Marvel Comics blabbery

Yeah, whatever your opinion of his work generally, I think most would agree that you're not gonna get much out of any individual Bendis issue.

if you like his banter and plotting style, his stuff becomes like comfort food

Bendis team books are uniformly awful, aren't they?

His Avengers run from Disassembled -> New Avengers -> House of M -> Civil War (not by him, but it's important) -> Mighty Avengers -> Secret Invasion -> Dark Avengers -> Siege at least kinda manages to tell one coherent overarching story. That page is at the end of that. After that, he just sorta continued with no ideas and it's shit.

I do agree that post-Siege a lot of his mainstream Marvel stuff was weak (though I think Ultimate Doomsday was around this time and fantastic, not to mention he continued to do Ultimate Spidey/Miles Morales which was obviously good). Didn't like his Guardians at all, DID very much like his time-displaced teen All-New X-Men. I did recently enjoy the post-Secret Wars Infamous Iron Man storyline as well. Civil War II was a waste.

Like every successful comic book writer, he just got spread way too thin, tried to do too much - I imagine they all reach this point where they figure they gotta grab the money while it's available, given the industry's lack of long-term support. It's happening now to Dan Slott and Tom King too. (Hell, even now, Bendis is publishing a gazillion creator-owned titles he wrote during his Marvel tenure that they wouldn't publish while doing two Superman titles and editing a teen group sub-label at DC.)

With the billions of dollars Marvel comics is bringing in through it's exploitation in other media, there should really have been a way to siphon some of that money off to the most loyal writers. I mean, nobody is ever going to give up any rights, but it's weird that the Brubaker tv work is making a weird art series with Refn, instead of just placing him in a 'advisory' role on the Winter Soldier and Falcon show. In the long run, everyone would profit off of that, I would think.

have you only just heard of Marvel Comics?

Eh, I think the real answer as to why they'd never do this is the influence Geoff Johns had over the DC Universe...

Geoff Johns’ influence over the DC universe is definitely the reason that Steve Ditko quit Spider-Man.

No, it was a dispute over residuals from the Spider-Man tv show.

🤔

every large publicly held corporation’s goal is to extract the maximum value from all assets (including employees) while not spending a dollar more than necessary, and seldom questioning whether changes in process or incentives could make them more effective

I’m also pretty sure the corporate way of retaining popular writers for longer would be to give the top level of management more money if they improved the retention rate

imagine how many promotions Didio would have received in the last 15 years if he actually did his job well

(Whatever happened to that New Mutants movie that was being developed; is that still on?)

― Theodor Adorno, perhaps the greatest philosopher alive today (morrisp), Friday, June 14, 2019 11:46 AM (one month ago)

The film is mentioned in that article.

― Tuomas, Friday, June 14, 2019 11:54 AM (one month ago)

Update here:

Disney is optimistic that handing Fox superhero properties such as “Fantastic Four” and “X-Men” to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige will improve the quality of these movies, but bumps must be smoothed over in that transition. The studio is unimpressed with “New Mutants,” an “X-Men” spinoff with a haunted-house vibe, and believes it has limited box office potential.

Well okay, after expressing my general lack of enthusiasm for Deadpool over in the Liefeld thread, I see that they've announced that Kelly Thompson will be writing the latest iteration of his title. She's low-key doing some of the best work at Marvel rn so I guess I'm onboard.

http://www.tcj.com/it-is-time-to-boycott-marvel/

(i know, fantagraphics piece on leaving marvel is very dog bites man but still)

Why is Disney mentioned zero times in that editorial.

I was gonna say... I think Perlmutter's involvement in Marvel is totally gross, but I guess you could just as truthfully point out that Bob Iger is "making bank" off Marvel product, and he's a big Democratic contributor.

comments go into that with some vigor

My uninformed sense is that Disney would be thrilled to give Perlmutter the boot but can't for reasons I'm sure only sic knows.

but I guess you could just as truthfully point out that Bob Iger is "making bank" off Marvel product

https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/evandorkin/781303/165826/165826_600.jpg

Wrong company, how embarrassing 4 u

give it a year or two

When will the "Marvel vs. DC" movie happen

xxp (?) I'm not rationalizing or arguing that anyone should buy Marvel product if they don't want to (if that's what you're implying by posting that strip), just pointing out that the logic of the editorial cuts both ways.

Disney has only owned Marvel for ten years; Perlmutter forced out Perelman after the suicide-by-Heroes-World.

(and continues to impose his bathroom / paperclip / warehouse policies that individual ppl did or didn't count as boycott prompts pre-Disney, as well as the labour policies that Marvel has run on forever)

Sounds like you're writing your own editorial (and probably a better one).

RJ is 3-for-3 on editorials where I agree with the principles, but think the details are insufficiently elucidated to argue those principles to people who might not typically assess spending options against such frameworks.

Such a boycott would hurt Your Favorite Creator far more than any CEO, sadly. (And really, who's gonna drop all Disney, Star Wars AND Marvel properties?)

Raises hand

Its not really that hard

I've tried to buy my twice-a-decade Marvel comic two months in a row now. Last Jedi was the first Star War I saw since Caravan Of Courage. I do watch most Pixars tho

Such a boycott would hurt Your Favorite Creator far more than any CEO, sadly

this is absolute nonsense though, My Favourite Creator is much better served by my buying the work that they own and control

ok so the last Marvel comic I bought was Strange Tales II

I have bought other comics by Nick Bertozzi and Thien Pham and Kate Beaton and Jillian Tamaki and (in anthologies) Shannon Wheeler and Frank Santoro and Kevin Huizenga and Dash Shaw and Nicholas Gurewitch and Xaime Hernandez and Beto and Jeffrey Brown and Paul Hornschemier and Tony Millionaire and David Heatley and James Stokoe and Ben Marra and Michael Deforge, but I have not bought any other Marvel comics by any of these cartoonists

I HAVE bought other Marvel comics coloured by Laura Allred, but only as a package deal

I bought one (1) other Marvel comic by Farel Dalrymple, vs ten or so of his own comics, and I bought the $5 digest of Ty Templeton's Spider-Man / Human Torch: I'm With Stupid.

(wait Strange Tales aside I guess I bought a couple of Roger Langridge comics from Marvel c. 2009-10 as well. I declined to buy the deluxe hardcover collection of his Muppet comics that came out after Disney bought Marvel, though, because they would not pay him. it's honestly really easy to make decisions like that!)

If only we could do both. Alas, I have pledged unyielding allegiance to the House of Mouse, apologies to all of those b&w books by depressed people about...I dunno, their feet or whatever.

(I'm pretty sure I've bought Los Bros a car each given the number of times I've repurchased the same stories in a different format.)

If only we could do both.

it’s only a small point of order, but I don’t think you technically can both boycott and not boycott the same product

I was talking about supporting a creator's corporate and independent work simultaneously, ya goof, but I suspect you could've grokked that without my assistance.

I guess I’ve really been letting Kate Beaton and Frank Santoro and Kevin Huizenga and Dash Shaw and Nicholas Gurewitch and Xaime Hernandez and Beto and Paul Hornschemier and Tony Millionaire and David Heatley and James Stokoe and Ben Marra and Michael Deforge down by not supporting all the work they’ve done for Marvel since October 2010

I already didn’t buy all of Jeffrey Brown’s Star Wars books before Disney bought Lucasfilm, though

Fantagraphics promoted a similar boycott when Marvel were insisting Jack Kirby sign a disgraceful contract before they returned any of his original artwork to him. These things are hard to quantify, but I think it did have some effect (on public opinion/perception if nothing else) - at least, Marvel eventually caved in iirc. Of course the stakes are quite different now, but at the very least, public opposition to Perlmutter and what he stands for can't do any harm.

I guess I’ve really been letting Kate Beaton and Frank Santoro and Kevin Huizenga and Dash Shaw and Nicholas Gurewitch and Xaime Hernandez and Beto and Paul Hornschemier and Tony Millionaire and David Heatley and James Stokoe and Ben Marra and Michael Deforge down by not supporting all the work they’ve done for Marvel since October 2010

I mean you can see how your case might be enhanced if your position was, “I Love Marvel stuff but refuse to buy it on principle,” rather than “I’m boycotting something that causes me no pain.”

Like I guess we’re supposed to just laugh at the Batman fan in the strip, “what a buffoon,” but his is the position that we identify with (as fans) — we all know what it’s like when you “gotta have your” (something).

I only buy Batman works that degrade or render the character ridiculous, hoping to cause an accelerationist death spiral of increasingly untenable Batman content that slowly dissolves the franchise, and even DC/WB itself, from within

I mean, you'd have to go some distance to outpace DC's efforts there, and still..

lest someone think I was being literal, that was completely tongue in cheek

I do look forward to future Batman efforts by Frank Miller and Neal Adams, though

I would go so far as to say, I honestly don’t give a shit if my mainstream comics purchases have a negative
political or ecological footprints for the industry and the world beyond. It’s a tiny industry. I support and pay for independent creators on a monthly basis. I’m okay with junk food.

I mean you can see how your case might be enhanced if your position was, “I Love Marvel stuff but refuse to buy it on principle,” rather than “I’m boycotting something that causes me no pain.”

Like I guess we’re supposed to just laugh at the Batman fan in the strip, “what a buffoon,” but his is the position that we identify with (as fans) — we all know what it’s like when you “gotta have your” (something).

Because it's important to express an opinion when you have one.

Marvel will outlast fucking Perlmutter. It'll probably outlast its current corporate steward once Feige leaves and the movies start to suck shit and lose money. I'm firmly on board until they start regularly pissing all over themselves a la DC. And I will somehow still muster the will and the wherewithal to read and support (*gasp* *choke*) independent comics and their creators. It's a weird wild wonderful world.

Nobody brought up shitting on indie comics at all.