[Comics Wank]What It Would Take To Get Me To Buy Marvel/DC

[Josh_Kablack]

Wait, he did one even better than Transmet? I must check out Nextwave, it seems.

Yes, you must :snidehipsterwhoreaditbeforeitwascool:

[Leress]

Wait, he did one even better than Transmet? I must check out Nextwave, it seems.

Yes, you must :snidehipsterwhoreaditbeforeitwascool:

I had to read it after hearing the theme song.

Nextwave

[Wesley Street]

The editors of Nextwave and Transmet, both of which I've read three times in full, were a bit too indulgent of Ellis' weird writer tics for me to recommend to anyone.

That said, the Gravel and Scars published by Avatar are the bees' knees. Straight up action-thriller-horror done right.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I gotta think about that. I mean, my tastes have changed a bit over the years, and I've grown way disillusioned with Marvel and DC but...yeah, I guess I could.

While I did like your list, I was thinking more of a top 5-10 things wrong with Identity Crisis.

[Ancient History]

Oh that. Ghost. Where to start.

1) Women in Refrigerators
Sue Dibny, raped and murdered. Jean Loring, insane. Arguably, Zatanna dishonored. These were rather minor characters in the grand scheme of things, but it was pointless sensational violence for no damn fucking reason, and not the enjoyable Michael Bay explosion superhero punch-ups. In Identity Crisis, violence against women is done just because they're women and considered expendable side characters. It even made Zatanna a dick for brain-raping people...I mean jeeze, that's normally the martian's job, isn't it?

Yes, some minor male characters die in this storyline too, but you don't see them raped or driven insane for no fucking reason.

2) No Pay-Off
The reveal that Jean Loring is the murderer is slightly less satisfying than finding out who shot Mr. Burns. When Alan Moore has a character raped and murdered in his books, at least there's a payoff to it - some deeper level of characterization or plot that gets revealed, or at least is part of the natural flow of the story. In Identity Crisis there's nothing like that - there's no sign that Jean Loring was murderously insane before, just as there's no indication Dr. Light was a rapist before. Truthfully, the characters of victim and murderer are so secondary to the story that is actually being told that you could have had Jimmy Olsen get raped and murdered by Dr. Light and it would have made the same amount of sense. Ridiculous. This whole storyline was a gimmick with the aim of making the Justice League of America distrust each other, end of story. There was no other purpose for it, it was obvious from day one issue one as a shill in another cockamamie massive DC fuck-with-the-customers-metaplot-event, and it showed.

3) Silver Mining, Badly
DC has a convoluted internal history, what with all the timeline reshuffles. The problem is that most of the current crop of writers grew up reading stuff which is now of dubious continuity, and want to dredge it back up and hammer it back in. While people like Geoff Johns and Kevin Smith can occasionally do this well, Brad Meltzer sucks at it. He wanted to do a story where you lift up an innocent Bronze or Silver Age rock about unmasking heroes and mindwiping and see what bugs are crawling underneath that - and then he had Dr. Light rape Sue Dibny for no fucking reason, completely fucking negating whatever he had intended to do. That is a plot twist that should have given the entire readership whiplash.

4) Wasted Potential
Here's the damnedest thing: the discussion about mindwiping your victims is one superheroes should totally have. There are lots of implications about heroes as vigilantes with their own space station to begin with, but it's like the Squadron Supreme: if you're going to bring up a serious fucking issue in a serious way, you really need to make it the centerpiece of your story.

5) This Should Not Have Been A JLA Story
I'll just come out and say it - this should have been a Batman story, or a Ralph Dibny story. This is a story which pretty much demands one major character on the investigation, and the reader follows them and makes the discoveries. It can take place in the context of the JLA, talk with all the members, conduct the autopsies, etc. ... but the way that this story was plotted was just a fucking ADHD attention span mess. It's bad soap opera, and it makes every one of the characters involved look like prime assholes.

JLA stories are difficult. You need some threat or challenge that takes the combined abilities of the group to address. The Martian Manhunter could have solved this case in a half hour plus commercials. Superman should have figured this out - X-Ray + Microscopic Vision == Instant Autopsy. The thing is, this wasn't a comic where the JLA was ever really together at any point, or doing anything. There was no enemy to punch, no real problem to solve past "dude, our minor characters keep dying mysteriously for no reason!" and "dude, are we a bunch of dicks for brainraping everybody?" I mean seriously, someone threatened Lois Lane with a note - you do not send a note to anyone when Batman is a member of the team. The only crimes Batman cannot solve are the ones he doesn't know about.

[Lago PARANOIA]

2) No Pay-Off

I honestly think that the reveal of Dr. Light as a rapist was supposed to be the payoff in of itself. I mentioned grimdark retcons previously, and given the infamy of events like 'Wonderdog mauls and eats Marvin and Wendy' or 'Gwen Stacy has sex with the Green Goblin' or 'Iron Man gets all NKVD on his allies' I think that firmly fits into the territory.

It wasn't bad writing so much as... well, it was bad writing, but not because they forgot basic tenets of characterization so much that they were deliberately trying to shock you. Think Exalted: Infernals versus Book of Exalted Deeds.

5) This Should Not Have Been A JLA Story
JLA stories are difficult. You need some threat or challenge that takes the combined abilities of the group to address.

I agree. Which is one of the reasons why DC comics and to a lesser extent Marvel comics fail to interest me. The heroes on an ensemble team need to be roughly the same power level.

And given that writers find it much harder to write stories for high-powered ensemble casts than low-powered ones, most of the superheroes should straight up get nerfs. Superman should just be a flying brick with X-ray and Heat vision. That's it. No ice breath, no Fortress of Solitude, no super speed, no nothing. The Flash shouldn't be able to go much faster than the sound barrier. Martian Manhunter should just have pstock psionic spowers, intangibility, and flight. And they should be the paragons.

Until DC comics does that I will never be able to be interested in JLA unless an absolute genius writer is doing the stories. Fortunately, DC comics seems to be fucking blessed with top-tier talent for their animation studios.

4) Wasted Potential
Here's the damnedest thing: the discussion about mindwiping your victims is one superheroes should totally have. There are lots of implications about heroes as vigilantes with their own space station to begin with, but it's like the Squadron Supreme: if you're going to bring up a serious fucking issue in a serious way, you really need to make it the centerpiece of your story.

That's the thing that irked me about the story the most.

I really wanted to like the story. The core conflict it 'supposedly' brought up and the rifts that it caused had the potential to be absolutely fascinating. The only part of the story I enjoyed was the JLA's angst over doing something that wrecked their integrity and friendships in order to protect their loved ones. The unstated tension between the JLA 'god tiers' and the 'second bananas' was the only redeeming factor to the story.

But again, it ended up being the VOY: Alliance of stories. They couldn't even resolve the core conflict in their own comic. Pitiful.

For the record, I'm on the mind-wipers side.

[Cynic]

Here's the real reason you should buy Marvel.

[ NSFW-ish ]

[Ancient History]

I don't need to see Stan Lee's Giant-Sized Man Thing. (That joke is never going to get old.)

[Cynic]

I don't need to see Stan Lee's Giant-Sized Man Thing. (That joke is never going to get old.)

Stan Lee is 90. I'm pretty sure his Giant-Sized Man Thing is pretty old.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. If you were going to remake or redo characters' superpowers in order to make the stories more accessible or gel better with the rest of the continuity, what broad changes would you implement?

[Ancient History]

Ugh. Where to start?

I guess in an ideal world, you want something a bit like the Valiant universe where there are N sources of superpowers and that is it. Those are your some total sources, and you can mix those flavoes in any way you want. So you can have stuff like:

* Alien
* Supertech
* Magic!
* Mutant
* Superbadass Training

And that's all you get. This seems fairly permissive, but comics tend to throw a lot of random shit in there over the years and things get ricockulous.

And ideally you wouldn't want any yo-yo superpower levels. None of this "Superman is faster than the Flash" or "In this comic Superman helps Batman catch muggers in Gotham, next issue Batman helps Superman punch out Unmighty God King." Dr. Strange can't go from being mystical powerhouse of the universe one comic to getting his ass kicked by a malevolent wererabbit and needing Daredevil to help him out the next. Yes, this means that a lot of team-ups will be rare or one-sided unless the characters are either balanced so they work together or one is depowered by phlebotonium for the issue...and I take offense to senseless depowering.

By the same token, I take offense to senseless ramping up of character power levels. Wolverine's regeneration has gotten so ricockulous that he's regenerated from nothing more than his adamantium-bonded bones before, and to try and explain that they had entire story arcs devoted to his killing the Angel of Death or some shit. Fuck that.

The only real exception to either of the above is great storytelling. When Iron Fist took a level in badass in Immortal Iron Fist, that was cool. Whenever Tony Stark upgrades his armor to deal with the latest threat, that is credible. When Dr. Strange breaks his mystic oaths and loses a lot of his cosmic homeboys, that's acceptable.

[Stahlseele]

what do you mean?
if we go with a complete continuity wipe, one rule would be made absolute:
death is a one way road, not a rotating door damn it . .

[virgil]

I'm a fan of divorcing from the continuity porn Marvel & DC have tied themselves to. Make the stories good on their own merit, rather than having a regular multiversal crisis.

[Cynic]

I'm actually reading one of the more magnificent JLA runs right now. JLA v3 by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter is awesome. It was a more mainstream Authority in which the storylines were more epic and deadly than what a lot of what JLA was/is.

Granted the power level fluctuation ran the gamut from Superman all the way down to Huntress and Green Arrow.

Also has a great Aquaman characterization.

Edit: i can has no proofread...

[Lago PARANOIA]

virgil, I didn't get the last panel in your comic. What the hell?

[Ancient History]

I've recently come to the startling conclusion that when it comes to comics, I'm a bitter old man. I can't keep up with the big events these days and lack the desire to try; more and more of my comics-buying dollars go to quirky, offbeat, non-superhero series because the whole genre has sunk into a black hole of bullshit and pulled the door closed behind it. I'm finally at the point where I can afford pretty much any comic I want, and I end up spending money on weird indie series that died because no one was reading them and end up in bargain bins. The mainstream hates me and I hate it right back.

But that doesn't make me better than any other comics reader. It just makes me a cynical, joyless curmudgeon.

Which I think it part of the reason I spent a couple hours at the discount bin today buying up this year's load of comics to give away for Hallowe'en. I probably won't have enough kids to give all of them away, but it's kind of amazing what's available for bottom dollar.

[virgil]

virgil, I didn't get the last panel in your comic. What the hell?

The girl was examining a stamp, and they essentially called her a fake stamp collector.

[Corsair114]

Greg Rucka's now finished run on The Punisher was a pretty enjoyable read in a pulpy-noir way.

[hyzmarca]

virgil, I didn't get the last panel in your comic. What the hell?

Apparently there is an extremely socially inept subset of male nerddom that when faced with attractive young women who show up at comic book stores (or, god help them, conventions) wearing a superhero t-shirt (or god help them, a consume) and attempt to engage them in conversation about comic books ( or science fiction, or video games) of all things assume that it is some type of trap and, their fight-or-flight instinct suitably engaged, either run the fuck away or verbally attack the young lady, often in mass.

I was completely unaware of it, too, until I came across it in a crazy feminist rant. Then I did some google searching and "fake geek girl" accusations are apparently an actual thing.

[Stahlseele]

@AH:
i get most of my comics in the form of .cbr file collections by now.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Then I did some google searching and "fake geek girl" accusations are apparently an actual thing.

Grognards ruin EVERYTHING.

[erik]

Then I did some google searching and "fake geek girl" accusations are apparently an actual thing.

Grognards ruin EVERYTHING.

Everything was great before the grognards ruined it.

:hipster:

[Sashi]

Apparently there is an extremely socially inept subset of male nerddom that when faced with attractive young women who show up at comic book stores (or, god help them, conventions) wearing a superhero t-shirt (or god help them, a consume) and attempt to engage them in conversation about comic books ( or science fiction, or video games) of all things assume that it is some type of trap and, their fight-or-flight instinct suitably engaged, either run the fuck away or verbally attack the young lady, often in mass.

The horrible thing is that "fake geek girls" actually exist as marketing devices. And so these terrible people feel justified in abusing the girl at the comics shop wearing a green lantern tee because Olivia Munn once dressed like Chun Li.

[hyzmarca]

Oh that. Ghost. Where to start.

1) Women in Refrigerators
Sue Dibny, raped and murdered. Jean Loring, insane. Arguably, Zatanna dishonored. These were rather minor characters in the grand scheme of things, but it was pointless sensational violence for no damn fucking reason, and not the enjoyable Michael Bay explosion superhero punch-ups. In Identity Crisis, violence against women is done just because they're women and considered expendable side characters. It even made Zatanna a dick for brain-raping people...I mean jeeze, that's normally the martian's job, isn't it?

When Identity Crisis first came out I said that if they wanted to really do a serious rape story the victim should have been Superman. I stand by that conviction.

[Chamomile]

Apparently there is an extremely socially inept subset of male nerddom that when faced with attractive young women who show up at comic book stores (or, god help them, conventions) wearing a superhero t-shirt (or god help them, a consume) and attempt to engage them in conversation about comic books ( or science fiction, or video games) of all things assume that it is some type of trap and, their fight-or-flight instinct suitably engaged, either run the fuck away or verbally attack the young lady, often in mass.

The horrible thing is that "fake geek girls" actually exist as marketing devices. And so these terrible people feel justified in abusing the girl at the comics shop wearing a green lantern tee because Olivia Munn once dressed like Chun Li.

Making this still worse is that the girls who are paid to wear the skimpy costumes to help sell things are an affront to the dignity of all comic fans. They objectify the women and their entire job is to manipulate the men. Everyone should be on board with disliking this tactic and the companies using it, but instead it's turning into some stupid war of the sexes where all women become the enemy.