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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 29, 2015 13:45:22 GMT -5
Comic-book fans demand super-powered roller derby! Or even better, super-powered junior roller derby! (It's too bad John Forte is no longer with us. He would be the perfect artist for such a project!) Writer and cover artist : James Stokoe Artist : Paul Pope Yes!!! Writer: Bob Haney Artist: Mike Sekowsky |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Dec 29, 2015 14:23:44 GMT -5
An interesting comparison, though not accurate. Both of those retained at least one character and the basic premise (team of mutant superheroes, team of world saving superheroes). If either of those had chucked all the characters and replaced them with professional wrestlers, that would have been a more accurate comparison. I don't know-the premise of Avengers was a team of the company's solo heroes all in one place-Thor Iron Man, Giant Man Hulk, then Cap replacing Hulk even though he had no series-i.e. Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but at 16 it was reformed villains looking for a second chance plus Cap as a team-that's a very different premise (it's actually the premise of the T-Bolts under Hawkeye not really the Avengers as originally constituted). And original X-Men is about a school of mutants learning to use their powers and live in a world where the weird teenage heroes in school is the central defining factor for the cast, new X-Men is about a team of international heroes globetrotting to save thew world with the school premise mostly being dropped. So I see both of those as very much changing premises and changing cast in the same vein that Thunderbolts and the Milligan Allred X-Force did, or even X-Factor when the original 5 left and Peter David took over with a different cast and a different premise for the book. It's not an unprecedented thing for Marvel to do, they do it every so often and usually the new status quo turns out to be as popular if not more popular than the original. Didn't work out that way with T-Bolts, but the move itself was well within the established parameters of what Marvel does to revamp books whose sales are falling off or that feel stale. I had dropped T-bolts a year or so before the Fight Club change because for me it had begun to get stale and the premise had run its course as far as it could without having a definitive resolution and it just began to recycle itself. I wasn't interested in the change, but I felt the book needed something to shake it up because it had long before lost interest for me. -M We're going to have to just disagree on the Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Avengers #16. They were, in my mind, much more of a line-up change, than the major premise shift like the other series (Thunderbolts, X-Factor, etc). Even the comparison of the "Kooky Quartet" line-up of mostly ex-criminals with the Thunderbolts didn't quite work, because the Avengers spent very little time dwelling on the "villains trying to go straight" angle, where it was the fundamental focus for the T-Bolts after they abandoned the "we're only pretending to be heroes" plot.
And yes, abrupt changes like this were not unheard of for Marvel to do. Some of them worked and some didn't. For me, this one didn't.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2015 14:44:29 GMT -5
I don't know-the premise of Avengers was a team of the company's solo heroes all in one place-Thor Iron Man, Giant Man Hulk, then Cap replacing Hulk even though he had no series-i.e. Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but at 16 it was reformed villains looking for a second chance plus Cap as a team-that's a very different premise (it's actually the premise of the T-Bolts under Hawkeye not really the Avengers as originally constituted). And original X-Men is about a school of mutants learning to use their powers and live in a world where the weird teenage heroes in school is the central defining factor for the cast, new X-Men is about a team of international heroes globetrotting to save thew world with the school premise mostly being dropped. So I see both of those as very much changing premises and changing cast in the same vein that Thunderbolts and the Milligan Allred X-Force did, or even X-Factor when the original 5 left and Peter David took over with a different cast and a different premise for the book. It's not an unprecedented thing for Marvel to do, they do it every so often and usually the new status quo turns out to be as popular if not more popular than the original. Didn't work out that way with T-Bolts, but the move itself was well within the established parameters of what Marvel does to revamp books whose sales are falling off or that feel stale. I had dropped T-bolts a year or so before the Fight Club change because for me it had begun to get stale and the premise had run its course as far as it could without having a definitive resolution and it just began to recycle itself. I wasn't interested in the change, but I felt the book needed something to shake it up because it had long before lost interest for me. -M We're going to have to just disagree on the Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Avengers #16. They were, in my mind, much more of a line-up change, than the major premise shift like the other series (Thunderbolts, X-Factor, etc). Even the comparison of the "Kooky Quartet" line-up of mostly ex-criminals with the Thunderbolts didn't quite work, because the Avengers spent very little time dwelling on the "villains trying to go straight" angle, where it was the fundamental focus for the T-Bolts after they abandoned the "we're only pretending to be heroes" plot.
And yes, abrupt changes like this were not unheard of for Marvel to do. Some of them worked and some didn't. For me, this one didn't.
Even Kurt Busiek, who created the Thunderbolts, has said in interviews that the Kooky Quartet and the change of the Avengers series from what it had been to what it became was his inspiration for the cast and direction of T-bolts when he pitched the book; he wanted to make a book/team that was as different from the Avengers (since the T-Bolts were replacing the Avengers in the post-Onslaught MU) as the Kooky Quartet had been from what the Avengers were preceding them. Those statement were pretty much what set my expectations for what T-Bolts would be and got me to buy the first issue even though I really do not enjoy Bagley's art most of the time. So, you may not see the change as such or think the T-Bolts Kooky Quartet comparison works, but the guy behind the T-bolts certainly saw it that way. I honestly felt when he brought Hawkeye in, he went too on the nose with the Kooky Quartet parallels, but I was a pretty big Hawkeye fan at the time, so stuck with it for another year or so before I lost interest. -M |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Dec 29, 2015 15:01:14 GMT -5
And yes, abrupt changes like this were not unheard of for Marvel to do. Some of them worked and some didn't. For me, this one didn't.
Maybe you have too much character loyalty?  I can get that. But for me, a good story is a good story, whatever the context so I hope you understand this still seems highly abstract when you haven't read it. But I get the mechanism... |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Dec 29, 2015 16:16:04 GMT -5
I'm mostly with DE on this one, other than the fact that I'd be willing to read this arc if given a chance. The wrestling era was a totally different and unrelated concept, it simply retained the numbering and title of the book. The X-Force comparison is close, though I think the Thunderbolts case is more extreme; a better comparison might be when many Golden Age comics abruptly changed focus, like when Sensation Comics dropped Wonder Woman and replaced her with Johnny Peril, turning from a superhero title to a horror/mystery book overnight. I can see why fans of Thunderbolts (and X-Force) would be upset given that Marvel was basically exploiting brand loyalty to get fans to buy a totally unrelated concept, while at the same time cancelling the book those fans were loyal to in the first place. They should have just run the story as a new series or mini-series and let it sink or swim on its own merits.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 30, 2015 23:39:26 GMT -5
I was MAD when Thunderbolts changed... it never made any sense to me why they wouldn't make it a new series... comparing it to the Golden Age trend-following swaps is very apt. To change the subject (or perhaps get back on topic)... anyone read Kirkman's Marvel Team up run? I had #2-3 from a quarter bin (or something), and they were kinda interesting...it seems the whole 25 issue run is pretty much one storyline... which is either really interesting or extremely annoying, I'm guessing  |
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Post by dupersuper on Dec 31, 2015 21:47:22 GMT -5
That sounds kinda' like the Waid/Perez Brave & Bold run.
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Post by spoon on Dec 31, 2015 23:41:07 GMT -5
I don't know-the premise of Avengers was a team of the company's solo heroes all in one place-Thor Iron Man, Giant Man Hulk, then Cap replacing Hulk even though he had no series-i.e. Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but at 16 it was reformed villains looking for a second chance plus Cap as a team-that's a very different premise (it's actually the premise of the T-Bolts under Hawkeye not really the Avengers as originally constituted). And original X-Men is about a school of mutants learning to use their powers and live in a world where the weird teenage heroes in school is the central defining factor for the cast, new X-Men is about a team of international heroes globetrotting to save thew world with the school premise mostly being dropped. So I see both of those as very much changing premises and changing cast in the same vein that Thunderbolts and the Milligan Allred X-Force did, or even X-Factor when the original 5 left and Peter David took over with a different cast and a different premise for the book. It's not an unprecedented thing for Marvel to do, they do it every so often and usually the new status quo turns out to be as popular if not more popular than the original. Didn't work out that way with T-Bolts, but the move itself was well within the established parameters of what Marvel does to revamp books whose sales are falling off or that feel stale. I had dropped T-bolts a year or so before the Fight Club change because for me it had begun to get stale and the premise had run its course as far as it could without having a definitive resolution and it just began to recycle itself. I wasn't interested in the change, but I felt the book needed something to shake it up because it had long before lost interest for me. -M We're going to have to just disagree on the Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Avengers #16. They were, in my mind, much more of a line-up change, than the major premise shift like the other series (Thunderbolts, X-Factor, etc). Even the comparison of the "Kooky Quartet" line-up of mostly ex-criminals with the Thunderbolts didn't quite work, because the Avengers spent very little time dwelling on the "villains trying to go straight" angle, where it was the fundamental focus for the T-Bolts after they abandoned the "we're only pretending to be heroes" plot.
And yes, abrupt changes like this were not unheard of for Marvel to do. Some of them worked and some didn't. For me, this one didn't.
There are even more differences between Thunderbolts and Giant-Size X-Men #1. Giant-Size X-Men #1 wasn't an abrupt change to a series publishing new material. In 1970, X-Men got canceled. It was revived several months later as a reprint title. For over 5 years, X-Men was either not being published or just being published as a bi-monthly reprint title. It wasn't a replacement of a vibrant title that was publishing new materials; it was a revamp of a series that had essentially been dead for almost as long as it had previously published new material. And X-Men didn't keep 1 character. It kept 3: Professor X, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. The other characters weren't left homeless. The Beast was already in the Avengers by the time the All-New, All-Different X-Men launched. After briefly appearing in X-Men #94, Iceman and Angel had already joined The Champions the same month that X-Men #95 came out. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 1, 2016 18:25:12 GMT -5
I was MAD when Thunderbolts changed... it never made any sense to me why they wouldn't make it a new series... comparing it to the Golden Age trend-following swaps is very apt. To change the subject (or perhaps get back on topic)... anyone read Kirkman's Marvel Team up run? I had #2-3 from a quarter bin (or something), and they were kinda interesting...it seems the whole 25 issue run is pretty much one storyline... which is either really interesting or extremely annoying, I'm guessing I always like rotating cast team-up books without Spider-man or Batman or (God Forbid) Deadpool anchoring every issue, but MTU (3rd series) wasn't my favorite. # 12 did some neat tricks with an unreliable narrator, and I liked the Legion of Losers arc which had a bunch of '90s rejects banning together to save the world. But I don't think the team-up format works well with extended arcs. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2016 18:44:42 GMT -5
Anyone tried the 'I Am An Avenger' 5-issue mini from 2010-11? The art looks interesting. I think it's Mayhew.  |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 1, 2016 19:22:40 GMT -5
I've been meaning to hunt that down... seems like they actually allowed Firestar to be an adult... I didn't know that was the actual title, though.. it was referenced in Young Allies but not named, just 'go read the miniseries'.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2016 21:47:34 GMT -5
Is this good, guys?  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2016 22:58:09 GMT -5
I've been meaning to hunt that down... seems like they actually allowed Firestar to be an adult... I didn't know that was the actual title, though.. it was referenced in Young Allies but not named, just 'go read the miniseries'. Here's what it looks like...my dealer got me a set   |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 2, 2016 23:15:07 GMT -5
Wow, so it's not a whole series about those characters, then? Must be a bunch of vignettes? Looks pretty intriguing |
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Post by Crimebuster on Jan 3, 2016 0:52:02 GMT -5
Is this good, guys? I can't really say, but I will suggest that if you're really liking Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man run, you should absolutely read their Doctor Strange. It's just as innovative and influential as anything in Spider-Man, and arguably more so. I don't think we get Starlin or much of the cosmic stuff without Ditko's Doctor Strange - and Ditko's Doctor Strange is also superior to what it inspired. I'd put the Dormammu/Eternity arc up in the top handful of Marvel stories ever. Marvel Masterworks Doctor Strange volume 1 contains almost their entire run; it has up through Strange Tales #141, and Ditko's last issue was #146. |
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