Waterhaul posted:

All of that just makes me want to re-read the Clone Saga.

What an awful mess

Waterhaul posted:

All of that just makes me want to re-read the Clone Saga.

What an awful mess

bobkatt013 posted:

Here is an easy way to get the whole thing. Just start from here and get all 11 volumes!
http://www.amazon.com/Spider-Man-Co...+saga+spiderman

Or is it Sputnik posted:

I liked "Stay Angry" because it was basically "Crank: The Comic", but holy lol should they have picked another artist.
The bigger problem was the opening "Island of doctor Moreau"-arc that took six issues to blow up Bruce Banner and had both Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio as artists. They're interchangeable, so the shift wasn't jarring, but still...

WickedHate posted:

I'm guessing something called "complete" probably shouldn't be in eleven pieces.

WickedHate posted:

I'm guessing something called "complete" probably shouldn't be in eleven pieces.

bobkatt013 posted:

What do you mean? It is complete in that it has every issue of the clone saga. It is just so massive that it needs 11 volumes.

bobkatt013 posted:

Here is an easy way to get the whole thing. Just start from here and get all 11 volumes!
http://www.amazon.com/Spider-Man-Co...+saga+spiderman

WickedHate posted:

It just seems silly to me. "Yeah, I've got The Complete X! No, not the complete Complete X, only the first volume of it."

"Complete" omnibusses like the X-Statix one are probably a bitch to actually produce, though, and I get and understand that. I just think calling something complete when it isn't is weird.

Or is it Sputnik posted:

Or you could just get the "Clone Saga Mini-series" by esteemed messrs. DeFalco and Mackie, "Clone Saga how it was meant to be told" according to DeFalco. Apparently Mackie didn't read that memo either, because it was just re-telling the exact same story in six issues instead of 100+. Everything is exactly the same (albeit compressed like whoa) until last two issues where we learn that

- Norman Osborn Green Goblin is actually the stooge of Mystery Villain
- Harry Osborn is the Mystery Villain
- Ben Reilly doesn't die
- baby May lives

the end! Basically DeFalco and Mackie thought for 13 years about what went wrong and then realized "nothing major, really".

The Question IRL posted:

Yeah I imagine there are plenty of Spidey fans who'd want Peter + MJ still married with baby Mayday and Ben Reilly still around. Rocking that Spider-Mullet, using Impact Webbing and Stingers.

CharlestheHammer posted:

The best part of the clone saga was the little family thing they had going on.

Waterhaul posted:

The Question IRL posted:

Yeah seeing Peter and Ben webswigning side by side, in that Mark Bagely artwork is one of the images that just sticks with me as being awesome. Even to this day, seeing two people webswing in one page always makes me smile. Whether it's Spidey and Venom doing it, or Peter and Kaine. I'm looking forward to seeing Spock and Kaine doing it in the upcoming crossover.

bobkatt013 posted:

I am not sure we will get that since Kaine did kill Doc Ock

WickedHate posted:

Art like this is forever etched into my memory as a reminder of that arc.

CharlestheHammer posted:

I would have been totally cool with that ending.

Not perfect (the osborns should have stayed dead) but whatever.

RevKrule posted:

Are we just doing runs here or can we also do EVENTS!!!!! Because holy poo poo are there a lot of really terrible events out there.

redbackground posted:

Nipponophile posted:

How about Chris Claremont's run on Exiles in Vol. 2?

The first series was a mixture of Sliders, Quantum Leap, and Marvel heroes, which meant that anything could and did happen. No such thing as plot armor here. Characters died, worlds were destroyed, poo poo happened. After its cancellation, Claremont took this setting of alternate universes and an entire multiverse of characters and used it to put together his favorite few characters and have them running around on Earth fighting generic bad guys like every other superteam.

RevKrule posted:

Are we just doing runs here or can we also do EVENTS!!!!! Because holy poo poo are there a lot of really terrible events out there.

Choco1980 posted:

Ooh, I've been meaning to write one up too!

Now, I'm hardly the most knowledgeable guy around here on comics, especially since I'm poor, but I like to keep apace of general superhero goings ons. That said, I do tend to try to catch whatever event stories are about, and read them if possible. You could argue that the first real "event" storyline in comics was way back when FDR got the JSA to go fight fifth columnists in South America, but most people accept that "Crisis on Two Earths" was the first modernly recognizable major story, leading eventually to "Crisis on Infinite Earths", when DC wanted to clean house in the biggest way possible. So clearly they're supposed to know a thing or two about how it's done, right?

The problem then ends up being that to the financial side of things, events make big big bucks, so the more of them the better, and they start happening sooner and sooner, and carry less and less weight. But for a while in the past decade, DC had Geoff Johns reinvigorate the Green Lantern franchise, and use it to spearhead Big Events, while still being comprehensible, and give other creators venues for their own ins into the event. First we had the rise of the Sinestro Corps, with the big battle of Green vs Yellow. It was good. Then they broadened it with the full spectrum Color War. Still decent. Then they introduced the zombies of Blackest Night, detailed earlier in the thread, and not terrible at all, and in a few choice spots, really rewarding. These all blended perfectly together into one tapestry of a story, that while feeling rushed, due to jumping from one event to the next with no break, still worked. The end of Blackest Night, however, lead directly into Brightest Day, which is where the whole thing fell off the tracks.

At the end of Blackest Night, this big powerful "White Entity" comes out, and randomly resurrects a handful of established dead characters for its own reasons. The events of Brightest Day pretended to lead into this big plan to save the world. Except the ones chosen to do the work had no idea what they were doing and no plans on how to do it, and pretty obviously neither did Geoff Johns. I think the problem was that Flashpoint, the next big event, which was established as going to be a big "RESET" button on the universe, was set to start pretty much at the same time that this was set to end, and also made by Geoff Johns. Basically that means that Johns didn't have to have an ending, just a stopping point for this story, because it couldn't continue past that point. The directionless nature of the story very painfully bleeds into the context of the event itself. There are literally moments where characters ask each other what they're doing, and realize that they have no idea. It's sloppy and boring to have to have characters ask for their motivation in story, but when they do that and there is no motivation, it just results in some of the worst writing I've seen in comics. Many of the comics would just meander like they were the "B" plot to something more exciting going on in the same issues, when everything else going on was doing the same thing. Don't get me wrong, there were some small bits that I enjoyed (like the JLI subplots, for instance), but other than that, it just ends up coming across as coasting until Flashpoint started. It's like some sort of filler event.

RevKrule posted:

Brightest Day combined with Fear Itself swore me off event comics for good.

Like both of them combined were so bad that even though I love Hickman and I know Infinity will probably be very very good, I will not get the main book. I refuse to willfully purchase something as terrible as either of those events.

WickedHate posted:

I liked the Avengers Academy tie ins of Fear Itself at least, but aside from that I never read any of it.

Gatts posted:

When you say Adam X, do you mean The Xtreme?

EDIT: YOU DO! Hahahah!

Mr. Maltose posted:

poo poo like that was why the X-men tie in was pretty much the only good Fear Itself book.

Or is it Sputnik posted:

Notable for the issues after after Clone Saga up to JMS' run were many concepts that were never again touched upon. Apart from the Nobody Goblin and Venom "killing" the Sinister Six that Gavok went into, here are some things off the top of my head:

- Korean martial artist Meiko Yin/Dragonfly, joins the Hand (ASM #421-423), one mention since
- S.H.O.C., superhero whose powers are killing him (SM #76), never seen again
- Someone at the Bugle looks at a picture of the doctor delivering Peter's baby and says something like "This guy is so mysterious and weird, he gives me the creeps" (ASM #421-423), never mentioned again
- Annie Herd, mercenary/supervillain Aura, paraplegic after Sensational #25, cameo appearance 8 years later
- Greg Herd, mercenary/supervillain Override, transformed to burning skeleton Shadrac (ASM v2 #2), cameo appearance 8 years later
- Spider-Man's new cat (ASM v2 #27), never expanded upon
- The sinister dog owned by Peter's hot neighbor, plot never resolved
- The guy stalking and kidnapping Mary Jane turned out to be "some guy with telepathy, it's not important" after years of buildup (ASM v2 #29), blows up at end of issue?

With a little help from DeFalco, he managed to forget/handwave away all these and more in just four years!

Gavok posted:

There's also the annoying Venom-eats-Carnage story. Venom breaks into the Vault, kills some guards and beats up Carnage. He eats the symbiote to make himself more powerful. On Venom's side, all he does is beat up Spider-Man and not kill him because "Wait, Carnage is trying to fight its way out! I'll be back later!" After that, his supposed power boost is never mentioned again. Cletus Kasady is still alive and when Mackie feels the need to bring him back as Carnage, he has him simply find a new, red symbiote in the Negative Zone.

IT'S LIKE LANDFILL NEVER LEFT!

Everyone ignores that whole mess because Toxin makes more sense if you do.

The issue also had a cliffhanger where Spider-Man's unconscious on a rooftop with Jameson, who's reaching for the mask. Mackie proceeds to forget about this plot thread and towards the end of the run sweeps it under the table by having Jameson shrug and say he didn't look under the mask because of reasons.

Gavok posted:

There's also the annoying Venom-eats-Carnage story. Venom breaks into the Vault, kills some guards and beats up Carnage. He eats the symbiote to make himself more powerful. On Venom's side, all he does is beat up Spider-Man and not kill him because "Wait, Carnage is trying to fight its way out! I'll be back later!" After that, his supposed power boost is never mentioned again. Cletus Kasady is still alive and when Mackie feels the need to bring him back as Carnage, he has him simply find a new, red symbiote in the Negative Zone.

Metal Loaf posted:

The story right after the Sinister Six one was a Carnage story, except it wasn't really, it was just Cletis Kasady running about New York in his underpants covered in red paint brandishing a knife.