Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,075
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Post by Confessor on Jul 10, 2018 12:22:28 GMT -5
Any success Barbara Gordon had following Killing Joke was in spite of Alan Moore and not because of it. Later writers who came along and said "Wow, Barbara Gordon was treated horribly in Killing Joke so I think I'll try to save her" shouldn't mean Alan Moore gets credit for their work. "I'm going to make her a computer genius who helps people through her brains" is something which can arguably make her "a more interesting character". "I'm going to make her cannon fodder for The Joker since I need someone expendable" doesn't. I agree that the credit for Oracle shouldn't be laid at Alan Moore's door, but there are a few false assumptions or suggestions in this post of yours: it was never Moore's intention to cripple Barbara to make her "a more interesting character." In fact, within the story, I'm not sure it was ever really the Joker's intention to cripple her at all...although he had to know that the shooting could kill or cripple her. But regardless, the shooting, and the other degradation that the Joker subjected Barbara to, was done to acquire a tool with which to torture Commissioner Gorden, with the intention of breaking him mentally. It was the Joker's desire to show that even someone as noble as the Police Commissioner was only one hellish experience away from going insane and/or killing due to that insanity. Whether you personally liked it or not, the Joker shooting Barbara in such an unprovoked manner was perfectly in keeping with the story's assertion that the Joker was going further and to more extreme lengths this time than he ever had done before. Not sure what you mean about "fake violence" - The Joker killed a lot prior to this story, but in a unique manner. He also shot people, but during the midst of some wider plan. Killing Joke was just a sadist going around being a sadist and nothing more. Again, Barbara's shooting was also part of "some wider plan", and not just "a sadist going around being a sadist". There was a motive, a plan and a desired outcome to it all on the Joker's part.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 10, 2018 13:11:17 GMT -5
No, we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't look to superhero comics for in-depth realism, not even great lasting literature of social relevance. I did care about Supergirl and quit buying most DC comics when they had her dead body on a couple covers of comics I bought but soon cancelled (perhaps ironically just down to Swamp Thing for awhile then). If you think these things weren't invented for 9-12 year olds in the late '30s - early '60s, again we would have to agree to disagree. I did see and own some Golden Age comics and there were some graphic crime and horrors, but I never saw such graphic scenes in superheroes. The Joker killed people and left grinning corpses, and Batman even used a gun, but much violence was implied and not the subject of giant splash panels or twisted inner dialogue thought balloons. The problem with Alan Moore or Frank Miller taking super powered characters to the limit or beyond (at least in stories part of continuity which Dark Knight originally was not) is there is nowhere sustainable to go in that direction, it's just history-making death followed by history-making resurrection, over and over with more and more explicit sex and violence that was appropriate to underground comix... but never mainstream characters associated with spinner-racks and supermarket check-outs. I remember actual underground cartoonists saying this to me! It would be like if they had shown in detail Darth Vader killing millions and enjoying it and finally Luke Skywalker cuts Darth Vader's head off and bathes in the blood to celebrate the ridding from the universe of pure evil. That's Bronson's Death Wish, or Rambo where he's supposed to be a hero, grafted on to something that is total fantasy (as opposed to hard Sf, Lucas started it as a revival of Flash Gordon), which super powers are. What that is is a bizarre mess ultimately, it marks an end of the road. We wouldn't have had more Star Wars, but then some would say that could be a good thing. They and you are ultimately wrong IMO, dead wrong you could say, to aim after a serious adult explicit superheroes and the state of the comic book as a mass medium today in spite of successful movies to me proves that. I thought I detectied a lot of aimed at women with these historic deaths at the time, was fine with Phoenix and Elektra but then the exploiting their dead characters set in and it unleashed more dead superheroines. Not interesting to me so I gave them up. It's fine to have a story like There Is No Hope In Crime Alley sometimes that contrasts reality compared to the fantasy world of comics, that was a great moment, Dick Giordano named this batman story as one of his favorites or all time, but it is so easily done wrong and merely a gimmick and appearance of relevance to have a character get AIDS or be raped, and gets more likely to lose any positive thoughtful effect upon repetition. There's really nowhere to go down that road but repetition and restarting, what's so mature about that? Breaking the toys, throwing them away... how many times has Alpha Flight died now? There are people with cases of a hundred never read copies of these things but no hundred readers, and I hear print runs are now down to 20,000 on some main super character titles? Oh look another restart, a good place for me to declare collection complete and save my money. Okay, you didn't care about Batgirl, somebody did though, and wouldn't caring be better than the I don't care let's kill somebody and make history (short term sales to collectors/investors) approach? I'm glad if you don't try to say nobody cared about Batgirl, that is even worse. Making the villains ever more purely evil is actually no sign at all of mature fiction for adults either by the way. That is back to the most simplistic cliched kind of good vs. evil scenario with less subtlety and realism. Take that green Star Wars bunny! (editing mostly to correct a few typos and improve grammar)
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Post by comicsandwho on Jul 10, 2018 15:45:29 GMT -5
No, we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't look to superhero comics for in-depth realism, not even great lasting literature of social relevance. I did care about Supergirl and quit buying most DC comics when they had her dead body on a couple covers of comics I bought but soon cancelled (perhaps ironically just down to Swamp Thing for awhile then). If you think these things weren't invented for 9-12 year olds in the late '30s - early '60s, again we would have to agree to disagree. I did see and own some Golden Age comics and there were some graphic crime and horrors, but I never saw such graphic scenes in superheroes. The Joker killed people and left grinning corpses, and Batman even used a gun, but much violence was implied and not the subject of giant splash panels or twisted inner dialogue thought balloons. The problem with Alan Moore or Frank Miller taking super powered characters to the limit or beyond (at least in stories part of continuity which Dark Knight originally was not) is there is nowhere sustainable to go in that direction, it's just history-making death followed by history-making resurrection, over and over with more and more explicit sex and violence that was appropriate to underground comix... but never mainstream characters associated with spinner-racks and supermarket check-outs. I remember actual underground cartoonists saying this to me! It would be like if they had shown in detail Darth Vader killing millions and enjoying it and finally Luke Skywalker cuts Darth Vader's head off and bathes in the blood to celebrate the ridding from the universe of pure evil. That's Bronson's Death Wish, or Rambo where he's supposed to be a hero, grafted on to something that is total fantasy (as opposed to hard Sf, Lucas started it as a revival of Flash Gordon), which super powers are. What that is is a bizarre mess ultimately, it marks an end of the road. We wouldn't have had more Star Wars, but then some would say that could be a good thing. They and you are ultimately wrong IMO, dead wrong you could say, to aim after a serious adult explicit superheroes and the state of the comic book as a mass medium today in spite of successful movies to me proves that. I thought I detectied a lot of aimed at women with these historic deaths at the time, was fine with Phoenix and Elektra but then the exploiting their dead characters set in and it unleashed more dead superheroines. Not interesting to me so I gave them up. It's fine to have a story like There Is No Hope In Crime Alley sometimes that contrasts reality compared to the fantasy world of comics, that was a great moment, Dick Giordano named this batman story as one of his favorites or all time, but it is so easily done wrong and merely a gimmick and appearance of relevance to have a character get AIDS or be raped, and gets more likely to lose any positive thoughtful effect upon repetition. There's really nowhere to go down that road but repetition and restarting, what's so mature about that? Breaking the toys, throwing them away... how many times has Alpha Flight died now? There are people with cases of a hundred never read copies of these things but no hundred readers, and I hear print runs are now down to 20,000 on some main super character titles? Oh look another restart, a good place for me to declare collection complete and save my money. Okay, you didn't care about Batgirl, somebody did though, and wouldn't caring be better than the I don't care let's kill somebody and make history (short term sales to collectors/investors) approach? I'm glad if you don't try to say nobody cared about Batgirl, that is even worse. Making the villains ever more purely evil is actually no sign at all of mature fiction for adults either by the way. That is back to the most simplistic cliched kind of good vs. evil scenario with less subtlety and realism. Take that green Star Wars bunny! (editing mostly to correct a few typos and improve grammar) My take is 'Do whatever you want, to whoever you want'..in a What If story. That's the fun of those 'twists'. If it's a story that 'counts', then make damn sure there's some real 'impact' to it, and not just 'Let's draw a Pieta homage for the 10,000th time, only this time, Hero Girl's costume will be ripped in these spots.' When EVERY story is treated like it's an 'alternate reality brought into mainstream continuity'...and any writer can 'decorate' any way he likes, and it can all be wiped away by the next 'cosmic thingy event series', so the new writer can start fresh, and kill anybody th e last writer kept alive, while reviving whoever got killed in the LAST 'event'...well, those are comics that deserve to have ridiculously small circulation.(This is also the recent ratings problem for 'Doctor Who', in a nutshell). I had no problem with 'crippling Barbara Gordon'..as an 'Elseworlds' concept.If it was supposed to be 'out of continuity', I wonder who changed it? Was Jim Starlin told to mention(or not) 'Killing Joke' early in 'Death in the Family'? ('Everyone will want a piece of the Joker, after what he did to Barbara'...gee, Bats, nice of you to mention that to her dad. 'You remember, right, Jim?') Or did he do it without 'checking' first, and they just decided to go ahead and lt it stand as an 'in continuity' reference?
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,075
|
Post by Confessor on Jul 10, 2018 16:51:18 GMT -5
No, we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't look to superhero comics for in-depth realism, not even great lasting literature of social relevance. I did care about Supergirl and quit buying most DC comics when they had her dead body on a couple covers of comics I bought but soon cancelled (perhaps ironically just down to Swamp Thing for awhile then). If you think these things weren't invented for 9-12 year olds in the late '30s - early '60s, again we would have to agree to disagree. I did see and own some Golden Age comics and there were some graphic crime and horrors, but I never saw such graphic scenes in superheroes. The Joker killed people and left grinning corpses, and Batman even used a gun, but much violence was implied and not the subject of giant splash panels or twisted inner dialogue thought balloons. The problem with Alan Moore or Frank Miller taking super powered characters to the limit or beyond (at least in stories part of continuity which Dark Knight originally was not) is there is nowhere sustainable to go in that direction, it's just history-making death followed by history-making resurrection, over and over with more and more explicit sex and violence that was appropriate to underground comix... but never mainstream characters associated with spinner-racks and supermarket check-outs. I remember actual underground cartoonists saying this to me! It would be like if they had shown in detail Darth Vader killing millions and enjoying it and finally Luke Skywalker cuts Darth Vader's head off and bathes in the blood to celebrate the ridding from the universe of pure evil. That's Bronson's Death Wish, or Rambo where he's supposed to be a hero, grafted on to something that is total fantasy (as opposed to hard Sf, Lucas started it as a revival of Flash Gordon), which super powers are. What that is is a bizarre mess ultimately, it marks an end of the road. We wouldn't have had more Star Wars, but then some would say that could be a good thing. They and you are ultimately wrong IMO, dead wrong you could say, to aim after a serious adult explicit superheroes and the state of the comic book as a mass medium today in spite of successful movies to me proves that. I thought I detectied a lot of aimed at women with these historic deaths at the time, was fine with Phoenix and Elektra but then the exploiting their dead characters set in and it unleashed more dead superheroines. Not interesting to me so I gave them up. It's fine to have a story like There Is No Hope In Crime Alley sometimes that contrasts reality compared to the fantasy world of comics, that was a great moment, Dick Giordano named this batman story as one of his favorites or all time, but it is so easily done wrong and merely a gimmick and appearance of relevance to have a character get AIDS or be raped, and gets more likely to lose any positive thoughtful effect upon repetition. There's really nowhere to go down that road but repetition and restarting, what's so mature about that? Breaking the toys, throwing them away... how many times has Alpha Flight died now? There are people with cases of a hundred never read copies of these things but no hundred readers, and I hear print runs are now down to 20,000 on some main super character titles? Oh look another restart, a good place for me to declare collection complete and save my money. Okay, you didn't care about Batgirl, somebody did though, and wouldn't caring be better than the I don't care let's kill somebody and make history (short term sales to collectors/investors) approach? I'm glad if you don't try to say nobody cared about Batgirl, that is even worse. Making the villains ever more purely evil is actually no sign at all of mature fiction for adults either by the way. That is back to the most simplistic cliched kind of good vs. evil scenario with less subtlety and realism. Take that green Star Wars bunny! I actually agree with most of what you're saying here. I don't think that relentlessly gritty storylines in superhero comics are a sustainable way forward, or even necessarily a good thing. However, I also don't hold the likes of Alan Moore or Frank Miller responsible for that trend. They wrote a few uncharacteristically mature story lines within the superhero genre and those stories became very popular with the comic buying public and consequently made DC a lot of money. That's why more of those types of stories appeared. Ultimately, I find the likes of Marvelman, Watchmen, The Killing Joke, or The Dark Knight Returns to be excellent comic books. The difference for me is that I don't need every subsequent comic to be like them, but I think the majority of the comic buying public and certain comic authors kinda do.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2018 3:00:07 GMT -5
The question of whether comics should be targeted exclusively for younger readers was not new in the 1980s. People were talking about comics growing up much, much earlier, as seen in this vintage article... from circa 1952 when the manager of Crestwood Publishing was writing about the Simon & Kirby offerings and other books of the post-war era (article and image are courtesy comic historian Robert Beerbohm's feed). -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 11, 2018 17:05:48 GMT -5
Those books did change the type of stories that were told from then forward, for good or for bad. It did sort of cut the kids out of the loop with the mature tags.
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Post by tarkintino on Jul 12, 2018 5:42:23 GMT -5
The question of whether comics should be targeted exclusively for younger readers was not new in the 1980s. People were talking about comics growing up much, much earlier, as seen in this vintage article... from circa 1952 when the manager of Crestwood Publishing was writing about the Simon & Kirby offerings and other books of the post-war era (article and image are courtesy comic historian Robert Beerbohm's feed). -M Thanks for posting this. Comic creators were trying to move away from the silly and/or trite dating back that far, with EC certainly being a force in that campaign. Imagine if comics--specifically superhero comics--were still in that light, late Golden/ early Silver Age stage by 1967, or so. It is difficult to doubt that the bottom would have dropped out for interest in superheroes to the point that their strongest ambassadors for cultural outreach/awareness--film adaptations and merchandising--probably would not have had their sparks of interest, helping keep general interest alive throughout the decades.
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Post by MDG on Jul 12, 2018 8:10:40 GMT -5
I had the hardest time getting through the Thomas-era Avengers (#47 to I think I gave up around #59). It was like living with a large, dysfunctional family. A lot of shouting, but nothing ever gets done.
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Post by brutalis on Jul 12, 2018 8:28:35 GMT -5
I had the hardest time getting through the Thomas-era Avengers (#47 to I think I gave up around #59). It was like living with a large, dysfunctional family. A lot of shouting, but nothing ever gets done. Roy actually began with Avengers 27. And are you kidding? His run sets up what the Avengers will be for most of their run. Roy gave us the introductions of Hercules, The Red Guardian, T'Challa as Avenger, Grim Reaper, Black Knight, Vision, Yellowjacket, Clint turning Goliath, Ultron, Squadron Sinister, Arkon, The Lethal Legion, Red Wolf, Avengers vs Avengers in Annual #2 and the massive Kree/Skrull war story. The dysfunctional family aspect of Avengers was what made the team interesting. With so many heroes and personalities there would be conflict and passion, agony and glory and all the familial patterns inherent of such a team of individuals.
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Post by tarkintino on Jul 12, 2018 8:55:28 GMT -5
I had the hardest time getting through the Thomas-era Avengers (#47 to I think I gave up around #59). It was like living with a large, dysfunctional family. A lot of shouting, but nothing ever gets done. Whoa. Pretty big statement, as I thought the Thomas run was the jewel in the crown of The Avengers' entire original run. Under Thomas, they emerged from the considerable shadows of the Justice League of America, and Marvel's own Fantastic Four to be a compelling group book where the teammates really brought individual personality to the group, and were not just absorbed by the fact they were in a group. A significant achievement in the group book format. Under Thomas (and touching on / adding to what brutalis posted), we were treated to the introduction of the Vision, the continuing tragedy of the "Bucky Lives?" saga running through several titles in those years, Ultron, the first appearance of the Invaders, the Kree/Skrull War, and on and on. Thomas has to be in the running for one of the best team writers in comic book history for achievements like that, right up there with Lee on the Fantastic Four and Wolfman on The New Teen Titans.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 12, 2018 10:35:47 GMT -5
I had the hardest time getting through the Thomas-era Avengers (#47 to I think I gave up around #59). It was like living with a large, dysfunctional family. A lot of shouting, but nothing ever gets done. I get why it was "ground-breaking" at the time. But I find a lot of the "characterization" from that time period to be a rough go. The attempt to put personalities into the characters ultimately lead to stereotypes with zero nuance. I get that these are funnybooks. But people are not all one thing all the time. And it's exacerbated in a team book because you have more limited time to actually do anything with the characters so you end up with this tip-of-the-iceberg personality that is really not any better than the white-bread-and-mayo that the Distinguished Competition was providing. And don't let's get me started with crossovers. There's a character showing up in my book. We must fight because...personality. Now we know that we are against a common foe. We are friends and will defeat him. Until the next time he shows up. Then we must fight because...personality. Rinse-repeat.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 12, 2018 11:18:52 GMT -5
Have to agree with tark on this one. Add to that the amazing art by both Buscemas, Adams, Smith...pure gold.
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Post by MDG on Jul 12, 2018 11:42:33 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley said it pretty well. I picked this up (Essentials vol 3) really expecting to enjoy it but 12 or so issues in I was done. Maybe I'll try again, starting in earlier. I did love the Buscema art, though, esp. when he was inking himself.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 12, 2018 12:08:19 GMT -5
There are jewels in there and it is one of the best runs; but, Roy's dialogue could be a slog and personalities could be rather one dimensional. I don't think I ever sat down and read a long stretch of his run, which really brings out a writer's formula. Read in the original frequency or as single stories, the experience is a bit different. As much as I love the Kree-Skrull War, Roy has some pretty silly dialogue and overdoes some of the emotional stuff.
The fighting all the time is part of why I always preferred Justice League, when I was young. The stories might have been blander; but, the characters acted more like mature adults; until Marvel writers came over and started Marvelizing them (or younger DC writers attempted the same). The JLA seemed far more professional than the entire Marvel Universe.
As I say, there are plenty of jewels and some of the best stories, period. Still, even some of the classic multi-issue stories have a clunky chapter or two in them, where in-fighting slows down the plot. I always felt the volatile personality mix worked better in the Defenders, where you had real abrasive types, like Namor, powder kegs, like the Hulk, of lower confidence, like Nighthawk; plus, the addition of the latest temporary member always kept the mix spinning. With a group like the Avengers, where team members are together for longer stretches, it felt like they should come to an understanding, at some point, or flat out leave the group. I do think Roy, at times, was a bit too slavish to Stan's formula; but, at others, he showed greater maturity and trust in the reader. As it is, I still rate Roy a better writer than Stan and would more often rather read Roy's run on a title, than Stan's (depending on the book and if it is Kirby or Ditko;s plots).
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Post by rberman on Jul 12, 2018 13:44:24 GMT -5
Professionalism is great for getting the job done, but "everyone collaborated to solve the problem at hand" does not make a great story. This was the problem that Star Trek: The Next Generation had. All the characters were so professional and mannered that there was never an opportunity for conflict among them to drive the story forward. As a result, too many of the stories devolved too "Oh no, we encountered a space hazard, and now we will spend 45 minutes of technobabble until the final technobabble is succesful, and we continue on our course." Whereas on a show like Babylon 5 or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, characters have desires which are mutually exclusive, so there's lots of opportunity for story just inherent in the set-up. Even Winnie-the-Pooh gets plenty of mileage out of "Tigger wants to bounce, but Rabbit wants peace and quiet."
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