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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 14, 2016 6:55:30 GMT -5
I've never understood the notion that strong continuity in superhero comics alienates fans. As a fan that started following Marvel in the mid-80's, I began in an era with far tighter continuity, that frequently used historical asides/editorial comments, and loved the fact that there was this vast history behind what I was reading. Not once did my 9-13 year old self feel the need to go back and read all 300+ issues of Incredible Hulk so I could get the "full story." Note 1: In general, any demographic argument based around "This one thing I did this one time" is a weak argument. But my comment really wasn't about me in the larger context. Everyone who started reading Marvel and or DC comics in the 70's or 80's had a virtually identical experience. Marvel had 25 years of history when I decided to start "collecting" instead of buying random issues. DC had 50. It's simply interesting to me that around 2000 or so, history became an overwhelming burden that could no longer be managed. I think the problem is that, for Marvel, once you get past the late 80's, you have a decade or more of stuff that most people want to forget. |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Jan 14, 2016 9:40:02 GMT -5
And I will counter with, if Bendis style Avengers comic had followed on the heels of the abomination of Heroes Reborn by Liefled, it would have bombed even worse than Heroes Reborn did. Busiek revived interest in the franchise, which Johns and Austin then squandered away, setting the stage for the reception Bendis' run got (which alienated a lot of the hardcore base too, but brought in enough outside the base to make it work, but the kind of reader he brought in wasn't really there to support that type of book in '98 when Heroes Return took place. Without Busiek rebuilding the foundation of that franchise, there would have been nothing there for Bendis to remodel, you can come in and wreck something already in ruins, and that was the state of Avengers in '98 after Leifeld got done imploding the thing. Busiek's Avengers, love it or hate it, was exactly the kind of shot in the arm the book needed at that point in time. I don't think there is a franchise for Bendis to revitalize if Busiek hadn't pulled it off the scrap heap and rebuilt it like he did. Sometimes timing is everything and Busiek on Avengers was right place right time for that book. -M Hard to say. There's always elements of right-place-right-time in any successful art-type product. But I'd say that Bendis et. al. did one thing right that carried over... Betcha a dollar that Busiek's Avengers would have sold better with Spider-Man and Wolverine in it. I quite agree that Busiek's Avengers would have sold better with Spider-Man & Wolverine in it. And if sales are the only thing that mattered, that would have been a great idea (obviously to their corporate masters, sales is all that matters). If, on the other hand, the writer is concerned that putting the two characters on the Avengers (when one is an avowed loner and the other is already on one or two other teams) makes absolutely no sense in the story, then maybe quality beats out sales? |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 14, 2016 18:04:40 GMT -5
Note 1: In general, any demographic argument based around "This one thing I did this one time" is a weak argument. But my comment really wasn't about me in the larger context. Everyone who started reading Marvel and or DC comics in the 70's or 80's had a virtually identical experience. Marvel had 25 years of history when I decided to start "collecting" instead of buying random issues. DC had 50. It's simply interesting to me that around 2000 or so, history became an overwhelming burden that could no longer be managed. I think the problem is that, for Marvel, once you get past the late 80's, you have a decade or more of stuff that most people want to forget. And the audience of the '70s and '80s was much, much less than in the '40s and '50s when continuity wasn't an idea And much, much less than the tens of millions of people who are buying Bone and the Walking Dead today. There are a small contingent of readers who like the idea they're only getting 1/256th of the story. Demographically, it seems that the overwhelming majority of potential customers don't - Fer instance, As far as I can tell, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers # 1 was the best SELLING comic book of the '70s. Marvel and DC have chosen to burrow into their little nest and pander to their predictably conservative core audience because they're predictable (I guess) but the comics that the greater population of readers seem to care about have never been in any sort of shared universe continuity. Compare the sales numbers of US comics to Japanese and European comics. Does strong continuity alienate fans? Well, there have been maybe 5 times over the last 50 years that you've been able to get a million people to buy an in continuity superhero comic -X-men # 1, Death of Superman Trade.... I'm sure I'm missing a couple. (And, as the recent spate of movies have proven, people really do like super heroes!) Smells like someone is getting alienated. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 14, 2016 18:16:09 GMT -5
Hard to say. There's always elements of right-place-right-time in any successful art-type product. But I'd say that Bendis et. al. did one thing right that carried over... Betcha a dollar that Busiek's Avengers would have sold better with Spider-Man and Wolverine in it. I quite agree that Busiek's Avengers would have sold better with Spider-Man & Wolverine in it. And if sales are the only thing that mattered, that would have been a great idea (obviously to their corporate masters, sales is all that matters). If, on the other hand, the writer is concerned that putting the two characters on the Avengers (when one is an avowed loner and the other is already on one or two other teams) makes absolutely no sense in the story, then maybe quality beats out sales? Yeah, I heard Stan say the same thing about Spider-man. He was wrong, too.  The Avengers has always been about 40% avowed loners. The Hulk, the original Hawkeye, Moon Knight on the West Coast Branch, Black Widow, the Swordsman, the Sub-Mariner, Moondragon, Tigra, Doctor freaking Druid... And if you look back, loneliness and alienation was as much a theme of the Silver Age Iron Man as it was Spider-man - and Thor wasn't a loner per-se, but he didn't really fit in with a team of mortals at all. There's really no unifying quality that makes one character an Avenger. A LOT of them didn't make sense in story on the face of it. I'm with you on Wolverine (because I don't like him) but having him on three (was it three in '96?) teams is going to be about 1,986,420th on the list of most nonsensical things in any issue of Avengers. Still seems a lot less random than having Patsy Walker join. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2016 18:50:13 GMT -5
But my comment really wasn't about me in the larger context. Everyone who started reading Marvel and or DC comics in the 70's or 80's had a virtually identical experience. Marvel had 25 years of history when I decided to start "collecting" instead of buying random issues. DC had 50. It's simply interesting to me that around 2000 or so, history became an overwhelming burden that could no longer be managed. I think the problem is that, for Marvel, once you get past the late 80's, you have a decade or more of stuff that most people want to forget. And the audience of the '70s and '80s was much, much less than in the '40s and '50s when continuity wasn't an idea And much, much less than the tens of millions of people who are buying Bone and the Walking Dead today. There are a small contingent of readers who like the idea they're only getting 1/256th of the story. Demographically, it seems that the overwhelming majority of potential customers don't - Fer instance, As far as I can tell, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers # 1 was the best SELLING comic book of the '70s. Marvel and DC have chosen to burrow into their little nest and pander to their predictably conservative core audience because they're predictable (I guess) but the comics that the greater population of readers seem to care about have never been in any sort of shared universe continuity. Compare the sales numbers of US comics to Japanese and European comics.
Does strong continuity alienate fans? Well, there have been maybe 5 times over the last 50 years that you've been able to get a million people to buy an in continuity superhero comic -X-men # 1, Death of Superman Trade.... I'm sure I'm missing a couple. (And, as the recent spate of movies have proven, people really do like super heroes!) Smells like someone is getting alienated. I don't think continuity alienates fans, I think it alienates readers, and while fans are usually readers, not all readers are fans. Continuity keeps a lot of potential readers, who just want to read the stories and not become fans of the characters, universes, etc. of the medium away. And there are a lot more potential readers than there are potential fans. Fans care about continuity and runs and characters history as well as the stories being told. Readers want to be entertained by the story in hand and have limited interest in having to seek out other things to enjoy the story at hand. Fans by the nature of being fans are willing to buy into the larger scene. Trebor said it himself, when he started to collect rather than buying random issues. That's the difference right there between a reader and a fan. A reader will buy something to read, a fan collects all that a thing that it has to offer. Comics went for aimed at readers to aimed at fans a long time ago and so all that i left buying them is the fans because they alienated the readers. Part of Image's growth in this market is that their series appeal to readers and not fans. Euro comics and Japanese manga always appealed to readers not fans, so cast a wider net for potential customers in their markets. Big 2 American comics, not so much. -M |
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Post by dupersuper on Jan 14, 2016 20:48:00 GMT -5
I loved Hickmans run and am enjoying Waids and plan on getting Wilsons in trade...and at least Bendis gave us back Wasp. Is Waid on the Avengers now? I haven't read anything of his yet so this might be a good time to give him a shot. I presume this means Hickman's run is finished now, so maybe I'll give that a try as well. It's only 3 issues in, so I don't know if it'll be on par with his Flash, Kingdom Come, Daredevil, etc., but if you do start here, you may want to get the issue with his Vision story (one of those post Secret Wars promo books). |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 14, 2016 21:31:47 GMT -5
Image comics appeal to readers because they're really more akin to novels in that they tell one overarching story and almost always have an ending. Mainstream superhero comics really have far more in common with other immortal characters, like Peanuts and the Simpsons, than they like to admit.
I considered myself a reader, even though I did become a fan. I certainly was never a hardcore collector or speculator. I think one of the reasons it was so much easier to get into comics back then was the use of the one-and-done, sometimes a few in a row, that lead into new story arcs. With the modern six-issue structure, there really is no time to catch your breath. Continuity is fine as long as it's not obsessive. What needs to go away, or at least get paired down, is the six issue story arc. Modern writers and artists would do the medium a favor if they learned the art of the one-and-done.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2016 21:59:55 GMT -5
Image comics appeal to readers because they're really more akin to novels in that they tell one overarching story and almost always have an ending. Mainstream superhero comics really have far more in common with other immortal characters, like Peanuts and the Simpsons, than they like to admit. And yet this is what the mainstream super-hero movie does and is amazingly popular with audiences who are not "fans"-story a s people come to expect it has beginning, middle and end. The neverending story isn't actually a story-it lacks the proper ending to actually qualify as one. Peanuts strips are vignettes for certain, but yet each one had a beginning middle and end and thus was satisfying. Immortal characters like say Hercules have several stories certainly, but each one has a beginning, middle and end, and you don't have to have knowledge of all the other Hercules stories to enjoy the twelve labors as a story, so it too has a beginning middle and most importantly end. And yes, done in one stories would certainly help over the 6 issue arc, but only each story had a beginning, middle and end and wasn't necessary to have read other ones to enjoy the current one. It's not the 6 part story that kills interest in modern comics, it's the 6 months it takes to tell one story. If all six parts were available at a higher frequency (weekly, all at one, whatever) or each part were a more substantial chunk of the story (20 pages a month is not enough to tell a significant part of a larger story in the manner audiences are used to in today's age. The pace of society has changed. Media consumption models have changed. Audience expectations for their entertainment have changed. Comics as an entertainment form have not evolved to meet the demands of a modern audience. Things which have not evolved are struggling to keep their place in modern society. Print newspapers and magazine deliver content much less immediately than online counterparts and thus a large portion of their readership/audience have moved to newer, quicker delivery systems. Change is not constant-things are always changing sure, but the rate of change is faster now than at any point in human history. Entertainment forms need to keep up with the pace of society. A monthly continuing story sold in 20 page chunk cannot do that-especially if you have to keep track of things between installments because so much other stimulus will enter the person's brainspace between installments that the necessary story info gets pushed out long before the new installment arrives a month later. Many of us here are of an age where we are acclimated to that slower pace, and most of us adapt as things quicken because we experience the increase in real time adjusting as we go. But could we have adjusted to the increase in pace if we were Steve Rogered into the future and had to adjust all at once? Conversely, someone growing up in the accelerated modern pace has real difficulty adjusting to that slower pace of things (think all those Peter David Quicksilver moments of how hard it is for someone moving at Pietro's speed to deal with things at the pace the rest of us move at. There are certainly content issues and continuity things, but they are exacerbated by the format and frequency of content delivery that has not evolved to the workings of modern society and modern audience expectations. -M |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Jan 15, 2016 9:17:28 GMT -5
I quite agree that Busiek's Avengers would have sold better with Spider-Man & Wolverine in it. And if sales are the only thing that mattered, that would have been a great idea (obviously to their corporate masters, sales is all that matters). If, on the other hand, the writer is concerned that putting the two characters on the Avengers (when one is an avowed loner and the other is already on one or two other teams) makes absolutely no sense in the story, then maybe quality beats out sales? Yeah, I heard Stan say the same thing about Spider-man. He was wrong, too. The Avengers has always been about 40% avowed loners. The Hulk, the original Hawkeye, Moon Knight on the West Coast Branch, Black Widow, the Swordsman, the Sub-Mariner, Moondragon, Tigra, Doctor freaking Druid... And if you look back, loneliness and alienation was as much a theme of the Silver Age Iron Man as it was Spider-man - and Thor wasn't a loner per-se, but he didn't really fit in with a team of mortals at all. There's really no unifying quality that makes one character an Avenger. A LOT of them didn't make sense in story on the face of it. I'm with you on Wolverine (because I don't like him) but having him on three (was it three in '96?) teams is going to be about 1,986,420th on the list of most nonsensical things in any issue of Avengers. Still seems a lot less random than having Patsy Walker join. Re: your list of Avenger examples:
Hulk: failed miserably, out in two issues Hawkeye: Loner? Not hardly. He barely had a couple of appearances before joining and hanging around forever. He's the ultimate team guy. Moon Knight: Didn't read most of WCA, but what I saw didn't work with MK Black Widow: Not many solo appearances prior to Avenging (similar to Hawkeye), usually teamed with Daredevil. Rarely alone. Swordsman: Not a great example. Ex-villain introduced to Avengers solely to introduce Mantis and die. Sub-Mariner: Loner, yes. Except for all that time with the Defenders & Invaders. Lousy fit for Avengers, yes. Spent all his time lording over them how royal he was. Moondragon: Barely ever an actual member, sometimes even the villain, loner because no one liked her, never worked. Tigra: See Hawkeye. Doctor Freaking Druid: Barely any history outside of Avengers, brought in to be "jerk who manipulates team to take over". Obvious failure as an Avenger, as he was intended to be.
So to sum up, some of them were not really loners, certainly not to the extent that Spider-Man was (aside from the Team-Up issues. He was more of the many, many "one-night stands" kind of guy instead of the committed relationship guy). The ones that were loners were lousy fits for the team. Like Spider-Man.
Yes, a lot of the character choices didn't make "in-story" sense. And a lot of them failed miserably.
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Post by MDG on Jan 15, 2016 13:19:59 GMT -5
I don't think continuity alienates fans, I think it alienates readers,.... Exactly. It's not just the jumping-on. It's also the need to not miss an issue after you do catch up (maybe including things that happen in other books) and--for casual readers, if such a thing exists anymore--to remember and keep mental track and to, frankly, give a damn. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 18:23:08 GMT -5
d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/649139.jpg
One of the things that I liked in the 1990's was the DC/Marvel crossovers. My favorite was Batman/Captain America by John Byrne. Why? I felt Byrne really captured the characters well in a WWII setting.
It starts in Gotham City in Jan 1945 with Batman & Robin pursuing the Joker. The Joker gets away. It then changes locale to Europe with Capt America & Bucky fighting a Nazi super tank. Cap is called back to the USA & given those orders by Sgt Rock. On their way back to America they intercept a hijacked plane. Batman is also in pursuit of the plane & Cap & Batman meet & take down the villains. When Cap meets with the brass in DC they give him orders to follow Bruce Wayne as Steve Rogers. They suspect Bruce may be a pawn of the Joker who is involved in the hijacking. Steve "guards/watches" Bruce & becomes bored with Bruce's playboy lifestyle. At one point he follows Bruce to his office & ends up fighting him. I really like the twist of the heroes fighting each other but in their secret ID's. With the fight they figure out their hero ID based on their fighting styles.
The story has a brief interlude where it is revealed that the Joker is working with the Red Skull (although the Joker does not know it is the Red Skull in disguise). Then a great shot of Batman, Robin, Cap & Bucky in the Bat Cave. Commissioner Gordon calls Batman about the Joker but he can't leave the Bat Computer at this time. So Cap goes with Robin to Gordon's office. Batman then gets a lead on the Joker & takes Bucky in the Batmobile. However they find the Red Skull instead of the Joker. They are captured & tied to explosives. As the Skull leaves he turns in time to see the warehouse explode with Batman & Bucky still inside.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 18:39:14 GMT -5
The Joker then meets his mystery partner who reveals himself as the Red Skull. The Joker is horrified that he has partnered with a Nazi. The Skull knocks out the Joker & takes him onto a plane. The plane then heads to Washington, DC to drop an Atom Bomb on it. However it is stopped by the Batplane. Batman reveals how he escaped the trap with Bucky to Cap & Robin as they intercept the plane. Robin & Bucky fly the Batplane & Batman & Cap fight the Skull inside the Skull's plane. Batman fights the Skull & Cap takes over the plane turning it away from DC & out over the ocean. The Joker wakes up & fights the Skull with the result of the Joker, The Skull & the bomb falling into the ocean & exploding. The 4 heroes reunite & the end??
Epilogue: 20 years later. Dick is Batman & Bruce Wayne Jr is Robin. They are exploring the North Atlantic & find a body enclosed in ice. They pick up the body & realize it is Cap. He wakes up screaming "Bucky, NO!" Cap is taken back to the Bat Cave & meets again with Bruce.
IMO the ending makes this story perfect. Byrne credits Roger Stern for the epilogue. I also liked Byrne's art "channeling" Dick Sprang & Jack Kirby.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 19:11:55 GMT -5
That's one of my favorite crossovers that DC Comics and Marvel Comics put together and did it wonderfully good and set in twilight of World War II. Your two reviews was a great re-cap of this adventure that you word it just perfectly.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 19:15:42 GMT -5
My Favorite Picture
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 19:19:01 GMT -5
Thank you. At a time when Batman was all grim it was a pleasure to see a Batman who smiled.
My next crossover review (probably in Feb) will be another favorite - Superman/Hulk by Roger Stern & Steve Rude.
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The Avengers has always been about 40% avowed loners. The Hulk, the original Hawkeye, Moon Knight on the West Coast Branch, Black Widow, the Swordsman, the Sub-Mariner, Moondragon, Tigra, Doctor freaking Druid... And if you look back, loneliness and alienation was as much a theme of the Silver Age Iron Man as it was Spider-man - and Thor wasn't a loner per-se, but he didn't really fit in with a team of mortals at all. 
