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

[Cynic]

There's never going to be anything close to a conclusion. But I think they just rebooted everything. It wasn't an alternate universe. They rebooted ALL of the worlds as far as I know.
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Also it looks like Marvel is doing something similar to this by ending their current universes and starting over with Secret Wars. I'm not really sure what they exaclty mean to do with it but thisf is the press hype for their next big event.
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I really am not a fan of New 52 at all. There is some good stuff in there. The early Superman stories by Morrison and the Earth 2 stuff was good but overall the New 52 loses more than gains from the reboot.

[Cynic]

YOu know what, I don't know. I keep coming to it and I wonder what's really so bad about N52.

I enjoyed the early SUperman stories, a decent set of the early Wonder Woman stories written by Brian Azzarello and also most of the Scott Snyder written Batman stories. All of these are within the N52 banner. I know that's only like 4 titles out of a realm of 52 different titles but those are at least the trinity and one other pretty big comic. IN truth, I normally don't even read most of the stuff that is outside of those walls normally unless directed towards it. I tried "Justice League: Dark" and I truly didn't like it. I haven't really tried many other comics under the N52 banner. Or if I have, they obviously weren't memorable enough.
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[Username17]

YOu know what, I don't know. I keep coming to it and I wonder what's really so bad about N52.

I enjoyed the early SUperman stories, a decent set of the early Wonder Woman stories written by Brian Azzarello and also most of the Scott Snyder written Batman stories. All of these are within the N52 banner. I know that's only like 4 titles out of a realm of 52 different titles but those are at least the trinity and one other pretty big comic. IN truth, I normally don't even read most of the stuff that is outside of those walls normally unless directed towards it. I tried "Justice League: Dark" and I truly didn't like it. I haven't really tried many other comics under the N52 banner. Or if I have, they obviously weren't memorable enough.
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The first year or so of N52 also came with a stone cold awesome Animal Man that was gritty as fuck (went downhill fast when they did the Rotworld alternate future thing, but it was fun while it lasted). N52 was profoundly hit and miss. The costume redesigns gaveth and tooketh away. Animal Man and Wonderwoman had a crazy art style that looked really different and very much added to the creepy vibe they were going for. But then they also let Liefeld shit all over Hawkman and Hawk & Dove. What the fuck?

Superman is a lot more fun when he's merely "very powerful" instead of "unimaginatively powerful." So the early Action Comics stuff was stone cold awesome. On the flip side, the new Teen Titans team was annoying and bad.

The truth is that I think 52 reboots was probably too many to do at once. I understand why they did it that way, but it was too many to do them all coherently or well.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Wasn't Secret Wars the Skrull Invasion or something like that a while back? O.o

[hyzmarca]

Wasn't Secret Wars the Skrull Invasion or something like that a while back? O.o

No. Secret Wars was the megacrossover in the 80s where the Beyonder kidnapped a bunch of heroes and villains and forced them to fight each other on another planet. It was made to sell toys, quite literally, Mattel mandated some type of story integration for their licensed Marvel action figures.

Secret Invasion was the Skrull thing.

YOu know what, I don't know. I keep coming to it and I wonder what's really so bad about N52.

[Stahlseele]

Right, i mixed them up i think.

[K]

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

Explain thyself, K.

The Authority was seemingly based on the premise "what would the JLA look like it they actually acted like adults?" They make complex moral decisions and use their powers in ways that adults would, and they also don't shy away from complex adult situations like non-supered ethnic cleansing by a foreign regime on their own people.

Based on a Stormwatch that I read recently that adds that Martian from JLA to the core Authority team, the characters from the Authority are now firmly classic comic heroes, meaning that that have the moral complexity of a not-particularly bright 8-year old. The critique of the JLA has just become an alternate JLA, making me wonder if they ever understood that they were being critiqued at all.

There is nothing sadder than seeing a parody be taken seriously.

[hyzmarca]

They never should have integrated Wildstorm into the main DC universe.

I don't understand why they did. DC has enough baggage, and Wildstorm doesn't really mesh well with it.

[Ancient History]

Because they own the characters, there's money in crossovers, and they didn't want to maintain separate continuities. Same reason they brought Icon and Static into the DCU.

[hyzmarca]

Integrating Milestone at least had the advantage of catering to DCAU fans and it wasn't such a major issue because Milestone's universe was smaller and Dakota isn't a big location in DC.

Integrating Wildstorm serves no purpose other than to piss off Wildstorm fans, and make DC fans wonder why Ghost Rider is fighting Superman.

[Cynic]

Really, bringing milestone in might have brought in some DCAU fans but, really, how many DCAU customers were also comics readers or potential comics readers?

I don't think there was any sort of true mandate in that there would be a higher impact if this imprint was brought in compared to this imprint. I think it was just that they wanted to group all their superhero comics together. Wildstorm was already starting to shutter its doors so it was easier to bring them and Milestone in at the same time.

I think it was a pure efficacy issue at the point.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Assuming that DC knew what they were doing, what would they have had to have done with the acquisition of Wildstorm for it to have made the whole thing worthwhile? Like, if the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern defected from the JLA to join The Authority and wholeheartedly adopted their MO, would that have been more satisfying? Or did you guys have something else in mind?

[Concise Locket]

You know, this is just water under the bridge at this point, but why didn't Marvel just fucking end the Spider-Man continuity?

Read Ultimate Spider-Man. Peter Parker has a good 10 year run and dies a hero.

Prior to Geoff Johns getting his Silver Age fetish accommodated, DC Comics were great. They understood the idea of legacy. There was literally three generations of the Flash and it was charming as hell. The fourth Green Lantern Kyle Rayner was half-Mexican, half-Asian.

Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and Diana of Themyscira wouldn't stay dead and let their successors take up the spotlight but I'm okay with letting three of the (literally) most globally recognizable pop-culture icons in history be permanent rocks.

Then Johns insisted on bringing back Hal Jordan and Barry Allen from the dead. Because if there's anything that contemporary readers like it's crewcut whitebread characters that wore bow ties in the 1960s.

Another thought- the Marvel Cinematic Universe pretty much determines where Marvel comics will go. If the Spider-Man property was brought back into the MCU fold from Fox Studios and the titular character was Miles Morales, 616 Peter Parker wouldn't be long for this world.

[Concise Locket]

Assuming that DC knew what they were doing, what would they have had to have done with the acquisition of Wildstorm for it to have made the whole thing worthwhile? Like, if the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern defected from the JLA to join The Authority and wholeheartedly adopted their MO, would that have been more satisfying? Or did you guys have something else in mind?

The Wildstorm Universe was a completely different universe in tone and content and it needs to be its own thing. It was more political and commented on contemporary issues rather than re-telling the myths and folktales that the DCU proper is known for. Superman isn't a good vehicle for commenting on bitcoins but the Wildcats are.

If DC wants to own it, that's fine. It's not like they can't handle multiple continuities and brand lines. The grown-up Vertigo corner of the DCU was technically it's own successful continuity for over a decade. But it needs to be separate to be meaningful.

[hyzmarca]

Assuming that DC knew what they were doing, what would they have had to have done with the acquisition of Wildstorm for it to have made the whole thing worthwhile? Like, if the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern defected from the JLA to join The Authority and wholeheartedly adopted their MO, would that have been more satisfying? Or did you guys have something else in mind?

The big issue is that you can't really tell Authority stories and JLA stories at the same time in the same universe. Remember that time that the Authority conquered the United States because it was the only way to stop an interstellar war? What the hell was the JLA doing then, anyway?
It worked in Wildstorm because there was no Justice League. It doesn't work in DC.

Honestly, I'd have kept them a separate universe within the New 52. It's not like they don't already have comics set in other universes within their multiverse. There's the one where Bruce Wayne died and his father became Batman, for example. If they can have an Earth-2 ongoing then they can half a Wildstorm ongoing.

And since the Authority has a bleedship, and multiverse travel is a thing that they do, they can show up in other universes anyway. And other characters can show up in their universe.

That being said, if it was a mandate from corporate and I was otherwise an EIC with absolute authority over the line?

First, Green Lantern isn't really a superhero. He's a space-cop. He exists to enforce interstellar law. He patrols 1/3600th of the universe. There are over 27 million galaxies under his jurisdiction. That's somewhere between 27 quadrillion and 100 quintillion planets. I wouldn't have him tied up in Earths political affairs because its small. It's beneath him. His duties are of a far grander scale (mindbogglingly so) and should be treated as such. Having him hang around Earth all the time just seems like a dereliction of duty.

That being said, having the Martian Manhunter join isn't a bad idea. But really, I'd have Superman join instead. Because Superman can do more good as a member of the Authority, both in terms of political activism, of keeping his teammates form doing something stupid, and in stopping bad guys. It's a win-win-win situation for him and his homespun midwestern values wouldn't stop him from doing so.

Basically, Superman gets proactive and things start changing, often for the better. But it becomes a juggling act, how do we get advanced technologies out to the public without letting people like Lex Luthor pervert them. How to we stop wars without becoming dictators. Where do we draw the line between necessary self-defense and murder. You've got nice levels of subtly and ambiguity, but at the end of the day Superman can say that right and wrong do exist, that helping people is right, hurting people is wrong, and that the hard choices aren't hard because some people are overly sensitive, they're hard because the world is sometimes so grey that you can't tell the difference, sometimes you hurt people despite your best intentions, and sometimes you have to make personal sacrifices.

There are these massively powerful guys who want to change the world for the better but who are rough around the edges. Superman can either fight them, or join them and guide them. And fighting them wouldn't actually accomplish anything good.

The problem with Superman political intervention stories is that you've got two types. There's the ones where he realizes that political intervention is pointless and he can't change anything despite his great power, and then you've got elseworlds where he makes himself dictator for life. There's no in-between. Putting Superman on an interventionist team without making him go off the deep end and lose all his morals would be a great thing, in my opinion.

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.

One point three billion dollars.

Much like Star Wars, the money from Spider-Man isn't in the books, it's in the licensing. Marvel doesn't want to risk damaging the character, not when they're making Hello-Kitty scale money off of him.

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.

The New 52 was basically a soft reboot. In other words, the stories carry on exactly where they left off except for some arbitrary retcons that they think will boost sales. Batman post reboot is exactly the same as Batman pre reboot and continues with exactly the same plot that it had before the reboot, except that Barbra Gordon can walk and is Batgirl for no adequately explained reason.

Same with Green Lantern.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Are there any Batman comics which emphasize his role as a captain of industry more than his status as a vigilante?

I think it'd be interesting to have a comic series that had Batman playing Logistics and Dragons. And not just a 'oh, Bruce Wayne donates to charity' way Batman stories typically do but him doing a full-court press to use his wealth, Xanatos-style, to muscle out the bad guys and un-Grimdark the city.

That said, I kind of understand why they don't do that. Once you show Batman legally dismantling the Court of Owls and starting up an academy of superheroes, it raises some uncomfortable questions as to why he dons the cape and cowl at all. I suppose they could salvage the concept by having Batman function more as a gentleman thief or spy or surgical strike who does things like steal evidence of criminality or intimidates mafia leaders, but still.

[Chamomile]

Shamus Young recently did a pair of posts titled "Why Batman Can't Kill People" but which is actually about why Batman can't ever meaningfully win through any route. Killing the Joker after he's demonstrated an ability to break out of Arkham ad infinitum is just the specific route that comes up most often because of how obvious it is. The short version is: If Batman were to take actions that would cause meaningful and permanent change to Gotham through any means, you would run out of Batman stories to tell in a hurry. The more Bruce Wayne entrepreneurs the city back together, the more you have to either confront the problem that you are running out of plots as Wayne's maneuvering renders them permanently impossible one by one, or else that every time Wayne ends one systemic problem in the city another, nearly identical one springs up as soon as the writers need to reuse that particular plot.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This is why I ranted earlier in the thread that superhero stories should be written with the idea that the entire line is going to end and be rebooted 5-7 years from issue #1. If the writers want to do another 'the mafia is a huge problem; what does Batman do?' or a 'the Joker has broken from Arkham Asylum' plot then they should damn well just start a new story.

[Chamomile]

I agree this would be a good idea and in fact I think the same blog I linked had a post or a tweet or something to that effect a few years ago, but it's not especially likely to actually happen which in turn means I wouldn't hold your breath for any "Bruce Wayne actually being smart with his money" stories. There might be a one-off here and there but it could never go on for very long without running into the problem that it's a story about engineering smart, longterm solutions set in a continuity where nothing can ever get permanently solved.

[hyzmarca]

A lot of problems could be solved if they went back to 60s characterizations. Replace Joker the mass-murderer with Joker the Clown Prince of Crime. Which is the entire reason they replaced the murderous Joker with the Clown Prince in the first place. Make it so that Gotham is actually a very nice city except for all the supervillains, who are merely annoyances that never actually cause permanent harm.

[Darth Rabbitt]

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.

Could you go into this in more detail? I'm curious to hear your critique of Red Son.

[Ancient History]

Well, part of it is that The Winter Men is awesome.

Red Son is...a less polished creation. The art isn't quite there, but more than that, the concept isn't quite there. Superman is still Superman, he's just wearing a sickle and hammer instead of a Big Red S. Which rather misses the whole point of making Superman raised by Russians. It's like having George Washington transplanted into Cornwall instead of Virginia and still leading a revolution against the British crown; the character and arc are identical - fuck nurture, nature has determine that Superman is going to be the "good guy," even when he's taking orders from fucking Stalin.

Red Son is also remarkably shallow, for the most part. The main characters rise to basically be the equivalent of Gorbachev and Reagan, only with Superman and Lex Luthor...and that's as far as it goes. It's not just that they ignore the political and cultural differences between the Soviet Bloc and the West, or the whole complicated history of Russia and how it would have changed if they did have Superman, it's that you never see anything from the perspective of actual Russians. It's a gimmicky comic-book universe, where Batman wears a furry hat with little bat-ears on it. It's a joke.

And that's annoying enough by itself, but it's more annoying when you compare it to something like Kingdom Come, which is pretty much better in every single way...it shows what Superman looks like when you invest in a decent artist and if you write him as trying to be a leader. Political power is not something that Superman needs, but if you do elect him as president or whatever, it does dramatically change the type of challenges he faces - and that can be interesting.

But they never do anything interesting in Red Son! They never take the "What if?" far enough - they wanted to cram in too many other recognizable elements, without asking how they would actually fit into the bigger picture. They won't let Soviet Superman save Communism, and they won't let him destroy it from within or be corrupted by it...and that's just cowardice. The whole point of Elseworlds/What If? is that because it exists as a standalone, you can do anything. The normal kid gloves of superheroes, where they cannot permanently deal with any problems or make any significant change, are off. If you can do anything, and you just make another Superman comic where he has a slightly different cape...it's disappointing.

[Starmaker]

Red Son is fucking terrible. It's ideologically dishonest and atrociously researched, and everyone failed remedial math.

Stalin died in 1953 IRL and in the comic. The comic cites the Warsaw pact, that's 1955 IRL. Ike is president from 1953 to 1961.
...Mmmmmkay.
Except holy shit WWII happened in this universe. Hitler happened. And Supes was supposedly raised on an Ukrainian farm. Since 1941 at the latest, Stalin should have ruled every country involved in WWII through his teenage proxy. (And why is he President and not Secretary General?)

"A chemical plant on fire three thousand miles west of Vladivostok" - 3000 MILES, motherfucker? And do you know what's 3000 miles west of Vladivostok? The Kazakh/Kyrgyz border, in Central Asia. Shouldn't it be "250 km from Bishkek and Tashkent"? (And no, they aren't in Vladivostok at the time of speaking.)

Earthquake in Stalingrad LOOK AT THE FUCKING MAP

Piotr is 2 miles away when Supes looks for him at the party in Moscow, and Stalin in Moscow is 200 miles away from Piotr. Aaaaargh the geography it's killing me. And MILES, MILES, MILES again. SUPES, YOU IMPERIALIST TRAITOR.

"lovers" - fuck no. The Russian language doesn't have the word "lover" in its English sense, the literal word "lyubovnik/lyubovnitsa" means "someone I'm cheating on my spouse with". On the other hand, boning for procreation is heavily romanticized. A healthy sexual attraction unconnected to marriage and childbirth isn't something Red Supes should have a word for.

Chanel #5 - unless he'd been trained as a spy, and he's too stupid to have been, Red Supes has no business knowing women's bourgeois perfume brands. Even the New Dawn selection is pushing it if he hasn't dated women yet.

Supes learning English "10 minutes ago" while the Cold War has been going on since forever and the US is the #1 enemy.

OH FUCK THIS IS SO STUPID STALIN'S CHIEF OF POLICE GOT DRUNK AND ANGRY AND ARRANGED STALIN'S MURDER AND EVERYONE WENT ALONG WITH IT

Use of artistic license to portray Stalin and Stalin's regime in uncharacteristically cartoonishly evil ways (Stalin's personal bodyguard is murdering people in their homes, Stalin grooming an obviously incapable "illegitimate" child for leadership).

Curing mental illness is somehow badwrong.

Then we have the regular stupid:
Big Brother is an anachronism.
Zubway sign.
Pre-revolutionary clothes, especially on kids.
Winter clothes in Moscow despite summer in the US.
Presidential suite.
"Oh Jesus." You don't say. Was "My God" so hard to write?
Soviet bars didn't have tabs.
Jordan and Mehri aren't Russian or Soviet names by any stretch of the imagination.
Pyotr Iosif Roslov is not a valid Russian or Soviet name.
Supes notices the arousal of a random bystander in a split-second but doesn't notice WW is horny.
"Pyotr?" Again, Supes can supposedly read emotions like a pro.
Batman murders people. How does he still live?
The queen of Themiscyra gets visibly older over ~20+ years, but she was several thousand years old in 1953.
Super-senses not detecting the equipment and the power lines.

And, of course, the resolution is completely arbitrary.

The US held on, despite isolation and economic devastation, and sustained Luthor and his crazy inventions. Supes didn't intervene, despite children living and presumably dying in the streets. Neither did he defeat AIDS and cancer, despite having learned English instantly (why not medicine?)

Then we are informed Luthor's utopian dictatorship is qualitatively different from Supes' utopian dictatorship. There's a number of ways this could've played out without being intellectually offensive. Supes could've been brawn only, a pawn in various self-serving power-plays by Soviet officials (oh and the historical Lana was just the right age to date Supes, this is one hell of a missed opportunity). Instead of a single person, Supes could've been opposed by a generational dream team of inventors, thus highlighting capitalism's alleged incentivization of innovation and personal excellence through FREEDOM!!1! and unrestrained exchange of ideas. He could've cooked up some crazy transhuman scheme only to realize there won't be any people left in a meaningful sense after its implementation. Instead, we got a deepity that nevertheless makes it onto various "bestest graphic novels" lists in mainstream publications. Ew.

[maglag]

Wasn't the main point of superman to be some kind of super parody of reality most of the time?

Superman can sneeze IN SPACE!

And Lex Luthor isn't much better.

Luthor the cake thief is still true in the latest DC reboot.

[Ancient History]

Wasn't the main point of superman to be some kind of super parody of reality most of the time?

No. In the Silver Age it was hokey as fuck, but everything was hokey as fuck.

And Lex Luthor isn't much better.

Point of order: the 40 cakes nonsense didn't come from a comic book, it was from a fucking kid's book that was using DC characters that was shat out by somebody on their lunch hour back in the 70s because when you're eight Spider-Man or Batman underoos are just the coolest fucking thing in the world. It became an internet meme and then some fucktard pulled it out as a callback in a Naughties comic for lulz.

Which is, not to put a fine point on it, a nice reminder that not everyone in the world is Don Rosa. Don Rosa did the Duck comics for Disney - and because Disney had learned the lesson well before most that it was characters more than creators that mattered, they had a stable of artists that they versed in a house style and didn't credit. And even among that crowd, Carl Barks stood out as "The Good Duck Artist." His strips were much beloved, and he slowly created a lot of the characters that became definitive for the Duck series - but it was the next generation, Don Rosa, who took all the things that Carl Barks had created and drew them together in a sweeping motherfucking epic on the life of Scrooge McDuck. Barks created, Rosa codified. Barks was doing weekly potboiler stuff, but it was good; Rosa drew the disparate elements together and with callbacks and call-forwards forged a continuity from what had been random chaos.

Which is really what Marvel, DC, and a lot of other creators do, over time. The random crap they throw at the wall gets remade, rethought, even retconned and brought together to forge a stronger metanarrative. But every so often, some asshat is too lazy to do anything good with it, so you get stupid, meaningless shit like this callback to an internet joke.