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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 20, 2021 5:55:21 GMT -5
I think Shooter's Avengers work is great, as is his LSH stuff. The first Secret Wars is fun as well. Not great, but certainly fun.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 20, 2021 6:29:45 GMT -5
Jim Shooter writing a comic where Hank Pym is an abusive husband. Going on 40 years now. I seem to remember reading that it was not Shooter's intentions to have Hank strike Jan... I think he swiped his hand to push her out of the way and the penciller did his best, but when the letterer got it, it looked like he hit her, and so he lettered a "smack" and it made it through editing and then the following issue just rolled with it and acknowledged it... and like you said, 40 years later..... Sound effects are part of the script. No letterer would add one on his own initiative.
Cei-U! I summon the reality check!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 20, 2021 7:50:58 GMT -5
Shooter's excuse that the artist misinterpreted the script is weak. He also said there wasn't time to fix it, which is even weaker. He's the editor in chief, it's his job to fix this sort of thing, and if this truly was an art error he had an obligation to correct it even if it meant the book was late. Jim hated for books to be late, but really... he halted the Avengers-JLA project just because it showed Quicksilver as running too fast. I think he could have found it in his heart to delay publication of that Avengers issue for one little one week if he had felt the slap was really inappropriate. Meanwhile... we're still discussing the case of "Hank the wife-beater" but Peter Parker apparently uses a get-out-of-jail-free card. It ain't fair!
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 20, 2021 9:05:00 GMT -5
The real crime in that article is the computer re-coloring of Spectacular Spider-Man.
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dave
Junior Member
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Post by dave on Jul 20, 2021 10:16:01 GMT -5
To me, a jaw-dropping " WTF?" moment from Steve Englehart in the mid-80s that tends to be overlooked, was when he was doing GREEN LANTERN. He got cartoonist & comics historian Fred Hembeck to research the entire history of Carol Ferris, a character who'd been horribly and inconsistently written for decades, in order to "figure out" what made her tick. And in one issue, he did an overview of her history, and, without my actually having read most of those older stories, I assume he did a fairly good job of it. UNTIL the ending. When, suddenly, out of left field, he decided to reveal that not only was Carol Ferris also Star Saphire (something we'd known for a long time), but, that she was ALSO... The Predator, a character that the previous team, Len Wein & Dave Gibbons had just recently created. Steve wanted to bring some kind of closure to Hal & Carol's relationship (such as it had been), so he could basically RID Hal of her permanently from then on. But this just made no sense. It was like a case of too much LSD kicking in suddenly, derailing what was otherwise (mostly) a well-intentioned and well-done story, while also insulting Wein & Gibbons in the process. Several years later... and not long before power-mad editor Kevin Dooley KICKED him right off the series, writer Gerard Jones took aim at that glitch... and FIXED it. I began to notice more and more instances in long-running comics where one writer would SCREW something over... and then another writer would have to come in and put it right... until, of course, another writer (or in some cases, the same one) would then SCREW things over even worse, until then another writer would come in a fix THAT. Why don't they just TELL GOOD STORIES, and stop messing with the heroes and their lives and careers? (Because "soap-opera" is easier for lazy writers to do, of course... ) The most MIRACULOUS thing the live-action GREEN LANTERN movie did was make Carol Ferris LIKABLE, and completely eliminate, right out of the gate, that stupid Hal-Carol-GL "triangle" that had always been a 5TH-RATE imitation of the Clark-Lois-Superman triangle. I know back in the 50s, DC editors & writers held their target audience in contempt and felt that "kids don't want romance", so every DC girlfriend was a horrid shrew. But kids don't read comics these days, and the over-aged adolescents who do (heh) deserve better. I read that story recently... holy smokes. Maybe the most insane reveal I've ever read. I was reading that whole sequence wondering if I got some special weed or what... BONKERS. Of course, once he gets all the characters where he wants them, Englehart's GL run really takes off and (IMO) surpasses the Wein/Gibbons issues.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2021 12:00:45 GMT -5
And this happened just one year after the Ms. Marvel pregnancy travesty of issue #200. The Avengers did not start the 80's well with these events. The blame for that one gets passed around to about a half a dozen individuals! Oh totally, it was meant more as a side observation than directed solely at Shooter. I want to jump into your Jim Shooter thread but have next to no time at the moment, but wanted to say your initial post captures pretty much my exact thoughts. When I also read what he was going through as literally a kid to support his family during those early Legion days as well, he will always get some slack from me!
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dave
Junior Member
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Post by dave on Jul 20, 2021 12:25:42 GMT -5
I think most of the writers involved with the Superman New Krypton story from the late '00s tend to be pretty great, but good God could I not have been more disappointed in their resolution to that sagging waste of a saga. Cynical, unimaginative, soulless, weak-kneed CRAP.
More in the spirit of classic comics... Mike Baron turning the Punisher into a black guy was a deal-breaker for me. Baron's not a great writer per se, but his early Punisher stories tend to get lumped in with the era and he shoulders unwarranted blame for turning the character into a bloodthirsty cartoon. Baron's Punisher is grim and violent at times, but that's not its raison d'être; it's mostly just a street-level vigilante crime comic, and (I haven't read them in years) I remember often feeling like Baron's tongue was planted pretty firmly in cheek with some of the more outrageous (for the time) elements. Long story short, I was plugging along nicely with that series until Baron hit us with not a black Punisher, but Frank Castle himself literally being turned into a black man... and I was pretty much immediately done, like in an "I don't even want to THINK about where this is going" sort of way. Yikes.
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Post by tonebone on Jul 20, 2021 13:04:49 GMT -5
I seem to remember reading that it was not Shooter's intentions to have Hank strike Jan... I think he swiped his hand to push her out of the way and the penciller did his best, but when the letterer got it, it looked like he hit her, and so he lettered a "smack" and it made it through editing and then the following issue just rolled with it and acknowledged it... and like you said, 40 years later..... Sound effects are part of the script. No letterer would add one on his own initiative.
Cei-U! I summon the reality check!
Ok, so my details were wrong, but the overall story is right... From Shooter's Blog: “In that story, there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration — making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her. [Illustrator] Bob Hall, who had been taught by [comic book artist] John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross! There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the ‘wife-beater’ story."
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Post by impulse on Jul 20, 2021 13:20:03 GMT -5
From what I've read myself and heard from others, Grant Morrison tends to misstep every time he has to write an ending.
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Post by The Cheat on Jul 20, 2021 13:26:23 GMT -5
Sound effects are part of the script. No letterer would add one on his own initiative. Cei-U! I summon the reality check!
Ok, so my details were wrong, but the overall story is right... From Shooter's Blog: “In that story, there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration — making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her. [Illustrator] Bob Hall, who had been taught by [comic book artist] John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross! There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the ‘wife-beater’ story." While I tend to take Shooter's blog with a pinch of salt, he's stated outright that Bob Hall has publicly confirmed this was what happened. I'd imagine there would have been some sort of rebuttal from Hall if it wasn't true.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 20, 2021 14:49:42 GMT -5
I don't but it... Shooter's writing tends to male power fantasy and damsels in distress much more than average, IMO, so I don't believe it's not as he meant it. Never mind the fact he was the editor in chief and could have changed it.
This seems like revisionist history at its best... clearly in retrospect Shooter realizes it was too far, and doesn't want to cop to it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 20, 2021 15:17:09 GMT -5
I don't but it... Shooter's writing tends to male power fantasy and damsels in distress much more than average, IMO, so I don't believe it's not as he meant it. Never mind the fact he was the editor in chief and could have changed it. This seems like revisionist history at its best... clearly in retrospect Shooter realizes it was too far, and doesn't want to cop to it. I'm ready to buy the story according to which Bob Hall decided to make the scene more dramatic by having Hank willfully hit Jan, but Jim is the one who chose to run with the art as it was. "It was too late to change it?" Nah. It was apparently not too late for Jean Grey to be killed instead of depowered in X-Men #137, even though the book was already pencilled and the change required much more than one or two panels!
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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 20, 2021 15:21:08 GMT -5
I don't but it... Shooter's writing tends to male power fantasy and damsels in distress much more than average, IMO, so I don't believe it's not as he meant it. Never mind the fact he was the editor in chief and could have changed it. This seems like revisionist history at its best... clearly in retrospect Shooter realizes it was too far, and doesn't want to cop to it. I'm ready to buy the story according to which Bob Hall decided to make the scene more dramatic by having Hank willfully hit Jan, but Jim is the one who chose to run with the art as it was. "It was too late to change it?" Nah. It was apparently not too late for Jean Grey to be killed instead of depowered in X-Men #137, even though the book was already pencilled and the change required much more than one or two panels! Considering how obsessed Shooter was with having books come out on time, I wouldn't totally discount the "it was too late to change it" defense.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Jul 20, 2021 16:44:44 GMT -5
Yes, Bob Hall is on record saying he messed up the panel, because - his sentiment here, not mine - he wasn't a good enough artist yet to draw it more subtly.
But Shooter's insistence that it was too late to have it redrawn is 100% bull. He's the EiC. He can grab someone from the bullpen and have them correct the panel. And if for some crazy reason that's not possible, if he feels the story is wrong, he has an obligation to delay it until it's fixed. Which he can do.
The truth for me has to be that regardless of what mistakes were made, Shooter did not think it was a big enough deal to warrant changing it. Everything else is blowing smoke later to cover himself once people started complaining.
Fir what it's worth, Icctrombone and I spent a lot of time in our podcast discussion of these issues talking about this.
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Post by Bronze age andy on Jul 20, 2021 19:48:08 GMT -5
From what I've read myself and heard from others, Grant Morrison tends to misstep every time he has to write an ending. It kinda makes sense when he really has no consideration towards other creators endings. If it's not his character it's not his problem. Tear it up! It's one thing to kill a character but he will kill a characters future effectiveness.
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