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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132320
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 9:02am | IP Logged | 1
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Ignore his history and you run the risk of fans pissing and moaning that he hasn't redeemed himself and is no hero.** Would these be the same fans who embraced mass-murderer Magneto as a "freedom fighter"? _________ ...Pym hitting Jan shouldn't be swept under the rug... •• Like I've said, characters should not be held responsible for bad writing.
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Shane Matlock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 August 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 1760
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 11:08am | IP Logged | 2
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They managed to ruin 4 characters (Henry Pym, The Wasp, The Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye) mainly because Chuck Austen couldn't get over a bad story idea that happened 20 years before. He blew up a great deal of character reform for Pym in stories by Roger Stern, JB, Bob Harras, and Kurt Busiek.
*****
It blows my mind that someone like Chuck Austen, a guy mostly famous for briefly illustrating Marvelman/Miracleman was given the writing position on Avengers and X-Men given the fact that there were plenty of well established writers in the business with more talent and fans that would have gladly written those titles and done so in ways that didn't crap all over the characters. And Marvel let him stay on X-Men two years despite intense fan hatred and declining sales. Of course, these days Marvel doesn't seem to care about sales by constantly restarting comics for characters and teams by the same creators that do no sell at all so maybe that was a portent of things to come. With all of the titles I've liked that have gotten canceled over the years, I never thought I'd long for the days when something like successful sales actually mattered, but when you have neither talent nor sales and keep putting something out, what is the point?
Edited by Shane Matlock on 16 December 2018 at 11:09am
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8363
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 11:32am | IP Logged | 3
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Shane, I almost wonder if they confused Chuck Austen for Chuck Dixon, and it took that long to catch on!
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Shane Matlock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 August 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 1760
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 4
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Brian, that's funny. I always felt like he had blackmail material on the Marvel editors that kept hiring him!
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14816
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | 5
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how Pym hitting Jan shouldn't be swept under the rug
———
Writers and readers have had no problem ignoring the time that Peter Parker struck his pregnant wife and sent her flying. Bad characterizations only continue to exist because writers keep bringing them up.
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | 6
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I always felt Austen had a fan in Joe Quesada. That was a weird period, lauded as Marvel's "Great Comeback" but I always felt there was really just a renewed interest thanks to the X-Men and Spider-Man movies.
Edited by Shawn Kane on 16 December 2018 at 6:06pm
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 16 December 2018 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | 7
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I always remember Austen as the guy who drew Doonesbury type strip in my College newspaper.
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 2:30am | IP Logged | 8
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I remember Austen as the writer and artist of the porno comics Strips and Hardball. I think it was in Hardball where one of the female leads argued with a right-winger that guns are tools used to kill people and should therefore be restricted. The right-winger countered that pencils can be used to kill people. Should those be taken away? And she said yes. I think they then had sex.
He's also the fellow who used an entire issue of an X-Men title for Polaris to espouse her philosophy on why terrorism is a good and wonderful thing and should be used all the time. She goes on all issue long on this theme, with no one saying "boo" to dispute her until the very end, when Wolverine or Storm says something like, "Excuse me, but..." and the book ended. Their response was to be in the next issue.
Much the same way the first four issues or so of Earth X went on and on about how heroism is an empty ideal made up by know-nothing humans who have no clue about how anything works in the real world before having someone come along later in the series to speak in defense of the concept, these comics were really and truly being written for the trade. If every issue is someone's first, these individual comics were as off-putting and rancid an introduction as they could possibly be.
I never followed any of Austen's plotting but accounts I've read of his runs are not promising. Just that individual issue was enough for me to say, "No, thanks" and leave the rest be.
I do like the line about banning pencils however.
Edited by Brian Hague on 17 December 2018 at 2:34am
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7485
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 7:47am | IP Logged | 9
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Two thoughts from this train of comments:
1) I really can't wait to see ELSEWHEN in print, hoping so much that it happens. JB is one of the few I trust to write really great X-Men stories.
2) Cyclops as a character isn't broken. The writers have done him badly but that can be fixed. As noted above, though, some fans (and fans-turned-writers) cling to really awful characterization or disgraceful, even terrible moments. It's hard to keep a character heroic when the writer is determined to make him a lowlife.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132320
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 9:10am | IP Logged | 10
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It's not simply the fans-turned-pro who are the problem, it's the fans who have only PARTLY turned pro. The ones who are married to every detail that has ever appeared in the books. (To borrow from Ned Flanders, even the parts that contradict the other parts.) The ones we might call the Footnote Fanatics, who want every detail carved in stone.*So, being broken, Cyclops must remain broken. And another great Marvel character gets flushed down the toilet. _________________ * Except the ones they don't. Much huffing and puffing over my portrayal of Magneto in HIDDEN YEARS. Didn't I understand he was a noble freedom fighter? Didn't THEY understand that was completely at odds with the character Stan and Jack had given us?
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
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Posts: 7485
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 11:06am | IP Logged | 11
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Have to admit, this comment makes me sad almost entirely because it encapsulates exactly the worst problems with hardcore fandom... and because it is therefore likely to be borne out, no matter what Marvel does to Cyclops now or in the future.
Like Hank Pym, Scott's going to have that albatross around his neck. I hope there's a way out of this trap but JB puts his finger on exactly why that's very unlikely to happen.
As for Magneto-- hard to imagine his current backstory could be much further from what his creators had in mind. And yet, there it is.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132320
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| Posted: 17 December 2018 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | 12
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Somewhere along the way, someone convinced Stan he’d created Xavier and Magneto with Martin Luthor King and Malcolm X as his models. And that became carved in stone, even tho it was (a) preposterous and (b) supposedly based on Stan’s notoriously bad (by his own admission) memory. An example of how some fans embrace what they want to embrace, even if it means using as support something at which they were scoffing ten minutes earlier. (I asked one of my comics conscious Jewish friends what he thought about Magneto joining the Tribe. “Sure!” he said. “Why shouldn’t we have our own mass murderer?”)
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