Marvel Comics General

So Morrison's run on the X-Men was good? I dont know much beside his breakup of the Summers marriage & Magneto going totally ape-shit on New York.

edited 29th Nov '15 10:52:47 AM by slimcoder

Morrison's X-Men wasn't perfect — I thought the dialogue was a bit dry at times myself — but it was still, forgive me for saying so, sublime. X-Men comics had still been good up to this point, and Claremont's run is a classic for a reason, but Morrison moved the franchise forward in a way that hasn't really been since. It took the minority angle and ran with it, transforming the series into something truly unique. And if he had gotten his way, Morrison would still be on the title today, just finishing up his 15th year in an intended 16/17 year run. It almost makes me want to live in whatever parallel universe that happened just for the sake of reading it.

Of course, that didn't happen. Morrison left, and Whedon took over. And his run was still good, in a more oldschool way, but no-one's really tried to do what Morrison did,which is a shame. Instead, the X-Men are still holed away in some mansion or extradimensional realm or another, staying segregated from the rest of the world instead of being a part of it, and always on the brink of extinction. That sort of thing was fine before Morrison came along, but as has been said, Morrision simply set the bar too high.

Morrison's run was half good.

The other half was him getting as many planned ideas on paper as possible before he rage quit Marvel.

The latter half of his run is very crowded with ideas that don't really get explored because he has to get to the next point on his checklist. On the other hand, telepathic talking scottish whale.

The art though. The art on his run is something I never liked and never got further than tolerating.

Morrison I think got the core of what worked but wasn't afraid to try to progress things. Frankly, his idea of mutants being more integrated into society but still facing bigotry and problems was a much more apt metaphor for the minority experience in America than anything the other writers have done since then.

And yes I'm counting the "Proposition X" bollocks.

What was 'Proposition X', if I may ask?

Anyone remember who makes these?◊

It was a law from Fraction's run to regulate Mutant breeding rights. It was a very unsubtle play on the controversial Proposition 8 anti-gay amendment that was in the news at the time.

...Huh. I read Fraction's run, but I barely remember that particular plotline at all. Guess that just shows how mediocre the whole thing was.

Them. Their comics are hilarious.

So secret wars 9 got delayed till January 6th. For now.

So, I was skimming through a random issue of Alpha Flight — 101, I think — and right on the first page, I completely lost it. The art is by Tom Morgan, who I had never heard of before but, my God, the artwork on this one page alone is atrocious. The only thing that's happening on it is Hercules punching Sasquatch, but mother of Heaven, is it BAD. Hercules' proportions are over the places, to the point where you can't tell where his neck is or if he even has a neck, and depth perception is practically nonexistent, but the real star here is Sasquatch. His body has no mass to it. It is completely flat like cardboard, partly because his fur looks like fire, and partly because, rather than drawing a detailed actual body, the artist just decided to draw a bunch of black bars and spikes, fill in the blanks with orange coloring, add in the head and hands, (which are the only parts of Sasquatch to have proper depth and proportion,) and call it a day. The result is this strange flaming outline which serves to contain a host of thick black lines, as opposed to something actually resembling bigfoot. If this were my first comic, you'd see me slamming the comic against the rack and never bothering to purchase another one ever again. That doesn't mean the book itself is bad, because I haven't read it, and for all I know, the writing may actually be good, but the artwork at least is horrendous. Just goes to show Leifeild wasn't the only hack back then.

edited 29th Nov '15 6:30:06 PM by kkhohoho

Was this from the 90's?

I know it's a tired gag by this point that 90's art sucks but seriously, Marvel and DC started hiring some seriously WTF-worthy people in the 90's and late 80's.

That issue was written by Fabian Nicieza. It was OK. It had some good parts and some bad parts. It wasn't his best work. At the same time, he was doing fantastic runs on New Warriors and Nomad, and they were much better than his Alpha Flight. Truthfully, Alpha Flight itself always ended up feeling like a bit of an odd book. Byrne's run was great, because Byrne, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as his Fantastic Four, and it wasn't one of the strongest books on the stands, because there were a lot of great books.

Then Mantlo took it over and let's not speak of that.

James Hudnall eventually took over from Mantlo, and his run wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. Nicieza did middling work. I'm currently reading Simon Furman's run and, again, it's OK, but nothing stellar, with some really bad stuff at times. (Wyre. Oh, hell, Wyre. Such a terrible character.)

I'm not sure why writers have so much trouble with Alpha Flight.

My favorite part of that was Grimm not getting it and asking why calling her a "broad" is sexist but hitting her isn't. Kitty's the one in the right - calling her a broad is, in fact, more sexist than hitting her; refraining from fighting a combatant on account of her sex would actually be the sexist move - but I completely bought Grimm stumbling on that point due to his much more traditionally masculine character.

This. So much this.

edited 30th Nov '15 12:54:15 PM by TobiasDrake

I wouldn't say refraining from hitting a woman in a fight is a sexist move. It's just that, under the circumstances, there was nothing sexist about the fact that he did hit her. Kitty's been in enough fights herself that I'm pretty sure she has absolutely no problem with a male hero hitting a female villain.

But yeah, Grimm is rather charmingly clueless about feminist issues, I'd say.

More 1993 Annuals to talk about!

The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual, by De Matteis and Jerry Bingham, introduces the character of Nocturne. A black female cop whose friend was killed by Vermin when he busted out of a medical centre. One of Zemo's mutates finds her and uses Zemo's mutation machine on her, and she becomes Nocturne. She has big bat wings, white hair, claws, a fancy gown that came out of nowhere, she can't speak, and she can project her emotions. She's actually fairly interesting. Apparently, she gets a couple more appearances, but not many at all. It would've been nice if more had been done with her at the time.

And the Deathlok Annual, by Evan Skolnick and John Hebert. The new character is the Tracer, the owner of an engineering company. His father, who started the company, was killed by someone with superhuman strength, and Tracer wants to find out who and kill them. In the meantime, he also believes superhumans are a threat, and wants to deal with them. So he created a suit of power armour and takes contracts that have been put out on superhumans. Starting with Deathlok. Tracer is an OK concept. There's nothing really wrong with him. He's not really written as a very compelling character. But there is some potential there, as a threat who can be slotted in randomly to any book. Of course, he's an antagonist in a 1993 Annual, so he drops into limbo and is pretty much never used again.

The Annual had one other thing I want to comment on, though. A back-up story, by Gregory Wright and Kirk Jarvinen (and inks by Sam De La Rosa), has a scene on a subway. And there's a poster for an upcoming movie: "Star Wars Part One: The Clone Wars." That was in '1993''. So, was there talk back then of a new Star Wars movie? One that would take place at the time of the Clone Wars? Or did whoever included that fake poster actually predict that there would be Star Wars prequels dealing with the Clone Wars? Either way, it amused me.

I caved and got unlimited because a sale so whats good?

I was thinking of starting with Fantastic Four #old because it started the kaboodle

Here's what I used to find good stuff.

edited 30th Nov '15 7:43:16 PM by Moth13

I thank you

The risk with starting with old comics is that they really are so very different from modern comics. They had very different standards back then, to writing and art. Also, holy shit the casual misogyny. Sue Storm was such a terrible character to start with that the audience practically begged Marvel to get rid of her.

Things like logic and plausibility don't enter into stories. It's a lot more wordy. You'd get characters routinely explaining what's clear through the art. Characters would go from whiny and angst-ridden to psychotically angry at the drop of a hat.

Reading those old comics can be downright rough, sometimes.

Well, I've been reading essential Avengers so I'm prepared for some of that

Actually, I'd argue that starting with old comics is the better way to go, at least in my case. If I had started with the newer stuff and then tried to back go the older comics, I'd be likely be put off by the more rigid artwork, the more compressed nature of them, the multitudes of unnecessary narration boxes, the characters speaking and/or thinking what is clearly happening on the page, etc. Whereas starting with those older comics first allowed me to appreciate them on their own merits without being spoiled by the slicker writing and more expressive art of the newer material.

I also think that the actual stories and plots of many older comics, dialogue and execution aside, are better than a number of modern comics, but maybe that's just me.

The old comics are kinda hard to read, and they are very wordy and longer but they have a charm about them, it and I like how fun they are. Even the X-Men were having fun while being discriminated against.

Just to clarify, by 'old comics', I mean anything prior to the early 90's or so. That includes the angst-filled Claremont days, were 'fun' was the last thing on the X-Men's minds.

edited 30th Nov '15 8:58:58 PM by kkhohoho

When I talk about "old," I generally mean the '60s, and some of the '70s. The '80s were a lot different from those days. That's the decade of Claremont's X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, Byrne's Fantastic Four, Simonson's Thor . . . It was one hell of a decade.