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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 31, 2015 10:07:32 GMT -5
Having read this week's Axel in charge column, I can't help but comparing the two following marketing approaches.
On the one hand, I am invited to get all excited about a vast company crossover that will (according to the publisher's own hype) end all the titles I might care about and replace them with several titles with the words "battleworld" and "war zones" it them. Inflated rhetoric makes it sound like this event will be the best thing ever, even if short- term memory confirms that the same arguments are pretty much used every other month to describe some new marketing ploy. More death! More destruction! More things that will never be the same again until they are!
On the other hand, Word of mouth invites me to buy the story of a family where mom has wings and dad has horns, simply because it's a damn fine example of great comics.
Make mine Image. Easily.
*edit* : I have no illusion, of course, about which company will make the most money. Bummer.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 31, 2015 11:41:27 GMT -5
Having read this week's Axel in charge column, I can't help but comparing the two following marketing approaches. On the one hand, I am invited to get all excited about a vast company crossover that will (according to the publisher's own hype) end all the titles I might care about and replace them with several titles with the words "battleworld" and "war zones" it them. Inflated rhetoric makes it sound like this event will be the best thing ever, even if short- term memory confirms that the same arguments are pretty much used every other month to describe some new marketing ploy. More death! More destruction! More things that will never be the same again until they are! On the other hand, Word of mouth invites me to buy the story of a family where mom has wings and dad has horns, simply because it's a damn fine example of great comics. Make mine Image. Easily. *edit* : I have no illusion, of course, about which company will make the most money. Bummer. I'm more make mine Dark Horse, but yeah I pretty much agree both the events being pushed by DC and Marvel hold zero interest for me. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2015 11:55:03 GMT -5
But didn't events like Crisis on Infinite Earths really actually make an honest change for the DCU?
Granted, there was no internet back in 1985, but how heavily was that event advertised?
Were big events different back then?
And by different, I mean, the impact it had on the actual books and universes.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 31, 2015 13:26:30 GMT -5
But didn't events like Crisis on Infinite Earths really actually make an honest change for the DCU? Granted, there was no internet back in 1985, but how heavily was that event advertised? Were big events different back then? And by different, I mean, the impact it had on the actual books and universes. It did, and yeah nearly every issue I have from around then has an ad for the the coming crisis. I think the difference between then and now is the frequency of events we have now, Crisis was the first and there wasn't another big event until like 1992's Death of Superman or 1994's Zero Hour. There were a few in between then like Legends, Millennium and Cosmic Odyssey but nothing as huge as Crisis. Meanwhile since 1994's Zero Hour there has been some huge event nearly every year: Underworld Unleashed 1995, DC Vs Marvel 1996, Genesis 1997, DC One Million 1998, Our Worlds at War 2001, Identity Crisis 2004, Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Infinite Crisis 2005, 52 and One Year Later 2006, Countdown to Final Crisis 2007, Final Crisis 2008, Blackest Night 2009, Brightest Day and Return of Bruce Wayne 2010, Flashpoint 2011, Forever Evil 2013. With that many events you just get burnt out and thy stop being special. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 31, 2015 13:43:27 GMT -5
But didn't events like Crisis on Infinite Earths really actually make an honest change for the DCU? Granted, there was no internet back in 1985, but how heavily was that event advertised? Were big events different back then? And by different, I mean, the impact it had on the actual books and universes. That's a fair question, and it is true that special series or big events like CoIE at DC and Secret Wars at Marvel were big deals back in the day. While the changes brought about by SW were kind of meh and eventually transitory, DC did change some things... but very few for the better, IMO. And in the process made its shared universe very complicated (far more than it had been pre-crisis) because some changes were too crastic and were later undone in unbelievable ways (Hawkman? Lord, what a mess). But the very success of these first "events" begat increasingly irrelevant attempts at generating the same enthusiasm. CoIE might have been a big thing (even if I didn't particularly cared for it), but Legends? Millenium? War of the gods? Zero Hour? Ultimate Crisis everywhere at the same time? As for Marvel, if Infinity Gauntlet is (somewhat oddly) remembered fondly by many, how many real fans of World War Hulk, Infinity, Fear Itself or Sins Past are there? These editorially-mandated huge crossovers might have nice art and lots of explosions, they usually bring little in tems of dramatic novelty or character development. (I had hopes for Secret Invasion, which openened the door for the return of many characters imprudently killed in the past, but it turned out to be mostly Avengers fighting dinosaurs). Big events have a clear purpose: to get obsessive fans to buy as many event-related comics as possible. Fair enough, these companies are into making money. However, I regret that once upon a time, even big companies like Marvel and DC tried to generate money by making their books more interesting than those of the competition; right now, it looks as if the Big Ones decided that their customers were all suffering from attention deficit disorder, and " interesting" was synonymous with "lots of explosions, lots of death, lots of cheap angst, and no need to develop anything". With the added annoyance of having comics tied ever more tightly to their own derived products like movies and TV series, because that's what gets the most exposure and is thought (I suppose) to be what brings customers to the comics shop. Which I seriously doubt. Reading the editorial staff at Marvel talk abput their stuff, I feel very, very far from the good-natured and clearly tongue-in-cheek bombast of Stan Lee... I feel like I'm reading the words of politicians, carefully vetted by some marketing agency. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 31, 2015 14:07:22 GMT -5
But didn't events like Crisis on Infinite Earths really actually make an honest change for the DCU? Granted, there was no internet back in 1985, but how heavily was that event advertised? Were big events different back then? And by different, I mean, the impact it had on the actual books and universes. That's a fair question, and it is true that special series or big events like CoIE at DC and Secret Wars at Marvel were big deals on the day. While the changes brought about by SW were kind of meh and eventually transitory, DC did change some things... but very few for the better, IMO. And in the process made its shared universe very complicated (far more than it had been pre-crisis) because some changes were too crastic and were later undone in unbelievable ways (Hawkman? Lord, what a mess). But the very success of these first "events" begat increasingly irrelevant attempts at generating the same enthusiasm. CoIE might have been a big thing (even if I didn't particularly cared for it), but Legends? Millenium? War of the gods? Zero Hour? Ultimate Crisis everywhere at the same time? As for Marvel, if Infinity Gauntlet is (somewhat oddly) remembered fondly by many, how many real fans of World War Hulk, Infinity, Fear Itself or Sins Past are there? These editorially-mandated huge crossovers might have nice art and lots of explosions, they usually bring little in tems of dramatic novelty or character development. (I had hopes for Secret Invasion, which openened the door for the return of many characters imprudently killed in the past, but it turned out to be mostly Avengers fighting dinosaurs). Big events have a clear purpose: to get obsessive fans to buy as many event-related comics as possible. Fair enough, these companies are into making money. However, I regret that once upon a time, even big companies like Marvel and DC tried to generate money by making their books more interesting than those of the competition; right now, it looks as if the Big Ones decided that their customers were all suffering from attention deficit disorder, and " interesting" was synonymous with "lots of explosions, lots of death, lots of cheap angst, and no need to develop anything". With the added annoyance of having comics tied ever more tightly to their own derived products like movies and TV series, because that's what gets the most exposure and is thought (I suppose) to be what brings customers to the comics shop. Which I seriously doubt. Reading the editorial staff at Marvel talk abput their stuff, I feel very, very far from the good-natured and clearly tongue-in-cheek bombast of Stan Lee... I feel like I'm reading the words of politicians, carefully vetted by some marketing agency. I didn't care for World War Hulk or Civil War but I did like the Front Lines books that came out during those events as I've always loved Ben Urlich. I never understood why there wasn't an Urlich book after those events; I mean if there was room for Streets of Gotham and Gotham Central providing a street level view of Gotham over at DC why wasn't there an attempt to do it at Marvel outside of their events? |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 31, 2015 15:45:54 GMT -5
(Deleted post meant for the Savage sword of Conan thread... sorry).
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Post by berkley on Jan 31, 2015 15:46:28 GMT -5
By Crom, if I thought there were new Marvel comics this good I'd be buying more of them!
But hold! Methinks some evil sorceror, perhaps in the employ of Marvel, has wafted RR's SSoC #60 review here to the NEW comics thread in an effort to deceive the unwary.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 31, 2015 15:56:07 GMT -5
By Crom, if I thought there were new Marvel comics this good I'd be buying more of them! But hold! Methinks some evil sorceror, perhaps in the employ of Marvel, has wafted RR's SSoC #60 review here to the NEW comics thread in an effort to deceive the unwary. As they said in the Age of Ultron event: time is broken!!! |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 31, 2015 22:37:28 GMT -5
Got my box for January... Usagi Gundam! Nice ending to Senso...not surprisingly, Stan Sakai hits all the right notes for his 'last Usagi story' and makes it fit in perfectly... can't wait for the series to get going again.
Clever ending to the Q-Gambit over in Star Trek... I don't love the movie cast, but this was a good one.
I'm pretty meh about Star Wars... the story was decent, but not great. I feel like he was trying a little too hard to call back warm fuzzy memories of the movie... from using the trash trick, to using the Jabba palace guard outfits, etc, it was a bit much. Then there's the fact that in his big splash page Luke looks like he's a 40 year old coach potato... I'm all for not having him be superhero-y, but that's too much.
OTOH, R2 kicking butt, and Leia taking the lead with a right cross were both pretty awesome... and I wonder how much they're going to dance around the movies, which Luke apparently facing Vader.
X-Factor had a bizarre ending... it seems PAD is doing that thing writers do sometimes and is trying to tie everything he's ever done together... I don't really want Maestro Hulk in my 2099! I suspect Spiderman 2099 will be seeing X-Factor a time or two if the series doesn't get re-started. I do hope Georgia doesn't end up in limbo, though, she a pretty cool new character.
I've been enjoying the 'last xxx story' in Fables, but the main story has really been dragging, to the point where I'm not sure how the heck Willingham can wrap it up in 2 issues.. especially if they still have back ups. I'm not usually that guy, but if Bigby doesn't get at least a semi-happy ending, I'm totally going to riot!
No Ms. Marvel, due to vagaries of Wednesdays, that was a bit sad. I'll probably tackle a couple of the new series I tried tomorrow, and I have 70s Wonder Woman and Airboy in trades to read later!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2015 8:06:40 GMT -5
But didn't events like Crisis on Infinite Earths really actually make an honest change for the DCU? Granted, there was no internet back in 1985, but how heavily was that event advertised? Were big events different back then? And by different, I mean, the impact it had on the actual books and universes. That's a fair question, and it is true that special series or big events like CoIE at DC and Secret Wars at Marvel were big deals on the day. While the changes brought about by SW were kind of meh and eventually transitory, DC did change some things... but very few for the better, IMO. And in the process made its shared universe very complicated (far more than it had been pre-crisis) because some changes were too crastic and were later undone in unbelievable ways (Hawkman? Lord, what a mess). But the very success of these first "events" begat increasingly irrelevant attempts at generating the same enthusiasm. CoIE might have been a big thing (even if I didn't particularly cared for it), but Legends? Millenium? War of the gods? Zero Hour? Ultimate Crisis everywhere at the same time? As for Marvel, if Infinity Gauntlet is (somewhat oddly) remembered fondly by many, how many real fans of World War Hulk, Infinity, Fear Itself or Sins Past are there? These editorially-mandated huge crossovers might have nice art and lots of explosions, they usually bring little in tems of dramatic novelty or character development. (I had hopes for Secret Invasion, which openened the door for the return of many characters imprudently killed in the past, but it turned out to be mostly Avengers fighting dinosaurs). Big events have a clear purpose: to get obsessive fans to buy as many event-related comics as possible. Fair enough, these companies are into making money. However, I regret that once upon a time, even big companies like Marvel and DC tried to generate money by making their books more interesting than those of the competition; right now, it looks as if the Big Ones decided that their customers were all suffering from attention deficit disorder, and " interesting" was synonymous with "lots of explosions, lots of death, lots of cheap angst, and no need to develop anything". With the added annoyance of having comics tied ever more tightly to their own derived products like movies and TV series, because that's what gets the most exposure and is thought (I suppose) to be what brings customers to the comics shop. Which I seriously doubt. Reading the editorial staff at Marvel talk abput their stuff, I feel very, very far from the good-natured and clearly tongue-in-cheek bombast of Stan Lee... I feel like I'm reading the words of politicians, carefully vetted by some marketing agency. I asked about CoIE because I am currently reading it, and am led to believe that it brought changes to DC for a good while. And I agree with you on the rest, especially your last sentence.  |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Feb 1, 2015 9:23:17 GMT -5
That's a fair question, and it is true that special series or big events like CoIE at DC and Secret Wars at Marvel were big deals on the day. While the changes brought about by SW were kind of meh and eventually transitory, DC did change some things... but very few for the better, IMO. And in the process made its shared universe very complicated (far more than it had been pre-crisis) because some changes were too crastic and were later undone in unbelievable ways (Hawkman? Lord, what a mess). But the very success of these first "events" begat increasingly irrelevant attempts at generating the same enthusiasm. CoIE might have been a big thing (even if I didn't particularly cared for it), but Legends? Millenium? War of the gods? Zero Hour? Ultimate Crisis everywhere at the same time? As for Marvel, if Infinity Gauntlet is (somewhat oddly) remembered fondly by many, how many real fans of World War Hulk, Infinity, Fear Itself or Sins Past are there? These editorially-mandated huge crossovers might have nice art and lots of explosions, they usually bring little in tems of dramatic novelty or character development. (I had hopes for Secret Invasion, which openened the door for the return of many characters imprudently killed in the past, but it turned out to be mostly Avengers fighting dinosaurs). Big events have a clear purpose: to get obsessive fans to buy as many event-related comics as possible. Fair enough, these companies are into making money. However, I regret that once upon a time, even big companies like Marvel and DC tried to generate money by making their books more interesting than those of the competition; right now, it looks as if the Big Ones decided that their customers were all suffering from attention deficit disorder, and " interesting" was synonymous with "lots of explosions, lots of death, lots of cheap angst, and no need to develop anything". With the added annoyance of having comics tied ever more tightly to their own derived products like movies and TV series, because that's what gets the most exposure and is thought (I suppose) to be what brings customers to the comics shop. Which I seriously doubt. Reading the editorial staff at Marvel talk abput their stuff, I feel very, very far from the good-natured and clearly tongue-in-cheek bombast of Stan Lee... I feel like I'm reading the words of politicians, carefully vetted by some marketing agency. I asked about CoIE because I am currently reading it, and am led to believe that it brought changes to DC for a good while. And I agree with you on the rest, especially your last sentence. There were slight tinkerings here and there and the multiverse eventually came back but for the most part the elements introduced by the first Crisis stuck around right up until Flashpoint. |
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Post by the4thpip on Feb 1, 2015 10:19:15 GMT -5
I asked about CoIE because I am currently reading it, and am led to believe that it brought changes to DC for a good while. And I agree with you on the rest, especially your last sentence. There were slight tinkerings here and there and the multiverse eventually came back but for the most part the elements introduced by the first Crisis stuck around right up until Flashpoint. To me, it felt like they had undone most of the Crisis changes. From the changes made to Superman: His cousin Kara was back, as was Krypto. Most limitations to his powers (like needing an air tank to fly through space of Byrne's telekinetic explanations for invulnerability and flight) were gone. True, he still had one of the parents... |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 1, 2015 11:07:46 GMT -5
There were slight tinkerings here and there and the multiverse eventually came back but for the most part the elements introduced by the first Crisis stuck around right up until Flashpoint. To me, it felt like they had undone most of the Crisis changes. From the changes made to Superman: His cousin Kara was back, as was Krypto. Most limitations to his powers (like needing an air tank to fly through space of Byrne's telekinetic explanations for invulnerability and flight) were gone. True, he still had one of the parents... What I resented the most of the post-CoIE is that the changes it brought were pretty much negated over time, but in ways that made the overall storyline ridiculously complicated. CoIE was supposed to make the DC universe easier to understand (or at least that's what the official line was); if so, it was a resounding fiasco. Pre-crisis, Superman had a cousin, Supergirl, who had come from a Kryptonian city that had briefly survived the planet's explosion. Her origin was a little naive, but easy to understand. Post-crisis, Superman was at first the sole survivor of Krypton. But a dimensionally-displaced superpowered Lana Lang showed up, calling herself Supergirl. Then she wasn't Lana but a shapeshifting synthetic being called Matrix. Then Matrix Supergirl fused with the soul of a dying human girl named Linda and doubled as the Angel of Fire. Then the Matrix side was removed from Linda who remained Supergirl, only weaker. Then Linda met the real Supergirl, one just like the one from the pre-crisis universe, who had been trapped in a rocket. Then...  The same thing pretty much happened to Hawkman and Wonder Woman: layer upon layer of complicated retcons to try and bring the character back to what it had been before Crisis. |
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Post by Jesse on Feb 1, 2015 15:06:40 GMT -5
Just finished reading The Strange Talent of Luther Strode #1-6. While I really enjoy Tradd Moore's art style I was not expecting this story to be so ultra violent. I mean this comic reaches Riki-Oh levels of absurd violence and gore. Definitely not for everyone. Still the story itself was interesting and I'm looking forward to checking out the sequel The Legend of Luther Strode when I get the chance.
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