What we don't get, except very rarely, is the kind of over-the-top stuff that used to be the cornerstone of superhero comics. We don't get Superman smashing thru walls, we get him sitting on clouds. We don't get the Hulk ripping tanks apart, we get page after page of Bruce Banner feeling sorry for himself.

What it comes down to, is that you should not be able to make a list like that. You should not, when confronted with the statement that too many are doing it wrong, trot out half a dozen names of those who are, you feel, doing it right. In the "Marvel Age" the half dozen names would be those who were on the wrong side of the coin. The list of books that were going above and beyond, and the artists providing that work, would have been the long one.

QUOTE: What it comes down to, is that you should not be able to make a list like that.

Good point.

"What's odd, tho, is that the current crop of comic creators seems largely to have responded to this challenge by backing down. They have effectively surrendered to Hollywood, saying "I can't do what they do, so I will do less." So we get painted panels of Tony Stark talking on his cell phone. We get heroes standing around arguing with each other. We get whole issues in which the title character does not appear in costume. (We are, after all, embarassed by costumes. Hollywood told us we should be.)

What we don't get, except very rarely, is the kind of over-the-top stuff that used to be the cornerstone of superhero comics. We don't get Superman smashing thru walls, we get him sitting on clouds. We don't get the Hulk ripping tanks apart, we get page after page of Bruce Banner feeling sorry for himself. "

________________________________________________

Very well put. I have expressed a similar opinion numerous times on other boards, and usually with the same response: "but the stories are so much better now", or "the characters have so much more deapth now that writers don't have to rely on pages of useless fighting." Of course these responses are totally inacurate. There were some great stories told back in those days of the fisticuffs, I daresay even some better stories, plus you had the exceptionally exciting action scenes that we all remember so fondly.