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Aaron Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 15 January 2015 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | 1
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Oh, and it's hard to go wrong with Stan Sakai's USAGI YOJIMBO.
****
The one constant in the turbulent world of modern comics!
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 16 January 2015 at 12:17am | IP Logged | 2
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I really like Joe Zhang's post above. Of course, if I'm in a comic shop these days, I'm only buying back issues.
"Spider-Ma'am" if I'm not mistaken was a feature back in the Spider-Man Family title seven years ago or so. As I recall, it was simply the adventures of Aunt May watching television or gardening, sans any costumed crimefighting whatsoever. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Marvel somehow resurrected the feature as something with more blood and guts... Hey, May does consort romantically with super-villains, have sex on-panel, and go all Punisher on Spider-Man's ass when she gets the chance... They'd be fools NOT to follow through on something like this! Fools, I tell you!
And somewhere, in some alternate reality, Aunt May as a spider-powered super-heroine is already happening... :-)
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 16 January 2015 at 12:41am | IP Logged | 3
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More on point with the purpose of this thread, comics long ago took a sharp turn into ultra-violence and mass-murder. Robbing banks went away and nearly every Rogue in Flash's Gallery became a serial killer. Villains no longer existed and in their place came the Psuedo-Villain; the guy who started off bad but sold too many damn comic books not to show up every single month... Venom. Carnage. Black Adam. Superboy-Prime.
Arms were ripped off. Faces were torn away. Heads rolled. And not in a good way...
Entire populations were sacrificed on the alter of bold, new directions. No longer could Green Arrow or Nightwing simply leave the cities they'd once sworn to protect and seek new lives elsewhere. No, the city and every person in it had to be massacred, en masse, so our guy wouldn't look like a bad guy for not protecting them anymore. Instead, he'll look like a complete clown and an utter failure, but hey, whattaya gonna do? Something hadda be done.
Big. Whatever happens, it's gotta be BIG. Preferably really, really violent too, if we can get it there. And if we can write over some existing story and make that retroactively more unpleasant and reeking of unsavory behavior on everyone's part, so much the better. Psycho Jean can't just kill rape victim Sue. She has to set her on fire too. Can we have her urinate on the corpse maybe? Maybe she gets a sudden pang of remorse and tries to put her out. Or maybe the sudden burst of heat from the flames gives her a "bladder spasm..." Something. We'll get it there somehow...
Fetishtic, uncontrollable universe destroying is just the pale, repetitive emotionally disconnected shadow of this overall "kill 'em, kill 'em all dead" compulsion on the part of people who spend way too much time trying to get inside Thanos or Darkseid's head and figure out "Who This Guy Is."
You know what needs to be done? The Joker needs to cut his own face off. You know why? 'Cause it's crazy and he's never done it before. It's crazy in a way he's never been crazy before, and there is no kind of crazy the Joker isn't willing to be. Totally need to do that... Because that's Who He Is.
You know who Wonder Woman and Aquaman are? Rulers of Nations. You know what Rulers of Nations do? Get lots of their own people killed while trying to kill lots of people in other nations. To date, comics've been too namby-pamby to go there, but that is totally Who These People Are.
More and more, comics, writers, who "go there" in expressing Who They Are, are saying some scary things about Who We Are as readers.
Edited by Brian Hague on 16 January 2015 at 12:43am
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2365
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| Posted: 16 January 2015 at 1:57am | IP Logged | 4
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DC went off the rails years ago (the rape and murder of Sue Dibny, Superboy-Prime ripping people's arms off, etc.) and then, somehow, it found new ways to keep getting worse.
Marvel went dark and depressing for about six years before, during, and after CIVIL WAR when Norman Osborn and all his villains seemed to be winning at every turn. And then Disney bought them and some word must have come down from the top and things lightened up.
Have you tried DAREDEVIL? Definitely low-key and even fun, with street-level villains the last three years under Mark Waid. (Check it out while you can since Waid is ending his run soon.) HULK (first under Waid and now continuing under a new writer) is surprisingly low key lately too. And FANTASTIC FOUR written by James Robinson is such a breath of fresh air. Waid and Robinson--two of the best writers around, making Marvel enjoyable again.
Unfortunately, your criticism is right on target over on the various AVENGERS books (by Hickman, I think). Each issue gets more depressing, dense, and bewildering. And my once-favorite book CAPTAIN AMERICA has taken a similar turn under Remender.
Edited by Eric Jansen on 16 January 2015 at 2:00am
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4184
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| Posted: 16 January 2015 at 6:15am | IP Logged | 5
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Funny, I'd consider the James Robinson run on Fantastic Four to be an example of what Andrew was talking about. It's not that I don't enjoy it, but the whole thing is a single 18-part (19 including the annual) "Fall and Rise of the Fantastic Four" story. There are some books that more or less keep to themselves and try to do things properly (Waid's Daredevil, Slott's Silver Surfer, the current Moon Knight series (kinda), etc.) but yeah, there is this general feeling that every story needs to be high stakes, strike at the heart of the characters, rupture long term relationships (ignoring that they were just ruptured in the previous storyline), and take as many issues as possible to tell (8, 20, 36, 83; whatever) - sometime within a few months, sometimes over a couple of years. A "hero thwarts a fiendish villain's plot" story just feels like a precious jewel in some titles these days.
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Andy Meyers
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Joined: 05 August 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 567
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| Posted: 16 January 2015 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | 6
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It's not just comic books. TV and movies are all on the same path.
I'll just to be the old man on the porch for a second. I've noticed a lot of younger people go for these type of stories. I kid my 19 year old about it and say, "Things seem pretty good these days. Why does your generation have an obsession with having the world destroyed?" He just shrugs his shoulders and says, "That's not me Dad."
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Derek Cavin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 June 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 2403
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 4:37am | IP Logged | 7
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A lot of Image, IDW, and Bongo for me these days.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133324
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 5:33am | IP Logged | 8
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I just re-read Amazing Spider-Man 226 (July 1980, Stern/Byrne/Day). The whole story takes place in 2 locations: Daily Bugle offices & Jonas Harrow's hideout. The plot is Harrow using his variator ray to make anyone it's pointed at nuts. Spider-Man has to knock out the ray, rescue a kidnapped JJJ, and stop Harrow.••• AKA "the 3 Day Spider-Man."
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Wallace Sellars
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Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17699
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 6:56am | IP Logged | 9
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A lot of Image, IDW, and Bongo for me these days.
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I don't buy a lot of new books these days, but when I do, it's from one of
the publishers you mentioned or Archie (which is fast fading), Dark
Horse or Oni. There was a time when I couldn't imagine liking Image
books better than DC or Marvel fare, but that has been the case for
quite a while now.
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Steven Legge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 866
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 7:04am | IP Logged | 10
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One of my favorite comics ever. One and done. No Apocalypse required.
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Greg McPhee
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 August 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 5091
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 7:58am | IP Logged | 11
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I'd agree that Mark Waid's "Daredevil" has been one of the gems that Marvel has put out over the last few years. It is very low-key, and while it does have its darker moments, they don't become so heavy and depressing as to make you want to put the book down. It also has a sense of fun running through it. Something DD has lacked for years.
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Don Zomberg
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Joined: 23 November 2005
Posts: 2355
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| Posted: 17 January 2015 at 10:18am | IP Logged | 12
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low key
I posted a five star review of the Stern/Romita jr collection, MARK OF THE TARANTULA on Amazon a while back. Another customer came along and gave it two stars, to counter my "inaccurate" rating because he felt nothing special or interesting happens to Peter Parker in those issues.
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Topic Closed)
