COMICS! l OT l October Marvel NOW is almost now edition

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ViewtifulJC said:
EIGHTEEN VARIANTS

THERE'S EVEN A VARIANT OF A VARIANT

INCEPTION-LEVEL MARKETING

WE NEED TO GO DEEPER(in your wallet)
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Theres quite a bit of talk online about how variants are starting to get out of hand. As someone who wasn't into comics in the 90s I can't say I really understand the whole scheme.
 
The 90s weren't even that bad for variants. There was a lot of other shit like chromium and gimmick covers but the variants weren't close to as bad as they are now. X-Men #1 having 5 variants was excessive. Now we've got 18.
 
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
is the trinity war gonna be what it sounds like (superman vs batman vs wonder woman)
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It looks like it will be JL vs JLA with a pandora's box plot. Check out FCBD of the DCnU for a preview at Comixology.

Y9if0.jpg
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Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
Nothings ever going to top claremont because of the way he loved those characters and basically dedicated his entire life to that book but there have been plenty of good xmen stories since his original run (some even done ny claremont himself, contrary to what the internet will have you believe)
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I'd love to read them. If you have specific recommendations, I'm game. I tried reading a couple of New Claremont books upon his return but found them pretty intolerable. The thing that was magical about Claremont back then - and it took me a while to appreciate it - wasn't just Chris. The entire editorial environment that CC worked in was conducive to telling strong stories that had to have somewhat logical throughlines. They kept him on track, bouncing strong story and character-centric ideas off each other, and didn't come from a history of just comic book influences. Today's writers seem to mine solely from comics and movies. Mostly.

The team of Claremont, Louise Simonson, Jim Shooter, and ANY strong artist with a sense for co-plotting was X-Men Heaven. Claremont alone could put out some really bad things, but it was the TEAMS that he worked with - pre-image - that made it all sing. CC is best when he collaborates.

New CC completely lost his sense for dialogue. Back in the day it was NEVER real, but it was sort of like Tarantino. It had a humanity and sounded real enough. When he came back, he was in full on Claremont shorthand, ie, writing stuff that he'd written before without the patience or voice that he he once had, as if he was imitating HIMSELF ("I will consume you, your will, your LIFE, Body and soul"...and shit like that over and over again) To be fair, he was already losing it by the launch of the new X-Men books and probably would've needed to be reigned in eventually, but by the time he came back fully, he was COMPLETELY gone.

You know the closest story I've read to the 'feeling' of old Claremont? Believe it or not, was Bendis' House of M stuff. I daresay that Bendis was 'inspired' by my absolute favorite X-Men story outside of the Dark Phoenix Saga, which was that X-Men/Alpha flight TPB where they fight over Loki's 'gift' of 'evolution' at the cost of losing 'magic'. It was an incredibly powerful morale story which was pretty much what House of M was all about.

The thing about old X-Men is that it wasn't about the plots as much as the relationships. It's funny because I honestly never thought of the X-men as Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, etc...until after he left and it became this absurd soap opera. Well, moreso.

In the CC era, you really only thought about those guys as Scott, Jean, Hank, Bobby, Logan, Ororo, Kitty, etc. Like, their codenames were really just an alter ego to protect the real lives they so desperately wanted to have.

Lastly, and sorry this has turned into an essay, but the tool that CC dropped when he came back but was ESSENTIAL to him as a writer before he left, was the thought balloon. I've had this debate with several comic types and I stand firmly. Modern writers don't use and don't understand HOW to use the thought balloon. First person , as currently utilized, is strictly a narrative tool to get you from point A to B, or a place to insert humor and sarcasm.

Now, if you go back and look at the way CC used it (and some of the best Marvel writers, too) you'll see that the thought balloon informed the reader of the character's thoughts and feelings while his actions and words spoken might betray something entirely different. Comics now are too centered on being movies and television shows. We're passive audiences whereby before, we were the omniscient third person, privy to every character's insecurities. What i used to LOVE was in not only SEEING how a character beats somebody, but reading or 'listening' to how they think through each action.

This tool allowed for very effective literary weapons like dream states and dream state reactions. Anyway, I could go into a shit ton details, but blah blah....Claremont was awesome.
 
BlueScrote said:
Theres quite a bit of talk online about how variants are starting to get out of hand. As someone who wasn't into comics in the 90s I can't say I really understand the whole scheme.
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Equal ratio variants are basically there to appeal to the collector; one guy might like "Cover A"'s artwork, another might like "Cover B" more (or C or D or...), but the collector is going to buy them all because he simply must. Incentive variants are supposed to entice retailers into ordering more copies of a book to acquire a limited-print variant cover that the retailer can then turn around and sell for a marked up price over the standard cover. One tempts the collector into feeding his addiction, the other bribes the shopkeep into tripling his order so he can make $50 off a $4 book... and risk losing the money on the pile of comics he loaded up on to get it.
 
BlackBanditSho said:
I'd love to read them. If you have specific recommendations, I'm game. I tried reading a couple of New Claremont books upon his return but found them pretty intolerable. The thing that was magical about Claremont back then - and it took me a while to appreciate it - wasn't just Chris. The entire editorial environment that CC worked in was conducive to telling strong stories that had to have somewhat logical throughlines. They kept him on track, bouncing strong story and character-centric ideas off each other, and didn't come from a history of just comic book influences. Today's writers seem to mine solely from comics and movies. Mostly.

The team of Claremont, Louise Simonson, Jim Shooter, and ANY strong artist with a sense for co-plotting was X-Men Heaven. Claremont alone could put out some really bad things, but it was the TEAMS that he worked with - pre-image - that made it all sing. CC is best when he collaborates.

New CC completely lost his sense for dialogue. Back in the day it was NEVER real, but it was sort of like Tarantino. It had a humanity and sounded real enough. When he came back, he was in full on Claremont shorthand, ie, writing stuff that he'd written before without the patience or voice that he he once had. To be fair, he was already losing it by the launch of the new X-Men books and probably would've needed to be reigned in eventually, but by the time he came back fully, he was COMPLETELY gone.

You know the closest story I've read to the 'feeling' of old Claremont? Believe it or not, was Bendis' House of M stuff. I daresay that Bendis was 'inspired' by my absolute favorite X-Men story outside of the Dark Phoenix Saga, which was that X-Men/Alpha flight TPB where they fight over Loki's 'gift' of 'evolution' at the cost of losing 'magic'. It was an incredibly powerful morale story which was pretty much what House of M was all about.

The thing about old X-Men is that it wasn't about the plots as much as the relationships. It's funny because I honestly never even thought of the X-men as Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, etc...until after he left and it became this absurd soap opera. Well, moreso.

In the CC era, you really only thought about those guys as Scott, Jean, Hank, Bobby, Logan, Ororo, Kitty, etc. Like, their codenames were really just an alter ego to protect the real lives they so desperately wanted to have.

Lastly, and sorry this has turned into an essay, but the tool that CC dropped when he came back but was ESSENTIAL to him as a writer before he left, was the thought balloon. I've had this debate with several comic types and I stand firmly. Modern writers don't use and don't understand HOW to use the thought balloon. First person is now strictly a narrative tool to get you from point A to B, or a place to insert humor and sarcasm.

Now, if you go back and look at the way CC used it (and some of the best Marvel writers, too) you'll see that the thought balloon informed the reader of the character's thoughts and feelings while his actions and words spoken might betray something entirely different. Comics now are too centered on being movies and television shows. We're passive audiences whereby before, we were the omniscient third person, privy to every character's insecurities. What i used to LOVE was in not only SEEING how a character beats somebody, but reading or 'listening' to how they think through each action.

This tool allowed for very effective literary tools like dream states and dream state reactions. Anyway, I could go into a shit ton details, but blah blah....Claremont was awesome.
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You're pretty dead on about his dialogue and thought balloons. I've always said that the way comic book writers used to write isn't a simplistic outdated method that they just stumbled into because they didn't know any better...it was a way to maximize the amount of story and content that could be put into a 22 page story. That doesn't just go for Claremont, but he was one of the best at it. You can pick up any single issue of his original Uncanny X-Men run and be entertained by it and it definitely wasn't an accident. He was also one of the only writers that took meter and rhythm into account when he did dialogue ("I'm the best there is at what I do" is written in iambic pentameter - mind blown).

Claremont always did work with a strong editorial team, Weezie Simonson and Ann Nocenti in particular. But then again...editorial brought back Jean Grey and X-Factor which IMO was a serious blow to the franchise (at least at first). I don't think the X-Office even had a say in that though.

As for good new Chris Claremont books. I have to say that I actually ended up enjoying X-Men Forever. It's not quite as good as 80s Claremont and it gets off to a really rough start, but it's actually really enjoyable by the end and I was really mad it got cancelled (and I HATED it in the beginning). The only thing it's missing is a great artist collaboration like you said. Harder to get great artists when you aren't making those X-Men royalties I guess. Paul Smith does a few issues though, which is always appreciated.
 
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
You're pretty dead on about his dialogue and thought balloons. I've always said that the way comic book writers used to write isn't a simplistic outdated method that they just stumbled into because they didn't know any better...it was a way to maximize the amount of story and content that could be put into a 22 page story. That doesn't just go for Claremont, but he was one of the best at it. You can pick up any single issue of his original Uncanny X-Men run and be entertained by it and it definitely wasn't an accident. He was also one of the only writers that took meter and rhythm into account when he did dialogue ("I'm the best there is at what I do" is written in iambic pentameter - mind blown).

Claremont always did work with a strong editorial team, Weezie Simonson and Ann Nocenti in particular. But then again...editorial brought back Jean Grey and X-Factor which IMO was a serious blow to the franchise (at least at first). I don't think the X-Office even had a say in that though.

As for good new Chris Claremont books. I have to say that I actually ended up enjoying X-Men Forever. It's not quite as good as 80s Claremont and it gets off to a really rough start, but it's actually really enjoyable by the end and I was really mad it got cancelled (and I HATED it in the beginning). The only thing it's missing is a great artist collaboration like you said. Harder to get great artists when you aren't making those X-Men royalties I guess. Paul Smith does a few issues though, which is always appreciated.
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Didn't realize that about the iambic pentameter! learn something new every day! Yeah, that creative team! I can tell that you're the real deal. i tried, perhaps, two early issues of forever and it didnt connect for me. Better than X-treme, sure, but not by much. If it won you over eventually, then i will give it another look. If i am lucky, its on Comixology. Thanks! I am very eager to check it out!
 
sca2511 said:
I think they will be mentioned sometime, but probably not as previous Batgirls due to the New 52 Batgirl timeline.


I'm not exactly sure myself, but I'd like to be thrown into a great ride, not just some, "hey I'm a girl and I kick ass" kind of thing. Would Batgirl Year One be considered light and fluffy? I guess I really liked that story due to the little hints of what would become of her in The Killing Joke, plus the story of just finding herself.

I liked Talon, probably would like a dark Batgirl story. I'll take a look at that Batman Inc. special. What are these Spoiler stories?
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Yeah, Year One was really good stuff - it had a point to it, you know?

I don't know if the Spoiler stuff has been collected, but her introduction was all about how her dad was a supervillian and she tried to take it into her own hands to stop him. I think it was in some really old issues of Detective. And then she was a major supporting character in Chuck Dixon's Robin series too. But what was good about her was that she had a purpose as a character, first fighting against her father and then trying to be accepted by the Bat family.
 
LiQuid! said:
The P5 were creating a utopia on earth, making it safe for mutant kind and generally righting wrongs and doing good by everybody.

In reality they were up to some real mean shit, like trapping Avengers in a "hell on earth" prison that Magik made and generally being agro and shit.
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P5 only went after the Avengers after the Avengers kept invading Cyclops' house for no reason. Cyclops didn't care before that.
 
Memento Mori said:
P5 only went after the Avengers after the Avengers kept invading Cyclops' house for no reason. Cyclops didn't care before that.
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But, see, current Marvel has Capt America be right about everything, but they suck at writing characters, so instead of writing it in a way that makes sense for him to be right, they just write everybody into an idiotic asshole. Just make everybody into ridiculous caricatures that have nearly zero basis in their history, current arcs or even basic, 8th grader logic that way Cap can't ever be wrong.

See: Iron Man, Cyclops.
 
WanderingWind said:
But, see, current Marvel has Capt America be right about everything, but they suck at writing characters, so instead of writing it in a way that makes sense for him to be right, they just write everybody into an idiotic asshole. Just make everybody into ridiculous caricatures that have nearly zero basis in their history, current arcs or even basic, 8th grader logic.

See: Iron Man, Cyclops.
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I think the issue is that the plot is mandated then they force fit characters into the roles needed.

Events cannot work this way.
 
WanderingWind said:
But, see, current Marvel has Capt America be right about everything, but they suck at writing characters, so instead of writing it in a way that makes sense for him to be right, they just write everybody into an idiotic asshole. Just make everybody into ridiculous caricatures that have nearly zero basis in their history, current arcs or even basic, 8th grader logic that way Cap can't ever be wrong.

See: Iron Man, Cyclops.
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I agree with you on Cap and Cyclops but Fraction has defined a clear arc for Tony Stark that has carried through at least like three events at this point.
 
krypt0nian said:
I think the issue is that the plot is mandated then they force fit characters into the roles needed.

Events cannot work this way.
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Totally agree. They ruined a few too many characters that I loved in AvX. I'm going to remain salty about it for a minute. Like, until they fix that shit with at least Scott and Emma. Total bullshit.

BenjaminBirdie said:
I agree with you on Cap and Cyclops but Fraction has defined a clear arc for Tony Stark that has carried through at least like three events at this point.
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Yeah, I see most of that as damage control for Civil War though. They realized they really destroyed a very beloved character that was really hot in theaters at the time and backpedal'd so hard I thought they were going to reverse the spin of the earth, Superman style.
 
WanderingWind said:
Yeah, I see most of that as damage control for Civil War though. They realized they really destroyed a very beloved character that was really hot in theaters at the time and backpedal'd so hard I thought they were going to reverse the spin of the earth, Superman style.
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I kind of see it in the opposite. Millar had/has no investment in these characters so he just did whatever the fuck he wanted. Fraction has been public about his recovery and built a like six year story arc for Tony Stark based on those experiences (among other things). I find it difficult to lump such personal and well-rendered storytelling with event-based missteps.
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
I kind of see it in the opposite. Millar had/has no investment in these characters so he just did whatever the fuck he wanted. Fraction has been public about his recovery and built a like six year story arc for Tony Stark based on those experiences (among other things). I find it difficult to lump such personal and well-rendered storytelling with event-based missteps.
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Eh, I'll bow to your Iron Man expertise. I followed him mostly in Avengers, not his solo books.

I will not budge on how they totally fucked X-Men, though.
 
WanderingWind said:
Eh, I'll bow to your Iron Man expertise. I followed him mostly in Avengers, not his solo books.

I will not budge on how they totally fucked X-Men, though.
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Gillen's work on UXM got some of the early turns in AVX to make some amount of sense, I found. The real problem is that Marvel has given him less than a year to let the Extinction Team status quo build to the point where the event was absolutely inevitable.
 
ElNarez said:
Gillen's work on UXM got some of the early turns in AVX to make some amount of sense, I found. The real problem is that Marvel has given him less than a year to let the Extinction Team status quo build to the point where the event was absolutely inevitable.
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AvX and Marvel Now were probably rushed by a year or two after New 52 made Marvel shit their pants.
 
LiQuid! said:
AvX and Marvel Now were probably rushed by a year or two after New 52 made Marvel shit their pants.
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I never really thought about that, but thinking about how much they hyped Bendis' futur-vengers story on that New Comic Book day but went to AvX first really makes me wonder.
 
I think it's funny people have taken to calling them the P5, as P5 is also an abbreviation used for the Permanent 5 members of the UN Security Council: America, Russia, China, Great Britain and France.

Illyana is definitely France.
 
LiQuid! said:
AvX and Marvel Now were probably rushed by a year or two after New 52 made Marvel shit their pants.
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uh just no, i think AvX was the final stage of marvel finally bringing the Xmen out of their pocket marvel universe and integrating them with the rest of the marvel U that has once again become viable. This is at least since Fear Itself. The problem was outside of Xmen and spiderman all the other marvel products werent nearly as popular. This has clearly changed and the result was Xmen stayed on their island where as before all the other properties were the island and xmen/spiderman ran marvel.
 
To everybody that just responded to me: Marvel straight up said they have been cooking AvX since Civil War, and it has been a direct conclusion to M-Day/Messiah/Second Coming/Schism, so it has obviously been their target end game all along... But the timing on it is WAY off. A year of Uncanny volume 2 before it gets the ax? The event has cockblocked the two main X-books in a major way, and the side books in the X-universe barely even bothered breaking their stride for the event (some not at all like UXF and Adjectiveless).

Also Marvel Now more or less needed AvX in order to make the major paradigm shift necessary for them to rebrand and solidify their IPs. You really can't say that Marvel Now might be a knee jerk from New 52 but not AvX, they needed each other.

Now I don't know anything about what has happened among any of the Avengers in the last year so this is only coming from someone who has read every X-book in the last year but my educated guess says there should have been AT LEAST one year, or two of post-Schism X-books before AvX happened but New 52 had fucking Aquaman glistening all over every Marvel book's sales numbers and Marvel needed to do something and fucking QUICK.
 
Remember that "Marvel future map" that Bendis wrote into an issue of The Avengers a couple years ago?

I said wow.

Of course, that could also be referring to the dismal "First to Last" storyline from a while back, but given how much Bendis loves the All-New X-Men concept who can say for certain?
 
Spike Spiegel said:
Remember that "Marvel future map" that Bendis wrote into an issue of The Avengers a couple years ago?

I said wow.

Of course, that could also be referring to the dismal "First to Last" storyline from a while back, but given how much Bendis loves the All-New X-Men concept who can say for certain?
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This is further evidence that I'm right, right? I don't doubt that AvX would have been the eventual event that lead to the X-Men and Avengers making happy fun time together again in a solidified Marvel U, but I have a feeling we missed out on at least a good year or two of killer X-men stories from Gillen cause Marvel was scrambling to get some book sales (which they did with AvX)
 
LiQuid! said:
This is further evidence that I'm right, right? I don't doubt that AvX would have been the eventual event that lead to the X-Men and Avengers making happy fun time together again in a solidified Marvel U, but I have a feeling we missed out on at least a good year or two of killer X-men stories from Gillen cause Marvel was scrambling to get some book sales (which they did with AvX)
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http://www.newsarama.com/comics/kieron-gillen-avx-consequences-uncanny-x-men.html

Nrama: It's also interesting, because when we talked back in February, you said that your entire Uncanny X-Men run had been building towards Avengers vs. X-Men. Since it's been established that much of Marvel NOW! was constructed far in advance, was it always the plan for your run to end right after AvX, too? And though there obviously were many other plots and threads throughout the relaunched run, what was the experience like writing a 20-issue series that more or less all related to the same story?

Gillen: I always arranged the run in a modular fashion. I knew the themes and character progression in each part. The first of the modules was up to the end of Schism, which led to a radicalized Utopia and a Scott who, if it came to it, would go toe to toe with the Avengers. The second ended with AvX, whose consequences remain to be seen. And while I had a few theories for module 3, I never really dug into them, as the idea of Marvel NOW! was finalized, and I knew I'd be moving on.
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People seem to forget that Gillen was laying groundwork for what has transpired with Cyclops and his Extinction Team starting waaaaaaaay back in UXM #534.1. Gillen seems to have known the major event beats as laid out by Marvel, and worked his stories to fit their rhythm.
 
CorvoSol said:
I think it's funny people have taken to calling them the P5, as P5 is also an abbreviation used for the Permanent 5 members of the UN Security Council: America, Russia, China, Great Britain and France.

Illyana is definitely France.
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I'm sorry, you probably mean PENIS 5. As in Piotr, Emma, Namor, Illyana and Scott.
 
Latest in a long history of times PENIS has blown my mind.
 
In trying to save money for a new tablet i put my new 52 Justice League books on ebay....feels weird.

Next to go will be Batwoman ( not rebuying in trade) and Green Lantern ( probably buying in trade for vol 1 and 2 then buying combo digital issues at issue 0 onwards)

I might end up dropping Batwoman entirely though.
 
Kizer said:
are you guys reading JL8? Because you really should be.
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LiQuid! said:
Better than anything DC is putting out currently with any of those characters. Art's good too.
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Really? Really? A three panel strip with a weak gag at the end is better than Batman at the moment? Or Wondy? Come on dude, don't be daft.

tim1138 said:
I dig the art, but for shrunken down superhero hijinks I'd rather bust out the Tiny Titans trades.
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This.

It does seem very charming and it looks lovely but I'm not sure of the point beyond being charming and lovely. And Tiny Titans was legit funny in places too, but the gags here are pretty weak. They should totally hire the artist though, it looks great.
 
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