Something I'm hating about DC

Post by **Hound** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:11 pm

Well what happened to Green Arrow during the year they skipped was chronicled in Green Arrow actually. As for Batman, we actually do see a little bit of what he was doing during his time away in the pages of 52. Not to mention that at the end of Infinite Crisis we do see Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman agreeing to take a year off. As for Jason Todd, he obviously survived and at some point decides to follow Nightwing to New York and impersonate him.

I'm not seeing how it's necessary to see them being nursed back to health actually drawn on the page to know they were. Neither looked to be in any mortal peril.

Like Cliffy said I just cherry pick the books I like best. I will say I am fond of many more DC characters than I am Marvel. For all the years I read only Marvel books the only characters that have had any lasting appeal to me are the X-Men and Iron Man.

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:20 pm

Post by **Hound** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:28 am

But they do explain what happened.

There's a 3 part story called "The Away Game" that takes place right after Green Arrow #59

Dead Man Wade · Post by **Dead Man Wade** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:59 am

Originally posted by DrSpengler
I'll give you that, save for the recent Infinite Crisis, which caused a lot of great arcs happening at the same time to fall completely flat at the end.

Given, but that's bound to happen when a creator is forced to shoehorn a storyline in before a major event occurs (one of the primary problems with the end of Nicieza's run on Thunderbolts, one that could have been solved with a miniseries...).

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
the best way to do things (which, for the sake of modesty, I should point out took me something like seven years of collecting comics to realise) is just to cherry-pick the good from the bad, instead of claiming "I hate company Y, because they do this. Company Z is much better".

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing for the past few years (barring the books that I collect for "Completist Bastard" reasons).

Always bugs me, though, when people bash one company or the other for doing things that both are equally guilty of.

Alpha Trion · Post by **Alpha Trion** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:50 am

Originally posted by Hound
Actually now that you mention it, did House of M actually leave any real lasting effects? I don't read much outside of a couple of X-Men books from Marvel but it seems that any major character that lost their powers were given them back somehow. Seems it's been largely disregarded to me.

I don't think anyone's gotten their powers back. Quicksilver has a new set of powers via the terrigen mists and has been trying to repower people, but so far all his attempts have failed.

Are there any characters playing pivotal roles in a comic book that actually did lose their powers and didn't get them back?

Xavier and Rictor over in X-Factor (the best thing to come out of HoM by far). David Alleyne is still part of the New X-Men cast despite losing his power.

I'm not anti-DC; I can see myself following Justice Society for a while, I'm just really turned off by the way they casually write off decades of stories. I'd hate to get invested in characters only to have some editor decide that all my favorite stories "never happened," and totally overhaul the characters. Like if Marvel declared their first 40 years of books were no longer canon and that the Ultimate version of events was the true canon.

Post by **Hound** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:41 am

Originally posted by Alpha Trion
Like if Marvel declared their first 40 years of books were no longer canon and that the Ultimate version of events was the true canon.

That reminds me, I just read Wolverine #50 and they had this part at the end where Wolverine is thinking back on some memories and he has this flash of something, I don't what you'd call it, but he sees a scene of Ultimate Wolverine. I'm starting to wonder things...

I used to think that if Marvel just decided to dump the old stuff and revert to Ultimate universe as the standard it would be a terrible tragedy beyond measure but I'm not as sure anymore.

I think that Ultimate Spider-Man is thousands times better than regular Spider-Man. Same with Ultimate FF. I'm not as sure about Ultimate X-Men. Even with all the crap mixed in, the good stuff from regular universe X-Men is still better than Ultimate X-Men. I've not read Ultimate Iron Man at all but I bet I'd feel the same as I do about X-Men. The Ultimates is hard to say though. There are some real gems in the history of the Avengers. Some completely horrible stuff but also some stuff that I'd be saddened to see let go of.

I'm the same way with DC too. There are some old stories that I'm sad to see have been retconned. Not that the stories are less enjoyable now but that they really did add to the characters history. Like Superman Birthright pretty much rewrites Byrne's Man of Steel mini. It's sad but at least it's not thrown by the wayside by a crap story, at least when they retcon a character the new story they tell is really good and not completely unreadable.

Post by **Denyer** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:37 am

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
break off the bits you enjoy, and screw the rest.

Been waving that banner a while... still makes for some interesting conversation, in the "they did what now?" way.

Most of the series I like are relatively self-contained, though.

Dead Man Wade · Post by **Dead Man Wade** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:31 am

Originally posted by Alpha Trion
I don't think anyone's gotten their powers back.

Except for Magneto in New Avengers.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:41 pm

Originally posted by Hound
Like Cliffy said I just cherry pick the books I like best. I will say I am fond of many more DC characters than I am Marvel. For all the years I read only Marvel books the only characters that have had any lasting appeal to me are the X-Men and Iron Man.

There're bunches of stuff from Marvel I can still read nicely - Actual Excalibur, Captain Britain, Busiek Avengers etc. It might have been me over-reading them at the time, but I haven't re-read an X-Men comic, classic or Hyped Up Relaunch Of The Month With EDGY Writer, for ages now... I'm going through this phase where I'm finding Chris Claremont very pretentious and annoying, because he writes like Scott Lobdell but thinks he's Alan Moore. I mean, I love Scott Lobdell half the time, because you know what you're getting. You don't get people calling out their powers every sixth frame. Claremont's plotting was generally great (I always find myself talking as if he died in 1991...), but it tends to read worse frame by frame than when skimmed or summarised...

Halfshell · Post by **Halfshell** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:21 pm

Analogy time... do you prefer Fox or Universal films? How would you respond if somebody said that all music on Columbia is rubbish?

That's pretty much where I stand on the whole DC/Marvel thing at the mo. Thinking about it, the majority of my TPBs are probably DC, but that's more down to my having a creator-following spell and the bulk of their stuff being out through Vertigo. It's hardly a conscious decision.

I read the Ultimate Marvel stuff, not because it's Marvel, but because I like it. I buy Planetary because it's good, not because of who its released by.

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
I'm going through this phase where I'm finding Chris Claremont very pretentious and annoying, because he writes like Scott Lobdell but thinks he's Alan Moore. I mean, I love Scott Lobdell half the time, because you know what you're getting. You don't get people calling out their powers every sixth frame. Claremont's plotting was generally great (I always find myself talking as if he died in 1991...), but it tends to read worse frame by frame than when skimmed or summarised...

Claremont, in my eyes, can be found guilty of not giving readers enough credit of being able to work out what's going on. Hence people saying aloud what their powers are, or the constant speech bubbling. Surely artists should be able to convey the emotion without the need to spell it out?

I currently have in my mind that issue of Alias that starts with a flashback to when Jess was a superhero. Complete with portentious Stan Lee opening spiel and a stilted character-establishing monologue. Awesome. And perfectly illustrates that Bendis gets how much comics have changed since then - something which Claremont totally misses.

Post by **Hound** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:16 pm

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
There're bunches of stuff from Marvel I can still read nicely -

I meant an affinity for the character, not what is rereadable. I still care what they do to the characters I read in X-Men and Tony Stark. I've got Captain America comics that are great but I don't really care if they screw him up in the new comics. I'd drop Amazing Spider-Man the second Straczynski stopped being the regular writer.

Originally posted by Alpha Trion
I don't think anyone's gotten their powers back. Quicksilver has a new set of powers via the terrigen mists and has been trying to repower people, but so far all his attempts have failed.

Polaris has been given back her powers. I also expect we'll see a telepathic Professor X soon enough too.

Now while Quicksilver wasn't actually given back his same powers he did get powers again. I also expect that at some point we'll see X-Factor resolve the whole aftermath of House of M thing making it completely inconsequential.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:15 pm

Originally posted by Hound
I meant an affinity for the character, not what is rereadable. I still care what they do to the characters I read in X-Men and Tony Stark. I've got Captain America comics that are great but I don't really care if they screw him up in the new comics. I'd drop Amazing Spider-Man the second Straczynski stopped being the regular writer.

Oh, right... It bugs me in a way when I read the comics, I've got to admit (Geoff Johns' Avengers, Chuck Austen's X-Men stuff... my main button is capable heroes of the past 30 years suddenly turning into dumb-teen type characters as She-Hulk, Ant-Man and Nightcrawler did in the above, or Kitty Pryde in, well, most of her post-Ellis appearances), but lately I'm finding it a bit easier to distance stuff, probably because I'm reading more and more stuff set in its' 'own' universe. I've always liked Tony as well, and some recent developments have bugged me (I felt the end of Galactic Storm was a bit of a divergence myself, so you can just see how what I've heard of Civil War is going down). The X-Men... less so. I'm happy Longshot has been pretty much ignored since about 1989, shall we say, and even a lot of Morrison's minor stuff bugged me even if I enjoyed the run on the whole (for example, the X-Corps characters getting the dumb-teen treatment), but since I stopped reading the books I've had no real desire to look up how anyone's doing... It's like they mucked Pietro around for no good reason, sure, but he's still damn excellent in David X-Factor and his solo series.

Soprry, gibbering, drunk.