Marvel Comics blabbery

but yes, I was referring to the Legacy thing, although "wtf they're doing" refers to pretty much every decision

xp if by "same thing" you mean "on a continuum between sort of readable but hardly recommendable and straight garbage", i'm going to bet you're right

jacking around with numbering, limited series, event shit, anything that doesn't involve having a good idea for a comic and assigning an interesting creative team and regularly releasing issues

that's all I want, you can even switch creative teams occasionally, idgaf. I'll probably read it if it's interesting.

The perpetual event-ing of Marvel is kind of a plague atm. It's gotten increasingly out of control over the past decade and I don't see how it'll fail to negatively impact sales in the long run. Particularly when they're pulling new series into the crossover du jour within a few issues of their inception.

If you have a series only run ten issues, and two or three of those are part of some crossover, it's a wreck!

On the rare occasion they let the writer kind of work around at and the crossover only tangentially interferes with the plot but even then, I think there's the impulse when you see the little crossover banner on the cover to think "hey, I'll skip this one"

The marvel i read these days with some enjoyment is Peter Parker (pretty good so far!), All-New Guardians, Silver Surfer, most of the star wars books (darth maul, darth vader, star wars, doctor Aphra, though emphatically NOT poe dameron), Black Bolt, Squirrel Girl and Zombies Assemble.

The core Doctor Strange, Thor and Daredevil books aren't bad at the moment either.

I guess i'm also reading bendis' jessica jones/spiderman/Invincible and infamous Iron Man though all of those with some exasperation. the nick fury reboot is interesting visually. Secret empire is a pretty painful slog. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Ms Marvel are good for a fast skim. Same for the Elektra, Kingpin and Iron Fist minis that just wrapped up.

tbrr, that's not a bad capes-n-tights pile, especially in comparison to the DC's slim pickins. all the xmen and avengers books are a disaster as of late tho'.

I subscribed to Generations a little while back - on spec - just to have some new content coming into the house. Looked like some of the issues may be fun, but I'm totally prepared for it stinking.

Looks like Generations and Legacy are linked somehow (or the former will lead into the latter?): http://io9.gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-marvels-legacy-projec-1797202223

Warning for those looking to hope for something non-terrible: it looks from the article that Alex Ross has been involved.

Ross was involved in Earth X (et al), which is one of my all-time favorite Marvel things, so that's not an instant disqualifier.

I actually kind of like the fact that this won't be a typical mega-huge cataclysm to tie all the books together. I'd give it a chance, but no way in hell will I read like 30 books

I like the idea of mixing old and new, and mashing up the continuity (if that's what they're doing). I don't care about the issue numbering thing, though I understand why others do.

On the one hand, it might give Marvel pause the next time they want to restart a series at #1. On the other hand, it won't.

their two ideas: renumbering everything at #1 and renumbering everything at the old number. surely there's other possibilities out there

just... stop... renumbering

Every issue is someone's first issue, so every issue should be #1.

every issue is assigned a random number between 1 and 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

numbers to be replaced with emoji, starting with spider-man #⛺️ (coverdate nov 2017)

starting to think DJP works at Marvel

Using month/year cover dates (like magazines do), instead of issue numbers, seems like a not-entirely-terrible idea. I imagine they would never do it, though, because (among other reasons) it would highlight the disparity btw. real time and comic-book time, and make older issues sound "dated."

But it would solve this treadmill problem... "High-numbered issues are off-putting to new readers, let's start at #1" -> "This constant renumbering is silly, and the legacy numbering is meaningful to fans" -> repeat ad nasueum

I don't think it hit me until now how incredibly repetitive Marvel's gotten when it comes to certain solo character books. I've enjoyed them, but the pattern is kind of ridiculous.

- Jessica Jones has a day job as an investigator, an office she constantly has problems with making rent on
- Hawkeye (Kate, not Clint) goes to the west coast and becomes an investigator
- She-Hulk miniseries where she quits her job at a big law firm, has problems making rent at her new office, and has an investigator (Hellcat) and an assistant with secret super powers
- Spider-Woman has a day job, an assistant with a super criminal past (he has a suit that seems to give him some powers), and Ben Urich helping with investigations

At least Jessica Drew can claim to have been investigatin' since the '70s. Of course, her series also didn't stick to any particular concept, and then was cancelled :/

I liked it, in a comfort food serial television way

Also, Jessica Jones was initially intended to be Jessica Drew but got turned into a new character because Marvel didn't want Spider-Woman cursing and having anal sex, I guess.

back when they were wary of this Bendis guy messing up their property instead of handing him property to make boring

*tries to hit 'Like' button; realizes where I am*

Side complaint: did Marvel change their cover designers? Everything (layouts, font, art) looks so amateurish lately. They look like 1990s role-playing-game manuals.

really? i disagree, having casually looked at the rack recently. actually appreciating that the covers tend to reflect the content inside rather than just being generic pin-ups which felt like a problem last decade

This sort of thing. And this. Just a weird 90s-chunky sort of ugliness.

oh ok. i see what you mean

Yeah. But I do miss Marvel being good! Seemed like they were on a roll just 4-5 years ago.

ugh yeah that secret empire cover is terrible. it's not actually illegible but it might as well be.

chuck: i see it too. I think it's retro nostalgia to the target audience which i presume to be men in their thirties?

That Ironheart/Iron Man cover finally answers the pressing question "What if Rob Liefeld understood proportions and could draw feet?"

That Generations cover is a variant. The real ones are better - https://comicstore.marvel.com/Generations-2017/comics-series/97936

haha

https://twitter.com/SenatorWatcher

funny and upsetting!

Reading Jason Aaron's Wolverine run from 10 years ago (!), its good trashy fun.

I figure that those who care probably know, but hadn't seen it mentioned: The Cosmic Trippiness that Al Ewing is writing in The Ultimates 2 is totally amazing - if you like that sort of thing, then it's probably a career highlight (and I've liked-to-loved pretty much everything he's done apart from That One Book)

couldn't get into that; very metal hurlant which isn't my thing i guess

I can't really get into it. I miss Mighty Avengers tbh

The intergalactic mercenaries in Al Ewing's Rocket seemed very familiar to me, so a quick check on Wikipedia confirms that I do remember them, not as Technet, but as the Special Executive, from near the end of Alan Moore's run on Excalibur. I don't think I remember reading it at the time, but it's definitely been at least 20 years, and it's a classic Moore "all of these characters are interesting and also they as a team have a specific agenda and there's a great fight scene, and the whole thing is maybe 10 pages" - I'd consider it as part of a spanning set of "Why comics are great"

Also of course reading a wiki entry about any Marvel characters who have been around for that long is a bit like listening to a young child make up an incoherent story - shout out to the paragraph that opens "The Technet were allowed to stay in Brighton, England, where they would use their alien technology to provide the city with sunny weather."

They were later used by Claremont and Davis in their US run of the same characters; that's where I remember them from. Really loved that book as a kid!

yeah, I remember them from the Claremont/Davis years

there's something essential british about them imo, but I can't put my finger on what it is

IIRC, a couple of them had fairly OTT British speech patterns.

Do not overlook the brief period during the Alan Davis solo run on Excalibur (one of the best Marvel runs ever, btw) when the Technet lived in the lighthouse and became the N-Men under Nightcrawler's tutelage.

Looks like the Silver Sable / Felicia Hardy movie ("Silver and Black") is really happening: http://deadline.com/2017/08/silver-and-black-marvel-sony-movie-sicario-2-holmes-and-watson-bad-boys-3-release-dates-1202147448/

I've read a few of the "Generations" issues so far (Jean Grey / Phoenix and Wolverine / All-New Wolverine).

Alex Alonso apparently said, "These stories do happen, they really count. They really matter. This isn't some alternate reality story or some time-travel story." – OK, but these seem like the definition of the one-shot "time-travel story" (and not much more)

The Wolverine ish is pretty good, and genuinely touching at the end (through Tom Taylor still can't write well in Logan's voice, IMO).

Also, they seem to be violating their own "compressed timeline" rules (re: "only 13 yrs. have passed since FF #1," or whatever); but I'm not complaining about that...

Just skimmed the Secret Empire plotline (for background on the time-travel). Nutty stuff. Is the Marvel Universe "remade" every few years now? (Oh, and Black
Widow is dead? Puh-leeze...)