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

[Chamomile]

Back in the 90s, MJ had a child, thus linking the main continuity with the popular spin-off Spider-Girl. The child was stillborn, so that link lasted all of about thirty seconds.

[Leress]

Back in the 90s, MJ had a child, thus linking the main continuity with the popular spin-off Spider-Girl. The child was stillborn, so that link lasted all of about thirty seconds.

That's not entirely what happened:

Mayday SNAFU

[hyzmarca]

Back in the 90s, MJ had a child, thus linking the main continuity with the popular spin-off Spider-Girl. The child was stillborn, so that link lasted all of about thirty seconds.

The stilbirth was faked and the child was kidnapped by an employee of Norman Osborne, actually.

And then it turned out that Aunt May's death was also faked.

The original plan was to get Baby May back and leave Aunt May dead. They brought Aunt May back instead, and left Baby May's fate up in the air. Spider-Girl spawned from a What If story where Baby May was rescued instead of Aunt May.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Re: Last few posters.

What the fucking fuck?

[Username17]

The Clone Saga was a thing that happened in the mid nineties. There's a reason why the rant Leress pointed us to about One More Day said that it was part of a series on the "worst non-Clone Saga" Spiderman stories. Wikipedia puts it more diplomatically than I would have:

The story is one of the most controversial Spider-Man stories ever told. Although it was intended to wrap up in less than a year, the comics sold very well and the writers were encouraged to prolong the saga as long as possible. This led to some changes to the storyline that ultimately proved unpopular.

When we say "Clone Saga" we actually mean the second clone saga, the first one being a thing that happened in the seventies that no one objects to or cares about (they cock teased about Gwen Stacey being alive for a while, but eventually returned to the status quo). The second Clone Saga introduces a lot of characters and a lot of plot twists. It's a confusing mess.



-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

But if you're holding Joe Kelly's "The Authority" critique as a good story we're probably coming from different perspectives.

Would it be too late for you to expand on this?

I found Superman affecting Sephiroth's voice and acting like him lulzy as hell. Aside from the obvious, if melodramatically overplayed, point that superheroes taking justice into their own hands when they're upset at how the real world operates is pretty scary.

[hyzmarca]

I don't know about Concise Locket's opinion, but I can give my own.

I will start out by saying that I don't read The Authority, so I'm saying this in a vacuum. Still, if you have to read an unrelated book from a different company to understand the one you've bought, the writer made a mistake.

So, where to begin.

Superman takes the position that continuum of force charts should not go up to lethal. This is, simply put, objectively wrong. Every law enforcement agency in the world agrees that this is wrong. There is no country in the world that doesn't permit law enforcement to use lethal force in defense of others. One can argue about when lethal force is necessary, but there is no doubt that it can be necessary.

There is a point where a group of six superpowered terrorists attack Tokyo and are, reasonably, going to kill hundreds of thousands of people. When the Elite kill them, Superman responds with:

"End justify the means". Clever. What's next "Wir Brauchen Lebenstraum"

No, really. Kelly has Superman literally claim that killing six terrorists who are about to murder hundreds of thousands of people is exactly the same, morally, as starting World War II.

He follows that up with this gem:

"You're getting people killed. I don't care if they're terrorists or armed rebels, it's not right."

Superman's stance is literally that it would have been morally wrong to use lethal force to stop the 9/11 hijackers from crashing planes into the World Trade Center.

Not just that, he literally says that that using lethal force to stop a terrorist attack that would be a hundred times worse than 9/11 makes you just as bad as Hitler. This isn't an exaggeration or a strawman on my part. That's actually what Joe Kelly has him say.


So the first strike against it is that he's taking a traditional superhero stance that simply does not work in the real world and making a huge moral issue out of it.

The second strike against it is that he's taking that stance to such an extreme conclusion that no one should take him seriously.


And so, like many who are objectively wrong on the issues at hand, he makes his side more palatable by turning his opponents into strawmen. In this case, he just made them so absurdly obnoxious that any reader would want to punch them in the face.

And this contributes to one of the unfortunate structural issues of the book. The fact that everyone with a speaking part that matters (which is Superman and Manchester Black, really) talks in pseudo-philosophical rants and no one speaks like a real person.

Actually, the fact that there are no actual characters in the book is problematic. Superman is an author mouthpiece. Manchester Black is a two-dimensional cutout made of straw, and everyone else is just there.

And in the end, Superman wins by beating them up. Specifically, he wins by demonstrating that he's so much more powerful than them that they never stood a chance against him.

Which kind of defeats the point.

He doesn't show that their violence was unnecessary. He doesn't show that they didn't save lives. He just shows that he can beat them up with impunity. And somehow that makes him right and them wrong.

Kelly is trying to go for a might doesn't make right moral. And yet, he ends the book with an explicit might does make right moral.

[virgil]

I believe Superman should (maybe he does in most cases?) take the pacifistic stance only for metahumans that can save the day without having to kill; which is normally just for him. This is because he, and others like him, have the level of power necessary that this is an achievable goal. Superman seems to rightfully view himself as a weapon of mass destruction, which changes the morality of actions done by him and others near his level.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The Marvel: Noir series are as bad as picking up a pizza slice and finding a smashed cockroach underneath it. I can't believe that I managed to read through not just one, but four complete series of this drivel. To their credit, none of them start out horribly and the artwork is acceptable, if uninspired. But they all have something to them that makes you think back upon the experience and realize that what you have just read was just. Stupid.

I recently just read all of these comics at Half Price Books and have no desire to reread, let alone purchase this drivel. So my memory may be faulty. Or I might be missing some key point or thematic element that makes these stories less awful. Feel free to tell me what a dumbass I am if I say something you didn't like.

Daredevil

Probably the least stupid of the tales while also being the most pointless. It's actually pretty good as an introduction if you're completely unfamiliar with the character, because they pretty much retell the entire fucking origin story, but set in the 1920s. But if you're picking up this series at all you know who the fuck he is and you know all of the major characters. Moreover, the comic makes no, and absolutely no attempt to immerse you into the Noir thing. Maybe it's just the nature of Daredevil but it felt like, aside from period dress, I was reading a generic Daredevil story. There's an attempt at a plot twist that doesn't really work (Bulls Eye is an attractive ingenue in this universe!) because they were way too heavy-handed with the foreshadowing.
Obligatory Plot Twist: The woman that Daredevil is in love with is in fact Bullseye! Oh noes! Wait, I already talked about thisone.
Warning Sign: The framing device of Daredevil and Kingpin recapping in detail the comics' events in some pathetic attempt at psychosexualdrama. If they were talking about an event that lasted one night instead of several weeks it wouldn't be nearly as retarded. Like a lot of comics in this series the stupidity of this plot device doesn't really hit you until you look at the comic in gestalt.

Iron-Man

This started out acceptably readable, if bland at first. The problem was that the Nazi climax got exceptionally stupid and Rah Rah AMURIKA FUCK YEAR. Also: Noir is not pulp, you roach motel chewers. If I wanted a pulp story of Iron-Man for some reason (I do not, for the same reason I do not want a Captain America story set during the Meiji Restoration) I would pick up Pulp: Iron Man.
Obligatory Plot Twist: Tony Stark's father is brainwashed by Nazzeys. Oh noes!
Warning Sign: The comic kept trying to push Stark as being reckless and unconcerned about the welfare of his teammates. While simultaneously having us believe that Rhodes thinks that Stark is too cowardly and wants him to man up. Lolwhut?

Luke Cage

This is probably the best one of the lot, which isn't saying much. It's actually fairly engaging and thematic (in that it, Tombstone moment aside, actually tries to tackle race relations during the time period it's set in and it sets up a series of plausible obstacles) but things get utterly gonzo idiotic by the last arc. Imagine if you were reading, say, Daredevil: Born Again and then 2014 Frank Miller arrived from a time portal and elbowed his younger self out of the chair to finish the story.
Obligatory Plot Twist: The comic has two: bastard child and the person who hired him had set him up! Oh noes! Both of them are okay in theory, but handled very poorly. Luke's bastard kid only shows up near the end of the comic and he speaks like a few sentences to him. The person who hired Luke to be a patsy ended up doing a lot of stupid self-sabotaging shit, starting with hiring Luke Cage to serve as detective patsy.
Warning Sign: Tombstone's random attack on Luke at the cemetery. It's only marginally stupid at first, but later events in the comic show that the nature of the attack ended up being utterly stupid.

Also, let's talk about Tombstone some more. Let's be clear: using 'albino black in 1920s Harlem who has a skin condition that turns him into Killer Croc' was a very, very stupid idea. As in, throw the book in the fireplace and drown out the memory with alcohol stupid. Jesus, why not introduce a Dragon Lady that has an eye disease allowing her to shoot hyper-pressurized jets of blood thanks to the unique shape of her slanted eyes? The only reason why I continued reading it at all was because I mentally invoked the Shaft/90s' Lesbian Sweeps Week Kiss rule. The comic didn't get offensively stupid again until the final issue but, like unwisely eating a tub of pork fried rice that you leave out all night whereupon the rice gets all slimy, it came up bad in conjunction with the rest of the stupid shit.

The Punisher

This comic was nice enough to show its stupid colors early. It's a Punisher story so we don't expect too much in the way of logical thinking, but we do demand action. And... this comic is lacking in it. See, for the first half of the comic Frank Castle is more than content to just let the criminals come to him, whom he does not kill. Until the mob gets sick of his bullshit and sends assassins after him. The rest of the comic is about killing the three assassins. Let's get one thing straight: while The Punisher is nominally a revenge story the revenge is little more than plot motivation for The Punisher to kill loads and loads of bad people. If loads and loads of bad people do not die every issue you need to have a damn good reason why you're delaying the payoff. This comic did not have that payoff. If you want to read a Punisher story where the Punisher temporarily dials down the rampage to have an extra-gory one at the end, I recommend Punisher: The Cell or Punisher: The End.
Obligatory Plot Twist: The Punisher, a.k.a. Frank Castle... dies? Leaving his tiny son to pick up the pieces? Oh noes!
Warning Sign: Early in the comic, two mobsters wielding guns muscle into Frank's store for protection money. They get their asses handed to them, but left alive. Frank Castle should have gotten the hell out of dodge at that point, especially since he had a son, but he stays long enough so that the mob boss who cuts off a finger from his underlings each time they fail to get the money has a literal box of fingers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, so I've now read some of the first volumes of The Authority. And I can totally see why a lot of people claimed that Superman vs. the Elite/What's So Funny etc. was a strawman. The two comic lines aren't even speaking the same language.

As far as the actual comic goes, it was both worse and better than I thought. The artists were really good and when people say that the Ultimates rips off its art style and aesthetics I see what they mean. The basic idea behind the comic was also extremely ambitious and I appreciated them at least honestly attempting to tell the story that they did. That said, I don't really see much of a reason to read much more of the comic. I read up to about where Reality Incorporated gets defeated and I can already see where the comic is going and I don't like it. The various flaws in the comic (plot leveling, overuse of conspiracies, team imbalance, the Engineer and Shaman especially having to regularly catch conspicuous nerfs, fights increasingly becoming bullshitting contests, stilted dialogue) keep magnifying with each arc.

I'm really glad that I read what I did of The Authority and I don't think I'll read or watch or play anything like it anytime soon. Yet even if some of the flaws did get ironed out/were able to be ironed in out in some spiritual successor the basic idea of The Authority is one that just doesn't lend itself to endless episodic storytelling. An ending would have to be planned in advance and the author would have to take great care to avoid escalating the stakes too soon.

[Ancient History]

The Authority basically peaks with the second arc; after that, you might as well leave the book with happy memories of Jenny Sparks executing God US Prison-style.

And it doesn't matter now anyways, since DC bought Wildstorm and worked the characters into the New 52. Urgh.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The Authority basically peaks with the second arc; after that, you might as well leave the book with happy memories of Jenny Sparks executing God US Prison-style.

I don't know. While I agree that, narratively, that was probably the best part those kinds of stories aren't exactly rare in fiction. What is rare, however, is:

• Heroes explicitly having a political ideology of aggressive utilitarian progressivism rather than centrism or libertarianism or just some mushy belief of 'let's just put out the worst emergent fires'.
• Said heroes having the in-story power to enforce their beliefs.
• The story making no bones about the problems with the status quo and the problems of 'let's just put out the worst emergent fires'.
• Most importantly, the story siding with them instead of, at best, painting them as power-hungry or deluded.

The only stories I can think of that really do that is Superman IV and Arc Rise Fantasia. And even Arc Rise Fantasia wimps out and paints the progressive utilitarian side as fanatical sell-outs whose willingness to go the distance is a flaw 2/3rds of the way into the story.

The Authority's attempt to do that was extremely flawed above and beyond the inescapable limitations of the genre and medium. But I nonetheless appreciate them making the attempt. For the same reason why even though the 3E Epic Level and Miniatures Handbooks were a pile of hot ass I still appreciate them giving it the good ol' college try.

[Ancient History]

Ellis' run on The Authority was basically WildStorm letting him have full access to the crayonbox for a few minutes. It was, in his own words, cinematic. If you think of the first arc, it's the whole thing from Watchmen again - "There has to be somebody to save the world." - the only difference is, the Authority actually have someone to save the world from, and are willing to do it. The stuff that came later is sort of an outgrowth of that (and even then, really, you'd probably be better off reading Ellis' run on Stormwatch that led into the Authority) - the idea that there are people with the power and willingness to change the world - but not everybody agrees with them. Ellis doesn't get to that point too much with the first two arcs, but it's still damn good fun.

You might like The Winter Men, if you can find it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Explain thyself, Ancient History. Specifically, The Winter Men and Ellis' run on Stormwatch and why I might like those better.

[Ancient History]

Ellis' run on StormWatch (which prior to that had been just another silly Image grrr, cool Blood McGrimdark Guy comic) more directly addresses some of the issues of wanting to make the world a better place, groups that want to address causes rather than effects, and competing powers. It's less fun than the Authority, the art is less planned and stylish, but it's a fuck of a lot better than the later volumes of the Authority after Ellis left the book.

The Winter Men is kind of an inversion; it's what Superman: Red Son could have been if DC could find their reproductive organs of choice. Cold War superheroes, Spetsnaz rocket men decommissioned, dealing with what's left. The writing is brilliant.

[Concise Locket]

There were a few interesting Wildstorm titles post-Ellis Authority that were a reaction to the book's no-compromise take.

Stormwatch vol. 3 was Stormwatch in title only. The core conceit of the book was that superheroes had become so incredibly dangerous to human society that a secret UN council decided to put together a group of operators to eliminate the most dangerous ones - typically super-powered employees of crony capitalists and George W. Bush's Homeland Security. And Jesus, sort of. It's basically a Tom Clancy revenge thriller set in a world where the Justice League is a real thing. Though the artwork in the first six or so issues is... not good... the introduction of new artists later down the road saves it.

Technically set in the same universe, I remember Joe Casey's Automatic Kafka was interesting in an X-Men as written by Salvador Dali kind of way but all I really remember was an issue which explores Charlie Brown's adulthood.

Joe Casey's Wildcats 3.0 addressed the idea of the superhero billionaire who actually uses his billions and secret alien technology to benefit the public. Instead of punching out Daemonites, the superhero Spartan has decided to solve the world energy crisis by developing a AA-sized battery that can power a car. The rest of the series deals with the fallout and the internal politics of his corporation, Halo.

Ed Brubaker's Sleeper was an awesome undercover cop story about a government agent who takes up the guise of a supervillain and ends up falling in love with a deranged supervillainess. The book chronicles the quirks and kinks of the supervillain lifestyle, including a drinking game where a participant has to share his secret origin in the most gruesome or entertaining manner possible. It also has a lot of "who are the good guys here?" themes when the CIA-style government agency that employs the protagonist turns out to be not so noble. Brubaker and Phillips went on to do Criminal, Incognito, Fatale and other great noir books.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Looks like I have something to spend my Christmas moneys on.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Are there any Ellis's Crécy-styled one-shots that I should be reading? I'm not looking for singular arcs of established heroes like Batman: City of Sin, but self-contained comics that only have three volumes, max.

[Ancient History]

Hmm. The Marquis and Honour Among Punks come to mind.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Just a reminder that Spider-Man made a deal with you-know-who to do the you-know-what and yadda yadda.

You know, this is just water under the bridge at this point, but why didn't Marvel just fucking end the Spider-Man continuity? Like, give the line if not the whole Marvel universe a proper ending. And none of this Crisis Crossover crap where everything gets fused into a continual timeline, I mean an actual fucking ending. If they still wanted to make more Spider-Man comics, how's this then: a whole new set of comics that can pick up wherever they feel like in the previous timelines and change whatever from that point on.

I know that there's some people (including my main man SFDebris) whining at how they don't want to follow some other Spider-Man and that whatever new Spider-Man comes out won't be the one with decades of history, but so what? Spider-Man is a fucking folk hero. And like with most stories about folk heroes, I don't want the writers jerking off about how their version of Robin Hood or King Arthur fits in continuity with other stories. I mean, I don't want a new Robin Hood or Batman story that goes through the rigmarole of an origin story every other year, but I don't want a Batman story that goes way past its sell-by date just because some nerds want to hold to the fiction of some eternally existing fiction where every story that happened in the past matters to this one.

Fuck that and fuck them. I don't mind variations of a folk hero story influencing other stories, but not every single detail needs to be carried over to other variations. Harley Quinn and Mr. Freeze from B:TAS were awesome and they're standard inclusions with Batman stories from now on. And future writers might decide to change up their backstories and details as they see fit. Future Batman stories might choose one of convoluted prankster Joker, murderous narcissist Joker, or Nietzschean terrorist Joker or even come up with their new personality. Whatever. As long as the new story is good.

Fuck you, Marvel and DC. End your fucking stories sometimes and start over. Don't indulge fanboys like Joe Quesada. Fuck.

[MGuy]

I'm not into comics that much or whatever but I thought they killed spiderman and replaced him with a black spiderman. Whatever happened to that?

[angelfromanotherpin]

That was the Ultimate continuity.

[Cynic]

Lago: I'm not actually asking you to read any of the New 52 bullshit but isn't N52 basically what you are talking about with them basically ending all of their continuity and restarting it again?

[K]

I am very sad at what has happened to the Authority.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago: I'm not actually asking you to read any of the New 52 bullshit but isn't N52 basically what you are talking about with them basically ending all of their continuity and restarting it again?

Well, I dunno. Did the previous lines really and truly end with a conclusion to all of the previous stories or is New 52 supposed to be an alternate universe thing like Ultimate Marvel?

When I mean end, I truly mean end. As in, Batman dies protecting Gotham or decides to hang up the cape after Gotham's crime rate goes down to a sub-Copenhagen level or gets blown up in a mission to stop Darkseid or retires to the Bahamas with Catwoman or becomes an insane, catatonic wreck after all of his allies die or whatever. This version of Batman's stories won't continue and from on now there's a new Batman. Rinse and repeat for every comic line. Elements of Batman stories we like such as Harvey Bullock or the Court of Owls or Bat-Credit Cards or No Guns Ever can get used in future stories, but they're new takes on old folklore rather than being continuing additions to an old set of stories. Or they might get dropped or substantially altered.

I am very sad at what has happened to the Authority.

Explain thyself, K.