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Post by Icctrombone on May 10, 2021 20:40:00 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “.
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Post by majestic on May 10, 2021 20:46:22 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “. I understand your point but I disagree. Later writers on some of these characters added so much more depth and made them more interesting. In fact their runs are classics for a reason.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 10, 2021 21:05:42 GMT -5
Of course there are some exceptions but people are still screaming that Sue Dibney was raped and killed by Brad Meltzer. Crystal and Johnny was a nice love story and later writers had her become a woman that slept around a bit and Engelhart actually wrote her as a woman willing to break up Johnny's Marriage to Alicia.
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Post by tarkintino on May 10, 2021 21:58:49 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “. I understand your point but I disagree. Later writers on some of these characters added so much more depth and made them more interesting. In fact their runs are classics for a reason. Agreed; Spider-Man is a perfect example of the character gaining a wealth of depth and interest beyond the creators (although one of his creators was responsible in part for his evolution).
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,410
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Post by shaxper on May 10, 2021 22:07:19 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “. I understand your point but I disagree. Later writers on some of these characters added so much more depth and made them more interesting. In fact their runs are classics for a reason. It really depends on the property and the writer, doesn't it? No one tackled the Fantastic Four better than Kirby and Lee, but I'm glad they didn't get the final word on Daredevil, Black Panther, nor the X-men.
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Post by berkley on May 10, 2021 22:08:41 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “.
I think this is true a lot of the time but not always: for example, Englehart wasn't the first to write Moondragon but I think his was by far the most interesting version of that character. But then, in her earlier appearances, including the first one, she was kind of a throw-away character, there just to perform a function in the plot, whether villain or part of the supporting cast. So you could say that Englehart was the first to really explore the character and make her a figure of interest for her own sake as oppose to just her plot-function. So in a sense, I would say he did "create" the character, which would support your statement.
But another counter-example would be a character like Dr. Strange: the Ditko/Lee is certainly one of if not the best version but I wouldn't want to have missed the Englehart (there's that name again!) .
The problem is more when someone wants to totally ignore the best or the definitive version of a character. The Englehart Strange didn't contradict the Lee/Ditko, it was just a different slant on it: it added nuance without contradicting what had already been established.
But when someone takes a character like Thena from the Eternals and changes her from a calm, cool, efficient leader to an incompetent, over-emotional, romance-obsessed failure, that's a problem - one that editorial should catch, if it's good for anything, yet somehow things like this happen all the time, especially when the relative obscurity of a character leaves the writer unafraid of any backlash from the readership.
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Post by chadwilliam on May 10, 2021 23:09:41 GMT -5
Maybe the first writer and creator of any character is the best writer. With every added writer , you run the risk that they will be a murderer, rapist or something “new that we never knew about “. I don't think this idea is given the serious consideration it deserves. Jerry Siegel and Bill Finger are, of course, respected creators for what they came up with, but I wonder how many fans today appreciate the quality of their writing itself. "He gave us Superman/Batman, you have to respect him for that" is true, sure, but it all too often sounds to my (perhaps cynical) ears like "He created the ball which others ran with". Finger's Batman was much more fully formed than I think he gets credit for. Finger wasn't just a guy who, in a moment of inspiration, came up with one good idea - the sidekick, most of the Rogues Gallery we have today, the gadgets, and most of the stories themselves came from him. It wasn't a coincidence that when DC was selecting stories to reprint in their Batman 80 Page Giants, most of them turned out to have been penned by Finger without their even knowing it. Same thing with Siegel - brilliant enough to not only invent the comic book superhero, but more than capable enough to adjust the medium itself to suit his story's needs - whether by having Superman square off against fictionalized newspaper strip good guys, watch himself in a Fleischer cartoon as he dances around the fourth wall, or simply come up with a character such as Mxyztplk. And like Finger, it's often his stories which are best recalled whether you're discussing the Golden or Silver Age.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2021 23:34:16 GMT -5
Had an interesting experience with Mycomicshop / Lonestar...
They discounted some VF $3.99 books to $2.00 and included the $19.99 cover variant in that $2 discounted price as well, maybe an error, maybe not, it was their pricing. So I ordered 2 and expected a couple slightly dinged books to arrive. I didn't argue if I was getting 90% off cover price.
When they arrived....I can't see what made them VF....no dings, no dents, no noticeable spine ticks as the variant had a thicker cover. They looked NM to me.
So I got $39.98 in cover for $4...then resold them to a couple of crazies and got $80 since the price went up over the past few months.
I'll order from them again, hell yeah.
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Post by majestic on May 11, 2021 8:57:26 GMT -5
Of course there are some exceptions but people are still screaming that Sue Dibney was raped and killed by Brad Meltzer. Crystal and Johnny was a nice love story and later writers had her become a woman that slept around a bit and Engelhart actually wrote her as a woman willing to break up Johnny's Marriage to Alicia. absolutely. I like Meltzer's novels but hate his comic book work. IMO DC should never have approved the story. I would be fine with it being an elseworlds story and having Ralph and Sue back together.
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Post by badwolf on May 11, 2021 9:24:23 GMT -5
I have mixed feelings about Identity Crisis. I too hate what happened to the Dibnys... but damn if that story wasn't gripping and with a great twist.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 11, 2021 10:30:51 GMT -5
I have mixed feelings about Identity Crisis. I too hate what happened to the Dibnys... but damn if that story wasn't gripping and with a great twist. I enjoyed ID Crisis also. I wasn’t attached to the Dibneys but it was rough what happens to them.
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Post by Graphic Autist on May 11, 2021 10:54:21 GMT -5
I thought the art in Identity Crisis was fantastic, but I didn't care for the story too much.
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2021 11:04:46 GMT -5
Identity Crisis was huge as it was being released. At the shops here, sales went up with each issue for the first 3-4 issues and all anyone was talking about in the shops was the mystery involved. It was appointment comics here. I also remember the variant covers for later printings being huge and the first time I noticed the modern variant cover culture in action. And then the big revels started hitting and it all went pear shaped and got ugly. A significant portion of that tuned in audience turned on the book. Demand for those variant cover later printings dropped as did the asking prices for them on those up on the walls for display. All the excited chatter for the book had become bitter grumblings and anyone saying they still liked the book (and there was still a large percentage of readers who did) got the evil eye or eye roll with an "oh you're one of them" kind of reaction. Overall sales via Diamond didn't drop because well, preorders had all the issues ordered before the reveals so to DC it was still a hit, and sales to end customers didn't really falter as people wanted to see how it all ended, but I don't think I had ever seen an audience turn so quickly on a book before. There had been a little bit of it with the Clone Saga with Spidey in the 90s, but that was more of a reader fatigue reaction even though there was some sharp negative reactions to the Ben Reilly reveal, but nothing like what I saw happening with Identity Crisis. This was also the burgeoning era of comic news and opinion sites on the internet (something lacking in the Clone Saga era) and I saw a lot of the same reactions I was seeing in shops mirrored online in comments sections on places like Newsamrama and the like, and I think that helped snowball some of the reactions and feed into the mob mentality of negativity against the books.
It's an interesting case study on the behavior of fandom, especially if looking at the origins of modern 21st century fandom and some of the divisiveness and buying trends (like variants and later printings) that hallmark this current iteration of fandom.
-M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 11, 2021 11:15:05 GMT -5
I've never read Identity Crisis. By the time it happened I had largely left behind super-hero comics and had definitely left behind "event" super-hero comics. But I remember the sh*t hitting the fan at CBR as the reveals came in. And a number of people whose opinions I trust as to mysteries have assured me that the mystery solution makes no sense. Ultimately there is close to zero chance that I'll ever read it.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,410
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Post by shaxper on May 11, 2021 11:32:27 GMT -5
I read Identity Crisis in tpb format a while after the fact, and free of the conversations and reactions surrounding it. It was incredibly well written, but it also felt like sensationalist shock value crap.
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