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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132303
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| Posted: 09 April 2024 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | 1
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I can understand indifference toward some characters, as there are so many - even in live action - now. What I don't get is the hatred that's been spewed toward a few. ••• You know how extreme religious fundamentalist want to eradicate concepts of which they don’t approve? Not enough that they don’t want anything to do with those concepts. They want them denied to EVERYONE. Many comic fans are like that. They are not prepared to simply ignore projects they don’t like. They are INSULTED by them. They want any choice by others taken away. (I experienced this first hand when working on SPIDER-WOMAN. Many Spider-Girl fans actively campaigned to get the other book cancelled. They didn’t want potential readers to have a choice—even if that might mean buying BOTH!)
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4530
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| Posted: 09 April 2024 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 2
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There are things in comics I'm happy to forget I ever saw. I think if I make a point about them it's more like why this didn't work or undermines the premise, or else doesn't go anywhere sustainable... of which 'culling' does seem to be one... Mr. Terrific is the first superhero death I remember and they brought that guy back or the name anyway. It usually just adds more layers of confusion really because they are going to come back one way or another... even the Mar-Vell Captain Marvel was in many comics haunting the living like Dark Phoenix for awhile. In a way they simply can't die, none of them, new stories can be done from when they were alive if nothing else.
I have all the Spider-Woman comics #1-18, and Spider-Girl from #0 to 32. One was in the regular Marvel continuity and the other part of the M2 future. I haven't thought of them in competition. Although... early on both had something more like the original Spider-Man costume. I could see that might have confused somebody for a little while, but the logos were very different.
Having gone from reader into fan is sort of like becoming a wine snob/connoisseur and I think many get poisoned somehow; the optimism and fun has turned sour for them? They want from commercial comics something they could better get from text literature or undergrounds and have no patience with them being and staying what they always have been, which used to be a mass medium. I read some fanzine reviews of Ditko's Machine Man and Bill Mantlo's Micronauts being worthless or two-dimensional, even a personal offense... but at the age I was when those came out they are loaded with charms, ideas (which I hadn't been exposed to a hundred times like an older jaded reader), and plain old fun. They were absorbing enough even just at a single issue level. I got my 35-40 cents worth, I might even say more, and became a regular buyer of the line before too long, they came out on a schedule which is not really something 'great Art' happens at. To the 'true believers' of the MMMS and the '60s comics they weren't fit to line a rat's cage next to the lasting and historic greatness of the past and anyone who said otherwise was a whole string of Harlan Ellison put-downs about mouth breathing and knuckle dragging. Fandom turned in upon itself, far from the fellow enthusiast sharing enjoyment with the like-minded.
I was poisoned myself for awhile, didn't buy anything Marvel or DC for a couple of decades. I'm glad that passed for me and I could enjoy many comics I'd missed as well as pursuing the '70s-early '80s comics with their first magic I had found long ago. It's the more adult superhero comics I tend to dislike. It just seems inappropriately bridging the underground comix and attempts at literature with something that is a usually pretty awkward fit... people with powers, costumes and codenames... especially if seasoned with serious cynicism and anger. It's almost like they are mad at the form itself... wanting it to be something it's not and to the flames for everything less.
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Brian Rhodes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3308
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| Posted: 09 April 2024 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | 3
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It's almost like they are mad at the form itself...
In a recent Facebook debate I regret having read, discussing whether Batman should or should not kill (fresh from a blurb from Snyder going around last month saying that not killing makes Batman "irrelevant"), one person in defense of this position, to someone opposed, suggested that the latter should only read "kids' comics", then.
My thought was that, where the superhero genre is concerned, we ALL should be reading kids' comics. I didn't share this notion, as I thought the point would have been missed.
Edited by Brian Rhodes on 09 April 2024 at 6:39pm
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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1251
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| Posted: 09 April 2024 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | 4
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Given the vast number of characters we are talking about, the most practicable solution is simply to stop using the characters you don't want, rather than crafting an ending for each of them, which also is like pointing a spotlight on the character you want to forget about.
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I get this, although I also see a chance to highlight why at least some weren't up to the grade anyway.
The genie is out the bottle on this one though. If there are thousands of poorly-written super-powered individuals out there in the Marvel Universe - the sheer wonder of that world is diluted.
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4530
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| Posted: 09 April 2024 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | 5
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I think the only thing that doesn't work is... what doesn't work. If they can make a superhero killing work I'm good with it. I wouldn't want a 'thou shalt not', other than 'there shall' be repercussions and effects from it anyway (guess I'm like Jim Shooter on that). Spider-Man deciding not to kill the Green Goblin after he'd killed Gwen Stacy, or Doctor Who hesitating long enough about wiping out all the Daleks in their earliest forms, are great moments perhaps, but not the only way. It's the lack of effect or numbers killed by a character that would make me not buy into them. I remember an Iron Man too where he technically killed some politician because someone took over his gloves weapons, and it happened while live tv coverage was going on... great situation for drama, could have wrung more out of it anything. And later I guess in Armor Wars (I think?) he and Captain America totally diverged on whether killing was justified and that definitely had repercussions all around especially in the Avengers, I thought that was also quite good.
The members of the FF and Spider-Man leaving the Avengers both rang true for me in those issues just past #300... could be why I think that about them not fitting; they themselves didn't feel they did either.
Now I'm wondering if Wonder Man was not the first major resurrection? He died way back in Avengers #9 after all and returned around the #160s before Mr. Terrific in Justice League bought the farm (although Ferro Lad in the Legion beats most, but not in resurrection).
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 09 April 2024 at 7:14pm
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4829
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 5:51am | IP Logged | 6
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Professor Xavier was "killed" in X-Men #42 and returned in X-Men #65.
Edited by Robert Bradley on 10 April 2024 at 5:51am
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2292
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 7:17am | IP Logged | 7
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It should be rare, and it was then. And both of those characters should be alive.
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4829
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | 8
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It's when they go to incredible lengths (like saying Aunt May had been replaced with a bio-engineered actress by Norman Osborn, with the replacement being the one who really died), that's when the stories lose all credibility.
Captain Mar-Vell is one of the few deaths that they've left alone - and they caome really close to spoiling that one a couple times as well.
The original White Tiger is another whose death has stuck (which is unfortunate because he was one of Marvel's early minority heroes).
And speaking on early Marvel minority characters, Bill Foster/Goliath was given a pretty senseless death. His was more recent, but seeing how he was one of Marvel's first minority supporting characters who was presented as Henry's Pym's peer as a scientist, you hate to see them waste a character like that.
And finally there's the original swordsman, Jacque Duquesne, who was sort of ressurected by the Cotati (Well, his corpse at least. Kinda.).
But they can't leave well enough alone (or at least the rights to a character's name and likeness alone) and all four of these heroes have been replaced by successors. None of which has really been an improvement.
edited for typo
Edited by Robert Bradley on 10 April 2024 at 1:23pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132303
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 9
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It's when they go to incredible lengths (like saying Aunt May had been replaced with a bio-engineered actress by Norman Osborn, with the replacement being the one who really died), that's when the stories lose all credibility.••• I participated in that one! And I will freely admit it was an act of desperation. The conclusion had been reached that killing off Aunt May was a big mistake. Sure, there were a lot of readers who didn’t like her, but the reality was that she was a vital part of the Spider-Man tapestry. So, resurrection. At least we didn’t make her a Skrull!
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4530
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | 10
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I always try to keep in mind the schedules for these comics, that they had to make it to a printer and all of that, and how snafus like paralyzing blizzards or illness will occur.
I really liked Aunt May most of the time, except that time she was set to marry Doctor Octopus, augh, nooo! Got me to buy it though (reprint title). I think maybe her best moment was in that Sal Buscema full art Spectacular three part story written by J.M. DeMatteis with an ill Vulture... #186-188.
Oops, we needed her, and Professor X after all... but then look at how many times villains have seemed surely done for and not been... especially the Green Goblin (after various others taking up the costume and bag of tricks, and they made great stories of all of it, especially where the original takes over The Daily Bugle). Mar-Vell has seemed fairly useful as a ghost haunting the Marvel universe, but I remember one where they basically show him in an afterlife fighting to stay, what? Alive? Dead? They at least had Hellcat and Mockingbird as sort of captives of Mephisto. Adam Warlock in his soul gem with Pip and Gamora needed new bodies, but Warlock seemed to always be dying and getting reborn, part of the counter-Earth saviour gig.
Geez, I missed the deaths of The White Tiger and Goliath... :^(
I hope Marvel and DC today can find new things for new readers, something that can be all or mostly theirs for another generation, which Miles Morales seems to be.
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8358
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| Posted: 10 April 2024 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | 11
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Regarding the Avengers, and how many heroes have been a part of that team: It ussd to seem like a more exclusive group of heroes, mostly the most powerful among them, but anymore it seems it's just any or all Marvel heroes assembling together for a threat in intervals. The whole Marvel Universe are pretty much members, depending on the time of the week.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "The members depending on the day of the week" should be The Defenders.
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Matt Hawes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16430
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| Posted: 11 April 2024 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | 12
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JB: "...At least we didn’t make her a Skrull!..."
Or have Peter make a deal with the Mephisto (i.e., "the devil") to restore her as he did to retcon his marriage.
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