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Post by rberman on May 3, 2018 5:54:15 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of "widescreen" comic "storytelling" as little storytelling happens. A comic book page and a movie storyboard are not the same mechanism. Also, the take on Hank Pym makes Jim Shooter seem sensitive. Vision and Scarlet Witch is just cheap sensationalism. A lot of what bothers me in the MCU movies is borrowed, quite often, from the Ultimate take on the properties. It's good for a TV screen to be wider than it is tall so that you can see two faces at once, given that most TV scenes consist of dialogue. The same is true of comic book panels. A nine-panel Eisner grid is taller than it is wide, which means that to see two people talking, you have to zoom way back to a full body shot, so you can't see facial expression as well as you'd like. Does every comic panel need to be the whole width of a page? Not, and for action scenes, other panel shapes may well be appropriate. But for dialogue scenes, panels half the width of the page, and wider than tall, make a lot of sense.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 3, 2018 7:05:36 GMT -5
Re: Eternals-Didn't read that; but, did read the special that followed. Meh... Really outside of Kirby, the only Eternals worth reading is Roy Thomas on Thor, when he brought the Eternals and the Celestials into things; but, the Eternals get shoved aside after about a half dozen (or so) issues and we are left with Thor and other pantheons. It's epic; but, it ain't Kirby. Squadron Supreme is a nice idea (though hardly original) that suffers in the execution. It's a decent read; but, hardly in the same league as Miracleman, Marvels, Kingdom Come, Golden Age or other, similar takes on heroes tackling real problems. The art is a bit staid, for the concept and it suffered from technical issues in the printing. It's rep was boosted after Mark Gruenwald's death and the inclusion of his ashes in the printing ink for the first trade print run. That, pls the talk of similar things at the time of Kingdom Come (especially Comicology's KC Companion. There was a follow-on graphic novel, with the Scarlet Centurian, that wasn't anything to write home about. Quite frankly, I thought the Squadron was more interesting in the Englehart run of Avengers (the Serpent Crown) and in the Defenders (with Overmind). Supreme Power starts well; but quickly loses its way, even before JMS dropped it for more Hollywood work. It recycled some of his Rising Stars ideas, which had been done before by people like Alan Moore and Steve Englehart. Re: Ultimate anything......Meh..... Spidey has some moments; but, the bulk of that line left me cold. Ultimates crossed into crass way too often and Mark Millar's constant name checking of Hollywood borders on pandering. I'm not a fan of "widescreen" comic "storytelling" as little storytelling happens. A comic book page and a movie storyboard are not the same mechanism. Also, the take on Hank Pym makes Jim Shooter seem sensitive. Vision and Scarlet Witch is just cheap sensationalism. A lot of what bothers me in the MCU movies is borrowed, quite often, from the Ultimate take on the properties. Counterpoint: Squadron Supreme was great, demonstrating extremely effective long term plotting where the dozen plus characters all had their own effective mini character arcs that resolved and contributed to the overall whole. It wasn't as self consciously "literary" (or self-important and humorless) as some of the works Cody cited, but it's a master-class in how to work character, plot, and theme together in the macro sense while delivering twelve solid individual comics with a beginning, middle, and end. And my tastes are always gonna skew towards structural formalism and experimentalism, so I quite liked the "widescreen" comics - at least it was something new! And the Ultimates was my favorite of the bunch.. I'm thinking it was the best paced mainstream comic I have ever read. I liked it better than anything from Avengers Vol 1 # 2* through Vol. 6 # 27, or whatever the hell imaginary number the Avenegers are on now-a-days. But the issue above was a Greg Land drawing, so the face is probably traced from online porn. Note that Crystal-or-whoever's body is anatomically impossible so we know the whole thing wasn't traced. So that is nice. * You can not beat the Hulk dressed as a clown pretending to be a robot juggling elephants. I don't want to say that this was the peak of comics as much as it was the peak potential of the human creative imagination, and the rest of our cultural achievements as a species will be progressively less worthwhile until our final deserved annihilation.
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Post by Trevor on May 3, 2018 7:45:19 GMT -5
Yeah, I’m surprised by the Squadron Supreme comments here, always thought it was near universally praised.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 3, 2018 8:24:08 GMT -5
Spidey was all I read of Ultimates with any consistency. I bought the UFF issues with Thanos just out of curiosity. But the FF themselves just didn't appeal in the issues that I did read. Ultimate X-Men I read for 20 some issues or so before it lost interest and just became the same as 616 X-Men to me.
Funny how I never really cared for anything in the Ultimate universe other than Spidey. And I've never really cared for anything I've read of Bendis except Spidey.
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2018 9:08:57 GMT -5
Funny how I never really cared for anything in the Ultimate universe other than Spidey. And I've never really cared for anything I've read of Bendis except Spidey. Same here although I did like the Ultimates as Marvel's version of the Authority.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 3, 2018 11:16:48 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of "widescreen" comic "storytelling" as little storytelling happens. A comic book page and a movie storyboard are not the same mechanism. Also, the take on Hank Pym makes Jim Shooter seem sensitive. Vision and Scarlet Witch is just cheap sensationalism. A lot of what bothers me in the MCU movies is borrowed, quite often, from the Ultimate take on the properties. It's good for a TV screen to be wider than it is tall so that you can see two faces at once, given that most TV scenes consist of dialogue. The same is true of comic book panels. A nine-panel Eisner grid is taller than it is wide, which means that to see two people talking, you have to zoom way back to a full body shot, so you can't see facial expression as well as you'd like. Does every comic panel need to be the whole width of a page? Not, and for action scenes, other panel shapes may well be appropriate. But for dialogue scenes, panels half the width of the page, and wider than tall, make a lot of sense. Not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about too much use of "cool shots" rather than images that actually convey the story. Instead, what we get is something that is more designed to sell the artwork in a secondary market than it is to convey the story. It's flash over substance. The Ultimate line, especially Ultimates, was filled with images that may look cool on a poster; but, did little to convey the emotion and drama of the story.
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 3, 2018 13:08:53 GMT -5
On Squadron, I agree with Reptisaurus: I think it's a really solid, well-written story and definitely worth reading, and the Marvel graphic novel that came out a little later was a pretty nice denouement. While I don't think it's better than Watchmen (to which it's often compared), Miracleman or Golden Age, I think it's far better than Kingdom Come.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2018 15:00:54 GMT -5
Infinity StonesI want to read the least amount of Comic Book(s) to understand the meaning of the Infinity Stones. If you can find a graphic novel that's explains everything -- that's would be great! This is one of my weakest area of Marvel Comics and it's might help Marvel's Infinity War Movie a bit better.
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Post by kirby101 on May 4, 2018 18:11:50 GMT -5
Why not let The Collector explain it to you.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 20, 2018 15:00:42 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ?
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Post by rberman on May 20, 2018 16:19:14 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ? “Dr Manhattan has two close friends and one occasional villain dying of cancer” is a plot point in Watchmen. I bet there are villains for whom “dying of cancer” (self, spouse, etc.) motivates them to Delve Too Deeply into dangerous Cuenca or forbidden mystic arts.
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Post by kirby101 on May 20, 2018 16:36:14 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ? What!! They killed Jane Foster? Gave her cancer? You bastards!!
Glad I don't read Marvel any more.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2018 17:04:54 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ? Are you limiting the question to corporate owned characters? Because there are a whole lot of memoir comics dealing with cancer deaths, dealing with cancer and other aspects of it, from Harvey Pekar's autobiographical stuff (Our Cancer Year) to stuff like Cancer Vixen. But more often it deals with the battle with cancer rather than just the death. Other big 2 characters have dealt with cancer, but not died from it including: Vic Sage (the reason he trained Rene Montoya to replace him as the Question was that he was dying form lung cancer but the new52 undid that Foggy Nelson-he was diagnosed with Ewings sacoma in Waid's run but I am not sure what happened after that Superman in All Star Superman John Constantine during Ennis' Hellblazer run (Dangerous Habits was the arc iirc) you can see some listicles on the topic here and here and probably a lot more with a little google fu. -M
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2018 17:05:57 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ? Jane's not dead yet...
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Post by The Captain on May 20, 2018 18:39:11 GMT -5
With Jane fosters death , that makes 2 comic books characters that have died by cancer( Captain Marvel ). Are there any others ? What!! They killed Jane Foster? Gave her cancer? You bastards!!
Glad I don't read Marvel any more.
Actually, it was a great story arc. She had cancer and was doing the radiation/chemo treatments, but every time she transformed into Thor, it undid all of the work that those treatments had done, as the transformation purged the chemicals from her body. It was her selfless sacrifice to protect others, proving her "worthy" of holding Mjolnir, that killed her just as much as the cancer that ravaged her human body; this was nice symmetry to the Silver Age stories where Odin would not accept her as being worthy of Thor's affection, making Thor choose between Asgard and his heritage and Midgard and the woman he loved. Marvel has been a dog's dinner in many ways for years, to be certain, but this story is definitely worthy to be included among some of the best they've done, not only in the past couple of decades but possibly ever. Jason Aaron just "gets" the character of Thor and the world of Asgard, and he spun a tale for the ages with Jane Foster wielding the uru hammer.
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