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site posted:so, to kinda tangent off the chat thread convo, i've never really dug into the avengers pre-secret wars 2015, besides as tie-ins for event stuff like civil war etc, and im curious as to what are like some good avengers stories that arentt crossover/event tie-in/blah blah blah related, if there even are any The Busiek/Perez run (ca. 1998-2002) is well worth seeking out. There's also the Korvac Saga (1977) and the Kree-Skrull War (1971), the latter of which might be especially interesting with Captain Marvel coming out. vvvv I agree that Roger Stern's run is a lot of fun as well. I especially like the "Avengers vs. Red Ronin" story (Avengers 197-199, 1980). Selachian fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Mar 7, 2019 |
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Mar 7, 2019 22:29
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site posted:so, to kinda tangent off the chat thread convo, i've never really dug into the avengers pre-secret wars 2015, besides as tie-ins for event stuff like civil war etc, and im curious as to what are like some good avengers stories that arentt crossover/event tie-in/blah blah blah related, if there even are any Most of Roger Stern's run is wonderful and while "Under Siege" is technically a crossover it's in the "Mutant Massacre" tradition of being very pick-and-choose about how far afield from the main title you want to go. Larry Hama's brief run from the late 80's is uneven but interesting. I personally like an awful lot of Bendis' tenure but it does run into crossovers very very frequently and thus probably reads as pretty disjointed on its own. Avengers Forever is a Kurt Busiek/Carlos Pacheco maxiseries that has a lot of charm for an extended riff on continuity, and a number of spin-offs hold up. Avengers Academy is a fun ride while it lasts and Al Ewing's Ultimates, Mighty Avengers, U.S.Avengers, and New Avengers are all completely delightful.
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Mar 7, 2019 22:29
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Going the second to Roger Stern run, a very young me picked up one of his later issues as my first comic purchased off the stands (literally, at a Waldenbooks) and it was the first book that got me going and buying back issues. It's generally self-contained in terms of there being very few/no crossovers with other comics, though it's definitely a book that has to adapt with the continuity of other books in the sense of "Thor is sick" or "Rhodes is Iron Man now" or "Secret Wars happened" but not in a "Avengers #252 is part 7 of a crossover, read Thing #22 for the next chapter!" There's some stuff I remember liking in the relatively short Michelinie & Byrne/Perez era but I'm not sure how much of that was just being really into the Avengers as a kid. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Mar 7, 2019 |
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Mar 7, 2019 22:37
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I hate the Byrne era personally and can't name a good thing about it. I personally really enjoy the very early Stan Lee stuff for how stripped down and honest it is. But it's also crazy sexist whenever the Wasp is on-panel so maybe it doesn't read so well today.
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Mar 7, 2019 23:04
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Lurdiak posted:I hate the Byrne era personally and can't name a good thing about it. http://kirbywithoutwords.tumblr.com/tagged/kirbywithoutwords/chrono
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Mar 7, 2019 23:53
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site posted:so, to kinda tangent off the chat thread convo, i've never really dug into the avengers pre-secret wars 2015, besides as tie-ins for event stuff like civil war etc, and im curious as to what are like some good avengers stories that arentt crossover/event tie-in/blah blah blah related, if there even are any So here's the thing. The Avengers have been pretty bad for probably 85% of their publishing history. But there are some good runs or interesting stories that have come out of them. Top of the runs, of course are Roger Stern's and Kurt Busiek's times on the book. Those are the two to go to for obvious reasons. So setting aside those two, let me pick out a few interesting high(?) points. Roy Thomas was the first writer on Avengers after Lee and though he tried a lot of it fell flat. But Avengers 57 and 58 are a high point of his run and worth a look. That's the first appearance of the Vision. The very first major Marvel crossover was Avengers centered and it's worth checking out: Avengers 115-117 and Defenders 8-11 is the best part of Englehart's run (spotty, but a big step up in ambition from Thomas). Englehart attempted a few more cosmic epics and one that got referenced a bit going forward is the Celestial Madona story that runs from Avengers 129-135 and through Giant Sized Avengers 2-4. This storyline is... less good. And as time as passed, it's become less and less fondly remembered. But it was one of the big foundational epics. George Perez provided art for the end of Englehart's run and the start of Jim Shooter's (this was about two years before he became EiC) and those books look great and are very readable. Nothing that is must read comics, but also if you want to read some superheroes this is one of the better Avengers periods. It's roughly issues 145-170 IIRC. Controversial pick time here, but there's a storyline about Hank Pym that you might have heard about. It runs through a few creative teams but you can start at 212, read 213 (which is that issue), 217, and finally 223-230.
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Mar 8, 2019 00:06
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I cannot fathom the arrogance of someone who thinks they can divine a dead man's intent. Random Stranger posted:So here's the thing. The Avengers have been pretty bad for probably 85% of their publishing history. You're thinking of the X-men.
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Mar 8, 2019 00:08
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Lurdiak posted:You're thinking of the X-men. I said 85%, not 95%.
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Mar 8, 2019 00:12
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Random Stranger posted:So here's the thing. The Avengers have been pretty bad for probably 85% of their publishing history. But there are some good runs or interesting stories that have come out of them. Top of the runs, of course are Roger Stern's and Kurt Busiek's times on the book. Those are the two to go to for obvious reasons. I disagree with a lot of this. I think Avengers is tops through Englehart at minimum.
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Mar 8, 2019 00:18
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I'm pretty sure that, on the whole, Bendis' run is well-regarded. Of course it seems like basically everyone agrees that it got bad near the end (at what particular point that is, your mileage may vary) like a lot of Bendis' stuff, but taken all together it's more good than bad. edit: I guess it's kinda littered with crossover stuff though...
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Mar 8, 2019 00:21
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I'm still a huge fan of Bendis' first New Avengers run, which was the flagship book of the Marvel Universe from 2004 to 2010. It ran through House of M, Civil War (leading to a spinoff book, Mighty Avengers, with the pro-registration, authoritarian Avengers team), Secret Invasion, Dark Reign (leading to another spinoff book, Dark Avengers, with Norman Osborn's evil Avengers team), and Siege. I loved that whole run with a relatively low-powered, street-level, underdog Avengers team who spent over half their own book as fugitives on the run from former friends and enemies alike. After Civil War, the core team was Spider-Man, Luke Cage (and sometimes Jessica Jones), Spider-Woman, Iron Fist, Ronin/Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Bucky-Cap, and Dr. Strange. Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts run was an important prelude to Dark Reign/Dark Avengers, and Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man story arc "World's Most Wanted" also tied heavily into the Dark Reign status quo. I'd even include Jonathan Hickman's excellent Secret Warriors in there too. This is probably my favorite era of Marvel Comics. Post-Siege, when Bendis' books were relaunched as Avengers and New Avengers, I think the magic was largely gone. Before Bendis, it's hard to beat Roger Stern's "Under Siege" in Avengers #273-277 and 280, a necessary denouement that is foolishly left out of most collected editions I've seen. I guess I just like my Avengers being tested, challenged, on the ropes, outmatched, but still carrying on.
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Mar 8, 2019 03:17
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Under Siege is both a great storyline and a terrible use of Baron Zemo as a character. The guy was fresh off a JM Dematteis story where he realized his vendetta with Captain America was wrong and he died trying to stop Red Skull, and then the very next time we see him he's somehow still alive and trying to destroy the Avengers just to hurt Captain America's feelings.
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Mar 8, 2019 04:14
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Thanks for the suggestions everyone, this was actually more than i had expected because i had heard about the aforementioned bad output ratio lol
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Mar 8, 2019 04:51
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BSS used to poo poo on me for liking Avengers Forever but gently caress all them guys it's a great story and PADs Captain Marvel spun out of it.
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Mar 8, 2019 05:01
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Rhyno posted:BSS used to poo poo on me for liking Avengers Forever but gently caress all them guys it's a great story and PADs Captain Marvel spun out of it. Avengers Forever is continuity masturbation. Very good continuity masturbation. I'd never actually recommend it to someone, but at the same time if you love comic book trivia like Kurt Busiek then it's fun.
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Mar 8, 2019 05:34
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I feel the same way. I love Avengers Forever but I don't think I'd ever recommend to anyone because I think anyone that would truly love it would be someone invested in comics so much they'd already read it anyway. I don't think there's much there that a new reader can grab onto.
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Mar 8, 2019 06:09
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Avengers Forever is fuckin' great. But it's definitely a master class, not a 101 level.
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Mar 8, 2019 07:15
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Random Stranger posted:So here's the thing. The Avengers have been pretty bad for probably 85% of their publishing history. Isn't this true of basically every comic character that's been published for the last 50-70 years? I mean God help Superman's stats.
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Mar 8, 2019 07:30
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SonicRulez posted:Isn't this true of basically every comic character that's been published for the last 50-70 years? I mean God help Superman's stats. Daredevil, Thor and Cap have pretty high batting averages in terms of good runs on their books.
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Mar 8, 2019 13:18
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Edit : double post
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Mar 8, 2019 13:18
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I'd argue for X-Men having a pretty good batting average over the years. And yeah, Daredevil probably has the highest average quality of any long/running book.
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Mar 8, 2019 14:12
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X-Men has a lot of great runs. There are least 25 cumulative years of great X-Men comics. There are some absolutely dire stretches in the middle, especially in the 90s (hi, Scott Lobdell and Rob Liefeld), but the 80s, the 2010s, most of the 70s and 2000s...all good stuff. The original 60s comics aren't terrible either, they're just not that amazing. (I'm probably being a little unfair on Lobdell's run. A lot of it's serviceable stuff, it's just unreadable because the man is a racist sexual harasser).
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Mar 8, 2019 14:20
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Rochallor posted:I'd argue for X-Men having a pretty good batting average over the years. And yeah, Daredevil probably has the highest average quality of any long/running book. Is there any essential DD story prior to Miller's run?
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Mar 8, 2019 14:56
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Rochallor posted:I'd argue for X-Men having a pretty good batting average over the years. And yeah, Daredevil probably has the highest average quality of any long/running book. Daredevil is weird. The first 160 issues of Daredevil? Throw them away. Don't even bother. Then Miller gets on the book and after that it's rarer for there to be a bad creative team on Daredevil than a good one. There are bad spots, but generally for the past forty years you're more likely than not to want to pick up a Daredevil comic. Superman, FWIW, bounces up and down hard on the quality scale. Early on, he was one of the best golden age comics. Suffered the same quality slump as everyone else after the war. The silver age is good Superman, the bronze age is bad Superman. Post-Crisis, the quality becomes really unstable with bursts of quality and awfulness and that's continued on to today. So he does wind up better off than characters where nobody is certain what to do with them (see Wonder Woman where if you skip every comic between 1945 and 1987 then you're better off).
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Mar 8, 2019 15:15
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Rochallor posted:I'd argue for X-Men having a pretty good batting average over the years. X-men has the worst batting average in all of comics.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:40
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Lurdiak posted:X-men has the worst batting average in all of comics. It gets exponentially worse when you factor in the entire franchise.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:45
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Random Stranger posted:Daredevil is weird. The first 160 issues of Daredevil? Throw them away. Don't even bother. Then Miller gets on the book and after that it's rarer for there to be a bad creative team on Daredevil than a good one. There are bad spots, but generally for the past forty years you're more likely than not to want to pick up a Daredevil comic. Going from Miller to Nocenti's runs in such a short span of time is really unfair to other comics.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:48
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Dawgstar posted:Going from Miller to Nocenti's runs in such a short span of time is really unfair to other comics. But after that its dire until the Karl Kesel run.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:49
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Rhyno posted:But after that its dire until the Karl Kesel run. Do people not like 'Last Rites' anymore?
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Mar 8, 2019 15:55
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Dawgstar posted:Do people not like 'Last Rites' anymore? I never much cared for it.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:58
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Rhyno posted:I never much cared for it. It was a genuine question. I haven't read it in years, but remember it being pretty hyped by folks.
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Mar 8, 2019 16:00
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Dawgstar posted:It was a genuine question. I haven't read it in years, but remember it being pretty hyped by folks. I don't think it's held up by anyone as even a top fiv DD story at this point.
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Mar 8, 2019 16:03
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Random Stranger posted:Daredevil is weird. The first 160 issues of Daredevil? Throw them away. Don't even bother. Then Miller gets on the book and after that it's rarer for there to be a bad creative team on Daredevil than a good one. There are bad spots, but generally for the past forty years you're more likely than not to want to pick up a Daredevil comic. 100% disagree. Gene Colan is a fantastic artist and elevates that book from the moment he touches it. I love ridiculous comics, and Daredevil is ridiculous. The villains, the plotlines, the supporting cast, everything is just turned up a notch. Yeah, there's the standard Marvel hero whining about women and the hero's lot in life, but otherwise it's off the wall bonkers nonsense. You've got aliens long after they've been dropped as a gimmick in other series, over the top villains, and the whole Mike Murdoch plotline is gold. Miller eventually brings the grit to Daredevil, but those early issues were Marvel's attempt at DC zaniness and I really like them for it. It's never a run that hits the highs that you see in Thor, FF, Captain America or Spider-Man (outside of #47, Brother Take My Hand), but it's no Iron Man. e: It you like crazy comics, I think you can start with DD at issue #12, when John Romita Sr. takes over the book. You've got a half dozen JR issues, and then Colan slides right in. Just keep going until you get bored. When they move to San Fran I find it does start to drag a bit. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 8, 2019 |
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Mar 8, 2019 17:08
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Jordan7hm posted:100% disagree. Gene Colan is a fantastic artist and elevates that book from the moment he touches it. I agree, Gene Colan is fantastic on DD, also super early Barry Windsor-Smith. It's all feverish nonsense and I love it-- I could never articulate why but the arc with Colan and BWS' hyper-campy, arch Starr Saxon is just chicken soup to me, I could read it every day and never get bored. Also Gil Kane! It feels a lot closer to the particular melodrama of the pulp serial than other Marvel comics of the time, and if the cost of that is thematic sloppiness on occasion, I'm fine paying that price. It's like if the surrealist energy of very early Batman-- when the image itself was still dream-like, when he could interrupt fighting gangsters to go meet talking flowers in Paris and destroy a straight up Matthew Lewis-style mad monk-- was captured in time and given the strange surplus leftovers of the Marvel formula. It's so cool to me.
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Mar 8, 2019 18:49
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I think stuff like Daredevil works because it had long iconic runs, where other titles suffer due to constant creative changes that may vary in quality.
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Mar 8, 2019 21:53
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Lurdiak posted:X-men has the worst batting average in all of comics. Definitely disagree on that one. Just going by the main books, let's say Uncanny and Adjective-less, you've got long unbtoken strings of quality comics. The Silver Age stuff is clearly not where Stan and Jack were putting most of their effort, sure. Then you get 16 years of Claremont, and even if it doesn't go out on a super high note, it's strong basically through to the end. The 90s are… spotty, but Nicaeza and (unfortunately) Lobdell do some pretty good work occasionally. I've not read much 90s past AoA but AFAIK it's pretty dire. But then you get Morrison's New X-Men, great Extinction/Utopia stuff a few years later, Mike Carey's long and weird Legacy run, Gillen's stellar Uncanny stuff, and then Bendis, which I find a lot more enjoyable than most people. It's only really since Secret Wars that the main books have gotten weak. Yeah, there's plenty of poo poo minis and books; Morrison and Chuck Austen are running at the exact same time. But there's also lots of hidden gems and weird little series that get saved from death by virtue of having an X in the title. And at least one of the two flagship books is usually worthwhile at any given moment.
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Mar 9, 2019 00:46
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The X-Men are bad in the silver age. They have like 3 or 4 good issues with Steranko and Adams, then get cancelled. The most interesting x-man during that period (Cal Rankin, alias Mimic) just disappears from the series from issue to issue and later dies in an issue of Beast’s solo run after the core series has been put in reprint mode. Claremont is excellent but the 90s are dire. There are a handful of great runs (I really like Morrison and Whedon, am ambivalent on Bendis and others), but there are so many x-men books out there that the number of terrible books is very high.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:01
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Pre-Morrison the X-Men/Post-Arbitrary Cut-Off are deeply crappy, just kind of doing whatever. You do get some very pretty Alan Davis-drawn issues, though.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:06
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For me 90's X-Men peaked with AoA. I have a soft spot for early 90's X-Men, mostly because of the cartoon, and I also loved Generation X so 90's X-Men for a little bit at least gets a pass from me. That being said, I did notice that the quality post AoA took a nose dive and things became stupidly convoluted and all interest I used to have was gone.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:11
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| # ? May 25, 2024 12:59 |
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remember Counter X
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Mar 9, 2019 01:30
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