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Post by kirby101 on Dec 28, 2021 9:29:39 GMT -5
the 25th Anniversary would have been 1986, 25 years after FF #1.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 28, 2021 12:03:57 GMT -5
Lots of the talent moved over to the Distinguished Competition and pretty much started making Marvel comics with DC characters in that same period of time. Pretty much the 25th anniversary is a pretty good place to stop for the most part. My 'no-prize' idea for explaining why the Marvel universe got so screwed up in the mid late 80s and into the 90s is that the series of universal/existence stories un-moored the 'reality' of the Marvel Universe. Grandmaster's meddling led to Korvac which cracked reality and led to The Beyonder and the Secret Wars (which rippled out and created the changes which brought upon Apocalypse) which then led to Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet, which totally shattered everything leading to everything else including the movie worlds. What year did the 25th anniversary fall on, 1976? I'd put thecollapse a few years later, though not many. Somwhere in the 1979 to 1981 range, maybe. It was kind of a gradual thing at first but accelerated later. The 25th Anniversary was 1986. They counted from the time they launched the FF. The July & August issues of the classic books had the anniversary frame, with the various characters in a border frame, with a single character as the center image. It also coincided with the launch of the New Universe, if that says anything about sharks.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 28, 2021 12:04:58 GMT -5
Yeah: what they said^^^
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 28, 2021 12:09:39 GMT -5
As far as I'm concerned, the entire Marvel Universe jumped the shark when they resurrected Jean Grey and created X-Factor. That was the point where I stopped buying Marvel comics (the Elektra: Assassin mini-series excepted) and didn't do so again until the Busiek-Perez Avengerss. Some four decades later, I'm still comfortable with my decision.
The proliferation of the mutant books, the terrible art on X-Men specifically, the horrifically badly conceived X-Factor … were all contributors to my quitting from the company as a reader for decades.
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Post by berkley2 on Dec 28, 2021 12:29:11 GMT -5
Dont know why I was thinking 1976 for the 25th anniversary but i had had enough of Marvel well before 1986, personally. Otherwise I'm in broad agreement with the comments above.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 28, 2021 16:32:38 GMT -5
Lois Lane jumped the shark - three times! - with the very first issue.
But then, remember that as a series, it was all about shark-jumping, almost as much as the Jimmy Olsen series.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 28, 2021 23:14:10 GMT -5
This perhaps belongs more properly in the 'there, I said it' thread, but I've never understood why people get so upset about Jean Grey getting resurrected. Of all the pointless deaths and resurrections, that's the one that I think was fine. It's the PHOENIX force.. as in... rising fom the ashes to be reborn? By definition, Phoenix is supposed to come back.
For me, the "jump the Shark" moment for Marvel was Bendis making Wolverine an Avenger.. there had been multiple story lines over the years about how Avengers don't kill.. and they let Wolverine join? That was of course after the Crossing, which is 100% the worst comic book story ever.
Over in DC, it was Flashpoint... that was just one reboot too many.
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Post by spoon on Dec 29, 2021 22:26:49 GMT -5
This perhaps belongs more properly in the 'there, I said it' thread, but I've never understood why people get so upset about Jean Grey getting resurrected. Of all the pointless deaths and resurrections, that's the one that I think was fine. It's the PHOENIX force.. as in... rising fom the ashes to be reborn? By definition, Phoenix is supposed to come back. I started reading comics shortly before Jean Grey's resurrection, but didn't really get into the X-books enough to know who she was until after the fact. So it really doesn't hit the same way with me, and I'm fine with the resurrection. And I agree that with someone named Phoenix, it's the least strange character to bring back. Also, there were numerous teases/callback the handful of years before the resurrection - from Kitty using some holographic projector to Maddy Pryor to Rachel Summers. I love most anything from Claremont's X-Men run, but I can see how folks could pick the transition from Paul Smith to JRjr as a shark jumping. Smith had one of my favorite runs (way too short). And although there is much of Romita's run that I love, his earliest issues are some of his weakest. I could see how it would be jarring.
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Post by spoon on Dec 29, 2021 22:28:28 GMT -5
Invaders when they finished the storyline where they were captured and paraded in Berlin, then rescued by Brian Falsworth, as the new Union Jack. It pretty much loses all steam at that point and never really recovers.
I was never a Frank Robbins fan (and think he destroyed Captain America when given the book, mid-storyline) but he was perfect for The Invaders, and the series seemed to lose a lot of energy when he left.
I agree about Captain America. Hideous.
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Post by spoon on Dec 29, 2021 22:42:20 GMT -5
The jump the shark analogy doesn't fit quite the same way from TV to comics. With a TV show, once it jumps the shark it usually keeps declining. But with long-running comics series, they usually bounce back and may go through cycles. Amazing Spider-Man jumped the shark during Marv Wolfman's run in the late 100s, but then returned to quality.
There are short-lived series that really got destroyed though. For Wonder Man, it was when penciler Jeff Johnson left, or to some extent, when the series went from a mix of funny and serious to just serious a few issues before Johnson's departure. For Spider-Man 2099, it was when Rick Leonardi departed as penciler.
For TV series, Sliders jumped multiple sharks. It's funny, because I started watching Sliders right before it started getting bad. The first shark was basically switching from the interesting stories about how different societies operate or character-driven stuff to the CGI Monster of the Week. Then subsequent sharks were each cast change. So the quality episodes I saw were mostly watching old eps.
A rare case of a TV show jumping the shark but recovering is The Americans. The penultimate season felt like a pointless slow burn without enough payoff, but the last season was a return to greatness.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 30, 2021 11:15:21 GMT -5
A rare case of a TV show jumping the shark but recovering For me, HILL STREET BLUES. I started watching from the very beginning, and was captivated by the mix of gritty, realistic, sometimes violent sometimes disturbing stuff and the character humor. It was, for me, one of the earliest instances of a night-time soap-opera mixed with some other genre.
But in seasons 4-5, they lost the balance, the depressing stuff over-took the fun stuff, and it became a dredge to watch. As I was videotaping it, and had every single episode by then, I didn't want to be missing any of it, and began PRAYING the would cancel the show so I could STOP!! (I bet a lot of comics fans can relate to this.)
Then, in season 6, a miracle happened. They got the balance back, and the show turned around. Not only that, they introduced a brand-new character who became my FAVORITE on the entire run up to then-- Norman Buntz, who I quickly nick-named "the FAT Dirty Harry". The unmittigated nerve department, was that Dennis Franz had previously played an entirely-different character in season 3, Det. Bennedetto, a brutal SOB who at the end turned out to be corrupt. His sudden off-camera SUICIDE while cornered in a bank vault was one of the most memorable moments in the early run of the show, so they must have thought a lot of Franz to bring him back as somebody else! And of course, after, his career continued with even greater success.
Season 7 surprised me again, when they introduced undercover cop Tina Russo, who I got to like EVEN MORE than Buntz!!! Imagine that, 7 years in and that's when my favorite character on the show debuted. She was played by Megan Gallagher, who I quickly named "the sexiest woman on TV", a position she maintained in my eyes for the next 10 years thru a whole series of different shows and guest-appearances. I actually followed her after HSB ended thru CHINA BEACH, THE SLAP MAXWELL STORY and other things.
Something that blew my mind only recently, was learning that the SAME director who started HSB-- and did its first 5 consecutive episodes, was Robert Butler. He was the SAME guy who directed the pilot episodes of both STAR TREK and BATMAN. I had never made that connection before. He didn't "get" STAR TREK, it didn't make sense to him, but he "got" the crazy style of humor of BATMAN immediately, and wound up doing the first 3 episodes produced, clearly 3 of the best-ever-- the 1st Riddler, the 1st Penguin, and the 1st Mr. Freeze. Only the 1st Catwoman story, later that season, out-did his work. Almost nobody else came close. But on HSB, those who followed managed to maintain the visual ands storytelling style Butler initiated, which is why (apart from seasons 4-5 being too depressing), HSB was so consistent from start to finish.
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Post by dbutler69 on Dec 30, 2021 11:21:11 GMT -5
the 25th Anniversary would have been 1986, 25 years after FF #1. I remember those 25 anniversary covers before, but until you posted them all together, I never noticed that they all feature an individual portrait.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Dec 30, 2021 11:42:30 GMT -5
What’s up with the last 5 on the bottom, lower right? Did those come out later as an homage to the 25th anniversary?
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Post by The Captain on Dec 30, 2021 12:08:10 GMT -5
What’s up with the last 5 on the bottom, lower right? Did those come out later as an homage to the 25th anniversary? They did, as did the last one (far right) in each of the other lines.
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