Doktor

1 hour ago, Ken Aldred said:

+1

Marvel’s comics improved considerably under Joe Quesada in the early 2000s.  A pity it didn’t last and soon we were back to being overloaded with variant covers, and then far too many additional titles being published with subsequent dilution of the talent pool and declining quality.

One other thing to actually keep in mind that was a 1-step-removed change in the industry was the end of the Wildstorm division at DC. Keep in mind where pretty much ALL of the big Marvel creators of 00's came from: They all got their big breaks working on the Wildstorm stuff.

Ellis became the "guy that could reinvigorate a flagging title/idea" for Marvel because of his work on Stormwatch/Authority/Planetary.

Millar went from being "Morrison's assistant writer" to the guy that could generate big sales when he took over the Authority.

Joe Casey showed he could explore totally different ideas of an existing property with what he did on Wildcats.

Brubaker got his big break on Point Blank/Sleeper/Authority: Revolutions. Bendis was the only one without a Wildstorm connection.

After that, Hickman & Fraction & some of the others came in from Image & shadowed those guys, but the big guns of Marvel's writing staff were all guys that got their big breaks & made their names on Wildstorm stuff. Or they came over from Vertigo (BKV & Jason Aaron). But they all got their big breaks working on non-mainstream or non-big-2 titles. 

But most of the problem these days is that all of those writers have left mainstream superhero books OR they've decided to work on their own stuff exclusively or they've moved on to hollywood work

1 hour ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

Why did Marvel replace Joe Q with Axel Alonso? It seems like Marvel was way better under Joe Q than Alonso.

He got a promotion so that he could do some actual comics work again (tho he really hasn't), and so that he could be more involved in the Marvel Studios side (back when there was a creative committee) and pushing/creating a lot of the non-Marvel Universe work that they were doing at the time. Axel was JoeQ's right hand man at the time, and he got the first call-up when Joe got promoted out of the day-to-day comics operations. 

And yes, it was a poor decision. 

Just now, kav said:

Funny how these guys who are trying to make 'statements' always have 'no comment' when confronted....

Well, cowards and insufficiently_thoughtful_persons generally can't defend their cowardice or idiotic statements.  

well, considering that Marvel's "statement" didn't include any sort of apology, and only a comment to remove it from future reprinting, the cynical side of me is starting to win out.

Tho now that I'm thinking about it since it's a fairly anti-semitic reference, if Ike finds out about it, he might step in on this one & just can the dude himself. 

20 hours ago, gradejunky said:

I thought Daken was already Wolverine's son???

Not only does he have more kids then John Stamos on that one episode of Law & Order SVU, but this one is Ultimate Wolverine's kid. 

As much as the cynical side of me says "they'll probably embrace it" as well, I think he might get his fired for this one. 

7 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

The game really has changed,and will continue to change. If I was Marvel and DC I would look to social media to expand my audience. Facebook,Twitter,Pinterest,Instagram and YouTube.  If I was Marvel I would actually try to put comics on these sites for free. That would broaden their audience tremendously.  

They tried that. That's where all the SJW-types inhabit & they've tried to appeal to them with all of their diversity initiatives & while we have no idea if it's impacted their digital sales, we know it's been a net negative on their print sales. 

NEED MOAR PICTURES!

It's definitely storm & Cable. That's the exact costume Storm wore in XXM and you can see Cyclops visor hanging around Cable's neck. This was just after the whole The Twelve story & he was wearing Cyclops visor around his neck in UXM in memory of his (though to be) dead dad. There's no more guessing needed there.

I cannot comment on whether it was published in any way though. Even as a house-ad or anything.

Yeah. It was most likely an unused cover, but I wanted to avoid using any guess-work as a definitive statement.

*edit* Tho I was mistaken. Lienil Francis Yu was the artist on XM at the time. Larocca came over to UXM and followed one of the Kuberts on UXM.

37 minutes ago, Real Elijah Snow said:

Unused cover from Uncanny X-men #388. Larroca art. Pictured is Storm and Cable. There was a bit of romance going on with those 2 characters at the time. I think they may have started veering away from that which may explain the cover change/change in storyline.

100% accurate. No one question me. 

You're correct, sir. It might not have been a cover, but it's unused art. That was Larrocca from right before X-Treme X-Men launched, when Storm & Cable were both on the X-Men during Claremont's "Revolution" run. This was the tail end of the run before Claremont got replaced so they could do a few filler issues by Scott Lobdell before Morrison & Casey were about to start their runs. Claremont's return got aborted on both X-Men & Uncanny X-Men quickly. He returned on UXM 381 (and XM 100), did 6 issues to get his run started, got interrupted by the Maximum Security event with 387, did the 1-month Dream's End X-over storyline in 388, did a filler-issue/breather issue in 389 and then got replaced on 390 by Lobdell for 4 issues before Joe Casey took over the title. He DID get to take Larocca with him from XM. He was sorta running both titles as interconnected but with 2 different field teams. Larocca was the regular artist & cover artist for XM, not UXM at the time. It was very likely that his editor pretty much scrapped any romantic entanglements he was introducing at the time and they scrapped this cover since the whole direction of the X-line was getting a drastic overhaul with Casey & Morrison taking over the 2 main titles.

23 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

was this a homage to This one?>

Yes. If you look at the sig on the cover, it says "after Byrne Austin"

7 minutes ago, drotto said:

Well they are attempting to promote the X-Men relaunch as a back to basics approach with a modern twist. I am not holding my breath.  I also hate to admit it thought, that DC seems to have avoided much of this SJW stuff ( not completely) and are telling much more traditional comic stories. Granted it took countless relaunches, but it seems to be holding for now.  The market share for DC has also greatly improved proving that approach is working.

DC very recently saw their DC  YOU initiative fall flat on its face. That's probably what convinced them to forget the political junk & just stick to superhero comics.

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

In a similar fashion, any thoughts on the casting diversity in the Marvel movies (both in-house and licensed properties)?  I see that, in the upcoming Spidey film, Flash Thompson is played by a Guatemalan actor.  Ned Leeds is now Filipino.  And Betty Brant is African-American.  Now, on the one hand, I appreciate that, if the Marvel Universe were created today, instead of the '60s, there would be more diversity among the characters created in those early days, and that the film franchises, with a much shorter history and frequent reboots, are an easy place to make those updates.  That said, it does feel like the pendulum is shifting so much the other way that I have to wonder if it's impinging on creative freedom.  More and more, the world I see on TV and in films gets farther away from what I witness in the real world (not talking about super powers and the like, but demographics and such).  Much of the time it's unobtrusive, but, sometimes it's quite noticeable and rings false.  

When it comes to the upcoming Spidey film, at least it is plausible that Peter Parker would have a very multicultural set of friends, especially living in a melting pot like New York.  I do have an issue with casting decisions that are totally incongruous and smack of tokenism, though - like making the Norse god Heimdall of African descent in the Thor films.  Or, I just saw the commercial for the upcoming King Arthur film during the NCAA final broadcast last night, where Djimon Hounsou will be playing one of the Knights of the Round Table.  I mean, seriously?  Has it really gotten to the point where you can't even make a movie set in the 500s A.D. without changing the race of one of King Arthur's knights?  I don't know about you guys, but that just really feels forced and inauthentic to me. 

Being a minority myself, I'm all for more diversity in film, TV and comics.  But, I think it should be done thoughtfully instead of the often ham-handed way that it's being done nowadays.

Well, with the King Arthur film, I'm just looking at that as payback for sticking Matt Damon in early Imperial China and Tom Cruise in Imperial Japan movies.

55 minutes ago, Senormac said:

Sounds like a pretty foolish business model.  Who expects to succeed catering to the smaller population?  I mean, what is the gay pop of this country?  2 - 5%

Without getting into politics, it's essentially the same approach that 1 of the 2 major US parties has tailored their campaigning in the past few years: cater to every minority demographic & try to  take advantage of the changing demographics while ignoring the majority, thinking that when you add up a 1% population group here & a 3% population group there & a 15% population group there & everything else, it'll total up to a majority. It hasn't worked out very well thus far there either because the math just doesn't work yet. Maybe it will in a decade or 3, but not yet.

1 minute ago, AndyFish said:

Yup.  It's a shame.  They should require new editors to read the Masterworks as a precursor, then have them build on characters from there.

The sad thing is, all of this was foreshadowed if you followed Tom Brevvort on Twitter & Tumblr. He was talking about a "lack of diversity" for years on there. He's been talking about how to "solve the problem of new readers being intimidated by high issue #'s". He was talking about how events were where they made their money. He was talking about the X-Men being a problem because of movie rights & how there was no incentive for Marvel to push X-titles when FOX would reap the rewards for readers seeing the movies. All right around the time he was getting promoted to "VP of Publishing". All of these forced-diversity/event-after-event/relaunch-any-title-with-an-issue-#-above-12/etc initiatives came about after he got promoted. He needs to go back to just being the Marvel in-house continuity cop that he did a mostly OK job with for a number of years.

17 minutes ago, HarrisonJohn said:

The thing is, who is going to say "wow xxx is black/ female etc now just like me!" It's so lazy that it's insulting. It alienates readers new and old.

I don't know the exact story but I see She-Hulk is the star of the Hulk book. Shouldn't it be called She-Hulk? But She-Hulk doesn't sell, I guess, so here we will force her on you with the title Hulk.

I see there's a Jean Grey book (one of my favorite characters) but I see that she's a teenager now and I assume the book will cater to that and so I have no interest. When I was a teen I was reading these characters as adults.

Then here's the new Iceman series that literally only exists because he's gay now. I have no interest in buying it because I thought that change was dumb & pointless & a whole series about that change is dumber & pointless-er. But I bought the out of both the Midnighter series & the Midnighter & Apollo series. (And I bought every Authority & solo Midnighter title before this too) But Marvel is starting to get like Hollywood where they can't see the difference because it's too hard to explain.

All they see is "well, they're gay, so you should like this character now because we made them gay too" and don't get that one was organic & essential to the character & has been there since the beginning & the character is interesting regardless of their sexuality, while the other is "look, it hits that checkbox now too! So you should like this!"

13 minutes ago, NP_Gresham said:

Constant complaining by publishers to congress and getting longer copyrights is killing the industry.

They need lots of stiff competition. Place all these 50 y/o characters into the public domain and it will bring out the best of the best.

DC and Marvel will FORCED to innovate and create new characters while the old characters will be turned over to newer publishers who will compete with better artists and storylines.

 

This is a very good point. I'm still a little torn on this issue. Especially as a completest and someone that loves long-form storytelling (I was a Claremont X-Men guy growing up). Deciding if I want to read IDW's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man and DC's Spider-Man or whatever & then hope to maintain something even approaching continuity that isn't just headcanon is the biggest foreseeable downside. IDW or DC might write a better Spider-Man series than Marvel for a time, then Dark Horse and then Jim-Bob's Meth-Lab Publisher (I made that one up) might do a better series for a while. And I'd like to maintain some degree of continuity over time, but I know that's something that I'd totally lose if copyright protection expired.

18 hours ago, Califelix said:

I ordered 4 of the Iron Fist Midtown variants and received then last week. 1 looks like a 9.8, 1 has a couple spine dings, but 2 have a small slice on the spine on the back. They both have it in the same place. Anyone else have this issue?

I'll have to check mine. thanks for the heads up.

1 hour ago, FN-2199 said:

Not being sarcastic and not a rhetorical question but perhaps:

Do you think Marvel has put their best creators on the film side of the business and intentionally let the comics slide since more money can be made at the movies? I don't hear anyone complain about Marvel films.

Not really. All the decent writers quit to go either work elsewhere in Hollywood, on creator-owned Indy stuff, or got burnt out on working on Marvel's stuff.

Millar does almost all creator-owned or Hollywood.

Same with BKV.

Brubaker is done with superhero comics & is doing indy & Hollywood.

Ellis is back over at DC rebuilding the Wildstorm universe from scratch.

Bendis is still writing whatever he wants but is also essentially "upper management" now.

Hickman wanted a break from Marvel & is working on indy stuff only.

Morrison is doing whatever Morrison wants (and I think there's still some bad blood with him and JoeQ).

JMS has been doing Hollywood again for years.

PAD is still around but not really doing anything with Marvel.

Fraction is more interested in writing a fictionalized version of his sex life with Kelly Sue.

And that's just the writers. The artists are trash these days too.

3 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

That is a very good idea.

I think everything after Secret Wars 2 should be considered What If stories. Think about it in that the Marvel's stories that happened in the 1961 to 1986 period compared to the 1987 to 2017 period were much more important and iconic. or if that is too far back than maybe all stories after when the Image guys left. Now looking back on it it does seem like Marvel was never the same after all those top artists left in the early 1990s

So either reboot  from the end of Secret Wars 2 or when Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee left. 

 

I'm still waiting for Franklin Richards to have a full-on "Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower" where he wakes up from a fever dream & we find out that everything since about 3 weeks before Civil War 1 was Franklin having a nightmare.

Got my ASM set today & it's nice enough looking. I picked up a print with it & they shipped it together & the set shifted & came loose in the package. So I got really lucky they weren't damaged. The A cover is maybe a 9.6 but the other 2 are 9.8 candidates 

11 hours ago, Califelix said:

The XMEN Blue has a much higher print run than the Xmen Gold...

20% increase in print run. 5% less of a discount. I might hold off on these now that I think about it. I like them & my X-Men completism is driving me nuts & screaming "BUY ME" but I don't know.

Nah. It's not gold. It's nice but will require at least a reasonable amount of restoration & could be very nice, but it is still missing some important bits & is only partially usable even after its been restored until the missing brackets & plates are replaced. But it's still nice. It could be very nice once it's pieced back together & restored. But in the shape its in, it's not really worth much more than the OP paid for it. This isn't a flip for profit piece. This is a buy, put in the elbow grease to restore it & then flip for profit piece. But if the OP doesn't have the skill or the time or the desire to do the work required to make this piece into something more valuable, then really it's really not worth much more than he paid for it. It was a good price because it had potential to be very nice. With work. Without work, it's still a nice price but not for flipping.