Sep 25
Housekeeping
Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2010 by Paul in Uncategorized
No reviews this weekend, because I haven’t got this week’s books yet, and it’s hard to review them when they’re still in the post. Some time during the week, probably…
Come on, you could just make some educated guesses : )
That’s quite the funny idea.
Paul’s pre-reviews. See how they hold up to the actual reviews.
I love Paul’s reviews, but I’ve always wondered something (and not to jinx his efforts): why does he write such eloquent and thoughtful reviews about X-Men comics? I mean, he made it through the Chuck Austen era, so clearly nothing’s going to stop him now, but . . . it confuses me that someone so intelligent puts more time into dissecting these things than the people who create them (well, excluding artists (excluding Greg Land)).
Michael: I remember him making a comment (maybe it was in that interview he did years ago) to the effect of that he’s fascinated by critiquing in-depth such a prominent example of mainstream comics, weighing both the good and bad.
That and he quite likes the X-Men. He explicitly described himself as an X-Men completist in one of the past podcasts.
Apropos of nothing, I’d just like to note that the current Avengers books contain some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen in any kind of a thing, ever.
Iron Man: Why did you do that!
Old Iron Man: ‘Cause I did that!
Iron Man: But you did it!
Old Iron Man: I know but I did that!
Iron Man: But it hurt!
Old Iron Man: But I did it!
Old Hulk: Shut up shut up!
Old Kang: Shut up shut up!
Old Iron Man: He’s a stupid head!
Old Kang: You’re the stupid head, stupid head!
Old Hulk: Shut up shut up!
Iron Man: Shut up shut up!
And, repeat.
Moose, that’s why I dropped all the Avengers books but Academy.
Zach – granted, ‘Avengers’, while having glimmerings of good ideas, does have a lot of Bendis’s worst writing tics.
But ‘New’ and ‘Secret’ are both very good comic books. ‘New’ is the only example I can think of Bendis writing a good team book, and everything there is actually coherent and fluid and fun. And ‘Secret’ is written by Brubaker, who is offering up his trademark style filtered though the popular-super-hero style. I read all four, and can totally understand dropping the main title, but if you’re liking ‘Academy’, I think you’d like where ‘New’ and ‘Secret’ are going as well.
I think I am a couple of issues behind but I agree that Bendis’ dialog is the worst that it’s ever been. I just don’t think that he is suited to writing team books. Virtually all of his characters have the same dialog. It’s fine to have one “funny” character like Spider-Man but it doesn’t make any sense for characters like Bucky-Cap and Wolverine to speak like that. When Bendis is writing a solo book I think that it is easier to take his writing but on a team book it’s just annoying.
I know this is the wroooong place to ask this, but is anyone else liking Scarlet? I am really liking it.
Seems poor timing considering how riled up Brian Bendis seems to be trying to get people about the lack of good comics reviewing (and the subsequent plugs by some people of this site)
I’m not sure why that’s poor timing, but fair enough. He’s not wrong, either way though, is he? There are certainly books that may or may not merit serious criticism (most X-Men books among them), but it’s unfortunate when books like Y: The Last Man or Daytripper or Asterios Polyp or Jimmy Corrigan or Neonomicon or even Umbrella Academy don’t get discussed in any meaningful way.
In any case though, I think Scarlet’s a really interesting book. I know there aren’t a lot of Bendis fans around these parts, and I’d definitely agree that a lot of his recent comics work is fairly uninspired, but I still think Alias and his run of Daredevil are some really, really phenomenal comics. (And I actually think the period on New Avengers where Leinil Yu was the artist was pretty damned good too.)
That said, I do think everything since Secret Invasion (and including Secret Invasion) has been pretty disappointing (although I agree that the current New Avengers series has been good so far). Spider-woman was especially awful. Great artwork, but such a terrible, lifeless book. Glad to see Maleev’s beautiful work in a book that’s worth it.
I’ve not really enjoyed Bendis’ Marvel stuff for a while now, but I’m really enjoying Scarlet. More of that sort of thing I say.
I wish we didn’t have to wait until the weekend to hear Paul and Al discuss the Bob Harras hire.
I only kind of liked Spider-Woman until the last issue, which I loved. It really sucked only getting into a book the issue it was canceled, I don’t think it had ever happened to me before.
Paul, let me second (sort of) the request for a separate column or piece on the Bob Harras hire. There’s a lot of conflicting claims making the rounds about whether Harras’ tenure as Group Editor and then EIC coincided with the X-Men’s period of greatest success or rather the onset of their long decline. As the internet’s foremost authority on all matters X-related, your insights would be damn interesting methinks.
I feel the same way about Black Widow. I thought the current series was incredibly boring, but kept buying it because I liked the artwork, and because I wanted to see if it’d pick up. Then issues #5 and #6 were really excellent, I got excited about it, and then realized the creative team was changing with the next issue.
I actually thought Spider-woman was awful though. Every issue dragged on an on, only the second issue had enough content to fill it, and Spider-woman was such an obvious, unsubtle character all the way through.
I honestly do think the blame for that is on the completely stupid motion comic idea. Plotting a ten-minute cartoon and then trying to fill 22 pages with the same thin plot is just not a good idea, and Maleev obviously burned out on having to make artwork for both every month very fast.
Speaking of Paul’s thoughts on Harras’s promotion, I’m curious to see Paul review a Harras-written story, particularly Operation: Galactic Storm. As an Avengers writer, Harras was actually pretty good, despite working with a rather bland cast in the midst of the ’90s jacket era.
I’m rather annoyed that Bendis *still* hasn’t gotten round to detailing exactly how Spider-Woman got her powers back. It just comes across as general laziness. And I’ve sworn off his ‘Avengers’ books for a long while now due to the aforementioned awful dialogue, general decompression and that he can’t write a decent team book. Plus I really, really hate how he writes Spider-Man.
‘Scarlet’ on the other hand has been incredibly enjoyable and strongly written, even though Maleev’s art has been the real draw. And I came across the first trade of the relaunched ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ pretty cheaply and it was as solid as usual.
So generally with Bendis – solo books = good, team books = bad.
Didn’t New Avengers establish several years ago that Spider-woman got her powers back through a secret deal with HYDRA (which was actually a secret deal with Nick Fury)? Or was that a fake-out?
It was a fake-out cause that’s when they swapped her out with the Skrull Queen.
I’m not going back to check, but I think Secret Invasion established that she was repowered by the Skrulls as part of the duplication process.
Those comments just reminded me how much they F-ed things up by making her the Skrull Queen. Why should the audience care about Spider Woman, when the cool one we all liked was an imposter all along. I wonder if, in the future they’ll just make out like it was her the way without actually retconning they seem to do with Jean Grey and the Phoenix.
I agree with that. The least interesting thing they could have done with her was make her a skrull. The current version of Spider-woman doesn’t seem to have much going on at all.
Actually, I’d say the biggest failure of Secret Invasion is that it didn’t fulfill any of its promise at all. It was strongly implied that the non-stop craziness of the previous few years was owed to the skrulls, and that House of M and Civil War were leading up to this… Only then flashbacks showed us that skrulls specifically had nothing to do with those things, and that they just reacted to them.
Even worse, we were explicitly told that skrulls had infiltrated every corner of the Marvel universe and every team. We were also told that any character with a suspicious resurrection in his/her history was fair game (in fact, even Elektra’s resurrection turned out to be untouched, since her abduction happened way later).
At my count, the Avengers had one skrull infiltrator, while Hank Pym was the only other major character replaced- and he actually wasn’t all that important right then. Jarvis? Dum Dum Dugan? The Contessa? Who cares?
I guess my point is that there was a potential for a seriously interesting story there, but even the guy who was writing it wasn’t willing to commit to it, so why would anybody else?
@Ben Johnston
But that makes no sense. Why would the Skrulls capture her then proceed to give her powers, which would obviously make any escape attempt that bit easier?
Furthermore it was shown that the Skrull Queen had extra or at least more amplified powers as evidenced when she cut loose on Dr Doom, which prompted Black Widow to query along the lines of “your file said nothing about those powers”.
I definitely agree with what Lambnesio said. I recall during the ‘Iron Man: House of M’ mini Hank Pym (which was later revealed that he would have been a Skrull at this time) going a bit mad and planting bombs everywhere. Yet during ‘Secret Invasion’ they all just kind of shrugged at the previous events and went along with the flow to avoid being rumbled. A lot of it felt like a left-hand, right-hand scenario with the editors and/or Bendis winging it on the fly so he could state that everything tied together nicely.
As an aside, these Joe Quesada OMIT interviews on CBR are turning out to be unintentionally hilarious!
“But that makes no sense. Why would the Skrulls capture her then proceed to give her powers, which would obviously make any escape attempt that bit easier?”
Same reason Norman Osborn kidnapped Aunt May and cured her terminal illness as part of a scheme to make Peter think she was dead. Supervillains can be helpful people when bad writers are involved…
I wish a poorly written supervillain would take an interest in my life.
“At my count, the Avengers had one skrull infiltrator, while Hank Pym was the only other major character replaced- and he actually wasn’t all that important right then. Jarvis? Dum Dum Dugan? The Contessa? Who cares?”
The story line reason for replacing minor characters like Jarvis was that he was the kind of guy that was always just there, but no one had any major history with him. Or at least, didn’t really get spoken to much. Imagine replacing Wolverine.
Cap: Hey Logan, remember that time 50 years ago when we beat up Nazi’s?
Fake Logan: Ahh, urmm… yeah, that was pretty badass, bub.
Nick Fury: Was that the same time we beat up those aliens that were hanging out with the nazis?
Fake Logan: Uhh, yeah, I think so.
Bucky: Nah, Nick, you’re thinking of the time we beat up goons for Romulus.
Cap: That’s right, cause Logan betrayed me to the nazis, so I beat him up.
Fake Logan: Uhhh, oh yeah, that’s right.
Bucky: Yeah, cause Logan wanted to beat me up, but then it turned out we were on the same side, so he had to help me beat other people up.
Nick Fury thought bubble: Something’s fishy here…
Nick Fury (winking at cap): And that’s when we found the secret nazi plans about Godzilla.
Cap: Oh yeah, that was a helluva fight.
Fake Logan: Wasn’t just. Godzilla was tough, bub.
Bucky: That never happened.
Nick Fury: Of course it didn’t. Who are you really, shorty?
Fake Logan: I’m the best at what I do.
Cap: I don’t think so. We didn’t fight Godzilla then.
Fake Logan: Yeah, maybe not, bub. But my memories…
Bucky: Oh yeah, your memories.
Fake Logan: Yeah, I’m going to a pub to angst.
Fake Logan leaves.
Cap: Nick, didn’t Logan get his memories back during House of M?
Nick Fury: Yeah, let’s keep an eye on him.
Fake Logan walks into random bar.
Fake Logan: A beer, bub.
Barteneder: LOGAN! How good it is to see you again, my friend. Remember that time you beat up some evil bikers from Mars and saved my family from a burning runaway car?
Fake Logan: Ughhh… I think I’ll go be Jarvis, instead.
Uh, I’m very late in responding to this- but based on what we know about the process the skrulls were using, they had access to the memories of the person they were impersonating, and were actually linked to their still-living minds in some way. Which is why the Mockingbird skrull knew Hawkeye’s secrets, or why skull Beast got into Wonder-Man’s head the way he did.
Uh, nobody is ever going to read this.