Marvel Comics blabbery

After barring the Spiegelman essay they commissioned for Marvel Comics #1000, Marvel have also censored political references from a Mark Waid essay about America in the same comic

https://www.comicsbeat.com/marvel-depoliticizes-captain-america-marvel-comics-1000/

"b&w books by depressed people about...I dunno, their feet or whatever" is a pretty weird way to characterize Kate Beaton

Anyway, anyone still reading Ms Marvel? New writer's first move was to whisk her away from the New Jersey setting that imo is the heart of the series for some tedious space opera business. Hoping it'll get better now she's back home, but I dunno...

It seemed a decent way to actually in-comic deal with "holy fuck I have just taken over a book that's both good and Important" - but I stopped after a few issues.

"b&w books by depressed people about...I dunno, their feet or whatever" is a pretty weird way to characterize Kate Beaton

It was, how you say, a troll.

Was Waid’s essay (including in its original form) meant to be in the voice of Captain America?

the two hickman x-books are the only marvel stuff i've enjoyed + followed in a few years. are there other ongoings right now that are must-reads? or recent runs (like over the last 5 years) i may have overlooked?

i'm enjoying Jason Aaron's ongoing run on Thor and I've not been a big fan of a lot of his other work! His style fits the character.

The Immortal Thor run is pretty good two tpbs into it.

Immortal Hulk, not Thor. Goodnight everyone.

Almost every Marvel run I've read has been derailed sooner rather than later by being taken into space, and DC/Marvel visions of space are almost invariably as derivative and boring as fuck

If I wanted to read bad 1950s pulp SF I can get that free at Project Gutenberg

Was Waid’s essay (including in its original form) meant to be in the voice of Captain America?

no, Waid himself wears a mask and carries a shield every day, even when he's typing or cooking

That would be a “sic” burn — except the original passage mentions none of those things and seems not to be written in Steve Rogers’ voice, while the 2nd one does and is, which I why I (naturally) wondered if the entire focus of the essay shifted. You should pause to consider the context before firing up your fearsome Sarcasm Eye Beams!

I paused to assess the context of your parentheses before making a silly joke offering some 100% accurate information that I have about Mark Waid’s personal life

☮️

Btw — the Spider-Woman story in Marvel Comics Presents #8 is apparently one in a series depicting “previously untold tales of Marvel Heroes” dealing with “major historical events that for whatever reason we have not been able to fully wrestle with, either because they happened too quickly or even because they were too raw a subject.”

The “real-life event” tackled in this story is “Misinformation on Social Media” — which a long blurb describes as, “Bad information from bad sources [...] whose sole purpose was ad revenue based on clicks, with no regulation, peer control or obligation to the truth.”

I think the way they chose to frame this particular issue (“ad revenue”?) shows that Marvel may not yet be able, or at liberty, to fully wrestle with this particular subject. (Plus, the story sucks!)

yeah... they're not all winners tbf

I saw 'X-Men Red' mentioned in an article on HoXPoX, and read the first TPB this week. It's pretty great, all X-Men as political metaphor, with an emphasis on feminism. The writer, Tom Taylor, did the All New Wolverine book, so I'll check that out afterwards. That one ran 33 issues! That's an eternity for a new comic book. Hope it's as good as this, there are few things as pleasant as a good long comic run.

ANW starts out great – definitely check out The Four Sisters (Vol. 1). I eventually bailed b/c I didn’t like where it went after that.

All New Wolverine is a solid book, blessing the world with the character of Honey Badger. I agree it peters out a bit by the end, but it was worthwhile imo (the very last arc which is a what if?-style alternate future dig was real fun). Tom Taylor's the guy who also did the epic Injustice comic series of series.
The follow up-to ANW is X-23 by Mariko Tamaki which is OK but not probably quite as good. Tamaki's indie stuff is great, but her Marvel work has been just OK (see also her gray She-Hulk run).

There’s a new Gwenpool miniseries,(Gwenpool Strokes Back), from a new creative team, but it’s really bad... they ruined the character, she’s annoying and unlikeable (and weirdly sexed-up). The art sucks, too.

It really reinforces the uniqueness of what Christopher Hastings (and Gurihiru) achieved in the original series.

(*Typo fix, it’s “...Strikes Back” — they’ll probably make a dumb pun like that though, the “humor” is at that level.)

Marvel was so great for a minute there; it’s really a bummer to me what‘s become of most the stuff I used to be so jazzed about. (I’m sure the complex,
time-spanning mutant epic is all right, but that’s not my kind of jam.)

current marvel books i will rep as readable at worst and greatly enjoyable at best:
Avengers, Conan (and Savage Sword of Conan), Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, House of X / Powers of X, Immortal Hulk, Invisible Woman, King Thor, Loki, Punisher, "Punisher Kill Krew", Savage Avengers, Silver Surfer Black, Star Wars, Squirrel Girl, Valkyrie.

I know there's like six books forthcoming next month but is this the first moment since the 1950's that (limited series aside) there are NO currently running X books? Teenage me would be agog.

also, against every prediction i would've made, the War of the Realms crossover was both great fun and well done!

I’ve heard Star Wars is good, but I’ve never read a SW comic and it seems a little late to start now.

There aren't that many of them and I'd bet most libraries have the collections

The arcs are somewhat connected but tend to be writer-centric and you won't really need much backstory because, for the most part, it's just a continuation and extrapolation of the movies. The only exceptions would be the new Doctor Aphra character, although she bounces through situations that include a number of fringe movie characters and a brief period working with Vader

kieron gillen's darth vader is really, really good

Yeah, crucially they restarted everything around the time of The Force Awakens, so there's only a few years to catch up on.

And the Vader is really good.

little reminder that v1 of squadron supreme was hella fucked up
http://www.comicosity.com/deadly-nightshade-poison-ivy-squadron-supreme-and-a-history-of-sexualized-violence/
xp to comics heroes killing people too

i should get around to reading that one of these days (and more Gruenwald in general)

Take it to the only real contribution I’ve made to this board

I remember attempting to read Squadron Supreme because I'd heard the bullshit about it being the Marvel equivalent to the "seriousness" and "maturity" of Watchmen, and man was it a load of crap.

It’s kind of a weird, brutalist, Twilight Zone version of a comic miniseries, without Watchmen’s guardrails of literary respectability (and, I guess, “good writing”). I think Squadron’s bizarre scenarios are more disturbing, because they’re presented in a way that doesn’t tell you what to think about them.

dang new house of x got me all choked up

Liefeld is going to sue Marvel over something Deadpool related, no further info at present.

But he did reveal they tried to sue him in 1996 for creating the Fighting American so he could self-publish fake Captain America stories. His lawyer turned up to court with the Marvel anthology of Fighting American, which the company brief didn't know existed, and showed the judge the Kirby and Simon ownership credit. Marvel also tried a supplementary lawsuit that FA shouldn't be allowed to have a shield, which failed also.

Are you sardonically reporting that Liefeld has a very confused misremembering of the Agent America lawsuit that was heavily reported on at the time, or are you accidentally misreporting Liefeld’s statement today, or...?

Aldo's pretty much quoting directly from Liefeld, there.

For anyone who doesn’t remember 1996, then: unsurprisingly, Mr Liefeld’s account of events is not especially accurate.

Which would mark the first occasion of Mr. Liefeld disregarding accuracy.

unsurprisingly

my mistake

I mean, i can believe Marvel legal are dumb as shit, but stupider than Liefeld???

Note that the lawsuit was filed by Marvel because:

- four years after leaving Marvel to launch the Image imprint at Malibu, and then forming Image as a publisher with others, Rob and Jim Lee returned to Marvel to do two 12-issue series each

- Rob, having had his contracts terminated due to poor quality subcontracted hackwork by teenagers mercurial refusal to respond appropriately to editorial low sales, simply formed a new company called Awesome Comics and solicited the next issues of his Captain America run, but titled Agent America, and without wings on the side of his head. (He also changed the Carrie Kelly-style sidekick that he had gifted Cap from redhead to blonde.)

During this period Rob also:

- got fired from Image, the company he had founded, because he was using company resources and infrastructure to publish competing titles drawn by a sweatshop of teenage/college-age Liefeld impersonators (AIUI he had stopped physically assaulting said employees by this time, but who knows) under Maximum Press, another publisher he had founded

- had Maximum go bankrupt (or possibly just collapse due to incompetence?) once he was no longer able to defraud Image's office structure to solicit and print the books

- teamed up with career scam artist Scott Rosenberg as his new publishing partner on Awesome, leading to the situation where in 2018 he discovered that Rosenberg had sold the rights to Youngblood and 513 other Liefeld properties to the truly unhinged gentleman who tanked Comico around the time Image launched, heisted Bill Willingham's Elementals, and spent years trying to heist Grendel from Matt Wagner

i presume the current lawsuit is gwenpool related and if so har har har

So is this Jonathan Hickman __ of X stuff good? A friend recommended it as the best X-Men in forever. Then I read a synopsis and it sounds bananas but also baroque and near-incomprehensible?

it’s pretty good and the two conjoined series wrap up today so a collection is probably forthcoming. hopefully in a format that makes it easy to read in release order

"best X-Men in forever is a mighty low bar but these are fun to read and I look forward to rereading the whole thing in one sitting.
i am SO over the whole four-pages-of-comics-and-now-three-pages-of-"dossier"-plus-one-unnecessary-chapter-heading-page schtick that Hickman does; just give me a fucking comic already

i love it! i'm one of those guys who loved Handbook of the Marvel Universe as a kid, bear in mind
(but i doubt they'll continue this now the Dawn of X is about to start proper)
HC collection is set for December, I think

looking at the x-men costume redesigns and realizing that while Jean’s looks very retro, it’s also an insanely cosplayable design (green dress, gold gloves and headpiece). seems... canny

seems to be mostly the same as her Marvel Girl costume during the '60s era (which may/may not have some relevance to the plot)