| Posted: 05 February 2021 at 9:40am | IP Logged | 5
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John W: "...when was the last time Marvel was great in your opinion?"
That's a good question, my friend. There are a number of elements that I think were indicators that the end of Marvel's grandeur was at hand...
* The introduction of characters such as Ms. Marvel, Nova, She-Hulk, and Spider-Woman. That seemed to me to be the start of "Let's cash in on our previous properties with an easy change, rather than something new and exciting!" All three of those characters I cited below were derivative of existing properties. Nova, especially, seemed to me to be an effort to once again catch the Spider-Man lightning in a bottle, but ten years later.
The characters and stories could be very good... but the same could have happened with totally original characters.
* The first company wide crossover. Suddenly, readers had to buy EVERY BOOK to get the full story. To hell with that. I feel that, at the time, nobody was buying every book; and it was far easier to drop four books than pick up eight new ones. This idea works a grand total of ONCE. Everything after that is designed to fail.
* Comics supporting toys. DC had Super Powers, which was fair at best (Kirby IS king...) But Secret Wars? Junk from top to bottom. Characters out of character, villains going out of their way to be ineffective - and look, it's only my opinion, but everybody CAN'T be Captain America. The X-Men, Avengers, etc. are suddenly kidnapped and trapped far out in space. They don't know the status of their loved ones, don't know if they'll ever get home - and here's Doc Ock and the Lizard and Doom are now trying to kill them. The very best of the heroes would come to the villains and explain that they're all in the same boat, and damn the Beyonder - they ALL have to work on getting home.
But how the Hulk didn't just tear the arms off Doc Ock and the armor off Doom mystifies me. Or how Wolverine didn't take matters into his own hands, and be the running man in one night to slit 100 throats.
* The advent of Comic Shop ONLY distribution. Direct sales were fine; it allowed better access to comics. But when that turned into "You can't get comics at your department store/drugstore/bookstore, but only at Costly Comics Cavalcade... I think that hurt matters a lot.
I reckon that's probably about the extent of when I thought comics were last really great. Although I'll probably think of more... that mind of mine never sleeps.
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