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Post by berkley on Mar 1, 2018 17:13:34 GMT -5
I've never read Crisis or any of the Secret Wars and neither one of them interests me much as a story, but I'll probably read Crisis one of these days for the George Perez artwork.
Even though I generally like the Marvel characters more than the DC, Shooter's writing and the soap-bubble-thin premise more than neutralise that factor, the only really positive aspect to me of the whole idea. The artwork in SW isn't an attraction - was it Mike Zeck? I liked his stuff on MoKF but the SW samples I've seen online all look pretty bland.
The continuity stuff in Crisis is neither a plus nor a minus for me at this stage, because I don't know much about it in the first place. Maybe that'll change in the course of reading the series, if I ever get around to it, but right now, it doesn't mean anything to me one way or the other. The DC characters aren't a draw, but I like Perez's art enough that I can probably put up with them - though once again, maybe I'll learn different if I actually read the thing.
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 1, 2018 17:33:38 GMT -5
Crisis: the destruction & rebuilding of DCU. Deaths of Supergirl & the Flash. Lasting effects for decades. Secret Wars: a popcorn summer movie. Black symbiote Spidey costume. She-Hulk replaces the Thing in Fantastic Four. Changes lasted several years. That's a decent recap. I enjoyed It and I really appreciated that the 12 issues happened between issues in the regular comics of the heroes involved. Unlike future crossovers which broke up storylines for the monthly books, it was isolated to the 12 issues. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Mar 1, 2018 17:39:53 GMT -5
Myself, I like Secret Wars for what it was - big, dumb superhero fun. It's not an amazing story by any means, but it is enjoyable if you turn your brain off, a bit like a Rocky film, for example. I was 11-years-old when it came out and I thought it was a perfectly fine mini-series back then, although I definitely didn't consider it to be amazing or anything either. It is a bit odd how some folks will trash Secret Wars and praise the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the same conversation... |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 1, 2018 17:49:33 GMT -5
Explain .
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Post by rberman on Mar 1, 2018 17:49:42 GMT -5
It is a bit odd how some folks will trash Secret Wars and praise the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the same conversation... At the risk of drifting off-topic... for me the MCU movies have never been about, "Wow, that was a really interesting place to take Ant Man in a story!" Obviously most of the people watching an MCU movie have never cracked a comic book and don't know anything about the character beyond what they see onscreen. The most enjoyable parts of the movies for me are the quippy dialogue and the characterizations. Unlike the recent DC movies with their dour Superman and dark cinematography, the Marvel films offer likable characters that I feel good about cheering for. (For that matter, I like Michael Keaton's Vulture a lot more than the comic version.) I would probably enjoy a Secret Wars movie more than I enjoyed the Secret Wars comic book, whose art was surprisingly pedestrian for such a high profile project. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 1, 2018 17:56:24 GMT -5
The artwork in SW isn't an attraction - was it Mike Zeck? I liked his stuff on MoKF but the SW samples I've seen online all look pretty bland. Jim Shooter said he didn't think Mike Zeck's artwork was suited to large scale cosmic stuff, so after the first few issues he began providing Zeck with rough layouts. The resulting artwork was far inferior to Zeck's stuff on Captain America and the Punisher. |
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Post by String on Mar 1, 2018 18:01:10 GMT -5
A comic series meant to help boost sales for a toy line? Why, yes it was. The real question though, fellow CCFers, is how many of you still have any of those toys? C'mon raise your hand if you do! I do, the Iron Man and Wolverine action figures. Logan still has his clip-on claws but I don't have the plastic shields anymore. So I guess you could say the series was a huge success for me as a kid! Hahaha! But c'mon this was a fun romp, some cool Zeck art, heroes and villains beating each other up, had some nice semi-lasting effects. I loved how initially the X-Men (mutants!) split off from the other heroes based on mistrust to some degree. (Plus, wasn't this Marvel's first ever maxi-series? Proof of concept in some ways.) Though forget Piotr falling for an alien girl. THIS was the real scandal:  Janet, say it ain't so!!! |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2018 18:12:58 GMT -5
So '84 I was 15 at the time and only got issues of Secret Wars in a polybagged 3 pack (I think it was 3 issues in a row and I only remember the Hulk under a mountain and Doom covers being among them). I wasn't impressed though I loved MArvle still and had no desire to seek out the rest of the series at the comic shop I found around that time. There were other , better things to spend my limited comics budget on. I was also pretty much done with toys at that point, though I was buying and painting D&D miniatures and interested in the D&D toys. Looked at the Secret Wars toys in the store and thought they were as poorly conceived and executed as the comic was. I did end up buying some Super Powers toys because they were so well done though, even though I was a much bigger Marvel fan than DC guy at that point. They actually looked like the characters and came with mini-comics to read not some cheap flimsy shield thing that resembled some kind of toy I could get for a quarter in a vending machine.
So for me, as both a toy line and as a comic series, Secret Wars was a fail to this 15 year old. Crisis though is what started me on the road to becoming more of a DC guy when I saw the Perez covers on the racks at the 7-11 and picked them up. I started late on that series too, I think #9 was the first one I picked up, but on that series did want to go back and find the stuff I missed and was able to do so at the comic shop.
-M
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Mar 1, 2018 18:18:00 GMT -5
Myself, I like Secret Wars for what it was - big, dumb superhero fun. It's not an amazing story by any means, but it is enjoyable if you turn your brain off, a bit like a Rocky film, for example. I was 11-years-old when it came out and I thought it was a perfectly fine mini-series back then, although I definitely didn't consider it to be amazing or anything either. It is a bit odd how some folks will trash Secret Wars and praise the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the same conversation... With the odd one or two exceptions, I find Secret Wars infinitely preferable to the vast majority of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 1, 2018 18:18:49 GMT -5
It is a bit odd how some folks will trash Secret Wars and praise the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the same conversation... With the odd one or two exceptions, I find Secret Wars infinitely preferable to the vast majority of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. ... |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 1, 2018 18:24:17 GMT -5
That series has the single most awesome Doctor Doom moment in all of Marvel history, as far as I'm concerned! (Your mileage may vary).
Even the jaded reader that I was, annoyed by the rushed artwork, the simplistic "fight to entertain some godlike being" theme, the poor characterization of my favourite superhero and the obvious crass merchandizing that surrounded the project, went HOLY F*%$ when Doom made his move.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,220
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Post by Confessor on Mar 1, 2018 18:24:30 GMT -5
With the odd one or two exceptions, I find Secret Wars infinitely preferable to the vast majority of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. ... Yeah, I'm not a big MCU fan. I think they make those films for fans of action movies, and I hate action movies. There are one or two that I enjoyed -- like Guardians of the Galaxy and the first Captain America film -- but most leave me cold or don't even interest me enough to bother seeing them. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Mar 1, 2018 18:27:57 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm not a big MCU fan. I think they make those films for fans of action movies, and I hate action movies. There are one or two that I enjoyed -- like Guardians of the Galaxy and the first Captain America film -- but most leave me cold or don't even interest me enough to bother seeing them. Iron Man 1, Guardians of the Galaxy 1, and Black Panther all offered something more than cool fight scenes and wisecracks. The rest all felt mindless to me. FUN, but when I'd look back and try to decide what was actually memorable about any given MCU film, I always came up empty handed. I haven't even seen Civil War yet. Just no interest. Secret Wars is the same kind of vapid entertainment, only more imaginative in my opinion. |
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Post by berkley on Mar 1, 2018 19:54:42 GMT -5
That series has the single most awesome Doctor Doom moment in all of Marvel history, as far as I'm concerned! (Your mileage may vary). Even the jaded reader that I was, annoyed by the rushed artwork, the simplistic "fight to entertain some godlike being" theme, the poor characterization of my favourite superhero and the obvious crass merchandizing that surrounded the project, went HOLY F*%$ when Doom made his move. Maybe, but his subsequent downfall as described in earlier the thread (first time I heard about those details) sounds like Superman/Batman-worship at its worst with Marvel's CA substituted, and reinforces my feeling that Shooter would have been better suited to DC than to Marvel. BTW, that's hilarious about Shooter providing rough layouts to artist Zeck: it's almost as if he was determined to make the series as bad as it could be! |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Mar 2, 2018 6:53:17 GMT -5
But before Secret Wars they didn't have Marvel figures yet, or did they? Of course they did!    I'm so tempted to track down Thor on a pink scooter. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this was green-lighted. Now I want a toy featuring the Punisher on a mauve Segway. |
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