Civil War

[Llava]

If I had known it was going to end that way (which, I suspect, the writers did) I would've made the focus of the story less about political ideals and more focused on questioning the pros and cons of Utilitarianism.  Cause that's sort of where they ended up, but without any intent to do so.

[Teleku]

Dear god, what a horrible series.  It went from going downhill fast to falling off a cliff.  I pretty much agree with all the shit everybody has said so far.  Continuity was HORRIBLE.  Writting was bad.  Story got bogged down and really started to not make any sense.  And now this ending, which totally and completly sucked.  Caps actions make no fucking sense what so ever.  Amazing that he comes to this realization just then after all this time.  I was pretty damn suprised though how suddenly pro-registration the writers went at the end.  I figured after the reporter (stupidy) damned Captain America (for many stupid fucking reasons), they would then go to Tony and do the same thing, ending the series with a "they were both wrong/missguided" sort of ended.  Instead, the reporters walk right in and proceed to suck Tonys cock so much that they should have catigorized that issue as Hentai.  Christ, they name off everything bad he did, and say it was all worthwhile and good.  After damning Cap for following the American ideal.

...........

Jesus christ, fucking horrible.  Im not going to touch any more main universe marvel stuff again (or at least for awhile).  Ultimate Universe has been good so far, but they are fucking it up now as well (Spiderman: Clone Saga.  You fucking dipshits.  Charles Xavier wants to bone Jean Grey, and now is dead......).  Ultimates is still great, but of course its taken them about 2 years to do twelve issues now (And Millar promised at Comicon last summer that he would finish Ultimates V.2 by the end of the year, or everybody in the room could punch him in the nut sack if he didn't......)

Guess its time to go back on a DC kick, or other random universes.  I just read the whole Planetary series by Warren Ellis, and that was pretty damn good.  Any other random non Marvel universes anybody can recommend?

[Llava]

Writting was bad

 



Ellis is writing NewUniversal for Marvel.  It's still coming out.  That's a separate universe.

There's also the Cthulhu books that Boom! Comics is putting out, but I've read two of the "collection" books (lots of 4 or 5 page stories based on cthulhu stuff) and they've mostly just been okay.

You should still read Cable And Deadpool.
You should still read Runaways.
You should maybe read Thunderbolts- this definitely does have to do with Civil War, but it's been decent so far.  1st issue was slow, 2nd issue was quite good.
Daredevil is largely untouched by Civil War.
Iron Fist is largely untouched by Civil War.
Moon Knight is CURRENTLY largley untouched by Civil War, but I believe that will change soon.

Pick up the new Justice Society of America that DC's putting out, it's good so far.

[stray]

PLANET HULK 

What is that, the fourth time I've brought that up in this thread now? 

He's also untouched by Civil War. For now. Last I checked at least.


[EDIT]

Well, I just read that after they wrap that series up, Marvel plans on bringing the Hulk back to Earth in a new event (dubbed "World War Hulk").

Considering that it was Richards and Stark that fucked him over to begin with, it'd be fitting if it turns out to be him that puts an end to all of this Civil War shit (and hopefully, kills Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic in the process).

[Velorath]

PLANET HULK 

What is that, the fourth time I've brought that up in this thread now? 

He's also untouched by Civil War. For now. Last I checked at least.

Yes, but he's coming back to Earth for Marvel's next big event World War Hulk.  That's the event they should have gotten Millar to write since that's the one that should just be a superhero slugfest.  I always find these trailers for comic books a little hokey, but here you go.

[stray]

Yeah, just edited that in right before you posted.

...

Hmm....To be honest, that trailer got me psyched. Heh.

Lame narrator though.

[Velorath]

As long as you're here Stray, this looked like something you might be interested in.

[Teleku]

Writting was bad

 

As if I bother to do fancy things like spell check (You bastards need to add in a spell checker to the forums so people too lazy to cut and paste look smarter).  And it wasn't that sort of writing I was talking about .

I've read a good amount of the Cable and Deadpool stuff.  I like it, and it is hilarious, but the writter gets a little to damn preachy for me sometimes.  But I agree, its good.

I actually just finished download a torrent of all the Runaway comics, so I guess I will have a peak ;).

Never really gave a damn about Daredevil, Iron Fist, or Moonknight (Marvel batman rippoff kind of?).

Never really read any hulk stuff, so I guess I can give it a look as well, thanks.

[stray]

As long as you're here Stray, this looked like something you might be interested in.

Do you know if that's in color? I have a compilation that covers those issues, but it's only in black and white.  

[Velorath]

Restored and recolored according to the Amazon listing.  On the one hand you could wait until it comes out and try to find a review just incase they fucked up the coloring.  On the other hand deals like DCBS's 50% only tend to be for pre-orders, and paying $37.50 is a lot better than paying $75 even if the coloring does end up a little off.

[stray]

Cool then, I'm sure the color will be fine (just as long as it is color!). Thanks for pointing that out.

[Llava]

(You bastards need to add in a spell checker to the forums so people too lazy to cut and paste look smarter).

There.... is one.  Right next to the Post button is the Preview button.  Next to that is the Spell Check button.

Moonknight (Marvel batman rippoff kind of?).

Not really.  Moonknight has very little to do with Batman.  It's more supernaturally based with the God of Vengeance whispering in his ear and all.

[Teleku]

Jesus, I need to stop posting.  In my defense, all the other forums I use put it in the upper option bar, and for some reason I apparently never EVER looked very closely at at the bottom.


On Moonknight, I just got the Batman vibe because he seems to be a hero thats uber rich and who's special ability is that hes good with martial arts.  And he throws moonerang things  .  Never actually really read much of it, so I dont know anything about the character really.

[Triforcer]

Just out of curiosity, what makes everyone here (if this is indeed true) care so much more about Marvel than DC?  The "52" thread is a lot shorter than this.  I've read ONE thing in the Marvel Universe (Marvel Zombies) that I would rather read than almost anything in the D.C. universe.  Maybe I just grew up on more of a diet of Batman and Superman, etc., but what it is for you guys?

[stray]

I like Batman, Judge Dredd, the Flash....

Especially Vertigo stuff...

But Marvel, as a whole, had a more interesting take on things to me (HAD, that is). I might just give DC more time now.

Starting from the top: Stan Lee. That's why I liked Marvel. Instead of just writing basic super crime fighter stories, he made superheroes a little more human than that. Many Marvel characters aren't even in it for just crime fighting.

For example, the X-Men and Mutant thing was reflective of the prejudice and racism America was going through in the 60's. And Magneto was the Malcolm X to Professor X's Martin Luther King. One the militant, and the other the pacifist who wanted to coexist with humans. X-Men wasn't about crimefighting so much as it was about staving off persectution, and trying to prove to the world that they were a force of good.

Marvel had a lot more anti-heroes too:

Spider-Man was a complete loser in real life. And as a hero, he was like Rodney Dangerfield -- He got no respect. No matter what good he did, people considered him a villain (mostly due to Jameson's antics, of course). And other heroes didn't care about him much either. 1) Because he was a kid, and 2) because they thought his costume was homemade.

Silver Surfer encounted some of the same problems of rejection, but in a different way.

The Hulk is the classic Wolf Man story to me. And his power is RAGE. And by most accounts, he wasn't really a good guy at all.

[stray]

The other thing I should touch on is that so many of Stan's heroes are heroes because of some dysfunction, or are only heroes by accident. Like the aforementioned mutants. For all intents and purposes, mutants are retards and freaks. The world doesn't like them. They are not to be admired.

Hulk can only be considered good just because bad guys happen to do things that piss him off more often. Not because he's trying to be a hero or anything.

Spider-Man almost does it out of obligation. I mean, he's a good kid and all -- But he deals with so much shit, it makes him want to quit sometimes. But he has that directive in himself: With great power comes great responsibility. He'll deal with the bullshit, being Spider-Man is not a choice.

Iron Man only made the suit because his physical body was screwed up.

Daredevil might be the only superhero who's power is actually a handicap: Blindness.

[Triforcer]

The other thing I should touch on is that so many of Stan's heroes are heroes because of some dysfunction, or are only heroes by accident. Like the aforementioned mutants. For all intents and purposes, mutants are retards and freaks. The world doesn't like them. They are not to be admired.

Hulk can only be considered good just because bad guys happen to do things that piss him off more often. Not because he's trying to be a hero or anything.

Spider-Man almost does it out of obligation. I mean, he's a good kid and all -- But he deals with so much shit, it makes him want to quit sometimes. But he has that directive in himself: With great power comes great responsibility. He'll deal with the bullshit, being Spider-Man is not a choice.

Iron Man only made the suit because his physical body was screwed up.

Daredevil might be the only superhero who's power is actually a handicap: Blindness.

I see what you are saying about Marvel, I never really thought about it that way but you have a good point.  The only thing I'd bring up is that the X-Men "persecution" thing doesn't really work in a combined Marvel universe.  It made sense in the movies (where the existence of the larger superhero pantheon was implicitly denied) and the early comics (before "combined" universes became common).  But how can the mutants really make the discrimination claim today when there are assloads of mystic/toxic accident/cybernetic superheroes?  People don't go around spitting and throwing things on Cap. America (well, at least before the recent unpleasantness), why should they single mutants out?

[Ironwood]

Um.  Because.

That's what the story is about.  It's about Mutant discrimination because it's a different thing to have 'superheroes' that are unique and creations and accidents.  But the mutants are the next evolutionary step that are going to REPLACE humankind.  They are, quite literally, Homo Superior.

And Homo Sapien is screwed.  This is the fundamental fight of X-men.


Of course, if you take that view of it, you realise that it doesn't actually matter what discrimination they go through - they're going to win...

[Triforcer]

Um.  Because.

That's what the story is about.  It's about Mutant discrimination because it's a different thing to have 'superheroes' that are unique and creations and accidents.  But the mutants are the next evolutionary step that are going to REPLACE humankind.  They are, quite literally, Homo Superior.

And Homo Sapien is screwed.  This is the fundamental fight of X-men.


Of course, if you take that view of it, you realise that it doesn't actually matter what discrimination they go through - they're going to win...

I guess...if you are a nobody and are really peeved about mutant superiority in that universe, I guess you just go jump in a pool of toxic waste or something.   

[Velorath]

Just out of curiosity, what makes everyone here (if this is indeed true) care so much more about Marvel than DC?  The "52" thread is a lot shorter than this.  I've read ONE thing in the Marvel Universe (Marvel Zombies) that I would rather read than almost anything in the D.C. universe.  Maybe I just grew up on more of a diet of Batman and Superman, etc., but what it is for you guys?

Marvel's event books (House of M, Civil War) are train wrecks right now, and there's nothing like a good train wreck to generate discussion.  SWG has had long discussions here, and Vanguard had about four threads running at once, but that doesn't mean that those are the favored MMO's here.

[Llava]

Also worth noting in the mutant hatred thing is that many, many mutants' first experience with their powers is a violent one.  Mutants ARE dangerous, most of them don't have the sort of control that you see with the X-Men.  They've received huge amounts of training.

There's an Ultimate X-Men book, for instance, with a young kid manifesting his mutant powers for the first time.  He emits a death aura that disintegrates anyone who comes within.. I think it was about a hundred yards.  He goes downstairs in the morning and his mom and dad aren't there.  Thinking they just left for work early, he goes to school.  Eventually he figures it out and isolates himself in the wilderness, where Wolverine is able to track him down (healing makes you invulnerable to disintegration I guess- whatever, not the point of the story) and talk with him.  He helps the kid commit suicide.

Dozens of people died one day just cause one kid woke up with mutant powers.  If mutants were real and I was a regular person, I'd be damn scared of them, too, and I'd probably support any government attempt to find a vaccine preventing people from becoming mutants.

Those sorts of things resonate with me realistically.  And that's where DC falls short with me.  It's not as realistic.  Let's compare, for instance, the Runaways and the Teen Titans.  The Runaways are a group of kids who fell into superpowers.  They're in hiding, try mostly to keep to themselves, and all the other heroes would, upon finding them, most likely turn them in to child protective services.  The Teen Titans, for some reason, are supported by the rest of the hero community even though they encourage a very dangerous style of life on a very impressionable audience, I'm not really sure where they get all the money they seem to have, and they operate openly in the public eye while the government and the average housewife with too much time and a lot of blank protest signs have nothing to say about it.

That just doesn't ring true to me.

Regarding rich superheroes:
Batman, Moonknight, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Iron Fist.  That's off the top of my head.  They're probably all Batman rip-offs, but at this point it's not really worth mentioning.  About as notable as a hero who can fly, has super-strength, and is invulnerable to gunfire.

[Velorath]

Regarding rich superheroes:
Batman, Moonknight, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Iron Fist.  That's off the top of my head.  They're probably all Batman rip-offs, but at this point it's not really worth mentioning.  About as notable as a hero who can fly, has super-strength, and is invulnerable to gunfire.

The Shadow pre-dated Batman.

[Llava]

Yup, forgot about him.  Good call.

Hell, I'll bet if you looked hard you could trace it back to folklore.

[stray]

The Count of Monte Cristo predated Batman ;).

[Ironwood]

Also worth noting in the mutant hatred thing is that many, many mutants' first experience with their powers is a violent one.  Mutants ARE dangerous, most of them don't have the sort of control that you see with the X-Men.  They've received huge amounts of training.

There's an Ultimate X-Men book, for instance, with a young kid manifesting his mutant powers for the first time.  He emits a death aura that disintegrates anyone who comes within.. I think it was about a hundred yards.  He goes downstairs in the morning and his mom and dad aren't there.  Thinking they just left for work early, he goes to school.  Eventually he figures it out and isolates himself in the wilderness, where Wolverine is able to track him down (healing makes you invulnerable to disintegration I guess- whatever, not the point of the story) and talk with him.  He helps the kid commit suicide.

You total bastard, I was just about to post this.

However, you read it entirely wrong.  :P

Wolverine is SENT by Prof X.  This story, this single issue, is the most powerful story I've ever read involving Wolverine (who is a joke of a charactiture at this point).  It's a that's about how Mutants and Homo-Sapiens just can't get along due to the nature of mutation and the fact that even mutant and mutant can't get along either.  The Prof says to Wolverine 'Go Sort This Out' knowing, as they both do, that when you send Logan to go sort summat out, there's really only one way it ends.  This poor wee chap (who, I think burned off fat deposits or some such shit) is totally fucking traumatised that he's just killed everyone he ever knew and that yesterday he was a succesful young lad and today he's an evil, evil, evil freak of nature.  He no more 'commits suicide' than my Gran.  He makes an impassioned speech about how unfair it all is and how he doesn't want to die.

Logan doesn't give him a choice.

This story is also interesting in that it reverses usual roles.  I put it to you that Magneto would not have killed this guy, but would have taken every opportunity to help him.

Ah, I could talk about that story all day.

[Llava]

It has been a while, but I do remember the speech.  It sounded, to me, more like a someone who just developed a terminal disease.

Yeah, he didn't want to die, but he realized there was really no choice and didn't fight it.

But either way, good story.

[HaemishM]

Just out of curiosity, what makes everyone here (if this is indeed true) care so much more about Marvel than DC?  The "52" thread is a lot shorter than this.

52 doesn't suck, and therefore there's less to bitch about. We always tend to write more about shit that really deserves derision. Civil War was just damned awful.

[HaemishM]

Those sorts of things resonate with me realistically.  And that's where DC falls short with me.  It's not as realistic.  Let's compare, for instance, the Runaways and the Teen Titans.  The Runaways are a group of kids who fell into superpowers.  They're in hiding, try mostly to keep to themselves, and all the other heroes would, upon finding them, most likely turn them in to child protective services.  The Teen Titans, for some reason, are supported by the rest of the hero community even though they encourage a very dangerous style of life on a very impressionable audience, I'm not really sure where they get all the money they seem to have, and they operate openly in the public eye while the government and the average housewife with too much time and a lot of blank protest signs have nothing to say about it.

That just doesn't ring true to me.

I can understand it not ringing true to you, but the DC Universe lately has really tried to establish not a "realistic" approach, but at least a logically consistent one. The world accepts superheroes in the DC Universe, though with some trepidation at times. Hell, in the DC Universe, religions pop up around particular superheroes constantly. With such support comes a bit more tolerance for really crazy shit, like a pre-pubescent teen being dressed up in tights and a cape and made to beat up people on the streets. No, the DC Universe isn't "realistic" but it is internally consistent. It's a different approach to Runaways but Titans is a good book even with such an approach.

The DC Universe has always taken the more mythical, archetypal approach to the stories, whereas the Marvel Universe is more naturalistic. Or it was until they went into cuckoo lala Civil War land where nothing makes sense except the sales figures.

[Teleku]

Also worth noting in the mutant hatred thing is that many, many mutants' first experience with their powers is a violent one.  Mutants ARE dangerous, most of them don't have the sort of control that you see with the X-Men.  They've received huge amounts of training.

There's an Ultimate X-Men book, for instance, with a young kid manifesting his mutant powers for the first time.  He emits a death aura that disintegrates anyone who comes within.. I think it was about a hundred yards.  He goes downstairs in the morning and his mom and dad aren't there.  Thinking they just left for work early, he goes to school.  Eventually he figures it out and isolates himself in the wilderness, where Wolverine is able to track him down (healing makes you invulnerable to disintegration I guess- whatever, not the point of the story) and talk with him.  He helps the kid commit suicide.

You total bastard, I was just about to post this.

However, you read it entirely wrong.  :P

Wolverine is SENT by Prof X.  This story, this single issue, is the most powerful story I've ever read involving Wolverine (who is a joke of a charactiture at this point).  It's a that's about how Mutants and Homo-Sapiens just can't get along due to the nature of mutation and the fact that even mutant and mutant can't get along either.  The Prof says to Wolverine 'Go Sort This Out' knowing, as they both do, that when you send Logan to go sort summat out, there's really only one way it ends.  This poor wee chap (who, I think burned off fat deposits or some such shit) is totally fucking traumatised that he's just killed everyone he ever knew and that yesterday he was a succesful young lad and today he's an evil, evil, evil freak of nature.  He no more 'commits suicide' than my Gran.  He makes an impassioned speech about how unfair it all is and how he doesn't want to die.

Logan doesn't give him a choice.

This story is also interesting in that it reverses usual roles.  I put it to you that Magneto would not have killed this guy, but would have taken every opportunity to help him.

Ah, I could talk about that story all day.

Actually, just to correct, prof X didn't send Logan in to kill him, it was Nick Fury.  They kept it secret from the prof, who would have been against killing him as well.  Nick knew that it would be disastrous to human/mutant relations if anybody ever found out it was a mutant that just wiped out a small town, so he asked Logan secretly to go in and kill him, since Logan could regenerate faster than he could be disintegrated.  Also because he probably knew Logan was the only one that would fully understand the situation and be counted on to do such a harsh thing.

[Ironwood]

Are you sure ?  Damn, did I read that wrong.

Though that's certainly consistant with Ultimate Nick Fury.  He's just a little mental.

[Llava]

To be clear, I do like DC.  I'm not knocking them.  But their universe doesn't feel like our universe, and so I'm less passionate about the stories.  They're still good stories, but the whole universe just feels so alien to me I don't feel comfortable talking about it too much.  Cause I just feel like I don't really know what I'm talking about.

With Marvel, I feel like I know the universe and am qualified to have an opinion.

[Teleku]

Are you sure ?  Damn, did I read that wrong.

Though that's certainly consistant with Ultimate Nick Fury.  He's just a little mental.

Actually, as I recall, they don't actually reveal who sent wolverine at all in that comic, just showing what happened.  It was in later issues that Wolverine brings it up in front of Fury when they are mad at each other.  But yeah, it was Fury, and they kept it secret from Xavier.

[Velorath]

One would think that spending five days answering readers questions about Civil War might get Marvel thinking that maybe the storytelling in this event wasn't as clear or as organized as it could have been since there are some very basic plot points that required Brevoort to do some fairly creative explanation.  Such as:

Q: Fourth, why was Cap attacked by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents way back in the first issue? Registration was not law yet, so isn't attacking him for theoretically refusing to support it illegal on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s part?

TB: As a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative with “Champion Status”, Cap may have been expected and even required to follow S.H.I.E.L.D. policy on this matter. His refusal to do so would potentially constitute a court-martial offense. How this might have played out had Cap simply gone quietly and appealed through the courts is anybody’s guess—we’ve seen similar situations in real life play out both ways over the years, sometimes depending on who is in power and how much authority they’re capable of wielding--but sitting around meekly waiting for somebody else to take action doesn’t really sound like Captain America, does it?

However, repeated attempts at trying to justify nonsensical plot points weren't the main thing Brevoort said to piss me off.  What I really objected to was this gem from the third day of questioning:

3) Market saturation with both Marvel and DC's recent big events has been an ongoing issue for readers and fans. How does this factor in when launching new titles like OMEGA FLIGHT, NEW WARRIORS, THOR, MIGHTY AVENGERS, CHAMPIONS and SUB-MARINER? Is there a point as a company when you feel the need to say "enough is enough"?

TB: There’s always a concern and a question about “how much is too much”, and it’s one that we consider very carefully when undertaking any project. This is why, despite the outrage and protests of Alpha Flight fans, we’re starting OMEGA FLIGHT as a limited series rather than an ongoing, same as AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, same as SUB-MARINER. By the same token, as long as we can still look at the top ten or top twenty titles in the industry and find a JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA or a 52 or a whatever, that means that there’s still dollars available to us in the marketplace, and as a competitive entity, we’re going to make it as difficult as possible for you to spend your time and your money elsewhere.

See, one of the components of the 90's crash was Marvel flooding the shelves with new series.  It proved to be pretty unhealthy for the industry, especially due to the fact that the average comic shop doesn't have a hell of a lot of space to display product.  So one can understand that as a comic fan, I might be a little upset to hear the because DC has the nerve to still have some top selling products, Marvel is going to flood the shelves with their shit until that little situation is rectified.

Yes, Marvel is a business and chasing after money is obviously important to them.  The problem is what the does to the Independent books that have to get dropped by store owners to make room for more Marvel product.  Independent stuff is where guys like Bendis and Brubaker get their start until they get recognized enough to make it into the comic industry in-crowd.  Drown this stuff out of the market and Marvel fucks over the industry as a whole just so they can get gain some market share back from DC.

Variant covers on a shitload of books, a never-ending parade of "Event" books, flooding the market with low quality work, egotistical talent, clones... fuck the 90's was just last decade.  There's no excuse for forgetting the lessons learned that fucking quickly.  This isn't ancient history were talking about, it's 10 fucking years ago.

[Triforcer]

Did this just happen outside of the Civil War series?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/03/07/captain.america/index.html (CAPTAIN AMERICA SPOILER) I thought earlier in the thread people were saying "imprisoned"...

[Ironwood]

Indeed.  Since I don't give a fuck about spoilers :  Is this just a journalist screwing up or did it happen ??

Seems totally messed up.