Marvel Comics blabbery

I too would love a Kyle Baker Luke Cage

If this is your kind of thing, the collected Steranko SHIELD is on sale for £3 on the Marvel app. It's about 500 pages.

I've been reading late '00s Spider-Man, likely because I have a deep-seated self-loathing I'm trying to work through and reading questionable comics is how it's playing out.

I started out right before "One More Day." It's really as bad as everyone said it was! The partial retcon definitely helped, although it's still very clumsy in execution. It divided the two events that the plot encapsulated into more-digestible bits, at least.

The multiple issues per month deal was sloppy in that it kept the number of plots and variability of quality that you'd get across multiple Spider-Man series, but all under the banner of Amazing Spider-Man. You still end up feeling like there's a main title and some interesting side stories, but they end up being neatly divided between "written by Dan Slott" and "some other stuff."

The integration between Spider-Man and the two (!) teams he's on is decent, but still a little sloppy. You no longer end up asking "if the Sinister Six (or however many villains there are this week) are so powerful and they're in New York, then how come the Avengers don't help out?". It also gives Slott the chance to do a couple FF stories during Hickman's run, and you end up with some fun stories that are less about the plots-within-plots and more about Spidey playing off of the Richards family.

I really liked Superior Spider-Man! I'm sure the new status quo is starting to show some wear, but having Doc Ock take over was the world's longest shortcut to pushing Peter into being a more developed human being. Him being a scientist only because he had to sell out to Tony Stark via the Civil War shenanigans just never felt right, and now he has an actual job instead of decades of bouncing between photography and teaching gigs. He's turned into a little too much of an Iron Man-lite version now, though.

I remember some decent Waid/Marcos Martn stories in that period.

Feel like he's much more interesting as a photographer than a scientist.

agreed, those were some of the better stories!

imo having him do science stuff is good, him being really successful is probably bad

there's also the weird anachronism of him showing up to the office with the classic "check out these pictures!" and "can we make the evening edition" style banter that continues on way too far into this century when absolutely no news room operates like that and I have no idea why he isn't uploading his pictures and while editions are important, newspapers upload shit all the time

Slott himself seems only half-sold on the Parker Industries thing at first. there's at least one "spider-mobile!" joke per issue for six months

I've recently started catching up slowly on some of the Marvel books from the last few years. Are they publishing anything else these days as focused and idiosyncratic as Tom King's Vision?

Karnak had a shot, but artist issues and disastrously blown deadlines kind of derailed that.

Karnak is nearly far enough behind that Marvel Unlimited will have all the released issues by the time the next is out

it's only up to issue three right? first two were real good.

I think I'm cautiously optimistic about Mariko Tamaki's take on Jennifer Walters; I don't know how well Tamaki's strengths will carry over to superhero comics, or how much of a free hand editorial will give her, but she's always been deft at character studies.

Karnak's up to #4 (came out in mid-May). Theoretically #5 is out this week.

Mariko Tamaki's doing She-Hulk?! This is excellent news!

I'll rep for the current Moon Knight series. Half a dozen issues in and I genuinely don't know whether the lead character has just had a breakdown and is imagining it all.

Got to say that Luke Cage trailer looks cool on Netflix.

Re: my previous post about Genddy Tartakofsky's Cage!...

I'll personally wait on dropping the otm-bombs until we have more than one dialogue- and context-free page of art upon which to judge.

After reading the first issue, I'm comfortable proclaiming that this is an indefensible piece of shit on pretty much every level. Even more racist than the previous dialogue- and context-free page of art would suggest, a pathetic 'story' that barely hangs together, shitty dialogue, no characterization. I thought at least the art/design would offset any other subpar elements but even that's no great shakes. I'm surprised Marvel actually put this out, and especially surprised that they timed its release so poorly as to coincide with a much better show that'll probably send people to the comic shop in search of further Cage material. Avoid!

Also, it's completely incidental that this is a Luke Cage book or that it's set in the Marvel U at all. This could've been any random-ass character.

it's shitty, yes.

And there's ample evidence on this board to suggest that I'm as big a Marvel apologist as it gets. Like, I can't think of anything Marvel that I've read from the past, I dunno, 5-10 years that I personally would call outright shitty. But this was outright shitty.

I mean, I do understand "don't judge a book by its cover" but we were actually given some severely offensive contents to peruse, I don't know how much benefit of the doubt was actually necessary here.

Agreed. If I was a fan of the show and saw this, it might put me off comics entirely.

I hadn't heard about the writer of Mockingbird being chased off of Twitter because of an MRA-baiting feminist joke on the cover of the series finale but this just more intensely fuels my belief that every Marvel comic should be an overt celebration of everything scared little man-babies wet their regressive widdle drawers over. The Scarlet Witch proclaimed 'no more hetero white dudes' and, lo, many neckbeards were drenched with tears on that day.

otm

I enjoyed the Mockingbird run quite a bit and read a few articles about the writer, with whom I wasn't familiar, before all this harassment bullshit. I might check it out now, so... hey

Vision was the best series since Superior Foes of Spider-Man. Almost makes up for how much utter crap they've been publishing since Secret War.

Ack! I know. I'm putting off the last issue as I don't want it to be over.

i'm starting to wonder what it might say about me that comic books and videogames, two of my favourite things, attract fans who are regularly so fucking vile

brb gonna get into classic literature, crochet and gardening

vision ends well btw

Any medium/genre that appeals to a multitude of age groups is going to unfortunately attract some people with arrested development. But a whimpering fanboy who wishes that dumb girls understood they're not welcome in his cloistered superhero clubhouse are ultimately no different than the dude with Truck Nutz on his pickup who longs for the halcyon days of the '50s when those gays didn't use their mental powers to make unsuspecting hetero folks think of ding dongs rubbing together all the time. The world moves on, some people have difficulty with that, and the worst among them lash out in confusion and fear. It maybe just seems more pronounced in a smaller community. But, yeah, there's a reason why 99% of my comics discussion and celebration has been relegated to very particular online haunts.

Feel like the whole bro/neckbeard culture never made it to the UK, but I could be deluding myself. It's not like we don't have a very conservative culture (obviously), they just aren't very interested in comics or computer games, except from the "ban this sick filth" angle.

Actually, I know next-to-nothing about computer games, so have no idea on that front. And Milo is British, isn't he? So never mind.

xxp true, and clearly the ability to organise like-minded people via social media has made it easier for hateful bags of shit to find each other and conduct harassment campaigns.

i guess maybe (although i fucking hope not) the same witch-hunts against 'sjws' are happening in the online classic literature / crochet / gardening communities too but i'm much more likely to be aware of campaigns by comic book and videogame fans because i pay them more attention.

and yeah, thank god for the relative sanity of ilx when it comes to talking about this stuff because there are so many shitty, horrible forums out there that are unfathomably popular

xxpost To be fair, I had pretty much zero offline exposure to those types in the US but, to be even fairer, my offline exposure to other comics fans is just a few ticks north of zero.

chuck, bro culture might be less of a thing here in the uk but, assuming by 'neckbeard' you mean the redpill/mra mindset, that's definitely and unfortunately an international phenomenon. thanks internet :(

Ah - oh well. I keep thinking everyone else is like ILX and Camden Mega City.

Gonna buy my protest Mockingbird anyway - was actually waiting for the collection. First ish was surprisingly good but felt like it'd read better together.

This is a treacherous thought to entertain but -- I feel like the DC milieu is just a wee bit more nourishing a Petri dish to your mra gamergate swarmer than the marvel milieu. There's something baked right into the characters of superman and (modern) batman that feeds it...

My gf was aware of the furor because she reads, like, actual books or whatever, and Chelsea Cain is apparently another one of those legitimate book writin' people who've taken a stab at comics of late. Sadly, she's probably learned her lesson on that front.

Jon, I don't think that's an unfair assertion at all. Although they admittedly still have work to do, Marvel has made serious strides at diversifying both their creative staff and their character pool in recent years. DC wouldn't let Batgirl get married, and generally still seems to be putting out a lot of regressive stuff (to say nothing of the behind the scenes culture, like the shit that was allowed to go down in the Superman office).

yeah, it feels correct to me, jon - marvel are at least making an effort, miles morales has definitely become a beloved character in spite of the questionable objections people raised at the time of his debut, but they're also publishing the fairly indefensible tartakovsky luke cage book...

It's a big tent!

I would've loved to be a fly on the wall during the discussions about whether or not to release that new Cage book. I don't think Tartakovsky's involvement on its own was enough to justify it even from a business standpoint, so I have no idea what they were thinking but it stands out pretty starkly in relation to the direction in which they've been heading.

i guess it's probably instructive that marvel seem to be working to build a more inclusive cast of high-profile characters while dc have worked to roll back new versions of established heroes in favour of reinstalling hal jordan, barry allen et al

I am curious as to whether there's more going on there than just the enormous batsignal you send up by making Geoff Jones the Chief Creative Officer.

I'm curious to see if DC gets any kind of shakeup if AT&T does ultimately wind up buying WB.

what's up with people who have the worst creative direction ideas having names that are atypical variations on "Jeff"

going to apply for a job in comics, my name is... Joephh

i don't think it's entirely a regime thing, though DiDio and his shitty ethos have been in place far far longer than I expected. The bedrock of modern DC is this this self-pitying neo-nietszschean humorless trip which is always gonna be ambrosia to a certain kind of asshole

assbrosia if u will

my name is jerf please let me direct tv show

BREAKING: DC NAMES NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/gameofthrones/images/4/4c/JoffreyBaratheon-Profile.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20160626094917

My name is J'eehpf, English is sixth language and have traumatic head trauma impairing plot- and character-formation centers of brain, I would like to run your universe.

A few years back Chris Sims (and IIRC others with an even more strident tone?) made the case that part of the problem is DC's hangups about its "legacy heroes" - who, being created during and before WWII are almost all white. So the urge to reach back to classic versions, and the primary pantheon itself, end up kind of accidentally being all-white: http://comicsalliance.com/the-racial-politics-of-regressive-storytelling/

I would push that a lot further though - the urge to go back to a putative golden age of heroic clarity is reactionary on its face, and in America, the "good old days" narrative only makes sense for a certain reactionary slice of the white audience. I'm thinking of "Make America Great Again," but also that viral comic strip where people get excited about traveling back in time to different periods, and the one member of a racial minority ultimately has to point out to these bozos that none of the periods they want to go back to look particularly fun for him. So there's this sense with DC that there's a great enduring canonical past where Heroes Were Heroes, and all changes after a certain date are just disposable products of temporary Crises awaiting the next reboot to the 'classic' status quo, the "real" versions. It's a narrative that basically invokes an all-white, pre-liberal-meddling golden age even before you look up the character sheets and find out that indeed that is exactly what it is.

Marvel is definitely NOT without versions of this problem, and the new Cage comic stands as Exhibit A that there is something really fucked up in their editorial culture/practices, that that could seem normal and just slip on through. But I do think there's something important to Sims's point about the chronology of character creation - there are all these really popular characters with decades of established material whose "real" versions are minorities - there is no white Storm to reboot the character to. And that's even before you get into more recent variants of legacy characters (e.g. Miles Morales) that have managed to 'stick' so far, at least in some capacity.