Comics are Awesome III

[andersonh1]

I tend to agree about the "emotional reservoir" idea, which still doesn't make a lot of sense. Other than that, I don't have a lot of complaints.

[andersonh1]

I seriously considered picking up Darth Vader #1 and 2 off the shelf this week. The art looks good and the story of Vader in disgrace after the destruction of the first Death Star seems interesting. But it would have cost me $9 for two comic books, and it just isn't worth it.

Green Lantern #40
Given the hints we’ve been given in interviews (“the ring’s no longer the thing”) and the ending of the last issue, I thought this was where the story was heading. Hal has decided that the way to restore the good name of the Corps is to become public enemy #1 and make himself the scapegoat. He lets Kilowog in on the plan, and possibly Mogo as well, given how Mogo reacts at the end of the issue. Hal escapes using the gauntlet of Krona, leaving his ring behind and heading for who knows where, while the Guardians contemplate some coming disaster for the universe (again) and plan to set something in motion. We don’t know what.

This isn’t a very meaty issue, story-wise, with a lot of it taken up by the fight between Hal and Kilowog. It does end on a fairly big cliffhanger, presumably so readers won’t lose interest during the two month break for Convergence. For long time readers like me, it’s a little wearisome to see Hal Jordan go rogue once again, but I’m certainly willing to see how things play out. Still, you don’t really have to be a long-time reader. Hal has already spent nearly two out of the last four years either expelled from the Corps and using the ring that Sinestro manufactured for him, or "dead" while Simon Baz had his story told, so it’s a little quick to go back to a similar status quo yet again. Hopefully the resulting story justifies it.


edit: Interview with Vendetti about GL going forward: http://www.newsarama.com/23725-green-la ... -june.html

When I was brought on to write Green Lantern, it was with the idea that the books would be very linked and there would be a very tight continuity between them. And the annuals would be capstones on events, where all the characters from all the books would have roles to play.

The new direction coming out of Convergence is going to be for these books to be much more self-contained.

Hopefully, it's going to be the best of both worlds. If you're reading all three, you pick up on these threads and see how they're tied together, but if you read them individually, they stand completely alone in that regard. It's something we worked really hard on.

But yeah, Cullen and I are working with each other, and we do know where we're going with our respective titles.

And it is all building on stuff that has come before, so if you're been a reader, you'll pick up on a lot of those threads that go back years. But it's also going to be very new and very self-contained so that new readers can pick it up and immediately come into it.

That's kind of what I mean about this new direction for Hal. It's something that was going to be the endpoint of this first long-form story arc, of him being a leader. And now he's going off on a new long-form story arc. And it just happened to fall around the same time that these breaks were going to be happening, with a new direction in June. So it all ended up being pretty fortuitous, in the way it came together.

[Dominic]

-continued from the "Drift: Empire of Stone" thread....


Shockwave made a comment to the effect of "I go to the comic shop for TF and He-Man books".

I can partly see that. I used to do that myself. In fact, it was either TF or "GI Joe" that got me in to comics in the first place. TF came "first", but I read Joe more consistently as I got more in to comics. (Never even saw "Masters of the Universe" comics, which was consistent with my inability to find the figures I wanted, which has continued to this day.)

But, after discovering the comic racks (and later stores), I got other comics. In fact, there were times when I skipped TF or Joe in favour of other comics. I might have been a little bummed out by the lack of toys for my favourite comics. But, the comics were good. I only discovered Furman's late run on the US book because I was in the comic shop to begin with, and a friend managed to convince me to give it a shot. But, I got back in because it was good, not because it was TF.

[Shockwave]

Part of that for me is an indifference to the medium in general. Given a choice between a TF comic or a TF tv show, TV will win everytime. I'm just more a fan of TV and movies than comics. So for me to actually spend money on comics, it has to be something that already has my interest enough to actually spend money on it. And TF as a franchise and concept that consistently does that for me. Most comic characters don't. And it's even less incentive with the way the industry is run now. DC and Marvel reboot or have "Everything is going to change" events that will just be undone a year later. For someone like myself who has only a passing lackluster interest to begin with, that creates even less reason to spend money on books when I could easily spend that money on other things that I would likely get more enjoyment from. Like dvds or toys.

[Dominic]

Even just limiting it to TF though, I would rather get something good. Outside of the mid-run of the original Marvel series, the comics tend to be better. (And, even then, I am not counting the UK comics, as I did not even know those existed until '90 or so. After that, it would be the better part of a decade before I could get my hands on actual UK comics beyond "Man of Iron".)

Gave up on TV about 15 years ago. Watched ridiculous amounts of it as a kid. In high school, I transitioned more to VHS (remember those?) and got slower about "replacing" shows that were cancelled, moved to other times or just went bad. Aside from "Raw" and "Impact" in 2011 (when those shows almost qualified as homework), "Deep Space 9" was the last show I made a point of watching. (I think that went off the air in 2000. Maybe '99?) Always meant to buy DVDs of "the Sopranos". Never got around to it.

I like movies well enough. But, I am not so much a fan of Bayformers.

Even if I watched more TV, not sure that the TF shows would be worth it when the time and money (think boxed sets) compared to other stuff. Comics seems to be where TF is at its best.

[andersonh1]

Gave up on TV about 15 years ago. Watched ridiculous amounts of it as a kid. In high school, I transitioned more to VHS (remember those?) and got slower about "replacing" shows that were cancelled, moved to other times or just went bad. Aside from "Raw" and "Impact" in 2011 (when those shows almost qualified as homework), "Deep Space 9" was the last show I made a point of watching. (I think that went off the air in 2000. Maybe '99?) Always meant to buy DVDs of "the Sopranos". Never got around to it.

Sounds like me. I'm currently watching Flash and Arrow on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but before that the last show I actually took the time to watch as it aired was Enterprise, so it had been about ten years for me. I tend to buy DVD sets of shows I enjoy and watch on my own schedule, or else not at all, and even then about the only current stuff I keep up with are Doctor Who and Transformers. Most of what I enjoy are older shows that I haven't seen in years but would enjoy watching again.

Even with Flash and Arrow, it's tempting to just wait for the inevitable DVD sets. The commercials drive me crazy and I had forgotten how much I disliked having that 8-9:00 hour monopolized by a show. I don't really mind when there's a month break between new episodes!

[JediTricks]

Comic book live-action shows recently, currently, or about to be on tv:

Agent Carter
Agents of SHIELD
AKA Jessica Jones
Arrow
Constantine
Daredevil
Gotham
Lucifer
Powers
Preacher
Supergirl
The Flash
The Walking Dead
Untitled DC Superhero Team Up (Captain Atom, Firestorm, and Captain Cold confirmed)
iZombie

and there are more that are aiming beyond this fall, so I didn't mention, but X-men, Young Justice, Riverdale, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, Static Shock, Krypton, Teen Titans, and more.

[andersonh1]

Between the movies and television, I'm wondering when super-hero burnout will occur among the viewing public. There's a glut of shows coming out. If nothing else, there's some diversity of content. There are a couple of things there that I'm interested in, but I'm going back to watching later via DVD or Hulu or something.

[andersonh1]

Dan Didio and Jim Lee dig a hole and instead of stopping while they're ahead, they just keep on digging.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... -dc-comics

It was really weird when we launched the New 52 -- there were so many fans focused on, "What happened between the five years, when this character showed up, and this character" -- it almost overshadowed what the original intent of it was, which was basically to put a fresh face on the universe, boldly go forward, tell new stories.

I'll just use one example -- there was a tweet I saw, someone complaining about "Throne of Atlantis," the DVD adaptation of the comic book. The complaint was, "Superman and Wonder Woman don't breathe underwater. You failed." Maybe the continuity proves that right, I don't know -- I'm pretty sure I've put Superman under water, and he was fine, and he's been to outer space, same with Wonder Woman -- when those things start overshadowing the story, and the emotional beats, I think there's something wrong with what's going on in the marketplace. That's my perspective.

There are so many of these series right now that are coming out that I feel was the original intent of the New 52. It's a lot of that openness and freedom and storytelling that we originally planned. But because when we launched, it was so pressed up against this hard-driving continuity for so long, people had a hard time recalibrating and rethinking how to approach our characters. So they started to fall back into old habits, and looking in the past, of where they were going to get their ideas from. Now I can tell you that we've changed it. We're actually looking to the future for where our ideas are. It's not about re-telling an old story with an old version of a character, or picking my favorite Superboy from 1965, and giving it a new light. It's more about figuring out who we are today, and using these characters to tell the story of today's society.

Our comics set the tone. They don't attract the same size audience that the shows or movies do, everybody's pretty much aware of that, but what we do is inspire the people who create those movies and TV shows, to look at what we have, and use the material that we create to help fill their stories, and fill their tales. For us, I think that's a great thing. We always constantly have to push to be the leaders in what we do. We can't follow the other media. We have to be the ones that everybody else is using as an example, in the creation of things that are actually derivative of material that was created in comics over the years.

When we launched the New 52, we knew a percentage of the line would fail. Or at least be cancelled. There's a natural progression about how we launch a book, how it sells over a period of time, and ultimately, how long it stays before it has to be replaced with another series.

I don't think either of these guys are very happy with the fact that their pet project, the New 52, is officially a failure. They sure take a lot of potshots at the readers and a few at the writers, but they think they got everything right.

[Sparky Prime]

It was really weird when we launched the New 52 -- there were so many fans focused on, "What happened between the five years, when this character showed up, and this character" -- it almost overshadowed what the original intent of it was, which was basically to put a fresh face on the universe, boldly go forward, tell new stories.

Wait, what? Is he really trying to say it's the fans focusing on problems in the stories that overshadowed their ability to tell new stories? When the New 52 launched, DC couldn't seem to make up their mind what they wanted to do. When they where going back and changing the dialog in the trades because they changed their mind what they wanted to do with the story in the middle of the run, that's pretty bad on their part. I don't see how he can claim the New 52 had "super-internal consistency" when we all saw how turbulent things were. They couldn't seem to stay consistent in many of the stories and so many creators left titles out of frustration with the editorial interference. Yet Lee doesn't mention any of that here. No, apparently it's the fans fault for focusing on problems in the story and wondering what happened to their favorite characters.

This is an attempt to refocus the line, focus on story, focus on producing great stories that become canon, and letting the creators have some freedom to tell those stories, without necessarily being confined by the restriction of "continuity."

I'll just use one example -- there was a tweet I saw, someone complaining about "Throne of Atlantis," the DVD adaptation of the comic book. The complaint was, "Superman and Wonder Woman don't breathe underwater. You failed." Maybe the continuity proves that right, I don't know -- I'm pretty sure I've put Superman under water, and he was fine, and he's been to outer space, same with Wonder Woman -- when those things start overshadowing the story, and the emotional beats, I think there's something wrong with what's going on in the marketplace. That's my perspective.

I don't think canon and continuity mean what Lee seems to think they mean here... I can understand the desire to open things up so as not to be restricted by continuity, but at the same time, I think he's underestimating how important continuity is. Clearly it is to the fans he's so quick to fault for focusing on it. It's not the marketplace that's the problem.

Our comics set the tone. They don't attract the same size audience that the shows or movies do, everybody's pretty much aware of that, but what we do is inspire the people who create those movies and TV shows, to look at what we have, and use the material that we create to help fill their stories, and fill their tales. For us, I think that's a great thing. We always constantly have to push to be the leaders in what we do. We can't follow the other media. We have to be the ones that everybody else is using as an example, in the creation of things that are actually derivative of material that was created in comics over the years.

So how does DiDio explain when they tweak the comics to reflect things we see in the other media? Like something I noticed in a recent Green Lantern issue, the Guardians citadel chamber was based on how it appeared in the film rather than previous appearances in the comics.