Storylines That Fizzled Out

[berk]

see post below.

[berk]

Of course DeMatteis missed the point, just as Steven Grant did earlier in wrapping up Omega. Neither one is Steve Gerber and it's a tad unfair to expect them to be. Their resolutions of his (involuntarily) unresolved plotlines may not have been inspired or clever or emotionally satisfying but I give 'em props for having the balls to even try. I sure as hell wouldn't want that job.

Cei-U!
I summon your real mission impossible!

Mark is right on. The elf "plot" I don't look at all as a fizzled out or unfinished storyline. I don't think Gerber had a grand conclusion. Life is often random and absurd, and sometimes that randomness and absurdity can include an elf with a gun.

Having said that I think DeMatteis, overall wrote some decent Defenders stories, just not in the same league as Gerber, Kraft, and at times Englehart.

I agree with all of this. I think I read somewhere (Comics Journal maybe?) that Gerber's intention with the elf was to show, thematically, that sometimes there are just unexplainable tragedies in life. Not everything has to have an end or an explanation.

I also think that Gerber and Kraft are so far beyond everyone else on Defenders. I could never get into Englehart's work on the series, which is too bad because I like some of his other stuff.

I think this is the correct "explanation" for Gerber's elf - that there is no explanation.

And I remember Steven Grant mentioning on his msg-board here once that he didn't want to write the Omega wrap-up but was told to do so by management, so in fairness to DeMatteis I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that something similar was behind his elf story, i.e. that it was Marvel management, not DeMatties, who didn't get the point and insisted that their new Defenders writer wrap up the elf sub-plot, if you can call it that.

[dogwelder]

the elf story was
so unexpected when i read the story monthy.....
that left a great big friggin' smile on my kisser!

[LEADER DESSLOK]

I haven't read much of DeMatties's professional work, but it's hearing about things like this that makes me think he was probably much better at writing analyses for the letters-page than at writing the comics themselves.

Read KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, his runs of CAPTAIN AMERICA in the 80s and SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN in the 90s and then , MAYBE I'll take this statement seriously...

[Aaron King]

Read KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, his runs of CAPTAIN AMERICA in the 80s and SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN in the 90s and then , MAYBE I'll take this statement seriously...

I generally like DeMatteis. Spider-Man, Justice League, Moonshadow, Willworld, Abadazad... even his Spectre book starring Hal Jordan. I think it's as berk originally put it: he was hired to do a job and he did it to the best of his abilities. This work didn't necessarily need to be done, but someone asked him to and it was his job. If nothing else, I think you can admit that he has a great sense of the bizarre and worked that into the Defenders storyline as best as he could. The storyline didn't demand that it continue, but at least he made it friggin weird.

[RichardWrite]

Now that I think about it, did the whole storyline about Peter and Mary Jane Parker's baby getting kidnapped get swept under the rug? I stopped reading anything new about that time. I know that Spidergirl from another timeline was supposed to be their baby, but I'm talking about in the regular Marvel Universe timeline.

[Venomous Mask]

Now that I think about it, did the whole storyline about Peter and Mary Jane Parker's baby getting kidnapped get swept under the rug? I stopped reading anything new about that time. I know that Spidergirl from another timeline was supposed to be their baby, but I'm talking about in the regular Marvel Universe timeline.

Yeah, they pretty much tried to ignore it afterwards. I personally think that the baby should have been allowed to live in the 616 universe.

[Brian Gravity]

When I think of a storyline that seemed to have potential, but then fizzled out, I always think about an elf. In the 1970s, Steve Gerber was writing THE DEFENDERS, and there was an ongoing subplot about this elf who would show up at different locations and shoot and kill some random person. It may have been under a different writer (I don't remember that well, and I don't have the issue), but rather than letting this develop into some great enemy for the team, all of a sudden one issue, we see the elf get run over by a truck....and killed. And that was it for the elf storyline.

So I was wondering if anyone else has a contender for a story that had potential....but then fizzled out.

Nothing to add but I'm intrigued by this elf storyline. What issue did he first appear in?

[dan bailey]

Defenders #25, according to the Elf with a Gun Wikipedia entry.

[Polar Bear]

Now that I think about it, did the whole storyline about Peter and Mary Jane Parker's baby getting kidnapped get swept under the rug? I stopped reading anything new about that time. I know that Spidergirl from another timeline was supposed to be their baby, but I'm talking about in the regular Marvel Universe timeline.

That's as completely abandoned a storyline as you're ever going to find, the very epitome of oblivion.

[Schnitzy Pretzelpants]

The only big one for me, is the apparent sea-change that the mini-series Legion of 3 Worlds made in terms of plotting.

It seems pretty obvious that the story was meant to head in a direction that somehow would redeem Superboy-Prime as a hero.

Either the first or second issue ends with the real Superman proclaiming something like: ‘We’ve got remind SBP what it is to be a hero’

If it wasn’t intended as a plot point, then it was a case of both the writing and art making it seem very much like it was.

On a gut level, I feel pretty sure that it was too and that sea-change was made somewhere.

[dan bailey]

I'm still not really clear on who or what Superboy-Prime was vis-a-vis any & all other Superboys, other than perhaps a really bad joke.

I'm pretty sure my life, such as it is, is easier that way.

[Brian Gravity]

Defenders #25, according to the Elf with a Gun Wikipedia entry.

Thanks for the that, there is another link from there that details his appereances: http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/elfwagun.htm

I will have to seek those issues out.

[Polar Bear]

I'm still not really clear on who or what Superboy-Prime was vis-a-vis any & all other Superboys, other than perhaps a really bad joke.

I'm pretty sure my life, such as it is, is easier that way.

It's the Superboy from Earth-Prime, who first appeared in DC Comics Presents #87 and then in Crisis on Infinite Earths #10. In Infinite Crisis, he became the "big bad" of the DCU, at least as far as Geoff Johns is concerned.

[JKCarrier]

I will have to seek those issues out.

You really should...the Elf with a Gun is just one example of the delightful craziness of Gerber's DEFENDERS.