| Posted: 15 August 2019 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 3
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No problem, Chris. I'm no stranger to reading and making long posts throughout my years of posting online, though I do try to not go too far these days. Still, I think it's only fair to reply in kind. All the same, we can all agree to disagree.
On a basic level, I can understand. Speaking purely for myself, my personal favorite modern Avengers run was the Perez-Busiek era, which was a very traditional take on the team yet still very well-executed across the board. That was arguably one of the best 90s Marvel books. The first arc is massive in terms of cast length, but the team was quickly scaled down to a more familiar size after that point. In any case, it felt like a breath of fresh air after the misfire that had been the Heroes Reborn titles from Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and company.
I am someone who is totally capable of appreciating small-scale tales or even anthology pieces. At the same time, I also tend to like stories with greater ambition and a big scope. That doesn't mean every single superhero narrative needs to be like that, perish the thought, but I strongly believe it's a valid storytelling option. If I don't feel like reading such a story at a certain point due to excess or exhaustion, then I'll just stop and come back later.
Perhaps I'll want to read something different and closer to a classical take after the fact, thus returning to the core concept if you want to describe it as such. It may be that many modern comics do tend to fall into the temptation of trying to do too much in too little time, but that's precisely why I don't follow a lot of current comics in the first place. I pick a few and ignore the rest.
I happen to disagree with your assessment of Hickman's FF run, because in my experience he still managed to give the team enough moments of individuality and personal interactions as a family, regardless of the threats. Like I've said before, I was fairly engaged by the sci-fi content too.
Regarding Avengers, I think there were proper narrative justifications for why the team needed to expand in the face of threats on an essentially galactic and/or universal scale. At the same time, I felt the core members were still classic Avengers such as Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Guest stars or effectively temporary members did increase, comparatively, but they aren't entirely unusual for this line of comics either.
It's important to address a few more points about the specifics of the story. Captain America was vehemently opposed to the idea of destroying another world to save their own, which was fully in character since he should be the most heroic of them all, but the others felt they were forced to seriously consider it (even if none of them, save Namor, were ultimately willing to pull the trigger). That being the case, they couldn't keep Cap around and needed to erase his memory (which does come back to bite Tony and company later, since Steve does find out and isn't happy). In my opinion, Doctor Strange wasn't out of character there. He has dealt with the devil, both literally and figuratively speaking, numerous times in the past. The act of erasing someone's memory isn't forbidden territory for him either.
Skipping right to the end of Hickman's run, all these events fed directly into the new Secret Wars. It was meant to be an apocalyptic "death and rebirth" scenario, where the heroes were taken to their breaking point and made a lot of wrong decisions. Yet, in the end, it was heroism that still triumphed and the vast majority of those previously escalating actions were negated. In the current Marvel Universe, they never happened. In other words, a clean slate was (very responsibly) left for the next writer instead of a messy room.
There's a separate discussion to be had about originality. At this point in the history of mankind, I think such a pure ideal doesn't exist. It's almost impossible to avoid falling into common patterns, because everyone is influenced by something else. It's craft and skill that differs. Like the famous saying goes: “good artists copy, great artists steal”.
Edited by Juan Gomez on 15 August 2019 at 12:33pm
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