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Didn't Invincible also pull the "well you were in space and not fulfilling my needs" thing with Amber to break her and Mark up?
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Feb 10, 2014 16:04
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What Raab did was turn Kyle Rayner into Hal Jordan, and in order to fix this, they brought back Hal Jordan. Just  on every level.
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Feb 10, 2014 21:04
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Onmi posted:Oh goodie so nobody has done Ben Raabs run on Green Lantern yet. Setting aside my problems with Marz in general, there's a lot stuff wrong in this paragraph. Green Lantern was nowhere near cancellation at the time. It wasn't a best seller, but it was doing solid middle range numbers (here's a hint that it wasn't a problem: you don't give a dying book three spin off series). Then editorial decided to 90's up the book and get in on some of that sweet Death of Superman/Knightfall sales (like pretty much every other DC book at the time). The writer at the time, Gerald Jones, didn't want to derail his plans so he was abruptly yanked off the book despite his next three issues, the climax of his five year story arc, were already written and solicited. Marz was then handed a set of pretty stupid lemons by editorial (Only one Green Lantern! Everyone must die! Hal is a bad guy now!) and decided to make lemonade.
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Feb 11, 2014 02:20
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Hal as a crazy badguy owned tho.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:05
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"Only One Green Lantern" worked really well for nearly a decade too, and Kyle was well in the process of bringing the Guardians and the Corps back. I mean yes it's a very brazen move but we all know of far worse editorial mandates.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:17
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I started looking up sales figures and was kind of shocked that even for a moment Marz/Kyle Green Lantern was DC's de facto #2 book. I just started looking at Februarys since it is February: FEBRUARY 1992 (Green Lantern #23: 56th overall) 1. Batman Gotham Knights 2. Justice League Spectacular 3. Legends of the Dark Knight 4. Armageddon: Inferno 5. Justice League of America 6. Detective Comics 7. Deathstroke the Terminator 8. Sandman 9. Green Lantern 10. Superman: Man of Steel Like RS said, not near cancellation, slotted pretty near the top of the non-JL/Batman ranking. FEBRUARY 1993 (Green Lantern 35 - Not in Top 100) 1. Hardware 2. Blood Syndicate 3. Legionnaires 4. Death: The High Cost of Living 5. Supergirl/Team Luthor Special 6. Sandman Mystery Theatre 7. Sandman 8. Legends of the Dark Knight 9. Superman Gallery 10. Batman "Dropping out of the Top 100" looks bad here, but this was the height of the speculation #1/gimmick cover/etc. boom. DC was a little late to the party, and their top two selling books (licensed polybagged Milestone #1s) only rated #24 and #25 overall. The only DC books in the top 50 were Legionnaires #1 and the sole Super* book solicited in the post-Doomsday hiatus. FEBRUARY 1994 (Green Lantern #51 - 1st full Kyle Rayner issue: 37th overall) 1. Superman 2. Adventures of Superman 3. Superman: Man of Steel 4. Action Comics 5. Batman 6. Detective Comics 7. Batman: Shadow of the Bat 8. Superboy 9. Supergirl 10. Legends of the Dark Knight 11. Steel 12. Green Lantern Green Lantern definitely got a Emerald Twilight/New Guy sales bump, but Batman and Superman were still riding high off of their own death/rebirth arcs, and were huge moneymakers for DC. FEBRUARY 1995 (Green Lantern #61 - 45th overall) 1. Batman 2. Superman 3. Adventures of Superman 4. Action Comics 5. Detective Comics 6. Azrael 7. Shadow of the Bat 8. Legends of the Dark Knight 9. Flash 10. Robin 11. Sandman 12. Catwoman 13. Green Lantern A year into Kyle, still a solid book but overshadowed by a plethora of Batman/Superman books. FEBRUARY 1996 (Green Lantern #73 30th overall (not including Marvel titles) 1. Death: The Time of Your Life 2. Batman 3. Superman 4. Detective Comics 5. Action Comics 6. Shadow of the Bat 7. Robin 8. Catwoman 9. Azrael 10. Batman Chronicles 11. Wonder Woman 12. Green Lantern Not a lot of change entering into year three of Marz/Kyle, though both of these lists made me realize just how widely accepted Sandman was in the direct market by the end of its run. FEBRUARY 1997 (Green Lantern #85: 50th overall) 1. JLA 2. Batman 3. Detective Comics 4. Superman 5. Supergirl 6. Action Comics 7. Adventures of Superman 8. Superman: Man of Steel 9. Batman: Long Halloween 10. Batman/Wildcat 11. Legends of the Dark Knight 12. Preacher 13. Unknown Soldier 14. Green Lantern This was the first of these lists that includes the revamped "Big Seven" JLA title. It's obviously the big book, but even so Green Lantern lags behind anything involving Batman, Superman, or Garth Ennis. FEBRUARY 1998 (Green Lantern #97: 45th overall) 1. JLA 2. JLA Year One 3. Superman 4. Batman 5. Superman: Man of Steel 6. Action Comics 7. Adventures of Superman 8. Detective Comics 9. Nightwing 10. Shadow of the Bat 11. Preacher 12. Catwoman 13. Green Lantern See 1997. FEBRUARY 1999 (Green Lantern #111: 30th overall) 1. Battle Chasers 2. Danger Girl 3. JLA 4. Crimson 5. Green Lantern 6. Titans 7. Batman 8. Detective Comics 9. Nightwing 10. Action Comics I'll be a monkey's uncle! Green Lantern was essentially DC's second-best selling title (exclusing mega-delayed creator owned Cliffhanger books they inherited from Wildstorm) in 1999. FEBRUARY 2000 (Green Lantern #123, Ron Marz's third to last issue: 36th overall 1. JLA 2. Batgirl 3. Batman: Dark Victory 4. Batman 5. Steampunk 6. Detective Comics 7. JSA 8. Batman Gotham Knights 9. Nightwing 10. Legends of the Dark Knight 11. Green Lantern By the end of Marz's run the Batbooks had overtaken again, but even in 2000 it was still a solid selling books. I wrongly assumed that the peak of the book's popularity would have been the first couple of years of novelty, or maybe a few years in when Final Night and all of the hoopla about Kyle being THE LAST SINGLE REAL GREEN LANTERN FOR REAL, but it turns out it really did end up winning the DC War of Attrition in the dying days of the 1990s, the only time in my literate life that I was paying less attention to DC Comics than now. I'm sorry I doubted you.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:46
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Edge & Christian posted:FEBRUARY 1993 (Green Lantern 35 - Not in Top 100) This would be just after they launched the Guy Gardner series, Green Lantern Quarterly was coming out, and Green Lantern Mosaic was being published (and bombing). Given that, I suspect that the reason it doesn't show up in the top 100 that month is that either it was delayed and slipped out of the month or was just overwhelmed by other superstar books. I think at that point anything in the top 250 was... well, not safe but a publisher could justify keeping it going. FWIW, though I don't like Marz's writing I wasn't one of those "Bring back Hal!" lunatics. I was annoyed at the editorial meddling with a book I had been enjoying and didn't blame Marz for that. All of the DC super hero books at the time took the exact same kind of swerve. It was like the New 52 twenty years early...
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Feb 11, 2014 05:40
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Yeah, I thought Marz writing was really boring and Kyle was an incredibly tedious character throughout the nineties. It wasn't really until the tail-end, when Morrison put in some work with him on JLA that I really got interested in him.
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Feb 11, 2014 06:43
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Dan Didio posted:Yeah, I thought Marz writing was really boring and Kyle was an incredibly tedious character throughout the nineties. It wasn't really until the tail-end, when Morrison put in some work with him on JLA that I really got interested in him. But that's wrong in two ways. The first being that Morrison didn't write Kyle at the tail-end of Kyle's run as GL (by that time Morrison was off JLA and Kyle had been replaced with John Stewert) and... Well I guess you're not technically wrong but I don't see how you can find him a tedious character I mean... he's literally the Spiderman/Batman Beyond for Green Lanterns character. He's thrown into the deep end almost immediatly and has to grow up, in his case through interacting with his various mentors (Batman, Alan Scott, John Stewart) and in one arc specifically goes out of his way to visit Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because he really wants to learn what it means to be a hero. I guess I just enjoy that stuff so much I don't see how someone can't. But hey, everyone has their personal opinion. I for one think that Geoff Johns entire run on pretty much everything since Flash and JSA deserves to be on here. Because he's a mass retconning schlock who only knows one madlibs story and just repeats it with the words changed. but I'm not going to do a write up on it because while I consider it to be one of the worst runs, sales and public opinion would not agree with me.
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Feb 11, 2014 09:18
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mind the walrus posted:Ahh. Makes sense. Still, what a poo poo line-up. I mean with Giant-Size X-Men you can immediately see conceptual winners in there like Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler as well as "I can see cool things being done with them" like Storm, Banshee, and Sunfire-- with the line-up in Eve of Destruction the best characters are Dazzler and Northstar, neither of whom sets the mind on fire with possibility and were known as permanent supporting characters for good reason.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:10
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What I will say about Kyle Rayner (and it also applies to Wally. Sort of to Connor Hawke and Cassandra Caine but probably not to the same extent.) Why they succeeded is they didn't just ape the Marvel way of doing things and throw everything else out. They took certain aspects of the Marvel way of doing things (the Spider-Man template) but put a DC twist on it, by making them the next step in a Legacy of characters. They were everymen (and women I guess) with their own problems, and one problem was being forever in the shadow of those who came before them, and building on that mythology. And I think it was that fusion of styles that made them distinct and made them work that seems to be missing now. It wasn't enough for Kyle to be Green Lantern. He was the green Lantern who had to learn about it on his own, while also being The Torchbearer. The shining light in a dark universe without a GL Corps, but one who kept the light alive.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:18
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The Question IRL posted:What I will say about Kyle Rayner (and it also applies to Wally. Sort of to Connor Hawke and Cassandra Caine but probably not to the same extent.)  Couldn't have said it better myself. Couple that with the excellent stuff going on with the Young Justice crop at that time and you can see why I--as a teenage kid--found what DC was doing immensely interesting in the late 90s and early 00s. Here was this company with this immense and fractured history that had this entirely new third generation, and they were standing tall on their own merits without disavowing their legacies for one second. Then about the time Geoff Johns got Teen Titans all that started to get thrown out the window and rolling back the clock became the order of the day. Oh well. Onmi posted:I guess I just enjoy that stuff so much I don't see how someone can't. But hey, everyone has their personal opinion. I for one think that Geoff Johns entire run on pretty much everything since Flash and JSA deserves to be on here. Because he's a mass retconning schlock who only knows one madlibs story and just repeats it with the words changed. but I'm not going to do a write up on it because while I consider it to be one of the worst runs, sales and public opinion would not agree with me. I won't go into it because like you've said sales and public opinions disagree, but just know you're not alone in this opinion.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:49
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The only time that Barry was ever interesting was in Return of Barry Allen.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:51
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bobkatt013 posted:The only time that Barry was ever interesting was in Return of Barry Allen. If you don't like crazy silver age goofiness where Flash was right behind Superman for insane awesomeness, then you are dead to me.
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Feb 11, 2014 23:01
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Random Stranger posted:If you don't like crazy silver age goofiness where Flash was right behind Superman for insane awesomeness, then you are dead to me. The silver age stories are amazing due to the sheer insanity, not the characters.
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Feb 11, 2014 23:03
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Yeah, the vast majority of personality and depth that Silver Age characters were mined from writers who grew up on those stories and got to explore their favorite characters as adults. During the Silver Age itself the characters were mostly just vessels for whatever insane poo poo the artist could draw that week, at least as far as DC seems concerned.
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Feb 11, 2014 23:09
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Thinking about it, the last hundred issues of the original Flash series were pretty bad but I think the only run ( ) that stands out for that is the last couple of years. Cary Bates wrote The Flash from about issue 210 to 350 with a handful of gaps and fill ins. In the late bronze age he tried to move The Flash to more of a Marvel style of writing and it collapsed painfully. But it's really exemplified by the final two years which were one long story.So, some set up. Around issue #275 Iris Allen, Barry's wife, is murdered out of the blue. This triggered a long, bad storyline where Barry investigates her death, goes through a bunch of his enemies who all could have done it, and then it turns out that she was killed by The Reverse-Flash decides he's going to kill Barry's fiance (a nearly complete non-character who gets yanked out of the story quickly) at the altar and they get into a big punch up. It ends with RF rushing into the wedding and Barry choking him out from behind. Doing this at .9c is apparently as bad for you as getting your ankle snagged by a webline after you fall off a bridge and everyone at the wedding is shocked to see the Flash suddenly appear standing over the Reverse-Flash dead from a broken neck. Now some of you may think, "Oh, this is the most cut and dry case of justified killing in history. The only complication is that the regular people at the wedding couldn't have witnessed the event, but the police and DA would have to be pretty stupid to not just take the Flash at his word considering his history of beating up villains and the villain's history of murdering women. And if they didn't, there were people there with senses fast enough to know exactly what happened. You might think that, but you'd be wrong. Thus begins two years of the stupidest legal farce ever presented in pop culture where the hoops that have to be jumped through are absurd. The Flash doesn't take his mask off as part of the proceedings until over a year into the story but he's received plastic surgery because his face was beaten into being unrecognizable so no one knows he's Barry Allen. His fiance is institutionalized and Barry aggravates her condition by showing up in her locked room to talk to her ("Barry Allen has been missing for weeks! She must be crazy!"), before just vanishing entirely from the story. The Flash has to save his own jury from a supervillain without letting them know he's saving them because for some reason he won't be satisfied with a mistrial (something that should have occurred a dozen times over in this thing). And finally he beats the rap through jury tampering by his dead, time traveling wife possessing the jury foreman.
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Feb 11, 2014 23:32
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Random Stranger posted:Thinking about it, the last hundred issues of the original Flash series were pretty bad but I think the only run ( You can get the whole stupid storyline here! http://www.amazon.com/Showcase-Presents-Trial-Cary-Bates/dp/1401231829/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1392158359&sr=8-5&keywords=showcase+flash
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Feb 11, 2014 23:39
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mind the walrus posted:Yeah, the vast majority of personality and depth that Silver Age characters were mined from writers who grew up on those stories and got to explore their favorite characters as adults. During the Silver Age itself the characters were mostly just vessels for whatever insane poo poo the artist could draw that week, at least as far as DC seems concerned. The story goes that the entire concept of the multiverse stems from Infantino thinking it would be really cool to draw a cover with both Flashes on it, then sent it off to Gardner Fox to see if he could come up with a story to explain why they were both there.
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Feb 11, 2014 23:41
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Random Stranger posted:Thinking about it, the last hundred issues of the original Flash series were pretty bad but I think the only run ( To be fair to the Trial of Barry Allen. (which it probably doesn't deserve but still....) the Prosecution in it did put forward one really good argument why the Flash was on trial, after it called Kid Flash to the stand. (Which by itself presents problems but still...) Prosecutor: Kid Flash, the Flash has taught you many ways of stopping super villains, hasn't he? Kid Flash: Oh yes, he was a great mentor. He taught me how to use my super speed to create whirldwinds or back drafts to stop objects, or to dig underneath them at super speed. Prosecutor: And he has demonstrated the abillity to think exceptionally fast and come up with complex plans in the blink of an eye. Kid Flash: Yeah that's how he comes up with those Flash Facts. Prosecutor: So is it not possible for the Flash to have devised a non-lethal way of stopping Professor Zoom as he had done in so many similar situations. Kid Flash: Well yeah. Rurhroh, I've just landed the Flash in some serious trouble. Basically the Flash was on trial over whether he chose to use Lethal Force to stop Zoom when he could have done so in a non-lethal manner. Now it's a problematic argument for superhumans but it at least made some sense. The story still had huge problems however.
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Feb 12, 2014 00:02
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Edge & Christian posted:FEBRUARY 1997 (Green Lantern #85: 50th overall) But what about a story involving Green Lantern, Garth Ennis, and behinds? 
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Feb 12, 2014 00:13
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Random Stranger posted:And finally he beats the rap through jury tampering by his dead, time traveling wife possessing the jury foreman. You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
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Feb 12, 2014 00:29
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TwoPair posted:You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention. His wife came from the future and before her neck was snapped she was brought back to the future.
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Feb 12, 2014 00:31
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The Question IRL posted:To be fair to the Trial of Barry Allen. (which it probably doesn't deserve but still....) the Prosecution in it did put forward one really good argument why the Flash was on trial, after it called Kid Flash to the stand. (Which by itself presents problems but still...) It's an interesting legal question along with the problem that the Flash could have done anything when it was impossible for normal people to witness it. But when you're dealing with questions of mental state you pretty much have to decide if you trust the guy. Considering Barry was so beloved that the city built a museum dedicated to him, I'm pretty sure that they would give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. Hell, Barry just has to say, "Whoops! I was trying to incapacitate him!" (which he probably was doing) and there's no crime there since Zoom was in the process of trying to kill someone. If the DA wanted to be a complete rear end in a top hat and was an idiot (which this story requires one way or the other), they haul Barry into court, he says this, the jury goes "Yeah, the dead guy did try to murder everyone in the city last year and the guy on trial has stopped him multiple times without a problem," and the thing wraps up quickly. But the DA should realize that there's no chance of conviction without jury tampering (which happens anyway before there's more jury tampering) and not waste the tax payer's money trying to prosecute him. And as a reminder: there was two years of this. Two. God. drat. Years. The OJ trial went faster and was more sane. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 12, 2014 |
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Feb 12, 2014 02:30
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The Question IRL posted:And I think it was that fusion of styles that made them distinct and made them work that seems to be missing now. It wasn't enough for Kyle to be Green Lantern. He was the green Lantern who had to learn about it on his own, while also being The Torchbearer. The shining light in a dark universe without a GL Corps, but one who kept the light alive. Too expand on this, one of the major facets of Kyle's character according to Marz was that he was the anonymous hero (which is hilarious because drat near everyone figures out it's Kyle under the mask) And that eventually no one would ever remember him for being Green Lantern. For all the good he would do he was never going to be praised or kept in some museum or record as the greatest lantern to ever live. and when Kyle learned that "Hey, the Legion of Superheroes don't even have a record of me doing anything, not even restoring the Green Lanterns" he decides that didn't mean that he shouldn't stop trying to do the right thing, because the kind of person Kyle was, was the guy who guy beaten up, had everything he loved torn from him, mocked, forgotten and had the world take a steaming poo poo all over him and then he picked himself right back up and goes "Okay, lets keep going" He wasn't the immortal badass or a stand in for Jesus, he was just a normal guy who was afraid, and got angry, and got sad and every time the world hit him he stood up and went "Lets keep going" Also, I'm going to be doing a writeup of Ken Penders on Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie) but it's a long one... a long, long, long thing to write. But it belongs here, along side the worst of the worst.
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Feb 12, 2014 07:06
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Onmi posted:Too expand on this, one of the major facets of Kyle's character according to Marz was that he was the anonymous hero (which is hilarious because drat near everyone figures out it's Kyle under the mask) And that eventually no one would ever remember him for being Green Lantern. For all the good he would do he was never going to be praised or kept in some museum or record as the greatest lantern to ever live. and when Kyle learned that "Hey, the Legion of Superheroes don't even have a record of me doing anything, not even restoring the Green Lanterns" he decides that didn't mean that he shouldn't stop trying to do the right thing, because the kind of person Kyle was, was the guy who guy beaten up, had everything he loved torn from him, mocked, forgotten and had the world take a steaming poo poo all over him and then he picked himself right back up and goes "Okay, lets keep going" Marz also gets put on the poo poo list for his run being the origin of the Women in Refrigerators meme. He invented Kyle girlfriend only to have her killed by a D-list villain half a year later and then proceeded to have her discovered in the most gruesome way possible. If for nothing else, that run deserves derision for that.
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Feb 13, 2014 12:28
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rkajdi posted:Marz also gets put on the poo poo list for his run being the origin of the Women in Refrigerators meme. He invented Kyle girlfriend only to have her killed by a D-list villain half a year later and then proceeded to have her discovered in the most gruesome way possible. If for nothing else, that run deserves derision for that. No he wasn't, no it doesn't. "Women in Refrigerators" is literally as old as storytelling itself, a close character to the protagonist dying in a horrible way to spur them on into whatever the hell the story is going to be about? Most likely at the fault of the protagonist due to inaction or sloth or some other minor thing? You think he invented that? you think that was special? you think she was found in "The most gruesome way possible"  ... Seriously? The history of comics all laid out before you, all the gore, blood, horrible ways people have died/have their corpses discovered, and that? That was "The most gruesome way possible"? If you honestly think that you have so little experience with comics and visual mediums in general that it's laughable. Gail Simone saw a target to stand on a soap box about and make an issue about, despite it being literally as old as storytelling, she did, and people took notice, and suddenly this was the most sexist thing in comics. What was it? it was a character dying so that the hero would get the big old "Great Power, Great Responsibility" message and learn to keep his identity anonymous so as to not hurt anyone he cared about. It was Uncle Ben, it was Papa McGuinesse, it was The Waynes, it was every god drat character that has ever been a motive for a superhero. The only reason this even registered as a blip for you is because she was a woman. Hell the only reason this registers as a blip for you is because other GL writers who don't know the first thing about the character will constantly bring it up. I really wish it actually was something major, like a huge horrific death scene and the fridge door was sprawled open to see her mangled corpse (She's just in there by the way, there's no dismemberment or lacerations or her body being snapped in half. That's the illusion of the CCA saying the fridge door can't be open and you only seeing feet) because then? I wouldn't have to do anything, and it might actually be "The most gruesome way possible" and that would be that. But it wasn't. It was tame, it was so tame the only way it could have been tamer would be having the first person view of Kyle opening the fridge and then the horrified look on his face. That's really the sad thing, this is nothing special, it's not particularly gruesome, it's not unique, it's just there. I mean... 2013 alone had more gruesome, brutal, senseless, violent, rage inducing deaths. How about this, lets make a deal you and I. You actually read the run, and then if you still think it deserves to be here on "The worst runs" then you can make it. And if you do, I'll gladly post my "Geoff Johns is the worst thing that happened to Green Lantern" one. And we can really compare who was the more vile and sexist and deserving to be up here. Personally though? My moneys on the one in the pink leotard with the violent dismembermants and brutal deaths. EDIT: For the record I'm not telling you that you're wrong for not liking it. I'm telling you you're wrong for the "Most gruesome way ever" and "Invented Women in Refridgerators" Because those aren't opinions. You're just flat out wrong factually. Onmi fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 12:57
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I don't know, man, you can argue that there are tons of more gruesome deaths out there, and you'd be right, but I definitely think that's a super gnarly way to kill someone, even if it isn't gory.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:12
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Hakkesshu posted:I don't know, man, you can argue that there are tons of more gruesome deaths out there, and you'd be right, but I definitely think that's a super gnarly way to kill someone, even if it isn't gory. Breaking someones neck (Well strangulation really) is super gnarly? I mean no death is "good" but it's a pretty common comic book death.  Again, I'm not saying you have to like it or it's good or anything like that. it's just so drat tame in fact if you were arguing that it's more horrifying in its tameness (as someone being strangled and unable to fight back is certainly not the most horrifying way to go out in fiction, but it's got a more stark realness than a giant alien vaporizing you and leaving your screaming skeleton) then I can see that. Onmi fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 13:14
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Onmi posted:Breaking someones neck is super gnarly? I mean no death is "good" but it's a pretty common comic book death. The method isn't the problem, stuffing a loved one's dead body in a fridge, leaving it for the person to find it is messed up, man. I wouldn't call that tame by any measure. Gwen Stacy dying from shock or whiplash or whatever is what I would qualify as a tame death, and even that had massive ramifications. Although, yes, I do think strangulation by hulking murderer is a pretty horrific way to go, precisely because it's not super comic bookey. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 13:17
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Hakkesshu posted:The method isn't the problem, stuffing a loved one's dead body in a fridge, leaving it for the person to find it is messed up, man. I wouldn't call that tame by any measure. Well of course it's messed up, but it's lost all impact these days. I mean disregard how DCs various writers have driven the fridge so far into the dirt that it's nothing more than a joke at this point, and of all the things to keep as a holdover into the Nu52? this was not the one that needed to be kept. I am not even claiming that this is required for his origin. It's just...  That's a horrifying and gory and gruesome death to me. That's hosed up. I mean Alex's death is yeah, horrifying in how just plain it is, you don't get this barrier of "goofy" that the typical comic book death entails, and in that way I can agree. But in a way I wish it was the most gruesome death in comics, you know why?    Because then poo poo like this wouldn't exist. And I think the world would be a better place for that.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:29
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The icepick one is straight up serial killer material, so yes, I will grant it that, but the others are just typical grimdark comic book poo poo - I don't find those to be particularly egregious, since they're clearly the result of an author thinking "let's do the most shocking thing I can imagine" and then doing it in a very over-the-top, cartoonish way. It's like comparing a typical zombie film to 127 Hours. I'm not a big comic book guy, I didn't learn about the fridging until maybe like 5 years ago. I'm a long time fan of Berserk, arguably the most violent comic ever made, and I only heard about the fridging and thought "drat, that's hosed up". I'd compare it to something like the end of Se7en. Now, yes, that one is worse because decapitation is involved, but in that one you don't even get a glance of the body - it's the implication that's horrific, the almost mundanity of the act. The same is true here, I think. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 13:40
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Hakkesshu posted:The icepick one is straight up serial killer material, so yes, I will grant it that, but the others are just typical grimdark comic book poo poo - I don't find those to be particularly egregious, since they're clearly a result of an author thinking "let's do the most shocking thing I can imagine" and then doing it in a very over-the-top, juvenile way. Actually... You know what, thinking about it I like the scene because of how realistically horrifying it is. Don't get me wrong, still utterly believe it shouldn't have been kept for the Nu52. But the thing that seperates Spider-Man losing Uncle Ben to Kyle losing Alex is that Kyle lost Alex and there was absolutely no warning. He got the ring, decided to do good things, and never even considered that a bad person who would find out who he was and who Alex was would come to hurt her to hurt him. He is so ridiculously innocent (especially in the 90's era of comic books) and could not possibly grasp that there was a downside to the ring and being a hero. And with Alex's death there's no warning for him... It's not like Spider-Man who if he stopped the mugger Ben would have lived, Kyle doesn't even have an action he can blame this on. He got the ring, became Green Lantern, decided to help people, and suffered for it. There was no mugger, there was nothing he did or didn't do that day that made Major Force decide "I'm going to kill his girlfriend on orders from the government so I can take his ring" And when he's out there, helping people with images of him being a hero, she's being murdered, in the most simple way possible. No cosmic blasts, no comic book beat down, He wraps his hands around her throat, and he kills her. And Kyle has no idea it's happening. He has no worries, his thought is just "Help people, done helping people? go home to see Alex" simplest thing in the world. There's no "There's something wrong" thought that some heroes get, or a gut feeling or anything that would make it dramatic. Again, I don't think it deserves to be in his origin still, it worked then because it wasn't funny. It wasn't a joke it was... I have a quote that I like- "In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.'" I think, that it was effectively portrayed in the book. I think I would be more be able to agree with people who hate it if it had been comedic, because it would be treating the death as a joke essentially, something to roll your eyes at, basically marginalizing the death. The way the death is though, is it isn't marginalized, or made a joke, it's taken very seriously and sobering, and I think it would have had less impact if you had just seen her in the fridge, because that would almost be comedic. And there's a difference between "I'm doing something for shock value" and "I'm treating this with respect" and I felt it was treated with the gravity it deserved. In short? it was well written. Horrifying? Yes. But horrifying doesn't mean poorly written. Now, almost every moment AFTER Marz that the fridge was brought up?  It's a god damned cartoon and joke. And there's no weight, no gravity, he's the "fridge" guy, his dead girlfriend parades around in a fridge, fridges scare him.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:59
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Black Lantern Fridge was easily the best part of Blackest Night. A well-deserved monument to hacky comics.
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Feb 13, 2014 14:49
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fatherboxx posted:Black Lantern Fridge was easily the best part of Blackest Night. If by that you mean Blackest Night was really hacky? then yes.
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Feb 13, 2014 14:53
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Onmi posted:But that's wrong in two ways. The first being that Morrison didn't write Kyle at the tail-end of Kyle's run as GL I said that Morrison wrote him at the tail-end of the nineties, not at the tail-end of Kyle's run as GL, read it again.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:19
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Dan Didio posted:I said that Morrison wrote him at the tail-end of the nineties, not at the tail-end of Kyle's run as GL, read it again. Uh... okay January 1997 so I guess that works out. Onmi fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 15:33
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Onmi posted:EDIT: For the record I'm not telling you that you're wrong for not liking it. I'm telling you you're wrong for the "Most gruesome way ever" and "Invented Women in Refridgerators" Because those aren't opinions. You're just flat out wrong factually. Dude, killing someone and mutilating the body is pretty drat gruesome. But yeah, considering what DC has come down to, I guess nobody hosed the corpse (hey, a Johns reference) so it could be so much worse. It certainly was gruesome for when it came out, but the bar has been lowered so badly in recent years that nothing old can really compete. I don't see how the latter can be debated. That is the incident that started Gail Simone on the meme, and what really got the ball rolling on it. And sorry, it is a poo poo sexist meme and Marz should be god damned ashamed of it. I'd be saying the same thing about Remender's recent fridge death (Scarlet Witch) if it wasn't blindingly obvious that there's a timeline reset in the next two issues or so. Read a bit of Marz's run back in the day when I was a kid, but it didn't stand out as good or really anything besides stock DC flailing at the time. Seriously, I can't think of a single DC universe book from that era (post-Bwahhaha League to Zero Hour) that was good, Hitman excluded of course. Johns' run is also not that great (he's turned into a charicature of himself, ala Byrne or Miller), so I'm not sure what the point is in saying Johns is doing the same poo poo things worse. Almost everyone here agrees DC is running the train off the tracks with its current lineup, so making an argument that Marz's stuff is better than that is damning it with faint praise. You're almost inspiring me to start doing worst runs for all the drek that DC crapped out in the early 90s. Problem is I sold my old DC stuff from that era and like hell am I going to pay to get it back. The early 90s were bad on Marvel but they were hell on DC.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:39
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Posters like Montezuma's Revenge: Defending the Fridge.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:40
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Rka, I'm posting my response in the GL thread, this is ridiculously off topic. If you would like to continue I'm happy to do it there.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:53
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