Sperg about comic books here

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So Doctor Strange recently changed writers, so some of this might have changed, but what made his current book really good is that it dealt with the "price of using magic". Basically, being the sorcerer supreme kinda sucks since doing the kind of magic that's needed to safeguard earth from extra-dimensional threats really messes with your body. The second arc deals with a threat that is out to kill all magic in the multiverse, and Strange has to stop it without any of the usual magic he can call on. The next arc deals with the fallout, as know with only a limited amount of magic left on earth Strange has to deal with several major threats wanting to take advantage of the situation.
 
[Insert Meme Here] said:
a while back Marvel was making a big deal out of the whole "Can these two superheroes share the same name at the same time, especially if they're of different races/genders/whatever?" All I can think of is, like "New Super-Man is friendly with Superman and Supergirl. The Flashes, obviously, but also The Atoms. Literally a universe full of Green Lanterns." It just... I don't know. It feels like DC is handling these things with so much more grace than Marvel that one wonders how on earth they've managed to fuck it up so badly.

I dunno, I'm just thinking about it a lot lately. They managed to create a second Superman character, yet make him distinct and interesting in his own right, who is both friendly with the original and off doing his own thing, rather than trying to make him erase the previous in either story, competence, or peoples' memory. Then you have Steve!Captain America and the former Falcon!Cap and they just had no idea how to make him interesting, and swapped him back with their tail between their legs.
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They drink their own kool-aid and market their stories as if they exist in a bubble where nothing happens unless Marvel, especially the current set of writers, did it first. You'll notice it a lot after it's pointed out to you. It's one reason why everything is the biggest thing to ever be a thing to them. Tune in next month when we tackle the important question of "Can someone work for a newspaper and be a superhero at the same time?".
 
Bendis leaving Marvel is really good news for people who actually like Marvel, regardless of his stuff from the early mid-2000s, he's become noticeably shittier in recent years. I wonder what's going to happen to Black Spider-Man and Riri Willaims now that he's leaving the company, especially since there was that rumor that Marvel wasn't pleased with the younger diverse legacy characters and wanted to put them in their own little corner.

As for Bendis joining DC, I'm on the fence about that. His strength has always been street-level stuff, but he's still the Joss Whedon of comics when it comes to dialogue. Off the top of my head I can't really think of what he could work on at the moment, unless they plan to have him write for Milestone or WildStorm. Most of the mainline DC books seem to have dedicated creative teams at the moment, unless he wants to work on some less popular characters. Any know if he's ever said who his favorite DC characters are?
 
GabeRegan said:
Bendis leaving Marvel is really good news for people who actually like Marvel, regardless of his stuff from the early mid-2000s, he's become noticeably shittier in recent years. I wonder what's going to happen to Black Spider-Man and Riri Willaims now that he's leaving the company, especially since there was that rumor that Marvel wasn't pleased with the younger diverse legacy characters and wanted to put them in their own little corner.

As for Bendis joining DC, I'm on the fence about that. His strength has always been street-level stuff, but he's still the Joss Whedon of comics when it comes to dialogue. Off the top of my head I can't really think of what he could work on at the moment, unless they plan to have him write for Milestone or WildStorm. Most of the mainline DC books seem to have dedicated creative teams at the moment, unless he wants to work on some less popular characters. Any know if he's ever said who his favorite DC characters are?
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Riri is going to be deader than Uncle Ben without Bendis around and they will probably stop suggesting to off Peter for Miles as often. tbh I hope he pulls a Sam Humphries and actually becomes okay-ish. As for who he'd try to write, it's obvious if you look at the stuff current Bendis likes to make:

>Anyone who's having a new movie, show, or cartoon coming out so he can attach his name to it
>Cyborg
>Bumblebee (if he can find some excuse to make her single and a teen again)
>Black Lightning and/or his daughters (Tony Isabella would fight him to the death if he tried)
>Static
>The younger Wally West
>Power Girl (Tanya Spears, not Earth-2 Kara)

Most of his current stuff is intentionally written as self-insert fanfiction about his adopted children (Miles and Riri are supposed to be them). That's assume DC doesn't tell him to cut it out.
 
Wait, Bendis has adopted black children that he inserts into his comics as legacy characters? :story: Forget everything I said before, this is going to be a shitshow when he finally starts writing for DC. Interestingly enough, most of that list is probably going to be off limits to him unless he gets his hands on Teen Titans or Deathstroke.
 
GabeRegan said:
Wait, Bendis has adopted black children that he inserts into his comics as legacy characters? :story: Forget everything I said before, this is going to be a shitshow when he finally starts writing for DC. Interestingly enough, most of that list is probably going to be off limits to him unless he gets his hands on Teen Titans or Deathstroke.
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You never knew about that? You can't unsee it after it's pointed out. I think he's brought it up in interviews that he has a thing for writing for his kids.
Marvels-Moon-Girl-Riri-Williams-To-Team-Up-In-New-Issue-715x651.jpg
C856SciUMAA_Et-.jpg

See what I mean? "Daddy made you Iron Man today".
 
RockVolnutt said:
You never knew about that? You can't unsee it after it's pointed out. I think he's brought it up in interviews that he has a thing for writing for his kids.
Marvels-Moon-Girl-Riri-Williams-To-Team-Up-In-New-Issue-715x651.jpg
C856SciUMAA_Et-.jpg

See what I mean? "Daddy made you Iron Man today".
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Lol, no I knew people have been saying he's writing the character for his daughter and not fans, but I just thought his daughter liked the character not that she was the character. Generally unless they're Alan Moore or Grant Morrison levels of weird, I rarely bother to look into comic writers past their work. This explains so much now that you've told me this though.
 
RockVolnutt said:
>Power Girl (Tanya Spears, not Earth-2 Kara)
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Boring! Give me big boobied Kara any day.

RockVolnutt said:
You never knew about that? You can't unsee it after it's pointed out. I think he's brought it up in interviews that he has a thing for writing for his kids.
Marvels-Moon-Girl-Riri-Williams-To-Team-Up-In-New-Issue-715x651.jpg
C856SciUMAA_Et-.jpg

See what I mean? "Daddy made you Iron Man today".
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What the heck is with Moon Girl's face in the first pic? Man, does that girl have a butt-ugly costume. Gray and yellow? No way.
 
RockVolnutt said:
Riri is going to be deader than Uncle Ben without Bendis around and they will probably stop suggesting to off Peter for Miles as often. tbh I hope he pulls a Sam Humphries and actually becomes okay-ish. As for who he'd try to write, it's obvious if you look at the stuff current Bendis likes to make:

>Anyone who's having a new movie, show, or cartoon coming out so he can attach his name to it
>Cyborg
>Bumblebee (if he can find some excuse to make her single and a teen again)
>Black Lightning and/or his daughters (Tony Isabella would fight him to the death if he tried)
>Static
>The younger Wally West
>Power Girl (Tanya Spears, not Earth-2 Kara)

Most of his current stuff is intentionally written as self-insert fanfiction about his adopted children (Miles and Riri are supposed to be them). That's assume DC doesn't tell him to cut it out.
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Static & Wally West are good bets, you can also bet on him doing stuff with Batman, which is a big character that also ties in with his street-level sensibilities.

The main challenge for Bendis, apart from actually giving a shit, is to adapt his writing style to DC's more iconic brand of superheroics.

Personally, I wouldn't worry much about DC, because WB as a corporation are still invested in keeping the comics relevant and of good quality, unlike the shambles that is Marvel Entertainment.
 
Bendis'll probably get tossed on whatever 'major' book has an open slot and/or a movie coming out. My bets are on Cyborg or Batman, maybe some Justice League/Justice Society thing if they immediately toss a team at him.
 
I just started reading the copy of the first volume of Hip-Hop Family Tree which covers the history of the hip-hop (the first volume goes from 1970 to 1981). It's got some really interesting stuff even if you're not a hip-hop fan.
 
I need to talk about how much I didn't like Black Hole.

It's a story about two lovestruck high school idiots, Keith and Chris. Keith is a whiny loser who has a crush on Chris, a girl in his biology class. Chris is a moderately popular girl every guy wants to bone. This is a world that is like ours except that there's something called "the bug", a sexually transmitted disease that causes individualized mutations in those affected. Chris catches the bug from a guy she has a crush on at a party after they have sex in a graveyard.

So Chris gets all emo about how she'll never be like normal girls again and decides that she and Rob will run away and live in the woods. A few of the infected have already done this. But then Rob gets murdered in the woods. Keith, meanwhile, moons over Chris until he meets some artist chick named Eliza in a drug house. Then he's sort of torn between them.

Eventually, Keith, who is house-sitting for an older couple while they're on vacation, lets Chris live there for a bit. They trash the place and Chris avoids Keith, wangsting, until one of the other infected folks murders some of the other inhabitants with a gun. Chris runs away, Keith grabs Eliza and heads south, and the story tries to pull a bullshit happy-or at least hopeful-ending with no rationale behind it.

I cannot express in words how unlikeable all the characters are. There is not a single redeeming trait among them. Eliza is the most tolerable, but that's mostly because the part where she gets raped elicits some sympathy. Keith is a self-centered numbnut, but is at least inoffensive (if occasionally creepy). Chris is a lovestruck idiot who is entirely focused on Rob's dick, whilst completely ignoring the 100% rational thoughts of her parents and her (former) best friend. Who is also one of the few tolerable characters.

The art is attempting to have a sort of woodcut print style, but all of the main characters suffer from same face syndrome. Keith and Rob look exactly alike except Rob has a soul patch, and there are times where Keith and Chris are hard to tell apart. Seeing as a variety of side characters have individual features, there is no excuse for this. The mutated peoples' faces are more pleasant to look at than the main characters. Everything is so ridiculously shaded in an attempt to cast a sort of claustrophobic feel on the page, but it just makes it hard to look at.

Keith and Chris' internal monologues are so ludicrously overblown and unnecessary. Beyond all that, the characters are so bland that you might as well not try to tell them apart anyway. They have no personality traits aside from wanting something they don't have. You can have unlikeable characters as your leads, but you have to at least make them interesting and or entertaining to watch.

It's a commonly recommended "serious graphic novel as literature" book, but it's just a bad one. Do not recommend.

Late addition to avoid double-posting: Cyborg isn't a terrible series, but it's plagued by too much telling and not showing. It has some really cool ideas but carries it with unnatural dialogue. I think with the right writer this could actually be a good series.
 
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RockVolnutt said:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/books/marvel-entertainment-names-new-editor-in-chief.html
Any opinions?
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On Axel going out? Fully in favor of it, this was easily Marvel's worst period from a creative stand-point.

I am not informed enough on CB Cebulski's capability to predict how he will do, but Tom Brevoort must be feeling a lot of butthurt right now. The main problem isn't very complicated: Bring back the recognizable faces, write them in a respectful way, and let your creators work on new franchises and creating new heroes & villains rather than bastardizing the original creations that made Marvel what it is.
 
[Insert Meme Here] said:
I don't actually know who this guy is, but with Alonso out we may actually start to see some changes.

I'm not holding my breath for any changes being quick however. Time will tell. Tentatively hopeful.
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There will have to be some turn around time, Maybe like 2-4 months of further SJW trash.
 
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