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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2015 5:04:29 GMT -5
Iron Man being arrogant is fine. Iron Man selling his tech has always been a big no.. there have been several major stories about it. In particular, he's selling Extremis to the masses, which, through the last 5 years in the comic, he's been on a crusade to make sure is completely obliterated. Has anyone said, 'Gee, something's wrong with Tony!' Nope. I agree that permanent change is rare, that's not what I'm talking about. I want consistent characterization, and a shared universe that is actually shared. Gotta disagree about that one - that version of Stark is a direct outcome from the (execrable) Axis series and was developed "on screen". The first 3 issues of Superior Iron Man have had him being attacked by Daredevil for what he's doing. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 11, 2015 6:05:36 GMT -5
Marvel and DC are unique beasts because their basic set-up, particularly with Marvel, is that all of their titles are distinct mythos' that are taking place in the same reality and are for the most part contemporaneous. This is quite different from Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Dr. Who, and so on.
The interesting thing with modern Marvel and DC is that the events are an attempt at "one big story" but ironically fail to retain strong continuity and the sense of a shared-universe much of the time. Marvel in the 60's-80's (up till Secret Wars) was never about reading one big story, but rather each title served as a window into a specific characters life with slight references to things going on elsewhere to create the illusion of something bigger. That said, it was clear that there was a tighter focus on the overall picture and cause and effect was taken into considering far more than it is today.
I'd have no problem with "Let's just tell good stories." being taken to the extreme, but to do that you really need to separate the titles and and not half-ass and lend lip-service to the shared universe concept. You can't eat your cake and have it too, so to speak. If they can no longer maintain what they had in the 60's-80's, each title should be treated like the DC Animated universe or any singular adaptation. Limit allusions to other character to little more than easter eggs.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 11, 2015 7:08:09 GMT -5
Valiant had it back in the day and has it today in spades in the best version yet. Seriously. No kidding! Not only did the early Valiant titles fit well together, they also did so for a span of four thousand years! That kind of cohesion was sure to be impossible to maintain over any length of time without a very firm editorial presence, and accordingly by the time Timewalker came around it had disappeared. But man, did I admire how Rai #0 made everything click between all the Valiant titles! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 11, 2015 7:17:33 GMT -5
(...) But even that's not absolute: it's always possible a writer might come up with something so exceptionally good that even the most diehard fan of the established version will accept this new version on its own merits. Moore's Swamp Thing might be the best example of this. Maybe Miller's Daredevil. Of course, that's where it gets tricky, because readers will disagree over which reinventions attain that level of excellence. Moore's and Miller's retcons are excellent examples (rare ones, too!) of a successful rewriting of history, or what we assumed history was. That being said, I personally don't view Moore's take on Swamp Thing as defying continuity: he just "revealed" things that we hadn't known about the character. (Martin Pasko had negated continuity when that volume of ST started, by stating that the last few issues of the previous run, in which Alec Holland could change to the Swamp thing at will, had never actually happened). One can still read the Wein Swamp Thing and continue with the Moore Swamp Thing and not go "uh? how is this possible?" That wouldn't be the case if, for example, an X-Man discovered a secret room in the attic of the X-mansion in which Professor Xavier had kept his evil twin brother for the past 50 years, because we know the mansion has been blown up and rebuilt at least four times and that the professor himself has been dead a few times, leaving no one to care for the prisoner. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 11, 2015 7:45:04 GMT -5
I've never understood the desire of some readers to have these established iconic characters to grow and change. They can't grow and change, for many obvious reasons. Sure, the argument can be made that every story should have a clear beginning, middle and end, but that would be a hell of a waste of a lot of great concepts. The best way to handle ageless characters is to keep the core intact and simply add to that base. I agree that Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, as radical a change as it was, was an excellent example of a creative mind expanding a concept and making it better. Of course, you don't need that level of radical change with Spider-Man or Batman, but that sort of thing could still work on the periphery of their respect worlds with villains, supporting characters, etc.
I feel completely different with creator owned material. We need finite stories, with characters that clearly grow and evolve, even die, to balance the immortal serial characters of Marvel and DC. I like both, personally, and think both are needed. Reflecting the human condition is vitally important, but we need everlasting ideals too.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 11, 2015 9:15:45 GMT -5
Iron Man being arrogant is fine. Iron Man selling his tech has always been a big no.. there have been several major stories about it. In particular, he's selling Extremis to the masses, which, through the last 5 years in the comic, he's been on a crusade to make sure is completely obliterated. Has anyone said, 'Gee, something's wrong with Tony!' Nope. I agree that permanent change is rare, that's not what I'm talking about. I want consistent characterization, and a shared universe that is actually shared. Gotta disagree about that one - that version of Stark is a direct outcome from the (execrable) Axis series and was developed "on screen". The first 3 issues of Superior Iron Man have had him being attacked by Daredevil for what he's doing. Daredevil only got involved because they're in the same town (which IS good)... I know it's from Axis, but why doesn't anyone care? The Avengers should be out there with Dr. Strange fixing him, or at least some reason they're not should happen. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 11, 2015 9:19:49 GMT -5
I've never understood the desire of some readers to have these established iconic characters to grow and change. They can't grow and change, for many obvious reasons. Sure, the argument can be made that every story should have a clear beginning, middle and end, but that would be a hell of a waste of a lot of great concepts. The best way to handle ageless characters is to keep the core intact and simply add to that base. I agree that Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, as radical a change as it was, was an excellent example of a creative mind expanding a concept and making it better. Of course, you don't need that level of radical change with Spider-Man or Batman, but that sort of thing could still work on the periphery of their respect worlds with villains, supporting characters, etc. I feel completely different with creator owned material. We need finite stories, with characters that clearly grow and evolve, even die, to balance the immortal serial characters of Marvel and DC. I like both, personally, and think both are needed. Reflecting the human condition is vitally important, but we need everlasting ideals too. I actually agree, but even immortal characters can develop a bit. I wouldn't even mind aging the character... Batman could be 45-50 at this point doing more mentoring than face punching, that would be fine with me...we can have LotDK at the same time. That's what was really cool about the Earth-1/Earth-2 thing.. you had both. The problem these days, IMO, is those everlasting ideals aren't consistent, and those characters that have had 'character' for 50 years or more are being written as a random character to fit the needs of the story. |
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Post by hondobrode on Jan 11, 2015 13:47:45 GMT -5
What you just alluded to is part of the appeal of the multiverse, where you can have versions of the same character, hence, different variants of the same, being identifiable and familiar yet characters on their own.
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Post by berkley on Jan 11, 2015 20:11:12 GMT -5
(...) But even that's not absolute: it's always possible a writer might come up with something so exceptionally good that even the most diehard fan of the established version will accept this new version on its own merits. Moore's Swamp Thing might be the best example of this. Maybe Miller's Daredevil. Of course, that's where it gets tricky, because readers will disagree over which reinventions attain that level of excellence. Moore's and Miller's retcons are excellent examples (rare ones, too!) of a successful rewriting of history, or what we assumed history was. That being said, I personally don't view Moore's take on Swamp Thing as defying continuity: he just "revealed" things that we hadn't known about the character. (Martin Pasko had negated continuity when that volume of ST started, by stating that the last few issues of the previous run, in which Alec Holland could change to the Swamp thing at will, had never actually happened). One can still read the Wein Swamp Thing and continue with the Moore Swamp Thing and not go "uh? how is this possible?" That wouldn't be the case if, for example, an X-Man discovered a secret room in the attic of the X-mansion in which Professor Xavier had kept his evil twin brother for the past 50 years, because we know the mansion has been blown up and rebuilt at least four times and that the professor himself has been dead a few times, leaving no one to care for the prisoner. That's true, but the distinction doesn't mean that much to me. If the new version is in an entirely new spirit to the previous, I count that as just as important a change as a more literal retcon that explicitly changes something more definable, even if you can reinterpret all the previous stories to fit the one and not the other. Sometimes a clever new retcon of that sort can be more insidious than the more obvious kind because later fans will interpret those older stories to fit the new version without any idea or care that they weren't originally meant to be read that way. Almost anyone who reads a Marvel comic with the Eternals will think of them as the MU version who are just another set of superpowered beings, just as the Celestials are yet another set of cosmic entities. And they'll accept all the later additons and changes - the Dreaming Celestial, the Titan Eternals, the "Fulcrum", Thena's various children, etc, etc. just as if they were part of the concept all along. And if they ever do read the original series, they'll interpret those stories as if all that was part of the entire concept as given. IOW, they'll have lost the entire conceptual basis of the book right from the start - it won't exist for them. That's not good - especially since those readers and quite probably the writers who eventually emerge from that readership will determine how the concept is read and written in the future - so the original idea gets buried ever more deeply. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Jan 11, 2015 20:37:15 GMT -5
Okay, I'm going to be lame here by doing two things I generally don't like to do: 1) Chime in without reading all that's already been discussed (because, honestly, I don't have the time right now), and 2) repost something I've already reposted in this community at least twice before Feel free to add me to your ignore lists... I wrote this at the old forum ages ago in response to a question about why I prefer comics as a medium: "The one thing comics can offer that no other form of literature can is a sense of legacy. An author can publish a series of books and, if they're truly committed, pump out 20 to 30 books starring the same character in their career. Now, either time will barely pass across those 30 books, preventing the character from undergoing much change and growth, or the writer will have to leave out entire years between stories, making us feel somewhat divorced from the character (who is now somewhat older and different from the one we saw in the last book) and relying upon the author's explanation to fill in all that we missed between books. "A comic, on the other hand, can provide 30 issues worth of near-continuous character growth over the span of less than 3 years. "For me, it's not the pictures, the action, the easily accessible writing, nor even the superheroes. It's the opportunity to watch characters grow and develop slowly and organically over the years, ideally earning each major change and new phase in their lives. Granted, writers who ignore continuity throw all of this out the window (and piss me off to no end in the process), but Claremont's X-Men, Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans, Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, and many short lived story arcs on other titles that did their best to acknowledge continuity and growth all offer an opportunity to watch characters grow and change in response to all that they encounter over the years. It's not always more character-intensive than a good book, but it can offer greater/better earned transformation and growth. "That's why I love comic books -- the opportunity to grow alongside my favorite characters and chart how far we've both come. "I can tell you right now that if I hadn't read New Teen Titans #39 when I was eleven, I probably would have quit collecting comics after the novelty wore off. This was the big issue where Dick Grayson gave up being Robin for good, all while reflecting carefully on his entire career up until this point. I knew then what potential comic books had, and I instantly became a fan for life. This above all else, is why I can't stand when writers ignore or just plain violate continuity, as well as why I think fans who feel that it shouldn't really matter are off-base. Continuity is one of the greatest advantages that the comic book medium can offer." |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2015 21:31:09 GMT -5
I've never understood the desire of some readers to have these established iconic characters to grow and change. They can't grow and change, for many obvious reasons. Sure, the argument can be made that every story should have a clear beginning, middle and end, but that would be a hell of a waste of a lot of great concepts. The best way to handle ageless characters is to keep the core intact and simply add to that base. I agree that Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, as radical a change as it was, was an excellent example of a creative mind expanding a concept and making it better. Of course, you don't need that level of radical change with Spider-Man or Batman, but that sort of thing could still work on the periphery of their respect worlds with villains, supporting characters, etc. I feel completely different with creator owned material. We need finite stories, with characters that clearly grow and evolve, even die, to balance the immortal serial characters of Marvel and DC. I like both, personally, and think both are needed. Reflecting the human condition is vitally important, but we need everlasting ideals too. Because growth and change to characters as they interact with the conflict is the essence of what a story is, without it, you just have an exercise in plot. Since audiences seemed to be hardwired for story, and story resonates with them in terms of seeing characters have conflicts that cause them to grow and change, it is the expectation of what they get out of a story. In fact, in my opinion, the fact that in the Marvel Studios cinematic offerings we do see the characters grow and change because of their involvement with the conflict of the plot (Tony's doubts, Bruce's struggles, Cap's questioning, etc. that has propelled them to grow as characters since they were introduced on screen that is responsible for these movies resonating with audiences to the tune of billions of dollars and millions of viewers while the same characters and plots on the pages of the comics, where they are not allowed to grow and strange can barely garner an audience of a few tens of thousands of readers. Yes, the medium is partially responsible, but the fact the movies are presenting fully developed character stories while the comics regurgitate endless plot exercises that rob the potential story of any meaning or consequence leaving them hollow and unsatisfying to an audience that has certain expectations of all stories, goes a long way t explain why the success of the movies is not translating to a similar success for these properties in their original medium. -M |
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jan 11, 2015 22:36:44 GMT -5
Because growth and change to characters as they interact with the conflict is the essence of what a story is, without it, you just have an exercise in plot. Since audiences seemed to be hardwired for story, and story resonates with them in terms of seeing characters have conflicts that cause them to grow and change, it is the expectation of what they get out of a story. In fact, in my opinion, the fact that in the Marvel Studios cinematic offerings we do see the characters grow and change because of their involvement with the conflict of the plot (Tony's doubts, Bruce's struggles, Cap's questioning, etc. that has propelled them to grow as characters since they were introduced on screen that is responsible for these movies resonating with audiences to the tune of billions of dollars and millions of viewers while the same characters and plots on the pages of the comics, where they are not allowed to grow and strange can barely garner an audience of a few tens of thousands of readers. Yes, the medium is partially responsible, but the fact the movies are presenting fully developed character stories while the comics regurgitate endless plot exercises that rob the potential story of any meaning or consequence leaving them hollow and unsatisfying to an audience that has certain expectations of all stories, goes a long way t explain why the success of the movies is not translating to a similar success for these properties in their original medium. -M Well said. Look at the two most popular superhero stories: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Why are they so beloved? Well partly it's because they had brilliantly skilled creators and partly it's because theres a lot of cool stuff going on, but I think a big reason is because they are able to stand outside of the frozen world of most superheroes. The Dark Knight Returns draws a lot of its interest and power from Batman being different. He's in his 50s, he's been retired for ten years and he's not the same man he was when he put on the cape and cowl thirty years before. His life has moved forward and he's been able to experience growth without it "damaging" the main continuity. And Watchmen tells a story of the entire fifty year history of two generations of superheroes, all of whom have aged and grown over the years. There are permanent consequences to actions and we can chart out a reasonably complete biography of all six main characters. Compared to that mainstream continuities feel static and dead, their story hindered in the name of business. I suspect this is why the origin story is so popular. How many takes on Batman's origin have we seen? Year One is heralded as one of the best Batman stories ever (its only competition being Dark Knight Returns). Why? Again, aside from being a really good story it's a story that features change. Origin stories are a cheat. They're set in the past so they're allowed to be different without tipping the apple cart. A character can start at A and end at B, and he doesn't have to keep going back to A again. Sticking with Batman, Morrison's greatest revolution was treating Batman's entire publishing history as his biography. The changing tastes of the times were interpreted as the evolving personality of a man aging over the course of his life. The decades of non-continuity turned out to be an amazing life story. Look at the original Spider-Man stories. They're told in real time. Peter Parker starts out as a 15 year old in 1962. In 1965 he's 18 and graduates High School. After two issues of summer break (July and August) he starts attending college. He starts the series completely alienated from his classmates and as the issues go by he grows a backbone, starts standing up for himself and ends up making true friends. The whole thing culminates his first love being murdered by his archnemesis and trampy Mary Jane Watson showing her own depth of character by refusing to let Peter mourn alone. Thats a story. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 12, 2015 2:54:02 GMT -5
I didn't word my thoughts as well as I should have. I don't literally think that Spider-Man and Batman should be frozen in amber, but there is only so much you can do to them until you lose the essential appeal of the characters. I do agree that much like the overall change to Swamp-Thing, extra layers can be added to characters like that without taking them too far afield. I would like to see characters like Superman and Cap given a few little quirks here and there, to be honest.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2015 3:54:52 GMT -5
I don't think it would have been all that crazy, if in the late 1930's, they decided to make Batman and Superman age, have lasting wounds, eventually retire and mentor a new hero with a new name and a new costume, and ultimately die. I don't think it would have been a waste of intellectual property. I think it could have made comics something much more than they are. Excuse me, I meant American mainstream superhero comics.
But now, as it is, with Batman and Superman being reliable money makers for 70 years, it would be crazy. Especially since the precedent of A list characters never dying or having any sort of real lasting change has been set, by Superman and Batman. But I do believe it holds the genre back from being something more. It isn't the publisher's fault. They're giving the modern fan what they want. I just think if comics had been different when my grandfather was a child, the modern fan would be a much larger demographic today more open to new things, making it so Thor doesn't have to become a woman because they could just create a new female character and it would sell. Power Girl wouldn't have to become black, because they could create a new black character and it would sell. I think maybe if the hands that guided the mainstream for the first fifty years or so had guided it differently, comics wouldn't sell better when they have 80 variant covers. But catch phrases, gimmick covers, and needless deaths and rebirths is the market that had been cultivated through decades of work, and now it's what we're stuck with in the direct market, probably until the eventual death of the direct market.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 12, 2015 8:11:02 GMT -5
Moore's and Miller's retcons are excellent examples (rare ones, too!) of a successful rewriting of history, or what we assumed history was. That being said, I personally don't view Moore's take on Swamp Thing as defying continuity: he just "revealed" things that we hadn't known about the character. (Martin Pasko had negated continuity when that volume of ST started, by stating that the last few issues of the previous run, in which Alec Holland could change to the Swamp thing at will, had never actually happened). One can still read the Wein Swamp Thing and continue with the Moore Swamp Thing and not go "uh? how is this possible?" That wouldn't be the case if, for example, an X-Man discovered a secret room in the attic of the X-mansion in which Professor Xavier had kept his evil twin brother for the past 50 years, because we know the mansion has been blown up and rebuilt at least four times and that the professor himself has been dead a few times, leaving no one to care for the prisoner. That's true, but the distinction doesn't mean that much to me. If the new version is in an entirely new spirit to the previous, I count that as just as important a change as a more literal retcon that explicitly changes something more definable, even if you can reinterpret all the previous stories to fit the one and not the other. Sometimes a clever new retcon of that sort can be more insidious than the more obvious kind because later fans will interpret those older stories to fit the new version without any idea or care that they weren't originally meant to be read that way. Almost anyone who reads a Marvel comic with the Eternals will think of them as the MU version who are just another set of superpowered beings, just as the Celestials are yet another set of cosmic entities. And they'll accept all the later additons and changes - the Dreaming Celestial, the Titan Eternals, the "Fulcrum", Thena's various children, etc, etc. just as if they were part of the concept all along. And if they ever do read the original series, they'll interpret those stories as if all that was part of the entire concept as given. IOW, they'll have lost the entire conceptual basis of the book right from the start - it won't exist for them. That's not good - especially since those readers and quite probably the writers who eventually emerge from that readership will determine how the concept is read and written in the future - so the original idea gets buried ever more deeply. The entire concept of the Eternals and the Celestials has indeed suffered from its integration in the Marvel Universe (even if I thought that Thor #300 was a very good example of a successful retcon). The Celestials as envisioned by Kirby were truly awesome, and remained so for a very long time; but when they started showing up along other "cosmic powers" they lost a lot of their mystique. I believe I even saw Celestial thought balloons in a fairly recent review (from Hickman's FF, maybe?) The Eternals could really (and should have really) remained their own thing, without being spliced into the regular Marvel Universe. Regarding how we view older stories as they get modified by later additions and retcons, I am a bit ambivalent. While I don't mind changes that cause extensive "damage" to an anterior concept if the change is well done and leads to more interesting possibilities than it destroyed (Moore on ST, Miller on DD), I think it often leads to a very cavalier attitude toward a shared universe,s history. I'm sorry, but retcons like Sins past, Original sin and Magneto's ever-changing parental status do very little to enhance my reading enjoyment; they mostly cause headaches (when I bother to read them at all, since some of them -looking at you, One More Day- cause me to permanently lose all interest in a character). |
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