|
I would like to like Ennis just because, hey, his politics seem a lot different than mine and it doesn't hurt to read stuff from the other side of the tracks now and then, especially if its well-done (having to come to terms with Ezra Pound and Carl Schmitt helped me out a lot professionally for example) but I can never get over his insistence on rape as funny and in particular the trope of a wimpy male character getting sexually assaulted to show that he isn't tuff enuff to bark with the big dog protagonists or whatever. I remember this really bugging me in the Barracuda arc, along with a strong sense of discomfort with Barracuda himself as "huge sexually insatiable hyper-mammal black guy" racist schtick.
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 21:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 2, 2024 09:53 |
|
|
Let's bring this all back but with Nancy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
edit: wrong thread!
How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Mar 29, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2016 23:35
|
|
|
What's the longest consecutive stretch that Jean Grey has spent alive? She last died in, what, 2005, 2006?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2016 21:33
|
|
|
LGD posted:she was definitely alive from 1963 to 1976, so 13 years is the number to beat baseline Everyone in the Ultimate universe was dead on the inside from 2008 on.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2016 23:51
|
|
|
I parsed that as Marvel Tzimtzum and was stoked for a very Lurianic follow-up to Secret Wars.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2016 00:49
|
|
|
I wasn't impressed with the current run, mostly because I found the art mega off-putting.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2017 01:19
|
|
|
I guess I can see what they're going for-- Spencer's big on amplification, amplification, AMPLIFICATION as his vehicle for making a point in his stories, and sometimes that's fine, and sometimes it's just silly. I think the idea here is, on paper, that to write about how superheroes would respond to a world that seems to be sliding dangerous into fascism, you need to write a story where superheroes are in a world that's slid very rapidl into fascism. And if you want to write about how those tendencies were disturbingly baked into the national fabric from day one, well, fella you better write a Cosmic Cube story. This is of course nonsense but it doesn't automatically guarantee a totally worthless story. This is kind of the logic underwriting his Sam Wilson book too. He's writing stories that aren't uninteresting on paper, but the lengths to which he goes to contort his points into superhero plots and his superhero plots into talking points is occasionally awkward. I think you certainly can tell thoughtful political stories in this medium, but his basic approach has two primary flaws: a) He's fixated on probing just a bit into how these issues would be different in a world of superheroes-- not quite far enough to be meaningful, but far enough to accidentally outline the bathos of seeing Rage the Very Strong 12 Year Old as political agitator. Is he making a point about the real world? Pursuing a sci-fi mental exercise about ethics in a world subtly different than ours? Having wry Gruenwald-style continuity fun ("what if The Bar With No Name was its own country...?"). This tends to be ok in his slighter works, or works where we can more easily distance Spencer's own beliefs from those of his characters. Deadly Foes was fine. The AIM Island stuff in Secret Avegers was fine. Again, he's a good ersatz-Gruenwald. I'm sure if Spencer had created the Serpent Society he'd have done a fine job. b) This method of amplification makes it very easy for Spencer to lapse into making a bunch of trite straw-men. The Americops or Americorp or whatever in his Sam Wilson book gesture at a meaningful point about race and policing but that point is lost when they all look like Penance dressing up as a Tom of Finland character for Halloween. His Maria Hill plotline gestures at the broad outlines of an interesting direction for a Captain America comic based on high-concept spy intrigue, but again, since the writing isn't up to snuff and this kind of story depends on nuance and subtlety it end up being just about a bunch of dumb idiots making ineffectual power plays at the air around them. c) Spencer's own politics seem to make him an uncomfortable choice for this kind of story. If we're reading about nazis in a comic book superhero comic, I presume that we all are in it to see them get beaten up. If we're reading a story about nazis in real life we presumably want the same thing. Spencer's carefully studied and rather poorly timed fence-sitting is certainly.... a reaction to have to real-world current events, and I'm not saying a writer's politics are a guaranteed predictor of how their stories will turn out, but Spencer's recent comics have been unpleasantly timid about characters fighting back against structural and systemic evil. This isn't just an ethical issue, it's a narrative one. I read superhero comics because I want to see people fighting. I want to see Sam Wilson fight MODOK, I want to see him fight Constrictor, and you know what, if the flying man with the telepathic bird is going to run into police brutality, yes, I would like to see him physically pummel and punch that too. Superhero comics' potential as a fantasy of agency and strength isn't just a juvenile power trip-- there's something energizing and liberating about seeing cartoonishly good people beating up the huge, unassailable forces that make our friends and families and neighbors suffer. If there's a gentrifying development company in Ms. Marvel's hometown you're drat right I want her to punch it with her huge fist. If Hitler's clone is wearing a purple KKK mask and making Kirby poses, I absolutely want Benjamin Grimm to turn his adam's apple to apple sauce. That's how the medium works-- that's the beautiful dream of transcending the unhappy world that this stupid wonderful genre is predicated on. You can have Sam Wilson vacilate on how much to put up with police brutality, sure. You can have that for an issue or two, then you have him fly around and fight it with his powerful kicks and his incredible bird. This particular plot of all plots should remind us that, again, the foundational myth of this genre is scrawny Jewish kids making a person strong enough and fast enough and kind enough to fix everyone's problems, and that Captain America was created so that all the kids scared and worried fascism could see Hitler get socked in the jaw by someone handsome and colorful, someone who maybe reminded them of their dad or their big brother or the kind of person they wanted to grow up to be. Like, if Grant Morrison was writing this crossover, the premise might be the same, much of the shuffling the pieces into place might be the same, but I think many of us would go into it confident that by the end, love and fairness would beat hate and cruelty, that it would be corny and abrupt but also make us feel a little bit happier and braver after turning the last page, and that the silliness and the poor timing and the awkward metaphorizing would be probably, maybe, possibly worth it. I'm not at that point with Spencer-- again, I've liked his comics before but I think he lacks the conviction in the fundamental strengths of the genre to pull off something that could go so wrong and be so tacky. I don't want to see some fake Doonesbury poo poo about realpolitik and compromise. I want the Red Skull to get punched in the mush and I want love to win.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2017 16:22
|
|
|
Mr President posted:I loving told you guysv(Specifically the people in the DC thread). It's not that we don't want diversity we just don't want it rammed down our throats just to make headlines or by editors and writers with agendas. poo poo like making Iceman gay or pushing America as "Marvel's first bi-racial lesbian beyonce inspired super hero" (that was a real headline that came out about a character created in like 2010) just pisses people off. But God forbid anyone questions it or be shammed with Jamie Reyes avatars and tags that make me come across as an rear end in a top hat. Sure, "avatars and tags."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 22:05
|
|
|
Maxwell Adams posted:The woman is Idie, she has fire/ice powers and complex feelings about god. I think she's the only character from generation hope who's still around. The dude is Romeo, Iceman's inhuman boyfriend. This is also how we has depicted in the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series from 1994, a few years prior to the Alan Davis picture:  As much as I love Alan Davis, I definitely prefer Gene Ha's design here, from the floating sarcophagal face-mask down to the cute lil' rollerskate hooves.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 22:19
|
|
|
Was Rat Queens on hiatus when Roc Upchurch was arrested/fired or did they have finished issues ready to go?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2017 01:41
|
|
|
I think Champions really needs an art shake-up-- there are things Humberto Ramos can do and there are things Humberto Ramos can't do and draw young people is apparently among the latter. His musculature is... an acquired taste at the best of times but Cyclops and Nova look like they're made out of beef jerky. The fashion in particular just feels like it's definitely the product of a middle-aged guy who hasn't bothered to update his idea of what teenagers wear from whatever Top Cow styleguide they passed out 20 years ago. I work with 18-19 year olds every day and they don't dress like extras in a Len video. Viv especially looks like Kang seized her from a Limited Too in 1998. I mean they fought a guy who was literally going around in an open flame-patterned silk shirt and board-shorts. A nightmare vision of Joe Casey essentially. This is a little thing I guess but I notice when an artist has a good sense of what people wear and why they wear it. I'm not asking for every comic artist to be Tula Lotay but like-- I think one of the reasons Ms. Marvel found such an immediate foothold, especially with young readers, is that Adrian Alphona (and/or G. Willow Wilson? I'm actually curious about the collaboration process here) thought about clothes and made smart decisions about them. Kamala and all of her supporting cast wear stuff that makes sense for them and wouldn't look out of place in a real high-school or college campus. And just like in Runaways you could actually glean a lot of character information out of all of this. The artists in Spider-Man and Nova are a little more functional I guess but I'm generally not rolling my eyes and they don't look blatantly anachronistic.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2017 19:50
|
|
|
rkajdi posted:I dunno, I rather preferred the 80s model, where events involving a character we actually in the main book for that character. Yes, Secret Wars was an exception pushed by about the shittiest guy involved in Marvel at the time but it was the exception rather than the rule at Marvel. I mean, just look at their big books (X-Men). All their events were self-contained between Secret Wars II and Onslaught. Before SW2, there was no non-Mutant crossover that affected the X-Men. You'd agree we had a shared universe in 80s Marvel, right? I'd even take the model where you don't have to worry about a crossover if you don't read the main writer's books, which minimizes the amount of fiat from other writers screwing over main characters from other offices. Inferno, Acts of Vengeance, Secret Wars II (especially!) and to a lesser degree the Mutant Massacre all had a bunch of tie-ins that, whether or not you like them (and I think a bunch of the tertiary Inferno crossovers were pretty good), were inarguably instances of titles getting roped into crossovers that were anything but self-contained. That's not even taking into account quasi-crossovers like the Fall of the Mutants or stuff that ran across Annuals like Atlantis Attacks or Evolutionary War.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2017 03:17
|
|
|
irlZaphod posted:Power Pack was one of the books in the 1980s which was only available through the Direct Market, i.e. you couldn't get it from a newsstand or a non-specialty shop. What was the reasoning here? You'd think the comic book about adolescents and little kids having capers would do well in the kinds ofk pharmacies and grocery stores where children would be hanging out browsing at the spinner rack while their parents shopped. I know most of the comics I bought before 10-or-11 or so in the early/mid 90s were very piecemeal, just whatever covers jumped out at me at Food Lion or had a character inside that I'd seen a neighbor's sick action figure of-- and even though I very very rarely had two consecutive issues of any given titles I was still coming home with an ok amount of comics per month as far as a tiny kid's disposable "mom, dad, gimme" income goes. Why would you want to take Power Pack out of the reach of this market?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2017 17:55
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:Maybe someone had the presence of mind to realize how hosed up the comic was and in how much trouble they'd get if a bible mom accidentally bought it for her kids. I mean I got the Uncanny X-Men issue where Wolverine is crucified on the cover at a Ride-Aid or something just fine. Granted I'm not that familiar with late-period Power Pack but was it really anomalously kid-inappropriate in the age of Carnage and three ongoing Punisher titles*? *which may or may not have also been direct market only I guess-- I don't have any Punisher comics from that period, but I don't know if that's because they weren't on the spinners or if my brothe or I just found him scary. I guess I did get the first issue of Punisher: War Zone at a gas station but that was in one of those sealed multi-comic mystery packs.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2017 19:01
|
|
|
Secret Empire is coming out at an awkward time but the premise is a more or less sound, pulpy premise that plays to a lot of Spencer's strengths even as it courts a lot of his weaknesses. #0 was something that a lot of recent event books haven't been-- fast paced and eventful, with at least one interesting or at least engaging thing happening on pretty much every page. I liked it quite a bit more than I expected to. I don't think Marvel is espousing fascism with this schtick any more than Age of Apocalypse espoused social Darwinism. And I don't think Captain America is going to permanently be a bad guy any more than Cyclops was permanently Mr. Sinister's Fabio-maned sidekick. It's essentially an alternate reality story-- are they marketing it as such? Of course not. But that's what it is. Marvel isn't seriously going to move forward with the long-term line-wide premise that the Axis won World War II. Again, the timing is mega unfortunate, and in terms of handling touchy political issues sensitively Spencer has already blown it not only on Twitter but in his Sam Wilson issues, where the hero's response to systemic white supremacy is to, uh, eventually give up. But he writes good bad-guys, and this story lets him run a little wild with a decent Taskmaster, a lively Eric O'Grady, and a not-bad Baron Zemo, which like, I'm a hopeless case so I'm sold. (it's also already given us some solid tie-ins-- as with Civil War II Al Ewing is making the most of it, and the little Deadpool lead-up issue seemed like it was setting up some pay-off to the two characters' relationship throughout Duggan's run)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 23:56
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:Go on. I think he writes fun villain dialogue-- kind of campy but often sharp and funny. I think he generally knows how to play to his artists' strengths-- see the comment about Larry Lieber below, for example. I think he's good at understanding pacing and how to tailor pace to the single issue. I've read a fair amount of bad Nick Spencer comics but very few uneventful ones, or ones that felt either dragged out or abbreviated. (I recall T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents being good but honestly I might be conflating that with The Order) I guess in a sense I see him as a latter-day Mark Gruenwald. His biggest strength is looking at the basic rules of the superhero-comic universe and finding novel, often quotidian new angles to them. Sinister Foes in particular felt like a neat extension of the Serpent Society stuff in Gruenwald's Cap. He's good with bad guys who are sort of low-level criminals rather than masterminds because the mentality he's most interested in is how the mentality of the "average person" would work in a setting built on different premises than the real world. Spencer and Gruenwald also have an instinct, I think, for giving the reader their money's worth in quantity if not in quality. Say what you will about the Superia Strategem or whatever, stuff happened on every page, even if it was dumb stuff, which is an even more refreshing approach in 2017. I think more things happened in this first issue of Secret Empire than in all of CW II (which is maybe beating a dead horse, but...) He's less strong on complex motivations, and in particular, as Edge & Christian wrote, his actual Steve Rogers is pretty much incoherent, almost as bad as his Sam Wilson in fact-- because he doesn't write him like a person, he writes him like a paragon, but of two wildly different things. And that push and pull doesn't come off as an interesting tension, it just comes off as a narrative sink-hole. And of course-- just like Gruenwald-- the politics of his stories are hosed if you poke at them too hard. That being said, for all the bad Gruenwald stories I've read I never felt like he was wasting my time, right (even Cap-Wolf)? I kind of feel the same way about Spencer. I think much better writers than him have put out much worse Big Event Books than this. I haven't personally paid for a Spencer book since Sinister Foes but if people I know keep buying this and leaving it out, I mean, I'll stand by my assertion that it's at the very least competently put together enough to read for free.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2017 21:01
|
|
|
Roth posted:Honestly, and I know a lot of people here probably snort at this, but I really can't stomach Nazi Cap at all. He was the creation of two Jewish people creating a fictional character who could fight people who hated them, and I find making Cap into a Nazi to just be making GBS threads all over them in a way that I can't tolerate. No, I mean, you have every right to feel viscerally turned-off by all of this. In the same way that the homophobic or transphobic jibes in some Ennis comics have often tainted the well for me. I know he writes good stuff and I even read some of it but there's a part of me that's always like "gently caress this, gently caress him." Of course every reader has the absolute right to draw a line somewhere and say "over this line any enjoyment I might get out of this is compromised by moral revulsion" and again, I get what it's like to have that line be drawn in such a way that online discourse gets sort of hairy. And while for whatever reason I can acclimate myself to the premise of the Secret Empire story, as a queer Jew I do find the comic-shop uniforms and rebranding hopelessly tacky at the very least. hope I didn't come off as implying that people who aren't at all into this event are idiots or over-sensitive. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Apr 21, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2017 21:22
|
|
|
DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I think picking the Secret Empire instead of Hydra would have been perfect, honestly. Hell, the Secret Empire even has its roots in pro-America jingoistic facism, for gently caress's sake. Aren't they a Hydra splinter-group anyway?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 02:17
|
|
|
Maybe it's a temporary tattoo and he only gets to put in on every time he finishes a box of Hydra cereal and fishes it out of the bottom.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 20:27
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:
Presumably it's one of several callbacks between the main title and Thunderbolts to the particular lineup Zemo put together for the Assault on Avengers Mansion story in the 80s. And that was... I want to say also the line-up that formed the backbone of Busiek's original Thunderbolts, minus Goliath and the Beetle. Baron Zemo, Absorbing Man, the aforementioned Blackout, Moonstrone, Screaming Mimi, Goliath, Fixer, Grey Gargoyle, Mister Hyde, the Wrecking Crew, Yellowjacket (the Rita one) and a few others I'm blanking on. Oh, Titania and Whirlwind. I don't think Nitro was involved but who knows, it's been awhile.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2017 16:55
|
|
|
Come to think of it I think there was a bit in the The Oath that implies that there's some fracture point where the "old" Steve Rogers is supplanted by the "new" Steve Rogers and is a seperate guy:quote:See, that’s the other truth. Like I told you before, I’m not the man you think I am. But everthing he ever did, every memory, every moment-- I carry it inside me. This is followed by about a page of Hydra Cap analyzing and giving commentary on Non-Hydra Cap and Tony's relationship in a way that heavily suggests that the actual published adventures of Captain America up to this point are still, in some way, in continuity. Which is a not entirely satisfying continuity bandaid and maybe supports E&C's idea that Nick Spencer might be kind of hazy on the precise mechanics of the story he's telling, because I don't really recall seeing it explained quite that way anywhere else.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2017 21:29
|
|
|
How recent is the 1:1 conflation of Hydra with real-world fascism/nazism? Is it an outgrowth of the movies? Because, like-- I'm reflexively also iffy about the hypothetical scenario in which Magneto is a member of Hydra, but I don't think I feel that, say, the Kingpin, or Mentallo, or Hydra Bob are read as necessarily bound up in a far-right ideology on the basis of their past association with the group. So in a way tying <x> to Hydra and tying <x> to fascism is kind of contingent on equating Hydra with fascism, which as far as I know, is relatively recent? I wonder how this storyline would go down if Hydra was still treated as kind of a campy S.P.E.C.T.R.E. style group instead of a nazi analogue, and if that turn was ultimately an ill-advised creative decision, or whether or not this sort of bifurcation is totally in my head. edit: Like, totally silly thought experiment, but would people feel differently about this event if Steve Rogers was revealed to be a long term sleeper agent for AIM (let's pretend for the sake of this that AIM are still broadly a group of bad guys and not Sunspot's employees)? How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Apr 24, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2017 01:31
|
|
|
SMP posted:Who would ever want to separate HYDRA from Nazis? They're only fun villains because they're Nazis. Anything else and they're just AIM or whatever. I think hypothetically if you seperated out the nazi stuff there's enough mythology that Hickman set up in Secret Warriors to cobble together a fun Illuminati-type group out of the pieces. I don't think the camp elements of it really depend on explicit evocations of fascism either. That is, I think you could do both Kraken and Hydra Bob without fascist imagery and in fact I think the fascist imagery really makes the latter character, in particular, kind of incoherent. I should really reread Secret Warriors because I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about the extent to which all of Hickman's deep-history stuff stands apart from the nazi angle.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2017 01:57
|
|
|
I liked his X-Men and his Iron Man, but no, he wasn't given particularly thoughtful artist match-ups for a lot of his Marvel assignments. I think a big problem of that era-- and maybe I'm being ahistorical, maybe it's been an issue for awhile (and I think it's definitely still an issue)-- was landing writer's on the basis of their indy work on then just not really acknowledging what made that work and their initial Marvel successes compelling. Often, I think, coinciding with being stuck with writing big crossover event books. Nothing in Bendis' ouevre would suggest that House of M would be particularly good. Ditto Fraction and Fear Itself. Similarly Spencer-- who was far from unanimously liked to begin with-- is kind of lapsing into his worst tendencies with Secret Empire and I definitely don't think it'll do anything good for his reputation in the long run. I guess Hickman getting a good reception on Infinity and Secret Wars (I personally didn't love either) was kind of an anomaly but, like, cosmic chicanery on a super-duper macro scale was something that was in his wheelhouse. Maybe a happy coincidence. World War Hulk was also dumb fun but imo Pak is more willing to do solid journeyman stuff and frankly just better at it. Say what you will about Geoff Johns over on the DC side of things but he's another guy who was basically tailor-made to write huge stupid blockbuster crossovers and if nothing else most of his big events over the past 10-15 years wound up being precisely what they set out to be. I'm kind of glad Gillen got in and got out before he was saddled with headlining a summer crossover because I liked his Marvel stuff and those things tend to mark a downturn in enthusiasm. I'm sort of dreading the day Ewing or Soule get one. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Apr 28, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Didn't Soule do Inhumans vs X-Men? Oh yeah. And it was kind of bad--- or at least so forgettable that it's only been, like, a month and I alread forgot about it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2017 17:46
|
|
|
TwoPair posted:It was him and Lemire. I like both of them but Lemire in particular I don't think has turned out very good work at Marvel, period.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2017 18:01
|
|
|
I'd be curious to know how it does in trades. From TNC's twitter at the time it seemed like the first issue drew in a lot of people who knew his other writing, weren't familiar with comics and probably more likely to buy a hundred-odd pages bound at a Barnes & Noble than to seek out a comic book store to visit every month.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2017 07:27
|
|
|
Rhyno posted:The answer is nobody in editorial gives even a single gently caress I feel like there's supposed to have been a time skip but if that's the case it's very poorly conveyed and nobody writing tie-ins seems to have been informed about it. Edit: I also feel like I should cop to being very repentent about my cautious optimism after #0, this is a mess. Edit 2: It's Spencer at his most self-indulgent, and ergo his most sloppy-- a lot of decent character beats that he hopes will cohere into a story. That being said I'm still going to read my friends' copies as long as the vague promise of Taskmaster showing up is dangled in front of me like a worm to a very stupid fish. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 18, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2017 21:33
|
|
|
Say what you will about Spencer but Sorrentino rules and so do the costumes from the Walker run. Sure, Cage looks like a dad, but that was a big part of that series, his dad side contrasting with Iron Fist as bachelor bro.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2017 20:26
|
|
|
Rochallor posted:I don't remember if it was here or on reddit, but someone suggested that it would have been a better idea to have Cap be a secret agent of the actual Secret Empire, like the 70s one where not-Nixon commits suicide. It would remove the Nazi connotations and might actually be all the more sinister because you'd have Captain America embodying a very American flavor of fascism, one that conceivably could have happened if history had gone a little different. I sort of agree, and it would be nice to tie it into the whole bit where Nixon-ish kills himself in front of Cap and disabuses him of some of his idealism, but two problems suggest themselves: a) IIRC, the Secret Empire WAS a branch of Hydra-- so at the heart of it you're still stuck with the same situation, but with slightly better optics. b) I don't know how many people know or care who the Secret Empire is vs. Hydra, which is all over the place because of the movies. c) If Cap running around in Hydra's fascist-inspired clothes was controversial, then Marvel would need to find something other than red KKK robes to make the Secret Empire work. So-- yeah, I think it would have been a better reveal, and better justify why he still seems to hate SOME Hydra guys but not others. It would also resonate nicely with Hickman's stuff in Secret Warriors about Hydra/Shield/etc. being tangled up in an ancient knot of intrigue, if Captain America was TANGENTIALLY Hydra but in the Secret Empire's Americanized gloss. But they'd lose the shock of seeing that hydra green on everybody, which-- I don't know? Would they lose out on selling comics to people curious about a scandalous twist, or would they gain by not having to deal with as many thinkpieces about the admittedly VERY questionable optics of the thing?
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2017 18:32
|
|
|
I like the idea of Taskmaster having different costumes for different situations. If he's mimicking Spider-Man or Daredevil I'd imagine the big cape would get in his way, but at the same time it's such a great visual and he could still, like, Moon Knight it up while wearing it.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2017 19:17
|
|
|
Open Marriage Night posted:Have there been many good stories where the Runaways aren't all together? Victor being related to Ultron got him in better stories more than Molly being a mutant. Edit: oops, I forgot who was in what mid-2000s youth team. Alex Wilder was in the David Walker's recent Power Man & Iron Fist, which was a lot of fun. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 05:43 on May 23, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 23, 2017 05:40
|
|
|
Edge & Christian posted:But that's the opposite of what he's doing, unless in his head it's a sliding scale where Red Skull or Thanos are 300% evil and his scenes are supposed to play out as "Steve's 150% evil... no wait he's only 50% evil... no, he's actually 100% evil" I feel like he's aiming for a narrative about Steve deluding himself into thinking he's good while implicating himself in increasingly grotesque deeds-- ie the cuts back and forth between the Inhuman camp and his euphemistic description of it-- but not really doing a good job of it. It wants to be subtle and over-the-top (Kommandant Hyde really does hammer home the nazi-kitsch elements I was hoping this event would sidestep) at once and just kind of flops around. See also: the scene with Magneto. I get it, I see what he's getting at, but in practice it's like, yeah, I remember that Acts of Vengeance issue too, I still don't know why Magneto isn't throwing him out the window. As far as tie-ins go I did like Secret Warriors a lot this week.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2017 23:45
|
|
|
 Edit: Before anybody gets their hopes up, this is just a cover to a Lee/Ditko reprint.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2017 20:32
|
|
|
The Punisher is repugnant and the idea that he'd flourish under a totalitarian police state is actually kind of sharp, if not at all subtle .
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2017 00:19
|
|
|
Say what you will about Avengers Arena but I'll maintain that Avengers Undercover was not that bad and shows glimmers of the maturation Hopeless showed in Spider-Woman, X-Men and Jean Grey. Then again I acknowledge that I'm a sap for Constrictor and Baron Zemo and Kev Walker.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2017 17:11
|
|
|
SMP posted:Returning to the Punisher chat from a few pages ago: I'm tempted to buy the Punisher MAX series while it's on sale, but I'm worried it's reactionary as gently caress. I don't know a whole lot about Garth Ennis, so I don't know if that's his take on Punisher or not. Really not into a vigilante just killing minorities all the time or whatever. It's reactionary as gently caress. I definitely don't scoff at people who can appreciate it but if you're even slightly squeamish about representation (and I am extremely, probably overly sensitive about it) I think you can happily spend your life reading excellent comics that aren't Punisher MAX. There are interesting bits but imo they don't make up for the embarrassment that is Ennis writing a comedy black man.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2017 19:36
|
|
|
SMP posted:Ah fair enough. I attempted reading Born ages ago, and I don't remember much besides the Punisher killing a rapist (cool) and then trying to prolong his time in Vietnam to keep killing people (not cool). Born is kind of an interesting case because I think it's much more strongly articulated than in the main series that Ennis reads the Punisher as a totally lost cause as a human being. This gets muddied in the main series because to work as a serial protagonist he needs to be doing stuff, and to be even remotely palatable to a comics audience he needs to be doing stuff to people that are worse than him. So he hunts down slavers, sex traffickers, etc., so far so good. My problem is that Ennis, to differentiate his bad guys from a faceless sea of evil (and too often, non-white) faces, he tends to give them outsized, sort of Grand Guignol traits that sometimes work, sometimes don't. Barracuda is a "loving" homage to blaxploitation masculinity that plays into some seriously hosed up stereotypes, Fifty and the Russian are blatantly transphobic, etc.. It's fundamentally a formal strategy that, as much as Ennis at his best pushes back on the idea that the Punisher is sympathetic or even comprehendible, sets him, a physically fit white man, as the norm juxtaposed with a series of freakish, exaggerated "others."
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2017 19:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 2, 2024 09:53 |
|
|
SMP posted:Ah well that sucks. I was hoping to find a good non-reactionary Punisher story (lol) to sell me on the character before the Netflix series drops. I think Matt Fraction's run is campy fun, and it consciously dials back on some elements of his character to make him fit more comfortably in the broader MCU. Ditto Rick Remender's stuff a few years later. In general I think the Punisher works better as a supporting character in other titles than a character on his own. He's very compelling in Frank Miller's Daredevil-- without those appearances I think he'd probably be a forgotten C-list Spider-Man bad guy.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2017 20:00
|
|