VintageComics

Two things I don't like about FedEx. Offshore call centers. Satellite shipping centers. And I will mention this with every FedEx employee I talk to until they get the message, and everyone else should too. This drop in customer service while raising rates is unacceptable for what used to be a top tier company, and until people make a stand nothing will change. So take a stand and say something and watch how things change.

Did someone say Loki?

Very interesting points. This post is long and waxes philosophical but I think you bring up a great point that's worth discussing. One of my favorite things about Miller's work is the sadistic, dark, depraved world he has wrapped around every story. It's not that I love sadism. I hate it, but I consider facing darkness a necessary evil for people to both grow personally themselves and to allow good to flourish in general. In fact, I'm a big believer in the Biblical phrase "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it", meaning I genuinely believe in real life that light is stronger than dark and good is stronger than evil. It's why I've come to believe that I never need to worry, because the good will always win eventually. In short, it's CONTRAST between light and dark that makes the light that much greater and powerful. One of the primary ways we are able to perceive ANYTHING, whether it's physical or psychological, is through contrast. For example, you can't see ANYTHING unless there are contrasting colors between light and dark. If everything is light or dark, you're basically blind. You can't FEEL anything unless there are contrasting feelings. To dig a little deeper, you can't even understand what it's been like to be hurt unless you've been hurt yourself. It's that contrast between feeling say, pain and no pain that helps us understand, feel and empathize with others. For example, if you have no idea what it's like to be cheated on, you may never be able to empathise with someone who has been cheated on, but you will DEFINITELY know what it feels like once it happens to you. Your brain unlocks "mirror neurons" that reflect that feeling back to you once it happens. After that moment, you can no longer forget what it felt like, and then you can FULLY UNDERSTAND and EMPATHISE with someone else who has been cheated on. As painful as these thing are to see and feel, they're necessary for personal growth, and this is why the more pain people experience, the more empathetic they are toward others - Qualifier: If they have not allowed that pain to overtake or deprave themselves. Because it CAN go the other way. That pain can cause depravity. It always matters what you do with it and how you handle it. That's where the Amor Fati principle I live by came in. I got tired of just confronting pain and decided to use it for my own benefit rather than it have it's way with me, and it's made all the difference in the world. Now imagine removing all the pain, darkness, depravity and sadism from your life that was sent to teach you how to overcome it? People would never grow, never learn, never expand their understand or empathy. We'd all be whitewashed zombies with no feelings. I learned all of this because of my upbringing. I was raised in an extremely cult-like society that was so isolated from reality and so depraved that things like substance abuse, child abuse, spouse abuse, elder abuse, suicides are commonplace. In my immediate family, I've had a sibling commit suicide, another attempt it, I have a sibling living on the streets that is outcast from our family, my dad died during a liver transplant necessitated by alcohol abuse. That is literally half my family. It's about as depraved as a Frank Miller story arc, right? But I chose not to succumb to the darkness and rather grow out of it towards the light. And the only way to grow toward the light is away from the darkness. And to grow away from the darkness, I needed to be aware of the darkness and recognize it for what it is. And to be able to recognize it, I needed to FACE it head on. That means that I, myself need to be aware AND ADMIT that I could be that depraved person if I made the wrong choices. In effect, you or I could become the worst person in the world if we make the wrong choices. This formula will vary in scope for most, but the underlying principles are the same for every person because we're all wired in the same way as far as our physiology and psyche works. This meme was me and still is. I had to accept that I was wrong and in darkness before I could see where the light was coming from... so bring on the darkness, because the more darkness there is, the more light there will be to eradicate it. That's my take on Frank Miller.

Yup. I noticed that moment as well in theater and it actually created a moment within myself. I had to think about it deeply. What is most interesting to note is that they pitted Iron Man and Cap against each other. Like, they could have pitted Scarlett Witch against Cap, or Vision against Iron Man but no, it had to be Captain America vs Iron Man. That made it blatant and overt. Or in avatars. Everyone is messaging something. Some messages are just more valid than others. The intent and motivation BEHIND the message is more important than the message itself, because the message fades but the intent is what drives the messenger. Intent is everything.

The Civil War arc is actually (and ironically) when people started noticing that Disney was moving from just storytelling to messaging. The timing seems to coincide with social / cultural change and post Avengers: Civil War there is a definite delineation between the two sides in the story telling. And I don't think it's a co-incidence that Tony Stark was initially vilified, or at least made to be polarising in Civil War the way he was, and ultimately sacrificed in End Game. Maybe I'm overthinking it but it's hard to unsee once you see it. -------- Regarding the philosophies behind the different Marvel teams, that's a great observation. The story telling genius continues to come out as you dig deeper and Marvel had very different formulas for the 3 different teams.

Man, typing in well thought out posts and losing them is SO EFFING TIRING.

I think that's ALL just an extrapolated concern that people have that they'll be forced to like something they don't. That's all. And people DO over react. And the over reaction is valid sometimes, as it feels like it's being rammed down people's throats unnaturally...and it kind of is. Even on here you've seen boardies pop in and try to stop a totally innocent, frank and productive discussion with force which is silly. Valid points. If there's one question I'd like to ask Stan, it would be WHY he never came out with a character to rival Wonder Woman and the answer may speak more toward culture than anything else. As has been stated, women were thought of as being in more traditional roles pre 1980s (duh, obviously) so seeing a woman in tights would have been quite....off putting for many at the time. Today, in Canada we have topless laws where women can walk around topless in public, legally as a human right. But that would have been a tough sell before. But do you know what the history behind Wonder Woman's creation is? Many don't. Wonder Woman was borne out of S+M and bondage culture. William Moulton Marston had a wife and they had a mistress and for a long time and they lived together as lovers. Most of the popular things about Wonder Woman came out of that culture: The lasso / wrist bands (bondage), the invisible jet (voyeurism), the truth telling power of the lasso (SM), her being the lead over Steve in the story (more SM). It's important to point out that Marston genuinely loved and respected women from everything I've read and elevated them to equal standing with men in his own life, but I'm not sure if Wonder Woman would still have been a prominent character if this was common knowledge back in 1940. They even made a movie about it a few years ago. Maybe this is why Stan Lee didn't want to pursue the Wonder Woman avenue circa 1961. Imagine the fallout if cancel culture associated a new female character with this history 60 years ago?

Man, for what it's worth while I speak out about the negatives of the movie industry (and forgive me for having strong opinions, as a dad I have very strong opinions about all media) but I totally feel for the people suffering through all of this. I have many friends in the industry and it's been so tough. So my apologies if I sounded uncouth. My opinions on the direction of story telling have no bearing about how I feel about the people who work in the industry and I'm thrilled that people can work again.

You've never mentioned Miller once and I'm curious as to why?

I know that they're out there on the net. I just can't go down another rabbit hole right now. I have too many body parts stuck in other rabbit holes currently.

I think it would be great to discus sales numbers to see how the FF was selling compared to other titles through the 90's. Anybody have those handy or do I need to transform into Dr. Google to make it happen?

It's been a LONG time since we've agreed. I think I'm going to mark this moment with a

As a counterpoint, I actually reviled Byrne's art during that part. He started in #232 IIRC and I was shocked at how schlocky it looked to me. Did you know that Byrne did a short stint a few years prior? The art was incredible and the story telling was pretty good. FF was a really good read in the 80's. What I think was part of the FF's decline in popularity was the onset of public media. The 80s were the onset of an explosion of pop culture through public media worldwide. We had MTV, Max Headroom, much more cartoons and comics entertainment (it was IMPOSSIBLE to find comic related material before that) and of course 24/7 broadcasting. Before the 80's most channels in North American went dark overnight. So I think the story telling in the FF was top notch but what the public wanted was changing and reading about a family was no longer in vogue.

A little philosophy, psychiatry and biology here (but fully related to the MCU): Can I bring up something on this post I made because I've inadvertently made a point to myself without realizing it. Is there a single comic book TEAM in comic history that has overshadowed it's most popular, individual member? Justice League. Fantastic Four. Challengers. Justice Society. Sinister Six. Suicide Squad. X-men. No TEAM will ever be as popular as a SINGLE character. The reason for this is that humans are wired this way. When a baby is born, it doesn't care who the neighborhood is. Or who lives in the home. They (generally speaking) singularly focus on the Mother first, because that's the only person they know. It's the first person they see after being born. It's definitely the first person they've heard, smelt, tasted, felt or touched. It's literally their universe. So it stands to reason that neurologically, they're wired to focus on this person first. I'm not a neurologist but this seems to be a pattern across all nature, isn't it? So we seem to have a natural, primal disposition to elevate one person over another and certainly one person over a team. ---------------------------------- The reason I bring all that up is to point out that what Disney / Marvel has been doing is trying to make the team more popular to the masses than the individuals in much the same way Alan Moore did with Watchmen. The way Moore did it was that he quite literally engineered the popularity out of the characters by recycling old characters or archetypes, but he changed their identities / abilities so that they were no longer recognizable to what we bonded with. Moore's many characters are a semblance of something we all know and understand but not the actual thing we recognize from childhood. By doing this, you're FORCED to overlook the individuals and to accept the team as a whole because the individuals are not as interesting anymore. It's a testimony to the genius of Alan Moore, who was so far ahead of his time he was in a different galaxy. ------------------------------------ I believe this is what Disney is doing today. What they're doing is taking the traits that made traditional Superheros what they were - the masculine strength, the feminine energy, the traditional roles, good vs evil and they are engineering these things out of the characters to make the team ideologically more appealing than the individuals. They are quite literally engineering the individuality out of the characters and homogenizing them into a team, and I think this is what riles people up about the new direction of the MCU. They're taking the characters that we have emotional attachments to, who hold archetypal roles in our lives (and have for millions of years quite frankly) and they're trying to reinginner what you're supposed to like, and feel and expect. They are removing the things we have emotional attachments to without our permission. So why does this rile people up? Well, it goes against natural precedent and how human progress happens over time. Like, you can't try to convince a newborn with external force or coercion to be more bonded with it's father than with it's mother. That bonding is innate and involuntary. By forcing that child to separate from mom and bond with dad, you are actually creating problematic conditions that will negatively affect that child. And I think that explains the root cause of why people are reacting the way they do about the direction of the MCU. They are trying to get people to accept things that don't really feel natural. It actually feels like a form of social engineering. It would be like if I wanted everyone to make Batman their favorite character but some people don't like Batman. Forcing them to like Batman will only make them like Batman less. But if I tell a really good Batman story, well then everyone will love Batman again. So just tell the darn Batman story. That's all people want. Does anyone disagree?

Happy to agree to disagree but also happy to change my mind. To me the OSPG value is the ticket. Until FF #1 got dethroned as the BIG SA BOOK in the Guide I'm not sure what other metric to use that is unequivocal besides sales numbers. If anyone has sales numbers handy, that would also add some credence to the discussion.

I could be wrong, but DC's books read like the writer and artist hardly spoke to each other whereas Marvel's stories read like the artists and writers were in relationships with each other. That's the only way I can vividly explain it to a non-comic person to make them understand.

I'm 52, born March 3, 1971. I thought I remembered you being my age, but you sounded younger when talking about the FF. You're a Pisces? Well that explains everything.

My first newsstand X-men comic was #118. That RED double splash on pages 2-3 just destroyed me (in a good way).

Imma point out an interesting point. You two are BOTH in your 40's, so about a decade younger than me. You're probably in your 50s and older. ------------------------------------------------------------ There is something to be said about legacy, taste and culture and I can't accept that FF wasn't an A lister in the 80's. They just weren't an A lister to a younger generation WHO WAS BORN IN THE 80's. Good God, people. HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY KNOW WHICH COMIC WAS POPULAR IN THE DECADE YOU WERE BORN WHEN YOU COULDN'T EVEN READ YET! This is the real problem with online discussions. Nuance is everything. If the FF weren't an A lister title, FF #1 wouldn't have been the most expensive SA Marvel key in the 80s (it was) and they wouldn't have been featured on so many licensed products. Were they more popular than Spidey? No. No TEAM will ever be as popular as a single character and I have no problem admitting they were likely in decline as Gen Y started getting interested in comics, but while Gen Y was in diapers, the FF were still considered not only A listers but had some of the best story telling of the 80's and likely were also still the top TEAM in the 90s.

Comics were made the Marvel way, so it was a collaboration and you can easily tell the difference in storytelling between Marvel and DC comics of the same era. They had different flavors when reading them. In DC stories the artist and writer were definitely separate entities. The storytelling felt more wooden and dry. Marvel's stories felt synergistic and exciting by comparison, but if you remember when Neal Adams took over Batman and GL at DC, the flavor of the story writing changed, and I bet Neal Adams brought over some of that Marvel magic to DC. It wasn't just the art that made Adam's work great. It was the overall story telling experience and you can only have that with writers and artists collaborating together. My apologies for forgetting to mention Denny O'Neill. The guy was brilliant.

The problem is that it's long and most people's attention spans will avoid it and they'll miss the gold in there. It is quite literally the greatest post on the MCU I've ever read with articulation, intelligence, insight and sensitivity I've never found elsewhere. This is what real journalism and discussion USED to be like.

There is NO WAY I would call Fantastic Four a B title in the 80's. The title was incredibly good reading, it sold well and it was well collected. The 80's would have been my peak collecting years as I got married in 1991 and dropped out of comics for a decade and I vividly remember FF #1 being the top book through most of the 80s in the OSPG. No. Way, IMO. Does anyone else agree that the FF was a B title in the 80's? How old are you? Are you in your 40's, 50's or 60's? I always assumed you were my age but now I'm not so sure.

That's actually a great observation. Why didn't I think of that? From a story writing perspective, and in line with Stan's target audience which were teenagers at the time, it would have been much harder to push a highbrow Thor at the audience than a lowbrow Hulk smashing things. That's why he was everywhere. He was the perfect foil. Thor is like Superman. It's tough to make him relatable and fun, unlike the Hulk, the bickering of the FF and the bullying and teenage troubles Parker had to endure. I DO think that one of Stan Lee's most ingenious skills was being able to throw a net to catch a wide audience, and Thor was likely meant to capture not only the highbrow audience but ALSO to remain as a character that the lowbrow teenagers would eventually grow in appeal as the original audience matured. It's a brilliant marketing strategy. Thor quite literally was waiting for the target audience to grow out of the silly comics and into more mature, adult ones.

This is probably the greatest post in the history of MCU discussions anywhere on the internet, anywhere. You quite literally nailed it and were able to articulate things to me things I didn't even know why I felt about the movies, but as I was reading through your post I just kept feeling bells go off with each sentence. Thanks for taking the time to do that. Having someone articulate something in such a detailed manner (and even though the post is long, it's actually quite concise). Effing brilliant. I give this prof an A+.

You're talking about franchise and marketing power in the movie age. He's talking about pre movie age. Pre movie age, FF was defeinitely an A lister for the first 30 or so years and possibly 40. The X-men became A listers after Adams and Cockrum / Clairemont / Byrne propelled them to the top in the 70s and 80s. In fact, you could argue that X-men rivalled Spider-man in the 90s. Why else would Marvel put such a push behind the Jim Lee X-men #1 of the 90s? Have the X-men not been A listers since the 90's? No 'team' was as popular as Spidey, Wolverine (or Batman) but then no team will EVER be as popular as a single character, but Wolverine was certainly the driving force behind X-men and made them an A lister. Easily. And they seem to have been able to stay there for over 50 years.