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Two Tone Shoes posted:Could you crawl out of your own rear end for half a second? Good lord. The 2009 remark was merely a jab at your "just wait" comment. I'm not paying DC any money save a couple of the Sandman books (edit: I forgot I'm buying Young Justice, because I...like those characters) but I'll stop talking about Wally West I guess, lest my spiraling, terrible life impact your comics forum reading experiences anymore. The main thing I do is follow solicits and see what's up with things I have interest in (note, most of my comments in these threads are about solicits or, I dunno, Abnett's Aquaman for awhile which I liked). Oh that makes things much clearer, you're not spending money on DC comics but you feel the need to complain about them regardless because... I don't know why, really, I guess there must be a reason beyond "people should know what I think about the books I'm not buying" but I just don't see it, myself. It's kinda like how I enjoy baseball but don't feel the need to listen to people who haven't watched the sport since the designated hitter became a thing when they try telling me "baseball sucks now." Dude, if you're constructing an identity around being a fan of a character - and I know this is what you're doing because you said so ("My schtick is being the one Wally West person on this forum") - that's a really dumb thing to construct an identity around. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that. I like a bunch of characters, personally - but I've rarely felt the need to say "I'm a Tony Stark guy, let me tell you about all the way Marvel is loving up this character." But hey, you keep on doing you, I guess. Again. And continually.
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Jan 22, 2019 09:52
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Roth posted:Maybe people don't want to have a discussion with people that think "I don't get where the hate for Tom King comes from, and I don't think this bad one invalidates the comics from him I thought were good" equates out to people defending Lois Lane getting murdered for 12 pages. I just don't know what it is with this specific thread that you people get the over-inflated need to shut all criticism towards anything as if being ticked at comics is this bizarre intrusive concept that threatens your pristine forums utopia. Okay, so no writing is ever bad, nothing is ever inappropriate, everything in DC Comics is just fine and great and perfect from now until forever! Now how about that latest issue of Doomsday Clock, eh?? Newsflashfact: you're not a cooler comic book reader just because you're not as attached to this universe enough to complain about bad writing. No one is handing out gold stars here on these dead gay forums for being the exact rightest best kind of nerd. And...just to recap, my one and original complaint about the Wal-Mart special that I made last night was, roughly, "King still only has one tired shtick, and comic books really aren't the best place for him to work through those issues." That's it. That's...that was it. And apparently even that tiny little bit of a takedown was just way too scathing towards the poor little defenseless snuff comic for everyone to take.
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Jan 22, 2019 10:16
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BrianWilly posted:I've been complaining about King since the very first book I've read from him so y'all can continue to sit right down with this whole ooh it's the new hip trendy thing to hate on King! distraction tactic that keeps popping up. The only difference between now and 2016 is that the more he writes, the more evident his problems become, the more people are reading these problems that weren't super glaring when he was simply writing niche titles about niche things. If someone is writing the most hyped event comic right now and and it loving sucks rear end, that person is going to get more negative press for some reason, how very strange. I can't defend a book I haven't read, but I feel like I can at least debate you on your premises, most specifically this one: what's wrong with having violence and misery in comic books, especially when said violence and misery is here as an obstacle for heroic characters to rise above? The imagery itself, tame as it is when compared to some of the stuff DC has published in the past, might not be appropriate for the context of a Wal-Mart exclusive comic, but the impression I get from your post is one of raw anger at the idea of bad things happening to Lois Lane, even when that's just an illustration of Superman's fears. There's obviously a historical context of hosed up things being done to women for the sake of fiction to consider, but I feel like your problem is with having violence and misery in the first place, as if any comic with those was just snuff porn with pretentions of profundity, to paraphrase you. I think superhero stories, as vehicles for sorta-aspirational escapism, can, and to some extent should, be able to deal with violence and misery. I think there's room out there for stories showing that Superman is just as hosed up and afraid as the rest of us, and that there can be something heroic in dealing with those feelings in order to do good in the world. If I'm in the mood for stories where he rescues a kitten from a tree and nothing else happens, I'm pretty sure those stories are already out there.
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Jan 22, 2019 10:32
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BrianWilly posted:Now how about that latest issue of Doomsday Clock, eh?? It was so good! --- I hope Niomi's good tomorrow. I doubt she'll catch on like Miles or even Riri, but I've liked Bendis' teen OCs so far, and David Walker getting a shot on something other than Cyborg comics is nice. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 10:33
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BrianWilly posted:Great, so everyone actually agrees with me that it's a poo poo book, then? Superb. See how easy life becomes when you do that? I was originally going to make a snarky post about how much everybody supports DT and won't hear anybody say a single bad thing about Scott Lobdell, but I'll be genuine. I think you do make generally decent posts, and I don't think you make criticisms without having some kind of a basis for what you say. However, you also frequently get kind of weird with how you present your opinions in a really angry way that I find just plain unpleasant and offputting. Like, I legitimately don't get the appeal of why you hate read James Robinson's Wonder Woman, even if I don't think you were really wrong with anything you said. Just personally, I was legitimately really excited for Percy's Teen Titans and ended up pretty bummed when I hated it. So, I dropped it, said my piece on why I didn't like it, and that was that. I'm not saying that to be some kind of detached cool guy, like, "Whatever, I like the Teen Titans, but who cares that they've been bad in basically everything but a mid-00s cartoon series" but because I just don't want to feel more upset about a thing I like being bad. I guess most of it is that I just don't see the appeal in knowingly reading things you know you'll hate. I don't know your situation, what your pull list is like, or if you even buy the comics you read at all. I was buying a lot of comics on pretty limited money, and a lot of those were mediocre comics that I immediately forgot. I found myself enjoying comics in general a lot more when I cut back and only kept up with the ones I was really enjoying. Also, just speaking personally, but I've increasingly found the declarations of "X writer is poo poo because this comic is bad, and they never wrote a single thing good" that people in this section in general love to make kind of just dumb? I don't think it's really constructive criticism, and kind of ignores how writers practice their craft across many different works, not all of which is going to be either good or bad. Not that that means you should forgive bad comics or something, but I find personally insulting artists/writers for the quality of their work to be kind of weird (that is not to say that you can't insult Scott Lobdell for being a creep or Chuck Dixon for being an alt-righter). I apologize if this is really rambly. I'm finding it a bit difficult to fully express what I mean in a way that makes sense, and doesn't come across as unintentionally mean.
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Jan 22, 2019 11:36
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ElNarez posted:I can't defend a book I haven't read, but I feel like I can at least debate you on your premises, most specifically this one: what's wrong with having violence and misery in comic books, especially when said violence and misery is here as an obstacle for heroic characters to rise above? The imagery itself, tame as it is when compared to some of the stuff DC has published in the past, might not be appropriate for the context of a Wal-Mart exclusive comic, but the impression I get from your post is one of raw anger at the idea of bad things happening to Lois Lane, even when that's just an illustration of Superman's fears. There's obviously a historical context of hosed up things being done to women for the sake of fiction to consider, but I feel like your problem is with having violence and misery in the first place, as if any comic with those was just snuff porn with pretentions of profundity, to paraphrase you. I think superhero stories, as vehicles for sorta-aspirational escapism, can, and to some extent should, be able to deal with violence and misery. I think there's room out there for stories showing that Superman is just as hosed up and afraid as the rest of us, and that there can be something heroic in dealing with those feelings in order to do good in the world. If I'm in the mood for stories where he rescues a kitten from a tree and nothing else happens, I'm pretty sure those stories are already out there. And so, the question we're forced to ask ourselves becomes "does the depiction of violence and misery, in and of themselves and for the sole sake of depicting violence and misery, make a story good?" And the answer I've consistently arrived at through the years is "no." No, your story is not good just because it is dark. No, the fact that your story is dark does not inherently make it more mature, more intelligent, or more valuable. All it is is dark. Of course, there are good stories that are also dark, but their value does not derive from their darkness. If the only thing that your story has to say is that things are dark and sad and then life is over and there's no escape from that, it's really not that much more interesting or valuable than a story where only positive happy things ever happen. (As an addendum to the above note about King's characters not actually rising above the darkness and just pretty much succumbing to it all the time: one thing that sticks out about his modus operandi is that he'll frequently depower or just flat-out change a character in order so that they will end up defeated or otherwise unable to deal with the problems they encounter. In King's universe, heroes do lose, but they seem to lose because King himself is bending power levels and characterization to whatever degree, sometimes past the breaking point, so that they will lose. This was really apparent to me in his depiction of Kyle Rayner in Omega Men and continues to be apparent in his depiction of Booster Gold in HiC. Again: if you have to intentionally lessen these superheroes in order to tell the "valuable" story of them losing and being sad about it, you're not actually telling me anything valuable about these characters...instead, all I've learned is that you'll write them out of character in order to serve your tragic tale. What little value we might have had with a story examining the question of "What if this character had to deal with this serious issue?" is tossed straight down the chute because you're not actually writing the character.) (It's a problem I'm having with Doomsday Clock as well...though we digress) Now...all of that may not pertain 100% to Superman Giant #7. The only notion we have so far of that story is some second-hand accounts and selected imagery...which include repeated and graphic depictions of a popular female character's victimization-slash-murder -- over and over and over again, literally filling up page after page of the book -- in order to make a male character feel bad. That's its own bag of shite and I think we're all fairly cognizant of why that alone, in and of itself, is just really tasteless and inappropriate even without me having to go into the whole thing. But in regards to your specific question of "Why shouldn't a comic book be able to deal with violence and misery?"...sure, they're totally allowed to do that. And they can still suck even if they do. I'm not opposed to violence or misery or graphic content in comic books, but I believe we can all agree that those things alone aren't gonna make your bad ideas good, your tasteless ideas tasteful, and your out-of-character scenes suddenly in-character again. And if violence and misery are the only things you are able or willing to write in this great big fictive universe with its limitless breadths of genres and concepts and relationships and history, then I think it'd be really easy to make the argument that you're a pretty narrow writer and probably unqualified to be taking the lead on so many of these characters.
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Jan 22, 2019 13:02
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Endless Mike posted:I say this so often that I'm convinced everyone here just reads comics for the sole purpose of complaining about them. We were the misery porn all along.
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Jan 22, 2019 13:34
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Oh that makes things much clearer, you're not spending money on DC comics but you feel the need to complain about them regardless because... I don't know why, really, I guess there must be a reason beyond "people should know what I think about the books I'm not buying" but I just don't see it, myself. It's kinda like how I enjoy baseball but don't feel the need to listen to people who haven't watched the sport since the designated hitter became a thing when they try telling me "baseball sucks now." I'm not constructing my goddamn identity. This is only relevant to this particular forum. It's like being a Saints fan in the NFL forum. But I guess my request for you to crawl out of your own rear end has failed. You literally can't stop yourself from armchair psychologist bullshit for a single post.
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Jan 22, 2019 16:57
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Closed till new comics are out. Please read and discuss them instead of arguing with each other. edit: Okay, if I can't force y'all to cool off, I'll just beg. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 17:04
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If you don't like the current state of discussion you can just not read it. Don't close the thread and therefore stop people from talking unless there's an issue with someone breaking rules. Everyone just be sure to keep your cool and keep it on topic to DC Comics. Don't bring any personal stuff into it. X-O fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 17:38
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E: Didn't see X-O's edit. E2: I will say that the recommendation to read Martian Manhunter in the midst of a discussion about how misery porn comics are bad seems weird to me. That is BLATANTLY setting us up for some extreme misery. It's not being *quite* as openly depressive as Vision or Mister Miracle were, but there's no happy ending coming in that book. Endless Mike fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 18:06
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I agree that King has some tendencies that go too far in some cases. I agree that he works a lot better with b-list characters as it allows him a bit more freedom. I don't think he is terrible writer all the time (if you want a "fun" comic look at his Batman/Elmer Fudd comic, or his Superman/Lois Lane and Batman/Catwoman date night two-parter). Does he go to certain wells too often? Yes. I'm not reading HiC because for me the story line sounds quite stupid, and I already hate Identity Crisis and I am getting major Identity Crisis vibes from it. I don't mind writers using heroes to tackle serious issues, and the whole Superhero genre (for better or worse) is built around conflict and misery. If superhero comics were being honest than they would be allowed to have a happy life and still be a hero (I guess Superman mostly fills this) but for a lot of heroes and a lot of books, misery and antagonism is what drives the story line. Not just King's books, look at the history of characters like X-Men, Spiderman, Batman etc. Unfortunately most creators see the idea of happiness as an end point for characters and because these characters are part of a long going story they can never be happy. It's tiresome and can be annoying at times ( like the reason why Selina decides not to marry Bruce) but sadly that is the way the industry is run. BrianWilly posted:
Also I generally like your posts. I like the effort you put into your posts, and your earnest passion for all stuff Wonder Woman, but when you post a sentence like this you come across angry and looking for a fight.
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Jan 22, 2019 18:09
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King talking about the Wallmart Superman comic with all the Lois deaths. https://www.cbr.com/superman-controversy-lois-lane-murder/ quote:"Because it isn't widely available, I'm not sure people know the story (which is beautifully told by Andy, Sandra, and Brad). So here it is: On a mission far from home, Superman tries calling home. Lois doesn't answer. As people do when they can't get in touch with their loved ones, he starts imagining worst case scenarios. Why won't she answer? Images of her demise crowd his thoughts, driving him crazy. In the end, the line connects and Superman and Lois discuss how worried they are about each other."
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Jan 22, 2019 18:29
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To jump on old bait, Electric Warriors has been neat. I like the one Dominator as an avenue of exploring how one of that race drifts from the characteristics we've come to expect. I'm staying away from Naomi for now because I don't feel like diving into another NEW CHARACTER GETS TO LEARN THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF EVER! but if folks here respond well I'll go back for it. My defective brain loves BIG SECRETS but I can't bite every time.
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Jan 22, 2019 18:32
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With regards to that King response, does anyone else think it's weird that Superman would imagine highly visceral and detailed death of his wife? Like I get being worried about her, I don't get imagining a bullet going through her head and all the other stuff. I'm a pretty pessimistic person and I don't go that far. And I'm no Superman. I think it's really easy to point out how this pertains to King's past and maybe that's where it's coming from but that doesn't really make it any better.
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Jan 22, 2019 18:33
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I hate Batman #50, but for me it doesn't erase the rest of the issues that made me invested in that storyline, and it definitely doesn't erase Batman Annual #2. That was written by the same guy, and even if he writes other things I don't like, I'm not going to forget how great that was. Obviously if he stops writing good stuff down the road I might decide I don't like him anymore, but as of early 2019 I think his highs are still as high as anyone in the business.Two Tone Shoes posted:Does anyone else think it's weird that Superman would imagine highly visceral and detailed death of his wife? Like I get being worried about her, I don't get imagining a bullet going through her head and all the other stuff. I know married people who obsess about all kinds of awful things happening to their spouses or kids, and Superman's seen more awful poo poo happen than most, and knows his wife's in more danger than most. I don't think it's weird at all, whether it should have been portrayed or not. I don't visualize things as much, but if I have a hard time reaching a family member for a while my brain can get pretty dark pretty fast too, even if I know the scenarios I'm coming up with are unlikely. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 18:33
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Sinteres posted:I hate Batman #50, but for me it doesn't erase the rest of the issues that made me invested in that storyline, and it definitely doesn't erase Batman Annual #2. That was written by the same guy, and even if he writes other things I don't like, I'm not going to forget how great that was. Obviously if he stops writing good stuff down the road I might decide I don't like him anymore, but as of early 2019 I think his highs are still as high as anyone in the business. See I get vaguely imagining really bad things. It's the difference between thinking, "What if she gets shot during her job?" and "What if Lex Luthor puts a bullet through her brain and there's a nasty blood splatter and you can see right through her head and poo poo." etc. It's the overindulgence in hyper violence, not the theme of worried, separated spouses itself.
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Jan 22, 2019 18:40
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Two Tone Shoes posted:See I get vaguely imagining really bad things. It's the difference between thinking, "What if she gets shot during her job?" and "What if Lex Luthor puts a bullet through her brain and there's a nasty blood splatter and you can see right through her head and poo poo." etc. It's the overindulgence in hyper violence, not the theme of worried, separated spouses itself. My personal feeling is that it went too far for those particular characters, I'm just saying I see what he was going for and how he got there. It makes sense to me that Superman might have those kinds of thoughts, but especially since comics are such a visual medium, maybe that's not a story that needed to be told.
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Jan 22, 2019 18:50
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I don't think you can hide behind comics being visual. You can show the exact same scenes that Superman thought of with a lot more subtlety.
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Jan 22, 2019 19:19
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Generally when I worry about people I don't graphically think of them getting their brains blown out or decapitated by a laser or burned at the stake.
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Jan 22, 2019 19:27
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Who's hiding? Everyone involved knew what medium they were working with. I do think graphic images obviously leap off the page in a way that written violence doesn't, but if the creators didn't take that into account, the failure's still theirs.Codependent Poster posted:Generally when I worry about people I don't graphically think of them getting their brains blown out or decapitated by a laser or burned at the stake. You don't see the poo poo Superman sees all the time. Tom King's 'superheroes have trauma too' stuff seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way, and I agree that it seems out of place with Superman, but it's not a completely idiotic premise. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 19:28
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Superman is the last hero that I would have imagining multiple death scenarios in graphic detail.
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Jan 22, 2019 19:35
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Codependent Poster posted:Superman is the last hero that I would have imagining multiple death scenarios in graphic detail. This. Superman is the type of character who acknowledges the worst, but still hopes for the best. He'd imagine Lois with a gun pointed at her or shot at, but not shot through. He'd imagine her in a death trap, but not dead. That's the type of character I see Superman as. Now Batman, he'd definitely assume the worst if he was truly worried. But in either case, you could depict the situation the same way for each of them, but contextualize it differently in dialogue rather than going to the gory extreme in drawn depiction.
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Jan 22, 2019 20:08
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It be like doing Batman’s origin story but having his parents graphically murdered. It’s pointless and just having Joe shoot them accomplishes the same thing. Hell most retelling don’t even show any blood or the bullet connecting and it works fine.
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Jan 22, 2019 20:28
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I like how kings response doesn't actually acknowledge or discuss the violence contained in the book at all
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Jan 22, 2019 20:31
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*wife leaves room* *instantly soaked in sweat, muttering to self* "I bet my wife is being beheaded by the terrorists I trained!!!!"
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Jan 22, 2019 20:54
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CharlestheHammer posted:It be like doing Batman’s origin story but having his parents graphically murdered. It’s pointless and just having Joe shoot them accomplishes the same thing. In contrast to that, The Killing Joke is relatively explicit about Barbra getting shot, but I'd say it's hardly as gruesome as the Lane deaths and in retellings, it's usually fairly abbreviated.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:02
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I like tragedy, so Tom King's works generally appeal to me, but the Lois Lane stuff is pretty excessive and not needed. His Batman run has also been all over the place in quality, and I found how he handled Talia to be kinda racist.
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Jan 23, 2019 00:54
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Nice https://twitter.com/MitchGerads/status/1087840122362449921?s=19
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Jan 23, 2019 03:53
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I know I'm a broken record but the Flash family would perfectly fit an Into The Spiderverse style story/show. Chain Lightning basically was that already. They even have a comedy animal themed version that they've teamed up with before.
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Jan 23, 2019 06:38
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So Naomi #1 wasn't half bad. I wasn't going to pick it up but thought I'd give it a bash as I had very little else in this week. It's a nice simple premise, but Bendis managed to get me invested in a brand new character right off the bat, so I'm going to give it a few issues for sure.
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Jan 23, 2019 09:49
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Two Tone Shoes posted:I know I'm a broken record but the Flash family would perfectly fit an Into The Spiderverse style story/show. Chain Lightning basically was that already. They even have a comedy animal themed version that they've teamed up with before. If one were to do a more extensive Amalgam thing again, The Flash and Spider-Man would be one of the obvious mixes, if only because both have such similar traits in terms of extensive rogues galleries, multiversal connections, extended hero families and general tone/character traits.
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Jan 23, 2019 16:13
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Grayson was awesome and Vision was alright but I'm admittedly salty about what he did with Victor in that. I don't blame him for Batman #50 when DC's marketing bulding up the hype on it was the worst bit of that twist. It doesn't seem to me like a smart idea to let King go full dark-depths-of-personal-anxieties-diving on a comic they're trying to mainstream but I guess I'm not the person in DC who makes those calls.
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Jan 23, 2019 23:36
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I really enjoyed Naomi a lot. Felt like the kind of Bendis book I enjoy. And holy poo poo was that art incredible.
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Jan 24, 2019 04:28
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Double post, but DC is making some changes it seems. They laid off some people today. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dc-lays-3-percent-workforce-1178694 And then there's this: quote:Together with Dan and Jim, and the executive team, we have spent time assessing DC’s business, as well as the comic book publishing landscape. DC is going back to its roots of delivering epic stories with our world-class characters, stories and brands. So uh, we're going back to the roots again. Whatever that means.
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Jan 24, 2019 05:27
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I honestly don't think that phrase has any real meaning anymore, Marvel and DC pretty much say that at least two or three times a year.
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Jan 24, 2019 05:36
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Vague promise of how we'll go back to what comics were like when you were a kid! How exciting!
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Jan 24, 2019 05:36
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David D. Davidson posted:I honestly don't think that phrase has any real meaning anymore, Marvel and DC pretty much say that at least two or three times a year. Absolutely. Generally it's not accompanied by people losing their jobs though so who knows what the thinking is here. My guess is nothing much happens.
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Jan 24, 2019 05:37
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Naomi was surprisingly good; I got a lot more interested in it than I expected. This is Bendis writing the kind of book he's built to write, it's a hell of a start.
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Jan 24, 2019 05:43
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I'm guessing there's some behind the scenes stuff that caused the dismissal
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Jan 24, 2019 05:56
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