Marvel Comics blabbery

Blaming Geoff Johns is a good general policy in this and many other, wholly-unrelated instances.

also, here's batman shooting a "vampire"
https://i.imgur.com/TQkQjoW.png

maybe i should start a "when superheroes kill" thread

graphic murder in mainstream comics was an every issue thing in the thirties and forties, waned considerably through the fifties, mostly disappeared in the era of the comics code and then came roaring back as a grim and gritty thing throughout the 90's and 00's

yeah this sounds about right

that Superman page never fails to crack me up, Supes is so "now this is happening" about it

I can't recall a time when there were as many non-specialty titles (i.e. stuff that isn't based on a licensed property or released under a YA sub-imprint) specifically geared toward younger audiences.

totally agree with this, it's crazy the wealth of stuff that's available and perfectly suitable for my daughter that bears absolutely zero relation to the DC/Marvel/licensed characters axis

OL on the mark about the COMIX FOR KIDS onslaught, which is great! but there's still a fuckton of weirdly ultraviolent books out there where murder is the case that they give you. The Punisher's last four(?) or so volumes treat human life like kleenex.

batman versus dracula: a one panel thrill ride

http://i.imgur.com/PYQ3cgv.png

Batman Stops a Pogrom

on a slightly more modern marvel note
https://i.stack.imgur.com/ult59.jpg

bon voyage, baron blood!

Comic Panels of Superheroes Killing People

Yeah, scrolling through the books released in the year I'm just wrapping up (2017), the only stuff that stands out as particularly murdery are Punisher, the Bullseye mini (which was frankly fucking gruesome), and, well, anything with Rocket Raccoon (I neither understand nor care for this retcon of the character as utterly kill-crazy). Some Deadpool stuff, naturally, but during his time on the Avengers they tamped it down quite a bit.

allow me to introduce you to what DC did with "deathstroke"
http://i.imgur.com/9tZmy33.png

I'm trying not to.... oh hell

Remember when Jeph Loeb wrote a little story called Ultimatum and Marvel pretty much burned their Ultimate Comics line to the ground?

What else...Old Man Logan, Thanos, Carnage. I mean, you know what you're getting with most of these books that feature characters who've always been 'edgy'. You don't have to worry that you're gonna turn the page in most of the other other Marvel titles and suddenly find Marvin being graphically devoured by Wonder Dog (thanks again, Geoff).

you're right about Rocket, that's the movie to blame for that i think in that they needed a way for people to not read him as a cartoon. which i guess leads to his Bendis catchphrase:
http://i.imgur.com/M4lSKua.png

Deeply, deeply, deeply hate that catchphrase.

all the "old man" series are murderfests; here's a random panel i found in the first page of old man hawkeye i opened
http://i.imgur.com/HeG5k2L.png

The Nighthawk book was dark but kinda righteous, too (black vigilante unapologetically taking out racist white folks).

Important to recall that Millar kicked off that whole 'old man' future timeline.

yeah, he's responsible for a lot of this post-miller grim and gritty bullshit too. i'm not even gonna post the relevant JR JR Hit-Girl panels.

Marvel stuff coming out this week:

Probably some murders imo
ABSOLUTE CARNAGE #1
COSMIC GHOST RIDER DESTROYS MARVEL HISTORY #6
DEAD MAN LOGAN #10
IMMORTAL HULK #22 (in a horror comic style, though)
MAJOR X #0
OLD MAN QUILL #8
PUNISHER #14 (of course, I mean...)
STAR WARS #70 (someone's gonna get shot or lightsabered in a cantina)

probably not murdery?
AGENTS OF ATLAS #1
BLACK CAT #3
DAREDEVIL #9
HOUSE OF X #2
SAVAGE AVENGERS #4

no gratuitous deaths here, folks (hopefully, no guarantees)
CHAMPIONS #8
AERO #1
FUTURE FOUNDATION #1
INVISIBLE WOMAN #2

i will bet you a shiny nickel that house of x and savage avengers will have at least one murder

a random 2019 monthly body count of marvel vs dc vs usa would be an interesting if depressing project

I can't tell if you guys are arguing for or against my point anymore (ie whether or not Vision was an outlier - kinda doesn't look like it if there's a consensus that >50% of Marvel's monthly titles = murdery). But idk you guys read so much more of this crap than I do.

kings vision is not more murder-y than most of marvel's books but it takes murder a bit more seriously.

i think the unspoken mainstream superhero "comics code" wrt murder for the past two decades is that it's okay to show villains killing if it *furthers the plot* and it's okay for heroes to kill if the people they're killing REALLY deserve it. the murders in Vision are unwarranted and have grave repercussions as opposed to punisher just fucking killing people left and right.

That Cosmic Ghost Rider mini is basically a humorous gloss on What If afaict.

Shakes, Marvel puts out 457 titles a month, no way is that <50%.

cosmic ghost rider has been quite fun imo but, as far as this discussion goes, it takes killing people as seriously as deadpool does

>50% rather

the murders in Vision ... have grave repercussions

do they though? They appear to have grave repercussions *at first*, within the context of the story, but by the end he's escaped the consequences of actions by virtue of his wife's sacrifices... and he just starts building himself another wife. Also no one really cares that that Grim Reaper is dead cuz c'mon now. And the dead civilians fade into the background.

I was just going off the weekly list mh posted OL

xps

I'd need to reread but i recall the murders destroying vision's family, even though he's saved the universe 17 times yadda yadda yadda so they certainly proved impactful enough to dislodge a cyborg god's way of being

here's a fun recap of the house of ideas monthly hit ratio in 2017
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/2017-year-almost-everything-went-wrong-marvel-comics-1070616

i think marvel and DC put out about 50 to 60 single issue titles a month? maybe more? it's got to be an unprecedented glut at the moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_Marvel_Comics_publications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_DC_Comics_publications

I've been sorting comics lately and (as you might imagine) have quite a number of Marvel comics. I think I have roughly the same number of boxes for stuff from the past five years as I do for maybe a decade and a half that preceded it. It's kinda ridiculous.

Humblebrag here

if one were to purchase a hard copy of every new single issue marvel book solicited for release in october (excluding reprints, knick knacks, bound editions and whatnot), it would run you about $390 plus tax. add in variant covers and you're pushing $500 a month.

It's probably more 'admission of serious illness' than 'humblebrag' but potayto potahto I guess.

I'm probably the only one who cares, but a little disappointed that the current version of Marvel Comics Presents will probably end with #9. It's been a fun book - the Soule Wolverine ongoing story is fun and I like the hidden conceit of this series - throwing characters into different real life time periods (Wolverine going through every decade since the '40s, Tony Stark in 2008, Spider-Man in 1983, etc.)

*starts reading House of X #2*

----ALERT----
--giant retcon incoming--

i have enjoyed the MCP reboot but i have enduring nostalgia for that series in general as v1 was the first book i ever had pulled from my local store

heh yeah nostalgia is probably a big draw for me too

Okay, I'm going to do a bodycount check for this week of Marvel/DC releases

may take a minute.

I think the Marvel count was lower than I expected, but I maintain that many of these titles are definitely high bodycount!

limiting this to reasonably clear on-panel murders:
Punisher #17: Punisher kills between 6 to 10 people, Ghost Rider appears to kill an additional two to five. Total body count: 8 to 15
Old Man Quill #8 - Rocket kills 2 people/aliens, Gamora kills 3 people/aliens and mangles one of them after death, Drax rips 1 person/alien in half and impales another person/alien with half of them, a group of aliens/people stomps drax to death, gladiator incinerates mantis, the guardians (in a multi-panel flashback) kill around 6 to 15 people/aliens, quill (in an iron man suit) incinerates an imperial guard's head. Total body count: 16 to 25
Absolute Carnage #1 - Mass grave with dozens of bodies unearthed, about a dozen people infected and presumably killed by carnage with a burrowing symbiote. Let's call it 12 dead with an asterisk?
Aero #2 - nobody gets murdered
Star Wars #70 - nobody gets murdered
House of X #2 - 10 to 12 scientists are killed by the brotherhood of evil mutants, a character who has the ability to be reborn is burned to death "slowly, so she doesn't forget how dying like this feels", a sentinel kills a mutant in flashback, Moira assassinates four people, captain america/ms marvel/several others killed in a flash-forward sequence. Let's call that between 18 to 20
Marvel Comics #1 - This one reprints the original Marvel #1 from 1939, plus books from 1990, 1994 and 2009. 1939: torch kills two people, a thug kills three people, the Angel kills four people, two thugs kill each other, Sub Mariner kills five guys and wrecks a ship and an airplane, gun thugs kill a guy, the Masked Raider kills two guys (possibly more), two aboriginal Caribbean men are killed, aboriginal Caribbean men kill three invading guys, Ka-Zar's dad is killed, the torch kills two more people in a retelling of the same story. Total head count is 28. Golden Age!
Sensational Spider Man #1 - no one is murdered
Daredevil #9 - no one is murdered
Future Foundation #1 - no one is murdered
Savage Avengers #4 - no one is murdered (though several people really REALLY try hard to murder each other)
Major X #0 - Wolverine kills one to three people, Rob Liefeld murders perspective
there's another ten or so books but this is boring me silly

Rob Liefeld murders perspective

the biggest lol in the otherwise awkward Seth Rogen/Charlize Theron "Longshot" film I watched last week was at the end when Rogen brags that his "First Mister" portrait in the White House was painted by Rob Liefeld

Aero #2 - nobody gets murdered
Star Wars #70 - nobody gets murdered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1rYlCpOnM

The whole horror gore stuff in movies has pretty much trickled down to being very mainstream at this point. Big shooting splatter shots is a big thing in lots of those TV cop dramas etc for a few years now.

The mainstream comic death that caught me as gruesome from a few years ago was when Black Hand "killed" himself in Green Lantern before Blackest Night. I think Doug Mahnke was the artist and I thought it was pretty bloody for Green Lantern.

i'll concede that I generally dig Hickman's use of the Marvel toybox, but after reading House of X #2 color me very optimistic for whatever that giant retcon might look like.

esp enjoyed the cameo appearance of Chulthu Island, which was obv the most excellent tree fort of all Magneto's various tree forts

Xpost

Yeah, I’m more troubled by gore than murder (stupid but true) but that’s what growing up when Rambo and 2000AD were popular will do for you.

OTOH Superman killing Zod is prob the most shocking panel on the other thread and that’s not gruesome at all.

Loving the Hickman X books so far, especially House of X 2. Well-told, smart, longform stories are *exactly* what I love reading in superhero comics an adult — and what I’ve missed since Hickmanks Avengers and GM’s Batman runs ended. I’m actually excited to pick up a new issue on a Wednesday for the first time in forever.

At any rate, if any line was crying out for a hard reboot, it’s the X line, so I don’t have any problem with that — I just hope Hickman doesn’t get tangled up trying to reattach the books to continuity in future issues.

xpost Always important to note how Superman's execution of the Kryptonian criminals was handled, too. He did what he saw as absolutely necessary and then immediately thereafter exiled himself to outer space because he felt he'd betrayed himself and the world by resorting to murder. A memorable alternative to the usual 'oops, sorry bruh' school of post-homicidal reactions in comics.