting a bunch of flying demons, with only one hero (Peacemaker) who can actually fly. During the fight Judomaster falls to his apparent death which causes the Avatar to back off. The heroes land on the island, but can't find Judomaster. The gang are puzzled at what to do next, but the Question figures they have to finish their mission. Oh and he also works out that someone is a traitor. Back at the Peacemaker HQ (where for some reason Blue Beetle is drawn in the background, making it look like he's in two places at once) the heroes are given another ultimatum by the Avatar, and I don't care. Something about GPS satellites that Ted Kord has built as a kind of super weapon. And how Avatar is relying on his mole to take control of it for him. The issue ends with the Avatar gloating of his triumph to Captain Atom and Judomaster. And Judomaster realizes the Avatar is actually his young sidekick, Tiger. Don't worry, next issue has more of the whacky stuff.
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Aug 16, 2013 01:41
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muscles like this? posted:Frankly I never really liked the whole "Dark Reign" direction in the first place. Mostly because the whole bit with Osborn's rise to power never made any amount of sense. They basically decided "we need our own Lex Luthor. Osborn is the arche-enemy of our most popular character and is a businessman in a suit therefore...". Like a lot of things in Bendis' Avengers run, especially late, it's taking a square peg and mashing it into a round hole. He's got a role he needs filled so he'll just scan through the Handbook until he finds a semi-obscure character that works on the most base of base levels. Need a superpowered crime lord? Use the Hood despite the fact it being a complete 180 shift in character. Need a Ms. Marvel equivalent for our new Dark Avengers? Have noted misandrist Superia dress in a skimpy outfit taking orders from a man with no problem; she's got super strength so it works!
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Aug 16, 2013 03:33
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Suben posted:Need a Ms. Marvel equivalent for our new Dark Avengers? Have noted misandrist Superia dress in a skimpy outfit taking orders from a man with no problem; she's got super strength so it works! Yeah, what the gently caress was that about. Was that even addressed in the story?
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Aug 16, 2013 03:36
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Suben posted:
I only know The Hood from Avengers Academy and that pretty awesome mini with Damian Hellstrom and Morbius. What was he like before?
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Aug 16, 2013 03:40
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I enjoyed Bendis' Avengers for the most part but man did he completely miss the mark with Noh-Varr. That Protector identity and costume were so far away from what that character should be and I would've preferred he had just created a new character in his place. Aaron seemed to have a pretty good feel for him in that one shot with Wolverine and Fantomex, I would have liked to see him have more time with the character.
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Aug 16, 2013 03:42
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Dacap posted:I enjoyed Bendis' Avengers for the most part but man did he completely miss the mark with Noh-Varr. That Protector identity and costume were so far away from what that character should be and I would've preferred he had just created a new character in his place. Don't remind me. I barely kept being a Noh Varr fan during that phase.
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Aug 16, 2013 03:43
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WickedHate posted:I only know The Hood from Avengers Academy and that pretty awesome mini with Damian Hellstrom and Morbius. What was he like before? In his original mini Parker wasn't exactly evil or a big planner. He was just a low level thug who kind of fell backwards into the powers. I mean, he wasn't a nice guy but he certainly wasn't "supervillain" material.
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Aug 16, 2013 03:50
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muscles like this? posted:In his original mini Parker wasn't exactly evil or a big planner. He was just a low level thug who kind of fell backwards into the powers. I mean, he wasn't a nice guy but he certainly wasn't "supervillain" material. That's the thing though, he tried to come across as a big planner, but it's not like his plans were especially effective without someone whispering in his ear. I think it's pretty clear that Osborne brought him on because he would be so far out of his depth that he would be an easy pawn I read comics today solely because of Ultimate Spider-man. I love what Bendis does for the most part, and don't really try to defend him since I know I'm biased. But Avengers after Fear Itself was truly terrible. It's like he knew what he was going to do for AvX (Which I loved BTW) and End Times, but couldn't go there yet, so had to put something out. He put out 232 Avengers books totaled up by the way.
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Aug 16, 2013 05:44
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TwoPair posted:I'd say the beginning of the end was the Fear Itself tie-in books where he did that godawful cut-in interview poo poo like I was watching a loving reality show, but apparently some people actually liked that, so whatever. It was a stupid thing because it was a gigantic waste of Bacchalo's art, but it was played to perfection in the issue where Daredevil joined the team, which I think is safe to say the last good Bendis Avengers issue. Lurdiak posted:Well you know, he was made provisionary director of the Thunderbolts under heavy surveillance because of that time Tony decided to... mind control him into shooting an atlantean guy... for no reason. And in that position, he shot someone in an all-out war with people dying all over the place. People still make the "He shot the Skrull Queen so he gets the promotion" argument? I know Thunderbolts isn't the most popular book out there, but it is the book that Norman starred in, so it's pretty important. A major part of why Norman was pushed up the ladder was because he had the most success against the Skrull threat. He didn't use Stark-based technology, so he and his forces were able to save Washington DC. That's kind of a big deal. Being broadcast as killing the Skrull Queen was just the icing on the cake. As for Dark Reign, I enjoyed it, mainly for Dark Avengers. Dark Avengers is a pretty amazing book if you look at it as being about what happens when anti-heroes fail to follow-up on the anti-hero path. Ares is warned not to join the team, but does anyway because he doesn't see anything wrong with it. He's the only one with any success in that even though he dies a horrible death, he still dies a good guy. Norman Osborn tries to save the Sentry, which would in turn save himself, but fails on both accounts and ruins everything. Noh-Varr realizes he's on the wrong team and proceeds to merely run away from his problems. Bullseye is the most interesting in that playing the hero really gives him some meaning and makes him genuinely likeable, but then in one moment we see him throw it all away.
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Aug 16, 2013 07:21
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I might be remembering wrong, but my favorite part of DA was the roster sitting around in Avengers tower basically saying 'god this hero poo poo is way too much work, can we take a day off'
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Aug 16, 2013 07:30
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Osborn's Return part 2: New Avengers -or- "You take that finished story home, throw it in a pot, add some Osborn, some Dark Avengers... baby you got a lovely story going!" So, on the Avengers title, Bendis was just writing Captain America & Co. getting their asses stomped by HAMMER while Osborn smirked. Over on New Avengers though, he had another side of the story going. Osborn decided that if he was going to reform HAMMER, he needed to do everything exactly the same because that's how you're successful apparently. See, this part is why I said originally the story felt like a Dark Avengers story that just came too late, because it just starts setting everything up exactly like it was pre-Siege and rolls with it. Norman goes to a bunch of villains and recruits them. Superia from Hydra agrees to be Ms. Marvel, the Gorgon from the Hand puts on a Wolverine suit, and Hawkeye's brother Barney (a.k.a Trickshot) gets pulled in after some mini I didn't read. AIM also manages to put the Thor clone from Civil War back together (after the entirety of loving Asgard fell on it during Siege). Rounding out the team are two newcomers from the Osborn mini: Toxie Doxie (gently caress I hate that codename) and Ai Apaec. Norman convinces Doxie to be Scarlet Witch. This makes no sense since her powers are all based around her altering her body chemistry so she has stuff like paralyzing breath. (Interesting side note: Bendis didn't screw that part up, I just found the costume choice odd. No, the person who would screw up later on would be Jeff Parker in Thunderbolts, who just decided "gently caress it" and had her start doing straight up magic poo poo for no reason.). Ai Apaec is my favorite addition though. See, Ai Apec is a Central American spider god guy with a cool character design. So here's how he gets added to the team in issue 18:     Just "gently caress you, here's a magic pill, we got a Spider-Man now". Issue 19 has the NA travel to a disaster site, but Victoria Hand (who works for them) gives them the wrong coordinates (because she's a double agent for Osborn), delaying them from reaching the disaster site before the Dark Avengers save the day. So then we have a showdown and issue 20 is the mandatory superhero fight. A fight at this juncture is a bad idea, but Cage just goes for it because back when Osborn broke out of prison before this whole mess started, we got this scene:  So yeah, after Jessica tells him, Cage goes bonkers at the sight of Osborn and attacks when he probably shouldn't   I suppose that yes, it's a good idea to try to capture Osborn, but you're in the middle of a ravaged area where there are still people. As said people point out:  All it's doing is proving Norman's point that the Avengers are all psychos. They start losing, bail, and head back to NYC, where Ragnarok (the Thor clone) is waiting. Issue 21 starts, they kill Ragnarok, then head back to the mansion, where the public continues to be stupid:  Then the NA get home and the government shows up to take the mansion:    HOLD ON A SECOND! Let's take a quick commercial break and go back to the main Avengers book. Issue 23 has the whole team still captured, and Madame Hydra, with a tied-up Captain America, meets Barack Obama in the middle of the desert to chat (well, okay, Obama's on an iPad, but whatever):    Well good on you, Barry! Not giving in to terrorist demands! Waaait a minute...  This is from the same issue later on. So, given this and the scene in New Avengers, there are two possibilities.
 The NA almost get in a fight before Dr. Strange warps them back to the Sanctum Sanctorum, where Cage finds out Jessica's taken off because she doesn't feel safe (someone chucked a bottle at her and Squirrel Girl earlier when they were leaving the mansion). He leaves. The rest of the team take off and interrogate Victoria Hand and find out she's not a double agent, she's a triple agent and she was reporting Osborn's actions to Cap the whole time. So they set a trap for the Dark Avengers and we get this scene.   Yeah, Skaar's a double agent working for Cap too. Which makes sense, I mean, he's been a hero up til now so I bet pretty much everybody was wondering what the hell he was doing on this team. "BUT WAIT", you ask, "Why has Skaar waited so long to pull this?" ... I don't know, what are you asking me for? Issue 23 has Skaar beat the poo poo out of the whole team then run off to free Captain America. Concurrently, in Avengers 23, Daisy Johnson from SHIELD is freeing all the other Avengers. The New Avengers bust in to finish the job Skaar started, and oh, one more thing:  Well goddamn, Ai Apaec! If you could just turn back into your spider-monster form whenever you wanted to, why didn't you do that when you were pissed off at Osborn in the jungle in the first place? (Just like Toxie Doxie, Apaec's next appearance would be in Thunderbolts, where Jeff Parker turned him back into six-armed black Spider-Man, either because he just didn't give a poo poo, or he just forgot.) Anyway, the story finally wraps up in Avengers 24 where everybody throws down with Osborn and it turns out the reason he's been able to no-sell punches from Luke Cage and Vision so effortlessly is because he got AIM to use some crazy tech to make him into a Super-Adaptoid so he just copies powers. Rulk socks him one though before they know this, so he turns into a big purple Hulk with those trademark Osborn cornrows and it looks really silly so I'll just repost this edit Gavok made in the Ruination thread based on a Dr. McNinja strip. Here's the actual pages if you care.  The Avengers beat Osborn by overloading him with power until he melts.   Then the President tells Captain America to go do some PR work so the public will stop being so stupid  And that's the end! There are so many problems with this story it's mind-blowing.
This story is terrible. Badly planned, badly written, and I hate Mike Deodato drawing New Avengers with a passion because all the women's suits look awful. I mean, I know women in comics are oversexualized, but Deodato's women look like they might as well be wearing body paint instead of a costume. It's the worst story I've ever read... from Marvel. I'll probably do a post about Lobdell's Superman later.
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Aug 16, 2013 07:48
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:48 |
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I never read that storyline besides your post right now. Maybe the President thought it was a good idea to seize the manson on his own. Hyrdra could have made a good point, but he wasn't going to do it because a terrorist told him to do so. Hell, the last page you posts even says "you guys are out of control and you need to do literal crowd control".
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Aug 16, 2013 17:40
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