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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 1, 2017 13:10:33 GMT -5
First time seeing this thread, and have a confession that I think fits the purpose, and that many of you will hate me for. I find Stan Lee comics completely unreadable now. I appreciate his vision, and plots, and love the art, but I can't read his dialogue without cringing and getting completely taken out of the story. Interesting. Sometimes I think he tries too much to make the characters sound "casual" but the dialogue is no less stilted than other superhero comics (or war or western or romance) at the time. of course, if you love the vision, plot and art, you don't leave much for Stan.At the risk of starting another Kirby vs. Lee debate, I have to dismiss this statement. If Lee was riding on the coat tails of others, then Spider-man would have sunk like a stone once Ditko left. It became more popular instead.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Jan 1, 2017 14:11:49 GMT -5
I find early Spider-Man and Fantastic 4 comics to be very good. Early Avengers comics less so, and early X-Men comics to be awful. But overall, they're still better than many of the golden age comics I've read. I find that the early Bob Kane/Bill Finger Batman years are unreadable.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 1, 2017 14:50:55 GMT -5
I find early Spider-Man and Fantastic 4 comics to be very good. Early Avengers comics less so, and early X-Men comics to be awful. But overall, they're still better than many of the golden age comics I've read. I find that the early Bob Kane/Bill Finger Batman years are unreadable. Man, I love the Avengers from 1- to around 40. Something about losing the big guns in issue #16 made the book more exciting.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 2, 2017 8:37:21 GMT -5
Dr. Doom is now a good guy wearing the Iron Man armor. That proves that Marvel just doesn't know what to do with their characters anymore. There I said it. I just thought of something- Marvel/Disney has avoided using the Fantastic Four or any of the characters in the conventional sense and maybe that's why you only see Doom, Ben, Johnny in unusual comics and roles. They are waiting for Fox to give up on the movie rights and then they will restore the comic and team.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 2, 2017 13:53:06 GMT -5
Dr. Doom is now a good guy wearing the Iron Man armor. That proves that Marvel just doesn't know what to do with their characters anymore. There I said it. I just thought of something- Marvel/Disney has avoided using the Fantastic Four or any of the characters in the conventional sense and maybe that's why you only see Doom, Ben, Johnny in unusual comics and roles. They are waiting for Fox to give up on the movie rights and then they will restore the comic and team. That's certainly the popular opinion with the internet comic community, but I don't buy it.... Fantastic Four hasn't sold well for a long time.. it did decent under Hickman, but he had to put Spider-man on the team and focus on the kids to do it. I think the main problem is the Marvel Universe doesn't have major villains anymore... they're all anti-heroes now. The level of threat the FF used to face in their comic know constitutes a major event, not a regular comic. It seems like the only thing any of Marvel's writers can think of to do with the team now is break them up .
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Post by WestPhillyPunisher on Jan 2, 2017 18:55:57 GMT -5
Well, I think Fantastic Four went downhill after Franklin, then Valeria came along. The kids became anchors in my opinion.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 2, 2017 20:40:36 GMT -5
Well, I think Fantastic Four went downhill after Franklin, then Valeria came along. The kids became anchors in my opinion. It was still viable when Franklin was there but when they introduced a previously dead Valeria, I Didn't enjoy is so much. She became the smartest and most Obnoxious person in the book.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 2, 2017 22:55:40 GMT -5
I got tired of the Fantastic Four after Doctor Doom co-starred for the 1,217th time
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2017 23:04:31 GMT -5
Some comic book properties are not well suited to be perpetuated ad infinitum and need to be allowed to be laid to rest. What made them work and be special is tied to a certain zeitgeist that has passed and trying to redefine them for the new zeitgeist removes what made them tick in the first place. I think the FF is one of those properties.
The world, science, technology, modern family dynamics, and comic book culture have all passed them by and trying to reinvent/redefine/ultimatize them for the current world/culture loses what made them work in the first place.
There I said it.
-M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 2, 2017 23:33:36 GMT -5
I got tired of the Fantastic Four after Doctor Doom co-starred for the 1,217th time I think it's a combination of the two... Valeria is super annoying... especially since they tried to use her to make Doom a hero, instead of having Doom make her a villain, which would have been far, far more interesting.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 2, 2017 23:47:54 GMT -5
Some comic book properties are not well suited to be perpetuated ad infinitum and need to be allowed to be laid to rest. What made them work and be special is tied to a certain zeitgeist that has passed and trying to redefine them for the new zeitgeist removes what made them tick in the first place. I think the FF is one of those properties. The world, science, technology, modern family dynamics, and comic book culture have all passed them by and trying to reinvent/redefine/ultimatize them for the current world/culture loses what made them work in the first place. There I said it. -M Any other examples jump right to mind for you, m? Many of the non-super-powered heroes? Acceptable and believable in our internalized version of America in the 40s and 50s, but they'd be cannon fodder in today's comics world. I haven't read a new comic since dirt was new, of course, but it seems that any hero now had better be a mutant or a meta-human if he or she hopes to suvive.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2017 0:18:30 GMT -5
Some comic book properties are not well suited to be perpetuated ad infinitum and need to be allowed to be laid to rest. What made them work and be special is tied to a certain zeitgeist that has passed and trying to redefine them for the new zeitgeist removes what made them tick in the first place. I think the FF is one of those properties. The world, science, technology, modern family dynamics, and comic book culture have all passed them by and trying to reinvent/redefine/ultimatize them for the current world/culture loses what made them work in the first place. There I said it. -M Any other examples jump right to mind for you, m? Many of the non-super-powered heroes? Acceptable and believable in our internalized version of America in the 40s and 50s, but they'd be cannon fodder in today's comics world. I haven't read a new comic since dirt was new, of course, but it seems that any hero now had better be a mutant or a meta-human if he or she hopes to suvive. Really anything that relies on the tropes of lost civilizations or unexplored corners of the globe doesn't work well any more as I see it because there are just no unexplored corners any more. Secret identities in the era of everything being filmed w/security footage 24/7, handheld devices with video capability, facial recognition software, portable GPS devices in everyone's pocket, etc. now lacks the verisimilitude in the modern era to really work well unless it is done as a period piece. Comics need to leave 20th century tropes based on 20th century tech and culture behind, but the old guard who are the core of the current niche market refuse to leave it behind, while newer readers won't embrace something that doesn't resonate with the world they know, so you have a market divided against itself the result of which is a lot of regressive comics with by the numbers storytelling and ideas because they are "safe" which dulls the thunder of what made comics so great which was their inventiveness and generation of new ideas and new takes on older ideas. The content is stagnant because the market is divided between the customers of different zeitgeists which paralyzes the market and leave a lot of stagnant comics that retread the old to stay afloat for a little while longer sales wise. Comics of the 50s, 60s and 70s capitalized on the Cold War and Space Age zeitgeist for their themes, characters, villains, and plots; 80s comics latched on to the agita of the Reagan and Thatcher years including the continual Cold War nuclear threat zeitgeist to evolve some of the themes, ideas and characters, but a lot of that changed with the fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the early 2000s they tried to latch on to the 9/11 Zeitgeist and the war on terror to inform things, but were also clinging to a lot of things that relied on the earlier tropes. The world has continued to change, comics haven't kept up. Comics of the 21st century should still be reliant on retreading those ideas of previous zeitgeists. The super-hero movies and television shows have done a good job of taking the basic super-hero idea, and some of the iconic elements of the characters and stories and translating them into a narrative that resonates with audiences who live in the here and now-the one that have bombed (such as the FF movies to bring it back to the original point) are the ones that failed to do this well or were ham-fisted in doing it. In the print world, there seems to be a regressive faction in the niche audience that resents the success of the movies and doesn't want the comics to reflect the mass market versions of the properties and wants to rely on the old outdated tropes and concepts that don't resonate with modern audiences or even audiences of the past who have flowed with the times which keeps actual comic books a niche market and makes some of the properties borderline non-viable in the current marketplace (FF again). People want to point to people don't read, or have other options or can't follow the panel & pages format and complicated back story as to why comics don't sell, and there is a hint of truth to that, people don't want to read or buy in to narratives that lack something that either resonates with the current time or has a timeless nature that transcends any one zeitgeists. And they will not choose them when there are options out there that appeal to them more. There are elements to things like Superman and Wonder Woman for example that transcend any one zeitgeist, but there are a lot of comics produced using those characters that appeal to a particular zeitgeist that no longer resonates with audiences and does not transcend it's time, and producing comics that harken to those eras rather than to the iconic timeless elements of the characters is a recipe for shrinking sales and irrelevance in the mass market. It's not the people don't (want to) read, they don't (want to) read that, and it's not that there are other options, it's that there are options that appeal and resonate more with them because the product of comics doesn't. Attempts to update on some properties (like the FF) have failed to find that current resonance or timeless factor that works. These are properties that need to be retired or at least let lay fallow until a take that works can be found, but because modern comic companies are built as IP farms rather than storytelling businesses, there is a need to keep the brands active and generating revenue which works against any other need, so they prop up these outdated properties with attempt after attempt that doesn't work and does more harm than good to the property overall. My personal preference is for some of the older stories and story telling modes rather than those that are designed to appeal to modern zeitgeists, but then I am on the other side of my prime and on my way out of the mass audience on the other side now and my preferences are those of a niche customer not a modern one. Comic publishers should not be catering to my preferences as I am too small a demographic and one with a much shorter shelf life now than the customers that should be being brought in with stuff that resonates with them the way comics resonated with me when I discovered them. They should be the same as when I discovered them, they should be doing the same things they did then, producing stories that capture the imagination of the next generation of readers and customers and building lifelong connections with those customers, not regurgitating what they did 40 years ago for those few who were kids then and still hanging on to those childhood preferences when the market and the world has moved on. But again, what do I know. -M
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Post by WestPhillyPunisher on Jan 3, 2017 4:06:44 GMT -5
Well, I think Fantastic Four went downhill after Franklin, then Valeria came along. The kids became anchors in my opinion. It was still viable when Franklin was there but when they introduced a previously dead Valeria, I Didn't enjoy is so much. She became the smartest and most Obnoxious person in the book. Hmm! You're most likely right there. Admittedly, I dropped FF after Jonathan Hickman took over as I could never get into his storytelling. And that level of dislike for Hickman's work continued when he took over Avengers years later and I avoided that book like the plague and haven't read it since.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 3, 2017 5:57:58 GMT -5
I find it interesting that Scott Campbell was savaged over this cover of a young female- But no one has said a peep that this person- Now looks like this:
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Post by The Captain on Jan 3, 2017 7:54:14 GMT -5
I find it interesting that Scott Campbell was savaged over this cover of a young female- But no one has said a peep that this person- Now looks like this: Actually, IIRC, there was quite a bit of backlash over this last cover you posted. I don't remember all of the details, but it was pretty much along the lines of "hey, isn't that a teenage girl you have dressed and posed like that?" Would love it if anyone else could corroborate, if only so I can continue to trust my memory
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