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Speaking of, you know that guy who takes Donald Trump tweets and puts them into panels of the Red Skull talking? I’m so glad he’s using 80’s Gruenwald era art of the Red Skull. It actually fits Trump more than the 60’s Kirby art of the Skull.
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Oct 25, 2019 19:51
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eliotlucas posted:There's a good Batroc scene at the end of Gruenwald's run where he comes to Avengers Mansion looking for Cap, who is, at this point dying and has but hours left to live. Cap is to tired for a confrontation and invites Batroc into the mansion for tea and the two talk for a while, with Cap trying to convince Batroc to become a hero. Batroc is imminently likable for stuff like this; he has his own understandable sense of honour. He's not going to try and break Cap's ribs when the man is dying, he either wants the victory at full strength or not at all. It made him a fun inclusion in Gwenpool, too. I know a bunch of Gru's Cap stuff is collected in Epic Collections, what issue is this?
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Oct 25, 2019 20:27
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:All I know of Gruenwald is he wrote the Skull vs Magneto moment which is incredibly badass.  and 
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Oct 25, 2019 20:37
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batroc was always someone I liked but yeah the gwenpool run with him was absolutely locking him into great character territory for me.
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Oct 25, 2019 21:02
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Oct 25, 2019 22:24
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so uh this written before the whole genosha thing, right?
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Oct 25, 2019 22:39
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Doc Hawkins posted:so uh this written before the whole genosha thing, right? Something like 11 years beforehand, yeah.
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Oct 25, 2019 23:34
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One of the first comics I remember reading had Iron Fist and Batroc fighting for like 12 panels on a single page, with a bunch of the panels giving a name of the move they were doing (Elephant Stomp Kick and so on) like a kung fu movie with a wrestling announce team. Child me thought that was The Tightest poo poo. And you know what? Child me was right. And I think that story is why every time I think of Batroc (ze Leapair), master of Savate, I mentally append (the art of french foot boxing) on the end.
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Oct 26, 2019 00:27
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Wanderer posted:Something like 11 years beforehand, yeah. ha, okay then. Just thought it was funny considering some atrocities ol' Mags is responsible for.
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Oct 26, 2019 00:37
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SiKboy posted:One of the first comics I remember reading had Iron Fist and Batroc fighting for like 12 panels on a single page, with a bunch of the panels giving a name of the move they were doing (Elephant Stomp Kick and so on) like a kung fu movie with a wrestling announce team. Child me thought that was The Tightest poo poo. And you know what? Child me was right. And I think that story is why every time I think of Batroc (ze Leapair), master of Savate, I mentally append (the art of french foot boxing) on the end. I bet you loving love this page: 
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Oct 26, 2019 01:20
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SiKboy posted:One of the first comics I remember reading had Iron Fist and Batroc fighting for like 12 panels on a single page, with a bunch of the panels giving a name of the move they were doing (Elephant Stomp Kick and so on) like a kung fu movie with a wrestling announce team. Child me thought that was The Tightest poo poo. And you know what? Child me was right. And I think that story is why every time I think of Batroc (ze Leapair), master of Savate, I mentally append (the art of french foot boxing) on the end. Fraction’s run on Iron Fist did that too. Except every now and then between all the Mountain’s Gentle Valleys and Flowing Stream Moves Rocks there’d be something like Brooklyn Headbut e:^^fb (and that’s the exact page i was thinking of)
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Oct 26, 2019 01:21
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For a while in Avengers every time Dr. Strange would cast a spell it would tell you what spell it was and what page you could find it in a spellbook.
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Oct 26, 2019 01:24
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Not complete without Fat Cobra’s patented techniques
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Oct 26, 2019 01:40
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Proteus Jones posted:Fraction’s run on Iron Fist did that too. Except every now and then between all the Mountain’s Gentle Valleys and Flowing Stream Moves Rocks there’d be something like Brooklyn Headbut I didn't like the Immortal Weapons mini but it had some nice takes on that for good     or for bad        
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Oct 26, 2019 01:51
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Fat Cobra is just the best. Also, Fraction’s iron fist was so loving great.
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Oct 26, 2019 01:55
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Those things are not the same at all though.
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Oct 26, 2019 02:38
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Toshimo posted:I bet you loving love this page: You say that like its possible for someone to NOT love this page?
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Oct 26, 2019 12:24
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Cassa posted:Those things are not the same at all though. Yeah, I'm generally fairly anti-Magneto, but destroying a military vessel is extremely not the same thing as genocide.
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Oct 27, 2019 05:27
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red skull's just an idiot. also thats a meme
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Oct 27, 2019 05:38
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You mean the literal Nazi will grasp at bullshit reasons to paint other people to be as bad as he is? I am shocked.
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Oct 27, 2019 07:00
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To put that panel in context, super villains in the 80's had only just moved away from Silver Age spectres of "threats of violence with little actual consequences." Magneto sinking a Russian sub was a big deal act of villainy*. We hadn't yet gotten to the stage of escalation where the Joker was blowing up school buses of kids on the regular. And even historic acts of real world villainy hadn't been really brought on board the four coloured world of Marvel and DC. So it makes sense that the Skull is throwing that at Magneto's face. (Right before he throws literal death dust at his face.) But on the flip side, you have to remember who is saying all this. A literal Nazi (even if at this point Johann was expanding into Nihilism. ) So his argument is very much undercut by who is saying it.
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Oct 27, 2019 11:17
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I mean if you’re posting those pages you need to post what Magneto does in retaliation.
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Oct 27, 2019 17:25
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They're both in the exact same post, in this very page.
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Oct 27, 2019 17:32
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To be fair to Magneto, they did just try to nuke him. Blowing up a sub that fires nukes at you is pretty much what most people would do if they had the ability to do so. 
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Oct 27, 2019 19:19
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Yeah at that point I'd call it self-defense.
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Oct 28, 2019 00:38
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jng2058 posted:To be fair to Magneto, they did just try to nuke him. Blowing up a sub that fires nukes at you is pretty much what most people would do if they had the ability to do so. To be fair to the sub, that was when Magneto had a doomsday weapon and was threatening to destroy any country that didn't make him king.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:17
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Patrick Spens posted:To be fair to the sub, that was when Magneto had a doomsday weapon and was threatening to destroy any country that didn't make him king. In summation, Magneto is a land of contrasts.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:17
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Nipponophile posted:In summation, Magneto is a land of contrasts. Both positive and negative.
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Oct 28, 2019 03:57
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For real though, that particular issue (Uncanny X-Men #150) is one of my all-time favorites. It starts the transformation of Magneto from stereotypical cackling megalomaniac to an actual character with a personality and motivations. He almost kills Kitty Pryde, and that moment where he realizes "Oh my God, I'm trying to kill a 14 year old girl. What the hell am I doing?" is the first step on the path to reconciliation with Xavier and custodianship of Xavier's school and the New Mutants. Before all that though, after Magneto delivers his ultimatum, the X-Men naturally sortie a team to take care of him, only to find out to their surprise that Mags has covered his island with a device that disables all mutant powers other than his own. Rather than give up, Cyclops is like "Well, Wolverine still has his claws, Kitty is a computer whiz, Storm can handle locks and alarm systems, Nightcrawler is super acrobatic, Colossus is still really strong in his human form, and I've been studying small unit combat tactics for my entire adult life. I think I can work with this." As much as people poo poo on Chris Claremont for his writing, when he was on, he was on. Nipponophile fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 04:45
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I mean, Claremont may have kind of gone off the rails toward the end of his legendary run, but he's still the guy who MADE X-Men. Like, they were made by Kirby and Stan, but Claremont made them. If Claremont said he would like to write X-Men again, if I were a Marvel editor I would bend over backwards to accommodate him.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:11
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They did do that a couple times and it really never worked out.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:13
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Mr. Maltose posted:They did do that a couple times and it really never worked out. I liked his Nightcrawler series he did awhile back from what I read if it. Anybody read the New Mutants one shot he did with Sienkiewicz back in September? I somehow didn't even know it was coming out.
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Oct 28, 2019 06:10
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Cabbit posted:Both positive and negative. North and south.
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Oct 28, 2019 13:23
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Skwirl posted:Anybody read the New Mutants one shot he did with Sienkiewicz back in September? I somehow didn't even know it was coming out. It was good. Sienkiewicz is amazing, Claremont didn’t write anything overly creepy. It felt like a lost issue.
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Oct 28, 2019 13:32
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Nipponophile posted:For real though, that particular issue (Uncanny X-Men #150) is one of my all-time favorites. It starts the transformation of Magneto from stereotypical cackling megalomaniac to an actual character with a personality and motivations. He almost kills Kitty Pryde, and that moment where he realizes "Oh my God, I'm trying to kill a 14 year old girl. What the hell am I doing?" is the first step on the path to reconciliation with Xavier and custodianship of Xavier's school and the New Mutants. It's a superb issue - even though it's not the beginning of the Claremont run, #150 almost feels like the run's thesis statement about what the X-Men's priorities and main themes are. The pages you mention with Magneto and Kitty? The pages where Storm finds Magneto sleeping in his chambers, and struggles over whether she should kill him while he sleeps? Even the more granular action, like Colossus almost drowning as the team is attempting to infiltrate the island, is delivered with verve and suspense. The whole thing is fantastic.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:53
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Mr. Maltose posted:They did do that a couple times and it really never worked out. There are some pretty good issues in his later runs on Uncanny and X-Treme X-Men, but it's uneven, some of it's bad, and it never really captures the power of his classic run. I think partly it's that Claremont's style is very at odds with how modern comics are produced, and partly it's that he isn't operating at 100%.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:55
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It also feels like he's playing catch-up and throwing a million things out there without giving them time to percolate. This is really apparent in his early aughts return to both titles, in which every issue seems like it's introducing a new squad of villains who will never appear or matter again. This was already kind of a symptom of his writing earlier, but in the 80s it felt invigorating, like he was populating blank spaces on the shared map with new concepts like the Marauders or the Morlocks or Alpha Flight or Mystique's Brotherhood/Freedom Force. But by the end you could sense fatigue setting in-- it's easy to forget how prevalent the Reavers are for awhile, and how boring most of them are, or that Claremont was responsible for relative dud concepts like Hardcase & the Harriers or the Dark Riders (who to be fair had a pretty steady presence through the early 90s but mostly remained ciphers with overly busy designs). But compare even the dullest of his 80s creations with like, any of the Neo, or the Goth, or the Crimson Pirates, or Vargas and his boring-rear end clique, or the Skrull X-Men that Xavier goes off to mentor in the late 90s in a fill-in, or the gang of dinosaur people. That verve just isn't there and on top of that he's introducing new specimens into an already over-populated pond. Edit: But yeah I do also want to agree that his latter-day returns to the franchise get a worse rap than they deserve. They're creaky and the psychosexual elements land with less of a frisson and more of an "ugh" but they have their good moments and often have really fun art. In periods where the franchise felt stuck with a holding pattern, he came back and wrote stories that had ideas and forward momentum, even if they largely sank without making much impact I admire him for that. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 16:02
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Archyduchess posted:It also feels like he's playing catch-up and throwing a million things out there without giving them time to percolate. This is really apparent in his early aughts return to both titles, in which every issue seems like it's introducing a new squad of villains who will never appear or matter again. I think you're totally right that he fell into an (extremely dull) holding pattern where like, having figured out that introducing new teams of powered people with punchy epithetic code-names was a formula almost chemically arranged to delight superhero fans, he began to rely on it to the point where it became both dull and baffling. Totally agree that the Reavers are an early example of this - they feel like a dilute version of the Marauders, who for my money already feel like a thin gruel version of previous iterations of the concept, being as most of them are just a codename, a superpower, and a fondness for murdering people while grimacing edgily. Mutant Massacre has its high points, and there's good stuff after that point in the run, but for me the introduction of the Marauders marks like, the twilight of the 80s and the looming spectre of 90s grittiness and excess. I think Claremont's continuing propensity for this is one of those things where, like - he did it (in co-operation with other people who worked on Giant-Sized X-Men) with one set of characters, and it worked fantastically to the point where it was career-defining, franchise-defining, genre-defining. He did it with the New Mutants, same again. He did it with various villain groups throughout both comics, and not only did the audience adore it, it generated ideas like the Hellfire Club or the Shi'ar Imperial Guard or the Morlocks - characters who enriched the setting and world of the X-Men, delighted fans, enabled new stories, and would remain integral to the franchise more or less permanently. Having had such massive success with this approach, it feels as though he then got stuck in a rut where he continued to repeat the trick in increasingly frantic fashion for the next twenty years. It stopped working somewhere around the advent of Hardcase and co., but it feels to me like it had worked for him so well as a storytelling device in the past that there remained an expectation of that same magic happening every time he waved the wand. The setting slowly became deliriously crowded with squads of epithetically named powered people with one note personalities, each penned in the hope that they'd be the next Hellfire Club. Lee, Nicieza, Liefeld - pretty much anyone who worked on X-Men in the 90s followed suit. Man, remember the Nasty Boys? The funny thing is, you can see this same propensity in ill-fated comics today, and I think at least some of it traces back to Claremont's legacy. You still get would-be superhero teams debuting as squads of five or six undifferentiated individuals, each with a different power, a snappy one word codename that's metaphorical, allegorical or referential in nature, and, if they're lucky, a single personality beat. It's wildly different from what a new super-team looked like before Uncanny X-Men blossomed into prominence. Claremont was so influential on the genre that he changed its baseline value for "generic".
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Oct 28, 2019 16:39
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Cabbit posted:Both positive and negative. Yeah he's a real polarising figure
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Oct 28, 2019 18:46
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Android Blues posted:The funny thing is, you can see this same propensity in ill-fated comics today, and I think at least some of it traces back to Claremont's legacy. You still get would-be superhero teams debuting as squads of five or six undifferentiated individuals, each with a different power, a snappy one word codename that's metaphorical, allegorical or referential in nature, and, if they're lucky, a single personality beat. It's wildly different from what a new super-team looked like before Uncanny X-Men blossomed into prominence. Claremont was so influential on the genre that he changed its baseline value for "generic". One of my favorite things about the original Busiek/Bagley Thunderbolts is how neatly their cover identities fit into this mold. They absolutely look like one of those boilerplate-ragtag groups and I've always liked that they show up in their dumb costumes right in the post-Pantheon era of PAD's Hulk.
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Oct 29, 2019 01:56
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