Byakuya769
Member
I'm honestly not convinced that TNC is good.
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The Atlantic: 'The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics Woes'
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
I'm honestly not convinced that TNC is good.
IrishNinja
Member
strongly agreed here
i bailed on hudlin's (i wanna say he was tied up with some big crossover at the time?), what did you like there/not like here? maybe i should revisit that stuff
hudlin turned him into a godlike being forgetting all the strategy that goes into doing what panther does, and coates made him into a wimp.
Alcoremortis
Member
Me too. It really irritated me that they killed off Banner, not only for no reason, but as a footnote in an event and without wrapping up any of his plotlines that were started over the last few years.
Like, I don't mind them killing off characters and I don't mind Amadeus being the Hulk now, but would it kill them to put a little effort into a good send-off?
Betty got a better death comic than he did and she was unconscious for the whole thing.
I just kinda decided at that point to read these comics on a six month delay on Marvel Unlimited instead of dropping $20 a week to keep up with my list.
Is this because of what happened with Image in the 90s?
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Other than McFarlane a lot of those 90s Image guys never got their comics off the ground. Not to mention the fighting that was going on. There wasn't enough of a success story to make Marvel jealous. It was never this bad during Marvel's recovery phase in the early 2000s, but now they're losing a lot of their talent over to Image and Hollywood so you can look at this as Marvel comic execs trying to keep everything under control and not have anyone steer the ship. I guess you can say history is repeating itself except it's worse now that Image and the indie scene is blowing up.
I'm not caught up to current yet but I love it two trades in. It's dense and political and sophisticated in a way that I rarely see in superhero comics.
ScatheZombie
Member
We order less singles from the distributor.
We've expanded our trades section to about 3x what it used to be.
We carry more comic-themed items that actually sell like posters, figures, bags, etc.
Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order
Member
This thread is like a look down an insane rabbit hole lol. How can the MCU be so good and this stuff be so shit?
One cares about the material, One cares about money.
Banner's sendoff was in "The Fallen" and Totally Awesome Hulk.
Big businesses only care money no matter what they tell you or what they put out.
LinkAndEpona
Banned
I remember the previous topic about this and diversity was hardly the problem compared to the horrible writing and constant rebooting and alternate universes, making it really difficult to keep track. Plus the prices have become absurd as well.
What's highly amusing is that the MLP comics have been much better than what Marvel and DC have put out in the last couple years, don't ask me how I know!
What's highly amusing is that the MLP comics have been much better than what Marvel and DC have put out in the last couple years, don't ask me how I know!
Bobby Roberts
Banned
More specifically: Feige takes care of his people. Top down, the management styles are completely different, and you see the difference not only in the output, but in the effort. It's not just that people really want to work at the studio, it's that they keep wanting to work there because in the end, you get the sense most in the company are concerned with good work being produced, and they're going to make sure you're happy and that you want to keep doing that good work. Once your'e in, you're in, until you don't want to be in, or your quality is no longer up to snuff and you gotta go.
(granted, there are people at Marvel Studios who have also gotten disgruntled and felt stepped on, but not nearly to the same extent, or as consistently, as on the publishing side of things)
Writers/artists want to work at Marvel Comics because it's Marvel Comics, and then it's a battle to see if they can survive having that will beaten and/or ground out of them by the constant pressures of upper-management's poor judgment coming to bear. It's a race against the clock to see if you get to do what you've dreamed of doing before your will to do it is swallowed by the disillusionment that is guaranteed to overtake you.
Basically: On the comics side, the culture is such that talented people are made to feel its only a matter of time before they get punished for being who they are and doing what they do. This atmosphere is nowhere near as present on the studio side.
IndoAssassin
Banned
Yah let's prop up Coates who has ruined T'Challa and his mythos just so he can push his politics. A book titled Black Panther has the main character show up like 25% of the time only to get his ass kicked by regular humans lol.
Then he gets a book called Black Panther and the Crew, and BP is nowhere to be seen.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Even with Marvel fuckups I seriously doubt that, unless your a hardcore fan.
Blame Marvel. When you get someone like Coates you get him for his political and social writing. The man said from the start he wasn't writing a simple Black Panther superhero book.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
If I were to guess it'd be that some dudes are mad the book is focus d heavily on female characters.
IndoAssassin
Banned
He turned T'Challa into an incompetant idiot so he could turn Wakanda into a democracy.
I agree with everything but the comment about dan slot being antagonistic: dude knows his shit. He launches Superior Spider-Man and commits as hard as he can to saying it's absolutely the future of Spider-Man and not a miniseries
If you had a brain and were reading it, it was obvious it was a temporary (insane) arc, but people were PISSED
so he fucked with them. "Oh yeah he's just spiderman forever now. Deal with it!" Is hilarious when he's drafted the next few arcs and knows it's temporary for sure
But yeah honestly marvel's shit has been on point outside of cancelling shit and relaunching comics over and over. If they'd just commit I'd be less pissed.
Also marvel at least has a consistent dimension where these stories take place: if a comic lasts 9 issues those characters still exist in the world and can be used again (ideally in a run that's more than 9 issues) whereas D.C. Goes "cool whole new universe idk who is still around and what matters anymore"
If you had a brain and were reading it, it was obvious it was a temporary (insane) arc, but people were PISSED
so he fucked with them. "Oh yeah he's just spiderman forever now. Deal with it!" Is hilarious when he's drafted the next few arcs and knows it's temporary for sure
But yeah honestly marvel's shit has been on point outside of cancelling shit and relaunching comics over and over. If they'd just commit I'd be less pissed.
Also marvel at least has a consistent dimension where these stories take place: if a comic lasts 9 issues those characters still exist in the world and can be used again (ideally in a run that's more than 9 issues) whereas D.C. Goes "cool whole new universe idk who is still around and what matters anymore"
Also planning on bring Storm and T'Challa back together for reasons.
I heard the new books are basically what we wanted the 1st year to be.
We're at one universe...or two but no more than that.
Also, Marvel has one writer from MLP comics who is doing well.
I would at least expect panther to be the forerunner of a black panther book, but both he and Robbie Reyes got the short ends of the sticks on those.
It's amazing that people want that Trainwreck back.
Maybe it's because I'm reading it on unlimited but I couldn't follow it reading each issue x weeks apart. It may read better in a trade.
This actually is one thing I don't think has been touched on yet.
One gripe I have about modern comics is theyre really inaccessible in how they are written. Many people have commented on how difficult it is to follow the numbering, but increasingly the stories themselves are hard to follow.
20 years ago, comics frankly had more words and were much more expository. It made it easy to figure out what the hell was going on week to week even if you missed an issue. Nowadays, there's less editorial boxes and less thought bubbles, and IMO, it takes much more skill to tell a cohesive story this way.
This is actually something I really hated about Hickman run-up to Secret Wars. I felt like I had to have wikia open every time I opened an issue of New Avengers because I didn't know who Smasher, POd, Ex Nihilo, Manifold, etc were. Or why Thanos was attacking earth. Or what a white/blue/red event were. It makes the stories needlessly confusing.
IrishNinja
Member
pretty damming assessment - if you had your say, where would you start? bench alonso, put bendis onto his own corner, who else would need be moved to create an environment that actually fosters new talent/retains the better ones?
yeah that was the impression i went into this book with & exactly what i got - it's a dense read compared to most other superhero titles so even if i'm behind, i don't binge it, but it's so much more than i tend to see of how wakanda & it's people work
IndoAssassin
Banned
Yah wouldn't be bad if he showed BP the badass he is. But he would showup just to get owned by a bunch of henchmen in his own flagship book. And they expect BP fans to just sit around quietly and take it. Man screw that crap. He deserves all the hate he's getting.
The book went from 200K copies issue #1 to barelly over 30K with the recent one. Gee I wonder why.
Remember when people thought we were getting something rivaling Astonishing X-men?
Part of the problem is comics fans are literally jackasses. I say this as a comics fan, we're all jackasses to various degrees.
I've seen some of the shit that gets tweeted at Slott, after a couple of years of that level of abuse we'd all be assholes and troll these guys too.
I'll be honest, I like the idea of having seasons for comics. That's basically how most people read them anyway. If a creative team you like is on a book then you'll read it, if not you skip until you find out if it's good or not. Relaunching with each new creative team isn't a bad idea, but sell it as that team's take on a character and give them a couple of years to run with it. Don't go relaunching after 9 issues and have the same dude writing it.
He turned T'Challa into an incompetant idiot so he could turn Wakanda into a democracy.
BP's current comic is no bueno, I was riding high on BP after Civil War so I was super excited but I gave up after 3 issues. Shit's dookie.
it feels like its a series being written by someone who doesnt like panther, or isnt aware of who he is.
IrishNinja
Member
yeah totally
i'm continuing my boycott until they properly revive the micronauts myself
ForsakenLotus
Member
Maybe this comes down to personal preference, but I like the idea that if the continuity of a large comic universe like DC gets too cumbersome, some major events have convoluted things, or just some primary characters have had continued poor sales or writing, that we aren't left with it as readers. Plus, putting something in secondary universes pretty much automatically makes it less important and it's much harder to latch onto those characters, with a few exceptions.
In 1985, roughly 20 years after the creation of the multiverse, DC decided to reduce it down to one universe. For the most part, the main characters and their history stayed the same. In 1994, the Zero Hour Crisis was the first event that essentially re shaped the DC continuity in a broad way, I believe. In 2004, Identity Crisis launched and wasn't a Crisis in the sense that it redefined either the continuity of the DC universe or change the fundamental structure of it going forward. In 2005, Infinite Crisis brought back the multiverse. In 2008's Final Crisis, it's just a big event, and like Infinite Crisis not a lot changes about DC's continuity or structure of its universe. In 2011, DC gave use our second actual reboot of the DC universe in about 50 years of them having a multiverse, though with the ongoing Rebirth line even that is now just a 5 year period that is being folded into existing continuity.
So between 1961 and 1994 we had more or less one continuity. Between 1994 and 2011 we had a second continuity, though in 2016 it has essentially been retconned into that same single continuity.
So unless I'm just way off, which I haven't been reading comics for all that long and I'm far, far from an expert, I feel like this idea that DC is constantly throwing out its continuity is really overstated. Especially when you consider in Marvel they have an elastic timeline and universe changing deus ex machina like Mephisto as well as long running secondary universes that get folded into the primary Earth 616 universe.
And you know what, how DC is tying in the 2011-2016 New 52 continuity and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earth's
continuity is really interesting and pretty clever. The upcoming event could go a number of ways, but playing around with continuity this way has a chance of really paying off for people who care about continuity.
So I reject this sentiment regarding DC.
IrishNinja
Member
i'm interested too, but let's not pretend new 52 continuity wasn't a mess, even on the editorial end...if they can tie it all back up, people will be fine with them abusing Moore's leftovers again though
People giving way too much of a shit about continuity is part of the problem to begin with. Non-comics readers are finally starting to catch on to how vacuous the shared universe narrative is in the moviesphere but comics readers should have known this since the late 80s. The superstar writers have the pull to get around editorial mandates and make great work as they envision it, but there are plenty of good writers without the prestige that are hamstrung with having to make their story fit in with whatever garbage JMS or whoever happens to be putting out that month. Fuck that. Bury this culture obsessed with documenting everything into wikis and just let artists tell good stories again.
LordRaptor
Member
Yeah, you're wrong.
Marvel have done 1 (one) continuity wide reboot ever, and that wasn't even a continuity wide reboot because the status quo and history is much the same.
DC has done continuity wide reboots at least 5 times, usually with the express intention of trying to fix all of the problems the last reboot created. And as silly as you might think "Mephisto mindwipes!" sounds, thats fucking nothing compared to reality puncher SPB.
The actual good solution to bad continuity is having editors that are prepared to say "no of course gwen wouldnt have norman osbornes kids, wtf are you doing? If you're peddling this shit you'd better build in an out so we can collectively all pretend this never happened"
The next best solution is the retcon / no-prize fix.
The worst solution is "fuck it, nuke the lot, we'll just retell all the good stories again, who cares?"
Totally agree. It was a little easier to bear when it included the digital copy also, but they've done away with that now as well. It was a real differentiator from the other publishers.
Incidentally, is there any data anywhere on sales since they dropped the included digital editions?
Marvel editorial staff doesn't really care about continuity though, and never really has. Certain editorial teams care about continuity within their own line of books, but it frequently gets tosssed out with a new creative team and there is no real sense of "this is what is going on right now in the Marvel Universe right now" outside of specific event tie-ins.
DC seems to want to keep some sort of feel of a single point in time for all books releasing near each other and a better sense of a shared universe (like with those Ambush Bug news segments during New 52).
Marvel is more siloed, which can seem weird sometimes, like during the run up to Secret Wars, when the earth is getting terraformed and all this weird shit is happening, but only in certain books. Meanwhile, Captain a america is both stuck in Baron Zemo's mutant world and also in the Avengers books.
I'm not saying one approach is better or worse, as both have their pros and cons. DC often seems more unified while Marvel makes it easier to have a wide range of stories with that character in the "main" continuity.
Preach it.
I know next to nothing about modern days Marvel but I've seen some praise for Spider Gwen around GAF (probably from Slayven), I've given it a chance and I'm glad I did. It's the first genuinely great superhero series I've read in a long while (well, Kamala is up there too). So I guess there's still some positive word of mouth?
(But yeah, that's more of an exception to the rule: rest of the time, I'm on the "not touching this continuity mess with a ten foot pole" bandwagon)
Still, thanks for recommending Spider Gwen, GAF!
(But yeah, that's more of an exception to the rule: rest of the time, I'm on the "not touching this continuity mess with a ten foot pole" bandwagon)
Still, thanks for recommending Spider Gwen, GAF!
LordRaptor
Member
They're both as selectively adherent to continuity as they want to be, and always have been.
Are Superman and Batman best buds, like the Justice League Super Friends fanbase and titles like Batman & Superman suggest? Or are they natural rivals that can never be friends, like Dark Knight Returns, Red Son, Injustice or the DCEU suggest?
The answer is "yes".
They brought the digital codes back at the beginning of the month.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
You can't judge the quality of a book by how much it sells now. These days good comics or at least the ones people usually want to read sell around 30K or worse. By your logic CWII is a masterpiece.
IrishNinja
Member
SENPAIatLARGE
Banned
The conclusion to the first arc in Coates BP run was such a limp "blink and you will miss it" ending. A bunch of stuff happened all at once, Panther wins, villain characters are quickly pushed to the side so people can sit around a table and have political debates.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Is the thread now more or less a means to shit on Coates' run as some sort of defense for Marvel management's poor decision-making skills?
Basically "Well, his book sucked, so they're probably not wrong?"
It seems a weird tack to take. Like, the notion I have to "prop up" Ta Nehisi Coates as a good writer worth promoting/helping/keeping happy.
Ta Nehisi Coates is a good writer. Marvel has a MacArthur Fellowship award-winning, National Book Award-winning writer in their stable and people are like "Nah, fuck him, he made Black Panther boring, Marvel's running things just fine."
Basically "Well, his book sucked, so they're probably not wrong?"
It seems a weird tack to take. Like, the notion I have to "prop up" Ta Nehisi Coates as a good writer worth promoting/helping/keeping happy.
Ta Nehisi Coates is a good writer. Marvel has a MacArthur Fellowship award-winning, National Book Award-winning writer in their stable and people are like "Nah, fuck him, he made Black Panther boring, Marvel's running things just fine."
SENPAIatLARGE
Banned
I never said marvels doing fine. I love Marvel characters but the only book I read now is Luke Cage and Ironfist since Nighthawk was cancelled. The dialogue in Black Panther is fine, the plot and events are cw-tier, and I know for a fact Black Panther is a more competent character than Barry Allen, but he's written to act like him. Marvel's current lineup isn't as appetizing as the competition due to a myriad of decisions.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
So you're a fan of Walker's stuff then!
IrishNinja
Member
wait Walker's the one name i don't know here, what does he currently write?
I think because don't want to be lectured too, they want action. I found it okay but dropped after 7-8 because of the digital code thing.
Luke Cage and Occupy Avengers
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Also wrote Power Man & Iron Fist.
And Nighthawk.
And Nighthawk.