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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 27, 2014 15:54:18 GMT -5
It's also pretty much by definition the "women in refrigerators" phenomenon: A male character's story made more interesting at the expensive or a female character's tragic fate. It's a fridging smorgasbord. Sue gets fridged four times (raped, mind-wiped, murdered, burnt) and Sue gets fridged three times (goes insane, murders Sue for ridiculous reason, tries to cover up murder in ridiculous way).
Geez! Spread it out a little, guys! With a little forethought, they could have destroyed five more women of the Silver Age (Iris Allen, Shayera Hol, Lois Lane, Vicki Vale, Dinah Lance) with the same amount of atrocities! Much more efficient. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Jul 27, 2014 21:53:59 GMT -5
There's also this:  Philosophically, I found Holy Terror tough to get through, but from a craft standpoint, I had no problem with it. Miller wants to be the poor man's Hugo Pratt. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 28, 2014 0:48:20 GMT -5
I feel like I'm swimming against the tide, I really enjoyed Morrisons JLA, X-men, and All Star Superman. There aren't many writers that hit all the time. Oh, the man has many more fans than detractors, and stories like We3 and All Star Superman have often been cited as excellent comics; so it's not as if he's not talented. Personally, what I've read of his is a mixed bag. I liked the new direction he gave the X-Men for a while, even if the Magneto reveal at the end wasn't very well handled. Oh, yes, I was totally fooled and never suspected that Xorn wasn't who he claimed to be. What's more, the commentary about old revolutionaries failing to adapt to the times was spot on. But the Magneto Xorn turned out to bear no relation to the character who had been evolving over decades at Marvel; he was just a supervillainous cypher with Magneto's face. Of the highly popular JLA run, I only read "Rock of ages". It is one of the few trade paperbacks I regret buying (the other being the first Lobo book patched up from bits and pieces of many comics. And I do own Identity Crisis, so I have my share of critically-panned books!!!). Reading that, I felt I was re-reading "Days of future past" and all other stories about a future timeline gone wrong that has to be set right. I was also very disappointed by Arkham Asylum, which I was waiting for eagerly before it came out because of the McKean art. It had a lot of name dropping, references to Egyptian symbols that aren't half as cryptic as the writer thinks, and Batman doing stupid things like stabbing his own hand with a sliver of glass to… what? Snap out of a funk? It wasn't very clear. And Batman was described as easily unbalanced, which he shouldn't be. (I did like the April fool's joke by the Joker, though. Very unexpected). I wouldn't call Morrison a bad writer, by any means. Just not one I'd personally rank with the best either, and in that I realize I'm in the minority. Archie Goodwin has wowed me far more often, even in very simple tales. My rule of thumb with Morrison is to stay away from his mainstream work with the more popular established characters, though that's easy for me to say since the characters he seems to like best - e.g. the JLA, the X-Men - aren't favourites of mine, so there's little temptation for me to look at them. I have skimmed parts of his JLA run, Rock of Ages and all that stuff. Not being a great JLA fan, I was mostly interested in how he wrote the New Gods, and since I think he came up with one of the worst ever versions of Orion, and didn't do much better with Darkseid (can't recall anything about how he wrote Barda) my interest in it died a quick death. Final Crisis was up and down for me, with some very good bits (many of them in the related minseries Superman Beyond), but most of it drearily familiar. But I wasn't exactly part of the target audience for what turned out to be a pretty standard DCU story about how Batman defeats evil and Superman saves everyone in the end, as Morrison himself put it. My favourite of his DCU stuff is Seven Soldiers, which I thought was outstanding - but again, that was on the fringes of the mainstream DCU, with few or no big name characters. But when I turn to his independent work, I have to say that I rate things like The Filth and The Invisibles up there with the very best comics ever written. I think he's fallen off a bit lately even in his original work, though, and I find myself wondering if all these years of writing Batman and Superman have stunted his talent. I will give Multiversity, and maybe his Wonder Woman series, a try, though. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 28, 2014 5:12:59 GMT -5
That' interesting, berk. I'm not surprised that Morrison's original creations would allow him to write his best stories; there's more freedom in crafting completely new material, and fewer opportunities to mischaracterize an established character.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 28, 2014 5:28:34 GMT -5
. "Because before IC, Ralph Dibny wasn't anybody's favorite character. But just look at what a great job they did in IC by depicting Ralph after he found out his wife was raped, mind-wiped, killed and burnt to a crisp! He sure is a great character now! You really care about the character now!" (...) Ugh! To me, that attitude embodied what was wrong with Identity Crisis ... and what's wrong with so much in DC event comics. I'll admit that IC did make me care about the Dibnys, but not because of the horrible things the couple endured: it was because of Ralph's description of his and Sue's first meeting. That was good writing. Horror and torture and rape and the reaction thereto, anybody can write: it has no subtlety and coasts on its own shock value; it's the junk food of storytelling. |
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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 28, 2014 5:49:33 GMT -5
My go-to for these type of threads is always the Shatterstar Sage in X-Force by Jeph Loeb. It's basically the one story in comics so far that has been completely unreadable to me.
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Post by fanboystranger on Jul 28, 2014 9:09:12 GMT -5
Oh, the man has many more fans than detractors, and stories like We3 and All Star Superman have often been cited as excellent comics; so it's not as if he's not talented. Personally, what I've read of his is a mixed bag. I liked the new direction he gave the X-Men for a while, even if the Magneto reveal at the end wasn't very well handled. Oh, yes, I was totally fooled and never suspected that Xorn wasn't who he claimed to be. What's more, the commentary about old revolutionaries failing to adapt to the times was spot on. But the Magneto Xorn turned out to bear no relation to the character who had been evolving over decades at Marvel; he was just a supervillainous cypher with Magneto's face. Of the highly popular JLA run, I only read "Rock of ages". It is one of the few trade paperbacks I regret buying (the other being the first Lobo book patched up from bits and pieces of many comics. And I do own Identity Crisis, so I have my share of critically-panned books!!!). Reading that, I felt I was re-reading "Days of future past" and all other stories about a future timeline gone wrong that has to be set right. I was also very disappointed by Arkham Asylum, which I was waiting for eagerly before it came out because of the McKean art. It had a lot of name dropping, references to Egyptian symbols that aren't half as cryptic as the writer thinks, and Batman doing stupid things like stabbing his own hand with a sliver of glass to… what? Snap out of a funk? It wasn't very clear. And Batman was described as easily unbalanced, which he shouldn't be. (I did like the April fool's joke by the Joker, though. Very unexpected). I wouldn't call Morrison a bad writer, by any means. Just not one I'd personally rank with the best either, and in that I realize I'm in the minority. Archie Goodwin has wowed me far more often, even in very simple tales. My rule of thumb with Morrison is to stay away from his mainstream work with the more popular established characters, though that's easy for me to say since the characters he seems to like best - e.g. the JLA, the X-Men - aren't favourites of mine, so there's little temptation for me to look at them. I have skimmed parts of his JLA run, Rock of Ages and all that stuff. Not being a great JLA fan, I was mostly interested in how he wrote the New Gods, and since I think he came up with one of the worst ever versions of Orion, and didn't do much better with Darkseid (can't recall anything about how he wrote Barda) my interest in it died a quick death. Final Crisis was up and down for me, with some very good bits (many of them in the related minseries Superman Beyond), but most of it drearily familiar. But I wasn't exactly part of the target audience for what turned out to be a pretty standard DCU story about how Batman defeats evil and Superman saves everyone in the end, as Morrison himself put it. My favourite of his DCU stuff is Seven Soldiers, which I thought was outstanding - but again, that was on the fringes of the mainstream DCU, with few or no big name characters. But when I turn to his independent work, I have to say that I rate things like The Filth and The Invisibles up there with the very best comics ever written. I think he's fallen off a bit lately even in his original work, though, and I find myself wondering if all these years of writing Batman and Superman have stunted his talent. I will give Multiversity, and maybe his Wonder Woman series, a try, though. Yeah, I totally agree on Morrison's recent work being sub-par for him, and his creator-owned stuff being far better. I don't think it's necessarily that it needs to be creator-owned as his runs on dOOM pATROL and Animal Man were excellent, but that he needs a certain amount of freedom to operate. He's going to produce challenging comics, and that's exciting for me. Like I said with Final Crisis, I'd rather read an interesting failure with ambition these days than something that just goes through the motions.
Happy was pretty weak, though. I think it must have been a re-purposed movie script.
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Post by foxley on Jul 28, 2014 16:57:56 GMT -5
And there was always "One More Day".
Remember, kids! Divorce is wrong, but making a deal with Satan is a-okay. But don't worry, this is most definitely not a 'magical retcon', despite all the magic being used to retcon stuff.
And, according to Marvel, this is being done because readers will only identify with an unemployed loser who lives at home with his parental figure and who has no romantic relationships. Good to know what Marvel think of their fanbase, I suppose.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 28, 2014 17:46:43 GMT -5
My local library has "One More Day" in trade, but I've never been able to get up the nerve to read it.
But I took the plunge with Identity Crisis and Final Crisis and Dark Knight Strikes Again (and I quite enjoyed the latter).
Maybe I'll check out "One More Day" next time.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 28, 2014 18:32:30 GMT -5
I thought it was about the best possible execution of an unGodly Terrible concept.
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Post by Action Ace on Jul 28, 2014 21:38:44 GMT -5
Dark Knight Strikes Again is still my current record holder the title "WORST... Comic Book Story.....EVER!"  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 28, 2014 22:58:07 GMT -5
Dark Knight Strikes Again is still my current record holder the title "WORST... Comic Book Story.....EVER!" I think the key to DKSA is Carrie Kelly. It's a very entertaining story if you look at it as the adventures of Carrie Kelly, and all the DC superheroes are just the versions as they exist in the Carrie Kelly Universe.
This will not work if you don't like Carrie Kelly.
After everything that's happened in DC since the first Crisis, I think Carrie Kelly is my favorite Robin.
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Post by coveredinbees on Jul 29, 2014 0:05:43 GMT -5
House of M
It was poorly written and it did, I feel, a great deal of damage to the Avengers and the X-Men. It destroyed the mutant culture Grant Morrison crafted in New X-Men. Wood's X-Men has jarringly referred to the mutant community. I hope the next writers grasps that the mutant community can't just be the X-Men.
Morrison improved the metaphor (or is to be lauded for trying). HoM made them an endangered species, though (on formspring, so I can't prove it to you) Brevoort has said the intention was make them more realistic as a minority. There were too many mutants. It had the opposite result and I think it weakened the X-Books.
The conclusion with Hope was pretty lackluster, too. There wasn't even a point to the five lights, was there?
It also painted the Avengers is a poor light. They let Wanda stay on team when they knew she was crazy? That's just terrible.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 29, 2014 6:55:19 GMT -5
Maybe I'll check out "One More Day" next time. To paraphrase Syrio Forel: "What do we say when we're about to check out that book?" "Not today".  |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202 
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Post by Confessor on Jul 29, 2014 8:19:59 GMT -5
House of M It was poorly written and it did, I feel, a great deal of damage to the Avengers and the X-Men. It destroyed the mutant culture Grant Morrison crafted in New X-Men. Wood's X-Men has jarringly referred to the mutant community. I hope the next writers grasps that the mutant community can't just be the X-Men. Morrison improved the metaphor (or is to be lauded for trying). HoM made them an endangered species, though (on formspring, so I can't prove it to you) Brevoort has said the intention was make them more realistic as a minority. There were too many mutants. It had the opposite result and I think it weakened the X-Books.
The conclusion with Hope was pretty lackluster, too. There wasn't even a point to the five lights, was there?
It also painted the Avengers is a poor light. They let Wanda stay on team when they knew she was crazy? That's just terrible.
That's interesting. I quite liked the main House of M series and I thought the whole "no more mutants" thing was bold, well executed and more than a little bit creepy. I also read the Spider-Man: House of M mini-series, but that was all too close to being an issue of What if...? for my liking. I thought that Generation X was a good mini that spun out of HoM though. But, but, but...not being by any stretch an X-Men fan, I had no vested interest in the mutant community itself or the majority of what had gone before with the X-Men. I can imagine that many X-Men fans must've gone through the roof when that stuff hit the stands. |
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