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Teenage Fansub posted:I imagine he entered an agreement with WB to keep working as long as he did their sensitivity training and laid off on groping people. If there hasn't been any further incident, or anything they didn't know in 2012, I'm not sure they could do a lot. Apparently they could?
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Nov 11, 2017 07:45
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Been reading some old Milestone comics. Particularly static and icon. They're pretty good comics if you never read them. I got to say that icon is pretty funny. He is a conservative, bootstraps African-American individual ( also an alien because comics) and his first action as a superhero is to go ask the cops how he can help. His sidekick warns him that the cops are probably going to take poorly to an African-American swooping in from the sky and trying to help them. He reprimands her for making everything racial. The cops immediately try to arrest them and open fire immediately.
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Nov 11, 2017 22:13
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Nov 12, 2017 03:21
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What is that from, because I don't remember it in gwenpool
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Nov 12, 2017 18:12
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Rocket & groot iirc
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Nov 12, 2017 18:54
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I'm up through the first 300 or so books of my Marvel complete order reading project thing (I'm slogging through, but it does feel like the books are speeding up a bit now as artists start to do fewer panels per page). I posted some thoughts about the reading over on the CMRO forums but thought I would cross post them here. I'm curious to see how others think of these first years of Marvel. All this stuff is up on MU, so if you're interested I really recommend reading some of the stuff I've highlighted as being excellent. Holy smokes Ditko was good. I had read the first 100 or so issues of Spider-Man previously, so I knew he was no slouch, but Dr. Strange in Strange Tales was a revelation. He has a storyline from Strange Tales #130-143 that was epic; the buildup to his fights with Mordo and later Dormamu, meeting Eternity, going hand to hand with Dormamu, his search for Clea... Just awesome. Too bad about the first half of those books (Torch stories). Strange Tales #136  Strange Tales #141     Namor was another one I didn't expect. I absolutely loved his first run in Tales to Astonish (#70-76). Gene Colan (under the pseudonym Adam Austin) brought a totally different look to Marvel, and the move to fewer panels and more line work really worked for the story they were telling. A classic gripping adventure story that really nailed Namor's personality - his courage, his self-sacrifice, his ego, etc. The only negative to that story was the really quick wrapup (no more Gene Colan after that either, so maybe that was related), but Namor's portion of TtA #74 amazing. Just loved it. Especially considering what he replaced. Some of my favorite shots: Tales to Astonish #74    Hulk is way better than I expected. I've already mentioned here before that the first 6 issues in his solo series presented a more nuanced Hulk than I expected. I had read a lot of the Kirby monster stuff, and was expecting just a longer version of that. What we got instead was the start of a character that would spend the rest of his existence living out an expanded version of that first run - balancing the more savage nature of his personality with the more rationale one, with both sides having benefits and downsides. When he came back in TtA I was excited. There was some weird stuff, more time travel and aliens than I expected, but it's been consistently pretty good. A highlight for me was seeing Ditko on Hulk. Thor has been nowhere near what I expected. I thought Kirby and Stan would hit with a bang, but instead it took a really long time to get off the ground. That said, Journey into Mystery #99-104 was a hint of what Thor could be, with big epic storylines of gods fighting gods and monsters from other dimensions. And then JiM #114-123 (The Trial of the Gods) was just EVEN more of that. I don't love Kirby but when he gets to play with extra dimensional worlds and weird alien architecture and landscapes, I have so much time for him. Thor, at his best, lets Kirby be Kirby, and I love it for that. But even better than the main Thor stories (which are brought down by the stuff with Jane Foster and the terrible secret identify) are the Tales of Asgard. Tales of Asgard is simply amazing, especially anything with Balder the Brave and the Warriors Three. Just gods being gods, doing godly things. Wonderful. Thor #129  Thor #131  Volstagg! Thor #133  Spider-Man is simply the best comic series Marvel made, and it's not even close. Ditko and Steve were at the top of their game. It's really cool to see Peter evolve over these first issues into a much more confident person and hero. S-M's rogues gallery is top notch, his supporting cast is believable, and his secret identity problems actually make sense considering he's just a teenage boy struggling to become a man. S-M Annual #1 is my favorite book so far. Those single page pinups are incredible. Fantastic Four is... a letdown? Not sure. So much of what we know of the Marvel Universe comes from these books. Hero comic shorthand was largely developed by Stan and Kirby here - the team and family dynamic has been the basis of so many other books. There's a lot of stuff here I just don't like though. Reed is bipolar, the plots are often recycled or filled with Deus Ex Machina moments, and Kirby's art is just hit or miss for me. I'm just reaching the "great" issues though, and I will say that I've only rated one or two FF issues as low as 2 (on the CMRO 1-5 scale... by contrast I've only rated a handful of S-M issues as low as 3). They're consistently good, and sometimes great, but just not as great as I expected. Thing and Torch in Strange Tales were fine. Lots of below average books, and I'm happy that they're done, but I think it did a lot to build up the FF's supporting cast so I'm not totally unhappy that they stuck with Johnny for so long. Giant Ant Man and Wasp in Tales to Astonish were terrible. I am so happy they are done. I would like it if they never come back, though I know that's not to be. Iron Man in Tales of Suspense is mediocre. Way too much emphasis paid to his secret identify struggle. Pepper and Happy are not interesting supporting cast members and they take up too much page space. Iron Man also lacks interesting opponents. A lot of one-off baddies. I liked Hawkeye / Black Widow but they were so good they needed a better book to appear in. Captain America is a mixed bag so far. In the Avengers he's pretty boring, but I'm at the point where he's taking over the team as leader and he's coming into his own. In his own run on Tales of Suspense he's fun. Steve the bumbling private is different at least, and I'll never complain about beating up nazis. Bucky is great too. Also - Nazi-Steve (it's a good storyline).  Nick Fury's first issue of Strange Tales was amazing, I'm looking forward to more of him. Kirby was at the top of his game for this one, I'm really hoping he keeps it up. Strange Tales #135   The Avengers have been boring but that's probably down to the cast. We'll see how I feel about them with this new improved team. X-Men are better than I expected (I expected them to be awful). Professor X is terrible, the rest of the group is pretty good. Maybe it gets worse but you can definitely see why there's a core of an idea here that's worth exploring. Daredevil has been as bad as I expected, though his appearance in FF #40 was awesome, and DD #7 was a really good book. So far though his stories have been convoluted and overly wordy, even for Stan. Other general notes: There are a lot of random aliens, and in books where it doesn't make a lot of sense. Like in Tales of Suspense #68, where Iron Man thinks he's crazy but it turns out there really are aliens, and everyone just kind of accepts that obviously there were aliens. Very weird. There's also a ton of villain re-use. I am ok with it in general, but all those Torch Strange Tales villains really seem odd when they're propped up as actual dangers despite the fact they get chumped all the time. There's also a lot of time travel. Merlin has been in a surprising number of books. Also Doom / Kang / etc.  Wally Wood was good, but it took him a while to get into it (he's just starting to now) and I know he's about to leave. Disappointing. I'm really looking forward to John Romita showing up though, I know that's on the horizon. Gene Colan was great, I would love to see more of him. My favorite monster era artist (Matt Fox) has sadly long since gone - I feel like I'll get that kind of heavy linework style back when I make it to the 70s. The rest of the Marvel bullpen is not great. Don Heck, Bob Powell, etc... they're workmanlike artists who just never connect with the characters. Maybe it would have been different if they didn't have to live up to Kirby and Ditko's iconic styles and had just done their own stuff - I think that's why Colan worked so well on Namor. It wasn't like anything else Marvel was doing at the time. You can't be Steve or Jack, so don't even try. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 23:26
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Your posts are wonderful, please keep them going!
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Nov 13, 2017 00:24
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Oh man I forgot to post about this one. In the middle of The Trial of the Gods Thor travels to Vietnam for some reason. It's real weird. Thor is looking for some special gems Loki used to cheat during the trial, and it takes him to Asia.  He then turns into Don Blake (because a lame man can make his way through the jungle better than Thor... because Thor's cape keeps getting stuck in the underbrush), and gets captured by the Vietnamese communists.  Then some poo poo happens.  The evil communist realizes the error of his way and the dangers of communism and...  The rest of this 10 issue story was about gods going on epic quests. Very strange departure, especially considering there really isn't all that much Vietnam stuff in Marvel at this point.
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Nov 13, 2017 01:27
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Capitalism sucks, socialism is good, communism is whatever.
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Nov 13, 2017 01:29
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Covok posted:Capitalism sucks, socialism is good, communism is a red herring.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:23
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Will you stop that!? No.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:26
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I'm reading more and more of the original Icon and Static and these comics are pretty good. Why does nobody ever talk about these series? The original ones, I mean?
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Nov 13, 2017 02:56
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Covok posted:I'm reading more and more of the original Icon and Static and these comics are pretty good. Why does nobody ever talk about these series? The original ones, I mean? I've never even heard of them before. Can you give a rundown?
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Nov 13, 2017 03:12
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Covok posted:I'm reading more and more of the original Icon and Static and these comics are pretty good. Why does nobody ever talk about these series? The original ones, I mean? White people For serious I have no idea. Hardware was fuckin excellent.
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Nov 13, 2017 03:12
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A Strange Aeon posted:I've never even heard of them before. Can you give a rundown? Icon is an alien who crash lands on Earth in 1889. His escape pod remakes him in the image of the closets lifeform, a black slave. He grows up a slave in America, assist in the underground railroad, fights in the civil war, fights in the world wars, and, currently, lives under the identity of his own great grandson (his DNA is incompatible with humans so he can't have kids, despite being married before) working as a lawyer in Dakota city. He's a conservative, "by-your-own-bootstraps" kind of guy. One night, a group of teenagers rob his house and he stops them. One of them, Raquel, is impressed by his super powers and convinces him to become a symbol for people, the hero Icon, and her, his sidekick, Rocket. Icon and Rocket have a funny relationship: Icon, despite going through a lot in his early life, has fallen into some old-age-conservative-pull-your-self-by-your-boostraps-naivete (there is a great scene where he goes to assist the police right after they start, Rocket warns that they may not like a black dude coming to help them, he calls her out for making everything racial...and immediately has to deal with the police pulling guns on them and trying to arrest him) but does care about people and basically plays Superman. Rocket is his smart young ward who knows a lot more how things kind of are and has to deal with a lot more down to Earth problems that you don't see often in comics, like teen pregency. Static is Virgil Hawkins, a student at high school in Dakota City. He's a good kid who tries to keep his nose clean. He's nice, but, because of this, he gets bullied. His friend convinces him he's got to stand up for himself and gives him a gun and tells him where his bully will be. Virgil goes there, is almost about to do it to stop all this and prove he ain't someone these gang bangers can push around, but can't do it. He's not a murderer. However, the same night, the police raid the place and use experimental gas. It kills a lot of the kids, but the survivors get super powers. With his new electro powers, Static becomes a local hero taking down criminals on the streets of Dakota. Static deals with a lot of things that are clear allegories for things young African Americans kids might experience in the 90s. Early on, a former superhero basically tries to recruit him into a gang to let his powers actually earn him something. Every time, Static's good nature gets him through and avoiding these pitfalls, but they keep coming up. The sad thing for me is why these things tend to enter his life. He's a good person, but his environment is rough. He just wants to go to school, hang out with friends, work his part-time job, and live his life. But, even before his powers, these things come up and get in the way, beat him up, make him feel small, and make him feel desperate and boxed in. I feel one of the writers must have felt the same way when they were younger. Like I said, his good nature sees him make the right choice in the end, but you also can't blame him for nearly falling when he does because it feels like life is just trying to make him make a mistake. Like I said, I think a lot of it is an allegory for the experiences of black teens in the 90s and I think it does it well. Covok fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Nov 13, 2017 03:28
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Covok posted:I'm reading more and more of the original Icon and Static and these comics are pretty good. Why does nobody ever talk about these series? The original ones, I mean? My dude I have been going on about Static at the drop of a hat for decades now. But the real reason is likely that DC left them out of print or hosed with fans for ages. In the mid-2000s they promised they were going to start collecting the admittedly-small runs of these books in trades, did one trade per series, and in some cases did poo poo so stupid as to put the very first and very final stories of that character in that one trade, nothing in between. I don't know if digital has made any of this more accessible now but when it was print or nothing, they always bet on nothing.
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Nov 13, 2017 04:37
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This just came up (in the DC thread I think?) but this is a rare case where DC's Collected Edition department isn't entirely at fault for lovely trade releases. The lineage of Milestone trades are basically: 1996: Icon: A Hero's Welcome collected the first eight issues of the Icon series [Milestone ceases publication] 2000: Static: Trial By Fire, a cheap-rear end trade collecting the first four issues of the original Static series released to promote the launch of the cartoon 2001: Static: Rebirth of the Cool, a collection of the four issue mini-series they put out that year (which End Me Scoob points out, was basically a wrap-up story set after the entire line ended) with the Trial by Fire trade tacked onto the end [DC signs a deal with Milestone again] 2009: A Hero's Welcome and Rebirth of the Cool get reprinted, plus -Icon: The Mothership Connection which reprints Icon 13, 19,-22, 24-27, and 30. This seems weird, but I guess it kind of makes sense. But only kind of. There were a number of crossovers/fill-ins, but the "missing" issues between the two trades include: #9 - Shadow War crossover #10 - A McDuffie/Bright issue, not sure why it isn't collected #11 - Kurt Busiek/Ron Wilson fill-in #12 - Jacqueline Ching/Wilfred Santiago fill-in #14 - A MD Bright solo issue, not sure why it's not included #15-16 - Part of the Worlds Collide crossover with the Superman books #17 - PART ONE OF THE 'MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION' storyline #18 - Maddie Blaustein/Prentis Rollins fill-in #23 - Another McDuffie/Bright issue #28-29: Long Hot Summer crossover So it's kind of arbitrary but maybe not a huge deal if there ended up being a robust collection of Milestone trades to snag the crossovers and one-offs and etc. But there wasn't. A Hardware trade with the first eight issues came out in 2010, and then nothing else because DC and McDuffie had a falling out and then he died.
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Nov 13, 2017 07:23
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Steve Ditko's Dr. Strange art was very popular on college campuses.
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Nov 14, 2017 01:21
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When Ditko went indie and published Mr. A, a lot of hippies who had assumed he was into acid and free love and poo poo were horribly disappointed that their favorite artist was actually the most straight laced man who ever lived.
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Nov 14, 2017 04:02
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My favorite Ditko story that's probably self-aggrandizing bullshit but I love it anyway is that Ditko would draw Spider-Man swinging by college protests and shaking his fist at them, and then Lee would come in, erase the speech balloons, and change it so Spidey was voicing support for the kids.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:18
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CapnAndy posted:My favorite Ditko story that's probably self-aggrandizing bullshit but I love it anyway is that Ditko would draw Spider-Man swinging by college protests and shaking his fist at them, and then Lee would come in, erase the speech balloons, and change it so Spidey was voicing support for the kids. This might be true regardless of Lee's actual political beliefs because he might know that shiting on your target audience is a bad idea. Assuming any of it is true of course.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:20
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There's like one panel where Peter Parker says he thinks campus protesters are pointless, but it still says they're pointless.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:26
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There's also that modern panel of him lamenting that time he was a college libertarian.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:47
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         Apparently libertarian Spider-Man is a meme. And I kind of like it.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:58
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what are you talking about, that's clearly Arachnaman! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0KQbzpYizA
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Nov 14, 2017 12:17
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Tonight I had a dream that DC had published a storyline in which the Joker had captured the Wasp and made Batman watch as he pulled off her wings and limbs and eventually tore her apart at the waist. I wasn't even surprised, is the thing. I don't know if my subconscious just comes up with hosed up poo poo or if there's some statement about courting controversy to boost sales in there.
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Nov 14, 2017 13:23
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Okay but the fact that my first coherent waking thought was "and next issue he goes after Ant-Man with a magnifying glass", that one's entirely on me, I'm afraid.
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Nov 14, 2017 13:27
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Who needs DC?
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Nov 14, 2017 14:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:Tonight I had a dream that DC had published a storyline in which the Joker had captured the Wasp and made Batman watch as he pulled off her wings and limbs and eventually tore her apart at the waist. It happens. I just woke up from a dream where a bunch of scientists and rich assholes convinced me and a bunch of other college students to play a game in a school where we thought it was Halloween themed game of tag but actually they really released serial killers into the school grounds and surrounded the place with armed Soldier to keep us in. They weren't all people either, one of them was a little doll that can only kill you if it took enough time to know your name. Also, we're talking a very large college campus that included a forest, many school buildings, a pool, a park, and the lot. You know, I think can actually could be a kind of fun movie.
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Nov 14, 2017 15:21
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The Fantastic Four wedding has maybe the worst art I've seen so far in Marvel's early history. I think Jack was drunk. The story is terrible too (though it's cool to see the whole universe in one book). This was a milestone event for me, what a letdown.
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Nov 14, 2017 15:34
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More details are surfacing now that I think about it: Batman fought the Joker but he had some kind of high-tech shield that Batman just couldn't get through, and at the end he revealed he'd had the Wasp strapped to the inside all along so Batman had actually beat on her the whole time, and then the unpleasantness started in earnest. My mind only came up with one actual panel but that was about as gory as that Marvel Zombies one, yeah. Only more in the style of Dark Knight Returns. e: I don't quite remember how he actually captured Batman to make him watch but I believe it had something to do with him being spent from beating on the shield. It was not Captain America's, appropriate as that would have been. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Nov 14, 2017 |
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Nov 14, 2017 15:40
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Sometimes I wonder if Ditko considered Parker to be the main villain of Spiderman. Think about it like this, instead of using his Spidey powers to make himself filthy rich he helps people and saves lives!!! For free!!!
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Nov 14, 2017 17:19
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Madkal posted:Sometimes I wonder if Ditko considered Parker to be the main villain of Spiderman. Think about it like this, instead of using his Spidey powers to make himself filthy rich he helps people and saves lives!!! For free!!! Even Mr. A fought criminals.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:23
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This one's just wrong.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:43
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Covok posted:This might be true regardless of Lee's actual political beliefs because he might know that shiting on your target audience is a bad idea. Assuming any of it is true of course. I've heard general stories about Lee changing dialogue but I've never seen any specific examples. Here's the scene you always hear about from ASM #38 (which was actually Ditko's last issue). People act like he goes off on a libertarian rant but he just gets generally annoyed: 
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Nov 14, 2017 18:34
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Action Jacktion posted:I've heard general stories about Lee changing dialogue but I've never seen any specific examples. On the other hand, 
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Nov 14, 2017 19:02
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Peter was just a really angry guy in general in those first years of S-M.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:53
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Jordan7hm posted:Peter was just a really angry guy in general in those first years of S-M. Well, to be honest, it makes sense. He's a bullied put-up nerd who gets access to phenomenal powers and plans to exploit them until it gets someone important to him killed and does things primarily out of guilt. That's not exactly the recipe for a healthy and together guy.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:59
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Perhaps, the real time-line is one where Spider-Man becomes a selfish, libertarian, MRA doucehbag incel, but Kobivk rewrote reality and gave us the emotionally well-adjusted hero the world would need. It's a Nick Spencer/Secret Empire joke. Honestly, Superior Spider-Man is probably closer to how Spider-Man would actually act.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:11
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ImpAtom posted:Well, to be honest, it makes sense. He's a bullied put-up nerd who gets access to phenomenal powers and plans to exploit them until it gets someone important to him killed and does things primarily out of guilt. That's not exactly the recipe for a healthy and together guy. The fact that old school spidey was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown/killing spree was part of what made him compelling. That's part of why I don't like the modern take on Spidey where he's self-deprecating and stands behind the other heroes and meekly goes "don't forget me  ". 60s Spidey straight up told the Avengers and FF to go gently caress themselves on the regular.I mean it's fine that he grew into a more solidly heroic character but I dunno, I really miss the brashness.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:36
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