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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I can believe I have to say this but: be fair to Joey Q.
The guy's a shitty writer and a terrible Editor-in-Chief, but he's a pretty damn good artist. He's judging the costume on its visual aesthetics, not the movie's approach to storytelling, and I'd say he's well enough qualified for that.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.He was actually a pretty good Editor-in-Chief, since he became EIC in 2000, when Marvel was just getting over its bankruptcy. He oversaw the creation of the Ultimate Universe and the Marvel MAX line, the revamping of Avengers into New Avengers, and many other very good comics (including Nextwave).
It's just that at some points, he got a bit too involved and that's when things crashed down, like in "One More Day."
And Quesada is actually one of the few Marvel EICs to leave voluntarily. He became the Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment.
edited 10th Jul '15 1:30:16 PM by alliterator
Outside of Spider-Man, I would say his problem was being not involved enough. Quesada had a pretty firm, "Write whatever the hell you want, consistency be damned," policy that made it impossible to tell where comics were supposed to fall in conjunction with each other and resulted in minimal cross-title consistency.
This is a problem because his run also saw a rise in cross-title continuity, which is a bad thing to couple with absolute inconsistency. Nowhere was this more evident than Civil War, the greatest failing of which being editorial's absolute refusal to allow anyone to draft an actual Superhuman Registration Act for the other writers to work off; Quesada insisted that everyone just depict the SHRA however works best for their story.
So in one comic, it's a totally benevolent ruling with no downsides and in another, it's Nazis, and no one could fix that because that's how Quesada wanted it. Each title was more or less a standalone universe but they couldn't be read alone because they kept being interrupted by the continuity of all the other standalone universes every three issues.
edited 10th Jul '15 2:28:00 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
I'd actually say that that policy worked out for the best for a lot of comics, aside from the dismal "Civil War" (which could have been good except for, ugh, Mark Millar).
I mean, just look at Nextwave. It absolutely broke continuity. And yet it was one of the best comics Marvel has never put out exactly for that reason. At one point, Warren Ellis even stated that Nextwave was the only real comic in the Marvel universe, everyone else were "anal Skrulls."
edited 10th Jul '15 2:38:54 PM by alliterator
See, that's the kind of joke that's only funny if you agree that all the other comics can go f*ck themselves, but if you're reading many of the titles Marvel's producing, it can get quite aggravating to see bickering authors blatantly refusing to portray things consistently while Wolverine is everywhere and doing everything at once.
Civil War broke Marvel for years because even long after the event had ended, no two authors could depict the effect it had on the Marvel Universe consistently. Civil War wasn't an event, it was a status quo and it lasted half a decade. Because of Quesada's editorial, it was half a decade of mismanaged mess.
Nextwave could sit in its own little corner and poke fun at the fact that every other comic is being pulled down into a quagmire of shit, but that's not a good solution. A good solution is to stop producing a quagmire of shit.
edited 10th Jul '15 2:51:47 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Actually, I was reading a bunch of other titles at the time. And even if they didn't match up, they still made sense to me.
You don't need a rigid continuity in order to tell stories. So what if Wolverine's in two teams? It doesn't hurt the story.
(Also, Nextwave pretty much made fun of everything about comics.)
edited 10th Jul '15 2:52:37 PM by alliterator
Not really. The Ultimate Universe was never really consistent in the first place (references to the Fantastic Four as adults happened before they were even officially introduced as teenagers) and it did pretty well.
The thing that killed the Ultimate Universe was a combination of declining sales and "Ultimatum."
edited 10th Jul '15 2:56:27 PM by alliterator
No, what hurts the story is when one writer depowers Wolverine's Healing Factor to manageable levels to eliminate his Boring Invincible Hero status and then another writer has him regenerate from a skeleton anyway because f*ck your depowering, I write what I want.
What hurts the story is when people want to know what you think about the SHRA's treatment of young superheroes, and you're reading The Initiative, which states that all young supers are drafted into basic combat training, Ms. Marvel, which states that young supers are apprenticed with experienced superheroes and suffer no harsh conditions whatsoever, and Runaways, which states that young supers can opt out and go through neither, even though that option was never presented to the Initiative kids or Anya in Ms. Marvel.
What hurts the story is when Iron Man is depicted as an absolute saint in one comic and the Second Coming of der fuhrer in another. When he pays for Aunt May's hospitalization out of his own pocket despite Spider-Man betraying him because he really is a good guy, and then goes out of his way to pick a fight with Thor because Thor doesn't want to register and nobody gets away with that.
What hurts the story is when one writer has Iron Man pouring his heart out and confessing that the Registration Act was the right thing to do but the cost wasn't worth it, crying over Cap's coffin. Then another writer has him only supporting Registration as the lesser of two evils so he can control it and keep it from getting worse. And yet another has him manipulating the war for war profiteering because he's just a greedy, selfish toolbag.
What hurts the story is not being able to form a concrete opinion of any character or concept in the story because every character and concept is being depicted four different, mutually-exclusive ways.
Because some people might like stories to be standalone but in a shared universe, nothing is ever truly standalone. Every character and concept will also be employed by another writer, and a failure to collaborate and cooperate on characters that multiple people are using simultaneously hurts everyone's story.
Even Nextwave is now back with a vengeance and firmly canonized as of Captain America and the Mighty Avengers.
edited 10th Jul '15 3:04:01 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.You'll get no arguments from me that "Civil War" was a clusterfuck. But at the same time, the other events that happened happened pretty well and without those problems. So perhaps it was just "Civil War" that sucked and not the actual rule. ("Secret Invasion," aside from a kind of boring main series, went extremely well in the tie-ins.)
Also, Wolverine's healing factor has been up and down for decades. There's never been a consistency to it. And I think that most people would like to forget that storyline where it was powered down a bit (wasn't that the one where he fought an archangel after death?).
edited 10th Jul '15 3:11:00 PM by alliterator
I actually think Nextwave being canonized lessens it.
I liked it being its own thing where it could be relentlessly ridiculous forever.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers"I didn't like that story," isn't a good reason for disregarding continuity. Throwing out something because you thought it sucked is how we got One More Day, the shining example of Quesada's complete apathy towards consistent storytelling.
And no, it wasn't just Civil War. World War Hulk sucked because writers couldn't get straight whether the Hulk was supposed to be the hero or the villain. Secret Invasion sucked because the entire scale of the conflict was premised on the other writers being willing to let important characters be revealed to be treacherous Skrulls and no one was going to do that - even those writing actual Skrull characters had them all undergo a Heel–Face Turn and fight against the invasion.
The Mutant Decimation sucked for the same reason Secret Invasion did: it demanded far-reaching consequences across other people's comics, and no one was willing to collaborate on it. All the important mutants survived it and any who didn't, like Magneto or Xavier, were immediately repowered despite the same comics repeatedly insisting that repowering mutants was impossible. And then Scarlet Witch came back and suffered no consequences because the guy writing Scarlet Witch didn't want to deal with that.
Collaberation is the lifeblood of a shared universe, and like it or not, the Marvel U is a shared universe.
edited 10th Jul '15 3:16:58 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Monica: Oh, God, now what... We didn't have to deal with this kind of thing in the Avengers.
*flashback*
Monica: It's the Gamma-Activated Bull Men From Beyond The Nineteenth Perimeter — and they're naked.
Captain America: Cover your eyes, go back to the Avengers Mansion, and make me my dinner.
Monica Rambeau, leader of the Nextwave Squad, lies all the time.
edited 10th Jul '15 3:17:49 PM by alliterator
The X Men had one of their most well coordinated periods since Claremont under Quesada's rule. From the start of Decimation until the end of the Messiah Trilogy the X-Titles worked quite well going to the same direction with a clear shared tone. There was some bumps here and there, such as the lack of important depowered mutants and the complete waste of the U.N.E. Sentinels, but I really enjoyed this period because it really felt it was one huge story shared among all titles. The ultimate ending was a bit disappointing, but the stories during the period were not bad.
That all happened under Quesada, I believe, so I am not sure it is fair to say everything under him was a clusterfuck.
I actually found World War Hulk very consistent. The Hulk was not a hero nor a villain - he was clearly an anti-hero. He blamed the Illuminati for the destruction of Sakaar, but it was actually one of his own Warbound.
And World War Hulk resulted in Incredible Hercules, so I can't fault it too much. Because that book was awesome.
Eh, the tie in books were all over the place to whether Hulk was supposed to be sympathetic or not and, more important, what was his effect on the city. I don't remember really well because, frankly, I didn't like almost anything from it, but I remember I felt at the time that things didn't seem to mesh together. I could be misremembering though, and the issue was not consistency and more simply plain bad writing.
That said, I agree. Incredible Herc was awesome. One of the greatest things to ever come out a Marvel cross over event (sharing spot with Avengers Academy, I say).
I think it's funny that the book was called World War Hulk, but he never left New York.
My various fanfics.It's one of Marvel's most consistent features: the books that spin-off from a crossover will always be better than the crossover itself. (See: Captain Britain and MI-13 spinning off from Secret Invasion, Secret Warriors spinning off from Dark Reign, etc.)
So far, Secret Wars is the exception, as the main book as been exceptionally good. Almost all the spin-off books are good as well (probably due to the fact that they aren't really tie-ins and take place on various regions of Battleworld, allowing themselves the opportunity to tell whatever story the writer wanted to tell without being hampered by the main event).

I think Quesada is a pretty cheesy writer.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!