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Andrew W. Farago
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Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | 1
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Whether it has or not, he's hardly representative of what's currently popular in mainstream comics. People love to trot out Liefeld's name as if every book on the racks is drawn in his style, but that's a trend that started fizzling out 20 years ago. Reading tirades against the Image founders while ignoring the fact that their company started branching out into dozens of different directions more than 15 years ago makes me wonder if people are actually reading the contemporary comics they think they're complaining about.
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Steve De Young
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | 2
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started fizzling out 20 years ago
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When I finally gave up and bailed out of DC's Nu52 a couple years back, Rob Liefeld was doing three books for DC. Other than Geoff Johns and Scott Snyder, the vast majority of people working on the DC line at that time were the exact same people responsible for 90's Marvel, including guys like Bob Harras and Tom DeFalco in editorial.
I don't see how its dated to complain about the Marvel/Image style of the 90's when those exact same guys have now run DC into the ground in the last couple years.
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Andrew W. Farago
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Joined: 19 July 2005
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 3
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Liefeld worked on three much-maligned books that were canceled due to poor sales, and nothing that read much like an early-nineties Image comic lasted beyond the first year of the New 52, either. Nineties X-Men guys like Scott Lobdell didn't manage to find much of an audience there, either.
The number of artists who made a big name for themselves in the nineties who still have a huge impact on monthly books at the Big Two is pretty much limited to Jim Lee and Greg Capullo right now. Lee's influence is strong, due to dozens of imitators in the field right now, and Capullo was a talented artist 25 years ago who's gotten even better since then. I just don't see the Liefeld influence on Marvel and DC books right now, and feel that griping about him specifically is like complaining that Vanilla Ice has too much influence on modern hip hop.
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Jason Schulman
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | 4
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The fact that Bendis now writes differently than he did 15 years ago doesn't mean that his writing has improved. It's just crappy in a different way.
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Andrew W. Farago
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | 5
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Maybe...but the "writing for the trade" style of dragging out an issue's worth of story into six fell by the wayside years ago. Complaining about decompression now is like complaining that all John Byrne ever draws is modern retellings of Spider-Man's origin.
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Tim O Neill
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | 6
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The current editorial approach is worse than the past. The decompression has gotten longer, with story concepts hanging around much more than six issues. Writers are not just writing for the trade -- they are writing epic length continuous storylines in an effort to keep the small readership hooked for multiple issues well beyond a trade length book. Marvel's two most recognizable titles, AVENGERS and SPIDER-MAN, became so intolerable in the last few years that I was driven away from reading them for the first time in many years.
In SPIDER-MAN, the main character spent thirty issues absent from the book while Dr. Octopus paraded around in his body. This would have been a really strong one to three issue idea, but to sideline their most accessible and well-known character for that long is inexcusable. It's one concept that changes the character dramatically, and it happened at a time when young readers could have discovered some great "one-and-done" Peter Parker stories after thefirst Andrew Garfield movie was released.
Jonathan Hickman's AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS became dull, chatty, and endless with the "Infinity" storyline unfortunately living up to its name - it just never seemed to end. Even though the fate of the world was in the balance, there never seemed to be any stakes we could root for in this meandering mess. I am always suspect of ideas where the entire world is on the brink of destruction -- it's just too BIG a concept and does not work. It was like Hickman was trying to construct a puzzle that the experienced readers would not be able to guess the ending, and in doing so he made something that was too impenetrable and completely lacking in any sense of fun.
Both books doubled down on one idea that could have been done in fewer issues. These painfully long storylines seem fully aimed at middle aged men who have seen it all and need something "new" to keep them buying the books. And both books were considered successful. The editors know their readers and are catering to them. The measure of success is squarely set on mature readers.
These kinds of extended story elements rob the current comic books of the easy accessibility that an all ages book should be able to pull off. There is no room in all ages hero literature for the kind of lengthy storylines Marvel has given to what should be their most accessible characters.
The heartbreaking part is I have enjoyed the work of these writers in the past. Dan Slott has done magnificent work in the past, and Jonathan Hickman's independent work on MANHATTAN PROJECTS is amazing. I even liked his FANTASTIC FOUR a lot, even though he was just as guilty of dragging his story along -- his writing seemed to work for FF much better than Avengers.
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Jason Schulman
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | 7
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I think the only time that "Saving the Universe Every Month!" ever really worked was in Grant Morrison's JLA. And even there the storylines did NOT drag on and on and on.
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Stephen Churay
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| Posted: 20 January 2015 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | 8
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Anthony. I will admit that some of the references used here can be
dated.
Every now and then, I get suckered into trying the material again. So,
while maybe a year or two old, the initial Marvel NOW story lines were
built for trade. Captain America's first sorry went at least nine issues.
Iron Man's Secret Origin of Tony Stark went for a solid eight. SPIDER-
VERSE. BATMAN has been nothing but long stories. Snyder started
the title in Sept. Of 2011 and he's on his fourth storyline. BATMAN
ETERNAL is a weekly book that has been a year long story.
Superman's H'EL ON EARTH was a long form story. As is the current
story being done by Johns and John Jr. Then there are all the
"EVENTS" and there tie-ins.
It still happens pretty regularly. Maybe there are more examples of
shorter stories out there. Maybe the 12 issue story has been trimmed
to mostly six issue stories. But it's definitely not a thing of the past.
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Andrew W. Farago
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| Posted: 21 January 2015 at 1:13am | IP Logged | 9
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I'm not saying there aren't multi-issue storylines anymore, or six-issue story arcs (or more, like that recent Captain America in Dimension Z storyline). Maybe I've whittled down my reading list to books that give me a full story every issue, but it's been years since I've read something and really felt like I'd only gotten 20% of a story out of it.
Why is Superior Spider-Man an inherently bad comic because Dan Slott didn't make it a three-issue arc? The story he wanted to tell wouldn't have been the same if it hadn't been given some space. Take away the supporting cast that developed over the course of that series, the small plot elements that built into bigger ones over time, cut that stuff out and it's not the same story. Most of the criticisms people are leveling at books here just don't make any sense.
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James Woodcock
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Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: 21 January 2015 at 2:15am | IP Logged | 10
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For me the issue is how long do stories take the main character away from being the main character, or put them in events that remove them from easily penetrable stories.
Examples: The constant move from one event to another seriously stopped characters from being themselves - for years if not a decade. You can call it a slow build, and I'm all for slow builds, but please have normality within that slow build. We went a decade without Cap, Thor and Iron Man being in the Avengers. Iron Man became some fascist leader, we had a year where across the entire line, every comic was focused on Norman Osborn and aspects of him being in charge. Peter Parker was away an entire year. For an 8 year old that's an eighth of their life. For a 40 year old that's the equivalent of 5 years. Think how long that feels. A kid that sees the films would go to a comic and not see Peter Parker. Nor would they the next issue. Nor the issue after. That's it. They're done. Clearly, Peter Parker is not Spider-Man anymore and he's become Doc Ock and will be forever. They won't be coming back. Ever.
Since Age of Ultron there has been a year long build to problems with time. It looks like this will culminate in a reboot of the marvel universe.
How is an 8 year old supposed to enter in to all this. Where is Spider-man fighting and worrying? The grandeur of super-hero comics is that the heroes are super. They can fly, they are really strong, they are really fast etc.
The grandeur is not and should not be that every day they save the world/universe from destruction. That should come occasionally.And they are heroes. I gave up when Original Sin was announced as every hero having an original sin. When Tony Stark was announced as being adopted, because we had to include an imaginary tale of Iron Man 2020 in to continuity. The method of storytelling is bad. The stories within that method are destroying everything that was good.
It needs a reboot but I fear that crap like Tony Stark being adopted will survive while Spider-man being at school will remain in the parking lot, rejected and alone.
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Carmen Bernardo
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| Posted: 21 January 2015 at 5:43am | IP Logged | 11
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I do think that a lot of the criticism is valid. The big issue here is accessibility. When I was an 8-year old kid, the comics were easy to read and quite entertaining. It was when I started to develop the adult brain that questioned why the stories kept repeating that I should've dropped out of the comics, as JB has said here often. The trouble is that not many of us really dropped out, and those who entered into the industry started playing with the books like it was their own pet project. The core audience (pre-adolescent boys and girls) was forgotten.
I look at the coming "end" of the Marvel universe being announced and am really not caring much because it'll be basically the same group running the show, with no real desire to bring back the basics. Just another Big Event to clutter up the proverbial cabinet.
There was a time when I thought that Marvel and DC would do something good by adopting some of the storytelling and stylistic elements of Japanese comics. Now that they've done some of that, I can see the point to the proverb "Be careful of what you wish for..."
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Stephen Churay
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| Posted: 21 January 2015 at 7:40am | IP Logged | 12
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Why is Superior Spider-Man an inherently bad comic because Dan
Slott didn't make it a three-issue arc? The story he wanted to tell
wouldn't have been the same if it hadn't been given some space.
Take away the supporting cast that developed over the course of that
series, the small plot elements that built into bigger ones over time, cut
that stuff out and it's not the same story. Most of the criticisms people
are leveling at books here just don't make any sense.
=======
Most of the grumbling dealing with with decompression have to do
value. When the price of an issue is $2.99-$4.99, getting so little of a
story is a BAD value.
How much of the supporting character development, were this a
movie, be edited out because they didn't serve the story? Now, there
are definitely stories that need more than three issues. If a story really
needs six issues, then fine, take six. But more times than not, writers
are carrying a story out longer than needed.
As of now, ever single story is collected in trade. You can't tell me that
there not thinking or told to carry a story for a certain length. This
makes the trade a certain size that gives the publisher the price point
there looking for.
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Topic Closed)
