Marvel Comics blabbery

No, I'm looking forward to it as well; it's bound to be better than most of the post-Secret Wars books I've been reading

(btw in case you were wondering, almost every X-Men book I can think of is now irredeemably terrible)

Vision book has an interesting premise but I find that in practice, I don't give a single, solitary shit about a solo Vision story

I'm finding it kind of interesting but so far it's domestic drama... with robots
...and now, witchcraft?

X-Men titles seem equally split between "let's rally the troops" and "mysterious forces are making us inferior merchandising property to the Inhumans"

The Cullen Bunn one that seems like a rehashed X-Force (X-Men assault squad) seems like it could be interesting but again, it's all action to start things off

the best post-SW title I picked up was the Karnak title, but it sounds like the artist has had some family problems and it's delayed

I'm still working my way through the Secret Wars pre-preamble. Thoroughly expect to read the first issue sometime in the next year or two.

Fun fact (which I don't remember how I discovered): there were more Secret Wars crossover issues than the total issues put out under the New Universe banner. And I think more than 2099, as well, but I'd have to double check that. At any rate, the volume surpassed a couple of multi-year, multi-title lines.

The only thing about Uncanny X-Men that I find "interesting" is the inclusion of M on the murder squad. I'm kind of done with the Psylocke/Archangel treadmill, good Sabretooth is basically indistinguishable from Wolverine, and Magneto being Magneto only less logical isn't a draw.

On the plus side, there are some hilarious Greg Land splash pages in there.

Someone needs to leave an enticing trail of skin mags and lightboxes that lead into a deep hole where Greg Land can live out the rest of his days.

oh, so has marvel reality been reconstituted?

Yeah, as of a couple months ago.

anybody wanna give me a capsule explanation? I've been reading on marvel unlimited and it's hard to follow .... or more accurately, hard to care about.

titles in the reconstituted reality have been shipping for a while

how the reality got reconstituted, that's yet to be seen

yeah I assume we find that out tomorrow

here's the dumb spoilers version of Secret War
~do not read if you really care, but the Hickman unraveling of it has been somewhat interesting~

- Doom and the Molecule Man, accompanied by Dr. Strange, bombed the Beyonders with a box full of Molecule Men they saved. They'd been killing them across all the realities after MM revealed he was a singular being with one body in each reality, and was basically a reboot bomb that would destroy them all at once. Doom had created a cult that was doing his bidding over decades, as the Beyonders have a grasp on everything except for time, which Doom could manipulate. Some of Doom's cult became heretics like the Black Swan character that showed up a couple years (?) back. They ended up unwittingly helping the Beyonders in their new plot to smash universes together.

- Following the destruction of everything (survived by two life rafts: one containing 616 Reed Richards and friends, another containing Ultimate Reed Richards and the remains of the Cabal) Doom pulled together remaining pieces of everything into his own world. He's God, Strange is his right hand man, an army of Thors is his police force. Sue, Franklin, and Val from two (maybe three) realities are his family. Castle Doom sits on top of Yggdrasil, the world tree. There's a wall surrounding much of the world to keep out the annihilation horde and zombies. There are different Houses, led by assorted characters, governing the different states of Battleworld.

- The life rafts open, Doom's deception is starting to show, rally the troops, etc etc. Eight years passed in Battleworld while the people in the rafts only experienced a couple days. Strange confronts Doom, gets killed.

- Not so secret: a handful of characters find out about a room below Doomstadt and figure out the Molecule Man is still there.

~end spoilers

Favorite moment: Molecule Man keeps complaining about being hungry, eats a hamburger

i haven't read an issue in months and none of those were spoilers to me which means... nothing has happened since like august??

what a load of nonsense

The main things that haven't been fully realized but will probably be integral are:
- Strange left a care package for anyone who knew the secret Illuminati password in case anything were to happen to him, and Black Panther/Namor found it
- Battleworld had no sun, until Doom got into it with Johnny Storm and exiled him to the sky. The sun's still shining on Battleworld for the minute.

it's a ridiculous Marvel comics event with all possible characters, of course it's complete nonsense!

at least now we get a Dr. Strange comic drawn by Chris Bachalo

ooh that is good news

other good SW moment: Doom and Thanos doing all kinds of posturing about who is a better god

i had the same experience as mordy
i appreciate the help condensing it there though mh

I wasn't sure how many spoilers you guys wanted or how much plot summary was needed.

Since August it's only been issues 6/7/8, but 7/8 really are kind of a single split issue, and were mainly about troop rallying and the initial assault on Doom. There's a side story with an imprisoned Thanos finding out what happened to Ben Grimm, Val starts to figure things out, and Ultimate universe Reed acts shady, as usual

now I feel like I write for avclub, let me go wash my hands

it's genuinely useful!

Judging by the summary, it sounds like Marvel is doing what DC did 30 years ago with CoIE, conflating their multiverse into just one universe? If that's the case, I don't get it, and I never understood why DC did it either, because their multiverses are such a great source for story ideas and a testing ground for new concepts.

Thankfully these days the only Marvel comics I'm reading are fringe titles like Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl, which are not that much tied into all this craziness. (There was a tie-in Ms. Marvel, but all you needed to know to get it was that the world was about to end.) I'm still bitter about how Marvel pretty much ruined Avengers Academy by continuously mixing it into various line-wide events, even though it would've been great as a stand-alone title. Let's just hope the same won't happen to these too...

And I'm not saying Secret Wars might not be a good story, but I don't have the time or the money to read all these loads of comics you need to get it. (According to Internet sources you need to read to read 3 years of worth two Avengers titles by Hickman before this story to fully understand it?) I tried to do that with the Bendis crossovers of the previous, but after diminishing returns it just wasn't worth the effort.

For a while it was cool to follow the cosmic Marvel corner, because their crossovers were limited to two titles and some one-shots all written by Abnett & Lanning, so it was manageable and coherent. But that line ended with Thanos Imperative (which was actually as awesome and definite an conclusion as you're ever gonna get for a superhero title), and after that Guardians of Galaxy was given the typically mediocre Bendis treatment, so I decided I'm not gonna read Marvel titles that are heavily tied into 10 other titles, I just can't be arsed.

"you need to read 3 years worth of two Avengers titles"

You do need to read three years' worth of two Avengers titles, but they *are* really good comics, so it's worth it, even if it takes a while. It's easily the best crossover I've read since Invasion!, way way back, which is what got me into superhero comics in the first place.

The only disappointing loose end [spoiler] was the central Cap vs. Iron Man conflict being resolved so weakly at the end of the Avengers run. And Infinity was a bunch of wank, really.

I'm glad Marvel have stood their ground against the fanboy moaners and kept the same artist in spite of the delays. It *has* dissipated the momentum, but you know, who gives tbh.

Out of the new titles, Iron Man, Totally Awesome Hulk and Captain America are surprising highlights; Thor continues to be great; Ms Marvel continues to run out of steam; Dr Strange and Waid's Avengers started weak but have promise; everything by Soule and Lemire is dull as shit.

Granted, I'm still about a year's worth of material away from Secret Invasion, but it seems pretty clear that Hickman's Avengers titles were intended from the start as a preamble for something much much bigger. So I guess it's worth thinking of his Avengers run less as a perfunctory chore in the lead-up to Secret Wars than the opening chapters of a long story which ends with Secret Wars.

The new Devil Dinosaur series is pretty good and I like Weirdworld a lot.

Right now, my favorite Marvel book is Doctor Strange

of course it is

only spoiler for today I will share is that the multiverse is still a thing ;)

have to say I share Tuomas's distaste for these UNIVERSE_SHATTERING-CONTINUITY-RESETTING-EVENTS but it seems like it's the only thing Marvel and DC can think of to do at this point, constant crises = sales + branding consistency, but it makes for shitty comics imo

the thing is that they generally maintain for a decade or so in-between. short of starting over and heightening the stakes, after ten years of in-depth life with one character who can shoot lasers out of their eyes, what else do you do?

create new characters

easy peasy

they've tried that too...
http://www.multiversitycomics.com/columns/return-of-the-return-of-the-1993-marvel-annuals/
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/3/36267/729107-25143_20060601140205_large.jpg

I mean Alan Moore's got a lot of crazy opinions but he is absolutely correct about the Big Two's creatively bankrupt/entirely financially motivated interest in just exploiting their existing properties rather than encouraging the development of new ones. Kirby didn't draw Fantastic Four for 50 years, he moved on and made up new shit, as was pretty much the case with every comics creator for decades. But now we just get reiterations and recreations of the same old shit, just shuffled around and reconstituted in the most confusing money-grubbing manner possible.

cool

the alternative is that you get a good writer/artist team and pay them well and let them have creative control of their book and then build numbers so you have a legit following, a'la hawkeye, captain marvel, squirrel girl but that's not a long term solution and not good for the company. what team in their right mind would stay on a single book for a decade at the height of their creative peak when they don't own the characters? the few that are capable eventually become industries unto themselves and merge, borg-like with the company (bendis, byrne)

essentially, i think it's intractable and that the superhero universes will need to go through these weird entropic cycles for the rest of our lives.

short of starting over and heightening the stakes

tbh I preferred the direction DC were moving towards in the 80s with a kind of legacy/passing of the torch thing for major characters - the mantle of Flash being passed from Barry Allen to Wally West etc. You could still have the same basic premise and characteristics, but things could change or shift over time. But they long ago abandoned that tack, it's kinda too late to go back to something like that.

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the only universal alternative these days appears to be emulation of the post grim'n'gritty Miller years... the 'more things in heaven and earth' philosophy founded by moore and filed to a razor by morrison wherein we never really understood these myths in a meaningful way to begin with, I WILL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND

perhaps not so strangely, my fave hero books are regressing back to sheldon meyer principles of slapstick, encyclopedia brown mysteries and character development. a "comics ARE for kids" comeback is one I'd welcome.

your suggestion of "torch passing" is being emulated in the xmen movie franchise and will likely make a serious comeback when the current avengers roster outdates their characters in 2022 or sooner. RDJ is in amazing shape for a fifty year old, but they're not gonna have a sixty year old iron man.

haha yeah that's true about the films, I wonder if that's gonna turn into a tale-wagging-the-dog kinda situation where the necessities of filmmaking impact the comics.

my fave hero books are regressing back to sheldon meyer principles of slapstick, encyclopedia brown mysteries and character development. a "comics ARE for kids" comeback is one I'd welcome

I'm totally in favor of this

Shakes, a lot of your complaints seem to suggest that you haven't actually read any Marvel comics in a while. There is, for example, a whole lot of torch-passing going on of late.

young avengers and whatnot

xpostSheldon Mayer, not Meyer

I definitely recall Alan Moore saying, in the late 1980s, how he wished superhero writers wld look to C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel for inspiration, rather than Watchmen or Dark Knight

that is true I gave up quite awhile ago. I flip through things on the shelf sometimes but the only floppies I buy are for my daughter (who mostly prefers DC's kids' comics as far as superheroes go) and um GI Joe vs. Transformers, which is incredible.

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