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I think most of the events of the modern era have been divisive. I can't think of a single one that has had a real consensus behind it being really good (maybe 52 if you count that, and more people than usual seemed to enjoy Infinity) and while there are some universally reviled ones (Countdown to Final Crisis, Fear Itself) there was plenty of arguments about just about everything. In addition to Civil War and Identity Crisis, I remember World War Hulk and Avengers vs. X-Men sparking a lot of arguing, both over the quality and who was "right" and how if the book is being sympathetic to THE GUYS WHO ARE BEING BAD it sucks, or it just sucks in general, etc. I would say Forever Evil was divisive because I know some people liked it, but really people didn't seem to pay much attention.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:57
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Edge & Christian posted:I think most of the events of the modern era have been divisive. I can't think of a single one that has had a real consensus behind it being really good (maybe 52 if you count that, and more people than usual seemed to enjoy Infinity) and while there are some universally reviled ones (Countdown to Final Crisis, Fear Itself) there was plenty of arguments about just about everything. I'd say Annihilation is pretty universally loved. It's a big crossover event, but most people don't think of it that way because it mostly concerned characters no one knew about or gave a poo poo about before that. But yeah, most modern events are torn apart and picked apart panel by panel on the internet. I think people were too harsh on WWH, but it was Marvel's fault. They played it up like a big deal when it should've been treated as a fun, "Check this poo poo out" series. It was awesome to see Hulk wreck the X-Men. The ads should've just been like, "Dude, Hulk fuckin' breaks Colossus's arms and mashes the poo poo out of Wolverine's head. poo poo's RAD, buy it." But they were all, "The Hulk is back and this time it's personal and consequences will NEVER be the same." Another one is Schism and AVX. The X-Men thread haaaates them, but by all accounts outside SA I think people generally liked it. I sure did.
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Jul 5, 2014 00:36
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Was the Sinestro Corps War especially divisive? Maybe it wasn't exactly an "event" insofar as it only really happened in the GL and GLC titles, but it often seems to be counted as one. Of course, it ran concurrently with Countdown, which probably makes it look much better.
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Jul 5, 2014 00:43
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Unmature posted:I think people were too harsh on WWH, but it was Marvel's fault. They played it up like a big deal when it should've been treated as a fun, "Check this poo poo out" series. It was awesome to see Hulk wreck the X-Men. The ads should've just been like, "Dude, Hulk fuckin' breaks Colossus's arms and mashes the poo poo out of Wolverine's head. poo poo's RAD, buy it." But they were all, "The Hulk is back and this time it's personal and consequences will NEVER be the same." And I thought Sinestro Corps War was really dumb and mashing-action-figures-together-don't-ask-how-this-works-it's-so-badass-who-cares?, but I think nearly every big story Geoff Johns has written is incredibly dumb like that.
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Jul 5, 2014 00:46
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SCW is basically everything I don't like about Johns' GL come to a head. Especially the further whitewashing of Hal's past crimes and how he made sure to remove all the stuff that made Kyle a special Lantern. I think WWH's problem was that it didn't seem to have a very good endgame since Hulk just clowns everyone so quickly and then it just doesn't have a very satisfying ending. Although, I remember hearing that Pak had to change his original plan because of Loeb wanting to do the Red Hulk stuff. Not sure how true that is.
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Jul 5, 2014 00:57
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Does Hush count? It was certainly treated like an event and pulled in a lot of characters (mostly Batman related). I remember everyone loving it at the time, especially me because I was like 13. People didn't really start hating it til a while after. Readers hated the ending, but now people seem to hate the whole story. I have yet to reread it since it was published.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:04
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I think most events sell better than issue 23 of whatever hero isn't Batman, Wolverine or Spider-Man, and that's why they keep doing them. I have question, recently (the past 5 years or so, maybe longer) Marvel will do crossovers between 2 failing comics to drum up support for both, or either really. Has that ever worked? I'm specifically thinking of Journey into Mystery/New Mutants, but there have been other cases.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:06
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Skwirl posted:I have question, recently (the past 5 years or so, maybe longer) Marvel will do crossovers between 2 failing comics to drum up support for both, or either really. Has that ever worked? I'm specifically thinking of Journey into Mystery/New Mutants, but there have been other cases. Usually those smaller-scale crossovers seem to actually be creator driven, so there's that. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 01:19
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Edge & Christian posted:I mainly remember most of the arguments about WWH either being "this is bullshit, this guy would never beat this other guy" and "yeah but Hulk is totally right and he's a fukken pussy he should kill that rear end in a top hat Tony Stark and Doctor Strange and REED RICHARDS THAT PIECE OF poo poo COCKSUCKER of course Marvel is pussying out and not letting Hulk be a badass Hulk is blameless and should slaughter everyone one of those monsters". World War Hulk bothered me because Tony Stark confessed to crimes that would send him away for twenty years in a world wide broadcast and there were zero consequences. Marvel seemed to not even realize that a major government official saying, "Why yes, as a private citizen I did kidnap and effectively imprison a man," would have major fallout.
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Jul 5, 2014 02:29
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Well, it was the Hulk.
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Jul 5, 2014 02:36
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Yeah I think people would've understood.
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Jul 5, 2014 02:39
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You're supposed to kidnap and imprison the Hulk.
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Jul 5, 2014 03:19
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I'm pretty sure there's even a full time employee of the military whose job is to kidnap and imprison the Hulk. I think he turned into a Hulk later.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:30
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If anything I would've been more upset at him for loving it up and letting the Hulk come back.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:47
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What about Flashpoint? I never read it because I didn't care, and then everyone learned the events in it were going to reboot the DCU. Was it any good or just as dumb as I thought.
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Jul 5, 2014 05:33
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greatn posted:I'm pretty sure there's even a full time employee of the military whose job is to kidnap and imprison the Hulk. I think he turned into a Hulk later. The difference being that he actually had a mandate from the government to go out and arrest Bruce Banner. (Maybe. Sometimes. Look, real-life political considerations is one more thing to throw onto the pile of things that Marvel doesn't understand along with the effects of radiation on a human body and what exactly a "mutant" is.) Tony Stark and pals just decided to do it on their own, didn't hold a trial, and launched the guy into space. Even if more of the population of Marvel America okay with this, Tony has political enemies who can easily latch onto the "Why isn't this guy in prison right now?" thing. He'd be so mired in scandal at the very least he'd have to resign as the directory of S.H.I.E.L.D., though he did things on a weekly basis that should have had people calling for his blood on the nightly news so what's one more scandal that should have prevented him from functioning?
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Jul 5, 2014 07:20
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Bruce Banner hasn't been legally considered a person in years. AS far as the government is concerned Banner died in the accident and the monster created by the same accident occasionally decides to look like Banner. Banner is legally dead and has been basically since his identity got outed.
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Jul 5, 2014 08:20
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The biggest downside to WWH was the stupid loving reveal that It was agents of the Red King that planted a bomb in the ship and Miek knew but let it go off because of stupid reasons. It would have been so much better if it was a accident that Stark and co were responsible for instead of the stupid cop-out easy resolution we got.
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Jul 5, 2014 11:15
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BigRed0427 posted:What about Flashpoint? I never read it because I didn't care, and then everyone learned the events in it were going to reboot the DCU. Was it any good or just as dumb as I thought. At the start of Flashpoint (like before it was in any way connected with the reboot.) most people kind of enjoyed Flashpoint as a DC Age of Apocalypse alternate history thing, with cool Kurbert artwork. They had done a good job setting up some mystery about the new universe with Buttons at cons and cool maps showing the alternate DC universe. (Apart from the minor bit of controversy with Africa being labeled as Gorilla Controlled. Something that makes perfect sense, if perhaps a poorly chosen name, if you are familiar with DC history and Gorilla Grodd. But comes across as racially insensitive if you are not.) The universe felt really different, had a vibrant story, some really nice twists on characters (Steel is a badass! Thomas Wayne is kicking rear end as a new Batman! The S.H.A.Z.A.M kids are awesome! Commander Cold as a hero! Grifter is here, awesome! [This is the first and only time that phrase was ever used.] The only people really complaining were Aquaman fans (who don't count) and Wonder Woman fans (who were moaning that she and the Amazons were the villains in an alternate universe story line.) But as the series went on it seemed to squander all the potential. They announced a mini focusing on the new Captain Marvel (where Billy, Freddy, Mary and three friends all had one power of Shazam and could form into a Captain Planet like Captain Marvel.) but then changed their mind and decided not to make it. The Commander Cold series became a really odd Noir type story that just didn't really make sense within the confines of the universe and became more unpleasant as it went on. (So basically Captain Cold is now Commander Cold and the hero of the Gem cities, the Rogues decide to go after him. But Cold has a secret that he ends up killing people to protect and goes from anti-hero to unlikable villain protagonist. His big secret? He used to be a bank robber. The world is ending, Europe has been torn apart, super villains run rampant there are only a handful of superheroes to protect the world and you are one of them. No one cares that you used to rob banks in your past life.) Lois Lane covered the war in Europe and since that involved the Amazons and the Atlantians a number of readers felt it was very anti women. (What didn't help was the series ended with Lois Lane apparently murdered off camera. Hilariously the story continued in the Superman series where a Kal El who was never allowed outside a bunker until he was released by the Flash saves Lois and they develop a connection. Then at the end of that series, Lois dies again. Like, what was the point.) Then it gets to a problem that these alternate history stories have. You've got to have a threat to the alternate world to motivate and move the story. At the same time, you want the hero from the real world to seek to get back to his world. Now in so doing, he's either abandoning the alternate world to it's own fate, or actively dooming it to non-existance himself. It's a very tricky rope to walk. In Age of Apocalypse they managed it by essentially saying that the X-Men ultimately chose to help Bishop to to bring back the 616 universe, knowing full well that in so doing it was going to Undo the AoA universe and leave them all to die in Nuclear Fire. That at least was a choice that while bittersweet, made sense. In Flashpoint, the Flashpoint World kind of gets held together but is still going to be destroyed while Barry ends up loving up bringing back the DC Universe. So it gets the worst of both worlds. I think my other problem with Flashpoint was at the start I thought Zoom's deal was he had gone back in time multiple times and just muddled around with DC character's parentage in an intriguing way. So before Clark Kent get's raised by loving parents. Nope, now I made sure the Kent's never found the capsule, so no parents for Superman. Hal Jordan is motivated by seeing his dad's firey death and resolves to be brave? Nah, I'll change it so nothing remarkable happens and Jordan is a by the book US Fighter pilot. And so on. And that at least provides an interesting set of reasons why some people become villains or non factors (lack of parents screwing up the JLA, or having parents make other people happy and content and lack the impetus to become superheroes). It also feeds into one of Professor Zoom's motivations (he hates his parents and his life, so he decides to blame Barry and attack him and his life.) and how he was building up this big revelation for the secret behind Flashpoint. If they had followed that thread then the only way for Barry to fix things would be for him to make the ultimately horrible but necessary decision to bring back the DC Universe he's got to undo Zoom's actions one by one. And while some of this may be nice (saving the Kents, saving Hipolytia, saving Arthur Curry) by the end of it Barry will have to stand by and ensure that Thomas and Martha Wayne are shot, that Jordan Sr's plane crashes, that his mother gets killed and so on. That without those tragedies these great heroes couldn't arise. And in his own twisted line of thinking, Barry has to become the villain and do bad things to save everyone. That's pretty messed up thinking. You might even describe it as, Reverse :flash But no, they just went with a cop out ending that Barry was responsible for Flashpoint, who is a n00b at time travel. And he needs to fix his own mistake. Oh and then it became the lead in to the Nu52 so everyone REALLY hated it at that point. So yeah, That's Flashpoint. In a nut shell. Tune in next time, where I explain what was good and what went wrong with World War Hulk. If you liked that rant, feel free to check out my post about the problems with Fear Itself.
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Jul 5, 2014 11:15
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Krypt-OOO-Nite!! posted:The biggest downside to WWH was the stupid loving reveal that It was agents of the Red King that planted a bomb in the ship and Miek knew but let it go off because of stupid reasons. It would have been so much better if it was a accident that Stark and co were responsible for instead of the stupid cop-out easy resolution we got. Eh that wouldn't make much sense. Which is fairly hilarious really, the Hulk has to be really, really gullible for WWH to even make sense.
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Jul 5, 2014 14:42
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SirDan3k posted:Bruce Banner hasn't been legally considered a person in years. AS far as the government is concerned Banner died in the accident and the monster created by the same accident occasionally decides to look like Banner. Then why did they put him on trial in a TV movie with Daredevil defending him? 
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Jul 5, 2014 15:28
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Krypt-OOO-Nite!! posted:The biggest downside to WWH was the stupid loving reveal that It was agents of the Red King that planted a bomb in the ship and Miek knew but let it go off because of stupid reasons. It would have been so much better if it was a accident that Stark and co were responsible for instead of the stupid cop-out easy resolution we got. Why would having a good guy be accidentally responsible for something horrifying like that be better? Did you learn nothing from Civil War?
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Jul 5, 2014 16:42
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Random Stranger posted:Then why did they put him on trial in a TV movie with Daredevil defending him? His name was also David on that show because Bruce was too "gay." Also in the Watchmen movie Dr. Manhattan was the fake bad guy in the end instead of a giant squid. Oh and Spider-Man doesn't have organic webshooters. Nick Fury wasn't black until a little while ago. Kitty Pryde went back in time in the comics, not Wolverine. And in the comics Daredevil doesn't suck. Because it's not the comic is basically why. Oh and continuity isn't real anyway. If the writers want Bruce to be defended a human he will be. If it serves the story to have him treated as an inhuman monster, he will be.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:10
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He's been on trial at least once, and Mr. Fantastic let him escape at the end when he was going to be convicted.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:44
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The Question IRL posted:Oh and then it became the lead in to the Nu52 so everyone REALLY hated it at that point. Yeah I think that's the real thing with Flashpoint. If it hadn't been a reboot, then it just would've been another "dumb fake earth" story and people would either like it or be lukewarm on it. But because it is the thing that led to the New 52, people just hate it.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:06
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Krypt-OOO-Nite!! posted:The biggest downside to WWH was the stupid loving reveal that It was agents of the Red King that planted a bomb in the ship and Miek knew but let it go off because of stupid reasons. It would have been so much better if it was a accident that Stark and co were responsible for instead of the stupid cop-out easy resolution we got. I'm going to agree with Krypt-OOO-Nite on this one. [spoilers] The resolution would have been far better if the truth was, there was no master mind behind the ship blowing up. It was just a stupid/tragic accident. Because if you look at it, Hulk had more or less united the survivors of his world to travel with him on his stone ship, solely on the mandate of "Let's kill the bastards who blew up our world!" And that mission of revenge was pretty much the only thing stopping all the survivors from breaking down with PTSD. And it was what focused Hulk's revenge. What Miek's final reveal to set off Hulk should have been was him speaking the truth that was obvious to everyone. That there was no mastermind, the ship had just exploded because it was a starship that crashed into a planet and left alone for months on end. That everyone knew this, but they let Hulk go along with his mad crusade of vengeance, because who wants to be the person to tell Hulk he's wrong. And that is what should set Hulk off. He finally realizes it's all a lie. Tony Stark didn't blow up his planet. Reed Richards didn't blow up his world. No one did. It's a stupid accident. If you want to blame anyone, blame God. And at that point Hulk will unleash and go full World Breaker. Because he's got all this anger, and no one to direct it at. And if he can't smash anyone, he can smash EVERYONE! Break Earth, break all the stupid puny humans! Become the World Breaker, it's the only way! I think it would have been a much more satisfying resolution. After all, it originally was a stupid freak accident that allowed Bruce Banner to become the Hulk, why not make this incident also a stupid accident.[/spoiler] As for WWH, I think it's an interesting story in this regard. When Planet Hulk originally came out, I remember people loving it. But even during the story, they were very much focused on Hulk coming back to Earth. I saw so many people cackling, rubbing their hands waiting for Hulk to smash Iron-man, Reed Richards and the entire illuminati group, and end the post Civil War nonsense. And they got EXACTLY this. But it wasn't what they wanted at all. Instead of it being Hulk coming back as the righetous, indignant wronged party, he was mean. He was vicious. The other's were presented as being sympathetic, willing to hand themselves over to save others. Suddenly the Hulk looked more and more like a bully and then a violent warlord. And I think that was Greg Pakk's ultimate point. That Anger, even Righteous Anger is ultimately self destructive. Going on a killing spree or violent assault on those who wronged you actually doesn't fix everything. It just means more things are broken. And I don't think readers were really ready or prepared for that, at all. Particularly the Hulk, who is a character who is just shown as being able to fix everything by just smashing.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:04
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Madkal posted:I always considered AoA to be a big comic done right, but should it really be considered an "event comic"? Stuff like AoA and No Man's Land are long multi-level story arcs that might be limited in scope but still change up the status quo for the title over a long period of time. I always assumed event comics were more mini-series set up to change everything. Yes, because it affected an entire line of books.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:04
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One of the things that stuck with me about Flashpoint was that Geoff Johns had already written that exact story a few years earlier. His second Booster Gold arc was the same thing. Booster goes back in time and stops Blue Beetle's death. They go back to the present and now everything is hosed. Everything's a big dystopia and it all leads to this big battle where everyone just starts dying in a clusterfuck way until it's decided, "That person who died and then didn't die needs to be dead in order to fix everything!" The difference is that Flashpoint was just a Flash arc Johns was going to use for his ongoing where DC said, "Why don't we just use this as an excuse to reboot everything? Just add a shitload of tie-ins and call it an event."
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Jul 5, 2014 19:05
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Booster Gold really dropped the ball on that whole Flashpoint thing.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:37
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Lurdiak posted:Why would having a good guy be accidentally responsible for something horrifying like that be better? Did you learn nothing from Civil War? To be fair, when it comes to designing spaceships that turn out to have ridiculous flaws, Reed Richards has previous.
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Jul 5, 2014 21:53
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SiKboy posted:To be fair, when it comes to designing spaceships that turn out to have ridiculous flaws, Reed Richards has previous. Fantastic Four is probably the origin story that suffers the most from the sliding timescale. Peter Parker is fine, just change the word radioactive to genetically engineered, or don't, gently caress it. Tony Stark just requires changing the warzone he was captured in. Captain America almost works better as time goes on, he becomes even more a man out of time. And people are going to be experimenting with new ways to blow each other up forever, so The Hulk is good to go. But the FF really works best if their ill-fated rocket journey happens before we actually sent people into space and got them home safely. They originally met The Watcher in the blue spot of the moon 4 or 5 years before Neil Armstrong got there.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:14
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Lurdiak posted:Why would having a good guy be accidentally responsible for something horrifying like that be better? Did you learn nothing from Civil War? My bad I didn't fully explain what I meant. Instead of a bomb and Miek being part of for a fairly stupid reason, it just makes sense to me for the ship to have a self-destruct. Which makes total sense since they planning to leave him stranded on a random planet, why then leave him with a working spaceship. As far as they knew the Hulk would be on his own and even if he was sat in the ship when it blew he would be fine. It's not like they knew the ship would be in the centre of a alien town. (If anything I'm just annoyed about how bloody stupid the Miek stuff was. Anyway to ask a question considering it seems to be a piece of cake to travel through space in the Marvel universe has there ever been a case of anyone planning a colony or is the same as everyone ignoring all the world changing super science? Krypt-OOO-Nite!! fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 00:48
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Dude that explosion nearly killed the loving planet. That is not a reasonable self destruct for a ship to have.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:55
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Lurdiak posted:Dude that explosion nearly killed the loving planet. That is not a reasonable self destruct for a ship to have. Also, why would it need a flashy self destruct, if he was going to land on a planet without any modern civilization it just needs to break a little, blow a fuse or something.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:01
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Skwirl posted:Also, why would it need a flashy self destruct, if he was going to land on a planet without any modern civilization it just needs to break a little, blow a fuse or something. And be made of bio-degradable materials.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:11
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I liked the idea of the self destruct being built in and just rubbing more poo poo in Hulk's life. Having it be one of Hulk's side was backed up and reasonable but it made the conflict less interesting to me.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:55
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SirDan3k posted:Bruce Banner hasn't been legally considered a person in years. AS far as the government is concerned Banner died in the accident and the monster created by the same accident occasionally decides to look like Banner. Is this actually stated in a comic somewhere or just kind of a popular fan-theory or something? Because isn't Bruce Banner a member of SHIELD and the Avengers? The former, at least, you'd think would necessitate some kind of citizenship.
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Jul 6, 2014 02:27
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Archyduke posted:Is this actually stated in a comic somewhere or just kind of a popular fan-theory or something? Because isn't Bruce Banner a member of SHIELD and the Avengers? The former, at least, you'd think would necessitate some kind of citizenship. It's come up when they want to do some evil government backed villain holding Banner without trail shctick, though I think last time that happened they went with the war on terror enemy combatant label instead. The part about Banner being dead and the Hulk just choosing to look like Banner is actually something Ross threw at Betty once.
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Jul 6, 2014 02:43
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Aphrodite posted:Booster Gold really dropped the ball on that whole Flashpoint thing. Skwirl posted:Fantastic Four is probably the origin story that suffers the most from the sliding timescale.
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Jul 6, 2014 23:22
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I dunno, patriotism isn't the best reason to take such a huge risk, but it beats out greed.
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Jul 6, 2014 23:37
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