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Post by bobc on Apr 6, 2011 17:10:37 GMT -5
Thanks, HB--you are right, it was the Taskmaster! Your info has been over-shadowed by a yet another DYNAMITE episode of EMH!!!!!!
If that cover didn't make the Top 100, well, something's wrong!!!
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Post by bobc on Apr 6, 2011 17:09:04 GMT -5
There already is another one, Shir!!!
IRON MAN FANS--go immediately to Witchcraftial's channel, this is an ORDER not a request--I will say no more but you are in for a TREAT.
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Post by bobc on Apr 6, 2011 10:19:45 GMT -5
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Post by bobc on Apr 6, 2011 10:09:18 GMT -5
Pssst--a third episode is up.
Hey Drew--I don't recall who the Avengers were fighting in that issue, but the cover with Antman on Hawkeye's arrow is pretty famous. The simplicity of it made it a classic. It really stands out when you see it amidst the busier cover illustrations. All that being said, there is also a kind of scary quality about it--imagine being all of maybe two inches tall, and traveling on an arrow!
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Post by bobc on Apr 6, 2011 8:51:23 GMT -5
I'm with you, Shir. There are so many great little snippets in every show! But yeah the minute I saw Ant Man on the arrow I was like "AHA!!!" I know where that came from!
You know Shir even if the writers bring in some recent storyline that we're not all that wild about, I feel like they'll somehow make it seem good. They are that good, from what I've seen. The writers seem to have a real talent for picking old and new stuff, and making it all fit.
It's so nice to see non-lazy writing for a change--these guys seem to have done their homework and it shows.
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Post by bobc on Apr 5, 2011 20:33:49 GMT -5
I love how the writers allow all the Avengers to shine. We all have our favorites, but this cartoon lets everybody have his or her moment(s). HB--forgive me--but I always saw the Hulk as a great villain or guest star, but thought he was too erratic to be on a team like the Avengers. EMH has made me a believer. The Hulk is probably the funniest character on the team, along with the Wasp. Any scene with the Hulk and Hawkeye, or Wasp and Hulk, grab my attention.
Did you all catch the great nod to that time in the 80's where Hawkeye had Ant Man on his arrow on the Avengers' cover? Man--what more could we old-schoolers ask for? And when Hawkeye whined that they should move the team to the West Coast--well, I felt totally respected as a fan of more than 30 years.
I will buy ten copies of this DVD when it comes out. Just to support these creators.
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Post by bobc on Apr 5, 2011 15:18:12 GMT -5
Hee hee! I prefer "panther-like speed," but I'll take Quicksilver! Yeah apparently these episodes aren't airing yet, but Witchcraftial has them up.
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Post by bobc on Apr 5, 2011 12:17:44 GMT -5
uhhh--no one's listening. There's a new episode up online.
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Post by bobc on Apr 5, 2011 8:31:07 GMT -5
Did you all see the new episode, number 20? It's really, really good.
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Post by bobc on Apr 4, 2011 11:24:58 GMT -5
Shir--I think it depends on the rate and speed in which you introduce new characters. I think showing quick shots of, say, the Black Knight, is exciting to us older fans, but not distracting to new viewers who aren't familiar with him. It's all about pacing. God only knows I don't want EMH turning into the XMen where there are 10,000 mutants running around--it's impossible to care about the characters when they come at you like a 100 year flood.
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Post by bobc on Apr 1, 2011 17:29:12 GMT -5
Golden--you are perfectly entitled to like the Sentry and Bendis. I didn't have any problem with the Sentry until you know who started saying he had the power of a "million exploding suns." That's just too powerful for any character IMO--nobody, not all of Marvel and DC put together, could have a prayer against him. There was an Avengers story arc a long time ago that was pretty interesting--it was about Thor being as powerful as all the other Avengers combined. While that isn't exactly true, the point was that Thor made the other Avengers almost superfluous--so writers started not using him just so the others could have a chance to do something. With the Sentry, the problem is the same, only a million times worse.
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Post by bobc on Apr 1, 2011 9:27:10 GMT -5
Hi SW! I never watched "Lost," but will now that you recommended it so highly. I live for great pop culture moments. I was STUNNED at how good the first three seasons of The Sopranos were, even though I was turned on to them long after they had originally aired. I couldn't stop watching them! But then the 4th season came around and I was like "what the hell?" I could tell something had changed--and surprise surprise! I did a little snooping online and found out that the writers had meant for the Sopranos to only go on for three seasons--and got talked into making more episodes because HBO threw tons of money at them! Didn't help the quality at all, sad to say.
Anyhow--I like the Secret Avengers okay. I find the choice of characters, however, really strange with the exception of Moon Knight and Ant Man. It's not that I don't like the characters, I like all the characters--always thought Valkyrie would make a great Avenger--but I guess having the more stealthy, secretive Avengers on this team would have made better sense IMO.
I happen to enjoy reading what other readers have to say, that''s why I come here. And if you think we don't like what Bendis did to the Avengers, check out CBR...
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Post by bobc on Mar 31, 2011 9:45:13 GMT -5
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
The support for EMH on Disney--if you look at any number of comic forums--is almost completely unanimous! I agree that comic fans can be overly picky about every little detail, but people are just discussing something they love. Thunderbolts is amazing, so is Avengers Academy IMO.
EMH is a complete love-fest, thread after thread.
And by the way, after reading Marvel since 1972--yeah, I'd wager I know and CARE more about the characters than half the hacks in the industry right now. And after spending thousands and thousands of dollars on Marvel-- I'm entitled to an opinion.
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Post by bobc on Mar 28, 2011 10:19:57 GMT -5
No need to get overly sensitive GF. The link is appreciated--but looking at the costumes for CA and Hawkeye make me fear for this movie. That's all I'm saying.
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Post by bobc on Mar 25, 2011 11:40:32 GMT -5
If "decompressed storytelling" is a joke, why am I not laughing? Actually I am laughing--but I'm laughing at the attacks on Bendis on CBR: forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=295839&page=33Sadly, Drew, the video game field is no different. Once a type of game is a hit--right now Facebook games are huge--nobody wants to screw with the formula. In console games, zombie games are multiplying like coat-hangers, and I am hearing constantly that people are sick of zombie games. If you stick around in this field, you will watch these trends come and go. The big problem is that it usually takes at least two years to make a console title (and that is a very conservative estimate), so if a company notices the zombie trend, and wants to make a Z game, they start out at least 2 years behind the eight ball. So what was yesterday's somewhat original idea becomes a marketing cliche a few years later--and sales drop. Publishers fund us--and they are in it to make money, period. They don't give a d**n about the artistic or creative side of things, and anything new or original often creates great confusion and trepidation in the minds of publishers. Games are so expensive to make, that selling 300,000 copies is like a bare minimum before you actually start making a profit. Most do not. Anyway, back to Bendis, the consensus of the anti-Bendis crowd is the same as ours. All the characters sound the same--snarky, wisecracking clones of each other. That approach is great if you are writing Spiderman or Deadpool, but not the Avengers. It is comical reading posts from (obviously) older comic fans explaining to the younger guys what the term "characterization" means--because they obviously do not get it. The pro Bendis fans seem quite happy that everyone sounds the same. And that's fine--if they are happy it's none of my bizzness. But don't argue that Bendis is good at characterization if you cannot provide a single example to support this idea. I'd rather just hear "I like his work." Whatever blows your skirt up is what I always say. |
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Post by bobc on Mar 23, 2011 17:00:16 GMT -5
I never even heard of The Ultimate Man. I'll see if Austin Books has it when I go next.
I read an interview with Quietly a while ago--and had to laugh because although the interviewer was respectful and obviously a fan, his final questions was "But Frank, what's the deal with the lips?" I was laughing! He does draw unusually large, kind of odd lips! It seemed as though Frank wasn't sure what the interviewer was talking about, but I did!
Bendis used to annoy me to no end, until I stopped actually buying him, which was around 2006. I occasionally bought a book written by him after that but it was always accidental in the sense that I didn't realize he was the writer until after I started the book. You know, Drew, I could tell, just by the writing, that it was him. The stilted, annoying, everyone talks the same approach gives him away every time. If you can recognize a writer's writing by reading it, it is amateurish. The first thing they teach you in college creative writing courses is that you should base characters on people you've known in your life. That is an easy way to define speech patterns and attitudes, creating unique personae. That is no different than artists being instructed to learn to draw by drawing real life stuff, rather than copying comic books. If I read "Oy Vey" one more time I thought I'd hurl.
These days I look at Bendis fans with alien-like bemusement. It really is a cult of personality. I want to understand it in the sense that it is like a sociology experiment. I posted this a long time ago, but it bears repeating. Back in 2006 I finally realized how truly bad Bendis' writing on Avengers was, and I was baffled that people seemed to think he was the Second Coming. In an attempt to understand what the appeal was, I went into a Houston comic store and asked the guy behind the counter if he liked what Bendis was doing, and he chirped "YES! I love it." Baffled, I asked him why--and he said it was because of how great Bendis was with "Characterization." I was still confused so I asked for an example. I swear to God, the guy said "Hawkeye--Bendis writes him as very brash." I just about died. Hawkeye was killed off in one of the first issues, never said much, and his final scene was a big, dreary frown as he basically committed suicide for no apparent reason.
Picking the character that almost never appeared in the book, and was certainly never "brash" the few times he showed up, let me know that I was dealing with a Cult of Personality. It makes me laugh that Bendis has people so bamboozled that he even came up with this trendy term "decompressed storytelling." We used to call that boring. Or meandering. Or not getting to the point.
The whole thing is fascinating if you step back and watch it unfold.
By the way, I was not recommending Millar's Kick Azz. It was the first book he ever did that didn't connect with me. If you can find his parody of the Avengers in the The Authority, get it. it's funny, scary and a great read--particularly for Avengers fans.
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Post by bobc on Mar 23, 2011 10:11:23 GMT -5
I never read most of the DC stuff you mentioned, Drew. I'm a Quietly fan, too, by the way! Loved his work on The Authority--particularly the parody of the Avengers and Jack Kirby as a mad scientist. That run was the first time I took notice of my idol, Mark Millar.
I have to say something here though--I am enjoying MM much less these days now that he is no longer teamed up with Quietly or Hitch. Mediocre art can really drag a story down. Or maybe MM has been so busy promoting Kick Azz that his writing has suffered. Not sure--but something isn't "clicking" lately.
I don't bash Bendis anymore--he isn't worth the time. I have come to the conclusion that I will never comprehend how anyone could consider him a competent or interesting writer but some people love him. On another forum they did a poll asking Avengers fans if they liked or disliked Bendis' Avengers--and one recurring theme I noticed amongst the "he's GREAT" fans is that many of them said they never read the Avengers prior to Bendis' run. It is a little hard to take the pro Bendis votes seriously if the people voting have nothing to compare it to.I never read Bendis' run on Daredevil or Spiderman so I can't give an opinion, but a lot of people, when asked about his Avengers stint, cite the Daredevil and Spiderman days as proof of his talent. They seem to not grasp the fact that they are being asked about the Avengers, not the other books.
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Post by bobc on Mar 22, 2011 9:53:43 GMT -5
I forgot you did that blog! I need to bookmark that! I really enjoyed reading it the couple of times you posted links.
Drew--I think Alan Moore is one of the greatest writers ever in comics. I am not always into some of the subject matter he writes about (Tom Strong and Prometheus (sp) being examples), but even so it can't be argued that that those titles aren't well written. His run on Swamp Thing was amazing.
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Post by bobc on Mar 21, 2011 13:13:56 GMT -5
Great to "see" you again, Dl! Where have you been?
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Post by bobc on Mar 21, 2011 9:18:56 GMT -5
Drew--everyone enjoys your posts and I pretty much agree with everything you write. It makes me sad to recall stories like Secret Wars, which were many issues long, but the story was confined more or less to those pages, not 500 other comic books. The story might affect other comics, which is fine--but this whole idea of having to buy 500 titles just to grasp what's going on is crazy.
Funny you should mention that writers today have only ever read comics and watched movies--which is EXACTLY why practically nobody is writing anything worth reading, Thunderbolts and Avengers Academy being major exceptions. Back when I wanted to break into comics as a penciler, they told me that I should NOT learn how to draw by looking at comics. They told me I should learn to draw by drawing real people, real buildings, etc. and that was great, sound advice.
Alan Moore is a stellar example of an amazing writer, and he is amazing because it is obvious he draws from so many sources, from the classics to True Crime. Have you all read Top Ten? It is so impossibly fantastic that I am now reading it again for the fifth time. That book, more than any other he's done, shows what an encyclopedic cultural database he has in his mind.
All that being said, comics are just comics, but that doesn't mean they have to be mediocre. To achieve depth, you must read all kinds of things.
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Post by bobc on Mar 15, 2011 13:45:38 GMT -5
I agree, Kid. Comics have gotten too convoluted with too many tie-ins. It's just too much work, not to mention too expensive, to follow all the endless plot lines. I don't mind an occasional tie in, but it's gotten ridiculous. I can say the same thing about video games. The average person on the street thinks two or three things about video games:
1. They have become way too expensive.
2. Half the time, they stink, which makes 1. on the list that much more painful.
3. They have become so complicated that the average person feels lost and confused--which is hardly how somebody wants to feel when they are supposedly relaxing.
I have told game designers these things over and over, but they don't get it because video games are their whole lives--they do not understand the average Joe on the street. Then suddenly Facebook games like Farmville and Frontierville come along and millions of people are playing them! they are simple, you can jump in and jump out, and they cost very little. 10% of America is playing these games as XBox titles and other console games sales continue to plummet.
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Post by bobc on Mar 14, 2011 9:21:33 GMT -5
Thanks, Drew!
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Post by bobc on Mar 13, 2011 19:37:20 GMT -5
I agree Badger--I have often wondered if "disorders" like ADD and all that crap are just about kids being unable to focus because they are inundated 24/7 with stimuli. All the guys around my age at work get so fried because we have a huge workload, and on top of that we have to keep up with incessantly changing tech (which never seems to work as well as the year before), e-mails, Facebook messages, Skype messages, Messenger, blah blah blah. It is never-ending. If I miss one day at work, I could easily spend an entire additional day catching up on hundreds of useless messages. On the weekends I leave my cell phone at home and just retreat into the Texas country areas and fossil hunt. I find it really sad that when you walk down the street in Austin these days, nobody even acknowledges anybody else because they have their snouts in a cell phone or Ipad or whatever. I just read a study that kids today prefer the online world to reality--which in some ways is understandable but eventually they will have to deal with the real world.
Anyway--enough of that. Life is being life and always changing.
I read on another comic forum that the EMH will be released on DVD in April (although, apparently the leaked titles and descriptions of episodes included are inaccurate) and that new episodes of EMH will be coming out at the end of March. This information may or may not be accurate--but it supposedly came from one of the writers of EMH.
I find it astonishing that there is almost universal approval of this series amongst comics fans. People may have a slight problem with some character or episode, but overall the accolades seem almost universal. That is so rare. I will be sad if this show doesn't find an audience.
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Post by bobc on Mar 11, 2011 10:02:41 GMT -5
Yeah you guys are right--I meant the whole tech age, not just the internet. And don't forget social gaming is huge now--games like Farmville and Frontierville. I'm an old man getting close to 50, and I've witnessed the explosion in entertainment options myself since the 70's. I've been doing video games since 1996--and back then virtually every developer had lots of Marvel statues/action figures in their cubicles or offices, along with figurines of movie characters like the guy from The Evil Dead or Star Wars, that kind of thing. Today I look around and see virtually no Marvel characters--they have been replaced by video game characters like Mario, or random strange monsters that I never heard of.
Anyway, I saw a blog a while back that said Marvel's super heroes were great back in the 60's/70's/80's--but now they are like Tom Cruise or Hugh Grant. Played out, basically. That idea is what spurred my wondering if super heroes are becoming obsolete. Maybe you just get to a point where there is nothing left to say about a character, so the writing gets increasingly erratic, trying to find an audience.
Man I am way too cynical for a Friday. BUT I LOVE THIS CARTOON!
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Post by bobc on Mar 10, 2011 11:25:06 GMT -5
As I've said before, whenever I talk to kids today (by kid I mean in the 10-13 age range)I usually ask them what super hero is their favorite--and most of the time they don't have one, or it is someone obvious like Batman. In the 90's however, I always got an answer, usually Spiderman or Wolverine. So it seems like with the advent of the internet has caused a major sea change somehow. Are super heroes obsolete? Seems like kids don't relate much to the concept anymore. They go to see the live action films with their parents but kids don't seem to really latch on to the characters anymore.
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Post by bobc on Mar 3, 2011 10:44:27 GMT -5
I found a blog the other day talking about this issue. All of the comments were the same--the series is amazing, but Disney is doing a pee-poor job of promoting it. I agree. This morning I saw the first ad for The Avengers in weeks--they are doing some sort of goofy promotion online where you can become an Avenger by filling out a questionnaire, and they are also hawking some new Avengers based video games. So it seems that there is some marketing going on, but it is not focused and it's not working.
Another sad point that makes putting this series across is the fact that there is so much competition. Here in Austin, the kids/family channels start in the 100's--and there are literally HUNDREDS of animated series out there. People on this forum actively seek out The Avengers because we're already fans, but I would imagine it's very difficult for kids to latch onto this series in a sea of other programs. It's really no different than the fact that there used to be just a couple of dozen comics to choose from, and now there are thousands. At some point, everyone suffers sales-wise.
If The Avengers is going to make a dent, Disney is going going to have to put some serious marketing muscle behind it. The quality is there, and the sheer dazzling variety of cool villains should be enough to keep people interested. The live action Marvel movies have been enormous hits for the most part--even the relative flops have been hits by Hollywood standards.
So what is going wrong here? Disney has moved the time The Avengers airs yet again here in Austin. That is NOT a good sign.
Drew--I feel like smashing something too. If the series gets canceled, I say we riot. If that IDIOTIC Zack and Cody's Suite Life goes on, and the Avengers does not, there is going to be big trouble...
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Post by bobc on Mar 2, 2011 15:10:47 GMT -5
I have a really bad feeling about this...
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Post by bobc on Mar 2, 2011 12:50:15 GMT -5
Why are there no new episodes? I'm getting upset...
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Post by bobc on Feb 23, 2011 10:11:52 GMT -5
I know I'm late on this thread--but I honestly think Avengers Academy is the best book Marvel is putting out these days. I re-read a couple of issues last night and the writing and art is top notch. I actually care about the characters and I love the way the kids have their own little world going on behind the backs of the adults. That's how kids really are! Avengers Academy and Thunderbolts are the only books Marvel is doing right now that I find enjoyable.
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Post by bobc on Feb 14, 2011 8:33:37 GMT -5
"Unafraid of feminine reprisals" LOL!! I watched the Avengers with IMPUNITY on Sunday, BABY!
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