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Jerusalem posted:Gotta agree with JLA/Avengers, it's really drat good. It also completely shits on the citizens of the Marvel universe at a height of time where the Marvel Citizens were basically shitbags. And yes they explain it away that Cap and Supes were getting egged on, but Cap going "THEY HAVE A MUSEUM AND THEIR CITIZENS LIKE THEM? CLEARLY THEY ARE TYRANTS"
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Apr 13, 2018 14:43
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A Strange Aeon posted:What are like the top 5 crossover comics that are actually decent? TMNT & Usagi are excellent crossovers. Stan integrates them completely into the Usagi universe.
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Apr 13, 2018 15:02
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JLA/Avengers sounds really cool. A quick look shows the used trades to be outrageously expensive, but presumably such a huge marketing event had tons of the individual issues printed, so that'd probably be the best way to read it, right?
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Apr 13, 2018 15:35
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Gimme something loving terrible. No dupes, please.
WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Apr 13, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 16:46
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The Batman/Superman vs Aliens/Predator are all pretty good too. Also I’m just finishing what I’m reading so go ahead and hit me, no dupes
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Apr 13, 2018 18:26
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Gimme something loving terrible. No dupes, please. Okay, I generated between 600 - 726 so you'd get something terrible, and boy did you. You get 635: Civil War  A 7 issue series filled with a ton of promise and potential that it is largely considered to have failed to deliver on, it is available on Comixology and is free if you have Comixology Unlimited. It is also available at Marvel as well. Retro Futurist posted:Also I’m just finishing what I’m reading so go ahead and hit me, no dupes You get 355: Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone By which I'm fairly certain hasn't been done yet.  That's the first 6 issues of the series, available at Comixology for what seems like a discounted price.
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Apr 13, 2018 23:50
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Trying to keep this updated as best I can - I think it's currently accurate but if I've missed anything or screwed up a url, please let me know. Review Archive - Updated April 17, 2018: 12. Gummy Joe: Jack Staff: Everything Used to Be Black and White 18. Jedi: TRANSFORMERS VS. GI JOE (Tom Scioli and John Barber 26. Lick! The! Whisk!: Daredevil: Born Again 28. Dias: Hitman 48. Cornwind Evil: American Barbarian 50. Jiru: Top Ten #1-12 58. Lick! The! Whisk!: Daredevil #284-290: The Man Without Mercy 60. Roth: Fantastic Four: Unthinkable 69. Retro Futurist: Uncanny X-Men #183: He'll Never Make Me Cry 86. Inkspot: The Demon vol. 1 #1-8 Part 1 | Part 2 118. Jerusalem: Starman (Robinson/Harris) Part One | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 183. Endless Mike: Hickman's Fantastic Four/FF: Part One, Dark Reign: FF | Part Two, Solve Everything | Part Three, Prime Elements | Part Four, The Future Foundation | Part Five, Three | Part 6, Tomorrow | Part 7, The Supremor Seed 184. enigmahfc: Superior Foes of Spider-Man 189. Otherkinsey Scale: Captain America #250, "Cap for President!" 190. Jordan7hm: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This One/Spooky Stuff/Punch Dracula 192. Jerusalem: Flash vol. 2, #91 198. Archyduke: JLA Year One 201. Jerusalem: Superman and Batman: World's Funnest 204. Random Stranger: She-Hulk 214. hup: Alias vol. 1 227. CarlCX: JLA: Tower of Babel, #43-46 269. Random Stranger: Doomquest, Iron Man #149-150 280. Inkspot: Tomb of Dracula #44/Doctor Strange #14 298. Jordan7hm: Atomic Robo: Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur 339. A Strange Aeon: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty 346. Archyduke: Superman: Secret Origin 349. jng2058: Iron Man: Armor Wars 352. Gaz-L: Fantastic Four #8 366. Senerio: We3 382. Gummy Joe: Animal Man #5: The Coyote Gospel 410. Zeeman: Fear Itself 440. Jiru: Seaguy 443. bagrada: Batman #417-420: Ten Nights of the Beast 451. bagrada: Tales From the Bully Pulpit 497. Zachack: Uncanny X-Men #101-103: Phoenix Rising/Leprechauns 510. baronvonsabre: Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D 511. Doctor Spaceman: Marvel Apes 529. Jiru: Garfield: Alone 554. Random Stranger: Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #106 "I am Curious (Black)!" 560. Wapole Languray NYX Part 1 | Part 2 568. Lick! The! Whisk!: Spider-Man: Identity Crisis - A rewrite may come later 573. SMP: Batman/Daredevil King of New York 594. Random Stranger: Batman #598: Santa Klaus Is Coming to Town! 600. jng2058: Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #112: You'd Better Watch Out... 621. CapnAndy: OMAC vol.2 (John Byrne) Part 1 636. Dexie: Flash Rebirth (Geoff Johns run) 650. Random Stranger Punisher #52: Maternity War 654 jng2058: Justice (Alex Ross/Jim Kreuger) 658. CarlCX: Ultimate X-Men #42 672. Roth: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures #1-12 685. Jerusalem: Spider-Man: One More Day 687. Retro Futurist: Suicide Squad (New 52) 688. CapnAndy: Spawn/WildC.A.T.S.: Devil Day Part One Part Two 693. bagrada: Green Lantern #54-55 696. Lick! The! Whisk!: Maximum Clonage 703. Cornwind Evil: Uncanny X-Men: Holy War, #423-424 Part One Part Two 705. Cornwind Evil: Kick-rear end Part One Part Two Part Three Coda 706. Gaz-L: Wanted 718. Doctor Spaceman: Countdown to Final Crisis Part 0 | Part 1 726. Cornwind Evil: Identity Crisis Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Conclusion Reviews That Need To Be Done: 183 Endless Mike: Hickman's Fantastic Four/FF (in progress; issued 1/6/2018) 63. Escobarbarian: Captain America: Winter Soldier issued 1/6/2018 411. Lightning Lord: Inhumans (Jenkins/Lee) issued 1/6/2018 68. Skwirl: Hawkeye #11, Pizza is My Business issued 1/6/2018 319. Sodomy Non Sapiens: Stormwatch (Warren Ellis/Tom Raney) issued 1/8/2018 679. Lightning Lord: Spider-Man: Reign issued 1/8/2018 375. Fritzler: The Mighty Thorcules (The Incredible Hercules #132-137) issued 1/10/2018 84. Jordan7hm: Mister Miracle #3-4, "The Paranoid Pill" issued 1/12/2018 484. Conrad_Birdie: Legion of Monsters (Dennis Hopeless/Juan Doe) issued 1/14/2018 625. Little Mac: Miracleman (Gaiman/Buckingham) issued 1/14/2018 576. AllNewJonasSalk: Final Night issued 2/3/2018 270. enigmahfc: Captain Britain and MI-13: Vampire State issued 2/7/2018 621. CapnAndy: OMAC vol.2 (John Byrne) in progress; issued 2/7/2018 718. Doctor Spaceman: Countdown to Final Crisis in progress; issued 2/7/2018 288. Android Blues: The Coming of Superman (Action Comics #1) issued 2/7/2018 218. Mr. Maltose: Aztek: The Ultimate Man #1-10 issued 2/11/2018 722. Inkspot: Avengers #200 issued 3/14/2018 103. baronvonsabre: V for Vendetta issued 3/14/2018 194. Pacra: Locke & Key: The Crown of Shadows issued 3/14/2018 302. Retro Futurist: BATMAN AND ROBIN MUST DIE issued 3/15/2018 314. Zeeman: JLA/Avengers issued 3/21/18 635. LORD OF BOOTY Civil War issued 4/13/18 355. Retro Futurist Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye issued 4/13/18 When Lick! made this thread he noted that requesting a comic should be considered a toxx. This isn't my thread or my subforum so I'm reluctant to start trying to enforce that, but what should be done about those who requested spots and then haven't filled them (especially without explanation)? Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 22, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 23:54
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Jerusalem posted:
Ok sweet, pretty sure I have the TPB kicking around somewhere
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Apr 14, 2018 00:16
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I'm still on mine but life has been busy lately. I'm even behind on my weekly stuff. I'll finish eventually though!
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Apr 14, 2018 01:42
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I know this is super late, and it's also not going to be very long. Real life is kicking my rear end right now and I just don't have the time to get into anything super in depth. Having said that, here we go.... TRANSFORMERS VS. GI JOE (Tom Scioli and John Barber) This is only going to cover the first trade since that's where I gave up on it. Things I liked - the art. This is a beautifully illustrated story. Everything about the way it's drawn is absolutely delightful. I was not familiar with Tom Scioli before I read this, but if this book is indicative of his talent, I'll be on the lookout for more stuff he's done. The whole book screams nostalgia and the art style is very reminiscent of old Kirby comics. I can not say enough good things about the way this book is drawn. Things I did not like - everything else. My first exposure to these franchises was coming home from middle school in 1985 and watching them on TV. With the exception of the silent issue, I never read any of the Marvel Comics run or either of them. As far as this series goes - I'm not sure if the characterizations didn't fit my memory, or if I just don't care enough about the characters involved to be really invested in it, but regardless, I didn't enjoy the story. I found myself just admiring the art rather than paying attention to any story being told. Judging by how high it places on the list, I'm sure I'm in the minority, but when I have to force myself to read something, I know it's not for me. Maybe when I have more free time, I'll go back and give it another shot, but for whatever reason, this really didn't click with me.
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Apr 14, 2018 09:50
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Working on mine - I read the volume, but then decided... to read the rest of the series  Not my usual cup of tea, but I thought it was pretty good! My writeup will be from the perspective of not having read the preceding or succeeding volumes.
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Apr 14, 2018 16:22
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Jerusalem posted:Okay, I generated between 600 - 726 so you'd get something terrible, and boy did you. You get 635: Civil War  This one's going to be hard. Not because I really hate this comic or anything, but because I have a weird feeling I'm gonna have very, very little new to say about it that hasn't been said about a thousand times already.
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Apr 15, 2018 02:34
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Do people talk about how screwed up its politics are? It’s clearly a paranoid NRA fantasy, except Cap the New Deal liberal is arguing for concealed carry with no restrictions, while Tony the Republican who actually is practicing the ultimate in concealed carry at all times is trying to throw all the “good guys with guns” into those secret concentration camps that the NWO was supposed to have. I don’t know if Millar was just being cynical or Quesada is deeply conservative or what.
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Apr 15, 2018 05:19
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Servoret posted:Do people talk about how screwed up its politics are? It’s clearly a paranoid NRA fantasy, except Cap the New Deal liberal is arguing for concealed carry with no restrictions, while Tony the Republican who actually is practicing the ultimate in concealed carry at all times is trying to throw all the “good guys with guns” into those secret concentration camps that the NWO was supposed to have. I don’t know if Millar was just being cynical or Quesada is deeply conservative or what. I think it's partly a side effect of superhero tropes deeply baked into the Marvel Universe, particularly the idea that superpowered, sometimes anonymous vigilantes are the main thing standing between the world as we know it and Armageddon. It doesn't help that Cap has a history of getting into conflict with the government whenever a Republican is in office; strip away some political nuance, and Cap becomes a guy who Doesn't Trust the Government. There's also the way registering superpowers had been established as Bad by the X-Men books. Obviously there's an important difference between registering everyone with superpowers and just registering members of a specific superpowered ethnicity, but still. I think the secret concentration camps were intended as commentary on Gitmo, not black helicopter stuff.
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Apr 15, 2018 08:05
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Servoret posted:Do people talk about how screwed up its politics are? It’s clearly a paranoid NRA fantasy, except Cap the New Deal liberal is arguing for concealed carry with no restrictions, while Tony the Republican who actually is practicing the ultimate in concealed carry at all times is trying to throw all the “good guys with guns” into those secret concentration camps that the NWO was supposed to have. I don’t know if Millar was just being cynical or Quesada is deeply conservative or what. It was absolutely one zillion billion percent a commentariat on Bush II's various spying programs, PATRIOT Act, and partially a reaction to 9/11. There's a lot of valid sins you can level against CW, but it being designed as a right wing power fantasy is not one of them.
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Apr 15, 2018 08:24
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Silver2195 posted:I think it's partly a side effect of superhero tropes deeply baked into the Marvel Universe, particularly the idea that superpowered, sometimes anonymous vigilantes are the main thing standing between the world as we know it and Armageddon. It doesn't help that Cap has a history of getting into conflict with the government whenever a Republican is in office; strip away some political nuance, and Cap becomes a guy who Doesn't Trust the Government. For someone who has a history of getting into conflict with government about ethical issues Cap seems to be awful quiet about how the government treats mutants...
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Apr 15, 2018 09:33
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 And.... I'm done.  Starman started 80 issues earlier with the rather cruel death of David Knight, who died seemingly for the "sin" of being an unabashedly true believer in the notion of the brightly colored Superhero. His worldview, which I believe was intended to be seen as naive, was that things could be as simple as his glorified vision of his father's glory days. Good guys beat the bad guys, everybody cheers, on to the next adventure etc. Jack Knight was the "modern" hero, the one who saw the world for the way things "really" were, as well as understood that nothing was as simple as the phrase "good ol' days" would have you believe. Jack didn't wear bright spandex, he wore a jacket and anti-flare goggles, he thought superheroes and their associated drama were a largely silly thing and though he would grow to enjoy his role it was always secondary at best in his life behind family, friends, loved ones and his own business. Jack lived in the "real world", David lived in a fantasy. So I couldn't be more thrilled that the series ends with the rehabilitation of David, Jack's embrace of the superhero world (without losing touch with his own values/personality) and that truly beautiful final panel of his departure from Opal City. It is a place he truly still loves and cherishes, but like his role of Starman it is something he can leave behind secure in the knowledge it is safe, and that he has other things/places he has to go/be. I am a sucker for optimism (not of the saccharine or unearned sort) and the final few issues of Starman that wrap up from Grand Guignol are ripe with it. I mean hell, if the below doesn't say it all:  This is all epilogue, 7 issues that allow Jack to wrap up his outstanding personal issues. Sure there are plenty of explosions, guest-stars, revelations and fun comic-book nonsense like time travel. But all of it serves the greater master of Jack's warring obligations to his family, his city and himself. It starts off, appropriately enough, not featuring Jack at all. Instead, Shade tells one last tale of Time's Past, the death of former Sheriff Brian Savage who would be reincarnated as Matt O'Dare, himself recently deceased and his own ancestor a deputy of Savage who avenges his mentor's murder. It's important both as a wrap-up of the Savage story that has filtered through the last 80 issues, but also a reminder of certain recurring themes. The most important being that things come around again: roles are filled, people are replaced, either by reincarnated spirits, descendants or successors (short-lived and long-lived) to the position. Savage defends Opal, then becomes Matt O'Dare to do the same, and then will become Thom Kallor and take on the role of Starman himself. Similarly, Opal will ALWAYS have a Starman - when it wasn't Ted Knight, it was David (briefly) and then Jack. Between them were Mikaal Tomas and Will Payton, as well as a Stargirl who served for a single day, and a briefly mentioned by Ted Knight "Starman of 1951" who held the role for a year and a day and then disappeared as mysteriously as he'd arrived. It's this Starman who Jack spends most of these last few issues meeting and getting to know, after one final "Talking With David" sees him briefly reunited with his dead brother AND father. Getting to say the final goodbye he didn't have the chance for in life, Robinson takes the chance to further tie things up nicely. First with an explanation for why David and Ted's souls were able to stick around (partly due to the Black Pirate's curse, now broken) and secondly a meeting with Kyle, David's killer who Jack killed in turn. The two get the chance to make peace, though I do find it interesting that Nash is nowhere to be seen. Jack gets to lay out his regrets and concerns with Kyle, David and Ted and make peace, and believes this marks a clean break with his life of Starman. But they have other plans, as he is returned to life but finds himself in 1951, where he meets the Starman of 1951 at last... his brother David!  It seems almost cruel, but in the split second before David's death the other half of the "Talking With David" explanation treated him to the gift of "A Moment in Time." Kent Nelson - the former Dr. Fate - gave him a year and a day, in which David Knight got to live his dream of being Starman. He replaced a man who had no idea he was his father, Ted having fallen into a deep depression following the Manhattan Project and also the death of his long-time girlfriend. With no idea he was only a split-second from death, Jack initially tries to hide the fact from him while using the time they have together to become the friends they would only become after David's death. In the process, they unknowingly help their father regain his mojo, as their own well-meaning but clunky efforts to defeat The Mist set Ted's brain in motion and lead him to discover the deeper truths behind the surface villainy. David's time finishes (Jack has by this point told him the truth) and Jack unknowingly sends his father to his first meeting with he and David's mother, bringing everything back together in a neat circle. It's all so neat and well-executed that Jack can be forgiven when he is "rescued" by Thom Kallor and assumes he knows all about his past lives/reincarnations, which is all news to the bewildered alien. All this leads in to the final issue, where Jack says his goodbyes to Opal City. Sadie had left him a note explaining why she ran out on him, but also giving him an option. She can't be with him and raise their child together knowing that the craziness that surrounds Starman/Opal City could impact on them. But she can be with him and raise their child together... but only with him, not Starman. She has moved to San Francisco and begs him to join her there, putting his superhero life behind him. Despite his close relationship with the city, his business, and his surviving friends, Jack doesn't hesitate for a moment beyond one matter. He can live Opal City if it is safe... and if it has a Starman. The cynical rear end in a top hat who thought being a superhero was stupid from 80 issues ago is gone, this is somebody who understands the importance and necessity of what his father created. So he searches across the city to assure himself that it has protectors: The Dibnys, Hamilton Drew, Bobo, Black Condor, Mikaal Tomas, even Shade. He finds a multitude of answers from all (including the shocking death of Mason O'Doyle, and his even more shocking resurrection) but nothing firm. Nobody can guarantee they will stay in Opal beyond the Shade, who gives him the good advice that Opal City is his home, but it is also "just" a city, and his home can be wherever he chooses to make it. When Jack says he'll have to remain to chase after Mason's attempted murderer, Shade reminds him that The Spider is HIS villain, which also makes him muse on the idea that perhaps he has become a hero after all. The last of Jack's thin objections are scattered aside, and all that remains is for him to make one last meeting. Which is also the only sour note in these final few issues. Because Starman is 80 issues of a mostly meticulously plotted and emotionally resonant story, and its greatest flaw has always been that it has to be (and wants to be) a greater part of the DC Universe. While this mostly worked to its credit in Stars My Destination and Grand Guignol, it has often caused my biggest complaints with the series. Sadie's backstory relegated to an annual, Culp and the Lombards in a tangentially related mini-series, the dogshit Genesis event, the clumsy Captain Marvel crossover etc. Because much to my surprise I discovered for the first time only AFTER finishing all 80 issues that apparently at some point during this run, Jack actually joined (part-time) the Justice Society of America and had a series of adventures/developed relations with them all. Yeah I know he's met up with various members at different times in the course of THIS series, but I didn't know it had developed any at all beyond that.  The above happens in issue 75, and I assumed as I read it that it was just a teaser of stuff he had been up to inbetween issues. I didn't realize it covered actual events in other comics, including a mini-event in which various heroes had their ages changed. This is also the first mention in this series of Courtney Whitmore, known as Stars. It's mentioned casually, but along with a prior earlier issue in which Ted Knight told the story of the one-day career of "Stargirl" it is clearly meant in hindsight to be setting the stage for what is to come. Because this is who Jack chooses to continue his father's legacy, he calls her into town and gives her his jacket, goggles and the cosmic rod. She's as baffled as I was by this decision, but he says some very nice things I'm sure would have resonance if I'd read any of the JSA stories that featured the two of them. The ironic thing being that I was fully aware that this character went by the name Stargirl through the 2000s/2010s but I also never actually made the connection between her and Jack. Probably because, based on reading this series, there was NO connection to be aware of in the first place. It feels churlish to complain about it, and it is a minor thing to find fault in, but again I want to stress that I was reading the Starman series, and if major events were going to be established in OTHER comic book series it would have been nice if they'd at least mentioned it somewhere in this one. I don't want to end on a sour note, so I'll go back to the beginning. Jack says his goodbyes to the city, visits his father's museum one last time, paints a still life to capture his memories, then picks up his son and drives out without a backward look as he heads to San Francisco and a new, good life waiting for him there. This ended Starman, a series well-deserving of the high place it garnered on the list, and it ended the polar opposite of its dark and slightly cynical beginnings. Like Jack, it grew and became better as it went along, and it went out on as high a note as it could. 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 09:58
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Silver2195 posted:I think it's partly a side effect of superhero tropes deeply baked into the Marvel Universe, particularly the idea that superpowered, sometimes anonymous vigilantes are the main thing standing between the world as we know it and Armageddon. It's really this. There's two major problems I have with Civil War that make it absolute garbage rather than just yet another lovely event. The first is that superhero comics do not lend themselves well to this kind of introspection unless you build things from the ground up that way. Unaccountable vigilantism is not a good thing. Leaving an unconscious person hanging from a lamp post with a note saying what the police should charge them with is insane. On top of that, Reed Richards and Tony Stark build weapons of mass destruction in major population centers. There's groups of civilians running around overthrowing countries. It's not an original idea to say that super hero comics are an inherently fascist power fantasy where those with power seize control and may do what they want because they're presented as "good guys". Literally every month there's an event that should be the equivalent of 9/11 because writers have to keep the stakes high. But as readers of super hero comics we politely look the other way regarding these issues with the genre. You accept that all this stuff is normal because if it was treated realistically then the whole thing falls apart. And Civil War decides to breach that, and then only does it half way. It wants its "realistic" take on these issues and to be a superhero comics where in the end punching guys is the way things are resolved. Which brings me to problem number two: Tony Stark is right so they have to bend over backward to justify the existence of the superhero universe by making him the most villainous rear end in a top hat this side of Dr. Doom. I don't want to say a single person is responsible for the problem of having absolutely no loving clue about how the legal system or politics work, Millar has to take a large share of the blame but Civil War is an event by committee so the blame can go around. But what matters here is that the SRA makes no goddamned sense as a law, the response to it makes no sense, and the enforcement of it makes no sense. No one challenges the law as transparently unconstitutional. Why does an international organization tasked with fighting terrorism enforce US laws? The answer is "it's a superhero comic" but they've already violated the conventions of superhero comics to get to this point which makes the hows and whys more important. And so Tony Stark has to go around doing very illegal things with absolutely no consequences because otherwise he'd be right. Lick! The! Whisk! posted:It was absolutely one zillion billion percent a commentariat on Bush II's various spying programs, PATRIOT Act, and partially a reaction to 9/11. There's a lot of valid sins you can level against CW, but it being designed as a right wing power fantasy is not one of them. It was, but filtered through a person who didn't actually understand any of it. You know that guy who has a decent position on politics in general but has them for insane and stupid reasons so you want to go, "Dude, don't be on my side" ? That's their commentary on Bush. Jerusalem posted:
Congratulations on finishing the biggest reading project in the list. FWIW, Jack is only on the JSA briefly and the story between him and Courtney came out after Starman finished. You might like to read the story that led into Starman. Shortly before the series started, Robinson did a reworking of characters in a series called The Golden Age. It's pretty good and featured Hitler's brain in an atomic superman's body plotting to take over the US through politics. It's not required reading, certainly not as much as the various annuals, specials, and side stories that dot the Starman landscape, but the events in that book are referenced a lot in Starman. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 12:23
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Huh, I actually read The Golden age a loooong time ago and I've obviously forgotten enough of it I didn't recall the connections to Starman. I remember greatly enjoying it at the time I read it, but the one thing that always stuck with me is that the young hero at the end is lauded by the newspapers. The article is accompanied by a close-up of his face showing "grim determination", but one of the heroes present notes that he'd actually been kicked in the nuts by the villain at the time the photo was taken  Random Stranger posted:FWIW, Jack is only on the JSA briefly and the story between him and Courtney came out after Starman finished. Well that actually makes me even more sour on it as a passing the torch moment, to be honest 
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Apr 15, 2018 13:44
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Random Stranger posted:
I mean, totally. To be clear, I'm not arguing that Mark Millar is a good writer, I'm merely making the point that Marvel never ever intended for CW to be an embracement of Bush's policies over a deconstruction and criticism of the same.
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Apr 15, 2018 18:41
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Just noticed the master list numbers had updated and drifted out of synch with our RNG list again so I've lined the numbers back up and I think it is all accurate once more. __________________________ I know I just finished writing up an 8-part review of an 80 issue series, but I'm already thinking about doing more so I went ahead and hit the Random Number Generator for myself:  Oh my God what have I done   
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 09:41
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Jerusalem posted:Just noticed the master list numbers had updated and drifted out of synch with our RNG list again so I've lined the numbers back up and I think it is all accurate once more. I'm actually quite curious how that is as an actual story. I never read it, just heard all the hate about the marriage-reset. So good on you for taking the bulllet for us!
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Apr 17, 2018 14:05
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jng2058 posted:I'm actually quite curious how that is as an actual story. I never read it, just heard all the hate about the marriage-reset. So good on you for taking the bulllet for us! Brand New Day was not bad, though.
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Apr 18, 2018 02:52
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RE: Civil War and its origins, trying to ascribe anything resembling a (deliberate or coherent) commentary on Current Events to it seems like a fool's errand; Mark Millar has never seemed deep or thoughtful enough to really warrant such things. As a personal Zelig type event, I actually went to the afterparty/drink-up of the creative summit where Civil War was concocted, because in 2005 I guess everyone at Marvel was okay with Mark Millar just posting the information on his forum. At that creative summit, the big post House of M "summer event" was penciled in to be World War Hulk, spearheaded by JMS and Jeph Loeb. It was going to involve a OHOTMUDE-level list of obscure alien races all led by Hulk seeking vengeance on Our Heroes, and a whole lot of people at the bar were vocally opposed to the idea of doing a big summer event dedicated to continuity porn about Rigellians and Ovoids and the Brood and Saturnian Rock Creatures and etc. Pretty much everyone other who wasn't Loeb or JMS at the bar (which included most of the editors and writers at Marvel circa 2005 minus Bendis and Brubaker) seemed to be complaining about this idea, and Millar kept saying they could definitely do better. I have no idea why they were telling people like me this, but I guess everyone had been drinking. This is the same night that Jeph Loeb told me that people were responding poorly to his Supergirl because fans weren't ready for Strong Female Protagonists. Mark Millar corroborates this in the official Civil War Scriptbook: quote:Marvel had a plan for a crossover, but it wasn't very good and I remember Brian and I passing each other little notes saying as much. [...] Brian went away slightly troubled, feeling we could do better. Next morning we hopped a cab from the hotel together and he said he had a great idea. Why don't we do something he'd touched upon as part of his big New Avengers plans with regard to secret identities and registration? He had this idea of SHIELD vs. the Marvel Universe... The original pitch (reprinted in one of the Civil War trades) was pretty different in the sense that the whole Registration thing was borne out of Speedball negligently killing Happy Hogan and Pepper Pott's kid, leading Iron Man to make the ultimatum that every hero had to unmask in 28 days or be depowered. People go along with it initially, though Cap is hesitant, but once heroes start unmasking their families start getting murdered and random heroes (Millar doesn't care which) are blackmailed into committing suicide in order to save their kids or whatever. This leads to Captain America dissenting, and things go along kind of like they did in the actual comic. Cap's "Secret Avengers" actually quit being heroes and live normal lives for awhile until Thor (the real Thor) comes back to poo poo all over Cap and his friends for giving up being heroes, and then Hulk and a hundred thousand Hulk Babies (because Hulk after getting shot into space hosed every alien he could find) invade the planet, leading Cap and the Anti-Registration Heroes to come out of retirement to help Iron Man and his buddies fight off hulk and his hundreds of thousands of Hulk Babies. All of the heroes unite to defeat Hulk's Army of Babies, when it's revealed that an Evil Senator has orchestrated the whole thing to destroy all of the heroes and depower them, and all of the heroes beat up the senator or something and destroy the depowering machine, but not before Steve gets depowered, meaning that Iron Man was right, people need to be registered because Captain America is weak now. Cue 50 States Initiative, Bucky Cap, Red Hulk, etc. That was the original pitch, and it was sort of deformed into the finished product by about a hundred people, often working at cross purposes. Mark Millar's intention was in his own words was to write a story "where the heroes do what Stan and Jack made them do best: kick the living poo poo out of each other" with little apparent desire to comment on politics. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Apr 18, 2018 |
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Apr 18, 2018 05:04
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I don't know how much influence it had on the final product, but Mark Millar almost died when he was writing Civil War, it was serious enough that he dropped every other book he was working on and there was talk about Civil War being his last book.
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Apr 18, 2018 05:26
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Edge & Christian posted:The original pitch (reprinted in one of the Civil War trades) was pretty different in the sense that the whole Registration thing was borne out of Speedball negligently killing Happy Hogan and Pepper Pott's kid, leading Iron Man to make the ultimatum that every hero had to unmask in 28 days or be depowered. People go along with it initially, though Cap is hesitant, but once heroes start unmasking their families start getting murdered and random heroes (Millar doesn't care which) are blackmailed into committing suicide in order to save their kids or whatever. That sounds even worse than the actual plot of Civil War.
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Apr 18, 2018 05:38
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Yeah that sounds loving terrible. Civil War itself turned out pretty poorly but that sounds far, far worse than what we got.
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Apr 18, 2018 05:53
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When Marvel first announced Civil War, I honestly didn't understand why they didn't give their in-house lawyers a few days off to have fun and knock together the actual text for the Registration Act, which they could then post online as a cool little bit of self-promotion that'd probably give a nice boost to the Pro/Anti squabbling they were encouraging on various forums. After Civil War came out, I really didn't understand why they never bothered to do that, because holy poo poo maybe at some point SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE DECIDED WHAT WAS IN THE loving BILL before twenty different writers all got a smudged cocktail napkin with "superhero registration????" written on it and interpreted that twenty different ways. And hey, maybe the laywers would have been able to tell Mark Millar (who, like I said re: Kick-rear end, has very little understanding of America and never strikes falser notes than when he pretends to depict its society) about what Constitutional Amendments are and how his pretend law was flouting nearly ever single one of them.
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Apr 18, 2018 06:03
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Having finally caught up on this thread, awesome job, J-ru. Even though it has flaws, that Starman run is still one of my favorite things in comics and I still read through it about every other year. Everything involved in Civil War wound up worse off for it, but it's incredible to see it could have been worse.
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Apr 18, 2018 07:22
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CapnAndy posted:When Marvel first announced Civil War, I honestly didn't understand why they didn't give their in-house lawyers a few days off to have fun and knock together the actual text for the Registration Act, which they could then post online as a cool little bit of self-promotion that'd probably give a nice boost to the Pro/Anti squabbling they were encouraging on various forums. They couldn't arrest Grizzly because the second amended guarantees his right to bear arms.
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Apr 18, 2018 14:20
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yeah i'm writing the Civil War review and there's going to be a lot of screaming
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Apr 19, 2018 18:18
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When I was a kid, I saw a comic-book cover that instantly entranced me. I had to buy that comic, I had to read it. It was the first comic I ever bought for myself with my own money, and I treasured it for a long time. What attracted me about the comic? The black costume? The weird looking dude in the exo-skeleton blasting electricity everywhere? The odd (at the time) spelling of "Phreak"? Nah, what absolutely blew my mind was that Spider-Man had a wife! I'd been reading comics for years by that point, but only the odd issue here and there, usually gifted to me by my comic-loving uncle but also the odd random assortment of issues given by my parents or grandparents. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Archie Andrews, The Phantom - as far as I knew they all just kind of existed in this amorphous, ill-defined world of largely disconnected, standalone stories. I didn't know that Spider-Man had married amongst much publicity the year before to longtime girlfriend Mary Jane Watson. I had no idea he had a wife, and seeing those words on the cover just immediately struck a chord with me. Spidey is married? How does that work? Isn't it dangerous? Does she know he's Spider-Man? I had to know! I bring all this up because one of the reasons used to justify the One More Day storyline was that a married Spider-Man simply wasn't relatable to a new audience. Apparently a person who picked up a current issue of Spider-Man would say,"Huh, this guy who has the proportionate strength and speed of a spider and counts among his enemies a robot octopus, an alien version of himself, the resurrected corpse of his best friend's dad, a man with a fishbowl on his head and that old pigeon guy from Hey Arnold! is pretty relatable.... hold on, he's in a committed and loving relationship? GETDAFUCKOUTTAHEAH!" Spider-Man is the crown-jewel of Marvel in my opinion, and a lot of that has been attributed to his relatability. Unlike Superman and Batman (arguably the only two superheroes with greater penetration into the public consciousness) he was an ordinary person who just so happened to have extraordinary powers. He struggled to pay his rent, he hosed up in his personal and professional life. He had no remarkable history/origin, he was just a kid from Queens who hit a low-level jackpot (his big goal was to make cash on local television!) and then hosed it all up and has spent the rest of his life trying to make up for that one mistake. But comics don't succeed or fail on their relatability, they survive on whether they're well written, well drawn and (perhaps most importantly of all) well managed by their publisher. Other characters have been created in the Spider-Man vein and failed, or had at best limited or sporadic success. For a long time Spider-Man enjoyed a strong and loyal audience, and enjoyed writing that set him firmly on the street level with a strong (if rotating) supporting cast and villains. In the 90s he exploded in popularity alongside pretty much everything else in comics, which lead to an overabundance of Spider-Man titles and some truly wretched massive crossovers or "world-shaking" events ala Maximum Carnage or the Clone Saga. The series was given soft-reboots and creative-team shakeups to try and fix the problem, at times paring down and other times ramping things up again to mixed results. So there was some justification when Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided that something had to be done about Spider-Man to preserve the longevity of the character. He'd been "outted" during the Civil War crossover so his identity was now known around the world. He'd spent time living in Stark Tower with a new suit and all his expenses taken care of. He now had new "powers" as part of an oft-maligned "Spider-Totem" storyline, including organic webshooters. He was currently on the run as a fugitive from the law after going against Tony Stark. There was credence to the idea that new fans (and old!) might be put off from picking up new issues of the series. Something had to be done, and it was clear that this something was to  I went into this story trying my best to have as open a mind as possible. I tried to ignore the aftermath, to pull back from my own distaste for everything that went on around these issues and just judge this based on the quality of the story itself. I didn't want the benefit of hindsight or my preconceived notions to color my interpretation of the comic. I had never read this before, because back in 2007 when it happened I was so disgusted at the concept that I voted with my wallet and didn't buy it. So then how could I truly speak on whether it was any good or not if I hadn't read it? Well because it was a stupid loving idea is how! But for this review I wanted to be as fair as possible and give it credit where it was due. The result? This comic loving sucks. Honestly I could end the review right there and you'd have all you need to know. It's awful. It's a bad story in every sense of the word. The plot beats feel designed by committee, the characterization makes no sense, the writing is forced, and even the art is surprisingly mediocre. The latter was the biggest surprise, because for any other faults he might have I have always credited his art. The writing was less of a surprise, even as he was writing it J. Michael Straczynski was open about the story not going the way he wanted to take it. This was a story that came from editorial mandate. It's a work-for-hire by a man who was already on his way out the door. So here is the set-up: Spider-Man's identity is public knowledge and he has lost the protection for his family guaranteed to him by Iron Man in the fallout from Civil War. An assassin who attempted to kill Peter accidentally hit his elderly Aunt May instead. Now she is in hospital, kept alive only by machines, and Peter has been told that as they have no money or proper identification/paperwork (they're fugitives), May is going to be dumped into a charity care ward to essentially die. Peter, understandably, isn't willing to accept this ignominious end for the woman who has been his surrogate mother his entire life, and sets out to get help in whatever way he can. Which is when the "but thou must!" elements come into play, as Peter is turned down at every turn purely to setup the utterly ridiculous back-half of the story.  After a confrontation with Iron Man gets him the money he needs to ensure Aunt May is getting the best round-the-clock medical attention possible, Peter goes to see Dr Strange to ask him to help heal her. Strange, master of the mystic arts and sorceror supreme, insists that he doesn't have the power to heal an old woman with a gunshot wound. But he does enable Peter to speak with the likes of Henry Pym, Black Panther, Curt Connors, Doctor Octopus (who once almost married May), Dead Girl, the X-Men (who included at the time a mutant who could literally heal anybody of anything provided they were alive), Reed "I can build a cold fusion device out of half a raisin" Richards and even Dr. "I can build a cold (but I'll make it hot anyway) fusion device out of the smell of half a raisin just to show up Reed Richards" Doom. Every single one of them tell Peter that they can't heal May. Not that they won't, but that they CAN'T. Doom doesn't even offer to clone a new body for May, then channel her soul into it! This puts the storyline at a crossroads. Peter can accept the inevitable, that his elderly aunt is going to die after a long life well-spent and travel to an afterlife he KNOWS exists. Or he can literally do a deal with the devil at ridiculous personal cost. Now to be fair, Straczynski makes an effort to address the extremely obvious questions this storyline raises. The fact these "answers" are in no way satisfactory is another matter, but he does as least make the effort: "Why not get "X" to heal May?" "Peter asked, they can't" "May has to die eventually, you have to accept that" "Peter can only accept that if it is due to natural causes, not this violent assault which was also intended for HIM" "Why not travel back in time and prevent May getting shot?" "Peter tried and was prevented by timeline protecting monsters" "If May does recover it may be a living hell for her" "Peter will ensure she is restored to her full and natural physical and mental health" Peter meets a small child who leads him down an alley where he meets two men who are CLEARLY himself from alternative/potential timelines where he never became Spider-Man. That he doesn't grasp this obvious fact is odd, though I guess given his emotional and mental state it can be forgiven. These visions are a cruel tease by the girl who turns out to be Mephisto, who is essentially Marvel's version of Satan (sometimes), who takes great delight in taunting Peter.  Herein lies another problem: Should I be agreeing with the literal devil in it's character assessment of the protagonist of the series? Because Mephisto is right, Peter IS being selfish and stubborn and close-minded. The writing here caused me flashbacks to the awful late 90s era of Spider-Man and the likes of Judas Traveler who would rip on Peter for being a piece of poo poo and Peter would just have to sit there and take it. Mephisto apparently has the ability to change the timeline, he has the power to overcome those timeline protecting monsters as well as the nous to change something seemingly inconsequential and allow the butterfly effect to cause the major changes, thus avoiding their attention in the first place. This ability, which apparently is beyond the likes of Dr "I can essentially play on the same level as cosmic entities" Strange and Dr "I have a literal time machine" Doom, is on offer to Peter. The cost isn't Peter's soul, which Mephisto claims he is likely to end up getting anyway, but his "love". He wants to undo Peter and MJ's marriage because it is "Pure" and blessed by God, thus taking it away would be a victory over God for Mephisto to cherish. He makes the offer not just to Peter but simultaneously to MJ (a neat artistic moment that demonstrates Mephisto's inhuman power/intelligence) and gives them "ONE MORE DAY" to make their decision. To sweeten the deal, he offers to "undo" Peter's identity being outted, but warns that if they don't agree then Aunt May absolutely will die and there is nothing anybody can do about it and they'll have to live with the knowledge that because of them she is enjoying eternal paradise reunited with Ben and beaming down her love upon them from on high. Oh also they kill their future daughter by agreeing!   I like to think of Spider-Man as an optimistic superhero, a character who ultimately lives in a good world and makes it a better place. This isn't always accurate to the way the series goes, which coincides with the periods where I dislike it the most. "With great power comes great responsibility" is an ethos that rose out a dark place and a failure on Peter's behalf, but it lead to one of the sunniest, most down-to-earth and likeable characters in all of comicbooks. Peter is a goof and a dork in a silly costume who makes bad jokes while fighting ridiculous villains whose attempts at gravitas and powerplays are stymied simply by his presence. The Death of Gwen Stacey was a pivotal moment in the series, featuring the death of a longtime supporting cast member/Peter's love interest. It is rightfully considered one of the best stories in Spider-Man's long run of comics, but as always the wrong message was taken from this by future writers. Because the death of Gwen Stacey also lead to the first tentative steps in the deepening of the relationship between Peter and MJ, and ultimately to a far more positive and optimistic character. It built off what went before, and grew the character without shifting the overall tone of the series. Ever since then though, there have been periodic periods of darkness/horror/grief that exist seemingly for their own sake. This feels like the same thing. Yeah it was going to lead to pretty broad changes in Spider-Man, but nothing that felt earned. MJ agrees to Mephisto's conditions and she and Peter say one final "I love you" before MJ repeats her famous "jackpot" line... and then Peter wakes up to a "brand new day" where it quickly becomes apparent what all this was REALLY about.  Because the complaint I had a decade ago when I first heard about this story holds just as true now as it did then after I finally read it. Joe Quesada claimed that the marriage of Peter and MJ in the first place was just a publicity stunt, ignoring that for 20 years after that it remained an established and integral part of the character. Stan Lee praised the idea of One More Day, saying the courage to make such a big sweeping change was to be lauded. He even noted that he faced a similar level of criticism when he married them in the first place back in 1987, and had he listened and kept things the same we wouldn't have had the Spider-Man we enjoyed so much over the intervening decades. But this wasn't about making changes, in my opinion this was about one thing above all else: Joe Quesada wanted "his" Spider-Man back. Look at the above panels. It's Peter back living with his Aunt May, struggling to wake up on time, being fed breakfast cooked by her. It's Flash Thompson hanging around again. It's the return of Harry loving Osborn for the millionth time (allegedly he initially wanted Gwen Stacey back too, but got talked out of it thank God). It's Peter striking out with women before he even has a chance to make his move. It's the Spider-Man Joe Quesada read when he was a kid. In 1988 my first comic was Spider-Man, and he was married to MJ. In 1971 Quesada read Amazing Spider-Man 98 and fell in love with a Peter who was best friends with Harry Osborn, being harangued by the Green Goblin and, most importantly, reunited with girlfriend Gwen Stacey. The end of One More Day kicks off Brand New Day, which is ironically titled because it basically resets everything to that 1971 setting. Peter even goes back to work as a photographer for the Daily Bugle! The only difference is that Gwen remains dead, MJ is still around but DEFINITELY not dating Peter, and there's a new character who is clearly set up as Peter's new potential romantic love interest... a character named after Quesada's daughter in what could charitably be looked at as a sweet gesture or more cynically as an attempt to stamp his own mark on the series forever (in either case, it didn't work). I don't want to dislike Brand New Day just because it changed the way I liked things, that would make me no better than Quesada. On its own merits though it's a terrible goddamn story. It is contrived in the worst ways, everything is designed to get it to the end point demanded by editorial mandate and the writer's attempts to explain away the (many, many) alternative routes only serves to bring them into sharper relief. In its efforts to make Spider-Man a more relatable title it fails completely. I mean, the concept of Spider-Man being married was apparently such a dealbreaker that Marvel considered the concept of Spider-Man making a deal with the devil as a preferable, easier to swallow option for new readers? The aftermath of One More Day exists in a weird place where proponents or opponents of the changes could argue their side had been proven right. Because with a brand new (old) status quo in place, there was a rough adjustment period of trying to figure out exactly how to handle Peter. Eventually it was realized the best way to write good Spider-Man stories was to... write good Spider-Man stories! Married or not, writing a grounded and largely optimistic series about a slightly goofy dude who bugs the poo poo out of too-grandiose-for-their-own-good super-villains worked well. Yeah there were still missteps or stories that fell flat, but there were lengthy periods where Spider-Man was used really well. Some would argue this was because everything was better now that the marriage had never been. Others would argue that you could have written EXACTLY the same stories and kept Peter married. Others didn't give a poo poo either way so long as they enjoyed the stories. All that is irrelevant though, we're discussing THIS story, not what came after. Except... we kinda are, because I have a pretty drat relevant complaint to make:  The first half of One More Day is about Peter desperately going to everybody he can to get help to heal Aunt May. Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. Fantastic etc, none of them can help him. So he agrees to Mephisto's deal, his marriage never happens and somehow his identity returns to being a mystery (he still unmasked, everybody just... forgot who he was). But there were still questions from readers, who wanted to know exactly HOW that all happened, or at least WHAT happened. Joe Quesada claimed that was unnecessary, since it could be described as "magic" and leave it at that. Eventually though Marvel decided to do a story called "One Moment in Time" that explained it all. So we learn that May was still shot, but this time recovers due to CPR administered by Peter. Why did that work? Because... Dr. Strange healed her. Dr. Strange. Healed. Her. Also Dr. Strange, Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic then set things up to make the world forget Peter's secret identity. You know who wrote this story? Joe loving Quesada. gently caress this stupid story, gently caress the stupid idea to end the genuine, loving and entirely relatable idea of Peter and MJ being happily married. gently caress this constantly recurring thing where fans who grow up to be writers "fix" things back to the way they were when they were kids. gently caress all of it... but in the interests of that optimistic, positive outlook I so love in Spider-Man, I'm not going to end on that sour note. Instead, I'm going to get some savage satisfaction out of the BEST thing to come out of One More Day.   Stan Lee praised the courage of Quesada/Marvel to make such a wholesale change, and it was reflected in the ongoing Spider-Man title he writes (or is credited for writing at least), but this time when the complaints came rolling in, they actually listened. It took several months, but the marriage was reestablished and continues on strong to this day. And you know what? They somehow manage to write fun stories just fine in spite of that "problem", just like they do in the "Renew Your Vows" series Marvel also now produces. Spider-Man is a great character. There were great Spider-Man stories before he married MJ, great stories after they married, there have been great stories after One More Day. But One More Day itself? That comic loving sucks. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Apr 22, 2018 |
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Apr 22, 2018 04:51
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Jerusalem posted:This comic loving sucks. I think the problem with One More Day, and a problem with a shitton of superhero books in general, is that it's a slave to continuity. Marvel decided editorially rather than through story progression that they wanted Peter Parker to have a different status quo where he's not married and is more freewheeling. But they already have that book and it's titled Ultimate Spider-Man. The problem is that comic fans have been trained to accept only one "true" version of events. That Spider-Man doesn't hang out with the Avengers or show up at the biannual crossover events so he doesn't count. So the continuity monster they've created demands that the marriage must go. But they also know that they have to drive a stake into the heart of the marriage or fans will be expecting it to be resolved and go back to the status quo at the end of the story. It will just be undone the next time the wind blows. And so they decided on this monstrosity as the solution. What they really needed to do so go, "gently caress continuity!" They should have had a grand send off to this era of Spider-Man. A Whatever Happened to the Man of the Spider story that gave Spider-Man and Mary Jane an ending, the one thing that comics conspire to deny their characters. And then next issue, Spidey isn't married and has the new status quo. No explanations, it just is. Yeah, you'll get whiners complaining about that but it's the kind of thing that needs a clean break and say, "These are the Spider-Man stories we're telling now. This is the Spider-Man who is going to go team up with Wolverine and be a groomsman at the Wedding of Galactus or whatever event we come up with next. No we're not going to go back and revisit anything to explain it. Just deal with it." But continuity cannot be denied.
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Apr 22, 2018 16:20
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Jerusalem posted:It's the Spider-Man Joe Quesada read when he was a kid.
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Apr 22, 2018 16:29
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Random Stranger posted:So the continuity monster they've created demands that the marriage must go. Even putting aside my own preference for him to remain married, I honestly see this entire thing as a solution to a problem that didn't exist. I honestly don't know of anybody outside of Quesada himself who was upset at the notion of Spider-Man being married, was that even something that was on the radar in terms of reader complaints or concerns? I mean, unless you were reading comics in the very early 70s, it's likely that Gwen Stacey didn't exist as anything other than a reference point ala Uncle Ben for you. Peter and MJ may have only married in 1987, but they were dating for years before then. Even if you were reading comics in the early 70s back when Peter and Gwen were dating, MJ had been around since the mid-60s as a friend/companion/supporting cast member. She's more tightly intertwined with Peter as a character than anybody else short of Aunt May, and I honestly can't see what ending their marriage actually accomplished. Even that stuff I mentioned higher up about Peter living with May again, working for the bugle, struggling to get money, hanging out with his old high school/college friends like Flash and Harry (ugh) is a misfire. It's supposed to be a return to the glory days (of Joe Quesada's childhoold memories) but given that Peter is an adult male now it just kind of makes him look like a pathetic guy who never grew up. It's a regression to a period of his life that the character grew out of, and for the better. Yeah there were great comics in those days, but Peter hasn't been in that mindset for a good quarter century or so at the time One More Day happened. I just do not understand why this story had to happen. It's bad. It's so loving bad. Evil Mastermind posted:People in charge of a property who want the version of that property they had when they were 12 are the loving worst. 
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Apr 23, 2018 03:22
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Didn't Aunt May die a few years beforehand too? Actually several times, but this one was for good and was because she was old so harder to magic away.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:27
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Evil Mastermind posted:People in charge of a property who want the version of that property they had when they were 12 are the loving worst. See my 280 page document as to why Geoff Johns is a loving hack and sucks.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:30
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It seems to me that it was all part of that "let's retcon the '90s" thing that got us Barry Allen and Hal Jordan back. While the nostalgia factor of "I want things back the way they were when I was a kid" certainly does play a part, I can't help but feel that there was also a lot of "the '90s sucked, let's blow it all up" in the thinking as well. Which is a shame because while there cerainly is a very high percentage of '90s comics that did indeed suck rear end, there's some pretty decent stuff in there. In particular, Waid's run on The Flash where Barry being dead and Wally trying to live up to his legacy was the throughline for the whole book. Having all that get flushed away to bring Barry back annoyed me even more than losing Peter and MJ's marriage. In short, while the '90s were kind of a dark time for a lot of DC and Marvel comics, the counter-revolution that tried to clear the decks afterwards often sucked just as bad, if not more so.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:34
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jng2058 posted:It seems to me that it was all part of that "let's retcon the '90s" thing that got us Barry Allen and Hal Jordan back. While the nostalgia factor of "I want things back the way they were when I was a kid" certainly does play a part, I can't help but feel that there was also a lot of "the '90s sucked, let's blow it all up" in the thinking as well. I think there's a lot of elements at play here. After the 90's tried to be mature by the entire industry becoming the equivalent of lovely teenagers, the 2000's tried to do it by shoving all of their embarrassing things into a meat grinder. At the same time, comics turned sharply inward. Superhero comics basically became commentary on superhero comics and went all-in on self-referencing and nostalgia. All the better to appeal to the people who had been buying comics for twenty years because that was pretty much the only audience they had left. We got some good books out of it, but a lot of unhealthy things too and one of the symptoms of it was turning back the clock. That doesn't have to be a bad thing. If someone has some good stories to tell about an earlier version of the character then why not just go for it? That's assuming, of course, that you're turning back the clock so you can start it moving forward again and do something different. I just think that the better solution than making incredibly lovely stories to justify it is to accept that it's not the 1960's with Stan editing every single book to keep them all in line and that it's okay to not have a coherent universe anymore.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:49
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Evil Mastermind posted:People in charge of a property who want the version of that property they had when they were 12 are the loving worst. And it's not even getting into the whispers/rumors/hearsay I've heard that speaks to an even deeper psychological issue that Quesada was motivated by to do this. That being he watched his mother die a long death from cancer and it deeply scarred him, and that there's a weird Oedipal thing where if he could trade his wife for his mother, he would. You can clearly see the analogies of such a concept in One More Day, but since I have no verification it should just be considered gossip. Also I have no idea if that being true would make it in any way better or worse.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:51
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