Comic Book Questions & Discussion

Originally posted by AlbertoJohnAvil
He tooks some blows on the move and gave one back. None of that would make him go up to darksied's level because he doesn't have the form and function to do so.

Originally posted by -Pr-
I agree with you, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I'll give you an example.

Let's say you worked at Marvel, and they said "we want you to work on a New X-Men comic that introduces a bunch of new team members". They tell you they want the team to be a diverse mix of ethnicities, sexualities and the like. You say "okay", and you go away and get to work.

There are, if we break it down, two ways to approach this:

A good writer, would try to make each character unique, and recognise that all the things about them, all of their characteristics, a part of an interesting whole character that will have the kind of longevity someone like, say, Storm has. A good writer might use a senior X-Man like Storm or Cyclops or Wolverine as a guide through all of this murky stuff, because they've been through all this before. A goood writer would want to show that there's common ground between them, and an acceptance of each other as students and teachers.

So when Wolverine shows acceptance in a way that feels natural, we feel it too. See: Wally West, Kyle Rayner, the GSXM team, any number of Avengers.

A bad writer, would bring in the kids. Maybe they'd have a teacher. The writer would tell us that these new kids are the bestest, most specialist X-Men ever, and are so much better than the ones that came before, but wouldn't show how powerful they are in any meaningful way. They'd write the previous X-Men, superhero veterans that they are, as incompetent or just plain wrong about everything. And they might get beaten up a lot, only to be saved by these special kids.

And that's just for starters. Here's an example of a good writer having to deal with the kind of shit editors want:

https://www.bustle.com/p/editors-rejected-leonard-changs-novel-because-his-characters-didnt-act-asian-enough-3249487

This right here? This is a perfect example of why comics are struggling. People who just wanted to write about superheroes got supplanted by people who were only interested in scoring what they think are points to show how great they are at being tolerant, but only to those that fit in to the little boxes they want them to be in. Gay men are effeminate, lesbians are only butch if they want to have one of them "be the man". A Muslim is never "too Muslim", but if they are, they get shoved in to the background because that offends certain people's sensibilities.

I grew up reading comics that told me "we're all essentially the same, even with our differences". Now I'm being told by condescending assholes that no, certain people are not the same, but we're doing them a favour by including them in our work.

Originally posted by qwertyuiop1998
He tanking Darkseid's blows through half of the comic. And Superman literally punched Darkseid to make him bleed.
https://ibb.co/KhdZztM
And when Superman didn't need to worry about innocents he dodged Darkseid's attack easily and punched Darkseid so damn hard that mother box needed to open an emergency boom tube.
Image if I can punch you so hard that you literally need some emergency measures to save your ass

Wonder Woman tanked Darkseid'sblows and made him bleed ASWELL too, Let me guess, She's above herald level now too huh? There's nothing impressive about this 😂 The lengths supermans fans go to DESPERATELY make Superman something HE's NOT.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
The thing is whilst I agree totally on good and bad writers, the subject of tasteful ethnicity is a real point. Look at how Mark Millar parodied the problem in Kickass two, red mist came up with names which actually for comics were not that stupid but were two-dimensional stereotypes. I mean come on, Shamrock. Ursa Major, Arabian Knight, Egg Foo etc. etc are no worse than Millars joke names really. I remember Jungle Action as a kid where BP fought the Klan, great, great story but the name of the comic "Jungle Action" ffs.

I... don't disagree with that. My belief is that too many modern writers stick to weak stereotypes that they themselves believe in, rather than actually doing the research.

I mean, if I got asked tomorrow to write about an inuit character from Alaska, you'd best believe I'd bury myself in everything I could find about what their culture is really like.

Originally posted by AlbertoJohnAvil
Wonder Woman tanked Darkseid'sblows and made him bleed ASWELL too, Let me guess, She's above herald level now too huh? There's nothing impressive about this 😂 The lengths supermans fans go to DESPERATELY make Superman something HE's NOT.

Originally posted by -Pr-
I... don't disagree with that. My belief is that too many modern writers stick to weak stereotypes that they themselves believe in, rather than actually doing the research.

I mean, if I got asked tomorrow to write about an inuit character from Alaska, you'd best believe I'd bury myself in everything I could find about what their culture is really like.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
I don't think it's modern writers only PR. You are old enough to remember Fu Manchu in Master of Kung Fu, I remember as a kid this issue of the Avengers with the Yellow Claw and even at the time thinking that's ****ing racist. Do you remember some of Powerman's early villains, they went way beyond Shaft and Blaxploitation. We needed to move away from that, I mean Ras Al'Ghul is a little racist tbh.

True, but I hold modern writers to a higher standard than I do those in the past. Partially, because society was just different back then. I usually hate the "it's current year" shit, but there is some truth to it in that we should be more tolerant and less bigoted than ever.

Writing a gay stereotype that spends every hour of every day thinking about their gayness isn't good writing. We should be better than that.

Originally posted by -Pr-
True, but I hold modern writers to a higher standard than I do those in the past. Partially, because society was just different back then. I usually hate the "it's current year" shit, but there is some truth to it in that we should be more tolerant and less bigoted than ever.

Writing a gay stereotype that spends every hour of every day thinking about their gayness isn't good writing. We should be better than that.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
Pretty much agree with everything here, but I think those stories that do gay, or black or Asian tastefully are rare, I wonder if the comics medium really lends itself to that kind of nuance and given its condensation of plot and visual narrative, I wonder if it just magnifies flaws.

That's the thing: I think it can, and has in the past. Obviously you still need the "superhero punches out the bad guy" stuff, but comics, like sci-fi, is an excellent medium for both social commentary and the exploration of the Human condition. You're just putting a fancy coat of paint on it to sell it to the people that like bright colours and violence.

Originally posted by -Pr-
That's the thing: I think it can, and has in the past. Obviously you still need the "superhero punches out the bad guy" stuff, but comics, like sci-fi, is an excellent medium for both social commentary and the exploration of the Human condition. You're just putting a fancy coat of paint on it to sell it to the people that like bright colours and violence.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
It can and has 100% agree, but most normal novels are not bestsellers. Good writers write mostly meh books and might have a few brilliant boocks in a career. Comic writers are exposed monthly, the narrative is condensed but the sectional nature of comics magnifies a bad issue, if you are reading a bad chapter in a novel you don't have to wait a month you don't ruminate. In a comic, someone writes something shit it's much more difficult to get a plot back, people drop the book even. Comic writers are more expose, the characters are also open to less interpretation from the reader.
We have how they look determined for us. Let's use Bendis as an example, I loved Powers and Alias, I loved a lot of his Caliber and Image stuff but I also think a lot of his stuff is shit. Is Bendis a bad writer, **** no!

I sort of agree.

A good crime writer is not going to be necessarily a good romance writer, and vice versa. Even in comics, Charles Soule wrote an appallingly bad Superman book, but his Darth Vader run is one of my favourite comics of the decade. And you mentioned Bendis, whose Superman ran has been terrible for the most part.

But, and this is my problem right here. I don't expect every comic to be a masterpiece. I don't expect it to be the quality of Watchmen or Frank Miller's Batman.

What I do expect, is a basic level of competence and consistency. That's it. I have no problem paying 4 euro for an issue of X-Men if I can trust that the person writing it at least understands the characters they're working with. There just isn't enough of that anymore.

Soule likes it when there's not much canon material to work with.

Since Disney reset SW continuity to its default state (films + new clone wars), Soule had a lot of freedom.

Originally posted by StiltmanFTW
Soule likes it when there's not much canon material to work with.

Since Disney reset SW continuity to its default state (films + new clone wars), Soule had a lot of freedom.

That's perfectly fine. Everyone has a preference. I just think that while that's a reason, it's not an excuse.

What exactly did he rape in that Superman book?

His Wolverine *seemed* fine, but the amount of continuity errors was over 9000, while being set in 616 reality.

Originally posted by abhilegend

Originally posted by -Pr-
I sort of agree.

A good crime writer is not going to be necessarily a good romance writer, and vice versa. Even in comics, Charles Soule wrote an appallingly bad Superman book, but his Darth Vader run is one of my favourite comics of the decade. And you mentioned Bendis, whose Superman ran has been terrible for the most part.

But, and this is my problem right here. I don't expect every comic to be a masterpiece. I don't expect it to be the quality of Watchmen or Frank Miller's Batman.

What I do expect, is a basic level of competence and consistency. That's it. I have no problem paying 4 euro for an issue of X-Men if I can trust that the person writing it at least understands the characters they're working with. There just isn't enough of that anymore.

A good Superman is hard to write. Some would say Byrne ruined the character, by having him cross a "No kill" line, and just generally grim 'n grittying up the stories (Lot of gore, kids being killed, Supes looking like a steroid sucking freak..)

He's who I grew up with though, and I love his work. I also see why some hate him.

Ruined?

Sounds like Byrne's work is the only one worth reading 😛

Originally posted by StiltmanFTW
What exactly did he rape in that Superman book?

His Wolverine *seemed* fine, but the amount of continuity errors was over 9000, while being set in 616 reality.

He just really, really didn't seem like he wanted to have Superman in the comic, to the point that he shoved Wonder Woman front and centre. Instead of making Wonder Woman just look good, he took the time to make her look good by making Superman look bad by comparison.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
Haha Bendis Superman is awful! You see, big Jim Shooter agreed with you 100% but with quality comes prescription, and things tend to become generic. He though was easily the best Editor Marvel had, look at Byrne on the FF and Claremont's first run on the X books. His rules changed both major companies. Before that, you had comics varying in quality from Neal Adams Batman, quite frankly still the best Batman ever, to Julius Schwartz putting himself in every Flash comic he could.

See, I think there's a middle ground. Sure, comics will always have that "hero fights villain" framework that they have to work with, but I think you can still make a good comic. Even a decent comic, within that.

But the issue for me, is that while you can say "we need to let writers take risks", the problem is that they aren't hiring good writers in the first place. Writers that when they take these risks, they'll give us the next Dark Phoenix or Death of Superman.

Originally posted by cdtm
A good Superman is hard to write. Some would say Byrne ruined the character, by having him cross a "No kill" line, and just generally grim 'n grittying up the stories (Lot of gore, kids being killed, Supes looking like a steroid sucking freak..)

He's who I grew up with though, and I love his work. I also see why some hate him.

I honestly think Byrne's Superman is fine. Some nice ideas, some decent character moments, but plenty of silliness too. Like the Darkseid sex-tape thing.

Originally posted by -Pr-
He just really, really didn't seem like he wanted to have Superman in the comic, to the point that he shoved Wonder Woman front and centre. Instead of making Wonder Woman just look good, he took the time to make her look good by making Superman look bad by comparison.

See, I think there's a middle ground. Sure, comics will always have that "hero fights villain" framework that they have to work with, but I think you can still make a good comic. Even a decent comic, within that.

But the issue for me, is that while you can say "we need to let writers take risks", the problem is that they aren't hiring good writers in the first place. Writers that when they take these risks, they'll give us the next Dark Phoenix or Death of Superman.

I honestly think Byrne's Superman is fine. Some nice ideas, some decent character moments, but plenty of silliness too. Like the Darkseid sex-tape thing.

Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall and hear how he justified that to the editors.