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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 10:09am | IP Logged | 1
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BRIAN: From what I understand, Sam is taking over as
Captain
America because Steve is being depowered AND aged. Last
time Steve was depowered, he didn't age....
SER: I know willing suspension of disbelief is required
when you read superhero comics, but this is just a
particular plot device that bugs me. Why would Rogers
have an "internal clock" that knows he's supposed to be
90? Wouldn't it be more like my mint condition copy of
BATMAN 244? If I take it out of its air-tight plastic
bag, the past 42 years won't suddenly "catch up" with it,
it will simply start to experience normal, wear and tear.
Yes, the super soldier serum is fiction but that doesn't
mean you should play it like magic. This is actually one
of my issues with modern DOCTOR WHO.
But rant over, and I'll play the game as intended.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132338
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 11:30am | IP Logged | 2
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Why would Rogers have an "internal clock" that knows he's supposed to be 90?••• There is a long tradition of not knowing how suspended animation works. SUSPENDED, not "delayed."
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4072
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | 3
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First- using gender and race swapping to create diversity instead of
creating NEW minority and female characters.
How many (mostly) new characters at Marvel and DC have really stuck since 1980? Maybe Cable, Deadpool, Gambit, and X-Force, although those are still building off of the whole X-Men franchise. Anyone else that's not a new or updated character at Marvel or DC that isn't a legacy character of some sort, or a different version of a character that's already popular?
Shuffling the core characters around a little bit has been standard operating procedure for decades, and the only real difference between this story and Walt Simonson's replacement of Thor or Defalco and Frenz's replacement of Thor or Jurgens and Romita's addition of Thor's new secret identity or the death of Thor at the end of Avengers: Disassembled or JM Straczynski's reinvention of Thor (and introduction of a female Loki, later replaced by a kid Loki, later replaced by a Loki that looks like the guy in the movies) is that Marvel's got their sites on bigger media outlets this time around. The first nine times they do it, it's okay, but the tenth time it's suddenly a desperate media stunt that smacks of desperation? Really?
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David Allen Perrin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 3549
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 4
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@Andrew….
In my opinion the answer to your question Andrew is, yes.
Because of the new found media attention, Marvel is plying these changes as some kind of diversity effort (and as a result, getting people who wouldn't otherwise have an opinion to suddenly have one). But the scam is the same. 'Woman-Thor' will last as long as it takes to bridge the gap between films. Same for 'Cap-Falcon'.
But I don't see some of the nutty changes made in the past in the same vein as what we have now from Marvel. Walt Simonson changing Thor to a frog seemed to me like Walt Simonson having fun and telling a tale. Nothing more. This was done at a time when there were no movies and web hits and publicity bumps to consider. The change in character felt like a genuine chapter in the Thor saga.
Woman-Thor isn't genuine to me. Marvel simply doesn't 'mean it' in my eyes. I would believe it if they cast a woman in the role of Thor and started work on feature films with Woman-Thor and if the character was established in the comics and in place 5 years from now. But that isn't going to happen.
How about instead of running the scam (on a higher lever of media attention) they actually put forth an effort to make The Falcon (Sam Wilson) as hot and popular a character as they can. How about giving The Falcon a top shelf creative team and promoting the heck out of that? How about giving the Black Panther and Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel the movies people have been clamoring for?
Be genuine and give us more of the diversity we already have, and give those characters all the attention and care they possibly can.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132338
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | 5
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For the first time in a long time, civilians are paying attention to comics. Not BUYING them, mind you. But paying attention. And the companies are taking advantage of this. Thor into a woman is right up there with the death of Archie. Civilian news media will pounce on things like this, and promptly get it all wrong (as they did when reporting on my MAN OF STEEL).The companies believe the only thing worst than being talked about is NOT being talked about.
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 30906
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | 6
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There's no such thing as bad publicity.
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4072
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | 7
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The Winter Soldier movie put The Falcon over in a HUGE way. Great representation of him on screen, he completely stole the show, and a quick look at Tumblr and you'll see that he developed a gigantic new fanbase overnight once the movie hit. Ed Brubaker started building him up as a major character again more than ten years ago, he's more popular than he's been since he co-headline Cap's title in the seventies, and after his brief (maybe a year?) stint as Captain America, he'll get his own title with a top creative team and we'll see a Falcon book that will last at least a few years, probably launching around the next time we get to see Falcon in the movies.
Yeah, it's a "stunt" to get people to pay attention to a character, but if Marvel had launched a solo Falcon book three years ago, even with a popular writer and artist attached, it would have quietly faded away after a few story arcs, since retailers "know" that minority characters or books starring women or whatever else doesn't sell, so they shouldn't get attached to these books or order very many for their stores, and the Big Two would get further evidence that readers don't want diverse casts of characters headlining their comics.
The Thor story's not any different than any other character taking over as the god of thunder for a while, and this doesn't sound different enough from the Eric Masterson storyline that I'm likely to check it out, myself, but maybe newer readers or diehard Thor fans will want to give it a look. Or maybe the women who will inevitably cosplay as this version of Thor (wouldn't be shocked to see some at Comic-Con this weekend) will give it a look.
Is it a stunt when you kill off Ultimate Spider-Man and replace him with an African-American/Puerto Rican teenager? Or replace Blue Beetle with a Hispanic teenager? Or gender swap a few Marvel and DC characters? Sure. But killing characters off is a stunt. Changing costumes is a stunt. I've heard people on this message board complain that bringing John Romita Jr. onto Superman as the new artist fell into the stunt category.
I will say that any number of things that were going on in my early years of collecting fell into that same stunt category, and I'll bet older readers were just as jaded about them at the time. Captain America quit and got replaced, the X-Men got "killed" and went underground, Spider-Man's costume tried to kill him, then he got Captain Universe's powers for a few months, the Avengers completely fell apart and disbanded, Iron Man went rogue and left the Avengers, the Fantastic Four lost half of its original lineup, Superman left the planet, the Justice League got a new, funny roster...I'd be hard-pressed to guess the last time we had a full year of stable, original status quo versions of all of the classic Marvel and DC characters. This stuff's all been changing pretty much constantly since Secret Wars and Crisis.
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Stephen Churay
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 8
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How many (mostly) new characters at Marvel and DC have really
stuck since 1980? Maybe Cable, Deadpool, Gambit, and X-Force,
although those are still building off of the whole X-Men franchise.
Anyone else that's not a new or updated character at Marvel or DC
that isn't a legacy character of some sort, or a different version of a
character that's already popular?
******
I see your point, and I will say this...In most cases, if the people like
the character design, and more importantly, the character is well
written, the audience will find them. Maybe not immediately, but
eventually the cream will rise to the top.
Shuffling the core characters around a little bit has been standard
operating procedure for decades, and the only real difference between
this story and Walt Simonson's replacement of Thor or Defalco and
Frenz's replacement of Thor or Jurgens and Romita's addition of
Thor's new secret identity or the death of Thor at the end of Avengers:
Disassembled or JM Straczynski's reinvention of Thor (and
introduction of a female Loki, later replaced by a kid Loki, later
replaced by a Loki that looks like the guy in the movies) is that
Marvel's got their sites on bigger media outlets this time around. The
first nine times they do it, it's okay, but the tenth time it's suddenly a
desperate media stunt that smacks of desperation? Really?
========
it's not the idea of the gender/race swap for the sake of the story. If it
makes a good story then do it. But why does it have to take a year
and a half to two years to tell it. When the stories are that long, you
don't end and go back to the status quo, you're creating a new one.
Besides, this THOR's gender swap didn't get reported in the bigger
media, it was reported using a specific show with a specific
demographic. It wasn't on FOX News first or CNN or even E! News. It
was The View. That's what makes it seem like a desperate media stunt
to show female diversity in there characters. They didn't go on the
View and promote, "Played by Halle Berry in the X-Men films, the
Marvel character, Storm is getting her own comic book. It's well
written, amazingly drawn and comes out Wednesday!"
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | 9
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Walt Simonson turning Thor (very briefly) into a frog was a deliberately goofy "how is our hero going to get out of this?" story. Having a woman become Thor...is not that.
Shouldn't the super-soldier formula be out of Cap's body by now anyway? It's not like he took repeated dosages. The whole story sounds like it's based on a very faulty premise.
As for reasonably popular DC and Marvel superheroes since the '70s who aren't derivative of some previous character and aren't pathetic:
Starfire Cyborg Booster Gold (sometimes not pathetic) Static Rogue
That's all about I can think of. Others don't even rise to the level of reasonably popular (Power Pack, the Runaways, other Milestone characters).
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Conrad Teves
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 2178
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | 10
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Jason>>As for reasonably popular DC and Marvel superheroes since the '70s who aren't derivative of some previous character and aren't pathetic<<
Perhaps, but none on that list are Spider-Man or Batman Popular.
After Wolverine, the closest I think would be Deadpool--who is very popular (and very derivative).
So much of what happened in the past seems like catching lightning in a bottle.
If the Big Two have any hope of recovering a comicbook-BUYING audience, I feel they have to quit beating the dead horse and experiment with new non-universe (for lack of a better term) characters. It would allow them to not follow rules connected only to things in other books. Stuff that could appeal to a broad set of audiences, rather than the current crop of elitist fanboys. They'll have to be happy that kids and girls are buying the books, etc. They'll have to do this knowing full well that most of them (like TV shows) will fail to find an audience, or may otherwise have limited runs.
As Jerry Seinfeld said, "Good luck with all that."
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4072
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| Posted: 23 July 2014 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | 11
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As for reasonably popular DC and Marvel superheroes since the '70s who aren't derivative of some previous character and aren't pathetic:
Starfire Cyborg Booster Gold (sometimes not pathetic) Static Rogue
Starfire and Cyborg (and don't forget Raven!) were core members of The Teen Titans, a concept that had been around since the 1960s. Static's always been published by DC, but has never been owned by them. And not denying that Rogue's popular, but she'd be a forgotten villain if she hadn't joined the X-Men. Would Booster Gold still be remembered today if he hadn't been folded into a really popular Justice League run right after his cancellation?
I'm increasingly curious if it's even possible to make something new for Marvel and DC, independent of already popular franchises or established concepts, and have it make any sort of impact. Were the earlier creators and creations so vibrant that they can be used and re-used and reinvented forever and ever, or is the audience that reluctant and indifferent toward new stuff?
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2294
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| Posted: 24 July 2014 at 12:54am | IP Logged | 12
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It's not so much that "she-Thor" and "Sam Wilson/Captain America" are such bad ideas (they were actually both bound to happen at some point), it's just that it's such a DUMB time for it to happen!
With the movies so popular, now is the best time to try to expand the readership by luring in as many of the movie fans as possible. It WOULD make sense to (1) give Falcon his own comic, (2) maybe use Thor's sleek movie look in the comics, and (3) maybe make Captain America mask-less.
While I consider the artistic side of comics to be very important, I also recognize that Branding is important to the overall health of the industry and it's common sense that the movie versions, the comics versions, and, yes, the toy versions should all match somewhat. It's just dumb to go out of your way to make them NOT match!
And why do comics not advertise at all? Why don't the movies and TV shows at least have a three-second blurb at the end that says "Read the Marvel/DC comio"?
I remember Malibu Comics used to buy ads on bus benches--and that mediocre company soon became popular and a threat to the big guys (enough that Marvel bought it and put it out of business!).
My point is--do the Big Two even have marketing departments and do they do anything besides foil covers and company-wide crossover "events"?
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Topic Closed)
