House to Astonish Episode 84
A tight little episode for you this time out, with discussion of the sad passing of Tony DeZuniga, the unbelievable box office of The Avengers, Marvel’s digital exclusive deal with Comixology, Cullen Bunn taking on the writing of Venom and DC’s upcoming Phantom Lady mini, as well as an extended chat about the value of new characters, reviews of Dial H, Mind the Gap and Trio and a grave undertaking from the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus America’s own private Easter, Marvel’s relationship status and ’90s technobabble.
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I got a free FM radio when I went to see Daredevil. It was a crap radio, but I think it made me feel better about the dicey movie.
The Season One stuff would be better if they weren’t stupidly expensive hardcovers. The digital download pack-in codes don’t help given it requires the books to remain sealed in bookshops, which prevents anyone flipping through them and honestly, are new readers really going to care about that? I’m not convinced putting the first issue of Gillen’s Uncanny in the back of X-Men Season One is a good idea either. Having them as cheap paperbacks instead of premium hardcovers would have been much more sensible.
I think that one of the problems with the launching of new big ideas in the Marvel and DC universes is that they can never embed whilst they’re overshadowed by their predecessors. Batman and Captain America limit the potential of their former sidekicks, both of whom were awkwardly shoved back into more familiar roles when their mentors’ status quos (statuses quo/stati quo?) needed to be reset. Gravity can’t be allowed to grow beyond his young-hero-on-a-learning-curve arc because then he stops being a fresh look at themes that were once the purview of Spider-Man and becomes Spider-Man as he is now, at which point you’ve got the two very similar characters vying for attention, one of whom is clearly a safer bet and is allowed to continue while the other becomes event fodder and background figure.
If superhero comics began to tell stories in a world which had consequence and changed, in which deaths were almost always permanent rather than almost always impermanent, then the old guard would be training/guiding/resisting new characters as their replacements for an inevitable death, rather than a transient one. Concepts like The Runaways would fit in perfectly: they have an initial finite story and then are allowed to fade into the background until and if there was a strong idea with what to do with them, rather than spinning their wheels into insignificance. The old stories wouldn’t go away and, as I believe you mentioned before, getting rid the comics starring Hulk et al. wouldn’t affect the collective consciousness idea of them and so wouldn’t harm their intrinsic value as IP, but would almost certainly provide a more fertile ground for new ideas and better stories. No more rehashing, distaffs and derivatives, more diversity in more individuals with their own origins and identities who don’t have the spectre of being a knock-off of a proven success presented alongside the source material.
Wow. That looks far too earnest… Sorry.
– During the superhero movie boom of the early 2000s, the LCS where i used to work made a deal with the local cinema where they supplied comics for a giveaway (usually animated/kids books of Batman/Spider-man/X-men) with a coupon for the store.
– The Dial H revamp that Will Pfeiffer did a couple years ago at DC (HERO) was also pretty good.
– For me, the best but not necessarily lasting character of the 90s-present was Jack Knight. And, to give DC credit for once, they have let him stay off the course, in deference?/a deal? with Robinson.
Marvel and DC’s wrongheaded publishing strategy is one thing that prevents new properties from being created. The other is a lack of incentive to create new properties for Marvel in the first place, though. If any creator has marketable properties and is in a position to do them at Marvel or DC, then they know they’re better off doing them at, say, Image instead.
Successful revamps are the best Marvel or DC can hope for. I’m still amazed Vaughan did RUNAWAYS for Marvel.
Not top-tier DC characters? I’d argue that Phantom Lady and especially Dollman aren’t in the top tier of characters DC bought from Quality. (That would be Plastic Man, Max Mercury and the Ray if you’re going purely by audience visibility in the modern era)
And Uncle Sam, if you want to count him.
Black Condor (II) and Phantom Lady (II/III?) also had feature roles near the end of Starman.
She’s not going to be headlining a series anytime soon, but Cameron Chase has managed to maintain a recurring presence in the DCU in the 14 years since her introduction. She’s apparently even shown up in the New 52 in “Batwoman.”
“Chase” was also one of those series that they did try to give a promotional push, with her premiere in an anniversary Batman issue being the most notable example.
@Thorn
That is a very good point, one I hadn’t really considered before (which is troubling because it seems so obvious now). The X-Men in particular have never had much long term success with their “Young” books. The original New Mutants worked at the time because the X-books were very few in number and it was something different. Now, those books get launched, cancelled, and launched again, and the only lasting effect seems to be an endless supply of fringe mutants hanging around to be used either as pet characters if a particular writer likes them, or as cannon fodder when people need to die in order to make characters like Stryker look threatening. As long as the regular old X-Men are in place (which, let’s face it, they always will be), these new teams and characters can never really go anywhere. They’ll always be positioned as the junior team until they inevitably drift towards irrelevancy at which point they’re shipped off to limbo or killed. I think characters like Dust, Armor, and Pixie are pretty well designed and potentially very marketable, but they’re completely stagnant in their development. Rather than have a floating island with a hundred of these new mutants running around, Marvel needs to pick two or three of them ONLY and say, “these are going to be our new X-Men and we’re going to try like hell to make it work.” If they don’t catch on with readers, so be it, but the only way any of the new ones will even approach something special is if they narrow their focus, big time.
I’ve heard Byrne’s recent Star Trek work hasn’t made him any new enemies either.
The first year of Hidden Years was terribly slow paced…. and spent a lot of time in the Savage Land. Slow Savage land stories. I think that says it all.
I miss the Jemas era in a lot of ways.
Sure there was some terrible crap but it felt like such an ambitious period in which they were really trying a few different things.
The X-men had a wonderful few years under Morrison and to a lesser extent Casey (whose run, while not terrific really is better than I gave it credit for at the time) while Spiderman under JMS in those early few years was a fun book.
Marvel’s conservative turn in about 2003/2004 took a lot away from the line.
Avengers opened in Australia on the ANZAC day public holiday.
Oh, and if you want to direct people to the comics after seeing the Avengers movie, you’d give them The Ultimates.
Also Avengers Origin by Phil Noto even more recently
It doesn´t look like Marvel and DC are even interested into looking for new IPs, or? It is not in the interest of creators of doing so, especially as long as the comics into movies thing works, and the Company is also not interest. Which actually was the last NEW character they tried to establish with a No.1? I really have forgotten. Hitman for DC? Sentry for Marvel? Nothing in the last ten years?
The long-established shared-universe setup inevitably puts new characters on the periphery of the larger whole, instead of being at the centre of their own storytelling world as the lead characters of fiction normally are. (Equally, the stars of a shared universe lose much of their capacity to figure in stories of their own. For a long time I’ve felt that Marvel don’t really put out Spider-Man or Fantastic Four or X-Men comics any more – they’re all just Marvel Universe comics, the same thing with a different wrapping.)
The success of the Avengers film makes any dismantling of this setup all the more unlikely, unfortunately.
Re: Marvel getting more leary about publishing things that aren’t selling, does anyone know if that’s why S.H.I.E.L.D. has disappeared from the schedules? Because I was enjoying that, and it just … stopped.
An interestingly underplayed element of Dial H is that the “heroes” seem to be based on things on Nelson’s mind. Boy Chimney reflects his cigarette addiction, Captain Lacrymose his feeling of depressed helplessness. Or am I reading too much into it?
I guess writers these days just keep their best plot/character creations for creator owned stuff. Like Invincible.
How soon we forget Adam, the Blue Marvel.
Other new Marvel characters? Well, there’s those Vampires no one but Victor Gischler seems terribly interested in.
It’s mystifying to me why, when a movie is about to come out, Marvel doesn’t get to team to match the movie version. Avengers at the moment features two characters from other movie franchises, at least one lesser character from a lesser movie, and their Hulk is the wrong colour and not Banner. With so many X-Men sequels, they haven’t once managed to match up the characters in the comics. Since there’s about seventy Avengers titles right now, surely there’s space for the one simply called Avengers to feature the five people in the movie, and no other major characters.
No need to have the costumes be identical, or the storyline be the same or anything, but it would be simplicity itself to have the characters at least be recognisable.
Threnody actually first appeared in a comic called Stryfe’s Strike File, which was basically a poster book with a few sentences on each that hinted at upcoming plots – most of course were never followed up on. I recall that she was clearly meant to be a bad guy in that, a big, super-dangerous one who could crack the world asunder and probably would. This was ages, maybe years before she actually turned up in a comic, so I get the feeling she was just a drawing and a name at the time the book came out.
I owned that book. I’m pretty sure it had the silver foil on the cover. It was awful, it may actually have actually been the comic that killed my superhero comic-buying habit for years to come, when I realised what I’d paid good money for.
@Si
But it gave us Holocaust…
Ah Holocaust. He and that robot Wolverine fought, Shiva, should team up with black Bucky as the Culturally Insensitive Squad.
It beggars belief Marvel don’t have a trade paperback of the first 6 issues of “The Avengers”, featuring the same characters from the movie, in original, modern stories, sitting in comic shops and on Amazon right now. They’ve had how long to prepare for this movie coming out? Hell, I’m a (lapsed) comic reader and even I find Marvel’s collections impossible to navigate. They really show no interest in gaining new readers.
Marvel’s collections ARE impossible to navigate. I’ve buying the trades for around 10 years now, and without researching what stories I “needed” to read on the internet I’d be screwed.
“Marvel’s collections ARE impossible to navigate. I’ve buying the trades for around 10 years now, and without researching what stories I “needed” to read on the internet I’d be screwed.”
Yes, they really let potential customers work to find the stuff they are looking for.
I just wanted to check on some Showcase Presents and hardcover collections on the DC site. Un-be-lievable! DCs tradelistings used to be so user friendly, everything listed alphabetically on one page, easy to find. They did everything right what Marvel did wrong.
Now, the NEW DC is just a fucking mess. As if they were going out of their way to make things difficult for potential customers. Why fix things that ain´t broke?
Good discussion on IP farming and new characters. But even with old characters I think it’s a mistake to affiliate every single one with the big teams (ie. Avengers or X-Men) because the more integrated they become with those franchises the less value they have as properties in their own right. As an example I think Cable works as a pretty simple “man from the future” concept but by intricately relating him to the X-Men it actually weakens that because there is now way you can now explain his backstory in an hour and a half movie. I think Marvel will take the wrong message from the Avengers movie that the shared universe works in movies and I think this is definitely the exception rather than the rule.
@Si
Actually, “Avengers Assemble” was created as a title to do exactly what you are describing. It is yet another Avengers title that, for no particularly good in-universe reason, features exactly the movie roster of Avengers.
Unfortunately, it’s also some of Bendis’ worst Avengers work to date.
Odessasteps said: “An interestingly underplayed element of Dial H is that the “heroes” seem to be based on things on Nelson’s mind. Boy Chimney reflects his cigarette addiction, Captain Lacrymose his feeling of depressed helplessness. Or am I reading too much into it?”
I don’t think you are reading too much into it, and I reckon it’s this ‘hero reflects some aspect of the main character’ thing that’ll stop it from becoming just descending into “LOL RaNdoMmmNesS!!!”
(I hope so, anyway, as I really loved the first issue and am genuinely excited for the second one just to see what direction it takes)
The reason the avengers shared movie universe worked is because (aside from iron man 2) the movies didn’t do any real heavy lifting, and told a complete story in their own right. With tiny foreshadowing scenes relegated to after the credits. Hell, even the Avengers movie still works on it’s own, even if you haven’t seen the 5 lead in films.
I get a feeling for the next wave (iron man 3, etc) will have a tighter build up to Avengers 2.
@Si
When it looks like comics companies change a series to match a current movie, people also complain. Trying to match a movie can be more disruptive than a bad crossover event.
I think the whole “making everything match the movie” tactic is a bit patronising to audiences/readers. The film’s an adaptation, you can’t expect the source material to be identical, especially when you’re dealing with such wide-ranging material. As a kid, going from the Spider-Man cartoons to the comics, it didn’t bother me that he wasn’t besties with Iceman and didn’t get his powers from a neogenic recombinator.
It would help if what you are putting out is a) accessible and b) good, which Marvel seem to be avoiding with most of its Avengers books at the moment. A season one book would also have been a good idea. EMH really wouldn’t fit the bill tho, as it’s heavily dependent on those Lee/Kirby/Heck issues.
I would disagree that the Millar/Hitch Ultimates* is a good “this is like the movie” comic to give a new fan of the Avengers, despite some superficial similarities, for two reasons:
1) The characters bear very little resemblance to the movie versions beyond costumes (and sometimes not even then. See Iron Man). Can you see Chris Evans’ Cap doing the “Does this A stand for France” thing or Mark Ruffalo’s Banner being so utterly weasely, for instance? The movie versions of the characters are nowhere near as cynical.
2) The first arc showing the formation of the team is basically the opposite of the movie – in the movie, the “Avengers” are a non-team fused that get brought together because of a specific crisis and go their separate ways at the end. In the Ultimates, they spend most of the first arc sitting around (in one extended scene, debating who would play them in the movie…) until Banner gets so pathetic he turns himself back into the Hulk to give them something to fight. (And the less said about Ultimates Hulk the better)
*As for that title? IIRC, Mark Millar’s reasoning was “they’ll never be able to call a movie ‘Avengers’
It’s not about changing everything in the comic to match the movie, as I said. It’s simply about making it recognisable. Team rosters change every few months these days, it’s not going to affect anything much to make sure the team is actually the characters that people have heard about. People will be forgiving if the costumes are different, even if the relationships are a little bit different. Novels are always different to the movies that are adapted from them. But if people come to a comic wanting to see more of characters X, Y, and Z and X isn’t there and Y is a different guy entirely, any interest is going to quickly dry up.
I didn’t realise Avengers Assemble has the movie cast, I thought it had Ant Man and so-forth.
If you excuse the ridiculously long pre-Assemble opening arc, the latest Avengers cartoon is a pretty good jumping on point, as it features more or less all the characters from the movie (albeit much less Black Widow). Unfortunately, the “cartoon” status would probably put off a lot of the potential audience.
GV said: “But even with old characters I think it’s a mistake to affiliate every single one with the big teams (ie. Avengers or X-Men) because the more integrated they become with those franchises the less value they have as properties in their own right.”
This explains a lot of the dissatisfaction I have with the current omnipresence of Spider-Man and Wolverine.
I like what Si is saying – it does make some sense to bend the comics toward the movie lineup to the extent possible within the existing comic continuity. Marvel continually does things other than that which are usually dumb.
Avengers Assemble seems to have a Hulk that bears no resemblance to the Hulk’s current status quo. They just bent over backwards to introduce a black Fury and his sidekick Coulson into the 616 continuity. That sort of stuff just irritates fans of the comics and never even gets seen by fans of the movies, from what I can tell.
The whole time you were discussing what trades movie-goers should be introduced to, I kept saying “Casey’s Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!” which was embarrassing since I was walking to work. (j/k) I’m glad you got around to it in your discussion but I disagree that it would not serve very well. The character interactions are key and serve to flesh out what the movie audiences will recognize as key players and relationships. I think it creates the through-line that you said was present in the Season One, and it was a great insight that all that was needed was a bit of re-packaging (especially since the current cartoon is called by the same name.)
In terms of big-budget “continuing” stories, the Mansion Siege is a must, as is the Kang Dynasty and Ultron Imperative. These are the stories that I would point potential new readers to.
@Al
The Jonah Hex film didn’t make any money. It cost 47m and grossed just under 11m.
Also, the theater I attended the film at actually did hand out promotional Avengers comics.
Can you make a semi-regular feature of turning bizarre turns of phrase from the podcast into potential “Dial H” heroes?
It would have been a good week to return to “whos whos in whos who” and examine some of the characters in the Silver Age Dial H series. (well, the 80s Dial H would have been just as good)
Although Marvel could let characters like Namor rest a bit more between failed relaunches, I do think occasional revamps of old characters *are* necessary for them to remain viable as big media properties.
While silver age comics provide the basic stories behind the Marvel Studios films, much of the look of those movies comes from The Ultimates and other more recent comics.
The Avengers movie doesn’t take the cynical tone of The Ultimates (thankfully), but you can bet that comic went a long way to showing that the film was viable as a contemporary mainstream movie.
Marvel send out packs of recent material out to interested stars and directors – you can see Ang Lee got Hulk Smash, while infamously the Ennis Fury MAX series repulsed Clooney and made him lose interest. Adi Granov’s approach to Iron Man is all over those movies.
DC used to do the opposite, apparently – up to the late 70s/early 80s prospective producers got a summary of each DC character’s *first* appearance. So anyone considering a Green Lantern movie would have got a synopsis of Alan Scott, his magic torch and vulnerability to wood, rather than Hal and the Corps. That can’t have helped.