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Author Topic: Marvel NOW!  (Read 72028 times)
Khaldun
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Reply #35 on: April 13, 2013, 06:26:05 AM

I'm still liking the NOW! books but I think they need to keep their eye on Hickman, much as I like his writing. Everything is getting so amped up in power and scope that he's more or less ruling out ever telling stories again where the Avengers punch the fuck out of Count Nefaria. He's got Tony Stark building a Dyson Sphere on the other side of the sun, for example, with Shi'ar contractors doing the construction. Like, what? Why does Earth still look more or less like our own planet when there's a smart guy who has the resources to build a Dyson Sphere in our solar system?
Velorath
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Reply #36 on: April 13, 2013, 03:56:18 PM

Haven't read much lately myself. I only checked out Hawkeye because I was constantly reading great things about it. Green Lantern is the only mainstream superhero book I'm following, and that will stop next month when Geoff John's run comes to an end. I did check out the first few issues of Age of Ultron and was pleased to find out it was only mildly stupid and boring rather than offensively fecal.
Khaldun
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Reply #37 on: April 13, 2013, 08:25:30 PM

It isn't terrible. But it's a well Marvel has gone to maybe once too often--time-travel, alternate dimension stuff is pretty much "it was only a dream", or the Marvel equivalent of Silver Age Superman Imaginary Stories. As long as they're gonna do it, I'd like to see some stuff that is wackier or less expected than "Ultron kills everyone".
Velorath
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Reply #38 on: April 15, 2013, 03:30:36 AM

Their PR for Age of Ultron is their typical level of terrible though. "Hey, you guys know that event we aren't even halfway through with yet?  Well in the last issue, Angela shows up! You guys remember Angela right? She's that character that hasn't been around in 15 or so years from Spawn, which hasn't been relevant for around the same length of time.  After that, she's popping up in an issue of Guardians of the Galaxy.  That's the book that was so good that we're using the IP as the next new Marvel movie franchise, while also relaunching the comic with Bendis writing rather than the talented writers who made these low-tier characters worth reading in the first place."
Merusk
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Reply #39 on: April 15, 2013, 06:50:27 AM

Well that shows me how long it's been since I read anything Spawn-related.  Angela was all the rage at the time. 

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
HaemishM
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Reply #40 on: April 15, 2013, 08:43:02 AM

I never understood why Angela was some amazing thing to pay attention to in the first place. But then I thought Spawn was mostly shit anyway.

As for Marvel, I'm going through a few of these free #1's and I'm noticing that they all read the same. Nothing much of anything happens in these first issues... like AT ALL. What fight scenes they have are usually C-grade villains getting dispatched in two GIANT panels while the rest of the book is talkie talkie about the new status quo for the book. The new Hickman Avengers book was essentially some weirder than Grant Morrison set of villains that lure the Avengers to a lush green Mars before beating them senseless and sending a battered Capt. America back to earth to assemble a new team of people I've never seen. The Bendis stuff is just fucking awful. He has literally become a caricature of his own work. First gen IMAGE comics written by Liefeld had more first issue plot development.

Ironwood
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Reply #41 on: April 15, 2013, 08:49:06 AM

But then I thought Spawn was mostly shit anyway.

It really, really was.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Lantyssa
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Reply #42 on: April 15, 2013, 08:50:55 AM

I only knew who Angela was because the issue she appeared was written by Gaiman or something.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Velorath
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Reply #43 on: April 15, 2013, 11:36:50 AM

I only knew who Angela was because the issue she appeared was written by Gaiman or something.

That's how she's ending up in Marvel comics now. There was a long legal battle over who owned the character and I think there was some out of court settlement which also involved some Marvelman/Miracleman stuff as well. I'm not really sure how much of a character Angela is when you likely have to strip everything Spawn related out.
Sir T
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Reply #44 on: April 15, 2013, 03:42:18 PM

But then I thought Spawn was mostly shit anyway.

It really, really was.


At the time everyone was raving about it's brilliance so much that I was afraid to even voice my opinion of it in my own home. (That it was over-hyped shit.) I actually had to sit through the movie as well. Now THAT was the definition of drekk.

It did lead to a brief surge of similarly crappy demonic heroes that were even worse and were promptly forgotten.

Hic sunt dracones.
Velorath
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Reply #45 on: April 15, 2013, 04:22:36 PM

But then I thought Spawn was mostly shit anyway.

It really, really was.


At the time everyone was raving about it's brilliance so much that I was afraid to even voice my opinion of it in my own home. (That it was over-hyped shit.) I actually had to sit through the movie as well. Now THAT was the definition of drekk.

It did lead to a brief surge of similarly crappy demonic heroes that were even worse and were promptly forgotten.

I think I've read maybe one issue of Spawn. That was pretty much a shit time for comics in general.
Sir T
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Reply #46 on: April 15, 2013, 04:38:08 PM

On Angela

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44385

Quote
Later this year, writer Neil Gaiman makes his return to Marvel Comics. According to The New York Times, the "Sandman" and "Eternals" writer will re-enter the Marvel Universe with a collaboration on the final issue of "Age of Ultron" with writer Brian Michael Bendis before co-writing "Guardians of the Galaxy" #5.

Perhaps even more intriguing is the announcement that Gaiman plans to introduce Angela to the Marvel U, a character the writer originally created as part of Todd McFarlane's "Spawn" mythology. Gaiman won a long-running legal battle in 2012 , awarding the co-creator 50-percent ownership of the character with McFarlane. While a crossover between two publishers is hardly unprecedented, this is the first time a character from another publisher has been introduced with the intent of being a larger part of the other's universe.

"We were looking for a good entry point to tease our fans and to let them know [Angela] was going to be a major player [in the Marvel Universe]," CCO Joe Quesada told the Times. Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso likened Angela's appearance in the final issue of AoU to "the post-credit scenes in one of our Marvel studio movies," saying it's designed to get fans hungry for more.

Gaiman was already slated to make his comics comeback this fall with Vertigo's "Sandman" prequel illustrated by artist J.H. Williams III, but his return to Marvel opens up a number of other possibilities. Gaiman was well known for his attempts to obtain the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman, writing "Marvel 1602" in 2003 specifically to fund a legal fight over the character. Marvel announced it had acquired the Marvelman rights in 2009 and began printing previously-released material by the character's creator Mick Anglo, but the disposition of the rights -- and whether Marvel has the legal capacity to print new material featuring the character -- is still not publicly known. However, given Gaiman's new relationship with Marvel, the possibility that he'll write the character again in new stories seems stronger than ever.

"I know that we’ve been trying our best to reach out to all the creators involved, but I believe there are still a few that we either haven’t heard back from or that we still need current contact info for," then-Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said following Marvel's announcement in 2009. "And yes, that night, after the announcement, when I finally got back to my hotel room, my email inbox was filled with creators who had ideas and pitches. It really is thrilling to see what this character brings out in the creative community.

Yes, I'm sure an angelic demon hunter in a bikini brings out a lot in the creative community.

Hic sunt dracones.
Velorath
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Reply #47 on: April 15, 2013, 04:45:06 PM

On Angela

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44385

Quote
Later this year, writer Neil Gaiman makes his return to Marvel Comics. According to The New York Times, the "Sandman" and "Eternals" writer will re-enter the Marvel Universe with a collaboration on the final issue of "Age of Ultron" with writer Brian Michael Bendis before co-writing "Guardians of the Galaxy" #5.

Perhaps even more intriguing is the announcement that Gaiman plans to introduce Angela to the Marvel U, a character the writer originally created as part of Todd McFarlane's "Spawn" mythology. Gaiman won a long-running legal battle in 2012 , awarding the co-creator 50-percent ownership of the character with McFarlane. While a crossover between two publishers is hardly unprecedented, this is the first time a character from another publisher has been introduced with the intent of being a larger part of the other's universe.

"We were looking for a good entry point to tease our fans and to let them know [Angela] was going to be a major player [in the Marvel Universe]," CCO Joe Quesada told the Times. Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso likened Angela's appearance in the final issue of AoU to "the post-credit scenes in one of our Marvel studio movies," saying it's designed to get fans hungry for more.

Gaiman was already slated to make his comics comeback this fall with Vertigo's "Sandman" prequel illustrated by artist J.H. Williams III, but his return to Marvel opens up a number of other possibilities. Gaiman was well known for his attempts to obtain the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman, writing "Marvel 1602" in 2003 specifically to fund a legal fight over the character. Marvel announced it had acquired the Marvelman rights in 2009 and began printing previously-released material by the character's creator Mick Anglo, but the disposition of the rights -- and whether Marvel has the legal capacity to print new material featuring the character -- is still not publicly known. However, given Gaiman's new relationship with Marvel, the possibility that he'll write the character again in new stories seems stronger than ever.

"I know that we’ve been trying our best to reach out to all the creators involved, but I believe there are still a few that we either haven’t heard back from or that we still need current contact info for," then-Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said following Marvel's announcement in 2009. "And yes, that night, after the announcement, when I finally got back to my hotel room, my email inbox was filled with creators who had ideas and pitches. It really is thrilling to see what this character brings out in the creative community.

Yes, I'm sure an angelic demon hunter in a bikini brings out a lot in the creative community.

I think that line might have been referring to Marvelman.
Margalis
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Reply #48 on: April 15, 2013, 04:54:47 PM

The whole fight over Angela was immensely dumb - the character idea is so generic and silly that the hard-fought battle over her seems like a bad joke. And now she's in Marvel - who cares? Seriously, who is supposed to care about this?

And yeah, that period of comics was the worst, to the point where it seems to have permanently killed comics as a viable mass-market product. So many awful trends dovetailing at once to create a historic clusterfuck. That period is when I stopped regularly buying comic books - huge price increases, artists with no writing ability being elevated to star status and writing their own books, books constantly missing deadlines, a million X-Men ripoffs, forced scarcity and speculation, major new title launches that were completely unsustainable, a million and one gimmicks like alternate and glow-in-the-dark covers.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
Velorath
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Reply #49 on: April 15, 2013, 05:02:35 PM

Sure glad Marvel learned from those days and restricted Uncanny Avengers to only having 20 variant covers.
Sir T
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Reply #50 on: April 15, 2013, 05:25:00 PM

Yes, I'm sure an angelic demon hunter in a bikini brings out a lot in the creative community.

I think that line might have been referring to Marvelman.
[/quote]

Eh, you're probably right. I need sleep

Hic sunt dracones.
Margalis
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Reply #51 on: April 15, 2013, 05:42:23 PM

Sure glad Marvel learned from those days and restricted Uncanny Avengers to only having 20 variant covers.

Is that some sort of record? Gen 13 had 13 IIRC.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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Reply #52 on: April 15, 2013, 08:56:31 PM

Gen13 #13 that came in 13 separate issues that you had to read them all if you wanted to be able to follow the story was the end of me following that particular series.

However, the 90s was when comics really went mainstream and darker, plus comic creators started to work towards owning their creations. Image attracts a lot of flak, but without that break DC and Marvel would have been content to deliver the same junk and we probably wouldn't have the same kind of pop culture releases of superhero properties today.


HaemishM
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Reply #53 on: April 15, 2013, 08:58:20 PM

You can't give Image credit for the super hero movie releases since they only ever got one movie released and it was dogshit. You can thank Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi for the movie releases because if X-Men and Spider-Man hadn't been handled so competently by those two, we'd still be getting movies like Daredevil (theatrical release) and Ghost Rider.

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Reply #54 on: April 15, 2013, 09:17:25 PM

I meant it more that creators breaking from Marvel and DC meant that suddenly a lot more people were interested in creating comics, which in turn reinvigorated the medium. Suddenly writers and artists started to think that they perhaps could make some money on owning their own creations rather than constantly creating according to DC's / Marvel's tune.

Plus we're here 20 years on and those people who read comics years ago because everyone was doing it feel comfortable going to see a film based on those characters.

Yes, "Spawn" was ordinary, but so were the bulk of Marvel's film releases up to that point too. "Punisher" with Dolph Lungren? "Captain America" with Reb Brown? That an independent comics publisher made enough of a splash to even get a film developed was a big deal.

And "Blade" is the superhero movie to look to for the start of the modern superhero film push - it sold very well on DVD, which helped give Sony the confidence to push ahead with "Spider-Man".

Velorath
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Reply #55 on: April 16, 2013, 01:01:55 AM

Sure glad Marvel learned from those days and restricted Uncanny Avengers to only having 20 variant covers.

Is that some sort of record? Gen 13 had 13 IIRC.

Justice League of America #1 which came out in Feb had 52 variant covers which essentially were the same image, but each variant had a different state flag (plus D.C. And Puerto Rico).
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Reply #56 on: April 16, 2013, 06:07:07 AM

Sure glad Marvel learned from those days and restricted Uncanny Avengers to only having 20 variant covers.

Is that some sort of record? Gen 13 had 13 IIRC.

Justice League of America #1 which came out in Feb had 52 variant covers which essentially were the same image, but each variant had a different state flag (plus D.C. And Puerto Rico).

Yeah, that was a bit ridiculous. My local comic shop was pissed because now they're stuck with loads of issues.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #57 on: April 16, 2013, 06:37:22 AM

Marvel's current books are being written heavily under the sign of decompression, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Everybody who likes decompressed story-telling likes to go back and point to the insane wordiness of Chris Claremont's work, but I was just re-reading Alan Moore's older stuff in Swamp Thing and it's just as wordy--but the words are great whereas Claremont's mostly aren't. So in Moore stories not only does a lot happen in a short time, a lot of interesting stuff gets said about what happened. In decompressed stories, sometimes you get great cinematic storytelling that works beautifully in a trade paperback, and sometimes you get empty shit with mediocre art that is just dawdling along in order to stall until somebody thinks of something to do with the character or the storyline.

I'm not liking Bendis' Guardians of the Galaxy much, maybe because I really loved Abnett and Lanning's work with those characters so much. Now there were some stories where shit happened--and they took Marvel's cosmic-scale characters and blended them in with grunt-level people like Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon so well. I think this is what is putting me off about Hickman--the grunt-level stuff is disappearing in a cloud of cosmic one-upmanship that follows Morrison's meta-fictional take on comic heroes without the fun fetishistic attention to the classic tropes of superhero comics.

Aaron's Thor is fucking knocking it out of the park, though.

I actually am sort of liking Uncanny Avengers, which is almost a sequel to Remender's X-Force work in mood and even characters. I was really, really put off by all the stupid fan criticism of Havok's speech in issue #5.  I also am sort of liking Bendis on Uncanny X-Men (the 'militant' X-Men) partly because it doesn't have the gimmick of the original five time-displaced X-Men, which really bugs me. (It's a classic case of being unable to let the characters really evolve and change--pressing a half-assed reset button just in case they get too scared of the current status quo.)

Indestructible Hulk has been good.

The arc in Journey Into Mystery with Sif was fantastic.

Young Avengers is fun.

I think this is the big thing--the range of mood and style across Marvel's books is now as good as it's been in my memory. Whereas DC is doing this curdled, unpleasant retread of the worst aspects of the 90s, and has chased away almost everyone who was trying to do their own thing--it's become the Didio, Johns and Lee Show and isn't even showing off the best side of Johns and Lee, really.
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Reply #58 on: April 19, 2013, 02:00:45 PM

I'm amused by the notion that comics haven't always been shit, regardless of the title. These aren't the next great bit of literature.. or pamphlet. 

But then I've never been a "comic guy." I know the characters, some of the plots, etc and I'll pick one up from time to time to read but that's it.  Most of what I know has always been because I had "that friend" who *was* a comic guy.  That's how I read the Spawn stuff, guy in college who was a huge McFarlane freak.  Had all the Amazing Spiderman covers and started in on Spawn our Freshman year.  The idea was at least more interesting to me than most superhero back stories.  /shrug.

The 90s was the golden comic bubble.  All the bullshit around them came to a head and burst.. and you still have guys at all the publishers trying to recreate 'the golden days' of their young careers, not understanding it was just another investment bubble.  When I read things like "rebooting everything again!" and "52 comic covers." that's all it says to me.  "We still think we matter and aren't selling to a fraction of our previous base!"

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Velorath
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Reply #59 on: April 19, 2013, 02:34:12 PM

You aren't making a very compelling argument that all comics are shit when you back it up by saying you haven't really read many comics but this one time in college you read Spawn because a friend of yours was into it.
Margalis
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Reply #60 on: April 19, 2013, 03:38:04 PM

But then I've never been a "comic guy." I know the characters, some of the plots, etc and I'll pick one up from time to time to read but that's it.  Most of what I know has always been because I had "that friend" who *was* a comic guy.  That's how I read the Spawn stuff, guy in college who was a huge McFarlane freak.  Had all the Amazing Spiderman covers and started in on Spawn our Freshman year.  The idea was at least more interesting to me than most superhero back stories.  /shrug.

I was "that guy" at one point. I have almost every McFarlane issue of Amazing Spider Man and Spider Man. However even I, being a total McFarlane mark, began to realize that McFarlane sucked when he started writing Spider-Man, and then began to realize that the McFarlane era of Amazing was also fairly sucky for a variety of reasons. By the time Spawn came around I was totally off the bandwagon.

It's fair to say that most comics are bad, but there are plenty of good ones, even among mainstream titles. I don't think comics are literature but then again literary fiction is the worst genre so I don't know that I care either.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
Velorath
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Reply #61 on: April 19, 2013, 11:04:23 PM

Just the comparison to literature is kind of pointless. Comics are written as scripts like movies or TV, they aren't written as prose, so to say that these aren't great works of literature is kind of a "yeah, no shit" point to make. That doesn't mean they can't be great stories, although you largely have to look outside the superhero genre for stuff that would really qualify as great.
Khaldun
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Reply #62 on: April 22, 2013, 06:29:31 PM

Cue McCloud's "sequential art" concept. Which I think is pretty on the money, though he's pushed it too far.
Margalis
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Reply #63 on: April 22, 2013, 08:31:27 PM

The early Marvel comics were written with the art first! Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would discuss the overall plot, Kirby would draw the comic, then Lee would add text later.

This was done for a variety of reasons some of which were purely pragmatic but it's a pretty brilliant strategy if you really want the art to convey the story rather than just serve as illustrations.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
Velorath
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Reply #64 on: April 23, 2013, 03:33:51 AM

The early Marvel comics were written with the art first! Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would discuss the overall plot, Kirby would draw the comic, then Lee would add text later.

This was done for a variety of reasons some of which were purely pragmatic but it's a pretty brilliant strategy if you really want the art to convey the story rather than just serve as illustrations.

i'm sure I've mentioned it here before, and I've long forgot where I initially heard it from, but to me one the important aspects in good comic book art is whether or not you can generally understand the plot without reading any of the text. A good artist can do great two page spreads, but a good comic artist can effectively tell a story through sequential art.
HaemishM
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Reply #65 on: April 23, 2013, 08:27:47 AM

I miss text captions. I really really miss them. Yes, some writers went WAY overboard (looking at you Bill Mantlo, RIP) but they really did help set the medium apart, added to the story told by the art and gave a comic some weight so that you weren't tearing through them in 5 minutes.

Sky
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Reply #66 on: May 01, 2013, 08:09:14 AM

I've been meaning to get back into comics since I can steal a lot of ideas for painting minis.  Turns out it's pretty damned hard to actually find any. No place in this city sells comics.

Re: McFarlane. I like how he shook up the art scene and pushed the genre forward. I also like how his spider man runs financed my move to California (with a full set of AD&D 1st ed books thrown in because they were all NM and I wanted them).
Merusk
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Reply #67 on: May 01, 2013, 02:29:57 PM

I understand that folks just have them shipped to their houses or buy them digitally these days.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Sky
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Reply #68 on: May 01, 2013, 06:24:45 PM

Well I figured on that but I need to scope out the landscape first. Looks like I head a couple cities over and see if there's still a comics shop.
Khaldun
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Reply #69 on: May 08, 2013, 02:18:46 PM

Ok, everybody needs to be reading Jason Aaron's current run on Thor. I now rank it as equal to Walt Simonson's early issues and yet it's totally different. This is a lusty, violent, funny and moving Thor and beautifully disinterested in "continuity" per se. In fact, a lot of the current Marvel books are using time-travel and alternate universes and so on to free themselves in interesting ways from the "normal" 616 continuity. But this is one of the best.
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