Comic: Age of Ultron 1

[clearspira]

This highlights a specific problem I've had with comics for a long time, and a big reason I've never gotten into them: the individual issues too often feel like nothing happened, and that nothing happened with extremely low density. Of all the times I've bothered to try getting into comics, I could probably count on one hand the number of issues that didn't make me feel like I'd wasted a lot of money on something that took three minutes to read. As a kid they were always far outside of being remotely affordable, and as an adult, I'd rather wait for the trade paperbacks. At least bad issues are easier to swallow in that format.

The rest of the stupid decisions he points out meant to "get new readers" are things I've encountered as well. Some industries really have a hard time with thinking outside of their perspective, so much that it almost hurts trying to wrap my brain around the stupid.

Ultimately my opinion on why comic books are dying. Your average comic is between $2.99 to $4.99 for something that net you an hour's worth of entertainment at best. A Netflix/Amazon Prime subscription is $12.99 for something that will get you thousands of hours of entertainment. Now factor in that comic books are not self-enclosed stories and thus can/will cost multiple times that of a Netflix subscription in order to see that story from beginning to end, you are now looking at something that fails any kind of reasonable cost benefit analysis. And given how the average response by the comic book companies to this is to raise the price, we now have a self-fulfilling prophecy on our hands.

I agree with you totally: any comic book i read today is a trade. And that isn't often.

[Deledrius]

Better yet, Kamala Khan, the new Ms Marvel. She's a good enough character on her own that she proves Marvel is capable of getting back to where it used to be instead of shooting itself in the foot.

I got some of these cheap in a digital format last year and read through the start of her story. It's really well done. I love her character, her abilities, and her issues with her family and friends and seeing how she deals with it all. Great stuff, and the sort of thing I want to expect from the superhero comic format.

[AllanO]

I thought he described this idea as "These are stories that are available to me through comixology Unlimited post-One More Day that I wish to cover." I'm not sure, I'll need to watch the intro again, I wasn't paying enough attention.

Note in the intro he explains he did these last year (ie 2018), hence why he goes from having no laryngitis in the intro to sound like he is dying in the review (to me it sounded less like he was going through puberty more that this comic was attacking him). So the good news is we know he will recover from the laryngitis.

The intro explains he got Marvel unlimited at the time and was experimenting reviewing with it. My sense would be that he is no longer doing this and this is the remnant of a failed experiment, but he does not say that one way or the other in the intro in plain speech. Perhaps he has a bunch of other comic reviews in the offing?

[MyUserName]

I'm guessing this was a paid request. Because honestly, I think a much more fitting and hopeful story to end the year on would have been Age of Apocalypse. That was a story that was truly epic and defined a hero's journey. Heroic characters facing hopeless and impossible odds on a journey where they will sacrifice everything to bring back a better world with more hope and life.

I thought he described this idea as "These are stories that are available to me through comixology Unlimited post-One More Day that I wish to cover." I'm not sure, I'll need to watch the intro again, I wasn't paying enough attention.

If he's got comixology unlimited than I cry foul for subjecting us to this. He could be covering Spider-Man 2099 by Peter F*cking David! Or the initial Battle Angel Alita run. Anything other than subjecting us to bendis.

Peter David is even more litigious than CBS's bot-army when it comes to people covering his work. He's verboten on a lot of sites because of his attitude towards fans of his comics.

Peter Davids always been a champion of Geek Culture and its hard to see him preventing coverage of his work. When some media tried to attack comic book readers earlier this year, Peter David stood up for comic book and geek culture, and called out the shill media. I'll need a link showing him opposing coverage of his work.

Here you go.
[url]https://www.peterdavid.net/2016/02/24/scans_daily-again/[/url]

Yeah, this doesn't even come close to what we are talking about. This is about a site that posted half an entire issue online for people to read at their leisure, not about reviewing or covering his work. Bad enough in its own right, but he also specifically asked people not to spoil that particular issue. He also went to Marvel expecting them to ask the scans themselves, not articles or the site, be taken down.

Misinformation and libel like this is why I ask for links and follow up information myself. Internet anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people

[Deledrius]

Yeah, this doesn't even come close to what we are talking about. This is about a site that posted half an entire issue online for people to read at their leisure, not about reviewing or covering his work. Bad enough in its own right, but he also specifically asked people not to spoil that particular issue. He also went to Marvel expecting them to ask the scans themselves, not articles or the site, be taken down.

Misinformation and libel like this is why I ask for links and follow up information myself. Internet anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people

That's a very charitable reading of what David himself admits to, and ignores the context. More importantly, the uncertainty of SFDebris having to defend against it is precisely the point of this conversation about avoiding his words, given all of the trouble with CBS and Trek reviews. A review being fair use doesn't protect you from abuse.

[jadenova]

Chuck, I don't want to be pendatic, but since your butcher the name of one my favorite Marvel character: It Taskmaster not Targetmaster.

Thank you. Glad I'm not the only one who was finding that annoying.

[Nealithi]

Okay now that this is done. . . Why does this remind me of a DC event from decades ago?
I don't remember the specific title. But basically the JL of the future comes back to ask the founding JL people to attend an anniversary event and the future counterparts would watch the present for them. But the villain Solaris set things up so several heroes were infected with something so it would be created in the first place. They decided to use their future knowledge to build in a weakness and provide a false weapon against Superman to the villain. So it could be defeated this time. They pretended it had kryptonite. Superman had retired and was literally living inside the sun. So when Solaris launched the 'krypotonite' it was a power ring. And a capsule with the genetic material for Superman to have a family. But the whole 'write a weakness into the past version' feels lifted straight from this mess.

[Linkara]

Okay now that this is done. . . Why does this remind me of a DC event from decades ago?
I don't remember the specific title. But basically the JL of the future comes back to ask the founding JL people to attend an anniversary event and the future counterparts would watch the present for them. But the villain Solaris set things up so several heroes were infected with something so it would be created in the first place. They decided to use their future knowledge to build in a weakness and provide a false weapon against Superman to the villain. So it could be defeated this time. They pretended it had kryptonite. Superman had retired and was literally living inside the sun. So when Solaris launched the 'krypotonite' it was a power ring. And a capsule with the genetic material for Superman to have a family. But the whole 'write a weakness into the past version' feels lifted straight from this mess.

"DC One Million," which is a Grant Morrison story. Grant is kind of the opposite of Bendis - Bendis takes decompressed storytelling to the limit... whereas Morrison writes in a pseudo-Silver Age kind of way where everything is way, WAY too compressed, fitting in a million ideas in his stories at once and thus it makes it harder to follow.

What this reminds me of is basically an inferior version of House of M - the story where the Scarlet Witch creates an alternate timeline where mutants are in charge, the tie-ins serving to help flesh out this alternate reality, with a few ethical questions raised, but ultimately it's about trying to fix reality into the original universe... with mixed results.

[jadenova]

Okay now that this is done. . . Why does this remind me of a DC event from decades ago?
I don't remember the specific title. But basically the JL of the future comes back to ask the founding JL people to attend an anniversary event and the future counterparts would watch the present for them. But the villain Solaris set things up so several heroes were infected with something so it would be created in the first place. They decided to use their future knowledge to build in a weakness and provide a false weapon against Superman to the villain. So it could be defeated this time. They pretended it had kryptonite. Superman had retired and was literally living inside the sun. So when Solaris launched the 'krypotonite' it was a power ring. And a capsule with the genetic material for Superman to have a family. But the whole 'write a weakness into the past version' feels lifted straight from this mess.

"DC One Million," which is a Grant Morrison story. Grant is kind of the opposite of Bendis - Bendis takes decompressed storytelling to the limit... whereas Morrison writes in a pseudo-Silver Age kind of way where everything is way, WAY too compressed, fitting in a million ideas in his stories at once and thus it makes it harder to follow.

Grant Morrison is the kind of guy who have to read in trades just so you can reread and try to understand everything at once instead of going from month to month.

[AndrewGPaul]

Chuck, I don't want to be pendatic, but since your butcher the name of one my favorite Marvel character: It Taskmaster not Targetmaster.

Thank you. Glad I'm not the only one who was finding that annoying.

I’m having a hard time thinking of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskmaster_(TV_series)]Greg Davies[/url] as a superhero.

If there’s any more comics reviews, could we get some dates, please? Especially here with references to old issues, I’ve no idea when this story appeared, or when Avengers issue 56 was published, that sort of thing.

Despite my knowledge of Marvel characters being exclusively about the films, I enjoyed this, although I think a review of something Chuck liked would have been better. This just reinforces my unwarranted dislike of superheroes as a comic genre.

As far as “writing for the trades” goes, the only series I’ve bought individually were 1602, the tail end of 100 Bullets (after the friend I was cashing them off moved to another country) and The Boys. In all three examples, it was a painful slog. The price is bad enough, but given that they’re about 50% ads for plastic crap and awful-looking TV shows, the value for money is even worse.

P.s. is the url tag broken?