Useless comics news, discussions, and recommendations

[HaemishM]

Wonder Woman has become one of those characters like Hawkman - a great concept, completely shitted up by a host of writers doing stupid goddamn shit to be different, fucking with her origin in 17,000 different ways just so they could write something "new." Also, I blame Johns' heavy hand with the Wonder Woman 1984 disaster.

[Velorath]

Hickman leaving the X-books after Inferno. Which isn't necessarily shocking except in how openly he admits his long-term storyline got a bit side-tracked.

"Oh, plans have changed entirely," Hickman says. "When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot."

Hickman continues, "However, I also knew that I was cooking with dynamite, and it was very possible that what I had written in House of X, and the ideas contained within, was not actually the first act of a three-act story, but something that resonated more deeply and worked more like Giant-Size X-Men, where it would represent a paradigm shift in the entire X-Men line for a prolonged period of time. So, during the pandemic, when the time came for me to start pointing things toward writing the second-act event, I asked everyone if they were ready for me to do that, and to a man, everyone wanted to stay in the first act. It was really interesting, because I appreciated that House of X resonated with them to the extent that they didn't want it to end, but the reality was that I knew I would be leaving the line early."

Now I haven't been fully following along with the X-books this whole time although I did like a lot of what Hickman brought to them, and I say that as someone who hasn't been a fan of a lot of Hickman's stuff. It's kind of a shame that nobody at Marvel though from Hickman, to the other writers, to the editors could have the discipline to see things through as intended though. I get them wanting to play around a lot more with the current status quo that Hickman has set up, but things are just going to get stagnant at some point only now they'll have to cobble something together when they want to move on rather than stick with the original plan.

[Khaldun]

He may just be acknowledging that everything he's doing is going to get blown up anyway as soon as the X-Men come on line as a fully armed and operational battle station in the MCU.

I loved what he did--first time in a good while I read the X-Books--but it was so clearly unsustainable in so many ways that I could see it was going to need a universe-level reset at some near-term point, movies or otherwise.

It's the problem with Hickman, Morrison, etc. who have amazing resetting visions--as you say, nobody who is less imaginative than they are is going to get what to do with it.

[Velorath]

I think he would have had enough time to get through his 3 arc story before the MCU became an issue. The MCU already has things scheduled out until mid-2023 and with Fantastic 4, Blade, and Cap 4 confirmed but without release dates. I'm also not convinced that internally they've even cracked what they want to do with the X-men yet in films.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, but I can imagine that he got some intimations and decided that it was time to just let them wind it all down without him. Who knows, maybe he got an offer to go over to DC and do some long-term shit with their characters.

The thing he cracked with X-Men that I don't think he got right with FF and Avengers was creating long-term story structures AND creating more emotional hooks that felt meaningful and grounded in the characters while also dramatically moving the ball downfield on a lot of characterizations.

[Velorath]

Sounds like Hickman still has some projects lined up with Marvel but he's moving his major focus right now onto launching some of his own stuff on Substack which makes sense to some extent. I know there have been articles lately about how creators at Marvel or DC only get a few thousand when their work gets used as the basis for movies so I can see the appeal of maybe trying to foster some IP's you can license out rather than just trying to make a living exclusively as work for hire at one of the big comics publishers.

[Khaldun]

Seems to be the way to go when you have a name like his that brings people in the door right at the outset.

Hopefully that will also increase the payouts inside the big 2 but then that was the idea of creative ownership in the first place and it hasn't entirely panned out.

[HaemishM]

House of X was certainly a different take on the X-books, but it was so clearly not something they could keep up long-term. And just in relation to its MCU possibilities - they are zero. That whole thing relies on there being an existing continuity that gets rewritten. It wouldn't fit into the MCU at all.

What Hickman and Morrison and others have found is that these stories without end get so narratively burdened with continuity, it becomes increasingly hard to write good stories that aren't total retcons of past stories. Much better to write something with a defined ending, which is still the antithesis of brand-driven never-ending shared universes.

[Velorath]

The X-men line as a whole since the Claremont days where it became popular through soap opera as comic book storytelling relies heavily on continuity to be entertaining though.  Even the only wholly successful movie of the X-men franchise, Logan, is built on Jackman and Stewart having played those roles for a good chunk of time by that point and by the implied continuity of the events that lead up to the start of the movie, which wouldn't work if we weren't already familiar with the characters and concepts of the franchise. The X-men don't really have any iconic stories that don't rely heavily on established relationships and backstory. I think they learned that the hard way both times they tried to do Dark Phoenix. Even Days of Future Past as a movie was only really "good" because it was being graded on a scale against the other X-men movies.

That's part of the reason I'm not excited for a MCU X-men movie, and especially not if they're bringing mutants into the MCU as mostly recent development. I mean I guess they could retroactively suggest that Apocalypse has been around in secret in the MCU, or Professor X and Magneto, but they already need to make a blatant explanation for why the Eternals haven't made their presence known before now. The other alternative is some soft reboot timeline reboot or dimensional craziness or something. The early days of the X-men aren't particularly interesting and if you're just doing 2+ hour movies and maybe some 6-8 episode D+ spin-offs here and there I don't think you end up with the long-term character drama that makes the franchise work.

I actually think the franchise would work better if they built it out in a Disney+ show first. I hesitate to use Game of Thrones as a touchstone, but I think it's a franchise that benefits from having almost too many characters, and a bunch of different factions all working towards conflicting ends.

[HaemishM]

The entire "outsiders with the world against us" trope doesn't work in the modern MCU. There is literally no reason to hate mutants when goddamn Thanos has wiped out half of humanity.

[Sir T]

Plus people like Apocalypse are only scary in the Context of there being a small non governmental group that can deal with them. In the MCU there is SHIELD that can call in the Avengers if there is stuff that they cant deal with on their own. The "Oh we are misunderstood kids woe is us" vibe simply does not have the vibe it would be when they could sign up with SHIELD to have a place to be, and there is no reason for SHEILD to turn them down when they are not going to be as risky as the Hulk to have on staff.

[Khaldun]

I can see a way to do it. Think about it like this:

The people of the MCU have to be really scared post-Blip. The world was already getting strange--some fucking robot raised an entire city into the sky with the plan to drop it on the planet, there turns out to be a hidden country in Africa that has the most sophisticated technology on the planet, there's a dude running around who claims to be Thor and he actually seems pretty godlike, motherfucking aliens invaded New York City and London (the dark elves count as aliens). Then half the people in the world died in a snap after an alien warlord and his goons invaded the planet and they came back to life with no memory of having been dead.

But actually superpowered people are still pretty rare and largely witnessed only on television. They mostly have "special explanations": they have exotic military technology and training (Iron Man, War Machine, Ant Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye) or they're aliens (Thor) or they got powered by alien technology (Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Vision). The wizards are a bit more baffling for the public, maybe, but they haven't been seen all that much and up to Endgame kept a low profile. Even there, if you had some non-super MCU academic studying superpowers, he'd probably say that the wizards were powered by esoteric training in an exotic branch of science and technology. (Thor and Loki seem to think about it the same way.) Spider-Man is the only MCU character to date whose (non-seen) origin is hard to fit into any of this and the MCU public doesn't know that.

Now imagine at the end of Eternals, the Celestials activate the X-gene and the post-credits scene is a bald graduate student studying genetics named Charles Xavier suddenly realizing he can hear the thoughts of people around him and a haunted young Syrian/imaginary MCU country citizen hunting the people who murdered his family realizing that metal bends to his will. And a teenager opening his eyes when he wakes up and blowing a hole in his ceiling.

That seems to me enough of an entry point to "outsiders with the world against us": the people of Earth are terrified enough about what their world has become and now suddenly their children, family, friends, and co-workers are growing fangs or getting scaly skin or flying. Maybe that's another attack, maybe it's like a spreading disease, etc.

[MediumHigh]

I can see a way to do it. Think about it like this:

The people of the MCU have to be really scared post-Blip. The world was already getting strange--some fucking robot raised an entire city into the sky with the plan to drop it on the planet, there turns out to be a hidden country in Africa that has the most sophisticated technology on the planet, there's a dude running around who claims to be Thor and he actually seems pretty godlike, motherfucking aliens invaded New York City and London (the dark elves count as aliens). Then half the people in the world died in a snap after an alien warlord and his goons invaded the planet and they came back to life with no memory of having been dead.

But actually superpowered people are still pretty rare and largely witnessed only on television. They mostly have "special explanations": they have exotic military technology and training (Iron Man, War Machine, Ant Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye) or they're aliens (Thor) or they got powered by alien technology (Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Vision). The wizards are a bit more baffling for the public, maybe, but they haven't been seen all that much and up to Endgame kept a low profile. Even there, if you had some non-super MCU academic studying superpowers, he'd probably say that the wizards were powered by esoteric training in an exotic branch of science and technology. (Thor and Loki seem to think about it the same way.) Spider-Man is the only MCU character to date whose (non-seen) origin is hard to fit into any of this and the MCU public doesn't know that.

Now imagine at the end of Eternals, the Celestials activate the X-gene and the post-credits scene is a bald graduate student studying genetics named Charles Xavier suddenly realizing he can hear the thoughts of people around him and a haunted young Syrian/imaginary MCU country citizen hunting the people who murdered his family realizing that metal bends to his will. And a teenager opening his eyes when he wakes up and blowing a hole in his ceiling.

That seems to me enough of an entry point to "outsiders with the world against us": the people of Earth are terrified enough about what their world has become and now suddenly their children, family, friends, and co-workers are growing fangs or getting scaly skin or flying. Maybe that's another attack, maybe it's like a spreading disease, etc.

I see this... the closet thing I can think of to the mutants being considered a problem was the after effects of Scarlet Witch and Falcon/Winter Soldier. Where the idea of "powered" individuals is taken to the reality of "if you don't have powers your at the mercy of people who do". To that extent it doesn't really matter "where" those powers came from, so much as "your ability to casually ruin my life and the life of my family and friends is worth my rage" kind of feeling from people. Especially people who were on the backend of say the flag smashers or the scarlet witches mental breakdown. Or even people watching Captain America kill someone in cold blood on international tv.

But if you do that...well your not doing a traditional xmen story where spiderman is ok but scott summers shooting laser beams from his eyes is not. Its more D.C universe level of general suspicion and fear of anyone with super abilities regardless of their intentions or background being the surface layer tension, but minus the assumption that "at least the good guys don't kill" ethos which explains why only the paranoid government types and batman have contingencies for the super powered community.

[Khaldun]

I'm buying trades for the first time in a long time to read the Hickman-designed X books--I'm most of the way through Dawn of X, then I plan to read X of Swords and see where I stand. But you know, they're really good so far, except maybe Fallen Angels, which I didn't care for much. I still doubt the editors will be able to stick to but now I really really hope they will--this makes all these characters interesting and surprising for the first time in decades. Like, I actually care about Apocalypse, I enjoy Mister Sinister, I liked Boom-Boom for god's sake when she showed up in New Mutants.

The only thing that the premise is already pretty inconsistent about is "kill no man". Either Krakoa didn't mean it exactly or there's a shoe yet to drop, because there's a body count for sure. You can't carve up a squad of human soldiers with a sword, complete with limb amputations, and not have at least one of them croak on you.

[Velorath]

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/50686/black-adam-gets-teammate-new-series

Chris Priest writing a Black Adam series has my attention.

[Khaldun]

Yes, genuinely interesting. It's one of those things, right, where someone looks more closely at a character and ticks down the list:

1) Granted immense power by a wizard who professed to be too tired to keep wielding the power personally. (Hey, wait, when is it that powerful people make someone else a proxy actor?)
2) Tries to do it "the right way" in a world long since passed, where violence was ubiquitous and eventually fails the wizard's tests of righteousness.
3) Gets his power ripped from him and is sent into infinite suspension.

Not too hard to see "hey wait" in that basic premise set-up. Plus "man out of time".

[Khaldun]

Feels like this should be separate from Minor Celebrity Deaths, but Neal Adams and George Perez were really major comics people. Perez was younger than I would have thought. I was really interested in one memorial article that quoted Marv Wolfman as saying Perez was 100% self-taught and had really shitty anatomy in his first couple of years of comics work, but that everybody stuck with him because he had such a good sense of visual storytelling both in-panel in and in his panel structure.

[Velorath]

Yeah, I mentioned Perez's passing in the Discord server a little. It was known for a while that he had terminal cancer so this wasn't a surprise but obviously still pretty sad nonetheless. He had such a pure, iconic style that lent itself to visual storytelling rather than trying to be flashy.

[HaemishM]

George Perez is what most of the Image guys wished they could have been.

[schild]

Department of Truth is good.

[Velorath]

Quesada just left Marvel, although I have no idea what his job actually entailed in recent years.

[HaemishM]

If it's anything like the first 15 years or so, greenlighting really stupid shit and rebooting comics every 2-3 years with new creative teams.

[Velorath]

Carlos Pacheco passed away. Had been diagnosed with ALS, only 60 years old. Really liked his art in Avengers Forever.

[HaemishM]

Damn. He was really good.

[Khaldun]

Really sad. There have been some painful early deaths of enormously talented artists in comics. I still feel sad about Darwyn Cooke dying so young.

[Velorath]

I was just reading through the first run of Savage Avengers the other day (28 issues I think) and I swear every issue seemed to have a dedication to some writer or artist that had just passed away.