Post by owene on Sept 20, 2010 14:02:28 GMT -5
As some of you may know I've recently got back into comics after about 9 years away. And i've got back into them quite enthusiastically, curiosity about what had happened in the MU led to a huge pile of tpbs amongst other things. It can be incredibly easy to get up to speed on long runs of comics these days if you have a bit of spare cash and a lot of reading time.
I'm not making claims to have read everything Marvel have done since I went away but I think I now feel I have a bit of a handle on how things are.
And, it's not that great is it.
These are the things I've noticed.
1) The tpb structure doesn't work very well with interlocking books that are heavily promoted in advance.
I was a big proponent of switching to tpbs when I last read comics, I was really into small press and vertigo stuff that read best that way and assumed it would work for everything.
It doesn't, at least not when there seem to be tie in one shots to everything and multiple creative teams contributing aspects to each storyline which largely seems to be about bring about a new status quo that has already been trailed in previews. So everyone knows going in what will happen at the end because they know what books will spin out of it. So the only real reason to read the book itself is just to see your favourite characters reeled out and going through their paces. Which is the opposite of the creator based stories that the tpb idea originally worked on.
Similarly decompression in the hands of a lot Marvel creators just means 15 dollar books that read in about 20 minutes.
2) There aren't stories any more. There are confrontations between characters who are all feature characters somewhere or other (if only in event tie in one shots) so nobody can ever win or lose. It's like nobody ever got told Show don't tell, or more likely it's down to having a lot of single discipline writers working in a visual medium.
X meets Y and tells them how bad they are and how Y is doomed.
Y pulls out some doohickey from his back pocket that seemingly changes everything and does some cool soundbyte. X pulls out a different doohickey that counters the last one and escalates it all. And so on and so on until one of them flies off and the other one complains to their minions about changing the security settings.
It's like a bugs bunny cartoon or Spy vs Spy.
This is particularly true of every recent comic I've read featuring Nick Fury who seemingly has 48 different plans going on at once and has always thought through all of his opponents moves but never actually manages to achieve anything. (Norman Osborn, Hank Pym, the Hood and Iron Man also seem to do it a lot.)
Everybody has become the Mad Thinker and it's boring.
There are of course exceptions. Captain America has a lot of this plan upon plan stuff but it actually works.
3) Power levels are inflated to such a point that you have to look at 99% of their previous appearances and wonder "if they can do that now, how come they ever...."
This has lead to a total divorcing from reality.
I can see the point of this in a sci-fi speculative fiction sense, examining the impact these powers would have on earth. But it lessens any empathy with the storylines and makes a joke of all of the characters appearances prior to say 2005. Everyone has access to countless safe houses and state of the art back up and nanites and flying craft and stuff. Nobody is ever likely to be actually put out by anything that happens.
I quite enjoyed Mighty Avengers but what exactly can't Hank Pym do? Capable of all that why was he ever dressing up as an ant and capturing truck hold up guys?
This is particularly glaring when they try and revisit old stories with the new sensibility. The recent Avengers the Origin 1 that has the teen brigade with a state of the art security net.
4) the Civil War.
I dont want to rehash old threads here but I recently read the tpb to see just what happened and
a) it doesn't even read as a story without the tie ins, you have no sense at all of what happens. All cross overs are to an extent guilty of this but CW is totally unreadable as a drama in the format on sale.
b) it fundamentally damages half the characters it touches and leaves a status quo that, whatever the easy points about liberty and the war on terror and so on, doesn't suit a lot of Marvels characters.
5) In a world where every single creator knows the value of saving their creations for something creator owned with a film or game deal nobody is prepared to really hand over any characters who are of a higher quality than fanfic Mary Sue level.
So everybody seems to fight the wrecking crew and the U Foes all the time, except they don't really, we just see a couple of splashes of battles in amongst all the important scenes of the heroes talking or plotting.
Seriously the same two dozen "classic" villains just keep appearing in all sorts of books I've read lately and even the good villains have been beaten and then pumped up again so many times they are a joke. The only villains who seem to have any motivation are the one who get their own books, and they just pontificate till the next event moves them into their next phase with it's next one shot or mini.
6) and I've wanted to largely focus on style stuff but I guess i have to mention this. People are way too free with rewriting the past. This has always happened, it doesn't bother me as much as some people. Two of the handful of runs I've actually enjoyed most are the Bucky Cap and the Brand New Day spidey so I have nothing against this in service of a good story. But editors seem to be just handing writers freedom to change anything, at any point, for any reason.
So Galileo actually defeated the first coming of Galactus centuries ago, fine. Not like it's one of the important stories you are undermining or anything.
So Rogue was actually sleeping with the Sentry. Whatever her regular writer might be doing with the character in her own book. Fine. Not like thats one of the main building blocks of all her characterisation for 30 years or anything.
There is good stuff out there. Avengers Academy is very good because the writer is using his own characters and actually building a narrative. The first few arcs of Brand New Day were actually very well constructed and funny spider-man stories from a team that clearly understand the character (I'll ignore how they got there and i haven't read that far in yet). Incredible Hercules was a lot of fun and I enjoy Amadeus Cho despite him actually embodying a lot of things I complained about (not as fond of Pak's Hulk for some reason). Brubaker's Cap is great with actually motivated characters putting all of those dastardly plans everyone else talks about into action and achieving things.
JMS thor was ok although incredibly slow moving, and I've enjoyed Gillen's issues.
I'm sure there are other good points but thats the impression i've got from my crash course in modern marvel
I'm not making claims to have read everything Marvel have done since I went away but I think I now feel I have a bit of a handle on how things are.
And, it's not that great is it.
These are the things I've noticed.
1) The tpb structure doesn't work very well with interlocking books that are heavily promoted in advance.
I was a big proponent of switching to tpbs when I last read comics, I was really into small press and vertigo stuff that read best that way and assumed it would work for everything.
It doesn't, at least not when there seem to be tie in one shots to everything and multiple creative teams contributing aspects to each storyline which largely seems to be about bring about a new status quo that has already been trailed in previews. So everyone knows going in what will happen at the end because they know what books will spin out of it. So the only real reason to read the book itself is just to see your favourite characters reeled out and going through their paces. Which is the opposite of the creator based stories that the tpb idea originally worked on.
Similarly decompression in the hands of a lot Marvel creators just means 15 dollar books that read in about 20 minutes.
2) There aren't stories any more. There are confrontations between characters who are all feature characters somewhere or other (if only in event tie in one shots) so nobody can ever win or lose. It's like nobody ever got told Show don't tell, or more likely it's down to having a lot of single discipline writers working in a visual medium.
X meets Y and tells them how bad they are and how Y is doomed.
Y pulls out some doohickey from his back pocket that seemingly changes everything and does some cool soundbyte. X pulls out a different doohickey that counters the last one and escalates it all. And so on and so on until one of them flies off and the other one complains to their minions about changing the security settings.
It's like a bugs bunny cartoon or Spy vs Spy.
This is particularly true of every recent comic I've read featuring Nick Fury who seemingly has 48 different plans going on at once and has always thought through all of his opponents moves but never actually manages to achieve anything. (Norman Osborn, Hank Pym, the Hood and Iron Man also seem to do it a lot.)
Everybody has become the Mad Thinker and it's boring.
There are of course exceptions. Captain America has a lot of this plan upon plan stuff but it actually works.
3) Power levels are inflated to such a point that you have to look at 99% of their previous appearances and wonder "if they can do that now, how come they ever...."
This has lead to a total divorcing from reality.
I can see the point of this in a sci-fi speculative fiction sense, examining the impact these powers would have on earth. But it lessens any empathy with the storylines and makes a joke of all of the characters appearances prior to say 2005. Everyone has access to countless safe houses and state of the art back up and nanites and flying craft and stuff. Nobody is ever likely to be actually put out by anything that happens.
I quite enjoyed Mighty Avengers but what exactly can't Hank Pym do? Capable of all that why was he ever dressing up as an ant and capturing truck hold up guys?
This is particularly glaring when they try and revisit old stories with the new sensibility. The recent Avengers the Origin 1 that has the teen brigade with a state of the art security net.
4) the Civil War.
I dont want to rehash old threads here but I recently read the tpb to see just what happened and
a) it doesn't even read as a story without the tie ins, you have no sense at all of what happens. All cross overs are to an extent guilty of this but CW is totally unreadable as a drama in the format on sale.
b) it fundamentally damages half the characters it touches and leaves a status quo that, whatever the easy points about liberty and the war on terror and so on, doesn't suit a lot of Marvels characters.
5) In a world where every single creator knows the value of saving their creations for something creator owned with a film or game deal nobody is prepared to really hand over any characters who are of a higher quality than fanfic Mary Sue level.
So everybody seems to fight the wrecking crew and the U Foes all the time, except they don't really, we just see a couple of splashes of battles in amongst all the important scenes of the heroes talking or plotting.
Seriously the same two dozen "classic" villains just keep appearing in all sorts of books I've read lately and even the good villains have been beaten and then pumped up again so many times they are a joke. The only villains who seem to have any motivation are the one who get their own books, and they just pontificate till the next event moves them into their next phase with it's next one shot or mini.
6) and I've wanted to largely focus on style stuff but I guess i have to mention this. People are way too free with rewriting the past. This has always happened, it doesn't bother me as much as some people. Two of the handful of runs I've actually enjoyed most are the Bucky Cap and the Brand New Day spidey so I have nothing against this in service of a good story. But editors seem to be just handing writers freedom to change anything, at any point, for any reason.
So Galileo actually defeated the first coming of Galactus centuries ago, fine. Not like it's one of the important stories you are undermining or anything.
So Rogue was actually sleeping with the Sentry. Whatever her regular writer might be doing with the character in her own book. Fine. Not like thats one of the main building blocks of all her characterisation for 30 years or anything.
There is good stuff out there. Avengers Academy is very good because the writer is using his own characters and actually building a narrative. The first few arcs of Brand New Day were actually very well constructed and funny spider-man stories from a team that clearly understand the character (I'll ignore how they got there and i haven't read that far in yet). Incredible Hercules was a lot of fun and I enjoy Amadeus Cho despite him actually embodying a lot of things I complained about (not as fond of Pak's Hulk for some reason). Brubaker's Cap is great with actually motivated characters putting all of those dastardly plans everyone else talks about into action and achieving things.
JMS thor was ok although incredibly slow moving, and I've enjoyed Gillen's issues.
I'm sure there are other good points but thats the impression i've got from my crash course in modern marvel