Marvel Comics blabbery

The worthiness of a given crossover can often be measured in part by how familiar you are with the characters/situations presented therein. There are several decent X-Men crossovers that may not do much for you if you haven't read a year or so ahead of when the crossover started.

The best crossover from recent years (and one that doesn't require much of a new reader) is Annihilation. The Infinity stuff doesn't really even provide much of a preamble to it. It's pretty easy to just jump right in.

kind of - since it was all on MU anyway, i did find the preceding Marvel: The End and Thanos series that preceded Annihilation to be worthwhile

really loved the mutant massacre

idk where to put this (there's no Bronze Age Marvel or Superhero Spanking threads) so um yeah:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iN6RbCdaO_s/VPiE1ySuYLI/AAAAAAABIPE/XJCG_YRlnXc/s1600/MarvelTwo-in-One062-11.jpg

I died a little laughing at this:

http://www.frequency.com/video/staying-positive-in-apocalypse-pilot/208508354?cid=5-47

More directly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV54wy_IBVg

So I'm apparently going all-in on Secret Wars and its 25,847 crossover issues. In case you were wondering who'd be dumb enough to do that.

post here.

Make a thread like Aldo's 52 excursion.

that video is pretty great btw

The best thing about DC this week has been the last issues of a lot of books, and stories actually ENDING.

I'm a few years behind on Marvel stuff so I've put my silver age marathon on pause (up to '71 currently) to catch up on material that seems like it might be germane to Secret Wars. Having only read a little of Hickman's Secret Warriors and Fantastic Four before, my current deep plunge into that material has been overwhelming. I don't know if it's going to ultimately add up to anything or how long it's going to take to get there if it does, but every one of these issues is a massive info dump of new concepts and new characters and new timelines and locations. Pretty much the polar opposite of the decompressed style that was so in vogue just a few years prior. I can see where it might've been kind of a confusing slog to keep up with on a monthly basis, but it's been thrilling to read through a couple years' worth of this over a handful of days. Feel like that dude's home must be plastered floor to ceiling with notes and maps and strings connecting this map to that note. Depending on how adroitly he's been able to play the long game, I have a degree of faith that he'll be able to make Secret Wars Mk 2 an interesting failure at the very least.

I'm actually quite excited to read it.

Yeah, me too, despite being out of the modern day Marvel loop for a while. It feels more like a proper EVENT than the crossovers they've gotten in the habit of tossing out every few months. It's sparking a bit of the excitement I got from tracking down new Infinity Gauntlet installments back in the day, which is the thing that began my Zombification in earnest.

I'm going to read it just in hopes of it starting out with a recap of what the hell's been happening in the Avengers titles for the last 2 years, because I'm pretty much lost.

I initially thought I'd just cover a little bit of the preamble by reading the Time Runs Out stuff but then I made the mistake of reading hints and allegations that Hickman has been planting these seeds for years and I appear to have fallen down a rabbit hole where I've deluded myself into thinking I can read the last half decade of Marvel's output in the next couple of weeks. Because that's my brain for ya.

Nothing is directly tied to the Council of Reeds that he did back in FF, but there's definitely a line of continuity from those days to now

the only prepping i've done is Hickman's New Avengers + Avengers runs and i feel totally prepared. overprepared even.

The Avengers' insane plottiness makes it seem like Hickman is constituionally incapable of doing character work or jokes, but there's a lot of sweet-natured character stuff in his Fantastic Four. I wonder why he seems to have intentionally subsumed that aspect this time 'round (not that I don't enjoy the insane plottiness). I need an Anhillus on the crapper moment.

Started the Hickman Avengers - it's really nice art but the fight scenes are all completely incoherent. Totes impressed they could sell this to people issue by issue when half are just introducing a new character so far (through 8-9).

One of my Secret Wars solicitations this month is "Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos." Basically rolling dice on ordering that.

do it, what the hell

I don't know if this is a useful metric but, while I probably would not usually have purchased a comic called Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos, I will be purchasing (and I guess I technically have already purchased) a comic called Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos because it will also have the words "Secret" and "Wars" on the cover.

So, Iceman's gay then.

On the Deadpool thing, he's been married to Shiklah Queen of the Undead for about a year.

um, this seems counter to iceman's long term storyline?

Remember when he kept trying to date Opal, and his dad was furious because she was Japanese? And then, she kind of dumped him because he was never interested in her unless she was in trouble.

iceman has successfully dated zero women, iirc

An interesting post about that.

having read two pages and not the entire issue where this is a plot beat, yes, it does seem really token and dismissive

really this is about establishing his sexuality as canon before this summer where we get an adult gay Iceman who has never been interested in women being the only multiversal survivor post-Battleworld

that's weird and interesting reading AF, i'm at a loss at the suggestion that skirt-chasing bobby was just dealing with being in the closet for the past sixtyfive years but hey, whatever.

I'm a superhero comics infant, now about halfway through Infinity in the Hickman Avengers/New Avengers run and it's kind of off-putting how they'll spend five issues laying out plot and then BAM kind of incoherent resolution in the sixth issue just in time for the TPB collection.

Are the majors usually better about pacing, or is that par for the course?

I do like that Spider-Man is a bit of a dick.

Yeah, the Mrs. Deadpool thing happened a while back (tbh, I measure big events/comic time in the ridiculous high-dollar variants I was able to sell on Ebay).

At least with most of the Secret Wars titles there's something I can connect to, but is Mrs. Deadpool going to sell the same as Deadpool? Nah. I wound up just matching that title to my lowest Secret Wars titles.

Reading the Hickman comics does give me hope that Secret Wars is going to be much less of a disaster than Convergence, but that doesn't take much.

"Are the majors usually better about pacing, or is that par for the course?"

I don't know that there are any super hero comics going now that really excellent examples of the genre. Pacing has been pretty screwed up on current comics stretching for the trade.

While there are some really good super hero comics made in the last decade or so, I do somewhat agree with the idea that the high water mark was in the 80s.

As Ed B told me once, "the writing was so much worse but the STORIES WERE SO MUCH BETTER"

Yeah, that's true. Code comics were just different, they were more like the best Saturday morning cartoons you never saw.

You don't need to fret on the logic of why the Masters of Evil were busting into the Avengers mansion to beat the crap out of them, it was just what they did and it was cool. You get too serious and it all just breaks down.

I dispute that! I mean, I read comics in a different way now to how I did when I was 12, obviously. But I still qualitatively enjoy them a lot, when they're good, and it feels like the last decade of comics was certainly better than the decade that preceded it - both of which I (just about) experienced as an adult (in purchasing power if not maturity).

Jesus fucking christ. I count 57 Secret Wars crossover issues in July's solicitations. 57.

Yup. It's a nightmare on the retail side.

At least DC, with Convergence, made the main series returnable, offered decent discount incentives on the miniseries and all the new series launching have returnability. That made ordering easy - I met my return quota and I'll be able to adjust orders for future issues after I see how those #1s do.

Marvel doesn't give a damn. Even the number to get popular variants (like the Skottie Young covers) is high, much less to hit the few discount numbers they're offering.

tbh you can charge an arm and leg for those, that is why they figure you'll buy all the issues and pump up their numbers

otoh, I had to look up who Skottie Young is because I just read the damn things and only really get into artists over a period of issues

I really think some retailers just take the number of issues to get an incentive cover, multiply it by the per-issue wholesale cost, and then throw the incentive cover on eBay at that price.

What's the appeal of those Skottie Young covers? They are like hella ugly Margaret Keane chintz

The Young covers just go for retail - it's a different kind of incentive, you have to meet or exceed the number on a prior comic.

tbh i love the skottie young covers bcz they are adorable

I don't like all the teeth. But you know, potato potato

And the 1% retailer incentive audience say potàäæÂâåto.

Finished Avengers/New Avengers past Infinity but I'm pretty burned out on it.

What's some Marvel Unlimited classic stuff I should try?

Added Simonson/Thor and the first Runaways series

Someone on the John Buscema Facebook page shared this great anecdote about Buscema's art tuition class:

So there we were, in Buscema's Workshop for Comic Book Art, at the Commodore Hotel - one day close to Christmas. Big John decided to hand out pages of original art as a gift to each of us. As he reached my seat, he was surprised to find this splash page in the stack! "I could get $50. for this one!" he exclaimed as he tried to shuffle it back to the bottom of the stack and hand me the next page down - but the next one had been heavily corrected & pieced together... Buscema paused for a moment, looked at this longingly, then shoved it at me... "What the Hell! Merry Christmas, kid!"

And this is the page:

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xta1/t31.0-8/s960x960/11406607_10207496983886091_7641302544163860037_o.jpg

wow. hell of a piece of art too!

I never had much of an appreciation for Buscema (John, anyway...I was wild about Sal back in the day) until I started reading some of his old Conan stuff and wondering how the hell I'd overlooked him before.