|
|
Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 16, 2016 4:29:05 GMT -5
I agree. I think you can trace the decline of "good continuity" back to Secret Wars and more specifically Secret Wars II, which was much more intrusive. Events weren't nearly as frequent in the late 80's and early 90's as they are today, so while they were chipping away at things, they weren't the blight that they are now. I think the Incredible Hulk and Silver Surfer were as good as they'd ever been in the late 80's and early 90's and those were the two series I enjoyed most at the time.
|
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Jul 16, 2016 6:58:05 GMT -5
I agree. I think you can trace the decline of "good continuity" back to Secret Wars and more specifically Secret Wars II, which was much more intrusive. Events weren't nearly as frequent in the late 80's and early 90's as they are today, so while they were chipping away at things, they weren't the blight that they are now. I think the Incredible Hulk and Silver Surfer were as good as they'd ever been in the late 80's and early 90's and those were the two series I enjoyed most at the time. I'd add Quasar to that list, and that was a series very heavily entrenched in past Marvel Universe continuity. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2016 23:34:40 GMT -5
Continuity is over-rated and become so confusing to being ridiculous. Every new comic-book is created in the current here and now time-frame by writers and artists. Trying to make what happened to a character 40 years ago work means compressing the time frame of their life so 40 years of story is supposed to have occurred within a 10 year time? Idiocy. The other end is the character has to remain young and vital to the current readers or they won't relate. Again idiocy. Yes a teen will connect more with a teen but when i was a kid or teen i had no problem understanding most of the heroes were of an older age than myself which gave them an inherent adult view that i may not have but i could understand. Comic books should be a 5-10 year adventure. If Superman met Kennedy in the 60's, then for story and current readers don't say it was Kennedy, just move the sliding time frame forward and say it was Ford or Clinton or Bush.. end of complexity and shoe horning retroactive continuity. it was Marvel being "current" with a timeline that began all this frustration. Before that nobody ever argued over when or where a story took place in a comic book. We just accepted that it had happened or will happen at some point within that characters lifetime. DC was great about that doing "future" stories that may or may not occur like Mrs. Superman and the Super-son's. it doesn't matter where something "fits" as long as the story entertains which is all a comic book is supposed to be: cheap entertainment. if i want to deal with continuity: i have a 9-5 job and a clock and calendar on my wall to deal with. I don't need reality in my comic book. It is super heroic fantasy to help me get through my daily schedule of life and work. Read and enjoy it all and The Shatner said: get a life! I agree, the need to legitimize time frames became absurd! It basically started with simply updating an origin story to reflect more modern times, which I was ok with, but then it escalated to the point where that was not enough, everything had to be overly explained, changed, rewritten into some insane cohesive canoninity, (did I just invent a new word??) everything had to fit perfectly in it's place. These characters are not real, why the need to get overly complicated? Remember when John Byrne took over the Fantastic Four book in 1981, some 20 years after it's inception? Byrne did not over complicate things, he just took a back to basics approach, making the characters fun & exciting again, keeping with the issues of the 80's, but not taking away from what made the FF great in the 60's. Events like "Crisis on Infinite Earths" were created to erase continuity to make things easier, but make things easier for who? I am assuming the writers because the fans were not complaining at the time that I can recall. I always felt that if there is something wrong with current continuity, if you feel a character has too many years of baggage, then just do not write about it, pick & choose the best aspects & ignore what you don't like. With DC we just had New 52 for a solid 5 years & now Rebirth, but why? Just write good stories period & stop once & for all complicating everything! |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2016 4:11:55 GMT -5
On the continuity thing: Marvel's tight continuity only ever worked when there was a small pool of comics being produced and the elapsed time since FF#1 wasn't too long. Once the elapsed time got too long, the whole "sliding 7/8/9/12/37 years" concept came in, but even that has broken under the strain of just so many comics published over so many years - not all of that material can possibly be fitted into the lifespans of the characters. The first half of it broke with the sheer number of comics being published in the 70s - there weren't enough hours in the day to fit all of that stuff in, particularly for Spider-Man then, and in later years for the likes of Wolverine.
So, a new approach was needed, and Marvel (specifically Al Ewing in this year's Ultimates series) came up with a neat in-continuity (and suitably Marvel super-science) explanation for what was happening. Which in typical fashion, has pretty much been ignored by everyone.
I'm a little on the fence over continuity - I'm not as hardcore as tingam, but I do want to have the feeling that in a general sense, things kinda sorta fit together, and Marvel have just utterly broken that - partly by having so many series featuring the same characters (multiple teams with the same people appearing in different books, team books which ignore solo books, major universe events (like the erasure of magic in Dr Strange) being ignored in other books (Dr Doom in Iron Man, for example) but worst of all by their utter incompetence at landing their event books before the follow-on series are launched - so you have characters talking in general terms about what happened in an "event" which hasn't finished yet, and different takes of shared aspects of the event which are mutually contradictory.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2016 4:15:33 GMT -5
On the original subject - on the DC/Marvel choice, I'm 99% Marvel (hence the name choice) - I've never really been able to get into DC much (apart from the Legion) no matter how mant times I've tried. I find the characters boring, the repeatedly-rebooted continuity incomprehensible and there's just something about the style of writing that leaves me cold
|
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Nov 13, 2016 7:28:53 GMT -5
What had me favor Marvel over Dc was that the characters personalities were more " real" In Marvel. Marvel had their heroes sad over failed romances, jealous, angry all the time and had villains turning into heroes which I can Identify with. I love that when the Original Avengers left, they but Cap in charge and Quicksilver and Hawkeye both wanted his job as leader.
Dc's characters were very bland and had interchangeable personalities. Of course they changed that but many of their original's are still bland. ( Hal Jordan, Barry Allen).
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2016 19:34:10 GMT -5
I was a Marvel reader myself, but other kids used to buy DC comics and we'd lend our comics to each other at school, so we all got to read the big titles by both. I never really got in to DC as I just couldn't seem to connect to their lines through the issues that I did read. Although I was a big fan of Batman through the old TV series, so I randomly bought a few DC issues featuring Batman if I had the spare pennies and the issues were on the comic stand in my local newsagent, however it was Marvel's output that was a mainstay throughout my childhood. (A kid couldn't buy everything!)
|
|
|
|
Post by brutalis on Nov 14, 2016 10:39:53 GMT -5
Oddly enough that i grew up a Marvel Zombie within their tight continuity as i have grown older it has gotten so confusing trying to tie things together that i find myself wishing for the older DC days when it was all loose and fun without trying to make everything come together so fanatically.
It has gotten so bad Marvel has had like 4-5 soft reboots in as many years as they keep messing things ups in their universe as editorially nobody is making the writers follow history or characterization or current stories. Writer A says Wolverine can do this and Writer B rewrites that saying it was a dream and Writer C never read or Writer B and uses Writer A's version and then Writer D comes along destroying it all to write what he says is the new definitive version. Until that version turns to crap and a few years later his version is tossed aside.
|
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Nov 14, 2016 10:49:11 GMT -5
It has gotten so bad Marvel has had like 4-5 soft reboots in as many years as they keep messing things ups in their universe as editorially nobody is making the writers follow history or characterization or current stories. Writer A says Wolverine can do this and Writer B rewrites that saying it was a dream and Writer C never read or Writer B and uses Writer A's version and then Writer D comes along destroying it all to write what he says is the new definitive version. Until that version turns to crap and a few years later his version is tossed aside. Case in point: will any writer ever reference events from Bruce Jones's run on Hulk? I doubt it... |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Nov 14, 2016 14:37:47 GMT -5
If I had to pick one, I'd have to go with Marvel because I love Silver Age Marvel so much. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the Silver Age insanity in something like this:  Or this:  |
|
|
|
Post by earl on Nov 14, 2016 17:37:06 GMT -5
Really you can probably quit talking about Marvel continuity in the mid/late 80s when half the staff flew the coop to DC. There are probably selected comics over the decades that are in line with what went on before, but really the classic marvel run from say 62-87 is the real universe, everything afterwards is just echoes. There was odd continuity in those couple decades, but for the most part the style was always there.
|
|
|
|
Post by tingramretro on Nov 14, 2016 17:47:18 GMT -5
Really you can probably quit talking about Marvel continuity in the mid/late 80s when half the staff flew the coop to DC. There are probably selected comics over the decades that are in line with what went on before, but really the classic marvel run from say 62-87 is the real universe, everything afterwards is just echoes. There was odd continuity in those couple decades, but for the most part the style was always there. I'd agree with that. Though I'd have said 1986. |
|
|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Nov 14, 2016 18:32:55 GMT -5
It has gotten so bad Marvel has had like 4-5 soft reboots in as many years as they keep messing things ups in their universe as editorially nobody is making the writers follow history or characterization or current stories. Writer A says Wolverine can do this and Writer B rewrites that saying it was a dream and Writer C never read or Writer B and uses Writer A's version and then Writer D comes along destroying it all to write what he says is the new definitive version. Until that version turns to crap and a few years later his version is tossed aside. Case in point: will any writer ever reference events from Bruce Jones's run on Hulk? I doubt it... More's the pity, that was definitely one of my favorite runs on the Hulk. |
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Nov 14, 2016 18:36:16 GMT -5
Case in point: will any writer ever reference events from Bruce Jones's run on Hulk? I doubt it... More's the pity, that was definitely one of my favorite runs on the Hulk. The other night I was watching the second Hulk movie and they had Mr. Green talking to Mr. Blue. I think that was from his run. |
|
|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Nov 14, 2016 18:45:01 GMT -5
More's the pity, that was definitely one of my favorite runs on the Hulk. The other night I was watching the second Hulk movie and they had Mr. Green talking to Mr. Blue. I think that was from his run. It was indeed, there were so many cool elements introduced in those stories. |
|
