That would be too cruel for Batman, but yeah, I get the point. I just hate how prog writers do the no kill rule and then just lets villains go without any attempt at trying to redeem them. You can really feel how they never even attempt to think through "no kill" or on a related note, "rehabilitation not deterrent" for prisons and real-life crime. There's only ever a moral benefit, which isn't a benefit especially in this genre because they almost never reform and they have more potential to damage their world than Bin Laden did to New York.
I know the reason why they do it, it is just more profitable to leave the villain alive. However in japan super heroes stories, they have heroes who kill and are still highly praised and revered. Whenever you put teo characters fighting against each other, the risk of one living and not should be real, but in the end it is just like a exhibition match that they aren't as serious as they would be in a real contest. And stories are better when they treat it like that.
I do feel more emotion with a child holding a sword than any capeshit battle because the story convinces me that everything there is "real" and the decisions they take are something they put their lives on the stake for it.
Now would why I care if Norman shot dead after decades of not taking things seriously for these characters?
I do feel more emotion with a child holding a sword than any capeshit battle because the story convinces me that everything there is "real" and the decisions they take are something they put their lives on the stake for it.
Mind you this is just the gekiga exception, everything after gekiga is not as good story wise. Occasionally you see a naoki urasawa coming close to gekiga but not quite. While western writers have a great advantage wrt writing realistic or dramatic stories, a lot of great batman solo outings are just that, the problem is they don't know how to keep philosophy, politics and morality separate or how to meld them when required, all of it is put in the same cauldron causing a miasma of blandness when mishandled. Alan Moore comes to mind, his first US comic was one about vigilante, a small dc figure, which focused on a woman who was sexually abused by her father and how killing him was 'bad' cause he was still her father and revenge begets nothing. That statement itself sorta shows how in vain the effort was. Same with saga of swamp thing, people laud it for so much but I remember entire segments being unreadable, especially with the drug trips, hallucinations, plant sex and woman rambling. But then again Japanese writers didn't flourish state side, with both kazuo koikes xmen and the blame authors wolverine issues being nearly unreadable. Since we're on the subject, kazuo koike is probably the best writer in manga history and his stuff is just so good. Buronson is a close second, both of them together have more shitty live action adaptations than anybody else in manga ever, which is a testament to how good their work is.
I was rereading the boys recently and I had erased from my memory how much went over my head just cause of the slang usage. A lot of stuff still goes over my head and I'm a bit disappointed I don't get stuff without googling it. Ennis tends to do this everywhere, did it in adventures of the rifle brigade as well so I would really like a comprehensive list of anglo slang from all four countries just to get my foot in the door. It would be really useful for both writing and understanding anglo language use instead of having to Google paragraphs of text.
Someone mentioned that comicbook writers are bitter about how the superheroes are way more successful and moral than what they'll ever be. As the eternal underdog, Spiderman is a prime target.
I firmly believe in the conspiracy that both Ultimate Spiderman runs were fucked with at the end, when it was pretty clear they were gonna be remembered more fondly.
Even the 2nd go at USM, leagues better than the current poopoo in the latest spoderman run where MJ is planning to fuck flash and they all got symbiote suits and the mystique of the symbiote is all gone since baby chibi style symbiotes exist and now they planning to force readers to remember Paul fondly.
I think Reed Doom is Maker, I think the brain surgery was a reverse of what he did to Tony, I think he took a bit of his weird, gross biology and put it in there,
That’s why Reed Doom is so much like early Ultimate 1.0 Reed. He’s a wargame, no different than his mice.
I think Maker wasn’t making a Doctor Doom, the Doom thing is a smokescreen for 2.0 Reed being Venom Snake’d into 1.0 Reed to see if the abused super genius takes the Maker-option. It follows the trend of 2.0/Hickman’s Ultimate tenure of old roles taking new faces. No Nathaniel Richards so Maker fills a twisted version of the role.
I’m just curious what he did to Victor, him stuffing Namor was inexorably based.
I think Reed Doom is Maker, I think the brain surgery was a reverse of what he did to Tony, I think he took a bit of his weird, gross biology and put it in there,
That’s why Reed Doom is so much like early Ultimate 1.0 Reed. He’s a wargame, no different than his mice.
I think Maker wasn’t making a Doctor Doom, the Doom thing is a smokescreen for 2.0 Reed being Venom Snake’d into 1.0 Reed to see if the abused super genius takes the Maker-option. It follows the trend of 2.0/Hickman’s Ultimate tenure of old roles taking new faces. No Nathaniel Richards so Maker fills a twisted version of the role.
I’m just curious what he did to Victor, him stuffing Namor was inexorably based.
Nigga what the fuck are you talking about? This isn't about this perceived idea that westerns have of Gekiga (which what I posted isn't). It is about taking their stories seriously in a way that it makes sense for the story themselves. It could be the slopiest kill island manga ever made, the moment they do kill a random character, the character stays dead. Capeshit comics can't and won't take these ideas seriously. I remember some years ago reading a red hood comic that Jason Todd shot the Penguin in the head point blank and he lived. No consequences at all for the fat fuck and that was left like that.
It is the same pervasive idea that the TV show The Boys had: to make series becomes franchises so they can keep milking stuff off.
It is like if in Naruto, they decided to not kill Itachi Uchiha just to keep milking him for years in spinoffs and other material. There is nothing about being gekiga about this, any manga does this stuff, even the most slop ones. When a character dies, he dies, every battle matters, which isn't the case with capeshit comics from Marvel and DC. (Which the only way they can do otherwise is by introducing alternative versions or elseworlds).
Just read the post above this very one: they are talking about fucking Reed Richards from the Ultimates universe who they had to to the most insane ball juggling to make him the antagonist in one of the sloppiest ways possible. Their big bad is a character from the 2000s that himself is an alternative version from the 1960s. Don't you see how vile this becomes eventually?
This isn't about this perceived idea that westerns have of Gekiga (which what I posted isn't). It is about taking their stories seriously in a way that it makes sense for the story themselves.
In the possibility that what you posted is samurai assassin, that is gekiga too. I don't want to sperg too much about japshit cause this is not the thread but safe to say, gekigas were about taking stories seriously, actions had consequences and their realism lended gravitas to the stories. This is not the case with shit which came later like shonen, which still had consequences but also had loopholes.
Now your problem with marvel and DC is not actually a problem with capeshit cause it's a trait fundamental to it. Capeshit is one of many genres which are descendents of pulp fiction of the 1910s to 30s, in fact they inspired comics as a medium and one of the traits of pulp fiction heroes is to fight the same guy across different stories, without wider consequences because of the serialized reusable format. Conan did it with all his villains, shadow did it with couple, phantom did it, John Carter did it, tarzan did it whatever. So unless there is an epic finale, the villains usually don't stay dead and there is no build up to an epic finale cause they're all disconnected stories. Marvel and dc did the same thing, dc especially with batman having runins with the joker around the 40s. But this is where the case of narrative storytelling dropped in. Around the silver age more and more writers along with the companies themselves wanted to do narratives within the serialized format, idk why but if I had to guess it's cause it worked in television. So starting from like neal adams, there were attempts to write narratives for superheroes within the serialized format. But the limitation of a narrative is canon, you cannot undo consequences of what happened before. So companies/writers, who wanted to have their cake and eat it too, ended up writing narrative arcs which are serialized but also disconnected, thereby you could keep the best of both worlds, pulp and narrative. This ultimately leads to the stories, while seeming consequential, not having many consequences. This is especially true in the case of heroes and villains, who will not die or have wide reaching ramifications. One solution they tried to pursue here is the alt universe idea, where every story takes place in a different universe, sidestepping canon entirely. I think this is fine and works out well for what they want to do. The reason you don't enjoy it as a reader is cause youre tuned to narrative instead of seeing it as a pulp story or something akin. Its a stupid endeavour to go into a pulp story expecting a narrative, nobody goes into conan the barbarian expecting lord of the rings.
Now comes the milking problem, is it milking the genre? I would say yes now but in the 80s and 90s probably not cause it was an exploration of possibilities. Year one and dkr take place in a different universe from killing joke which is different from death in the family which is different from hush. There is probably some fundamental exploitation in the idea of keeping heroes and villains perpetually fighting with no consequence, but like I said it's a pulp format, that's how it is and that is why the alt universe thing exists, to appear to have some semblance of consequence while also not having any. It's not the best solution but I find it difficult to come up with something better.
Also precisely cause of this pulp narrative integration does the manga comic meme exist, start at issue one vs start with a dozen different arcs all disconnected from one another. Manga also initially had some series which were narrative pulps, flavour of the week stories with recurring villains, like golgo 13 and City hunter. But they sidestepped the consequence issue by having the villains be non central and unrecognisable while also not having major impact on the world so that does not come up in subsequent issues. Otherwise for the most part manga is just one long narrative which is serialized, with no pulp elements. That is why they have solid endings, except for again golgo 13 which is still going for almost 60 years (and to some extent City hunter which is using the alt universe reinterpretations format for spinoffs). And side note, golgo 13 is still second highest best selling or most popular manga of all time in Japan, despite the guy never having permanent consequences and just killing random people from terrorists to world leaders every arc. In fact despite being a 60s character, the writers never age him and always place him in contemporary settings. There is also the story structure and Japanese vs American storytelling I can dive into but this is long enough, I hope you get the point.
Edit: Also fucking lupin the third, very famous very serialized non narrative experience. Every adventure was different and had no impact on the previous, why he has like 15 adaptions in the first place.
Well they’re dropping Maker’s spore mind-control and him literally appearing to Doom, Silverhand/Handsome Jack/Cortana-style makes me think he was already in there.
So I think the reveal is gonna be that every heinous thing, losing the FF, the torture, the gaslighting and after the torture, casual abuse, it’s just recreating himself as he was pre-turn, to prove a point and satisfy Maker’s complex against Reeds. That eye colour switch is when Maker is “watching” I bet. He just took a Reed and made him into himself, wrapped in Doom’s clothing because that’s Maker, he’s just Ultimate’s actual Doctor Doom.
Him referring to his depression as a “negative zone” is so on the nose that he has a bit of Maker in his brain. Him wanting to kill himself? It’s cause he’s the Maker’s backup body. Guarantee the mask comes off and it’s now Maker’s face under there.
At least this is me reading Hickman’s plan. Camp is a faggot and retard so who knows how it’s gonna go. I’ll just be glad to have Maker freed up after all this. He’s the best “new” villian made in the 2000s and one of the better “evil version” characters because of just how much weight he had as the Ultimate Mister Fantastic.
Honestly Maker scratches the itch Lex used to, impossibly smart, irredeemable, cunt. Making him the big bad was a mistake for Ultimate 2.0, he should’ve been the “big good” of the universe, the Superman, the Spider-Man and a presence in every book, like Nick in Ultimate 1.0. With the reveal being the smartest man on the planet used cheat codes and rewrote everything to be…… boring. Kinda like Wanted but less edgecore.
