Why It's Hard to Love Mainstream Superhero Comics These Days

[NowhereMan]

On that topic there are some really, really great runs that don't involve anything new but rely on well done stories that respect and understand the character. The Superman/Shazam run is one of the best comic stories I've read and really made me love the Capt. Marvel character (hell I went out and bought the paperback after *notpiratinghonest* reading it). It didn't require some shocking, sensationalist change to the character. It didn't need to invent some huge scandal or make the character Miller level ridiculous, it was simply a story that took the character and told its tale in a believable, human way. There are titles in the big two that are telling good stories but they face the problem of 1) artists and writers being moved around, usually good ones to bigger titles regardless of whether or not their current team is working well or how familiar they are with the subjects and 2) Editorial mandate, which can fuck some writers and titles massively because editors have some overreaching narrative they want told that requires utterly fucking with planned storylines. The thing with these two big problems in Marvel and DC is that they mean that certain titles can be awesome for a run until the creative team is broken up (or stuff like Bendis writing titles he really isn't suited for) or stories that start of great fizzling out because the planned characters have been ringfenced for an upcoming event story. Cosmic marvel, having and continuing to be awesome, is looking set to start suffering from the latter problem since editorial seem to have become aware of Nova (and likely some of the other characters in it). I look forward to crying salty tears when Nova can't be used in stopping the next galaxy ending even because Norman Osborne's clone has kidnapped Capt. America's newborn son and taken him to Mars where only Nova can reach or some crap.

[Jeff Kelly]

I never was much of a comics guy to begin with.

Most of it had to do with me never really much liking the basic comic author mindset. There are a lot of really great Authors and Illustrators out there but many others suffer from the desperate need to feel validated or are basically writing fan fiction.

Take Kevin Smith for example the ultimate comic book nerd. He's showing off his intimate knowledge of continuity and canon in everything he writes and he's also somebody who confuses bodily fluids and sexual perversions of all kinds with edginess. It's like reading Harry Potter fanfic as written by a fifteen year old nerd with no life experience but a runaway imagination.

In my experience a lot of comics basically are fan fiction. Watchmen is a great book because it tells a great story not because the writer tried to cram the most amount of sex, violence and gore into the panels. The dark knight returns, the killing joke, arkham asylum those aren't remembered for their blood, gore and sex content but because they told great grown up stories.

It seems to me however that a lot of writers have an unhealthy fixation on violence and sex. Ennis's preacher was good but he was always to much enamored with violence.

Not that I have anything against it if it serves a purpose to the story but every time I pick up a new issue at the local store I get the feeling that many are still stuck in puberty when fart jokes were still funny.

People should be less concerned about thinking up crass stuff that they just might get away with and get back to writing great stories. There's a difference between movies like Pulp fiction, Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance on the one hand and torture porn like hostel on the other even if they all show a similar amount of sex and violence.

It seems however that most comic book writers don't get that.

[CmdrSlack]

As someone who just recently has been trying to get back into comics, I'm actually enjoying some of the mainstream stuff.

I've been reading the Marvel Adventures Spiderman TPBs, Spidergirl TPBs, MiniMarvels TPBs and a few others with my daughter. She's 4 1/2, and her love of Spidey and Iron Man make it easy to get started on reading. The books tend to use words that she can reasonably sound out, and I don't have to worry about content that's too old for her.

Since we're already at the comic shop, I've been picking up TPBs as well. So far, Ultimate Spidey #1 was great, Ultimate X-Men #1 & #2 were pretty decent. I'm finally catching up on Deadpool. The Shadowlands series seems pretty interesting so far, altho I am a bit pissed that it's spread out along a jillion titles I could care less about.

There was a nifty Spiderman Reign TPB I picked up that was pretty damn good.

Maybe I've been out of the scene too long to be bothered by some of the reboots and retcons.

My next mission: get Scud The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang.

ETA: Any suggestions? I decided to quit smoking to free up my lungs as well as spendy cash for comics.

[Hoax]

God I loved SCUD. If you can find the short stories about a variety of types called Tales from the Vending Machine those were great.

[Triforcer]

Run!

Post-Final Crisis story about the Human Flame.  One of the most enjoyable one-offs I've read recently. 

[Khaldun]

Yeah, that was sort of amusing: they did a good job making him a relentless douche.