Also, adding that Dan Slott has only been on the book since issues #21 so he is I feel just getting his legs going on the title.  Bendis wrote a majority of the stories that were seen in the title. 

Slott has been averaging 2-3 issues a story arc since he took over.  He was kind of dealt a crappy hand with that SI thing and Dark Reign.

Thanks for the info, Steve.

Jean's return would be enough to get me to pay attention to the X-books again. After what Morrison did to her, I walked away and haven't really looked back since.

Jason Mark Hickok wrote: Having a registered and an un-registered team of Avengers in conflict with each other could have worked well.

Hating the entire "registered" and "non registered" superhuman storyline that took over more than a couple of years at Marvel and really destroyed my love of Iron Man/Tony Stark, I can't agree.  I don't pay to see my superheroes, beacons of a world where they're supposed be looked up to, fighting at each other's throats for anything longer than an issue or two crossover and even then, they realize they've been pitted against each other, or mind controlled, or something and team up to fight a common foe.  This whole notion of superheroes of Avengers caliber in constant ideological conflict with one another is absurd and nothing I want to read about.

And I use that reference pointedly. This nonsense has become the vogue since Alan Moore force fed it to us in WATCHMEN -- Frank Miller was the first to fall victim, halfway thru DKR -- and it has become the Cool Idea that no one seems able to shake. Like mutants were the Cool Idea for so long at Marvel. Like heroes BEHAVING like heroes was the Cool Idea before that.

See where we've gone wrong? In case you need another clue: "It's on, bitch."

I mean, seriously, what hero would ever say that to Reed Richards?  What kind of crap happening in context would have that line make any sense?  Oh, right.  Superheroes pitted against one another in some insane ideological battle that lasts years and issues too numerous to count and ultimately ends up with Captain America dead. 

So sad.

Why, yes, because Moore actually pressured people into buying copies of Watchmen under some kind of duress?

No, I'm sorry, I can't let that pass unchallenged ... Watchmen sold by the boatload because he was trying something that hadn't been seen in the mainstream superhero genre, a determined effort to bring a wider literary sensibility to a superhero story.

And the fact that it's still in vogue some 21 years later? It's not like Moore has spent the following two decades trying to do nothing but replicate Watchmen ... it depresses Moore as much as anyone that the lack of editorial imagination at just about every major publisher keeps churning out grim, gritty, deconstructed superheroes.

I do, however, agree wholeheartedly that if people stopped buying this sub-Watchmen dross, or simply favoured books with a little less gloom and doom, then the market would hopefully respond.

Unfortunately, it would seem that the Public wants what the Public gets, as the Jam so astutely observed.

Cheers

Jim

My fake quote would fit in nicely.

________________________________________

Paul, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Edited by Rick Whiting on 25 August 2009 at 5:43pm