Marvel Comics blabbery

Mark Gruenwald's anniversary issue of Captain America (350?) is the greatest. It's like the best piece of comic book hackwork ever.

Speaking of hackwork, Nick Spencer has turned into a terrible writer! Lousy overextended dialogue on every page.

xp yeah, it's a blast. steve rogers vs john walker! the red skull returns in a cloned captain america body! gruenwald's stories sure ran at a hell of a clip

xpost Aw, I was about to say that just about the only thing this nutzoid idea had going for it was Nick Spencer. I've really enjoyed everything I've read of his (through I guess like late 2014?).

Yeah, he's been better. Blame the editor, perhaps?

It's funny, I was just thinking the other day when DC's Rebirth revelations leaked that Marvel, despite sweeping changes across their books, haven't made a change yet that I can remember pissing off a sizeable portion of their audience in the way that DC has become infamous for, but this might be the one depending on the execution.

Retconning the Spider-Man marriage would probably count here

Ohhhhh yeah. Good call on that one.

That time they let Jeph Loeb wreck the ultimate universe

This issue also introduces us to a new generation of Hydra fighters, who resemble ISIS and white supremacist organizations. What were your influences there?

That’s exactly right. Those are the two things that are being conflated here to some extent. The Red Skull obviously has a lot of experience with fascism and Nazism and white supremacy movements. What we’re seeing here is an adoption of modern-day terror tactics. For me, those were an interesting couple of components to put together. What we see throughout the world right now is that these kinds of movements are heavily resurgent and seeing record-breaking recruitment numbers. So some of this is trying to be a little forward-thinking in picturing what the world might look like if these kinds of organizations decide to adopt these kinds of tactics.

As a Spiderman reading guy for over a decade there was all the shit with Aunt May being dead or not; Peter Parker finding out he was a clone, hitting his wife with a mighty punch, teaming up with Jackal and poisoning people; Green Goblin getting Gwen Stacy pregnant. Stopped reading not long after the last example (but I was mostly going off the superhero genre).

But if I was a young fan when Dr Octopus taken over Parker's body, I fear how I might have acted online, because that sounded incredibly vulgar and stupid. I know I would have been mad as hell.

it worked out pretty well, though!

still kind of amazed how that changed the spider-man status quo considerably and wasn't followed up by a swift reset

The idea sounded stupid for sure, and I'm not the world's biggest Slott fan, but Superior Spider-Man was decent. Mostly because the concept wasn't "now Spider-Man is evil" but rather "now Dr. Octopus is feeding his ego by trying to be an even more effective version of Spider-Man".

I felt kind of bad for Otto at the end!

I've been filled in about it, something like Parker acting as a ghostly Jiminy Cricket, Octopus becoming a good person and I'm still pretty sure I would have hated it.

Never liked Otto much.

Basically he copied his mind into Peter's and vice versa, but he needed Peter's memories in order to take over his life, so Peter's not really gone. A little Jiminy Cricket-ish, but not irritatingly so.

Otto as Spider-Man isn't really a "good person," he's still a narcissist and has what amounts to a Spider-Militia on call. But what he does do is really throw all of his potential into creating Parker Industries, which is something Peter could have done but never really had the confidence to do.

But if I was a young fan when Dr Octopus taken over Parker's body, I fear how I might have acted online

I was thinking about the late 80s Dr Fate comic - Doctor Fate went from being a man, to being a man/woman hybrid, to being a woman, to being a man, then a woman, etc.

Maybe I read the wrong publications (and admittedly it was a C-list title) but I don't remember the gender swap being an issue. Right-wing nerd whining about gender/race issues seems like a very 2000-2010s thing - at least, the internet has broadened its reach from nut fringe to not-at-all-fringe.

Where does Spider-Man's radioactive sperm fit in all of this?

deep in the fallopian tubes iirc

Right-wing nerd whining about gender/race issues seems like a very 2000-2010s thing - at least, the internet has broadened its reach from nut fringe to not-at-all-fringe.

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, May 27, 2016 9:38 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the only appropriate response to this recent hue and cry is for the creative community to do whatever they can to induce mass MRA aneurysms all the time.

I support this strategy

Yeah I am now completely behind the Captain Nazi plot twist after seeing all the entitled online whining

So many people are saying it's an insult to Jewish Kirby & Simon but I never thought Hydra were supposed to be Nazis, aren't they more like communists inspired by Russia and China?

http://i.imgur.com/CeCfOzS.png

I love the first appearance of Hydra where their leader has a giant rotary dial on his wall with pictures of animals on it. did anyone ever bring this concept back in later years?

Hydra first appeared in Strange Tales #135. In its original continuity, it was headed by nondescript businessman Arnold Brown, who was killed as S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently crushed the organization. Hydra soon returned, however, headed by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, with the support of the Nazi Red Skull; Hydra's changing origin was one of Marvel's earliest retcons. After its initial defeat, several of its branches, such as its scientific branch A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) and the Secret Empire, became independent.

so yeah, the very second appearance has HYDRA linked the the Red Skull and Strucker, both nazis

dial h for hydra naval action sea dragons look like some grant morrison shit for sure

nice beaver

the big hydra wheel is kind of like the round table of Hickman's Secret Warriors run that connects it to the ancient SHIELD series he did. it's star signs instead of animals, though.

I really hope it was an homage to the animal wheel

Dear Brian Michael Bendis, it's clear that you do layouts for the comics you write, which is cool and all but please listen when I tell you: these two page layouts you do are always confusing. Always. When a panel on the left-hand page ends at the gutter, the reader's natural inclination is to move to the panel below it on the same page, not the adjacent panel on the right-hand page. Please stop doing that because there's no reason to do that. Thanks!

You could stop reading Bendis comics?

I don't think I can. He completes me.

The guided view on the Marvel app is made for Bendis. Suddenly all the micropanels make sense and the bad page geography disappears.

Oh god, Bendis two pagers. One of his books has six of them. IN A ROW.

I've gotten used to hunting a bit for the reading order. I'm more annoyed that he abuses spreads for stuff that doesn't particularly benefit from it.

I've come to the conclusion that I hate reading Bendis

This is tangential but I wanna ask: Who among you still buys individual floppies on a monthly basis? And why?

i do! i hate hate hate reading comics on a screen and i like the weekly comic book store ritual.

i don't really buy marvel or dc books on a consistent basis though because i have learned my lesson (over and over again)

I got used to screen reading and ran out of shelf space. After i filled seven bookshelves, I am now on new book lockdown.
I more or less NEVER enjoyed the weekly ritual of going to the store; always feel silently judged by the behind the counter guy. Probably just me.

I don't buy anything regularly but what I do buy is floppies or trade paperbacks

i got an "excellent choice" today in re: new shigeru mizuki kitaro collection /basks in forbidden planet employee approval

i can understand buying trades, i have a harder time understanding buying floppies (especially if they're from DC/Image/Marvel). Resale value is basically nil and you run the chance of missing an issue and having an incomplete story... plus the little buggers are hard to store!

I make an effort to pick up the occasional stack of issues when it's a low-selling series I want to make sure they'll be interested in collecting

Man, Civil War II is awful.

Nothing makes sense, the 'moral argument' is ludicrous, not a single memorable line or drawing. Just pure unrelenting Bendesque dullness.

How is the repro on the new Shang Chi omnibus?

I buy floppies because I like the medium. They are digestible in 5-10 min and easy enough to throw into longboxes.

when i hit thirty longboxes, i migrated everything to bookshelves. the pokemon collector in me gets obsessive about full runs and that way lies madness and poverty. Trades saved my soul.

would any of y'all want a fancy wooden longbox, or would you feel weird paying more for your box than the comics inside it?

i've known at least one guy who used full longboxes as a boxspring for his mattress.