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Hitman holds up (very well) because it was set right in the edge of the DCU so he could get away with a alot but in the end it still had to be a general audiences series.
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Jul 15, 2018 03:09
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He's a writer very, very invested in traditional masculinity, and while he can wax pretty poetic about it, he's also anywhere from skeptical to dismissive to outright hostile to anything that diverges from it. So he can write a pretty well-executed if formulaic World War II story about fearless fighting men but anything that requires writing about actual culture and actual society falls apart under the weight of his archaic revulsion. Like, he feels like such an unbelievable, egregious artifact of a different, worse era. He treats race abysmally, and can't seem to write black men in particular as anything other than anhedonic walking sex engines. He'll also probably never stop finding rape funny because in his moral universe sexual assault is a fitting and sly punishment for "weak" men. When he's good he's good, I guess, but at this point it's been at least a decade since it's felt worth giving him the benefit of the doubt. I agree that Hitman is among his best, precisely because, as Rhyno mentions, he was reined in and edited. It had to exist in the moral universe of the DC Universe, where people are, in the end, not ravenous beasts, and while it poked at the more hard-boiled edges of that universe, he still had to play by those rules. So much of Hitman is so good, and you know, all things considered Natt the Hat is, despite what I said above about Ennis and race, a pretty well-realized character.That being said, Bueno Excellante is still a loving atrocious joke, and I think it's pretty damning that Ennis feels compelled to revisit the one loving joke that he offers each time he revisits that milieu. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Jul 15, 2018 |
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Jul 15, 2018 03:18
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Archyduke posted:He's a writer very, very invested in traditional masculinity, and while he can wax pretty poetic about it, he's also anywhere from skeptical to dismissive to outright hostile to anything that diverges from it. So he can write a pretty well-executed if formulaic World War II story about fearless fighting men but anything that requires writing about actual culture and actual society falls apart under the weight of his archaic revulsion. I ran across an interview where Ennis said he couldn't write Judge Dredd anymore because he respected the character too much. Now, on one level, that's good. If Dredd doesn't have a small core of satire at his stories, he's not really Dredd. It came off as 'I can't write Joe Dredd anymore because I like him too much to write him for a whole prog with a weasel in his colon' or something similar. quote:I agree that Hit Man is among his best, precisely because, as Rhyno mentions, he was reined in and edited. It had to exist in the moral universe of the DC Universe, where people are, in the end, not ravenous beasts, and while it poked at the more hard-boiled edges of that universe, he still had to play by those rules. That being said, Bueno Excellante is still a loving atrocious joke, and I think it's pretty damning that Ennis feels compelled to revisit the one loving joke that he offers each time he revisits that milieu. It's also telling that the only thing he ever mentions going back to from Preacher is the Sexual Detectives and apparently whatever idea he gave to Vertigo they said, "Uh, no." That said, I almost tear up just thinking about the end of 'Closing Time' in Hitman. Almost. To actually do so I'd have to re-read it.
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Jul 15, 2018 03:22
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Archyduke posted:Like, he feels like such an unbelievable, egregious artifact of a different, worse era. He treats race abysmally, and can't seem to write black men in particular as anything other than anhedonic walking sex engines. He'll also probably never stop finding rape funny because in his moral universe sexual assault is a fitting and sly punishment for "weak" men. When he's good he's good, I guess, but at this point it's been at least a decade since it's felt worth giving him the benefit of the doubt. You saying this really makes me wonder what that Tuskegee Airmen book he wrote for Aftershock was like. I know I saw some pages from his James Bond parody book for Aftershock and they were among the worst things I’ve ever read on a comic page.
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Jul 15, 2018 03:46
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X-O posted:You saying this really makes me wonder what that Tuskegee Airmen book he wrote for Aftershock was like. I really liked it! Probably the only Ennis-written series I enjoyed outside of Punisher and Punisher MAX.
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Jul 15, 2018 08:46
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Archyduke posted:Like, he feels like such an unbelievable, egregious artifact of a different, worse era. Northern Ireland is anywhere from 50 to 100 years behind the rest of Europe.
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Jul 15, 2018 11:17
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Archyduke posted:He's a writer very, very invested in traditional masculinity, and while he can wax pretty poetic about it, he's also anywhere from skeptical to dismissive to outright hostile to anything that diverges from it. I don't know about that. In Preacher both Cassidy and Custer are portrayed as traditional masculine and that masculinity almost destroys both of them. Likewise in his Hellblazer where Constantine gets called out for his toxic masculinity: 
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Jul 15, 2018 11:46
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Alhazred posted:I don't know about that. In Preacher both Cassidy and Custer are portrayed as traditional masculine and that masculinity almost destroys both of them. Likewise in his Hellblazer where Constantine gets called out for his toxic masculinity: I feel like he's having his cake and eating it too when he does that self-critique. Butcher from The Boys is toxic and is supposedly explicitly not a hero, but the narrative still mostly celebrates him for being a badass antihero. Same thing for the Punisher.
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Jul 15, 2018 15:55
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Servoret posted:I feel like he's having his cake and eating it too when he does that self-critique. Butcher from The Boys is toxic and is supposedly explicitly not a hero, but the narrative still mostly celebrates him for being a badass antihero. Same thing for the Punisher. OTOH Butcher knows he’s a bad guy and puts Huey, who is decidedly unmasculine, in position to stop him. I think Ennis is just kind of stuck halfway with this stuff. Like he “gets it” and can work with that, but he also harbours a lot of regessive attitudes in himself.
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Jul 15, 2018 16:14
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Retro Futurist posted:OTOH Butcher knows he’s a bad guy and puts Huey, who is decidedly unmasculine, in position to stop him. I think Ennis is just kind of stuck halfway with this stuff. Like he “gets it” and can work with that, but he also harbours a lot of regessive attitudes in himself. Like if Frank Miller had some self-awareness.
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Jul 15, 2018 16:16
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Retro Futurist posted:OTOH Butcher knows he’s a bad guy and puts Huey, who is decidedly unmasculine, in position to stop him. I think Ennis is just kind of stuck halfway with this stuff. Like he “gets it” and can work with that, but he also harbours a lot of regessive attitudes in himself. There’s still some sort of Hegelian synthesis going on where Huey has to learn to man up from Butcher before he’s in a position to stop him. Butcher represents an unreasonable ideal of masculinity that, in Ennis’s judgment, comic book nerds can stand to learn a thing or two from, so we can at least have the dignity of idolizing real world heroes like the British SAS instead of musclemen in leotards.
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Jul 15, 2018 22:34
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Retro Futurist posted:OTOH Butcher knows he’s a bad guy and puts Huey, who is decidedly unmasculine, in position to stop him. I think Ennis is just kind of stuck halfway with this stuff. Like he “gets it” and can work with that, but he also harbours a lot of regessive attitudes in himself. yeah you get weird poo poo like the slavers arc of max that tries to tackle stuff like rape and trauma afterwards in a serious way but hes constitutionally incapable of not having rape jokes in literally everything he publishes. or the arc the issue in the boys where he has huey tell butcher to ease up on the homophobia, but story that takes place in is just one long dig at some homophobic caricatures he made
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Jul 15, 2018 22:50
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Let's never forget where Huey found his pet hamster. Actually, I wish I could, but we shouldn't.
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Jul 15, 2018 22:58
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site posted:yeah you get weird poo poo like the slavers arc of max that tries to tackle stuff like rape and trauma afterwards in a serious way but hes constitutionally incapable of not having rape jokes in literally everything he publishes. or the arc the issue in the boys where he has huey tell butcher to ease up on the homophobia, but story that takes place in is just one long dig at some homophobic caricatures he made Ennis is bad when it comes to rape. When a woman is raped in his stories its a terrible tragedy, but when a man is raped its either written as a joke or something you should be able to shrug off.
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Jul 16, 2018 19:11
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The Boys has a very weird thing where Hughie is sexually assaulted by Black Noir in an early story as a joke, but then later on it's played as serious trauma and he commiserates with Starlight about their shared experience of sexual assault. In general, while he has his worse excesses, Ennis is capable of nuance and compassion. He just isn't always in the mood for it.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:17
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Dawgstar posted:I've never really warmed up to Frank Quitely, if we're being honest, but I can respect the craft if not the result. I could not get over how badly suited Damion Scott was for Batgirl.
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Jul 17, 2018 18:51
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Halloween Jack posted:I could not get over how badly suited Damion Scott was for Batgirl. Diff'rent strokes there. I thought the stylized and kinetic look worked for her book.
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Jul 17, 2018 22:31
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I mean it could, but Scott drew fights like someone who has only ever had a kung fu movie described to him over a walkie-talkie. That's not good for a character whose Thing is martial arts.
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Jul 18, 2018 03:25
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I started reading post rebirth Detective Comics because I asked for good Batwoman comics and it was suggested. How long does Tim Drake stay "dead" after the first arc, I know it has something to do with weird cosmic poo poo or something that I don't actually care about, but I liked the way he was written in that and want him back.
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Jul 19, 2018 04:36
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Skwirl posted:I started reading post rebirth Detective Comics because I asked for good Batwoman comics and it was suggested. How long does Tim Drake stay "dead" after the first arc, I know it has something to do with weird cosmic poo poo or something that I don't actually care about, but I liked the way he was written in that and want him back. For a while but he’s a major part of the full run. The focus of a lot of what’s to come. He’s Tynion’s favorite comic character and it shows.
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Jul 19, 2018 04:56
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Can someone tell me what the big backlash with Nick Spencer and Secret Empire were about? Because all in all, I thought it was a well done crossover. In fact his Cap run as a whole I thought was pretty solid (hammy political commentary aside).
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Jul 21, 2018 01:03
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Knives Amilli posted:Can someone tell me what the big backlash with Nick Spencer and Secret Empire were about? Well equal parts that it went on too long and was poorly timed with what was going on with the country (though not sure if that was more unfortunate or commentary). Mostly I think we were just dealing with too much Nazis in real life and then having to deal with Hydra Cap at the same time was a little much. There are a lot of other biases against Spencer for past poorly written books (His Ultimate X-Men is among one of the worst runs of comics I've ever read) and there's some really sketchy stuff in his past as well. So honestly a lot of reasons.
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Jul 21, 2018 01:08
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People don’t like his politics and everything has to be the worst. There is no middle ground. (They’re right. His lovely simplistic politics come through his work. I thought secret empire was boring, but not particularly bad.)
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Jul 21, 2018 01:21
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He also wrote (spoke?) himself into a corner by saying there wasn't gonna be a situation where it turned out Nazi Steve wasn't the real deal, and then it turned out that, essentially, he wasn't. It basically worked out in similar fashion to Spider Man's clone saga, except Clone Saga had its' share of fans until they extended the story because Marvel was bleeding money, which cased small plot holes to be plot holes the size of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:29
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Knives Amilli posted:Can someone tell me what the big backlash with Nick Spencer and Secret Empire were about? As prior posters have stated, he is bad. And the ways in which he is bad are pretty bad too. Also, turning Captain America into a Nazi analogue is just the dumbest possible plot idea. It's Captain America, for gently caress's sake. You may as well try turning Magneto into a Nazi for how incompatible it is with the character's history. Nick Spencer is a mediocre writer who, despite being an adult, is still that kid screaming "Look at how edgy I am!" at anyone who will listen.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:40
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Man, I still don’t buy that as being a problem at all. Turning Captain America into a Nazi analogue to contrast it to the real Captain America is a fine story beat by a better writer. The fact it took almost a year to tell the story made it a lot worse than if this was a couple issues quickly told. Dragging it out for as long as they did made it worse.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:57
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It's like Batman with guns or the aforementioned Nazi Magneto to me. Sure you could, but why?
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Jul 21, 2018 03:14
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I think one thing in particular people really didn't like was the whole "This is really Captain America's true history, he was always a Nazi."
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Jul 21, 2018 03:31
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muscles like this! posted:I think one thing in particular people really didn't like was the whole "This is really Captain America's true history, he was always a Nazi." It's lazy and unwanted, yeah. I think it was Mark Gruenwald who once said that the trick to writing comics that people like is to give people things they wanted that they didn't know they wanted until it's presented to them.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:15
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SonicRulez posted:It's like Batman with guns or the aforementioned Nazi Magneto to me. Sure you could, but why? I think the purpose of stories like that is pretty evident, it shows by contrast how good the real heroes are. I mean it's like those panels everyone posts where Cap denounces the Commie-smasher Cap by saying that a flag is nothing, or when Azrael acknowledges that Bruce Wayne is the true Batman and edginess is not the way. I think NaziCap is a perfectly good idea, it just came out at a real bad time and the story definitely went on too long. Also the "actually the Nazis won the war" twist is really uncomfortable and it's blatantly obvious that the only reason it existed is so Spencer could go "Not A Hoax! Not An Imaginary Story, etc" and be technically correct. The part of Secret Empire that bothers me more are the little things where you can tell that the story was planned before other events were written (like don't even try to loving tell me that the original plan for SE involved a Tony Stark AI that's "drunk" because he's depressed and purposefully nerfed his processing power and not an actual drunk Tony Stark) or the stuff that's a sloppy metaphor for some real world poo poo but totally doesn't work within the Marvel Universe. Like for example the planetary defense shield which is a blatant border wall that Carol Danvers and Maria Hill are framed as in the wrong for installing/activating, when in truth loving everybody would jump for a planet wall when the 616 is being attacked by aliens every other week. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 04:22
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Note that in your two examples, they were fakes and not the actual character.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:38
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The story ends with the original/true character returning to show people how the impostor's ideology and methods are flawed and then everybody both the stupid public and the heroes who have embraced the wrong side reject the evil/wrong "hero". They're not that different. I get it, I know it's controversial and it rubs people the wrong way but as I see it, ymmv, no matter what anyone including Spencer says, at the end of the day it's just another mind control/impostor story. Like I said, I don't think Secret Empire was some great story, it's got plot holes and some bad writing, but in a world where one of DC's best comics (Injustice) is based on the premise of "what if Superman was a fascist?", I don't think a story where Captain America becomes a Nazi is inherently wrong, so long as it's written well and makes a point to show us why it's wrong. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 05:01
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TwoPair posted:Like for example the planetary defense shield which is a blatant border wall that Carol Danvers and Maria Hill are framed as in the wrong for installing/activating, when in truth loving everybody would jump for a planet wall when the 616 is being attacked by aliens every other week. 
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Jul 21, 2018 05:06
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Injustice is also an alternate universe and at some point in the story The Real Superman shows up to beat his rear end. It's a thin line, but it's a line to me.
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Jul 21, 2018 06:19
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They made Captain America a literal Nazi for almost 2 years and hosed with the character development for a lot of other characters. If it'd been a six issue arc it would have been fine. Injustices great because its not in continuity and has amazing character moments, and is frequently hilarious. They really aren't comparable in any way aside from the paragon of virtue becoming bad, and even then, Superman has an actual motivation for every terrible thing he does instead of "a magic rock did it." Which is odd since there's a ton of silver age comics where Superman becomes evil because of different colors of kryptonite.
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Jul 21, 2018 11:48
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muscles like this! posted:I think one thing in particular people really didn't like was the whole "This is really Captain America's true history, he was always a Nazi." This is the big one for me.
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Jul 21, 2018 12:14
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In my mind the whole thing with Nazi Cap was, Nick Spencer got so enamoured with the new fake backstory he wrote for Steve that he focused on that. And he lost track of the original idea of Cap as the sleeper agent. The argument that Steve was always a Nazi and that the Allies lost World War 2 until they cheated was obviously bullshit. Like even in the story, all the people who tell us this are clearly liars or with huge agendas. I just think Spencer leaned too hard into that line because he spent so much time on his fake Hydra world that he had to justify it in his own head.
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Jul 21, 2018 14:28
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Given the state of the world in the last few years, having the living embodiment of America turn out to have been a nazi all along was in poor taste. Also it got tied in with some of the “anti-sjw” stuff he randomly tossed into SamCap. And even looking at it from a neutral story standpoint, nobody wanted another big year long crossover, and it was pretty much just a worse take on the Secret Warriors twist
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Jul 21, 2018 17:19
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Skwirl posted:
And also a movie.
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Jul 21, 2018 17:25
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TwoPair posted:Like I said, I don't think Secret Empire was some great story, it's got plot holes and some bad writing, but in a world where one of DC's best comics (Injustice) is based on the premise of "what if Superman was a fascist?", I don't think a story where Captain America becomes a Nazi is inherently wrong, so long as it's written well and makes a point to show us why it's wrong. That's not the best example. Superman, a character who's story can be boiled down to, "Alien comes to Earth, adopts it as his home, creates peace through super strong punches" translates VERY easily to fascism. It's been done over and over again because it's such an easy take. Captain America, a character created by Jewish dudes who literally punched Hitler in the face, just does not make sense as a Nazi. It's antithetical to his core. There's a reason why nobody painted Cap as a Nazi prior to Spencer. Yes, I agree, a better writer probably could make that plot line work, but it's somebody much, MUCH more talented than Spencer could ever hope to be.
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Jul 21, 2018 18:00
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