Marvel Comics General

Damn that’s deep.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

I just finished the last issue of Avengers: No Road Home and damn that was good. The beginning of all creation being literally the House of Ideas and returning everything to the beginning with the original Human Torch was genius. And I love how it ended with Hercules now in his Bob Layton Prince of Power adventures and the Greek gods reborn in the Space Beyond Space.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 21st 2019 at 7:09:20 AM

Though in the current Journey into Mystery mini Ares seems to be the same as always.

I don't believe Ares was with the Greek pantheon when Nyx killed them all, so he wouldn't have been reborn.

I found a quote by Stan Lee on comic books and political activism which I think is interesting when we discuss how escapist fiction is supposed to tackle RL issues:

“I don’t think we’ll be sending him to Vietnam,” Lee told a radio interviewer, when asked about plans for Captain America. “We treat these characters sort of tongue-in-cheek and we get a lot of laughs out of them, we have a lot of fun with them. I don’t know if it’s in good taste to take something as serious as the situation in Vietnam and put a character like Captain America . . . we would have to start treating him differently and taking the whole thing more seriously, which we’re not prepared to do.”

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Well, back then they were aiming more for Kids, so it kinda made sense.

Though maybe not totally since this is around the time that Gwen died isn't it?

Also, apparently Ice Man has been a member of the Fantastic Four according to the latest FF series, only it hasn't actually happened yet (for us; Bobby and Johnny were arguing about it and it's happened for them, even though Johnny keeps trying to say it doesn't count).

Any idea what the deal with that is?

One Strip! One Strip!

Very interesting in light of Chip Zdarsky's Spider-Man: Life Story where Captain America intervenes in Vietnam and often against the US Army, a story that expresses a judgment on Vietnam now that would have been unthinkable for Marvel to back in The '60s, at least unthinkable if they wanted to be a mainstream publisher. Of course Captain America's first comic cover had him punching Hitler and him being tied to World War II is a big part of history, so I think it's more a judgment on Vietnam.

Stan Lee as EIC tried to be apolitical, and he was political to the extent that he dodged controversy. He wanted to be everyone's friend.

I agree with the idea that you can't really have colorful superheroes beat up actual real world issues but I think tackling them in appropriately fantastical ways works.

Like that time the president was a snakeman.

There's also the fact that the present is really complicated, intricate and that it takes time to make a sense of it and get perspective. It's a problem people have across mediums. IT's hard to do it say in a documentary, like it took a 7 hour documentary to get us a sense about what OJ Simpson was about, saying stuff and putting it together when in its time all you had was "white bronco" and "you must acquit" jokes. And that's a domestic murder and celebrity trial, minor things in the grand scheme of history. So imagine doing that in an ongoing comic. I mean take the American Civil War, for a long time saying something like "The South were bad guys" was controversial. I mean EC Comics got into trouble with that, leading to Harvey Kurtzman dropping shade in his letters' columns:

"As we mentioned once before, we are trying to take a neutral path between the North and South. We find ourselves in a situation that cannot help but give our books a 'Northern' tinge. For some reason, while the South turned out much colorful story material on the war, the North seems to have documented the actual history of the war a lot more completely."

— Harvey Kurtzman, The EC Archives: Two-Fisted Tales, Volume 3, Editor's Note

I remember reading JMS' Spider-Man and he of course did the 9/11 issue which was a non-canon one-shot, and I remember people at the time wondering if it was appropriate. He did it better when he had Peter and MJ say goodbye at the airport, a classic motif in their relationship, and MJ has to say goodbye to Peter at the gate. When before, like in their classic kiss in ASM #142, MJ could accompany Peter into the terminal while Post-9/11 that can't happen anymore. That was just a simple thing. And later in his Thor run, he had the Asgardian come to New Orleans after Katrina. I am tearing through Aaron's run on Thor, and I like the way he's tackling climate change and so on with Roxxon and Jane Thor and Roz Solomon. And he's dealing with the whole issues, the existence of Gods in a society run by CEO and so on, in an intelligent way that makes us thing, and gives sense of the hopelessness of dealing with climate change and how that measures on the cosmic scale that a comic book can visualize and convey so well.

So there are some real issues comics can tackle in ways and others it can't.

My disappointment in the Fantastic Four cannot be overstated.

The current run or the group itself?

The current run. Slott made it so bland that I found fan fiction to be more fantastic.

Do you remember any "Guardian of the multiverse" type of characters, overseeing and fixing alternate realities, other than Immortus and Karn?

I think that Iceman being in the FF was just a Noodle Incident in that comic.

Edited by GrigorII on Apr 26th 2019 at 5:48:45 AM

Ultimate Secret Wars

I think the Exiles count? They're basically multiversal Avengers. Even if they've got more X-Men ties in terms of their roster.

@Bocaj

Yes she is, go read the War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men mini, issue 1 came out this week. She's now the LAST Valkyrie (at least until Jane Foster gets recruited), in fact, having missed the slaughter because she was with the X-Men and arrived at the battle to find everyone else already dead.

Edited by Digifiend on Apr 27th 2019 at 8:36:43 PM

I've been reading the Bendis/Austen Elektra series, and it turns out Chuck Austen very well may have been a worse artist than writer. Which is an accomplishment, really. Stiff, flat, emotionless, awkward fight choreography, the worst hands I have ever seen in a mainstream comic. It's like a comic about action figures. Honestly, it's almost impressive just how weak Chuck Austen's art was. And it is baffling to me that Marvel actually gave him work as an artist.

True, it was a time when Marvel was taking on a lot of artists with unique visual styles. Quitely on New X-Men, Allred on X-Force, Mack on Daredevil, they were trying new art styles. But Austen was not on the level of those guys. He was not even remotely on the same level. Their art was dynamic, interesting, they'd studied the rules they were breaking. Austen was just bad.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

And then he tried doing all CGI art (under the name "Christian Moore") for the infamous U.S. War Machine 2.0

Edited by Sircray on Apr 28th 2019 at 4:17:09 PM

Oh shit, I'll be reading that soon! I think he did the same thing for Elektra. Looks similar. Either way, it's some of the worst art I have ever seen in my life. Not even art I just don't get, it's legitimately bad art that Marvel never should have accepted. It is legitimately bad.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

Champions #5 today felt really cathartic as a Cyclops fan. It's more of a loose tie-in to War of the Realms as it's more about the team doing damage control. They have an encounter with the X-Men, as they're delivering supplies to civilians in need. This triggers Scott's O5's memories and he ends up joining the team in fighting off some trolls.

The heart-to-heart that Scott had with Kamala was really nice, and honestly makes me miss Teen Clops being on the team.

I thought Teenclops was a great idea that never really manifested properly.

And he should have stayed hooked up with X-23 instead of pining over JEEEAAANN again.

Logan's reaction to that would have been meme worthy.

Wake me up at your own risk.

Champions actually showed mutants and one Inhuman working together while in Uncanny had one get beat to death despite the fact she can turn into a fucking werewolf. -_-

Mileena Madness

They fucking killed Rahne? ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGH! She's like, the biggest X-woobie of them all. Marvel civilians are beyond redemption. They need somebody to go Justice Lords on their ass.

But this is a real life situation because she couldn't fight back against this crowd just like in real life. Except wait this is a fucking comic book, she would die tearing this assholes limb from limb. I want the current writer to leave this book so bad...

Mileena Madness

Wait how'd she get beaten to death?

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."