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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7787
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 2:14am | IP Logged | 1
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One of the first issues of Amazing Spider-Man I read was #293, which had Spider-Man dead and buried with Kraven the Hunter running around impersonating him. That got me hooked and I could barely wait for each next installment to hit my local newsstand that summer. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------- That was a six issue story.
Six issues that ran over two months. And Spider-man came back within those six issues. To compare that to Superior Spider-Man tells me you may have forgotten how long time felt as a kid.
For me, now, the time between bonfire night (5th November) and Christmas is pretty short. As a kid it was an eternity.
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4184
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 6:45am | IP Logged | 2
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JB wrote:
| Be honest with yourself for a moment. Dig down deep and find the kid -- presumably -- who first started reading comics. |
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Yeah, I was about 8-9.
QUOTE:
| Now, imagine you'd started reading four or five issues into a thirty issue "epic" in which the main character doesn't even appear! Would having that explained to you every issue REALLY have made you come back for more? |
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Well, my first issue of IRON MAN (#171) had James Rhodes as the title character... (Which took me a second to understand since the AVENGERS issues I'd seen with Iron Man had a white guy in the suit, but I figured it out a few pages in.) For that matter, the second Hulk I got (#283) had him with Bruce Banner's personality in charge. (The first (Annual #10) technically had the proper Hulk, but Bruce and the Hulk spent almost the entire story split apart.) At that age, I didn't really put any thought into what "the proper status quo" was. If I liked what I read, I got more. (As funding allowed, anyway.) If I didn't, I didn't.
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Stephen Churay
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 7:18am | IP Logged | 3
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Be honest with yourself for a moment. Dig down deep and find the kid
-- presumably -- who first started reading comics. Find his emotions,
his expectations, his excitement for the new issues. Think about your
favorite characters and titles.
Now, imagine you'd started reading four or five issues into a thirty
issue "epic" in which the main character doesn't even appear! Would
having that explained to you every issue REALLY have made you
come back for more?
Think really hard about this, now. And don't fall into the trap of thinking
"Well, I've seen all this before, and I know it ways gets back to
normal." Try to remember a time when you didn't know what "normal"
was!
==========
It's even worse than that. At the time, if you hit Iron Man in that run,
you had an expectation of seeing a man in the red and gold suit. That
was it. If Rhodey is in that suit, the expectation was met. Iron Man is
fully covered, so it sort of works. But that isn't true of every character.
Also, thanks to the films, the expectation has changed. An 8-12 year
old not only knows who Iron Man is, he knows who Tony Stark is as
well. To meet the new readers expectation, Tony needs to be in the
suit.
When I first started reading, I got a Superman comic. My new reader
expectation was:
Clark Kent is a reporter for the Daily Planet and Superman.
Lois Lane is a reporter for the Daily Planet and Loves Superman.
Jimmy Olson is a young photographer for the Daily Planet and
Superman's Pal.
Perry White was there boss at the Daily Planet
Lex Luthor was the bad guy and bald.
Superman could fly, see through things, super strong, had heat vision,
super cold breath, telescopic vision, and super hearing.
Now imagine an 5 year old boy picking up a Superman comic in '78.
The Daily Planet, which is such a thread through everything I know,
barely existed. Lois and Clark worked in television. That alone blew
the dynamic for me. I didn't read another Superman book for eight
years. For what I knew, JB actually righted the ship for me.
Now, look at today's Superman.
The Costume is different.
Clark is a blogger and doesn't work for the Daily Planet
Lex Luthor is a member of the Justice League.
At what point does a new reader pick up an issue and then put it
down never to pick it up again?
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7526
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 9:47am | IP Logged | 4
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One thing I think SECRET WARS will do is align the Marvel Universe with the movies very closely. We'll probably see Inhumans elevated and X-Men lose some ongoing titles, plus upcoming ongoings for Black Panther and others who have movies in the works from Marvel. I don't know if we'll see FANTASTIC FOUR revived any time soon, but if the movie does well... I don't know what we do to attract new readers at this point. As noted, "normal" very much depends on when you start reading and what you've seen besides comic books--TV, movies, etc. We can't afford to write off a generation, but efforts to engage young readers seem to falter and are dropped when they're unprofitable (which makes sense, the publishers need to make money). So here's where it is for me: 1. I'd like to see some of the heroes take a break from fighting each other. They seem to be spending more time fighting each other than fighting villains.
2. I'd like to see more stories that are not "the fate of the nation/world/universe" -- more variety in the stakes, and some of them must be personal, would be welcome.
3. I'd like to see fewer heroes with feet of clay. To me, "hero" denotes someone who is just plain better than I am--not because of their powers but because of their dedication and determination to use them to make the world a better and safer place. Please... enough with Cyclops, the Illuminati, et al being bastards and borderline villains.
Edited by Andrew Bitner on 22 January 2015 at 9:50am
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15953
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 10:13am | IP Logged | 5
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There's a difference between feet of clay and being bastards/borderline villains. The original differentiator between Marvel and DC was that Marvel's heroes all had flaws that ordinary folk could relate to compared to DC's perfect guys and gals who were born ready for the job.
Marvel's lot should be heroes, and there should no doubt about that for the reader -- but maybe a bit more doubt in the mind of the heroes themselves -- though they should keep the feet of clay.
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7526
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 11:35am | IP Logged | 6
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It's gotten way beyond "feet of clay," though, Peter. I agree, Marvel's heroes were always grounded in having personal problems, issues and struggles that emphasized the HUMAN part of superhuman...but the heroes of today go way past that. And some of them--not just "Superior" Iron Man-- are borderline villains. C'mon. Do we really need to turn heroic figures into self-justifying monsters? Maybe I should edit out "feet of clay" from #3 above. It doesn't go as far in describing the problem, as I see it, as it should.
Edited by Andrew Bitner on 22 January 2015 at 11:35am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | 7
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And some of them--not just "Superior" Iron Man-- are borderline villains. C'mon. Do we really need to turn heroic figures into self-justifying monsters? ••• Roger Stern used to say of one particular writer that he could not do superheroes because he did not believe anybody could be more noble than he was -- which was not very. That guy used to be the exception.
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | 8
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Marvel's heroes were always grounded in having personal problems, issues and struggles that emphasized the HUMAN part of superhuman...but the heroes of today go way past that.
---
Yep.
The main reason I preferred the Marvel heroes as a kid -- or at least particular ones -- over DC's had nothing to do with "feet of clay" but with the fact that despite having extraordinary powers, very few of these people led happy lives.
Peter Parker. Bruce Banner. Ben Grimm. Matt Murdock (after Frank Miller got ahold of him). Most of the X-Men (Scott Summers in particular). Et al.
Not happy people. Spider-Man may crack wise all the time while the mask is on, but once it's off he's back to being Peter Parker and his life is still mostly crap.
Even Steve Rogers has to live without Bucky (or Sharon Carter) coming back and Namor is always angry and Howard the Duck is Trapped In A World He Never Made and so on.
DC heroes, by contrast, generally seemed to be content with their lot in in life. (This was before writers decided that Dark Knight provided the way that Batman should always be written.) Only obscurities like Deadman and Swamp Thing and the Doom Patrol seemed miserable enough to be Marvel-ish, and I didn't discover them until after CRISIS had started.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133325
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | 9
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When I fully discovered Marvel Comics, at the ripe old age of 11, it was something of an epiphany. These were REAL PEOPLE, or at least as close to such as my limited experience could interpret. Suddenly, instantly, my beloved DC characters became cardboard cutouts. This was because Stan, Jack, Steve and the rest did not forget the man inside the superman, something DC had forgotten decades before.
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Carmen Bernardo
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 3666
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | 10
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The human factor with Batman was that his parents had been murdered right before his eyes for a piece of jewelry that his mother wore that night. Through it, he found his motivation to fight crime, and felt strongly enough about it to be a terrorist towards the criminal element that he hunted so ruthlessly. In reading those early Batman stories, you also saw how Bruce Wayne had to be careful about his secret identity, something that Peter Parker had more to worry about as Spider-Man years later.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10937
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | 11
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JB: "Roger Stern used to say of one particular writer that he could not do superheroes because he did not believe anybody could be more noble than he was -- which was not very.
That guy used to be the exception."
****
It's so sad that we have gotten to this point. When I was a kid, reading superhero literature helped shape my ethics. And because the heroism was wrapped up in adventure with "feet of clay" Marvel heroes, I didn't even realize I was developing an ethical foundation.
This is my major beef with "Superior Spider-Man" - we are reading thirty issues through the perspective of a villain. I can see why this appeals to an adult readership because as we grow older, we see the complexities of life and maybe even see the darker sides of our own nature. At its best, "Superior Spider-Man" showed a Dr Octopus who saw life through Peter's eyes and questioned his own villainy. And I did get enough of a chance to see glimpses of this. But even at its best, he is still a villain, and this ceases to be an all ages book. It's not like someone else being Captain America - it's teh bad guy taking over.
I think JB statement above (paraphrasing Roger Stern) is all too true. But how does someone like Dan Slott fall down this hole? He is more than capable of nuanced heroic literature - more so than a lot of his peers
Could "Superior Spider-Man" be Dan Slott's midlife crisis book? A story that possibly reveals his own struggles with the notion and relevancy of heroism?
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 22 January 2015 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | 12
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Or maybe Dan just ran out of other ideas.
I enjoyed his earlier Marvel work -- The Thing, She-Hulk -- and I thought he was a good choice to revitalize Spider-Man.
But even his best Marvel stories are taking place in a version of the Marvel Universe that I barely recognize and really, really dislike. Worse, his more recent Spider-Man stories have drawn from earlier stories that should've been pushed down the memory hole -- the Clone Saga and parts of the J. Michael Straczynski years.
And the plot of "Spider-Island" was too much like a Silver Age Superman story. (Everybody on Manhattan starts turning into spiders? Very gimmicky. Very "red kryptonite.")
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Topic Closed)
