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Post by tarkintino on Mar 5, 2018 19:40:35 GMT -5
Secret Wars certainly wasn't a cataclysmic game changer, but comics are no stranger to the "Spider-Man's life is about to change.... forever!!!" hype monster. At least with many Spider-Man stories from the 60s and 70s, they lived up to the hype. Secret Wars seemed to not only be a toy marketing tool, but a poor attempt to be some "epic" yet lacked any sense of what that meant in the language of comics. Like a video game where a pile of typically unrelated characters are tossed in with unlocked powers and a loud, sensless "fight" plot, Secret Wars was the forerunner of some of the similarly plotted crud produced by the Liefeld/Jim Lee era of Marvel, where being eXtreme was the order of the day. Apt analogy. Secret Wars and the comics it influenced seemed to cater to, or be written with clumsy, over-the-top ideas only some group within the teenager demographic would like. |
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Post by badwolf on Mar 5, 2018 20:14:52 GMT -5
As I've said, I didn't even finish Secret Wars at the time it was coming out. But in retrospect, I think one of my problems with the book was the way it was advertised and hyped. It was touted and hyped that it would change the Marvel Universe. In the end...what happened? Spidey had a new costume for a little while and Ben Grimm hung out on Battle World for a while. If anything else happened I'm not aware of it. Kitty broke up with Colossus and there was Drama. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 5, 2018 20:17:37 GMT -5
As I've said, I didn't even finish Secret Wars at the time it was coming out. But in retrospect, I think one of my problems with the book was the way it was advertised and hyped. It was touted and hyped that it would change the Marvel Universe. In the end...what happened? Spidey had a new costume for a little while and Ben Grimm hung out on Battle World for a while. If anything else happened I'm not aware of it. Kitty broke up with Colossus and there was Drama. Well that certainly seems far-reaching and consequential. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 5, 2018 20:41:44 GMT -5
Except Secret Wars itself was trying to outdo the previous event, Contest of Champions, form two years earlier which was built on the same premise, so it didn't start the event trend, but continued it. If a three issue series crossing over everyone sold well, let's do 12 this time, especially if its tied into a launching toyline. Secret Wars did continue the "Get everybody together to punch each other for REASONS" trend from Contest of the Champions, but I don't recall Contest impacting continuity at all. Secret Wars did a little, though obviously nowhere near as much as Crisis did. Speaking of Contest: I haven't read this since it first came out, but my recollection was that the final MacGuffin grab came down to Shamrock vs Captain America, and Shamrock used "luck of the Irish" to win for her team, but the final score given in the caption (and the outcome of the series) indicated otherwise. Was I a confused kid, or did this happen? Yes! There was some spectacularly bad counting there. This did result in a "Sequel" to Contest of Champions in Avengers Annual to "fix" the mistake - which I frickin' loved. I quite liked Contest of Champions as well - Really the only large scale crossovers that work for me are the simpler, punching-related ones. Contest of Champions, Secret Wars 1, World War Hulk, Fear Itself. Anything more high concept just careens off the rails into a Civil War style mess. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Mar 6, 2018 7:20:32 GMT -5
Except Secret Wars itself was trying to outdo the previous event, Contest of Champions, form two years earlier which was built on the same premise, so it didn't start the event trend, but continued it. If a three issue series crossing over everyone sold well, let's do 12 this time, especially if its tied into a launching toyline. Secret Wars did continue the "Get everybody together to punch each other for REASONS" trend from Contest of the Champions, but I don't recall Contest impacting continuity at all. Secret Wars did a little, though obviously nowhere near as much as Crisis did. was also hyped waaaaay more than Contest of Champions ever was. As a comic reading kid in the early '80s, Contest totally passed me by, but no one reading Marvel comics could've missed Secret Wars. It was super-hyped as something that was going to impact the Marvel Universe in a massive way, although, as stated by others, it really didn't. So, while Secret Wars might not have technically initiated the "event" trend at Marvel Comics, it certainly initiated it in the public (read "the comic buying public") consciousness. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 6, 2018 7:25:28 GMT -5
As I've said, I didn't even finish Secret Wars at the time it was coming out. But in retrospect, I think one of my problems with the book was the way it was advertised and hyped. It was touted and hyped that it would change the Marvel Universe. In the end...what happened? Spidey had a new costume for a little while and Ben Grimm hung out on Battle World for a while. If anything else happened I'm not aware of it. Some people definitely seem to like it. And that's fine. I like a lot of crappy things that I probably shouldn't. There were other changes. She Hulk joined he FF, Things was gone that led to Johnny Storm getting bizy with Alicia. In the Avengers absence, the Vision tries to take over the world. They never said there would be PERMANENT changes to the MU. All in all, it was a slugfest guilty pleasure.  |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 6, 2018 11:28:15 GMT -5
As I've said, I didn't even finish Secret Wars at the time it was coming out. But in retrospect, I think one of my problems with the book was the way it was advertised and hyped. It was touted and hyped that it would change the Marvel Universe. In the end...what happened? Spidey had a new costume for a little while and Ben Grimm hung out on Battle World for a while. If anything else happened I'm not aware of it. Some people definitely seem to like it. And that's fine. I like a lot of crappy things that I probably shouldn't. There were other changes. She Hulk joined he FF, Things was gone that led to Johnny Storm getting bizy with Alicia. In the Avengers absence, the Vision tries to take over the world. They never said there would be PERMANENT changes to the MU. All in all, it was a slugfest guilty pleasure. Hell, as a member (maybe the only member?) of team "likes Secret Wars but hates Crisis" I'd say the quality of the stoeytelling in these huge crossovers is inversely related to how much effect they are intended to have on continuity. You can either write a continuity patch or an engaging narrative- not both. |
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Post by badwolf on Mar 6, 2018 11:58:38 GMT -5
Hell, as a member (maybe the only member?) of team "likes Secret Wars but hates Crisis" I'd say the quality of the stoeytelling in these huge crossovers is inversely related to how much effect they are intended to have on continuity. You can either write a continuity patch or an engaging narrative- not both. How do you feel about Avengers Forever? |
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Post by nero9000 on Mar 6, 2018 13:22:06 GMT -5
There were other changes. She Hulk joined he FF, Things was gone that led to Johnny Storm getting bizy with Alicia. In the Avengers absence, the Vision tries to take over the world. They never said there would be PERMANENT changes to the MU. All in all, it was a slugfest guilty pleasure. Hell, as a member (maybe the only member?) of team "likes Secret Wars but hates Crisis" I'd say the quality of the stoeytelling in these huge crossovers is inversely related to how much effect they are intended to have on continuity. You can either write a continuity patch or an engaging narrative- not both. You're no longer alone, friend! Check out my Crisis reviews! Ok, you are alone, as I don't hate Crisis, but I certainly subscribe to the notion it's far too concerned in fixing (read: breaking) stuff and name-dropping everybody rather than writing an engaging story. Secret Wars it ain't. Hell, as a member (maybe the only member?) of team "likes Secret Wars but hates Crisis" I'd say the quality of the stoeytelling in these huge crossovers is inversely related to how much effect they are intended to have on continuity. You can either write a continuity patch or an engaging narrative- not both. How do you feel about Avengers Forever? For my part, Avengers Forever succeeds in this impossible task fairly well. Yes, there are like two full issues of pure continuity porn, but they are also spliced with a brilliant character study of Kang. Busiek can write the hell out of Kang, and in his hands the character is one of the absolute finest villains Marvel has to offer. There are also interesting moments with a wuss Cap and evil Yellowjacket, IIRC, but those character studies are sadly reduced by the fact they are phantoms taken out of time. At the end of the story they're thrown back from where they came, and any development is reseted. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 7, 2018 9:35:00 GMT -5
Hell, as a member (maybe the only member?) of team "likes Secret Wars but hates Crisis" I'd say the quality of the stoeytelling in these huge crossovers is inversely related to how much effect they are intended to have on continuity. You can either write a continuity patch or an engaging narrative- not both. How do you feel about Avengers Forever? That was the one with all the footnotes? Vile and evil, everything wrong with comics in the fanboy era, a blight on comics as a whole..... with really nice art from Carlos Pacheco. |
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Post by badwolf on Mar 7, 2018 18:25:21 GMT -5
How do you feel about Avengers Forever? That was the one with all the footnotes? Vile and evil, everything wrong with comics in the fanboy era, a blight on comics as a whole..... with really nice art from Carlos Pacheco. I don't remember if there were footnotes, but it was most certainly a continuity patch. I enjoyed it pretty much, even though I didn't know a lot about what it was patching. Just kind of went along for the ride. |
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