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Post by Nowhere Man on Feb 7, 2021 13:46:33 GMT -5
Galactus vs the FF and other heroes. Even weakened and hungry he could turn them all into bricks or gelatin cubes with a thought. Once you create a godlike character and show that he can manipulate matter any way he wants...yeah. If he doesn’t win within two seconds he’s just being nice. Same with the Silver Surfer really, just not on the same level.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Feb 5, 2021 18:05:10 GMT -5
I'm a big admirer of Barry Widsor-Smith, but he didn't start evolving into the artist I love until the very end of his Conan run. Those early issues, where he's trying to ape Kirby, are wonky to say the least. Buscema is my preferred Conan artist, particularly once he caught his stride. I think he got Conan's proportions perfect. Smith's Conan was always a tad too lean for my tastes.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 29, 2021 17:23:40 GMT -5
Watched episode 1 last night. The sardonic parody of 50's sitcoms and surface level optimism/suburban utopia has been done so many times, I found it a little grating. This sort of thing impressed me when I was 14 and watching Nirvana's "In Bloom" video, or Ed Wood, but not so much with this execution. Clever if you've never seen it done better. Still, I'm intrigued to find out where the overall story is going and will give it some time to build.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 29, 2021 17:15:50 GMT -5
It boggles my mind that these classic collections have modern artists for the covers. I also find it a tad disrespectful. So please explain the marketing strategy behind this. You grab a new reader with a fancy modern style only to provide hundreds of pages of classic, retro, Kirby or Ditko art? Nonsensical. Are Masterworks impulse buys at bookstores? For me, I have zero interest in a collection of classic material with a cover by anyone besides the original artist. Clearly these sell better, or they wouldn't market it like this, but WHY they do fascinates me and irritates me in equal measure.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 29, 2021 17:10:22 GMT -5
With Marvel it's tough because my favorite era is still probably 1977-1985, but that's cheating. As time goes on my love of 60's Marvel grows beyond appreciation for all of Kirby and Ditko's innovations. I'd still say that 1977-1985 is the most readable period of Marvel with the most classic runs. Creatively I'm not sure if Marvel ever recovered from the DC exodus of talent and the lack of support for Epic.
With DC I think it's easier. In terms of pure quality, it's hard to beat 1986-1996. I guess that means that 90's DC is my favorite, but that includes Vertigo.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 26, 2020 17:08:25 GMT -5
I've always been underwhelmed by the Batman films. The 1989 film and the first Christian Bale film are the only ones I'd want to watch again. BTAS is the only Batman adaptation that I'll ever need. Keep trying DC/WB, maybe one day you'll pique my interest. My first suggestion would be to get the costume right.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 26, 2020 16:24:07 GMT -5
The disappointing thing to me, artistically, about the original Image founders is that I think most of them were truly talented yet produced work that nobody cares about, creatively, with those early Image comics. I'm 42, so I'm the perfect age to have bought in to their early work, yet I never did and still to this day can't name a single member of Wildcats or Youngblood. Spawn and Savage Dragon might be exceptions. Jim Lee and Mark Silvestri in particular have done things that I still admire. I find Larsen's work fun and slightly repulsive. I think of all the original Image guys, he cares the most about comics. I known McFarlane has his faults, but I still find his work oddly fascinating and sometimes even compelling. Liefeld? Yeah, I agree he was only tolerable early on in New Mutants when he was inked by a competent inker.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 23, 2020 8:53:51 GMT -5
I agree that the Marvel Universe was far more cohesive under the guidance of Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Jim Shooter. Much of the problem came mid-to-late 80's with the flood of new characters that probably didn't need to exist, primarily mutants. It's a problem. In theory new ideas and concepts are good, but most aren't good and most superhero universes have maybe a half dozen or dozen at most truly worthy series/characters in terms of carrying a book. I think the shifting timeline is only a problem if you let it be a problem. We all know they don't want the primary characters to age. This has been set in stone almost since the 40's. With that understood, you either accept that reality as a reader or you don't. Much of the problem in recent years is that there has been too many series, too many events, leading characters to be overexposed and simply doing too much to keep track of. I'm at the point where I want a shared universe, but simplified, only focusing on the best concepts and characters with series more or less left to themselves with crossover happening only if the story warrants it. This is why I like the idea of the recent DC direct to digital comics. It's still a version of the DCU, simply trimmed of superfluous fat. Canon is BS as far as I'm concerned. I get to pick and choose my own personal canon, ignoring and including what I want as I see fit as a reader. Except Marvel, where Peter Parker and Johnny Storm aged pretty much in real time through the Silver Age in their two flagship books, as did the X-Men, but then it all came to a screeching halt and perpetual status quo. Back when Marvel was gaining customers and still appealing to a wider mainstream audience than just hardcore comic fans, and it's what the MCU does, which again appeals to a wider mainstream audience and not just hardcore comic fans. So no, you don't have to accept that shifting timelines are part of the deal, they weren't when the stuff had mass appeal and growth potential. it's only when you reduct the potential audience hardcore comic fans only that such things become an expected part of the landscape because they cannot accept changes to the status quo and want everything to suffer from Peter Pan syndrome. -M The characters aging more or less in real time early on was partly a consequence of uncertainty—Lee, Kirby and Ditko had no idea they were creating icons that would be massively popular and profitable almost 60 years later. My point is that as soon as Marvel realized the value of their characters they kind of had to put a halt on that growth. Bruce Wayne was still 30 and not 50 around this time after all. I get how compelling that early growth was, but taken to extremes we’d have superhero universes filled with retired geriatrics and processions of teenage sidekicks graduating to new costumes with little certainty that any would be as interesting as Peter Parker. It would set up a status quo of its own every bit as absurd, at least to me. Sure, Parker’s story being finite is the only real option but that’s beyond wishful thinking.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 22, 2020 15:06:49 GMT -5
"Good" continuity is half the fun of the first 20 or so years of Marvel Comics. It certainly got out of hand in later years, but it's not the dirty word that it was made out to be in the early 2000's--nor was it ever, in and of itself, a detriment to creativity. I agree that stand alone works are typically more focused stories, and usually better, but there are flawed charms to shared universes that finite works can never reproduce. Reading late Pre-Crisis DC is fascinating as was the Post-Crisis attempts to make everything cohesive. An argument can be made that every major superhero series would be better if it took place in its own universe...but do we REALLY want that? You'd never get Hulk vs Thing or Batman teaming up with Superman against Lex Luthor and the Joker. Nah, I like continuity...when handled properly. Shared universes and continuity only work well when there is a singular (editorial or authorial) vision guiding it. The more hands involved, the more diluted that vision is, the poorer quality the result. When Marvel was under a singular editor, it worked fairly well, when one editor oversaw other editors it became diluted and worked less well. It also only works when time moves forward and there is consequence to stories and growth of characters, once time stands still and a perpetual status quo sets in you wind up having a situation where each hero has to have had hundreds of adventures each day of his career for all of them to fit into the 5 or 10 year window that is supposed to have elapsed in their career destroying all sense of verisimilitude to those stories and making any kind of suspension of disbelief impossible. In essence, there is an expiration date for all shared universes and continuities, and Marvel and DC have passed theirs. There I said it. -M I agree that the Marvel Universe was far more cohesive under the guidance of Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Jim Shooter. Much of the problem came mid-to-late 80's with the flood of new characters that probably didn't need to exist, primarily mutants. It's a problem. In theory new ideas and concepts are good, but most aren't good and most superhero universes have maybe a half dozen or dozen at most truly worthy series/characters in terms of carrying a book. I think the shifting timeline is only a problem if you let it be a problem. We all know they don't want the primary characters to age. This has been set in stone almost since the 40's. With that understood, you either accept that reality as a reader or you don't. Much of the problem in recent years is that there has been too many series, too many events, leading characters to be overexposed and simply doing too much to keep track of. I'm at the point where I want a shared universe, but simplified, only focusing on the best concepts and characters with series more or less left to themselves with crossover happening only if the story warrants it. This is why I like the idea of the recent DC direct to digital comics. It's still a version of the DCU, simply trimmed of superfluous fat. Canon is BS as far as I'm concerned. I get to pick and choose my own personal canon, ignoring and including what I want as I see fit as a reader.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 21, 2020 21:53:04 GMT -5
"Good" continuity is half the fun of the first 20 or so years of Marvel Comics. It certainly got out of hand in later years, but it's not the dirty word that it was made out to be in the early 2000's--nor was it ever, in and of itself, a detriment to creativity. I agree that stand alone works are typically more focused stories, and usually better, but there are flawed charms to shared universes that finite works can never reproduce. Reading late Pre-Crisis DC is fascinating as was the Post-Crisis attempts to make everything cohesive. An argument can be made that every major superhero series would be better if it took place in its own universe...but do we REALLY want that? You'd never get Hulk vs Thing or Batman teaming up with Superman against Lex Luthor and the Joker. Nah, I like continuity...when handled properly.
Sure, when it's all superheroes that's fine, to a degree, and of course it can be fun to see Spider-Man trying to join the FF, etc, but personally I feel no need to see Shang Chi joinng the Avengers or Dracula fighting the X-Men or any other such mis-matches. So there are lots of characters that shouldn't IMO be part of the superhero universe - because they aren't superheroes.
I agree that in recent years the What If? style storytelling has taken things too far. Conan should never be a permanent part of the modern Marvel Universe, for instance. That said, superhero universes really are an amalgam of all fantasy/adventure genres when you think about it: science fiction, pulp detective, magic, high fantasy, spy fiction, gothic horror, etc. I remember the annual where Dracula basically tosses around the X-Men. Yeah, that one stretched suspension of disbelief. Personally I think some of those unwritten rules existed for very good reasons: Spider-Man should never join a team, Wolverine's/Joker's full origin should never be told, etc.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 21, 2020 19:56:42 GMT -5
"Good" continuity is half the fun of the first 20 or so years of Marvel Comics. It certainly got out of hand in later years, but it's not the dirty word that it was made out to be in the early 2000's--nor was it ever, in and of itself, a detriment to creativity. I agree that stand alone works are typically more focused stories, and usually better, but there are flawed charms to shared universes that finite works can never reproduce. Reading late Pre-Crisis DC is fascinating as was the Post-Crisis attempts to make everything cohesive. An argument can be made that every major superhero series would be better if it took place in its own universe...but do we REALLY want that? You'd never get Hulk vs Thing or Batman teaming up with Superman against Lex Luthor and the Joker. Nah, I like continuity...when handled properly.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 15, 2020 15:07:20 GMT -5
The Demon # 5 by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer Superheroics and pulp horror in a mix that only Kirby could execute. I particularly liked the Lovecraftian creature at the end of the story.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 14, 2020 15:07:29 GMT -5
I like variety on principle, but the fact is DC readers have never really supported anything outside of the core titles to protect them from this eventual shift to "just the proven sellers." Same goes for Marvel readers. Hell, Marvel almost did this in the 90's with Spider-Man and X-Men. I'm only surprised that this didn't happen a decade ago since I and others have been predicting this for years. It will be interesting to see if the quality of the remaining titles will improve given the fact that writers, and artists to an extent, will have fewer books.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 13, 2020 20:42:40 GMT -5
He will always be remembered for Batman and GL/GA; but his greatest work, in my eyes, was The Question. That was just a really thought-provoking series, filled with a dichotomy of peaceful philosophy and violence. Hub City was based on East St Louis, a town that has seen horrible times and he translated it well. Also, when you think about it, the world lost two great writers: Denny O'Neil and Charlton scribe Sergius O'Shaughnessy. I loved Denny's Batman, but I REALLY need to read his The Question run. It's one of the glaring omissions in my comics reading history. RIP
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 13, 2020 20:31:01 GMT -5
I've lost track of what goes on in the Marvel universe... Is there still such a thing as a continuous Marvel history, or are new stories just written as their own thing, which could be seen as soft reboots? Not judging either way... just curious about what goes on these days. The titles I see advertised often seem to be set in a quasi MCU, and only partially related to the MU from the pre-movie era. I pretty much gave up Marvel Comics around 2002--basically the end of the Heroes Return era. I came back and enjoyed Annihilation, Planet Hulk and Brubaker's Captain America, but the truth is that the Marvel Universe proper (a fairly strong continuity that held together since the early 60's, strong characterizations, etc.) hasn't really existed for a long time. My personal cut off date is 1991 when Claremont was unceremoniously booted from The X-Men, but that's another discussion. What they seem to do now is ride the historically cache of "The Marvel Universe" while shoehorning What If? and professional fan-fic ideas into what should be main continuity. It's clearly what modern creators and editors want to do with the characters, and I suppose what the modern minuscule readership wants, but I can't honestly say that any of it is lighting the world on fire and will be remembered decades from now. I'm certainly not saying that nothing good has been done since 2002, but much of it seems to have an implicit cynicism and fatalism to it (in regards to Marvel history) that usually turns me off.
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