chuck austen
ah, now i see. ive been trying to find what all you guys' problem with chuck austen is for a few days now, cause i really enjoyed his run. now i think i get it.
seems to me that, when one of you replies to the idea of a female character being sexually adventurous with "that never happens!" you completely devalidate your entire arguement. fact is, get this: women are not all the same. a woman is just as likely to want sex as the rest of us, and women go about becoming involved with men in as many different ways as there are women. you imply that austen thinks all women are lecherous, but what he is actually showing is their versitility. a women can be strong and intelligent, and at the same time have desires, including ones of a carnal nature, that she may or may not feel ashamed of.
chuck austen shows the mentality of different kinds of people in different kinds of relationships that havent been explored yet in comics, and you guys chastize him for it. take a cue here. that show sex and the city became one of the most popular of its time because it showed us that we had the wrong idea of the female perspective. i personally dont care much for the show, but it goes a long way to illustrate my point.
i guess i forgot that my peers in comics view the world through different lenses. perhaps you fellas spend a little too much time reading writers you hate and not enough actually meeting women to base your interpretations on. some of them are actually interesting, multi-dimentional people. imagine that.
and to deny that grant morrison's new x-men was creative is ridiculous. morrison completely revitalized the whole x-universe by introducing countless new characters with enormous depth and scripting excellent plots that none of us saw coming.
also, how can you prefer claremont to austen? i read the full run of x-treme x-men consecutively, and was infinitely disappointed. talk about redundancy. i realize new readers come in every month, but he literally re-explains every single character's power in agonizing detail IN EVERY ISSUE. and unoriginality? he hit every cliche from his villain ending up a mind controlled former x-man to an entire storyarc built around a girl who hates mutants because they killed her family. how many times has that been done? how many times has claremont himself done that? ever hear of william striker? we get it. mutants are different, people hate them. its very apt, yes, but weve been hearing that story for 45 years.
thats why we need some young blood like austen and morrison. they break new ground by adding depth. they take claremont's original good ideas and build on them, adding social and cultural elements that go beyond superhero action, instead of just reiterating. what makes marvel comics great is that the creators had the foresight to instill their stories with elements that elevated them above simple action-based funny books. where once comics were a kids hobby, now they have a range on par with movies, tv, and traditional literature, the best examples of which are even more successful, in quality if not popularity. to badmouth our progressive creators only hinders the creativity.
i respect chuck austen's storytelling a lot, and its discouraging that other fans are so disrespectful as to cheer when he decides to move on. the only solace i have in austen's withdrawl is that it will be peter milligan who takes over, not just another book thrown back to claremont. but i suppose you guys probably hate a non-traditionalist like milligan too. i guess its true what theyve been telling me... people really do hate and fear what they dont understand.