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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 10:02:32 GMT -5
I'm by no means a healthcare expert and not particularly knowledgeable on other countries socialized healthcare programs. My understanding is that they are fine with regular medical treatments. But the downside is when you need a specialist. I keep hearing that in Canada and England you would wind up waiting months until it's your turn for specialist treatment. The U.S. has the reverse problem where we have more specialists than we know what to do with. It's not really the major issue it's made out to be, anyway, here in the UK at least. And if someone is really desperately unhappy with the NHS, there is nothing whatsoever stopping them from paying for private care if they choose to do so. Most people do not choose to do so. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 9:57:05 GMT -5
You're gonna get copycats the more the media replays things for shock effect and ratings. These situations are about people trying to get attention in extreme manners. The more they get the attention, the more the same kind of disaffected people get the idea into their head, if they are as far gone. Yes, it is a news story and the public need to be informed; but, they need calmly delivered information and facts, not sensationalism. That just spins people up and adds fuel to already disturbed minds. It also does the job of the terrorists for them. The aim of terrorists is not to make victims, it is to spread terror and to destabilize the society they're targeting. The more we talk about them, the more successful their action has been. If we didn't give them so much press after they murder innocents, their very small death toll would be insignificant and would not cause much terror. I mean, according to this, more than 600 people are killed each year in England by... stairs. If we reported each stairwell-related death the way we report terrorist actions, nobody would dare use them anymore. That's basically the point I was trying to make earlier, we never used to overreact like this. It's totally counterproductive. Now we have demands from the usual suspects that Britain's police all be armed. Why? Most of them don't want to be, and in this case, it wouldn't have stopped this lunatic from driving a car into a crowd of people anyway. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 9:44:38 GMT -5
And you are continuing to prove my point for me. This is what I meant about judging based on no information. Because this is not not what the story is saying. Marvel are not actually claiming that Cap was a lifetime Hydra agent-until a few months ago, when his personal history was rewritten by a villain using a Cosmic Cube, something which the characters are unaware of but which the readers have known since day one because we basically saw it happen. There is no retcon, all past stories are still pefectly valid from our POV, nobody is trying to tell the readership "Cap was actualy this all along", and it's fairly obvious it's a storyline with a definite ending in mind. But a horde of outraged readers who haven't actually read the book in years have picked up on a headline and decided "Marvel have retconned Cap! The bastards!" Despite the fact that, unlike DC, Marvel actually aren't known for doing that kind of thing. I was actually trying to avoid spoilering the story, but since it appears I'm the only one reading and enjoying it anyway, what the hell... So he was Comic Cubed into a Hydra Agent? Okay, still glad I don't read Marvel anymore.  Fine. Whatever. I'm enjoying it, that's all I care about. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:42:13 GMT -5
Alan Moore's Captain Britain
Jamie Delano's Captain Britain
Watchmen
Skizz
Infinity Inc.
All-Star Squadron
Steve Englehart's Avengers
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:30:26 GMT -5
Or they started noticing that all the interesting stuff was at the beginning and it seemed like no ending had been conceived and he was struggling to find one. Perez's absence definitely hurts the thing. Could well be, I haven't read it since it first came out. I do plan to re-read it one of these days. Even the other acclaimed stories of Shooter's first run - Ultron, Nefaria - don't feel particularly special to me now, though I liked them well enough at the time. Once again, in hindsight I think it was mainly Perez's artwork that made them seem better than they were at the time. But I'll re-read the whole thing one of these days and see how they strike me now. In fairness to Shooter, I think Marvel's decline started even before he came on board as editor in chief. I believe Gerber and Englehart both left before then, isn't that right? Those were huge losses to me, as I think that between the two of them they accounted for a lot of Marvel's most innovative writing at the time. And McGregor too, I believe, for all his flaws. Kirby's Eternals was undermined and then cancelled before Shooter as well. I want to say that Tomb of Dracula and MoKF were also cancelled before Shooter's reign but I'm not sure about those two, especially MoKF. But anyway, I think the rot might have set in already. The promotion of what I saw then (and still do now) as cynically motivated new characters like She-Hulk, Spiderwoman, and Ms. Marvel was part of that decline into bottom-line mediocrity as well, IMO, though I know not many agree with me. MOKF was still being published in 1983, several years after Shooter took over. Tomb was cancelled in 1979. What's wrong witth Spiderwoman, She-Hulk and Ms Marvel? I really like all those characters, Spiderwoman in particular. In the early eighties, Spiderwoman was one of te best things they were publishing for a while, IMO. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:23:08 GMT -5
I enjoyed the set up to the Korvac saga but it really lost it's way towards the end. That surprises me. Avengers #177, the conclusion to the Korvac story, is an issue I actually keep a spare reading copy of because it's always been one of my favourite Marvel comics ever. No idea why. But I don't think Marvel have done "cosmic" as well since. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:19:53 GMT -5
I'll just say this: even if Jim Shooter was the nicest guy in the world and everybody said so, I still wouldn't think much of his writing. His first stint on the Avengers is OK but far from spectacular, to my taste. I quit reading the series after the Korvac saga so I wasn't around for his second Avengers run, but everything I've heard about it since plus the 2 or 3 stories I've read as back issues has left me with the impression that it is pretty bad. In hindsight, even the first run was memorable mostly for George Perez's art. I think he was a by the numbers guy in everything, which is what made him a decent administrator as far as getting the books out on time, but also made him a pedestrian writer and an editor who was unable to appreciate someone like Gene Colan, whose style sometimes broke the rules. I used to say he would have been better off staying at DC, but can you imagine him working with Alan Moore in the 80s? I can see him now, sending back the latest Watchmen script marked over with "corrections" on every page. "Just follow my directions, Moore, you'll get the hang of it eventually!"That's funny. But you might have missed his Legion Of Superheroes runs for DC. I loved his second stint on the Avengers that included the Fall of Hank Pym and it didn't include great art by Byrne and Perez. It was Bob Hall and other journeymen. That second Avengers run was terrific, I thought the whole fall and rise of Pym arc was the most interesting thing that had been done with the character at that point, and it probably still is. It made him "real" to me for the first time. I also really liked the Molecule Man storyline. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:04:43 GMT -5
I can't help but wince whenever a story tries to convince me that the Earth 2 Superman or Earth 2 Batman are supposed to be the same guys introduced in Action 1 and Detective 27 respectively. Really? The same squinty eyed guy who wrapped machine guns around a bunch of bad guys necks seconds before chucking them one by one out a window is doomed to become the slipper wearing, newspaper reading guy living a mundane, squeaky clean life in the pages of Superman Family? Should Batman's tombstone really read 'Killed by some guy named Jensen or something like that to get the All-Star Super Squad off their asses'?
It also doesn't help that in recent years, the Earth 2 Superman became a character to trot out every time DC wanted to take a swipe at the Siegel family. "You're claiming that the Superman from Action 1 should belong to you? Well here he is, going crazy in Infinite Crisis wanting to destroy the universe and being beaten to death by a little kid - Enjoy!" He didn't go crazy or want to destroy the universe. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 24, 2017 3:02:42 GMT -5
No, it doesn't. That's rather the point. Because they haven't actually retconned anything. There's no possible way Cap can be a lifetime Hydra agent and it not be a retcon. That just doesn't make sense. Just like it didn't make sense when they decided Tony Stark had been working for Kang for 20 years.. it's just a set up for a story and will likely be soon forgotten. And you are continuing to prove my point for me. This is what I meant about judging based on no information. Because this is not not what the story is saying. Marvel are not actually claiming that Cap was a lifetime Hydra agent-until a few months ago, when his personal history was rewritten by a villain using a Cosmic Cube, something which the characters are unaware of but which the readers have known since day one because we basically saw it happen. There is no retcon, all past stories are still pefectly valid from our POV, nobody is trying to tell the readership "Cap was actualy this all along", and it's fairly obvious it's a storyline with a definite ending in mind. But a horde of outraged readers who haven't actually read the book in years have picked up on a headline and decided "Marvel have retconned Cap! The bastards!" Despite the fact that, unlike DC, Marvel actually aren't known for doing that kind of thing. I was actually trying to avoid spoilering the story, but since it appears I'm the only one reading and enjoying it anyway, what the hell... |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 16:17:40 GMT -5
I sometimes think I'm the only person around here who still enjoys modern comics.
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 12:57:41 GMT -5
Iccy's adoration of Jim Shooter and the original thread where this was previously hashed out is here Jim Shooter CCF ThreadI freely admitted that I was a fan. What's your point ? Apparently, you're not allowed to be. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 12:56:34 GMT -5
As I said earlier, anecdotal evidence from third parties none of us are personally that well acquainted with. I prefer to judge based on firsthand knowledge, and my only firsthand knowledge of Shooter is that he was EIC when a lot of material I liked was being created.
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 12:23:25 GMT -5
Why? If you had read it, you'd know that there is a sound premise behind it which neither contradicts nor invalidates any previos Cap story, and that it's obviously intended to be an arc with a very definite end point. It's seldom a good idea to make judgements based on incomplete information. It doesn't matter how much retconning they do to make it fit. It destroys the soul of the character. No, it doesn't. That's rather the point. Because they haven't actually retconned anything. |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 11:54:43 GMT -5
Did you ever see Paul Neary's Batman spoof, The Crusader? Or Alan Moore's Daredevil satire, Dourdevil? No, I missed those. The title alone, on Dourdevil, kind of sums up the problem I had with Miller's run, brilliant as it was, and those that followed. I liked the swashbuckling, wise-cracking Daredevil, before every tragedy in the world was heaped upon him. Alan Moore shared your feelings...  It actually becomes more absurd after page one, with the arrival of Erektra, Pigseye and the Tiepin of crime, but I'd better not post the whole thing... |
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Post by tingramretro on Mar 23, 2017 10:58:34 GMT -5
Big Ben! I quite agree, I always loved "the man with no time for crime".  Eclipse also reprinted The Spiral Path, but nobody seems to remember that. To be honest, I didn't. The Bojeffries Saga turned up in a few places that I wasn't aware of, besides Tundra, I later discovered. Big Ben is what I love about a lot of the British approaches to comics; that kind of affectionate satire. Discovering some of that material, thanks to Titan Books and some other sources, was one of the joys of college and after. After a lifetime of seeing stories done in the same formulaic way, it was nice to see a different perspective, especially when it was well done. Then, the icing on the cake was seeing that talent get their hands on the American characters. It was kind of similar to growing up on a diet of American variety show sketch comedy (like the Carol Burnett Show) and then seeing Monty Python for the first time. Did you ever see Paul Neary's Batman spoof, The Crusader? Or Alan Moore's Daredevil satire, Dourdevil? |
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