Shockwave wrote:What a clusterfuck. If they're really just going to cross everything over like that why not just put out one 60 page comic per month called "Marvel 616" or whatever. Jesus.
Shockwave
-Comics are stupid.
Seriously! Not even a month, weekly. This is the problem of a shared universe, the temptation to overuse it becomes an unchecked power not wielded with great responsibility. It is both a boon and a burden. As many issues as cross over with Marvel though, it'd be impossible even weekly.
They should at least include the corresponding issues digitally with any TPB or hardcover purchases, a unique code to access those crucial issues on their website. $56 for the Dark Avengers vol 1 TPBs and you still end up with no ending at all, $50 for the hardcover.
O6 wrote:That'd be a little crappier, to lump it all together that much, because the different superheroes are really intended to have entirely different tones and settings. (Everybody loves Cosmic Marvel but you don't need to see Hawkeye fighting in space.) I've always said it should be split up amongst some pretty obvious central themes: technology and/or politics (Iron Man, SHIELD), mythology and demigods (Thor, Beta Ray Bill, etc.), Cosmic Marvel bullshit (Thanos, Galactus, etc.--this could easily crossover with the Thor stuff though) and "grounded" superheroes (Spiderman, Venom, etc.). You might even be able to just spin off Spidey into his own book (I'd totally buy Spiderman Monthly, with stories about him, Scarlet Spider, Venom, Carnage, etc.) and let that ride.
Not a bad idea, but you'd just end up back in the same hot water eventually. Shit, you have Spider-man and Venom as "grounded" superheroes, yet Venom is an interdimensional alien symbiote! (Even Spidey's very first mission in his own title involved hitching a ride on a jet plane to save a falling space capsule, and he IS one of the more grounded characters.)
I guess your idea is sort of the intention of Marvel Ultimates, and we all know how that turned out.
Dom wrote:Silver Age writing sucks. And, that is why I could not get through the retro story in "What if...?" #200. It had a pretty clear idea, specifically that if somebody interferes in a situation, they are taking some ownership of the problem. That is a big part of the Watchers to begin with, and it fit thematically with the main story, where the Watcyher clearly did nothing, and may end up getting killed by an ever expanding disaster.
But, stylistically, the Silver Age is damned near unreadable. (I cannot even stomach the Lee/Liebler "Spider-Man" newspaper strips reprinted in CSN every week.
Expand upon this bold claim or be painted with the "slobbering fanboy rage" brush.
The 80s were a time of transition. There were ambitious ideas and some good execution. But, much of the industry was struggling to get away from Silver Age habits.
[See previous paragraph - Ed.]
Again, that's thin. The idea that it has to be one OR the other is ludicrous, a good story arc doesn't negate an issue having its own beginning, middle, and end.
Each issue of "Dark Avengers" ended on a natural break or legitimate cliff-hanger.
A break or cliffhanger does not a story make. Let's put this to the test though...
Dark Avengers #1: Starts with Morgana Le Fay in the past looking for Doom's activities, spies on him in the Cabal, then we jump to the public appearance of the Dark Avengers, then we flashback to the gathering of the team members. Followed by Doom getting dropped off by Thunderbolts in the wreckage of his home country and being attacked by Morgana's magic, the cliffhanger. Ends with a follow-up back at the public appearance. I didn't realize at the time how much of that story laid on the shoulders of Secret Invasion: Dark Reign, the whole Cabal angle Morgana is looking at. The story is basically that Morgana is following Doom then attacks him, while the Dark Avengers come together and make a press event.
Dark Avengers #2: Starts with Morgana Le Fey stalking Doom as a child while he sleeps, then changes her mind striking at him at this point in his life. Cut to Norman making a speech to HAMMER, while Doom in present day is under attack from Morgana's monster legion, the Thunderbolts get the word out. Intercutting scenes of the Dark Avengers getting to know each other with the magic battle in Latveria. Norman finally gets word and because of his Cabal ties he has to act, if you missed "Dark Reign" you're out of luck on that info though. The DAs finally show up and a lite battle followed by Sentry ripping Morgana's head off only to have worse returned upon him from Morgana's time-traveling skills. Ends on Venom being overwhelmed and turning back into a ravenous monster. Story? Beginning, middle, end? It's a cliffhanger, yes, but that's it.
Dark Avengers #3: Starts with "3 days ago" flashback to Norman talking to Bob, the unstable superhero, giving him a psycho pep talk about being more, better, one's own self. This is like half the issue, and ends on Morgana, in the past, watching this through her cauldron to discover the secrets of her current enemies, "Doom's protectors". Cut to "now" and it's a battle that once again has Morgana defeated only to return again, then Norman gets SHIELD intel on Morgana and takes Doom back in time to confront her at the source, cliffhanger. Story?
Dark Avengers #4: Starts with more "now" battle of the Dark Avengers getting the shit kicked out of them without their leader. Cut to 1300 years ago, Morgana and Doom & Norman talking magic strategies only for Doom to get the upper hand while Norman gets confused about the time travel element, Morgana being sent back a million years to survive against dinosaurs. Battle over, the Sentry seems to be dead, Doom rebuilds his castle with magic and the cube. On the ride home, they bicker and talk, the Sentry appears in a flash of light in front of them, Norman realizes Bob is more powerful than expected. Story actually gets somewhere FINALLY, this issue doesn't really have a beginning, but it has the tail of a middle and end.
Dark Avengers #5: Norman has a serious press interview, intercut with dealing with The Sentry's return and the emotionally unstable Bob. The team bickers and shows weaknesses at being a motley mess of a group of cutthroats and liars and not-enoughs. Norman is adept at manipulating the press and twisting the truth to suit him, natural politician. Moonstone (aka fake Ms. Marvel) screws Marvel Boy. Cut to Golden Apple comics here in LA and an attack by Atlantean terrorists. Cut back to Marvel Boy & Moonstone in bed, he's just lost his cherry and she casually tells Marvel Boy that these "Avengers" are psychos, criminals, and murderers. Norman's interview is cut short by coverage of the attack on LA. Story is non-existent, basically just more atmosphere setup, then the beginning of the next story.
Dark Avengers #6: Namor is summoned to the Cabal, the first real appearance of such in the series (Morgana's cauldron notwithstanding), Norman makes demands of Namor to help deal with the Atlantean terrorist attack, Namor doesn't like Normie's plan and says no, Norman loses his cool, the party breaks up. The team sits around asking where Marvel Boy is, Norman storms in and yells, Victoria tells him he's overextending himself and he tries to listen, sends Sentry to the terrorists' underwater base and destroy them all except one, the example, Bob recoils and Norman calls upon "the Void", Bob's dark inner voice that he sees as another person to do the job. They spend 4 pages showing Bob fly to LA and the base beyond, 2 page ad spread, and then a meager 1 page on Sentry's attack on the Atlantean terrorists. Norman ensures the captured terrorist is shown to the news taken away by the noble Avengers and HAMMER who will be given "due process", and what that entails is him getting fed to Venom. Closes with Norman learning Marvel Boy has left without notice, and he loses his control, goes downstairs to the armor vault, and starts hearing a green voice. Story is mostly the ending again, almost no middle to this issue, and more atmosphere for the overall tone.
That's half a year's issues and of them there's only 1 total story, 1 ongoing story that's still fleshing itself out, and a barely-anything story. And it takes place in the span of maybe a week and a half.
So does Norman not know this, in which case he's incompetent; or does he not care, in which case he's incompetent?
At that point, Osborn was selecting for people who could be controlled, because he knew he was losing control.
So, then he's incompetent, because at this point he's blundered controlling everybody on his team except Victoria Hand who is just there to serve. So he's the master of control in the first issues except he's a complete failure at control in those same issues (except controlling the public image of him and his crew, which is what eventually will lead to his downfall in the pages of NOT Dark Avengers).
Where are you getting "months before the Siege"? Those last few issues of Dark Avengers take place over the course of a few days. And, yes, they all related to "the Siege", so the banner-branding is legitimate.
So the Siege has all the planning, all the fallout from the little fat Asgardian, all the machinations, all the building up to it, and then the Siege itself including the gathering of forces and public opinion against Norman's dark Avengers, all that happens in matter of days??? That's not how it's presented in any of the Siege stories I saw, especially the Loki issue which seems like this is quite stretched out.
What "scam"? "Dark Avengers" and "Siege" are clearly related. That "the Siege" banner on the relevant issues should be a tip-off for readers that they might want to check-out that book called "the Siege". And, I am 90% sure that the banner shows up on the relevant compilation.
Oh, you mean like the "Dark Reign" banner on Dark Avengers issues 1 through 8, including 7 and 8 which are also under the "X-men: Utopia" banner as well, gotta read those too? And the TPBs don't have "Dark Reign" or "Siege" banners, although vol 3 is TITLED "Siege" (vol 1 is titled "Assemble" and vol 2 is "Molecule Man"
), while the hardcover collection of 1-16 has no banner at all. The scam is being sold a series of books and then having partial stories told in them so as to sell crossover books under the same event banner, there's dozens of them and some don't tie in for crap while others are so essential to the main line's story that the series becomes incomprehensible without them.
You are flat out refusing to read "the Siege" because.....it was sold separately. You are skipping chapters of the story and then complaining that the story is incomplete.
Would it really make that much of a difference if Marvel had published "the Siege" and numbered it as part of "Dark Avengers"? Because, they easily could have. And, it would have worked just as well as a story. And, the series would have been fort-nightly for a few months, and then people would complain about having to buy more comics or something.
I came to read Dark Avengers, not to read something else. And even when I put in as much effort as I could given the circumstances, it still came up way short. And then I have all these Siege one-shots that don't help at all.
It could have been easy and yet they didn't, they spent 4 issues telling the story of how Norman's dark Avengers fought Morgana Le Fay for nebulous reasons that ended in a monster cheat, but couldn't be bothered to pad out the interesting story of Norman Osborn tricking the world into backing the wrong things for what could be the right reasons. Basically, by your logic, Dark Avengers and The Siege together entail about 2 and a half weeks, and it took a year and a half to tell the story of that in-universe fortnight, giving almost no actual time to show the Dark Avengers in any real success.
Them's the breaks of you are reading comics. But, if there is going to be a big event, it makes sense to have other guys showing up on page. And, "Dark Avengers" was the core title to begin with. If you were reading it, it would not be unreasonable for you to read "the Siege" because the two books are directly related.
You don't get to complain about the dying comics medium anymore with that attitude. And "directly related" seems to be a one-way street, there are 9 "Siege" banner-wearing titles of Dark Avengers including the Annual, and
only 1 of them actually has anything to do with the Siege, and that issue is only the aftermath of the destruction of the titular team in the shadow of the siege of Asgard. That's not related, that's a ripoff.
The point of my example is that you skipped several chapters of a story despite knowing exactly where to go and find them. The comics says "go read the Siege before you read issue 16". I pointed the same thing out. And, you decided not to read "the Siege".
Yeah, I got that, only it's not apt, and where exactly can I go get them right now? The comic says "go read Siege #4 before you read issue 16", and where am I supposed to get Siege #4 right now? Also, why is it that Siege #4 is the only pertinent issue here? Where we leave things in issue #15 is far away from where we pick them up in issue #16, they're barely connected at all beyond series title and character names. Yet somehow this big event only needs 1 issue to express all the connection? Unlikely. Fuck, I've read like 6 earlier Siege books already and it's barely connected anything at all, just Taskmaster's appearance in the Cabal is all I can think of that crossed into Dark Avengers whatsoever. I just read the first sentence in the wiki entry for Siege #4, and already it's clear that there's more to have to read than just that, gleaned from one sentence!
I dunno. It is a good figure (albeit with slighty stubby arms) either way.
Iron Monger's arms can be stubby, it's not the same kind of suit as Iron Man. BTW, I think they might have used the same CAD files for a starting template on him, that would explain the similarities, but they're not taken up by stereolithography or anything like that, there are clearance and assembly changes which wouldn't allow for that. The arms don't look stubby in pictures to me though, they go just past the crotch, that's about right.
Shock wrote:Them's shouldn't be the breaks though. That's bullshit. If I'm reading a title I should be able to read that title and get the full damned story. Period. No other medium does this, but for some reason this thing of "start a story in one title, continue in another, finish in yet another..." model is not only tolerated but expected by comic readers.
Bingo!
EDIT: The other thing I found annoying about reading "event books" was that literally every damned title on the shelf at the time from either of the big two had the damned banner on it. If you just walk in like I did and just wanted to read the event by itself and not the literally entire damned DC or Marvel universe it's almost nigh impossible to tell what's required or relevant to the story and what's not. So it's not "reasonable" to automatically expect readers to pick up one book just because the banner is on another, especially when said banner is on everything they put out, related or not. The current business model only caters to hardcore comic readers and is totally insular to that fandom. There's absolutely no way a casual reader could come into this with any sort of ease short of being a millionaire capable of affording every damned book per month.
No shit, look at my example yet again for Siege:
That's 3 setup titles, 7 titles the first true month, 8 titles the second month, 10 titles the third month, 9 titles the fourth month, AND that list doesn't show everything including about half a dozen Siege one-shots which only tangentially tie into the series, OR the fcbd story that ties into the ending, there's a total of 43 different issues across 4 and a half months under the Siege banner, 2 of those are free comics, so that's about $168 before tax to try to catch 'em all. And having read a few issues, I guaran-fucking-tee you that they're not all necessary to the series, nor are they all necessary to Dark Avengers, nor is Dark Avengers terribly necessary to them!
The business model is two-fold, to cater to hardcore fanboy readers who will follow anywhere, and to try to sucker a few bucks out of newcomers who don't understand just what a giant ripoff events truly are before driving them away with those same shenanigans. And the irony is the industry has it ass-backwards, they think the events are meant to bring newcomers in!
Or, you know what? Now that I'm thinking about this, I actually think this kind of shit is worse than that. The industry is literally canabalizing itself. The big two are so desperate to keep sales up that they have to keep crossing stories throughout all of their titles in order to get fans of one series to keep buying the comics of other series. But the problem is that only hardcore comic fans are going to be willing to stick with this. No one like myself is going to buy in for 20 titles a month just to ensure that we get "the full story". And really, what a low standard to have for one's entertainment. I mean really, I shouldn't have to see something or someone show up in a story and just "assume some stuff happened elsewhere". If it happened and is getting referrenced is important enough to the story in the book I'm reading, SHOW IT IN THE DAMNED BOOK I'M READING!!! This isn't fucking rocket surgery.
Right on the nose. Dom derides them, but silver age comics are fun to pick up and read, there's one-and-done books and there's continuing tales, but they at least treat the reader with enough respect to give them a clear SOMETHING for their time and money. Even the '80s titles from my youth where DC went with longer-format stories across multiple issues had editor notes and real stories within each issue, they kept you coming back not by jerking you around but by giving you a quality experience each time.
I actually also think that having too many writers is part of the problem. No one stays with one book for any length of time anymore. And as soon as one writer finishes, another comes along and undoes everything they did. Too many cooks in the kitchen and some of them should just get the hell out.
The problem is that the big boys in the industry see their universes and the characters as "too important, too valuable", so they expand and expand and expand, they give every character his own title and then they need more writers, then the writers want to create something else and maybe they get to but it gets yanked away from them and the few loyal building readers because it's not selling the way the AAA titles are, and then you get so many tangents and story threads running hither and yon that they get so tangled that the whole universe has to be rebooted, but because people were buying individual titles they need to reboot with even MORE titles, and on and on, down the drain the industry goes. Bottom line: too much money has created too much demand, too much speculation, and too much separation between strong editorial control and the books themselves; what matters now should be the comics themselves, but instead it's become about "the brand".
Sparky wrote:On another hand, I do think there are some nice touches to be had with this kind of storytelling. During the "Saga of the Alien Costume" storyline of ASM for example, shortly after Peter visits Reed Richards to study the suit and turns it over to them, there is a scene where it starts to snow. Peter wonders why being the middle of July, and there is an editor note that says to read an issue of Thor if you want to find out. Personally, I think that's a nice world building thing for events to carry over between titles like that.
Back when editors cared about the audience, back when crossing over in a big deal story was meant to enhance it rather than force it.
As an aside to all of this, I just ordered the hardcover of All-Star Superman, I enjoyed the movie enough and heard good recommendations for it that at $21 delivered on Friday to my doorstep, I figured what the hell. I also gave my mom IDW/DC's Star Trek/Legion of Super Heroes crossover hardcover for mother's day, she's enjoying it so far.
