Giving up arguing about Marvel, Civil War etc. for Lent [Archive]

chastmastr

02-02-2008, 10:49 PM

As I've hinted in my sig and posted elsewhere, I've been very unhappy with the state of mainstream "616" Marvel for a while now and it's been on my mind a bit too much. There's only so much negativity I can dwell on without feeling down. I post on discussion boards, but after a while I feel like I'm repeating myself. Like many people I'm very displeased with One More Day but it's much more than that -- the mainstream MU is a depressing place for me to read about now for the most part, with so many heroes acting like villains in my eyes. (Someone actually said "What does morality have to do with storytelling?" on a thread the other day...)

And I'm sick and tired of constantly arguing about it with people on discussion boards. (There's something genuinely jarring about people saying, in so many words, that the ends justify the means -- which I consider totally counter to heroism and to goodness in general. But I've been an old pedantic moralist on that issue since at least the age of 16 or 17 (I'm 40 now) if not a lot younger, so I'm used to that, just not as much in people who like to read about super-heroes...)

And then I thought, hey, I finally have a nearly gap-free run of all those MC-2 books (the Spider-Girl universe) that I've wanted to start reading, which is something like 180 comic books, not to mention a host of back issues in general (just got a full run of Marvel Comics Presents and filling up my Wolverine run; also discovering Conan and such, not to mention Golden Age reprints which came out recently, and so on).

WOW, I realized. That's a lot of books. I do read terribly fast, but still, I could take a break from the mainstream 616 universe for a bit. For all intents and purposes I have a whole new universe of Marvel comics which are fun, more lighthearted, heroic, uplifting, and in a way show an alternate future for the characters without Civil War, Decimation, One More Day, Disassembled, etc.

And then I thought, hey, you know, Lent is coming and I haven't actually given something up for Lent in a few years now...

So I've pretty much determined to stop reading current 616 books for Lent, and to start on the MC-2 ones I've gathered in earnest. (The ones I plan on reading, mind you, I'll still buy and put in a box or something. Unlike some people, while I loathed OMD, I like Dan Slott so I'm giving BND a chance.) Also to stop posting about my gripes with Marvel for Lent -- it's burning me out. (When you reach the point of referencing Aristotle and Horace, and C.S. Lewis multiple times (like the Green Lady in Perelandra, I can enjoy a story about all kinds of things, but the kind of story the malevolent visitor offers her is like making the sun all black and the air so she cannot breathe it and the water so she cannot drink it; I think it must have been a copy of Civil War) then it's time to give it a rest. Well, OK, I quote C.S. Lewis a lot regardless, but you know what I mean. If you don't, you will by the end of this post.) I'll make an exception for X-Men: First Class and Wolverine: First Class, but I don't quite see them as 616 books anyway.

A lot of my fellow posters who are upset about the current state of Marvel, though One More Day seems to have become the poster child for that, seem to be eaten up with the same kind of misery over it, consumed with vitriol, even going so far as to personally attack Joe Quesada and such online. To me that's just not right. I think he's messing up Marvel right now, though it's making lots of money for them (and yes, to me those are very different things), but for goodness' sake he's a human being, people.

If I could summarize my position, it would really be... this hideously long thing. Perhaps I need a summary of a summary. But here it is:

1. I think Marvel's mainstream books, and mainstream world, have gone horribly off the rails since mid-2004, with most of their big-name "leader" characters unrepentantly corrupt or else dead, with a joy-choking, fascist paradigm in place which makes the ongoing backstory a real pill to read.

1a. Critically, this doesn't mean the writers or editors are themselves bad guys as human beings! My God, the vitriol some readers have for them is -- well, let's put it this way, if what bugs me about the books is the lack of heroism, would the characters whose heroism I so revere act with that kind of obsessive hatred and childish petulance? And of course, when people act like that it makes it hard for the writers or editors to take those complaints seriously. Dan Slott was in a podcast where he talked about some of those readers who were saying they were quitting Marvel forever and so on, and I could really see how that sounds to Dan and others. I think Joe and some folks have a very snotty, unprofessional attitude about the crazed internet fans, but there's a reason for that perception: some of those people are, to put it charitably, being a tad melodramatic at best. This doesn't mean I think my concerns aren't valid. I'm sure that those creators are quite nice people in real life; I just think they've done terrible damage to Marvel's characters and stories, with what are probably the best intentions in the world. I don't wish them ill. In fact in some cases I think they may be good writers, just not good writers for these specific characters -- they seem to have very good reputations for books which are about a thousand miles away from classic Marvel stuff -- noir crime fiction, Vertigo stuff, etc. -- and I think they've been changing the characters' basic essences to fit their own style. Grant Morrison can do both the brain-frying Vertigo-style stuff and classic inspiring heroism and probably unnameable genres of his own devising, but that's because he's a bloody genius who does six impossible things before breakfast. Not everyone can do that. If Millar had been doing, not Reed, but a character like Reed behaving the way he did in Civil War, it could be an interesting story, but it's like they've tacked a wholly different character with a different moral sense onto him and called it "Reed." But it's not Reed...

Whoops, digressing again. Back to the summary. Those who've seen some of my longer posts might confirm that even this is condensed. :eek:

1b. My gripe is not, like some, about whether or not Spider-Man and Wolverine are in the Avengers, or whether Storm married the Black Panther, or for that matter about organic web-shooters, or even for that matter about whether Spider-Man is married. It's solely the moral stuff. Let Peter get divorced, let MJ turn out to be a Skrull sleeper agent, but jeez, people, a deal with Mephisto? I never cared for Logan's bone claws, I didn't particularly like Origin, but don't take away his focus on honor, no-BS honesty with himself, embracing his humanity despite his feral rages, and helping the innocent, because that really does destroy the core of the character. (And so on with Reed et al.)

2. Some writers, most notably Dan Slott in the Initiative, are able to take this mess and make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the aftermath of Civil War. They don't make the corrupt heroes less so, but at least they show how bad this situation is, and therefore uphold the ideals the characters have betrayed, even though the whole situation is terrible. His writing shows the basic humanity of the characters (even the nastier ones) in what is essentially an inhuman, Procrustean situation.

continued...

chastmastr

02-02-2008, 10:50 PM

... continued...

3. I don't think this situation will last forever. I have no idea if Peter and Mary Jane will go back to being married in the mainstream MU, but I'm pretty sure that the horrible "if you get powers and don't register with Tony's little police state, you get hunted down like a dog by monsters and serial killers" setup will go away, because it's just no damn fun to read about in the long run. Apart from the real-world ethics of some kind of registration, or the ethics of how this one's applied in the MU, the whole "put on a mask and fight crime with no one knowing who you are" fantasy is such a deep-rooted one, from the beginning of comics history on till now, I can't see Marvel single-handedly destroying that. But also I don't think people want to read about a fascist dystopia in the long run. Right now it's got a lot of novelty driving it -- we simply haven't seen this kind of thing before. Once that wears out, I think that it'll be as tired and worn-out as foil covers from the 90s, and circa 2016 people will look in the three-for-a-dollar bins at all the stories from "back when they made Tony Stark into a dick."

How this will happen or when, I don't know. Maybe under Quesada, maybe someone else. Maybe it'll be weird and clunky, maybe it'll make perfect sense and explain all the inconsistencies away (which will bug a lot of people who like the books as they are now, though why they do genuinely baffles me). But it'll happen. Maybe it'll be at the end of Secret Invasion. Maybe it'll be the Cosmic Cube or the Infinity Gems. Heck, maybe -- and I could cope with that though again right now it'd be hard to take seriously -- they'll have the SHRA legally struck down and quietly stop referring to it at all, and just make the heroes heroic again, without explanation. I am sure Steve Rogers will be back as Captain America. We might still have Bucky around, we might not. Lord, who knows, maybe he'll turn out to be a Skrull. I'm pretty sure the "no more mutants" edict will go away too, as if it doesn't it kind of shoots the X-books dead, since apart from this one baby there aren't more being born, but just oodles of death. (They could publish a new miniseries every year spotlighting the ones remaining. After Decimation it was The 198, but now it could be The 145 and next year The 89 and so on, until perhaps we get down to the original five X-Men, followed by And Then There Were None...)

4. I actually like a few -- precious few -- other mainstream Marvel books. I like Whedon's Astonishing, Straczynski's Thor and The Twelve, Van Lente's Incredible Herc, and I'm even giving Dan Slott's Spider-Man a chance. I don't think it's fair to punish Slott for a story which he didn't write, or for that matter to punish Straczynski for a story he mainly seemed to write under protest (first a "hired gun" and then trying to take his name off it). There's an Avengers/Invaders book coming up with art by Steve Sadowski, whose work I love. But I don't like Bendis', Millar's, Aaron's, or even Brubaker's stuff for the most part, and as they're the current architects of the MU, it leaves me with fewer books to buy.

5. I have come to love a whole bunch of non-mainstream Marvel books, particularly their all ages lines -- Spider-Girl and the MC-2 books (coming soon: American Dream, a miniseries about the female successor to Captain America) (http://www.comicboards.com/spidergirl/view.php?trd=080125173334), X-Men: First Class and Wolverine: First Class, the Marvel Adventures line and the Power Pack books. In all of these (and I have it on good authority that Wolverine FC will be like this as well, thank God), the characters are much more like, well, themselves -- their classic heroic interpretation, with their core values that make them who they are -- than they are in present MU. Storm, Wolverine, and Spider-Man are in the Avengers, sure, but that's fine, they're still much more the classic, pre-mid-2004 heroes they were before, and while the books are marked "All Ages," they're still damn good stories.

5a. Despite my gripes with Joe Q and such, I can't pick on him for the bad stuff without pointing out his role in the good stuff too. So there. :p

5b. I've also been discovering how good the old back issues are, even the ones from the 90s that people put down a lot. And they are still there, regardless of Civil War, Decimation, One More Day, Brand New Day, Doris Day, Susan Dey, Day-Glo, Day-O, etc. and just as good. And given the way I sort my comics into their own continuities (http://www.comicsbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4422) (click link at your own risk -- or better yet, you fools! Turn back while you still can! :eek: ), I'm perfectly free to treat everything from circa 2000 to mid-2004 as its own little world (ending with the "The End" mini of my choice, tying it off in a neat happy ending), and the books prior to that as leading to the ongoing Spider-Girl MC-2 world, and the current setup as... er... whatever dystopic What If it is... as well as Marvel Adventures etc. as its own thing. And I can enjoy these without the slightest trace of Civil War infecting any of these nice, clean continuities. ;) It doesn't mean I'm not dismayed by the mainstream stuff, but for goodness' sake I can still enjoy other books.

5c. Heck, if Marvel wanted to spin off the more classic (but still mainstream) MU into its own thing for us fans, and do whatever they want with the stuff I find depressing for the other fans, that'd be great. I wasn't buying the Ultimate Books (apart from Supreme Power, which seems to have become grandfathered into the Ultimate Uni -- er, Multiverse) because I found them too dark and depressing, but I'm not begrudging other people who like them. I was even enjoying Supreme Power partly because it was an alternate take on the Squadron Supreme -- not a replacement for it. It's not the presence of the dark, alternate version of the characters which bothers me, but its replacing the mainstream one which does. It's like we have two Ultimate universes now, each with a grimly "realistic" backstory, and the classic characters are hiding out in the All Ages books.

5d. I'll still keep buying these when mainstream Marvel gets better. If one good thing has come out of this it's been making me appreciate what we had before, and discover new things. What I've been forced to discover out of necessity I intend to continue with for enjoyment. I simply had written off Spider-Girl and the MA books as "only for kids," but as I keep quoting from C.S. Lewis elsewhere,

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

5d. Oh, and there's always DC. ;) DC's been dealing with similar things to Marvel, except over there they've shown the heroes learning from their moral mistakes and taking steps to correct them, learning to forgive one another and trust each other again, taking a year off to get their heads back on right after going off the rails with their OMACs and mindwipes and such, which is miles more refreshing to read. Heck, right now we're seeing a covert government agency doing bad stuff behind the scenes involving how they treat super-villains, and even then we see both Checkmate and the JLA very concerned about what's happening, rather than doing it themselves. They're not perfect but they're trying to do the right thing. Heck, the Paul Dini story showing Batman and Zatanna dealing with each other, and dealing with what they'd done and forgiveness, was not only more uplifting that what Marvel's been doing, it's more complex and human and real. (I hope Marvel will deal similarly with their own characters soon... some genuine "we screwed up bad, for some time, and we want to earn everyone's trust back" riffs are badly needed.) Mind you, it doesn't hurt that a whole bunch of good writers left Marvel for DC all at about the same time (yep, mid-2004 -- I think there's a pattern here...). I was following their (Kurt Busiek's, Geoff Johns', Grant Morrison's, Greg Rucka's, Mark Waid's) Marvel work avidly, and then when they went to DC, I followed them there, and if they come back to Marvel I'll pick them up again there. I pretty much follow writers more than anything else, while I do care what happens to the characters.

And now that I've posted this, and will certainly respond at least the next few days (but after Tuesday and till Easter I can't argue about Marvel, so it won't be fair to expect me to do so here, though I might still be able to respond...), perhaps I don't have to say the same things again for a while...

David
weird, long-winded dude

Expletive Deleted

02-02-2008, 11:26 PM

Good for you.

Sanagi

02-03-2008, 02:10 AM

I don't think it counts if you cram in forty days worth of complaining beforehand.

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 11:16 AM

Well, it's not only complaining, though, which is kind of my point here. One thing I've been increasingly trying to do is not only express my concerns (and they are serious ones) but point out the alternatives Marvel itself is publishing, rather than just fly off the handle and say that I'm quitting Marvel altogether or even quitting comics. I've seen people yell about getting rid of all their back issues because now somehow they're retroactively "tainted," which I'm sorry to say I think is ridiculous. (This has mainly been in response to One More Day, rather than the laundry list of gripes I have.) And I do need to point out that whatever gripes I have with Quesada, he is also the one responsible for making sure those alternatives are around in the first place.

One thing I neglected to mention about OMD is that with things like Mary Jane's whispering to Mephisto, and the appearance of Jackpot and such, I strongly suspect that the story is not quite "over" yet -- that it's not only setting things up for BND, but is more like Act Three in a five-act play, and may ultimately deal with those ethical issues -- just not immediately. (Mind you, if that's what they're doing, it would help tremendously for people to stop telling us to look ahead rather than back -- if they'd just say "oh, don't worry, we will be addressing that, just not immediately" it would relieve a lot of people's minds, I think. I think Joe Q's public persona is really becoming counterproductive in some ways -- various fans are feeling like their concerns are irrelevant to him, or even mocked, which leads to more emotionally charged reactions, and then the cycle repeats. Not being sure how honest he's being about things in interviews isn't helping either. (Does he really mean for people to really forget OMD and the last 20 years of Spider-marriage, or is it a ploy to get us all excited about things if it gets addressed down the line? Having to second-guess that is not much fun... DC's not immune to this -- that whole "death of Bart Allen" business with the writer talking as if his run was going to go on for some time, when he knew it wasn't (or else that was a lie), plus DC's solicitation of issues they knew were never going to come out, is a really bad sign if this is the wave of the future. Any other industry would come under fire for making public statements about their products they knew to be false, once this was discovered, and I don't think we should let it slide for the comics industry. Even in other literature, how would we feel if J.K. Rowling killed off Harry Potter in book six and then revealed that she never planned a seventh book in the first place, despite claims for years to the contrary?)

I suspect Joe Q is trying to duplicate Stan's old bombastic, P.T. Barnum-esque style (in much the same way he keeps referring back to the original 1960s Marvel with his "genies" to put back into the bottles -- i.e., heroes not trusting each other, with consequent unpredictability in the books, and so on), though I am not sure of this.

But yes, I can be a long-winded cuss. :o

David

Dpool

02-03-2008, 11:48 AM

Wow no way I am reading that cliff notes might help

Beast

02-03-2008, 11:58 AM

Wow no way I am reading that cliff notes might help
Cliff notes version:

*Stamps feet and whines endlessly* :p

Clea

02-03-2008, 12:06 PM

Read Iron Fist! It is heaps of fun.

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 12:33 PM

Cliff notes version:

*Stamps feet and whines endlessly* :p

Not quite. LOL. More like:

Marvel mainstream bad. Marvel alternate universes good. Marvel mainstream get better someday. Not stop buying alternates when mainstream get better. Joe Quesada probably not big old meanie Grinch, probably nice guy, means well, but still wrong. Don't be mean to Joe Quesada, fanboy readers! He put out nice books too. One More Day bad but Dan Slott good. Give Dan Slott Brand New Day chance. Me need break from tedious arguing. Me not drop Marvel, or comics, or reading, or oxygen, just books me not like, and take break from reading 616 books for, like, a month or so, read alternative ones only, and catch up on 616 afterward.

Is that simpler? ;)

David
Fire bad!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan,_Tonto,_and_Frankenstein's_Monster)

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 12:39 PM

Read Iron Fist! It is heaps of fun.

Will try Iron Fist. Fun-heaps good.

David
Hwæt! We Fan-Boya / In gear-dagum...

rZi

02-03-2008, 12:43 PM

Astonishing X-men makes me not cut myself if that helps, plus i wasn't gay till i met Joss Whedon.

CyberCoyote

02-03-2008, 12:59 PM

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 01:15 PM

Oh yes. I've genuinely enjoyed Whedon's run. I suppose I should list (Oh, yes, Uncle David! We'd love another list! Oh, do, do, do give us another list!) the mainstream "616" Marvel books I buy or am signing up for:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
SPIDER-MAN FAMILY
SPIDER-MAN: WITH GREAT POWER...
AVENGERS CLASSIC
AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE
CLANDESTINE
INCREDIBLE HERCULES
HULK VS. HERCULES: WHEN TITANS CLASH
debating about IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM
all MARVEL ADVENTURES
GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS/INVADERS
all POWER PACK
all MC-2, which mainly means SPIDER-GIRL but other books as they come out, like AMERICAN DREAM
THE LAST DEFENDERS
THE TWELVE
THOR: AGES OF THUNDER
THOR
YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS
LOGAN
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
NEW EXILES
DEAD OF NIGHT FEATURING MAN-THING
ASTONISHING X-MEN
any and all hardcover Golden Age reprint books

Though admittedly if you drop out alternate universes, reprints, and stories set in the past, this leaves, like... ten titles... and dropping out miniseries from this that leaves... four titles: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, INCREDIBLE HERCULES, and THOR... which I'm largely getting because of Slott, Slott, Van Lente, and Straczynski (well, okay, I would be getting Herc anyway just for the eye candy factor, but I also have really come to like Van Lente's stuff)...

Oh! Cebulski will be on Wolverine after Aaron and Millar, so I'll pick that up then. (I have hopes for Cebulski.)

David

wolp

02-03-2008, 02:36 PM

Seriously if anyone gonna complain so muchl about the state of Marvel comics then maybe they should stop buying them. Relive the classics and let some other people enjoy the newer ones. I tried to read your long winded posts but it's too much lol

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 03:30 PM

Well, hopefully my Frankenstein/Tonto/Tarzan post above summarized things more succinctly for you. :) I have stopped buying the ones I don't like -- but that doesn't mean I'm not still concerned about what they're doing... it's not merely a matter of what kind of style I personally happen to like, but real concern about the content. However, that's all up in the huge block of text, if you feel like digging...

ThePhenom

02-03-2008, 07:53 PM

Yeah, it's probably unhealthy to stress about this that much.

I couldn't even write this much about the problems I have in reality, let alone with fiction.

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 08:12 PM

Yeah, it's probably unhealthy to stress about this that much.

I couldn't even write this much about the problems I have in reality, let alone with fiction.

Really? Wow. I could write quite a lot more about, oh, all manner of things... :o I used to post quite extensively over on Ship of Fools about theology and philosophy, and my posts got just as long there. :eek: The length of the post is not necessarily indicative of its associated stress levels, just of my verbosity. (And I hope you'll note that quite a bit of the length is due, not to ranting, but to clarification and amelioration of my concerns, and even trying to be fair to Joe Q and others, as well as the things I like about Marvel even now. If I wanted to just express stress I could have posted some ultra-simplistic burst of angst...)

Heh, if you check the link (hey, kids! Can you find the link hiding within the dense forest of text?) on "how I sort my comics" in there, you'll see a mostly angst-free, but equally long, post about comics and continuity and a (mad! He's mad, I tell you!) scheme for sorting comics I've devised for my own collection. (Hey, I'm happy with it...)

It could be worse. I've put posts on philosophical/theological discourse into doggerel poetry before... just because I'm thilly. :rolleyes: But I can be just as verbose without the stress. Yay! :p

On a side note, is it disturbing, amusing, or both, that one of the first things I thought of when I saw your sig (Machiavelli: "Here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared...") was the one-page "What if Marvel Comics published Spidey Intellectual Stories?" from the first all-humor issue of What If, #34? ("You -- you are correct, Spider-Man! Your logic has defeated me!" "Naturally! As Hegel wrote...")

David

chrismileslord

02-03-2008, 09:04 PM

Not quite. LOL. More like:

Marvel mainstream bad. Marvel alternate universes good. Marvel mainstream get better someday. Not stop buying alternates when mainstream get better. Joe Quesada probably not big old meanie Grinch, probably nice guy, means well, but still wrong. Don't be mean to Joe Quesada, fanboy readers! He put out nice books too. One More Day bad but Dan Slott good. Give Dan Slott Brand New Day chance. Me need break from tedious arguing. Me not drop Marvel, or comics, or reading, or oxygen, just books me not like, and take break from reading 616 books for, like, a month or so, read alternative ones only, and catch up on 616 afterward.

Is that simpler? ;)

David
Fire bad!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan,_Tonto,_and_Frankenstein's_Monster)

Wow. My head hurts after reading this.....Just wow.

But on topic, I think current mainstream Marvel is utterly amazing, and even though it has its flaws, the flaws are being blown way out of proportion. Take for example a great movie with a ending you don't agree with. Does it make it a bad movie? No, it's still a good movie, you in particular doesn't like the movie. I think the people who like Marvel are a lot more numerous than the people who don't but we rarely speak up and argue with people who will just continue to say a lot of the same things everyone has already heard.

It's a matter of opinion anyway. I am not right. Neither are you. It's all subjective.

Now, I honestly have no reason why I posted this, but I just needed to say it.

chastmastr

02-03-2008, 09:33 PM

Well, we are free to disagree, after all. :) Even about subjectivity! ;)

David
good heavens, I'm succinct for once :eek:

ThePhenom

02-04-2008, 09:19 AM

I can't say much because I read very few of the 616 comics anyway. I read those that I hear rave reviews on, like the premise of, and generally crossovers and big events (just because they're plenty of fun) but I'm curious as your main post kind of sticks you halfway between having a problem with the status quo and the other half as having a problem with the moral compasses of the characters themselves.

I understand the passion that underlies all of this, but you do seem to be stressing a lot based on some of the comments in the earlier section, it would seem just easier to either avoid them entirely or come to terms with the facts that you are purely powerless to do anything about it.

I mean I read the Ultimate universe religiously, but as of late have had to deal with Loeb turning the Ultimates into neanderthals and Kirkman regressing the X-Men about ten years back in time, thematically of course. I just :D and bear it because no matter how many of this waste I buy there's always gonna be the possibility (and in comics, the probability) there's gonna be something worth enjoying again.

Lord S

02-04-2008, 09:56 AM

Well, I didn't read your posts in their entirety...but I do get the gist that you're unhappy.

I'm sort of the same way...which is why I plan to ditch a few books in the very near future...namely New Avengers and Astonishing X-Men (as soon as this Colossus/Breakworld arc is finished). You could turn your attention to the heavens...there was this teeny weeny little cosmic story that went on last year that sort of took us by storm called ANNIHILATION! Plenty of true heroism to be seen in that story. The sequel is...adequate...so far.

I do agree with your point that the core of MU is getting depressing...too many 'serious' stories...and I mean too serious. Too realistic, too street-level, and just too political. Not my cup of tea.

:|

chastmastr

02-04-2008, 10:48 AM

I can't say much because I read very few of the 616 comics anyway.

Ah, I see. I did a lot of thinking last night trying to figure how to quantify my feelings on this -- I mean, in a sense, I've certainly dropped titles before when they went in directions I didn't like -- and part of it is certainly (like a lot of readers seem to be about One More Day, especially those who only started reading Spider-Man after he was married; I'm older than that) that I've literally been reading these characters for at least thirty years. I was one of those teens who got seriously into X-Men when I was a kid and followed the book religiously (oh, for those wonderful days when the then-new New Mutants title was the only other X-book in existence, and a novel thing...). I was also one of those people who years later felt kind of burned out when Marvel started cramming X-Men guest shots into every book they could because they knew they had a captive audience. I was horrified -- but not as much as I am now, and perhaps in a less nuanced way -- when they started doing things like Fall of the Mutants and Inferno -- it seemed like everything was just getting darker and darker and darker, and we started getting characters like Punisher and Venom in their own series. But those were, at least, characters who were morally "grey" at best already (I don't include Wolverine here -- one thing I have realized over time is that they've tried to be consistent about his genuine struggle with his humanity against his rages, embracing the path of honor etc. so it's not quite like the Punisher's unquestioning hunt -- though if there's been an issue of Punisher in which he does wrestle with what he does, I happily retract this and would love to read it), rather than the icons/paragons who have generally been the "really good guys" of the MU.

I read those that I hear rave reviews on, like the premise of, and generally crossovers and big events (just because they're plenty of fun) but I'm curious as your main post kind of sticks you halfway between having a problem with the status quo and the other half as having a problem with the moral compasses of the characters themselves.

Oh, no, it's both for me. I really hate the present MU status quo but I could deal with it better if it hadn't been some of the previously really-heroic heroes who had set it up. If I had to choose one or the other -- either the SHRA or the heroes' corruption -- I'd pick the heroes staying heroic and trying to fight the evil fascist crap, absolutely, rather than having the good guys be less good. In some ways, watching the good guys stay true to their principles and die fighting, but never giving in, would be more inspiring than watching them decide the ends justify the means.

And yes, to me, while it would still be bad anyway, it makes it all much worse because of the real-world analogues to the crap in Civil War. When you're already fighting stuff like the Patriot Act and Abu Ghraib and so on, it's horrible to see your own beloved childhood heroes not only supporting but creating things like it. For decades and decades now, Marvel had tried to make its heroes politically vague, and now I believe I see more clearly why that was a good thing. I mean, Captain America became Nomad for a while in the 1970s and all, but for the most part there wasn't a lot of sense of partisan politics in the way the characters were written -- whatever "side" you were on in real life, your favorite characters might be on either for all you could tell. There might be implications to the way they were written, but nothing really solid. The same largely went for religion, apart from specifically ethnic characters, especially ones created later on (so Kitty Pryde was Jewish and Nightcrawler was Catholic, but Sue Storm could be anything, really; I do think making Ben Grimm Jewish was a nice touch and homage to Kirby, though). The issue even came up in letter columns of the time and it was explained that this was an official policy -- they wanted the readers to be able to identify with the characters and not for the characters to take partisan sides so much. I've come to miss that now, if this is the alternative.

I understand the passion that underlies all of this, but you do seem to be stressing a lot based on some of the comments in the earlier section, it would seem just easier to either avoid them entirely or come to terms with the facts that you are purely powerless to do anything about it.

I suppose I don't understand. Easier how? It doesn't make me less displeased, although part of my point is that I'm taking a break from stressing about it. I do think it's unhealthy to get as worked up about it -- though by no means am I alone in that. My God, people are making YouTube videos about One More Day alone. :eek:

I'm also not particularly interested in abandoning Marvel based on a bad period of 3.5 years (out of, depending on how you count, 47 years or 69, since FF #1 or the Golden Age) that I think will, indeed, pass. If I really could know the future, and could see that it would never get any better, then that would be a different story, though I can't see that happening.

As for "powerless," firstly, I am not sure how that is; for example, this thread and the arguments I've posted here and elsewhere could lead someone to think about some of these things which they may not have before; even if they don't reach the same conclusions, it might lead to a more complex view of things than before. But more critically I don't see how that's relevant to thought and discussion. I mean, if discussing things and thinking about them won't change anything, so what? That would mean no one posting anything on discussion boards at all, right? I don't think I can stop thinking about and analyzing things in general more than I can stop breathing, myself, nor can I see why I would want to: the exception here is that I'm taking a break from debating Marvel stuff and reading 616 for Lent temporarily, because I am indeed getting overheated, but it's not like I'm throwing my brain away, or cutting logical analysis out of it where comics (or other forms of literature) are concerned. In a sense if I get that stressed about it, it will make logical thought harder, not easier, so backing off is a good idea. But it means putting it on hold, not abandoning it forever.

If it helps, while I don't want to be a show-off or anything (oh, yeah, right, be honest, yes you do), I can natter on endlessly about all kinds of things that aren't comics. (It's just, this is a comics board.) I used to have long, long, long rambling debates till 3, 4, 5 AM back in college on theology and philosophy. I almost went on to become a professor of English Lit in hopes of becoming the new C.S. Lewis (one of my big, all-time heroes), but I didn't want to spend my entire academic career arguing with deconstructionists about the transcendent signified and the theistic essentialist paradigm I hold (and, yes, that's not mere gobbledegook, it actually means something, though it's in the tedious jargon which is popular in lit departments these days -- or at least in the mid-1990s, for it is the glory of academia to progress...). Anyway.

I mean I read the Ultimate universe religiously, but as of late have had to deal with Loeb turning the Ultimates into neanderthals and Kirkman regressing the X-Men about ten years back in time, thematically of course. I just :D and bear it because no matter how many of this waste I buy there's always gonna be the possibility (and in comics, the probability) there's gonna be something worth enjoying again.

Absolutely! I think what bothers me is that it's not just the poor writing, or even the out-of-character writing, but the specifically moral issues in the way the characters are being written out of character. Absolutely, it could all be overturned in one issue, or even one panel. And Marvel has no end of McGuffins to fix it all, probably in some non-nuanced, really heavy-handed way (see also: One More Day, "no more mutants," etc.) rather than a more satisfying one which might please lots of readers on both sides of the fence. (Sorry to be snarky but this is the current track record...) I've wondered myself, if I ran Marvel (cue Cowardly Lion: "If I were kinnnnng of the forrrrrrressst..."), how would I please both the old-school (pre-2004) fans and the new ones? Since while I would be thrilled to embrace a "last three years didn't happen" event, I don't think it would be fair to all the new readers who really like the present setup. And I think it would be difficult but it could be done (quite probably by splitting off the timelines somehow). If people can deal with Ultimate and 616 and MA, then I think they could deal with, I don't know, the Marvel Legends universe or whatever we'd call it, more complex and "adult" than MA but less "ultimate" than current 616. But I am sure that Marvel is not keeping the SHRA carved in stone forever, along with a Tony Stark people love to hate or whatever. I can't see it still being this way five years from now, much less ten. I think they're writing themselves into a corner with all of this, though, as they've established so many of their characters as unlikable b*stards (can I say that here?) and the only way to recover from that is probably some kind of retcon. (And hoo boy, if the response to One More Day is an indication, whenever this happens, the fur will fly even more, no matter what problems this solves...)

David

Dr. K

02-04-2008, 12:55 PM

But on topic, I think current mainstream Marvel is utterly amazing, and even though it has its flaws, the flaws are being blown way out of proportion. Take for example a great movie with a ending you don't agree with. Does it make it a bad movie? No, it's still a good movie, you in particular doesn't like the movie. I think the people who like Marvel are a lot more numerous than the people who don't but we rarely speak up and argue with people who will just continue to say a lot of the same things everyone has already heard.

Sometimes, a single scene can ruin an otherwise great movie, especially if it's a poorly handled ending. Just like a single stain can ruin an otherwise perfectly good shirt. Sometimes, flaws are blown more out of proportion BECAUSE everything else is flawless.

chastmastr

02-04-2008, 03:28 PM

True. Though in this case, for me this applies more to, say, Jason Aaron's issue of Wolverine, "The Man in the Pit," which was good in many ways (apart from the whole "er, he'd have lost all his mass by that point and be a really shiny set of adamantium bones" issue, since I didn't get the sense he was ingesting any matter to convert into more flesh to heal in the first place, but that's neither here nor there) except for the ending, for me, in which Logan is depicted, inexplicably and against all prior depictions, as totally throwing honor out the window re the guard who slowly came around and set him free, even killing the other guards to give him the chance to escape. He might have killed him as an act of mercy (which is what the guard was asking him to do), he might have told him to move on with his life with a second chance (more probable), but he wouldn't have just thrown him into the same pit and told him that's where he belongs. (Secondarily, the whole "going to kill every other person in this building" didn't make much sense either -- not strategically nor ethically -- but this is new vengeance-focused Logan. Even with that, you'd think he'd extract information from the people there to track down whoever was behind it all... but the biggest thing for me was that one guard. Who, by the way, would likely now get a slow death by starvation or thirst, or else get killed by whoever was behind it all...) It makes no sense and spoils the whole story for me. But before that, the way Logan got into the guy's head, that was great and made perfect sense; it's a shame it was all spoiled by the ending.

Alas, I don't see the rest of the MU that way. I don't see Civil War as some kind of failed masterpiece. I like Straczynski's writing and style very much, so there is some element of that in his Civil War tie-ins in Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, but even then, I don't see Reed "doing the math" to show he was really doing the right thing that way, I found the whole sequence of "my uncle stood up to McCarthy but he was wrong to do so" :eek: ... just wrong from beginning to end, etc. -- and that's in the hands of a Straczynski. I don't at all see Millar's or Bendis' stuff as otherwise flawless, but rife from start to finish with "not getting the characters" as they've been shown for decades up till, again, mid-2004. If I completely forget all I know about the characters, and treat them as wholly new with only the backstory they're treated as having under their writing, then it ...

I almost said, as an example, "Civil War might be a somewhat OK story, but..." and then I realized, no, it wouldn't, it would be a wretched dystopic mess with lots of bad things and no good resolution to make them worth it. In my opinion, but honestly, that's my opinion. Squadron Supreme, or Straczynski's re-imagining of the Squadron, are dark but with more going for them than mere darkness and misery. Same with Watchmen. Of course it's hardly fair to compare almost anyone with Alan Moore, but still, while a nuanced story dealing with the issues of security vs. liberty could be really good, engaging and make one think, this wasn't it, and honestly I don't think it even succeeds as a decent partisan political screed, so other than setting up a new paradigm for the heroes to hate each other (and selling scads of books), I don't see Civil War as a particularly successful story.

I have, again, heard that they're more successful with their own characters, or with noir-style street-level stories, and maybe that's true, but I haven't read those. I just know what they've done with the characters I like, and as a reader I'm not pleased. They already had the Ultimate Universe to shape into whatever they liked (and since I didn't like that one very much I was gleefully ignoring it; I also gleefully ignore Marvel Zombies, for that matter), so I don't understand why they had to go and make "616" into something as close to it as they could get...

But this is indeed why I'm taking this break. :D

David

Lord S

02-05-2008, 06:57 AM

Wow. Y-you...really love writing...don't you? :p

chastmastr

02-05-2008, 10:21 AM

God, yes. :) Really wish I could get something published... I just start thinking about things and analyzing them and it's the most natural thing in the world for me. It's almost like thinking on paper... er... pixels. (And, yes, I try to organize my thoughts the way you see them here.) Heck, it seems like about 15 minutes have passed but it's more like an hour sometimes. :o But it's not only comics, or negative feelings about comics and ameliorating aspects thereof, it's all manner of topics...

I know, you may have been making a joke, but I do love writing. There's just not much of a market for stuff like mine, I'm afraid. :( My previous job had me editing but not writing. The problem is writing about things I'm not passionate about; I may simply be undisciplined enough to not have enough impetus to try, though. When it's something interesting to me I go off like, well, the above. :o

David
hmmm, I wonder, maybe I should look into that after all

Liberty Belle Fan

02-05-2008, 10:24 AM

chastmastr

02-05-2008, 10:26 AM

Hmmm, it seems you don't read Captain America. This may be the root of the problem itself.....

How so? :confused: It would add a title to my list but I don't think it would make me like the other books I don't buy.

I've picked up a couple of issues of it but perhaps they need to be all read together or something.

David

Liberty Belle Fan

02-05-2008, 10:32 AM

How so? :confused: It would add a title to my list but I don't think it would make me like the other books I don't buy.

I've picked up a couple of issues of it but perhaps they need to be all read together or something.

David

It wouldn't make you like the books you don't buy. I'm not 110% sure what kind of books you would/wouldn't like, but I personally enjoy Captain America. If I were in a jaded/tired state and wanted to cut back on what I was reading for whatever reason I'd want to read something good. Captain America right now is one of the books that makes comics fun and intriguing to read atm.

chastmastr

02-05-2008, 11:25 AM

It wouldn't make you like the books you don't buy. I'm not 110% sure what kind of books you would/wouldn't like, but I personally enjoy Captain America. If I were in a jaded/tired state and wanted to cut back on what I was reading for whatever reason I'd want to read something good. Captain America right now is one of the books that makes comics fun and intriguing to read atm.

Ah, I see! (Though I hasten to add that I am reading a fair number -- I'm taking a break from reading all current 616 for a month and a half, but will be reading them after Lent...)

I do know that (this is hearsay online, not from my reading, so I could be mistaken here) what with the Cosmic Cube connections in CA, and the Skull's apparent plans to destroy everything Cap cared about (including the entire country), it does make the perfect cause (and solution!) to a host of difficulties across the 616 line...

I did get a year of Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men and ultimately didn't care for it, but he may be better on Cap. Perhaps I should check it out after all... someone else here recommended Iron Fist, too.

David

Expletive Deleted

02-05-2008, 11:35 AM

I did get a year of Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men and ultimately didn't care for it, but he may be better on Cap. Perhaps I should check it out after all... someone else here recommended Iron Fist, too.He's exponentially better on Cap. And Daredevil. And Iron Fist (with Fraction). And Criminal.

Really, Uncanny is the weak link in his output at the moment.

chastmastr

02-05-2008, 11:45 AM

He's exponentially better on Cap. And Daredevil. And Iron Fist (with Fraction). And Criminal.

Really, Uncanny is the weak link in his output at the moment.

That makes me feel better. (One of the things I was less than thrilled about -- and I have, like, less than 24 hours to complain about it (whatever shall I do?? :eek: :rolleyes: :p ) -- was the way he depicted Charles in X-Men (re the "forgotten" team) -- one more log to add to the fire along with Reed, Tony, etc. -- but on the other hand he may be writing CA with more of that sense of heroism I'm interested in reading. I recall something I read very recently involving Bucky/Winter Soldier and his role as Cap being a kind of "redemption" after his years as Winter Soldier, which is a far cry from the stuff I've been complaining about -- indeed, is specifically the sort of ethical/moral issue I wish other books were dealing with (though I think if they make Tony Stark into Ghost Rider for a couple of years before bringing him back as Iron Man, it'll make the GL parallel just a little too complete). I certainly haven't perceived Brubaker the way I do some of the other writers.

I am picking up some back issues of Daredevil -- there was a storyline by a writer I have not read (David Mack) involving a character on a vision quest with Wolverine as a spirit guide, so I had to check it out... :o but it's not Brubaker, so it won't tell me anything.

David

chastmastr

02-28-2008, 05:16 PM

I recall something I read very recently involving Bucky/Winter Soldier and his role as Cap being a kind of "redemption" after his years as Winter Soldier, which is a far cry from the stuff I've been complaining about -- indeed, is specifically the sort of ethical/moral issue I wish other books were dealing with (though I think if they make Tony Stark into Ghost Rider for a couple of years before bringing him back as Iron Man, it'll make the GL parallel just a little too complete)

Wow! And while I'm drifting too much into arguing elsewhere about why I like this new development (whoops! Mea culpa...) :o they're redeeming Tony Stark in Matt Fraction's new Invincible Iron Man series!!!! :eek: :eek: :D Woo-hoo!!!!

David
dancing about, emitting joyful squeals of delight

chastmastr

12-27-2008, 06:18 PM

they're redeeming Tony Stark in Matt Fraction's new Invincible Iron Man series!!!!

... eventually, I assume. Still hasn't happened yet. Maybe now in the wake of Dark Reign and Osborn, with Tony on the run experiencing just what he helped put heroes like Spider-Man through, this will finally happen?

David

Mark_S

12-27-2008, 07:34 PM

Good luck. I've tried. Failed. Marvel is just such a massive generator of anger right now if you cared at all for what the heroes used to be and how they were mangled. Because as badly as they are mangled now there are people on the net who will never accept that they are mangled that much or at all, that Tony Stark despite all his actions is still the supreme good guy in the mu, he just makes a few mistakes. And the writers and the editors at the top level do come across in interviews as barely tolerating fan dissent and seriously doubting fan intelligence. Bendis in an interview before cw said that they wanted to get people on the net talking about more than who would win in a fight between the Hulk and Superman. They structured cw from the start to generate anger and controversy and I don't think that they really minded the hate that came along with it. Probably weren't thrilled when the hate spilled from the character to the writers, but probably didn't really mind.

And then afterward they kept coming up with half way measures to try to settle things down, yet at the same time kept writing stuff that would keep the anger going. Tony's supposed to be a better person after cw, he went through all that stuff in the Knauf's book, yet Tony tries to bully Thor and he uses sleazy methods to get into Jen's pants... there is stuff like this all over the place because of sloppy/lazy editing and writing. But to a lot of people it doesn't seem that attention to detail matters, so long as the building doesn't topple over it can sway in the wind a bit. Fraction's latest Tony arc is probably going to be more of the same.

So good luck. But if you like writing keep writing, start a blog or an online review page, the people at marvel may not like what you have to say but other people might. The world can always use more intelligent discourse.

Mark_S

Mark_S

12-27-2008, 07:35 PM

... eventually, I assume. Still hasn't happened yet. Maybe now in the wake of Dark Reign and Osborn, with Tony on the run experiencing just what he helped put heroes like Spider-Man through, this will finally happen?

David

It depends. I've gotten the feeling all along that the writers at marvel see nothing at all wrong with most of Tony's actions and they see no need to redeem him.

Mark_S

chastmastr

12-27-2008, 11:43 PM

Well, mainly these days I'm focusing on the alternate continuity books (Marvel Adventures, Spider-Girl (or her upcoming backup in Spider-Man Family), the GeNext/X-Men The End stuff (another GeNext series has been greenlighted), Exiles, etc.), stories set in the past which (while supposedly 616) arguably don't really connect with the current continuity (X-Men First Class, Wolverine First Class, Weapon X First Class, Marvels Eye of the Camera), one-shots and miniseries which don't really connect up with current depressing storylines (most of the Wolverine one-shots), and a tiny tiny number of present-day 616 post-Civil War MU books, like Incredible Hercules. And, of course, DC and Dark Horse (Conan, etc.) stuff...

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 02:13 PM

Hi all! I was just going to update the thread in my previous sig with this -- last year, I gave up complaining about Marvel for Lent as it was becoming a wee bit obsessive, though this year I'm giving up something else -- and decided it really deserved its own thread.

For those who want to know in depth what I loathed, then and now, about the current direction of mainstream Marvel books, the original thread is here:

Giving up arguing about Marvel, Civil War etc. for Lent (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=208093)

Back now? :smile: My, that was a long read, wasn't it? :redface: I guess you could call me Screed Richards. (Or not.) Anyway...

I realized recently that while I hate, hate, hate, with the passion of a thousand firey burny things, the current paradigm and approach to the present-day mainstream Marvel Universe, from Disassembled to Decimation to Civil War to Planet/World War Hulk (Hulk as barbarian leader, cool idea; Hulk's friends betraying him, really bad) to Messiah Complex to Secret Invasion to Dark Reign, and Peter's deal with Mephisto, and Wolverine Origins/Legacy/etc. ... (oh, just go read the thread...) I've still noticed recently that even on my meager budget right now, I'm buying a whole lot of Marvel books, yet I'm still almost completely shunning stuff in their present-day dystopic 616 continuity. While I am not at all a fan of the current backstory of the present-day mainstream MU (Disassembled, Decimation, Civil War, Planet and World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign), I'm finding quite a lot of good stuff to enjoy, and that I can recommend without reservation -- it's just, with rare exceptions, set in the past or in alternate realities. I'm wondering if Marvel is realizing that there is a big market for us classic-heroic-minded readers.

Going over my order list, I came up with my comprehensive list of Marvel books I'm getting right now, for the next few months, as I can afford them, so I can show what I mean about the classic/heroic stuff actually being around, just mostly not in present-day 616 stories:

The Marvel Adventures "all ages" line of books:
DOCTOR DOOM AND THE MASTERS OF EVIL
LOCKJAW AND THE PET AVENGERS
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES
MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS

Marvel books set in the past, ostensibly in the same universe as their
current titles, but arguably with a much lighter, more classically
heroic style:
MARVELS: EYE OF THE CAMERA
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS FINALS
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (fingers crossed)
and the upcoming UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
plus some one-shots set in the Golden Age:
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
HUMAN TORCH COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
SUB-MARINER COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

Marvel books set in (or focused on) other continuities -- again with a
more classic style:
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY (to which Spider-Girl is moving when her own
series ends)
EXILES
FANTASTIC FORCE (hopefully; it spins out of the future of Millar's Fantastic Four but is by a different writer, so I will give it a try)
GENEXT: UNITED
X-MEN FOREVER ALPHA (and ongoing FOREVER series)
X-MEN: SWORD OF THE BRADDOCKS (Exiles spin-off one-shot)

Marvel books which don't necessarily have anything to do with the last
few years of retcons or continuity at all:
ASTONISHING TALES
RAMPAGING WOLVERINE
SPIDER-MAN & THE HUMAN TORCH IN...!BAHIA DE LOS MUERTOS!
Spider-Man: The Short Halloween
WOLVERINE: THE ANNIVERSARY
WOLVERINE: WORST DAY EVER (another all-ages book)

One Marvel reprint title:
THOR: TALES OF ASGARD BY STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY

And a whopping two (!) ongoing Marvel books set in and dealing with
current continuity:
AGENTS OF ATLAS
INCREDIBLE HERCULES
plus one issue of RUNAWAYS

Obviously I'd like the regular mainstream MU to become more like it used to be circa 2003 or so, or, rather, springboard from its past into a more modern yet still heroic approach than I believe it has right now, but I do think this shows that Marvel knows there are a lot of readers whose interests are more classic, and definitely stuff worth buying. Any other fans doing something similar to this?

David

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 02:14 PM

I was going to post an update here but decided to just make a fresh thread about it, which I have titled:

Despite hating current 616 continuity, I still love lots of Marvel (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?p=8511571#post8511571)

Feel free to go check it out if interested. :)

David

Zero Hunter

03-03-2009, 03:00 PM

Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy are both really good books that don't get too caugth up in the regular Marvel U nonsence.

Babylon23

03-03-2009, 03:43 PM

I'm not a big fan of Marvel currently, but there are a few books that I still enjoy: Agents of Atlas, X-Factor, Captain Britain, Iron Fist, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm still on the fence about Slott's mighty Avengers but I like what I'm seeing so far.

Kasper Cole

03-03-2009, 03:44 PM

I didn't read one line of what the threadstarter typed. I just saw how long it was and started laughing. LOL

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 03:56 PM

LOL! I feel like a Stephen King novel now. Threadstarter.

ComiXFanBoy

03-03-2009, 04:30 PM

are the marvel adventures that enjoyable? im thinking of picking them up. do they share a continuity or does each title have its own continuity?

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 06:49 PM

I certainly like them a lot. They're almost continuity-free (I rather wish they did have continuity, myself), but on the other hand they're pretty much all "done-in-one-issue" stories. There's a little continuity with the Power Pack all-ages books (which only aren't on the list because there don't happen to be any coming out in the next few months).

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 06:53 PM

Oh! Just noticed... er... that my new thread has been merged with this one. Odd, but I have no reason to complain...

It does make this all kind of amusingly recursive, but hey. LOL.

David

MTL76

03-03-2009, 07:27 PM

I've been reading Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, Incredible Hercules, Thor and Mighty Avengers. Also re-started Iron Man (tentatively - if Tony has really stopped being a sleazeball.). And started Incognito (which is in its own universe) and Runaways (which oddly enough I think you'd like... they can't do the hatchet job they did to Iron man, Reed Richards, etc. to a bunch of kids.) If you told me a few years back that those first three would have been on my pull list my eyes would have spun, but such is life.

I dropped Punisher a few issues after Ennis left, and the Bendis-associated Avengers titles (nothing personal, I just don't like... OK, can't stand... the direction he took them. Still love Alias though!)

Captain America is touch-and-go with me. I think Brubaker's a great writer, but I don't like Bucky as Cap. And there's only so much noir I can handle.

I poke my head in on the X-verse, but aside from Whedon's run (which I'm not surprised you liked, I think he nailed the classic heroic feel you mentioned) it's only sporadic. I was a ravenous X-fan in my younger years but I feel a bit lost nowadays, maybe the move to SF is a good jumping on point but I'm not sure. I've yet to understand how a "mutant baby!" (cue hysterical wailing from the few remaining mutants) is a messiah. While Marvel maybe overdid it with the mutants, I miss things like Mutant Town and the way mutants were (slowly) incorporating themselves into mainstream society.

I haven't picked up any of the X-Men: First Class or Marvel Adventures titles b/c one of the things I liked about MU comics when I first got into them was the continuity, but since so much of the current 616 doesn't appeal to me (for reasons largely similar to yours) I may give them a shot.

Ex_

03-03-2009, 08:45 PM

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 08:45 PM

Yes, one advantage to the way I read my comics in general (ha! You think I'm long-winded in this thread? You should see my analysis of continuity at Marvel and DC and how it relates to comics-sorting, reading order, etc. (http://www.comicsbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4422)) is that I can happily put the First Class titles and the later storylines I've enjoyed (before the Bendis/Millarverse took over) as leading up to, not Decimation and Messiah Complex, but X-Men: The End and GeNext. Or one could have them lead up to Claremont's new X-Men Forever series. Or even, theoretically, up to MC-2 with Spider-Girl and such. (Some alternate future stories are compatible with each other while others are not -- I could easily see Silver Surfer: Requiem being in the same universe as X-Men: The End, while of course Michelinie's Iron Man: The End is mutually exclusive to his future history in the MC-2 universe.)

But that's literally another thread, which already exists in the link...

David

chastmastr

03-03-2009, 09:03 PM

Cebulski ain't gettin' on Wolverine. It's becoming Dark Wolverine, Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu. Also, Wolverine Weapon X is all Jason Aaron.

Well, that was what he was saying back in September (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=135333), though that may have been abandoned now, or it may be in some other venue, or be after one of the other writers' runs:

CBC: ... And David Finch has recently said that he and I are taking over a short run of Wolverine coming up. That's still on track, although the plan has changed a little bit, but there will be an announcement about that soon. There is some other news from the Marvel front that we'll be announcing soon.

NRAMA: Dave was really excited about the Wolverine story you two were doing when he told Newsarama about it in September.

CBC: We get along great. He and I have been friends for ages ... And it led to this Wolverine story, which I couldn't be happier with.

NRAMA: Will your Wolverine story follow the four-issue arc by Jason Aaron and Ron Garney that is starting in February?

CBC: I can't speak to that exactly because it's gone through some changes since the original plan. But it's going to be a really broad, expansive Wolverine story. That's what it's turned into. ... And again, we've been talking to Bendis, so it's going to kind of play into Secret Invasion a little. As everybody knows, Elektra was revealed to be a Skrull. And at that point, she was the leader of The Hand. And The Hand has always classically been, aside from a Daredevil villain, also a Wolverine villain going back to the first Chris Claremont/Frank Miller miniseries. And so, with Bendis' blessing now, what our story has turned into is that there's been a power vacuum in The Hand because Elektra was a Skrull. And we're going to start dealing with a new leadership, a new Hand, and a new mandate which involves Wolverine in the biggest of ways.

So I have no idea where this stands. While it would still deal with current continuity stuff, I think I'd like Cebulski more than any of the current writers on the mainstream Wolverine books, so I'd be willing to give him a try, at least.

David

chastmastr

03-25-2009, 08:22 PM

Yay! Now with the latest (June) solicits, there's more stuff for me to add!

I've very tentatively, after looking at the latest one in the store, added Dan Slott's Mighty Avengers to the list, though I also must say that Herc's presence in the book is a definite factor (eye candy, if nothing else); this brings my present-day current-continuity 616 series up to a whopping three.

My June additions include:

MISS AMERICA COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL (set in past)
YOUNG ALLIES COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL (set in past)
THOR: THE TRIAL OF THOR (set in past, and seems classic-style)
X-MEN ORIGINS: GAMBIT #1 (set in past)
WOLVERINE: REVOLVER #1 (set in present, seems continuity-free)
plus
WOLVERINE NOIR (alternate continuity)

chastmastr

03-25-2009, 08:27 PM

By the way, I do hope to eventually get some of the titles not listed here as back issues when my finances can afford it -- from that old list alone, I see several I've had to drop due to money issues, like the Twelve, Thor, Avengers/Invaders, etc.

Calybos

03-26-2009, 06:21 AM

Anything you're not enjoying, you should definitely drop. If the overall Marvel universe tone seems depressing and unappealing, just drop all your Marvel titles. Heck, I dropped just about all my Marvel titles as a result of Civil War myself. Problem solved!

(By the way, the Marvel All-Ages Adventure titles are quite fun. I'm picking up their "Avengers" book and loving it. Comics Should Be FUN.)

.

DrDoom616

03-26-2009, 08:15 AM

I too dropped an horrendous amount of books because of recent bad writing and stuff, down to just 3 a month now

chastmastr

03-26-2009, 02:06 PM

I too dropped an horrendous amount of books because of recent bad writing and stuff, down to just 3 a month now

Oh, which three?

I have indeed dropped the ones I don't like. :) One thing I am watching myself for now is "Am I buying this title because I am hoping something I like will happen in it?" For instance I was getting Avengers: The Initiative mainly because I was thinking, "Aha! This is where they will show how bad the Patriot Act -- er, I mean, the SHRA and Tony Stark's side in Civil War -- really is, and the good guys will eventually win in it!" Yet 22 issues in (22 x $3 = $66 for I hope something I will like will happen eventually?? :eek: ) and still it never really did what I expected. (The writing didn't suck or anything, but the main reason I was buying it was not really a good enough reason. I have started picking up Slott's Mighty Avengers book because I think I'll genuinely enjoy it on its own merits.) It's like the whole "is Jackpot Mary Jane? Keep buying and you'll find out! Another clue this issue!" thing. I heard Matt Fraction was going to redeem Tony Stark in Invincible Iron Man so I was buying that based on that specific reason ... at 3 bucks a pop every month, watching and waiting. (I am sure he will be redeemed eventually, and I think that's part of what's happening now, but I don't need to spend $3 a month on one comic waiting for it to finally happen.) If later it does turn out there's a well-crafted storyline which leads to that, great, I'll get the back issues or the trades of it, but if the main reason I'm getting something is the hopes that it will "fix" various things I don't like, then, gah, that's not a good way to spend my money. (Of course, if I like the comic for other reasons too, then that's different.)

Fred Van Lente did a one-shot "Brand New Day" issue of Spider-Man with the Spot that I picked up and I am sure I will like it because I love his writing. I wish it were in the real -- er, the pre-One More Day :evilsmile: -- continuity, of course.

David

chastmastr

03-26-2009, 02:29 PM

Another example would be the Fantastic Four Dark Reign miniseries. Part of me sees the synopsis of it -- Reed wonders what he's done so terribly wrong the last few years and decides to try to fix things, going on some kind of trek to alternate realities -- and thinks, "AT LAST!! They're FINALLY addressing this! I must buy it!" But it's by a writer I've never read, who is apparently partly behind the here-we-go-again with-another-negative-retcon Secret Warriors series (in which, apparently, SPOILER ALERT, select the whited-out text to see it -- SHIELD is "revealed" to have always been a branch of HYDRA, shoot me now) -- on the other hand, that may not have been HIS idea, and maybe it's actually some kind of trick after all or something, so I should not blame him for it, but so far it seems like yet another retcon which makes no sense, and which yet again drags formerly heroic things through the mud and "reveals" they've always been basically bad and working for their own secret Machiavellian ends. Yay. :mad:

At the same time, if he is writing Reed as someone who looks back at what he has done, finally realizes that he's stepped over moral lines and that the end doesn't ever justify the means, no matter how much math you've done, and that's a sensibility about heroism he'll bring to the title when he becomes the new writer on FF itself -- well, then I might very well like it, so I'll have some back issues to get. But I must not give in to the temptation to start buying it now just to see what happens, in hopes it will "fix" things.

(Of course, if this works out, I want to see Clor (now called "Ragnarok") (when will the inevitable "Bizarro-Thor #1" jokes start?) have some kind of happy ending, or new beginning, the poor thing. Creating a cyborg clone-slave of an old and dear deceased friend as a living weapon for their own ends honestly strikes me as one of the nastier things Reed and Tony (Pym now doesn't count, having been replaced by a Skrull, but Tony and Reed are not off the hook) did which was just plain wildly out of character, and if Reed wants to clear up his conscience, then I think helping his own creation -- he's an Asgardian Deathlok, basically -- become his own person, freed from any cyborg control, rather than abandoning him to the four winds, would be a top priority.)

David
does not, however, want to encourage Ragnarok/Danger slash fiction, despite the fact that they have so much in common

kindella2

04-08-2009, 03:54 PM

chastmastr

04-08-2009, 04:57 PM

I suppose we'll just have to disagree on some of that, then...

Mark_S

04-08-2009, 06:47 PM

I respect your opinion and i know lots of people who hated the OMD story. Im just getting back into comics after losing interest as a youngster and im reading several titles and buying back issues and TPB to get back acclimated to the MU.
I like the storylines and the BALLS of the writers to do such. Im sure lots of people would have rather seen May die but that was too easy and in writing these crazy fiction stories of superhuman individuals if you dont do something crazy to the character it gets boring.
I love that after getting so much respect and power Tony is now outlawed and getting dumber by the day. I like that Peter still at least has a shot at MJ. I love that Osbourne after killing people can rise up to have Tony Stark power. its the twists that keep me involved. But im also not looking for morality in these books cuz its fiction which means anything goes based upon whose writing the story.

The twist are inventive, no denying that. But while I don't look for absolute morality I would like a comic where I cheer the hero on, not where I see little difference between the hero and the villain. At the moment the vogue in marvel is that you have to be willing to forgo any sort of moral, legal or ethical limits if you want to accomplish great and good things. The inherent contradiction in that and the lack of sophistication in addressing that contradiction makes the stories far less than what they could be, at least to me. Marvel has not so much embraced shades of grey for nearly all of their characters as they have embraced ratios of black.

Norman has a plane shot down a plane to test Pepper, Tony risks a world war with Atlantis to bring the public on his side: Tell me a substantive difference in those two actions. Not in the motives, but to the people involved if either gamble fails. That is the ultimate problem, both Tony and Norman play games with peoples lives and no one at all gave them that right. So long as I can't see a difference between them then this Dark Reign simply becomes Al Capone and Bugs Malone battling for control of the Chicago mobs.

Mark_S

chastmastr

04-08-2009, 07:38 PM

Well, in this case I think it's more Tony experiencing what he put others through, in what will probably be a Purgatorial experience for the character -- so perhaps it's Al or Bugs having a shot at redemption through a Mikado-like or Karmic suffering. But it's still a pretty miserable universe.

Although I want to gleefully emphasize the Books I Am Really Liking on this thread too (since the other one got merged with it) -- to which I can happily add today's early release (at least at my store!) of the all-ages Wolverine: Worst Day Ever. :smile:

I'm also, since this seems as good a place to mention it as any, going through the last 9 years of Marvel books, sorting between the pre-Disassembled books -- the post-Disassembled books (and those, into ones I enjoy and am keeping, like all the Fred Van Lente stuff (Herc etc.) and Agents of Atlas, and the ones I'm selling on eBay, like Civil War and House of M) -- and the books which, while published after Disassembled, can still fit into that earlier, more heroic continuity (like Wolverine Worst Day Ever, the First Class books, the occasional one-shot and miniseries, and Claremont's X-Men The End and GeNext).

David

David

Elayis

04-19-2009, 12:16 AM

If you hate Marvel's "dark and depressing" universe so much, read DC. :rolleyes:

Hamdinger

04-19-2009, 12:34 AM

Chastmastr for a lot of the reasons you listed I now read a lot of the more self-contained Marvel books. Captain America is my favorite. The whole run has been consistently terrific because Brubaker understands the characters and read the original Captain America comics when he was a kid, so he loves the characters and it shows from the start of the run.

Iron Fist is also good, so has been Nova which has a great space adventure going on in there. Thor has been really great.

And speaking of Gods, Incredible Hercules has been one of my favorites as well. Deadpool and Captain Britain and MI13 are also great for the fun titles too.

Hamdinger

04-19-2009, 01:08 AM

For me Elayis its not so much the"dark depressing" stuff that has soured me on a lot of Marvel's stuff its mainly the very poor job of haveing bigtime Hero characters like Reed Richards and Stark act completely Out Of Character and acting like Doctor Doom or something, you know?

Like making "Clor" or violating any and all civil and human rights by putting people in prison in another freaking dimension for the rest of they're lives without a trial? Or hiring multiple murders, paying them millions and granting them a full pardon to do Stark's bidding.

And like how BND was done to fix the massive OOC screw up of Sidey unmasking. There were many ways to end the marriage too with out the weird lame plot-hole riddled devil pact thing did it. But they painted themselves into a corner because of the Civil War unmasking.

I like the Dark and Gritty stuff but with so many big time characters written Out Of Character it just smells like poor writing and poor editorial work. There were easy ways to write these stories and still have everyone still be in character. Most of these plotlines could have still happened for the big cross over events had they simply had evil characters do the deed.

Like had they had Henry Gyrich(or some one like him) be promoted above Stark and be the one doing the evil deeds (doing what's necessary for the good of his country of course) behind Stark and Richards backs unknown to all of them for awhile. And in the meantime Stark,Reed and others are fighting the dissenting heroes in civil war the same way it was written but would still be in character-- they just don't know the bad things being done behind their backs. The whole story would basicly be the same but then no one would be complaining about it now still after these years.

It's the poor writing, not "Dark & Gritty" that are turning me off.

Batman was taken

04-19-2009, 03:38 AM

If you hate Marvel's "dark and depressing" universe so much, read DC. :rolleyes:

Let me know when Superman starts making deals with the devil, and Ras Al Ghul is in charge of national security.

chastmastr

04-19-2009, 08:56 AM

Hamdinger summed it up well. :biggrin:

2-4-5_Trioxin

04-19-2009, 09:23 AM

Im not reading all that stuff you said, I just skimmed it.

But bascially if you dont like something then dont get it, it really is that simple. Like me there are alot of things I dont like and I simply dont get involved with them.

Sitting on a message board and writing a novels worth of reasons why you dont like something wont do you any good or change a thing because the only person who will care less than you when you complain about something is basically everyone else in the world.

chastmastr

04-19-2009, 09:50 AM

Yeah, that'd be easy if (1) the mainstream MU didn't cross most of its titles over with each other, so it's hard to avoid the bad stuff in pretty much any book set in the mainstream 616 MU, and (2) they weren't damaging classic heroic characters that have been around longer than I have, in ways which have resonated disturbingly with the worst of recent real-world evil acts, which is just plain depressing. And of course all the retcons which make the characters out to have been deeply messed-up for pretty much their whole histories.

Honestly those "novel-length" posts aren't all that long for me...

Although I do still agree with you about reading what I like and avoiding what I don't, and if you click on the link in my sig you'll get sent to what was originally a new thread but got merged with this one, which is all about books Marvel publishes that I like. :)

David

Mark_S

04-19-2009, 10:30 AM

When nearly the entire title line is polluted with dreary cynicism then avoiding it all becomes a little hard and since writing letters to marvel is nearly useless these days since there are virtually no letters pages putting it out on the web is a harmless way of venting. Those novel length post take only about five to fifteen minutes to type up. I get the feeling that the creators tend to resent the negative post more than anyone else. Understandable since there is usually flash anger and for some fans some creators can not do anything right. But I've seen just as much flash anger and pettiness from the creators as I've seen from the net. There are just more fans than there are creators so it seems lopsided.

Mark_S

chastmastr

04-19-2009, 12:14 PM

writing letters to marvel is nearly useless these days since there are virtually no letters pages

Actually there are still some at Marvel... alas, DC isn't doing them right now, but Marvel still has some.

(And very happily I just got one published in the last issue of Amazing Spider-Girl in which I also mention enjoying Marvel's "alternate continuity" books.)

I still plan to be up-front about thinking Marvel's mainstream present-day 616 continuity has gone horribly off the rails, but I'm trying to encourage people to read the books I find enjoyable. On the one hand, absolutely, the present state of the 616 MU is ghastly; but on the other, I don't think there have ever been so many alternatives on hand. I mean, right now, Marvel's publishing the Spider-Girl universe in Amazing Spider-Man Family and online, with trades/digests collecting her run and other titles in the same universe, which has gone on for more than a decade; the GeNext world which spins out of X-Men The End; Claremont's upcoming X-Men Forever; an entire line of all-ages books (Marvel Adventures) which are in their own continuity (or continuity-free); Exiles, which while it deals with an array of parallel worlds, is still not set in 616 and has an ongoing cast of characters; plus of course Marvel Noir and other alternatives; not to mention ongoing series set in a happier past, Wolverine First Class and (soon, Uncanny) X-Men First Class. If one wanted to do so, one could simply put the First Class books in order before any of those alternate timelines and have an entire upbeat/heroic Marvel Universe with nary a mention at all of Decimation/Disassembled/Dark Reign. And of course the minis which don't connect at all with current continuity problems -- the Wolverine one-shots, Fantastic Four True Story, Isla De Muerta, and so on.

I am not happy that the mainstream present-day 616 world is so broken, but I'm very happy that there are loads of good Marvel books I can buy instead. :smile:

And, of course, someday I expect all of this to be fixed. I don't think the anti-heroic stuff will go on forever, and it will probably be mostly retconned out, so then I'll have even more Marvel to buy. :)

David

Mark_S

04-19-2009, 01:55 PM

chastmastr

04-20-2009, 05:46 PM

By the way, if you like Marvel Adventures, go to your local Taco Bell right now for some quite nice MA-style comics -- you don't have to get the kid's meal for them, just about a dollar for each of the four one-shots --

http://chesterfest.blogspot.com/2009/04/never-been-in-kids-meal-before.html

http://www.paultobin.net/?p=387

http://chesterfest.blogspot.com/2009/04/taco-bell-creative-teams.html

chastmastr

04-21-2009, 04:05 PM

Yay! Marvel's July 2009 solicits are out! (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=20888) Not many additions but there are some:

ALL SELECT COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL -- connects with past
USA COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL -- connects with past
KID COLT #1: Tom DeFalco story which was only online till now
UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #1 (of 8): At last!

Some others I will look into when I have more money:
REBORN #1 (of 5): They aren't saying what it is and I have no intentions of buying it in hope that it's Cap's (i.e. Steve Rogers') return. Technically even if it is, I'm not really into Brubaker, and at 5 issues for $4 a pop that's $20 just to buy "the return of Cap"... to the current 616 MU I don't care for.
Pride and Prejudice, Trojan War, and Oz -- when I can afford them.
I like Paul Cornell so when I can afford it, I'll check out more of his Captain Britain and possibly even his Dark X-Men; similarly, I'm pondering Jeff Parker's Hood mini, because so far I've really liked all of Parker's other stuff, ditto Frank Tieri's Lethal Legion. But right now, if I have to put my money somewhere, it's going to the other titles I've been listing. (There's a lot of DC I'm eager to get, too, when the time is right, like the Robinson/Johns Super-books, the Rucka/Winick/Dini Bat-books, the GL books, but all of those kind of require a bigger financial commitment than I can give right now; I also feel like I want to put my support behind the less-mainstream Marvel books like, say, Wolverine First Class or Spider-Man Family (Spider-Girl's new home), etc.) Savage She-Hulk by Van Lente, definitely. I've heard some good things about elements of Fraction's X-Men though the art seems ghastly. Still picking up Astonishing Tales though I wish they'd just put the Punisher/Wolverine story in a one-shot and be done with it.

Marvel Divas sounds like it could be very good (yes, really) because I've so far liked everything Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has written, and the actual artist (not the cover artist in the solicits!) has mostly non-cheesecakey female art, some of which I posted over on the Marvel Divas thread. But I may still need to wait till I have more of an income.

David

chastmastr

04-21-2009, 04:13 PM

...the Rucka/Winick/Dini Bat-books

(I must get the Morrison/Quitely Batman and Robin. That goes without saying. :wink: )

chastmastr

05-20-2009, 01:33 AM

I like Paul Cornell so when I can afford it, I'll check out more of his Captain Britain
... which, sadly, will be just a few issues. :frown:

I do have some

August Additions

now that Marvel's new solicits are out. :biggrin:

Getting more of those 70th Anniversary Golden-Age one-shots: All-Winners, Mystic, and Marvel Comics #1. But not, alas, Brubaker's "hidden connections between the Golden Age characters" mini. For one thing, while I know lots of people like his Captain America, this was the writer who gave us Deadly Genesis, and if that's the kind of retcon he has in mind, I'm not interested.

Iron Man and the Armor Wars by Caramagna, definitely buying. :) Looks like an all-ages semi-Marvel-Adventures book (like Doom and Masters of Evil or Lockjaw and Pet Avengers) so I'm happy.

And finally adding Dominic Fortune by Chaykin. Sounds good.

Jason Abbadon

05-20-2009, 05:17 PM

So we can finally wrap up this thread by saying that:

-Tony Stark was right to try to "one up" the government's plans to regulate superhero behavior but did several shady things in presuit of what he felt was "the greater good"....but certainly no more than Nick Fury would have as SHIELD director.

-Captian America was right that the Registration Act was going to restrict how super-heroes operate and that the government having everyone's secret ID would lead to abuses (just look at what Norman would have done!).
Cap was wrong to attack Tony instead of trying to talk things out.

-"Clor" was a baaad mistake and, while Tony has certainly paid for it, Reed somehow has not. As Hank and Reed's specialties would have been more key to making "clor" this seems unfair.

-"Clor" is still not as bad a mistake as making a "Black Goliath" in the first place.

-Cap made the Civil War a personal thing between himself and Tony and lost sight of the reason he was fighting- to allow heroes to be heroes.
Instead he got a big chunk of New York trashed and got jumped by EMS personell as result.

-Hank was a Skrull but the Skrull was doing what Hank would have done anyway- certainly no one ever said "gee, Hank's sure acting out of character".

So, in wrapping up:
TONY was right. (sorta)
STEVE was wrong.(sorta)
Hank was a Skrull. (Ug.)
Reed was trying to impress Tony (for some reason).
Thor was dead but now is not and still only blames Tony for that "Clor" thing.
Bill Foster is dead. (but no one really cares)
Peter was unmasked but now that never happened and...(headache ensues)
A LOT of Avengers supported registration and Tony. (most notably the Wasp)

A lot of characters acted "out of character"- meaning they were more than two-dimensional- and irked fans expecting Cap's dialogue to sound like Stan Lee.
(shrugs)

The Marvel Universe got a lot darker (no pun intended).

Cap got killed BY THE RED SKULL but everyone blames Tony.
Seriously, WTF??! It seemed that no one tried to find out who shot Steve except characters in Cap's book!

Everything is now Tony Stark's fault- the Secret Invasion, Global warming, dark Reign, the Recession, "Clor", Windows Vista....

Mark_S

05-20-2009, 05:24 PM

Everything is now Tony Stark's fault- the Secret Invasion, Global warming, dark Reign, the Recession, "Clor", Windows Vista....

Cloudy days. Don't forget cloudy days. :evilsmile:

Mark_S

chastmastr

05-20-2009, 06:45 PM

So we can finally wrap up this thread

:confused: No need for that; I tried to start a new thread on books I like by Marvel but someone merged it into this one, so that's what I'm posting here now.

-Tony Stark was right to try to "one up" the government's plans to regulate superhero behavior but did several shady things in presuit of what he felt was "the greater good"....but certainly no more than Nick Fury would have as SHIELD director.

Not sure where that conclusion comes from, either the "Tony was right" nor the "Nick would have done stuff just as bad."

-"Clor" is still not as bad a mistake as making a "Black Goliath" in the first place.

I'm guessing this is just a joke about Goliath's 1970s-era name.

-Hank was a Skrull but the Skrull was doing what Hank would have done anyway- certainly no one ever said "gee, Hank's sure acting out of character".

Which is itself what I'd consider out of character. Not a shock given the way the whole thing was written from beginning to end...

A lot of characters acted "out of character"- meaning they were more than two-dimensional- and irked fans expecting Cap's dialogue to sound like Stan Lee.

... honestly, no, they acted out of character by acting in ways that only ends-justify-the-means anti-heroes or outright "villains with a supposedly right cause" would act. And they still haven't been repaired. But this isn't just Civil War, this is the last few years, and not remotely limited to Tony, Reed etc. Xavier's been particularly badly portrayed, what with Deadly Genesis, X-Men 1.5, Vulcan and Danger. Logan as well with all the crap they've shoehorned into his history, not even counting Azrael and Romulus. (My God, I thought we had it bad when they did the Draco storyline for Nightcrawler. While an awful retcon, at least that didn't impugn his moral character; I had no idea what was coming next...)

The Marvel Universe got a lot darker (no pun intended).

Yep. Still waiting for it to get better.

Cap got killed BY THE RED SKULL but everyone blames Tony.
Seriously, WTF??! It seemed that no one tried to find out who shot Steve except characters in Cap's book

Hopefully Steve is coming back this summer. ;)

Everything is now Tony Stark's fault- the Secret Invasion, Global warming, dark Reign, the Recession, "Clor", Windows Vista....

No, I blame editorial mismanagement focused on short-term sales increases based on sensationalist, "shocking" redefinitions of the characters that "get people talking" rather than being true to their traditional heroic roots or basic character concepts. ;)

However, I'm trying to focus on the books I like now, as my last batch of posts may suggest. I did try to start a new thread which wouldn't have all the other posts centered on What I Don't Like About Marvel These Days (that's the link in my sig file -- you can see the "new thread" starting there in the middle of this one), but again, it got merged into this thread, which I was kind of hoping to leave behind and move on somewhat from. :redface:

David

chastmastr

05-20-2009, 06:53 PM

Just to kind of refresh the new thread/direction I was/am trying to go in, which was going to be its own thread... boldface mine (okay, the original post was mine, but just to emphasize it):

... While I am not at all a fan of the current backstory of the present-day mainstream MU (Disassembled, Decimation, Civil War, Planet and World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign), I'm finding quite a lot of good stuff to enjoy, and that I can recommend without reservation -- it's just, with rare exceptions, set in the past or in alternate realities. I'm wondering if Marvel is realizing that there is a big market for us classic-heroic-minded readers.

Going over my order list, I came up with my comprehensive list of Marvel books I'm getting right now, for the next few months, as I can afford them, so I can show what I mean about the classic/heroic stuff actually being around, just mostly not in present-day 616 stories:

[huge list]

Obviously I'd like the regular mainstream MU to become more like it used to be circa 2003 or so, or, rather, springboard from its past into a more modern yet still heroic approach than I believe it has right now, but I do think this shows that Marvel knows there are a lot of readers whose interests are more classic, and definitely stuff worth buying. Any other fans doing something similar to this?

But because all the original thread is now prefacing the new one, we keep going back to the stuff I don't like rather than the stuff I do.

chastmastr

06-08-2009, 12:19 AM

Marvel titles I'm adding with August 2009 ship dates:

ALL WINNERS COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
MYSTIC COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
MARVEL COMICS #1: 70TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
IRON MAN & THE ARMOR WARS
DOMINIC FORTUNE
and biting the bullet and adding MARVEL DIVAS

Mr. Immortal

06-08-2009, 12:24 AM

Cliff notes version:

*Stamps feet and whines endlessly* :p

Thanks for the cliffs. No idea what TS said, but I'm in the same boat as far as current Marvel goes. I just haven't been into it for years. Luckily there's like 60 years of back issues to read and discuss, which the forums do on a daily basis. :smile:

GHalecki

06-08-2009, 12:50 AM

Calybos

06-08-2009, 06:06 AM

I've mostly been picking up the Essentials collections (the "classic superheroic stuff"), but I must admit I DID pick up a current Marvel title this month:

Fin Fang Four!

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/thumb/d/d6/Fin_Fang_Four_Return_Vol_1_1.jpg/300px-Fin_Fang_Four_Return_Vol_1_1.jpg

Seriously, that's the only Marvel book I've picked up since Civil War. If you can't give me heroes, at least give me comedy.

.

chastmastr

01-29-2010, 01:50 PM

While I am glad Marvel is finally getting past the last few years of misery with its upcoming Brightest Day -- er, I mean Heroic Age -- given that the architects of this are the same ones that messed up the MU in the first place, I'm not holding my breath -- so nothing has changed in my buying habits...

Except... ;)

My all-new updated list!

Going over my order list, I came up with my new comprehensive list of Marvel books I'm getting right now, for the next few months, as I can afford them (alas, less money than before), so I can show what I mean about the classic/heroic stuff actually being around, just mostly not in present-day 616 stories:

The Marvel Adventures/"all ages" line of books has now split into a genuine continuity MA line, which effectively puts it in the "alternate universe" category at last:

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES

Both of which are being relaunched, but not rebooted from Paul Tobin's new direction for the line. Hooray! Perhaps this is the beginning of a new Marvel Universe -- the opposite of the Ultimate U...

And a more or less continuity-free all-ages line:
THOR AND THE WARRIORS FOUR
(Will get more Pet Avengers when I can afford it again)

Marvel books set in the past, ostensibly in the same universe as their
current titles, but arguably with a much lighter, more classically
heroic style:
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN
BLACK WIDOW & THE MARVEL GIRLS
IRON MAN: LEGACY
SPIDER-MAN & THE SECRET WARS
UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
X-MEN ORIGINS: CYCLOPS
X-MEN ORIGINS: NIGHTCRAWLER

Marvel books set in (or focused on) other continuities -- again with a
more classic style:
WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (I get it for the Spider-Girl stories)
X-FACTOR FOREVER
X-MEN FOREVER

Marvel books which don't necessarily have anything to do with the last
few years of retcons or continuity at all:
GIRL COMICS
SPIDER-MAN: FEVER
THE MYSTIC HANDS OF DR. STRANGE
WOLVERINE: MR. X
WOLVERINE: SAVAGE
WOLVERINE: WENDIGO!

And a whopping one (!) ongoing Marvel books set in and dealing with
current continuity:
WOLVERINE WEAPON X

(When I can afford it again I'll be picking up INCREDIBLE HERCULES.)

Obviously I'd still like the regular mainstream MU to become more like it used to be circa 2003 or so, or, rather, springboard from its past into a more modern yet still heroic approach than I believe it has right now, but I do think this shows that Marvel knows there are a lot of readers whose interests are more classic, and definitely stuff worth buying. Any other fans doing something similar to this?

chastmastr

02-17-2010, 11:28 AM

My newest updated list: For those who care.

The Marvel Adventures/"all ages" line of books:

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES

Along with the more or less continuity-free all-ages line:
THOR AND THE WARRIORS FOUR
(Will get more Pet Avengers when I can afford it again)

Marvel books set in the past, ostensibly in the same universe as their
current titles, but arguably with a much lighter, more classically
heroic style:
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN
BLACK WIDOW & THE MARVEL GIRLS
IRON MAN: LEGACY
SPIDER-MAN & THE SECRET WARS
UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
X-MEN ORIGINS: CYCLOPS
X-MEN ORIGINS: NIGHTCRAWLER
X-MEN ORIGINS: EMMA FROST
ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS (probably)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #37

Marvel books set in (or focused on) other continuities -- again with a
more classic style:
WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (up through #7 -- I get it for the Spider-Girl stories)
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL (WOO-HOO!)
X-FACTOR FOREVER
X-MEN FOREVER

Marvel books which don't necessarily have anything to do with the last
few years of retcons or continuity at all:
GIRL COMICS
SPIDER-MAN: FEVER
THE MYSTIC HANDS OF DR. STRANGE
WOLVERINE: MR. X
WOLVERINE: SAVAGE
WOLVERINE: WENDIGO!
WOLVERINE #900
INDOMITABLE IRON MAN

And a whopping two (!) ongoing Marvel books set in and dealing with
current continuity:
WOLVERINE WEAPON X
ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN/WOLVERINE

(When I can afford it again I'll be picking up INCREDIBLE HERCULES/PRINCE OF POWER and ATLAS.)

Just wanted to post an update of the books I like and recommend. Part of the reason I do this is because I see so many fellow disgruntled fans who seem to have sworn off Marvel entirely, perhaps in protest, but I think it's better to buy the titles which one likes, "voting with one's wallet," as it were, rather than wait for the entire mainstream present-day 616 MU to be what we want, since there are so many alternatives to get our classic Marvel "fix" with.

chastmastr

03-30-2010, 07:27 PM

Just some additions as of the June solicits:

IRON MAN: KISS AND KILL (set in past and/or not focused on continuity)
FANTASTIC FOUR IN…¡ATAQUE DEL M.O.D.O.K.! (not focused on continuity)
HERCULES: TWILIGHT OF A GOD (alternate future spinning out of the 80s series)
THE RAWHIDE KID (new series) (set in past)
X-CAMPUS (alternate continuity)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 (why Marvel needs to treat its series as if they were movies, I have no idea; I'd be happy with X-MEN FOREVER #25, etc.) (alternate continuity)
MARVELMAN CLASSIC PRIMER (alternate continuity and/or reprints)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP (set in past, possible alternate continuity)

inferno

04-15-2010, 02:28 AM

SHIELD probably counts as "Marvel books set in the past, ostensibly in the same universe"

Jason Abbadon

04-15-2010, 03:42 AM

THE RAWHIDE KID (new series) is either NOT set in the past or very poorly though out- his female companion in the art teaser is wearing an ipod and dressed kile 80's madonna.
Hardly a "old west" outfit.

chastmastr

04-15-2010, 11:06 AM

SHIELD probably counts as "Marvel books set in the past, ostensibly in the same universe"

Alas, its whole focus is major retcons of the kind I don't care for. Although making Leonardo Da Vinci an adventuring hero is still miles better than the character damage to Professor X and Tony Stark, it still involves altering a lot of classic Marvel history in ways that just don't make sense (Galactus, etc.).

THE RAWHIDE KID (new series) is either NOT set in the past or very poorly though out- his female companion in the art teaser is wearing an ipod and dressed kile 80's madonna.
Hardly a "old west" outfit.

I've missed the teaser, so I don't know. It could just be some sort of non-continuity humor thing, in that case.

DetectiveDupin

04-15-2010, 11:09 AM

I don't feel posters should inform others of their religous endeavors. Keep it to yourself.

chastmastr

04-15-2010, 11:16 AM

I don't feel posters should inform others of their religous endeavors. Keep it to yourself.

That's your problem. Sorry! :smile: Considering the actual Lenten aspect of the whole thing was over two years ago, and the thread's become "Despite hating current 616, there's a lot of Marvel I recommend" (which I tried to start as its own thread, but someone merged it with the older Lent one, as you'll see if you actually read the whole thread; the shift is a few pages back, in fact), it's a bit of a moot point anyway, but posters are quite free here to talk about such matters as they see fit. If it were not for the Marvel Comics connection, then of course I'd have started the thread (if at all) in the Community Forum, but since it was specifically related to my then-increasing frustration with the direction of Marvel's books, it was appropriate for this forum. :tongue:

chastmastr

04-20-2010, 10:03 PM

Latest update as of July solicits:

Rare mainstream continuity stuff:
ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN/WOLVERINE #2 (Jason Aaron)
WOLVERINE WEAPON X #15 (Jason Aaron)
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #891 (Frank Tieri doing Mr. X. I have to.)
WORLD WAR HULKS: WOLVERINE VS. CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 (of 2) (tentative; I do love Paul Tobin's stuff)
WORLD WAR HULKS: WOLVERINE VS. CAPTAIN AMERICA #2 (of 2) (see above)
X-FORCE: SEX AND VIOLENCE #1 (of 3) (tentative; will Del'Otto give male eye candy as well as female? Will have to see)

Set in the past but without reference to last few years of retcons:
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN #4 (of 5)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP #2 (of 3)
IRON MAN LEGACY #4
THE RAWHIDE KID #2 (of 4)
X-MEN ORIGINS: DEADPOOL #1
X-WOMEN #1 (actually written in the past, too)

Alternate continuities:
HERCULES: TWILIGHT OF A GOD #2 (of 4)
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL #3
SPIDER-MAN #4
SUPER HEROES #4
THOR AND THE WARRIORS FOUR #4 (of 4)
X-CAMPUS #2 (of 4)
X-FACTOR FOREVER #5 (of 5)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #3
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #4

Golden Age reprints:
MARVELMAN CLASSIC VOL. 1 PREMIERE HC ANGLO VARIANT (DM ONLY)
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST #1 (of 6)

Maven

04-21-2010, 01:54 PM

I don't feel posters should inform others of their religous endeavors. Keep it to yourself.

Oddly enough, feel that posters SHOULD inform others of their religious endeavors. I INSIST that you tell me about yours.

chastmastr

04-21-2010, 02:12 PM

Oddly enough, feel that posters SHOULD inform others of their religious endeavors. I INSIST that you tell me about yours.

Me, or DetectiveDupin? :confused:

chastmastr

05-22-2010, 01:09 PM

Latest update as of August solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:
AVENGERS & THE INFINITY GAUNTLET #1 (of 4)

Set in the past:
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN #5 (of 5)
IRON MAN LEGACY #5
THE RAWHIDE KID #3 (of 4)
DAREDEVIL: BLACK & WHITE #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP #3 (of 3)

Set in alternate continuities:
HERCULES: TWILIGHT OF A GOD #3 (of 4)
NEW MUTANTS FOREVER #1 (of 5)
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL #4 (of 4)
ULTIMATE COMICS X #4
SUPER HEROES #5
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #5
SPIDER-GIRL: THE END! #1
SPIDER-MAN #5
X-CAMPUS #3 (of 4)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #6

Golden Age Reprints:
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST #2 (of 6)

Rare current-616 comics:
X-FORCE: SEX AND VIOLENCE #2 (of 3)
WOLVERINE WEAPON X #16

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include the upcoming new Thor series (alt continuity) and the Atlas and Prince of Power books. Even without those, this is about $70 plus tax for the month of August just from Marvel, so I'm not lacking for books to buy!

Guest_1001

05-22-2010, 03:04 PM

I don't feel posters should inform others of their religous endeavors. Keep it to yourself.

It's comics-related and if he's happy to be open about it, more power to him. I'm Catholic, incidentally, and glad a poster is willing to express his beliefs on a public forum.

chastmastr

06-16-2010, 04:33 PM

Latest update as of September solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:
AVENGERS & THE INFINITY GAUNTLET #2 (of 4)

Set in the past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: PATRIOT #1 (of 4)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: PATRIOT #2 (of 4)
IRON MAN LEGACY #6
THOR: FIRST THUNDER #1 (of 5)
THOR: FOR ASGARD #1 (of 7)
THOR: FOR ASGARD #2 (of 7)

Set in alternate continuities:
HERCULES: TWILIGHT OF A GOD #4 (of 4)
NEW MUTANTS FOREVER #2 (of 5)
SPIDER-MAN #6
SUPER HEROES #6
X-CAMPUS #4 (of 4)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #7
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #8

Golden Age Reprints:
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST #3 (of 6)

Rare current-616 comics:
ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #3 (of 5)
WOLVERINE #1
WOLVERINE: THE ROAD TO HELL #1 (just for the Jason Aaron bit)
X-FORCE: SEX AND VIOLENCE #3 (of 3)

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include the upcoming new Thor series (alt continuity) and the Atlas and Prince of Power books. Even without those, this is about $83 plus tax for the month of September just from Marvel, so I'm (still) not lacking for books to buy!

chastmastr

07-27-2010, 01:37 AM

Latest update as of October solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:
AVENGERS & THE INFINITY GAUNTLET #3

Set in the past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: PATRIOT #3
IRON MAN LEGACY #7
LOKI #1
THOR: FIRST THUNDER #2
THOR: FOR ASGARD #3

Set in alternate continuities:
NEW MUTANTS FOREVER #3
SPIDER-MAN #7
SUPER HEROES #7
THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER #5
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #9
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #10

Golden Age Reprints:
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST #4

Continuity-free stories (some of which may be set in the past):
TOMB OF TERROR #1
STRANGE TALES VOL. II #1
IRON MAN: TITANIUM! #1 (some may be, anyway)
SPIDER-MAN VS. VAMPIRES #1 (maybe, not sure)

Rare current-616 comics:
UNCANNY X-FORCE #1 (new writer Remender mentions redemptive focus)
WOLVERINE #2 (Jason Aaron)
SPIDER-GIRL #1 (Paul Tobin, who has more than proven himself in every other book I've read by him; still sad about Mayday Parker, but I must get this book!)

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include Jeff Parker's Hulk and Thunderbolts, and Fred Van Lente's Chaos War (Herc). Current total, not counting those last ones: about $73 plus tax for the month of October, just from Marvel...

chastmastr

08-26-2010, 11:30 PM

Latest update as of November solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:
AVENGERS & THE INFINITY GAUNTLET #4 (of 4)

Set in the past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #1 (of 5)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: PATRIOT #4 (of 4)
IRON MAN LEGACY -- sadly dropped as it now seems to be including the retcons I can't stand, like the Illuminati
LOKI #2 (of 4)
THOR: FIRST THUNDER #3 (of 5)

Set in alternate continuities:
NEW MUTANTS FOREVER #4 (of 5)
SPIDER-MAN #8
SUPER HEROES #8
THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER #6
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #11
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #12

Golden Age Reprints:
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST #5 (of 6)

Continuity-free stories (some of which may be set in the past):
STRANGE TALES VOL. 2 #2 (of 3)
WOMEN OF MARVEL #1 (of 2)

Rare current-616 comics:
ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #4 (of 6) (Jason Aaron)
THUNDERSTRIKE #1 (of 5) (Tom DeFalco)
UNCANNY X-FORCE #2 (Remender)
WARRIORS THREE #1 (of 4) (not sure about this one)
WOLVERINE #3 (Aaron)

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include Jeff Parker's Hulk and Thunderbolts, Paul Tobin's Spider-Girl, and Fred Van Lente's Chaos War (Herc) with appropriate crossovers by certain writers I really like (DeMatteis is doing one, I believe). Current total, not counting those last ones: about $76 plus tax for the month of November, just from Marvel...

chastmastr

09-28-2010, 05:14 PM

Latest update as of December solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:

Set in the past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #2 (of 5)
LOKI #3 (of 4)
THOR: FIRST THUNDER #4 (of 5)
THOR: FOR ASGARD #5 (of 6)
THOR: WOLVES OF THE NORTH #1 (wow, lots of Thor coming up; I just can't imagine why... :wink:)

Set in alternate continuities:
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE KORVAC SAGA #1 (of 4)
NEW MUTANTS FOREVER #5
SPIDER-MAN #9
SUPER HEROES #9
THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER #7
WHAT IF? IRON MAN: DEMON IN AN ARMOR
WHAT IF? WOLVERINE: FATHER
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #13
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #14

Golden Age Reprints:
MARVELMAN FAMILY'S FINEST#6

Continuity-free stories (some of which may be set in the past):
STRANGE TALES II #3
WOMEN OF MARVEL #2 (of 2)

Rare current-616 comics:
CHAOS WAR: X-MEN#1 (I plan on getting some other Chaos War issues later on, but this is by Claremont!)
THUNDERSTRIKE #2 (of 5)
UNCANNY X-FORCE #3
WARRIORS THREE #2 (maybe)
WARRIORS THREE #3 (ditto)
WOLVERINE #4
WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS #1

Holiday (because I'm always a sucker for that stuff this time of year):
SUPER HERO SQUAD #12

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include the stuff I mentioned last time. :smile: I've decided to pick up Iron Man Legacy again as it is by Van Lente, but it's still on a lower tier for me since it does drag in Illuminati and the like.

chastmastr

10-24-2010, 05:56 PM

Latest update as of January solicits:

Set in either the past or in an alternate continuity:
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE KORVAC SAGA #2 (of 4)

Set in the past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #3 (of 5)
THOR: FIRST THUNDER #5 (of 5)
LOKI #4 (of 4)
MAGNETO #1
WARRIORS THREE #4 (of 4) (if set in the past, that is; still don't know)

Set in alternate continuities:
SPIDER-MAN #10
SUPER HEROES #10
THOR THE MIGHTY AVENGER #8
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #15
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #16 (final issue! Alas...) :frown:

Rare current-616 comics:
THUNDERSTRIKE #3 (of 5)
CHAOS WAR: X-MEN #2 (of 2)
WOLVERINE #5
WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS #2
WOLVERINE AND JUBILEE #1 (of 4)
UNCANNY X-FORCE #4

Some others I'll get when I can afford them include the stuff I've mentioned before (Van Lente stuff, esp. Hercules-related and Iron Man Legacy, as well as the non-Claremont Chaos War).

Sadly, it looks like my list is dwindling...

chastmastr

11-16-2010, 02:15 PM

Holy cow, my list is dwindling. Feb solicits:

Alt-reality OR past (not sure):
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE KORVAC SAGA #3 (of 4)

Set in past:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: MAN OUT OF TIME #4 (of 5)
THOR: FOR ASGARD #6 (of 6)
Doctor Strange: From The Marvel Vault #1
WOLVERINE #1000 (some set in past, probably some are continuity-free as well)
MARVEL GIRL #1

Rare current Earth-616:
THUNDERSTRIKE #4 (of 5)
WOLVERINE #5.1
WOLVERINE #6
WOLVERINE AND JUBILEE #2 (of 4)
WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS #3
UNCANNY X-FORCE #5
(Yes, yes, I know. Lots of Logan eye-candy. Don't judge me. LOL)

Alt-reality:
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #11
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #11
(Oh, Spider-Girl and MC-2. Oh, Forever books. How I shall miss thee!)
(And, apparently, Thor: The Mighty Avenger. Dang it...)

To get later:
IRON MAN LEGACY #11 (Van Lente)
SPIDER-GIRL #4 (Tobin)
HULK #30 (Parker)
ARCADE: DEATH GAME #1 & #2 (of 3) (Tobin)
THUNDERBOLTS #153 (Parker)
MARVELMAN CLASSIC VOL. 2 PREMIERE HC (Golden Age reprints)

That sounds like a lot but it's really not. The stuff to get soonest is a whopping $49.86.

jackolover

11-16-2010, 03:34 PM

Have you softened yet about the Heroic Age 616, or does it still feel like the Civil War?

jackolover

11-16-2010, 03:43 PM

jackolover

11-16-2010, 04:18 PM

I really don't think it will ever be fixed. Not really. The writers can always come up with a quick Mephisto-deal to fix everything, but I really don't see the writers/editors at marvel moving away from darkness. I think it comes down to individual belief and I think that the writers/editors at marvel mostly have the belief that a character just isn't very interesting unless he or she is willing to betray/cheat/use friends and allies for a greater good. I think that the time of the noble hero has for the most part past in marvel and the heroic ideal is now somewhere between Norman and Dr. Doom, with the occasional aberration such as Spiderman.

Mark_S

Don't you think that all Marvel was trying to achieve is the heroes cranking back to just being suspicious of each other? I wouldn't read any more into it than that, and certainly not that the characters are being written out of character, and trying to sabotage each other at the least excuse.

Marvel had to find some way to achieve getting the heroes suspicious of each again. Just getting Gyrich to dupe them wasn't going to do that. They needed the characters themselves to believe they were doing the CW for their own reasons, so that the other characters could see that it was super heroes doing it. That was the only way to make the suspicion stick.

Now that the CW is over, there is no reason to believe that Tony and Reed still aren't heroes with moral fibre, don't you think?

chastmastr

11-16-2010, 05:45 PM

Have you softened yet about the Heroic Age 616, or does it still feel like the Civil War?

Actually, I've been pondering writing a follow-up to my initial screed, er, set of posts, since it was almost three years ago. Something Steve Wacker said in a thread on OMIT about "comics should be fun" struck a chord with me...

Here it is. On this thread (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=341096&page=20), Steve said and I responded...

Bringing adult sensibilities (along with a lack of imagination) tends to ruin these things...but adults ruin most fun things.

I hate to say this, but this thread is helping convince me he's right...

Of course, the question of whether things like OMIT and OMD and a host of other things are more or less fun, and make the comics more or less fun, is its own issue, but I feel like this thread is certainly non-fun. Perhaps particularly anti-fun.

I think I'm going to read some actual comics tonight, rather than grousing about them on the internet or anywhere else.

jackolover

11-16-2010, 06:44 PM

Actually, I've been pondering writing a follow-up to my initial screed, er, set of posts, since it was almost three years ago. Something Steve Wacker said in a thread on OMIT about "comics should be fun" struck a chord with me...

Here it is. On this thread (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=341096&page=20), Steve said and I responded...

I can never understand Steve Wackers responses, so it's hard for me to know if he's serious or not. If SW thinks us adults don't have enough imagination, I find that astounding, but if SW is saying it to be humorous, then it doesn't matter what he says.

If continuity is in fact like SW says, a slave to the writer, and not the opposite, (the writer is a slave to continuity), then I have been missing a lot about comics I love. Mind you, Steve is right, when Marvel can change the Hulk into the Red Hulk, and Spider-Man into BND so suddenly, so from that perspective, continuity takes a back seat. Our heroes are just driven by the winds of editorial, depending on where they want Captain America to suddenly be today. Does he become Bucky Cap, or does he arise from the dead and now nothing in CW matters anymore? Purely up to editorial, and continuity be damned.

I'm not sure if I'm reading Steve Wackers mind, but is he saying we should all calm down, and not be obsessed with the comics? Just read them and have fun, but don't get too wrapped up in them? If that's so, then why should we bother buying comic boxes full of stuff, when tomorrow, the editors will just turn everything around and what was important a few years ago won't mean that much in the future? So from that perspective, Marvel does evolve into a different beast and go through different cycles. It may start as a unified super hero universe, then degenerate into a dark age, but then it might just forget all that and go into a light hearted fling, where everything CW is forgotten and everyone are buddies, because that's the way Marvel want the books to go for the next 5 years.

Sue Storm lover

11-17-2010, 06:52 PM

If you guys keep this thread going much longer, Lent 2011 will be upon us...

chastmastr

11-17-2010, 07:03 PM

Indeed, which is one reason I've been thinking about revisiting the opening posts and seeing what I think about those issues three years later.

Hmmmm...

chastmastr

01-03-2011, 08:31 PM

Almost three years ago, I wrote a very long manifesto/screed about my concerns about the direction Marvel Comics had been going in. Now that some time has passed, I thought I’d return to it and see what I think about some bits of it now.

Three years is a long time.

(Original material posted February 3, 2008.)

Giving up arguing about Marvel, Civil War etc. for Lent: Revisited

There's only so much negativity I can dwell on without feeling down. I post on discussion boards, but after a while I feel like I'm repeating myself.

-- This hasn’t changed. If anything I’m more tired of repeating myself on discussion boards in general.

There's something genuinely jarring about people saying, in so many words, that the ends justify the means -- which I consider totally counter to heroism and to goodness in general. But I've been an old pedantic moralist on that issue since at least the age of 16 or 17 (I'm 40 now) if not a lot younger, so I'm used to that, just not as much in people who like to read about super-heroes...

-- This also hasn’t changed, other than that I’m now 43.

And then I thought, hey, I finally have a nearly gap-free run of all those MC-2 books (the Spider-Girl universe) that I've wanted to start reading, which is something like 180 comic books

-- And I did, and it was lovely. I was rather sad when Spider-Girl finally ended (for now) a few months back. On the other hand, 200 or so comics is nothing to sneeze at, and I think (if one leaves out DC’s actual Golden Age comics), for stories set in a parallel universe, MC-2 has more comics under its belt than Earth-2 did before Crisis. (50 issues of All-Star Squadron, 20 or so of Infinity, Inc., the short All-Star Comics revival in the 1970s, a run of the 1970s Wonder Woman set in 1943, the Mr. and Mrs. Superman back-up in Superman Family -- yep, I think even with all of that, MC-2 still wins hands down just in terms of number of comics. Heck, you could throw in the 1970s Shazam (Earth-S) and even Freedom Fighters (from Earth-X, though set on Earth-1), plus pre-Crisis JLA/JSA crossovers, and I think MC-2 would still actually win...)

Unlike some people, while I loathed OMD, I like Dan Slott so I'm giving BND a chance.

-- I did. Alas, it didn’t really grip me. Sorry, Dan...

I'll make an exception for X-Men: First Class and Wolverine: First Class, but I don't quite see them as 616 books anyway.

-- I happily have been making an array of exceptions for other books set in the past (or set in alternate dimensions, or just that have no real continuity references as such) that have nothing to do with any of those post-2004 retcons. It works for me. :)

A lot of my fellow posters who are upset about the current state of Marvel, though One More Day seems to have become the poster child for that, seem to be eaten up with the same kind of misery over it, consumed with vitriol, even going so far as to personally attack Joe Quesada and such online. To me that's just not right. I think he's messing up Marvel right now, though it's making lots of money for them (and yes, to me those are very different things), but for goodness' sake he's a human being, people.

-- This has not changed. Hatred for total strangers based on their editorial decisions (which are themselves affected by many factors we know almost nothing about) is just plain creepy.

If I could summarize my position, it would really be... this hideously long thing.

-- This, as the Gentle Reader may be able to tell, has also not changed. :)

I think Marvel's mainstream books, and mainstream world, have gone horribly off the rails since mid-2004, with most of their big-name "leader" characters unrepentantly corrupt or else dead, with a joy-choking, fascist paradigm in place which makes the ongoing backstory a real pill to read.

-- Ah, now we come to the meat of it. Things have changed somewhat in this regard. I don’t think it’s been done in a particularly “realistic” way, nor that things have been retconned out in quite the way I’d prefer, but characters are back from the dead and pretty much the heroes have bounced back from being jerky fascists.

In fact in some cases I think they may be good writers, just not good writers for these specific characters -- they seem to have very good reputations for books which are about a thousand miles away from classic Marvel stuff -- noir crime fiction, Vertigo stuff, etc. -- and I think they've been changing the characters' basic essences to fit their own style.

-- I still believe this, and this is why I have, for instance, zero interest in Bendis’ Avengers books.

It's solely the moral stuff. Let Peter get divorced, let MJ turn out to be a Skrull sleeper agent, but jeez, people, a deal with Mephisto? I never cared for Logan's bone claws, I didn't particularly like Origin, but don't take away his focus on honor, no-BS honesty with himself, embracing his humanity despite his feral rages, and helping the innocent, because that really doesdestroy the core of the character. (And so on with Reed et al.)

-- This has not changed. Indeed, one of the things which converted me to Jason Aaron’s run on Wolverine is precisely that he gets that “core.” Even with all the ludicrous and nasty stuff which other writers (coughDanielWaycough) have shoehorned into Logan’s backstory, Aaron has had him react to all his “recovered memories” the right way: Aghast at them, and doing everything in his power to make it right. That one two-parter at the end of the last Wolverine run (before Wolverine: Weapon X) was what got me to give him a chance, and I’m glad I did.

Some writers, most notably Dan Slott in the Initiative, are able to take this mess and make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the aftermath of Civil War.

-- Alas, Initiative also lost my interest eventually -- it just seemed to lead into the next array of crossovers.

I don't think this situation will last forever. I have no idea if Peter and Mary Jane will go back to being married in the mainstream MU, but I'm pretty sure that the horrible "if you get powers and don't register with Tony's little police state, you get hunted down like a dog by monsters and serial killers" setup will go away, because it's just no damn fun to read about in the long run.

-- And look! It’s gone now.

(continued)

chastmastr

01-03-2011, 08:31 PM

… circa 2016 people will look in the three-for-a-dollar bins at all the stories from "back when they made Tony Stark into a dick."

-- There is no way on God’s green earth that I plan on a 2016 retrospective to see if I was right. :eek: Fear not.

Maybe it'll be weird and clunky

-- And it was! If someone had told me that in three years, many things would have been resolved by the Green Goblin taking over SHIELD and leading an attack on Asgard, which would be floating over Oklahoma... um, well, what else needs to be said?

… and just make the heroes heroic again, without explanation.

-- That is kind of what happened, sort of.

I actually like a few -- precious few -- other mainstream Marvel books. I like Whedon's Astonishing, Straczynski's Thor and The Twelve, Van Lente's Incredible Herc, and I'm even giving Dan Slott's Spider-Man a chance.

-- Whedon lost me eventually and I still hate the “Danger” premise. Still waiting for the rest of The Twelve. Van Lente’s Herc and Herc-related stuff ROCKS.

But I don't like Bendis', Millar's, Aaron's, or even Brubaker's stuff for the most part, and as they're the current architects of the MU, it leaves me with fewer books to buy.

-- Ha! I used the word “architects” first!

I have come to love a whole bunch of non-mainstream Marvel books, particularly their all ages lines

-- Definitely still true. Alas that some of this has gone or is going away.

I've also been discovering how good the old back issues are, even the ones from the 90s that people put down a lot. And they are still there, regardless of Civil War, Decimation, One More Day, Brand New Day, Doris Day, Susan Dey, Day-Glo, Day-O, etc. and just as good. And given the way I sort my comics into their own continuities (click link at your own risk -- or better yet, you fools! Turn back while you still can! slightest trace of Civil War infecting any of these nice, clean continuities. ;) It doesn't mean I'm not dismayed by the mainstream stuff, but for goodness' sake I can still enjoy other books.

-- This is all still absolutely true, and I’ve even refined my whole continuity scheme. I can even enjoy some books in the present-day 616 (Aaron’s Wolverine, Van Lente’s Herc, Parker’s Atlas, Remender’s Uncanny X-Force, etc. -- and other titles by those writers, too) on their own merits, even though for me, for now, it still is a kind of weird What If Marvel with a dystopic backstory. But its future doesn’t have to be dystopic.

What I've been forced to discover out of necessity I intend to continue with for enjoyment. I simply had written off Spider-Girl and the MA books as "only for kids," but as I keep quoting from C.S. Lewis elsewhere,

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

-- I absolutely still stand by this.

I pretty much follow writers more than anything else, while I do care what happens to the characters.

-- So (apart from alternate worlds) at Marvel, I definitely actively seek out Aaron, Claremont, Parker, Remender, Tobin, and Van Lente. It’s a slow start, without as many of the “big titles” which seem to be snapped up by other folks, but I like their stuff consistently.

One thing I've been increasingly trying to do is not only express my concerns (and they are serious ones) but point out the alternatives Marvel itself is publishing, rather than just fly off the handle and say that I'm quitting Marvel altogether or even quitting comics.

-- I do wonder if any of those people ever came back. No clue.

And I do need to point out that whatever gripes I have with Quesada, he is also the one responsible for making sure those alternatives are around in the first place.

-- Just thought this needed repeating.

One thing I neglected to mention about OMD is that with things like Mary Jane's whispering to Mephisto, and the appearance of Jackpot and such, I strongly suspect that the story is not quite "over" yet

-- And, in theory, as Joe pointed out about OMIT, for all practical purposes Mephisto has erased his interaction with Peter and MJ from the timeline itself. Er, I think. Not the way I’d do it (see “clunky and weird” above), but it beats waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But yes, I can be a long-winded cuss. :o

-- Plus c’est change, plus c’est la meme chose. :)

David