Marvels current direction

[Nutcase65]

We all have our opinions and desires for the company we grew up with. Tell us all what you really feel the company plans for itself.

I truthfully think, unfortunately, that we are going to be bounced from one crossover series to the next until a lot more people start dropping titles they used to collect.

This is not a commentary about ANYBODYS writing skills.

[redstatecap]

I believe that Marvel will continue to write from crossover to crossover as long as it profits them to do so. Whether or not that results in a meltdown like the 90s, remains to be seen.

RSC

[Doctor Doom]

I'm not sure I follow. Marvel will continue to do crossover mini-series AND ongoings. To say they bounce from crossover to crossover is technically true but kind of silly in many respects when you consider that only ONE of the major characters of civil war is a big player in World War Hulk and pretty much all the rest aren't- including most of Marvel's biggest books (Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers titles, X-Men)

So basically, most books they will keep putting out ongoings, then they will shove out minis every so often for crossovers and other books will tie in. I fail to see the problem. Are we really calling this a "new direction" when we're only in the third year of it?

[Nutcase65]

I'm speaking more towards main focus, Doom. Even though they still maintain their series thr MAIN focus seems to be on generating most interest/revenue through crossovers and mini-series.
As much as you hate the phrase 'in the old days' In the old days, for the most part, you could follow your two or three main comic lines and be caught up in the story line in that book. Where you could still follow just your two or three, if you don't buy into the most recent crossover. You can feel sorta lost.
They used to just do they occasional thing(secret wars). Then they moved to doing this through annuals(High Evolutionary) So you weren't so greatly left out if you decided not to follow.

So this question, which is NOT a rip at the company, simply asks where do you feel their main focus is?

[dlw66]

I think part of the appeal of the Ultimate Universe, as well as what DC did in the 80's after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and what the Legion of Super-Heroes has done somewhat successfully on several occasions, is the reaching out to new readers while at the same time "freshening up" existing characters/ideas. There is nothing as fun nor as important to comics as an evolutionary medium as discovery. Re-boot, baby! Satisfy the old and young at the same time.

[Black Knight]

I with totally reboot. I don't think that anyone can save the mess that is the MU now. Bouncing from crossover to crossover, and yes that is what Marvel is doing. HOM leads into CW, CW leads into WWH. Even Joe Q says that in one of his Joe Friday's over on Newsarama. They are tailoring the comics mostly to go from one major event to the next, and it in my opinion is making it harder and harder to collect a series.

[Shiryu]

Uhm, for once I disagree with Doug ^^ I would never reboot, that would mean nullifying decades of good stories just because some recent ones have been very bad. That's what they tried to do with Heroes Reborn, and the result is in front of everybody's eyes.

For example, as much as I enjoyed Peter Parker time in college, I wouldn't want things to go back there. That time was great, but it's now gone, things should move forward.

I'm much more in favor of adding things, as with the Untold Stories of Spider Man or Classic X-Men.

PS, not to mention that eventually the reboot would be removed and things would become twice as messy ^^

[dlw66]

You know, I thought about Heroes Reborn as I was typing my post about rebooting. Yes, it was a train wreck of an idea -- but do you suppose that had more to do with the creators chosen than the initial idea? Those guys had to have one foot out Marvel's door and into their new Image door when they did all of that stuff. I would question their commitment to the project in the first place.

While I do not think rebooting is the best choice, give the choices in this poll it seemed to be the best for these purposes. I will admit that I have liked the stability of the Legion of Super-Heroes now for the past two years. However, given the way that team has gone the past 10-15 years, I am wondering if we are just about halfway to the next reboot??

[Black Knight]

dlw66,
Exactly, given the current state of the MU, and the chooses we where given, I felt a reboot was the best thing you could do. Removing the timeline from the debocals that are HOM, and CW.

Resetting the Avengers, and so on.

[Shiryu]

But that would also mean no "Under Siege", no John Buscema, no Busiek's V3 etc. We would have to lose a lot just to get rid of a few bad years
I would happily go back to the end of Busiek's run, but not before there... it took 40 years to build the Avengers, I'd rather not see other 40 years spent on restarting all over.

[Doctor Bong]

I would go back to exactly the moment after a big grouping of Avengers had just defeated Scorpio's plans & reunited again the 2 separate halves of the In-betweener, right before a grateful world (and the UN) gives the Avengers the same powers as a sovereign country...

[Doctor Bong]

In-between (bad pun intended...) Vol. III #s 60-61...

[balok]

I'd prefer they concentrate on the ongoing stories, and create cross-overs only for the occasional important event. Sadly, I suspect their current model of focusing on cross-overs and bringing the ongoings along for the ride is more profitable, for the moment. (We know this is the approach because we saw that the various ongoings were resolicited to meet the demands of Civil War.)

Time will tell whether this model can last.

[Nutcase65]

DLW, I think you have a good point about the whole heroes reborn thing.

Does anubody else miss the ability of any specific book to carry its own meaningful long-term storyline?

[Black Knight]

I most certainly do. I long for the days where I got all the story if I just read the Avengers.

[Shiryu]

To expand on my previous post, here is part of an interview that Kurt Busiek gave to the Comics Journal a few years ago. His answer to the question "what did you think of heroes reborn" pretty much summarizes my thoughts.
The full interview is at www.tcj.com/3_online/t_busiek.html

BUSIEK: As I've often said, it's not what I would have chosen to do. I can't argue that it worked -- it boosted sales on all four books, kept them quite high, and let Marvel bring them back at a higher level than they'd left at. So in financial terms, which is what it was all about, it worked -- and it brought in more readers to try those books.

In aesthetic terms, it didn't interest me a whole lot. I thought Iron Man was the best-crafted of the bunch -- Fantastic Four was well-drawn but rushed, and the other two were enthusiastically sloppy -- but as I mentioned when you asked about Spider-Man Chapter One, a lot of my interest in these characters is due to their history. I see who they are as defined to a great extent by what they've been through, what they've experienced, and not just what they look like, what attitudes they project and what powers they have. So these guys were not the characters I had an attachment to, and there wasn't anything in the stories that hooked me in, the way a good Elseworlds project can. And of course, as with Chapter One, I'm not the target audience -- I don't need a new beginning to make me interested in Iron Man or the Avengers. I was already hooked.

The main thing I appreciated about the whole Heroes Reborn experiment, aside from the clean slate and the sales boost it gave us guys who came along afterward, was that it happened off in its own world, and had an entry point and an exit point. The characters could come back as they had been without a big to-do, once the experiment was over. So they did it, they got a benefit out of it, they put it away, and we got the real guys back.

Not much to complain about, from where I sit.

[dlw66]

shiryu said:

But that would also mean no "Under Siege", no John Buscema, no Busiek's V3 etc. We would have to lose a lot just to get rid of a few bad years
I would happily go back to the end of Busiek's run, but not before there... it took 40 years to build the Avengers, I'd rather not see other 40 years spent on restarting all over.

Let me try to better explain my posit:

With a reboot, you don't lose all that has gone before. What it does is (like Busiek said in the article excerpt you posted) free the writers to create from a given history. I really think what we have now to some extent is a group of writers who feel constrained by history and want to remake it in their own image. They have the notion that they are going to ignore what others have done. A reboot, with responsible creators, would freshen up old ideas, giving readers both old and new a chance to experience stories in a contemporary environment.

I would still have the old stuff (shoot, it's about all I read now!) and would love it as "that chapter in my life". I am sure when Byrne rebooted Superman in 1986 there were a tremendous number of Superman fans who held onto the old stories and traditions of the multi-colored kryptonite, etc. With a reboot at Marvel now, I'd have more updated versions of those same characters I've loved that I could once again "grow up" with. I think to some extent we've seen rebooting anyway: Reed and Ben used to be WWII pilots; now the Gulf War is sometimes mentioned. Tony Stark was tied to Vietnam; that's not done anymore because of the timing issues. So the circumstances change; my biggest problem is that the characters AT THEIR FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS have begun to change as well.

A reboot -- and again, with creators who respect what was and what can be -- can be a useful tool to bring about an increase in sales without the alienation of longtime fans.

[Nutcase65]

but to say that the primary focus is to generate revenue? I know that it is a buisiness, I do. But the thing with this buisiness is, if you make your customers consistently happy (a hard thing, I know) by producing a constantly high quality product, it seems the revenue would take care of itself.
It also seems like many of these mega-crossover events are more for generating revenue than they are about telling the story.

At least that's how I sometimes feel.

[dlw66]

nutcase65 said:

It also seems like many of these mega-crossover events are more for generating revenue than they are about telling the story.

You think?!?

I agree with your point about turning out a quality product that will please both veterans and new readers, and obviously from all of the uproar around here -- that ain't easy!

I just wish I had less of a sense of "OK, this is just another gimmick" and more of a sense of "OK, this seems like a logical evolution in the lives of these characters that I've come to love".

[Doctor Bong]

Exactly...

[Tana Nile]

I'd like to see Marvel (and DC) stop dragging us from one event to the next and get back to just telling good stories in their regular books again.

As much as I may be an old-school fan, I don't want to see a reboot. While I may not be happy with everything that's going on at Marvel (an understatement!), change is a part of life, and comics, whether we like it or not. The latest Comics Buyers Guide has an excellent column this month (issue 1629) by Andrew Smith. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is available online. He responds to a letter by Jason Veraggi, who describes himself as a 32 year old Marvel fan who "grew up on its continuity-heavy titles in the 70's and 80's". Veraggi is unhappy with Marvel's current direction - sound familiar?

Smith's advice struck a chord with me. He described how he has had to "reboot" himself every decade or so, in order to keep going as a comics fan. As an example, he mentions how he loved the Lee-Ditko era of Spider-Man, and had to essentially let go of it so he could enjoy the Lee-Romita era, and everything that followed.

Here's a direct quote that really summarizes his attitude:

"Obviously, I still care greatly about continuity and I find it in today's comics where I may -with the grudging acceptance that it is no longer important to today's creators or audiences. But the important thing is to continue to enjoy today's comics in whatever fashion I can, and, if I get a hankering for an era that came before - well, I've still got all those long boxes that I can dive into like a porpoise and relive my youth."

This is pretty much where I am at too. I may not like this new direction, but there are still books at Marvel I will read. I'm sure I'll like some and dislike others. But I have also been reading long enough to realize that nothing lasts forever, and this too shall pass! Eventually there will be a point in time where I am pleased with Marvel again. In the meantime, I am not going to throw in the towel on a universe I have enjoyed practically my entire life.

[dlw66]

I have seen Andrew Smith's work in a weekly AP column my local newspaper runs. Sometimes it seems a little too "Newsarama" for me, but it's good to see comics news in a newspaper anyway.

I'm struck by this thought, Tana, as I re-read both your last post and mine four up from yours: In all of the history I've read about DC in the 1960's-early 1980's, the editors have been regarded with generally nothing short of disdain. Other than Julie Schwartz's Batman, and the O'Neil/Adams GL/GA stories, it seemed that change was forbidden and stories had to be formulaic. One-and-done was the order of the day. DC's corporate suits passed down to the editors that they were the (to use a Stan Lee-like term) Keepers of the Flame and had better not go monkeying around with it. Of course, Marvel was experimental, wasn't afraid to push the envelope, etc.

BUT, I find myself, in reflecting on this wondering if maybe someone at Marvel shouldn't grab the reins and say "Whoa!! What the heck are we doing?" We have several posters around here who have recently gotten back into comics. Do they recognize the Marvel Universe in comparison to when they departed the hobby? Or is it just a big convoluted mess that demands that the consumer purchase umpteen books each month so they can keep track of it all?

Has Marvel sacrificed all concern for good, solid storytelling for the chasing of the almighty dollar?

[Doctor Doom]

Well dlw, to be fair I got fully into comics again after a hiatus at the start of last year and settled in with extreme ease.

[dlw66]

A) I didn't know that
B) I was really referencing some of the old farts around here who had been out for, say 15-20 years.

[Doctor Bong]

Well, but it really isn't fair to compare most of us Everyman Joes with the magnificence that is Doom, don't you think...

[Doctor Doom]

A) I didn't know that

Ah sorry, I thought I'd mentioned it a few times before. Prior to "Road to Civil War", I read Fantastic Four, Captain America Amazing Spider-Man and New Avengers. So not quite "out of the business" but I was VERY rarely on the net about it and never really got excited or anything. I had been an avid collector until I fell out of the hobby during the Johns Avengers run, but I never stopped collecting FF, ASM or Avengers, and I picked up Cap at the new issue 1.

B) I was really referencing some of the old farts around here who had been out for, say 15-20 years.

I know, just stirring up trouble

And ua2, it's ALWAYS fair to compare anyone to the glory that is Doom. It's just not fair to expect them to come close

[dlw66]

docdoom said:

Ah sorry, I thought I'd mentioned it a few times before. Prior to "Road to Civil War", I read Fantastic Four, Captain America Amazing Spider-Man and New Avengers. So not quite "out of the business" but I was VERY rarely on the net about it and never really got excited or anything. I had been an avid collector until I fell out of the hobby during the Johns Avengers run, but I never stopped collecting FF, ASM or Avengers, and I picked up Cap at the new issue 1.

Yeah, I don't consider that even close to what I meant -- not enough time for you away that "recognizing" Marvel would have even been an issue. Someone who checked out in the mid- to late '80's, for example, was more what I was alluding to.

And if I missed that before, which I probably did, I apologize.