THE MARVELS starring Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonna Parris (2023) 9 9

[fantastic_four]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:33 PM, PopKulture said:

On 11/9/2023 at 12:21 PM, mr_highgrade said:

 And how the hell is Captain America in the same class as Daredevil and Moon Knight. 

 

 

 

Yeah, Cap was thoughtlessly ranked. I guess they forgot about the super-soldier serum. He didn’t just do push-ups and lift weights.  

It may have been accurate at the time, I don't really remember.

There are two constants with superheroes--big characters tend to keep getting bigger as more writers and artists tackle them, and powers tend to keep getting more powerful.  I'd have to research how they defined the limits of his agility and strength over time...maybe they said at one time he had the strength of 2 men, then later 5 men, then even later 10 men, etc.  I don't really remember how that changed for him over the decades.

[fantastic_four]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:38 PM, VintageComics said:

You two are BOTH in your 40's

I'm 52, born March 3, 1971.

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:31 PM, Dr. Balls said:

Claremont's penchant for dropping tidbits here and there in stories, then following up a year later on things was really what made X-Men a great read. He had such a great stable of characters to work with that hadn't been pigeonholed yet. My first X-Men books were somewhere in the 170s, and by the 190s, I was really into it as a kid, even though I was probably too young to pick up on a lot of the drama there. Keeping him on as the writer for all those years made me practically fanatical towards the X-franchise by the time I was in my early 20s.

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

[kimik]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:38 AM, VintageComics said:

 

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.

We will agree to disagree on this, Roy. The FF was not A-list when I started reading books (1985/86?), and the X-Men, a team book, was the top comic at the time thanks to what started with Claremont/Byrne run.

Edited November 9, 2023 by kimik

[kimik]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:41 AM, VintageComics said:

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

The Byrne/Claremont run is outstanding. I started X-Men with Claremont/Silvestri and thought that was the top X-Men run until I started collecting back issues and hit the #108-143 run. It is fun to see all of the young collectors at shows that are collecting GSX 1/X-Men #94-142 runs now. Those books stand the test of time.

Edited November 9, 2023 by kimik

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:41 PM, fantastic_four said:

On 11/9/2023 at 12:38 PM, VintageComics said:

You two are BOTH in your 40's

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. 

 

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:38 PM, kimik said:

I was exposed to the Adams/O'Neill Batman and Tec runs when I started collecting in the early 1990s and was blown away by how good the stories and artwork were for a DC book. Those two must have worked more closely together than the normal DC teams did as it was basically at a Marvel level of storytelling.

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. 

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:42 PM, kimik said:

We will agree to disagree on this, Roy. The FF was not A-list when I started reading books (1985/86?), and the X-Men, a team book, was the top comic at the time thanks to what started with Claremont/Byrne run.

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.

[kimik]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:48 AM, VintageComics said:

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. 

To be honest, the non-O'Neill/Adams DC books at the time were still fairly campy. They modernized the DC line IMO. I forgot about their Superman run as well which was a step up.

[fantastic_four]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:46 PM, VintageComics said:

On 11/9/2023 at 12:41 PM, fantastic_four said:

On 11/9/2023 at 12:38 PM, VintageComics said:

You two are BOTH in your 40's

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. 

First newsstand comic I bought was GI Joe #1 in 1982.  The next title I started buying was FF somewhere in the 240s, I imagine whichever issue came out the month GI Joe #1 or #2 came out.  It wasn't far into Byrne's run, and I went back and picked up the rest of it at conventions over the next year or two.  It was WAY more interesting than GI Joe, but GI Joe had the figures too and Marvel didn't so I stuck with it for a while until I outgrew buying action figures (I re-grew into buying action figures just a few years ago when I had kids ).  I vividly recall pretending my GI Joe figures were the FF, or the X-Men, and playing with them as if they were superheroes.  I also remember imagining Destro from GI Joe was Doctor Doom.

The only concept I had about the popularity of FF at the time was that most of my friends who read comics didn't read FF.  But they all read X-Men and were crazy for Wolverine, so that's what I tried next after FF.

Edited November 9, 2023 by fantastic_four

[Buzzetta]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:50 PM, VintageComics said:

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.

If you are gauging overall monetary value then I would use OSPG as a metric.

If you are gauging popularity of a intellectual property at or over a specific point in time then I would go by sales numbers.

 

If I remember @RockMyAmadeus usually has that information or knows where to get it. 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Buzzetta

[Buzzetta]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:55 PM, fantastic_four said:

(I re-grew into buying action figures just a few years ago when I had kids ). 

Based on our mutual collecting habits and seeing what you buy in the plastic crack thread, I believe that part of your decision to have kids was to justify your eventual action figure purchases.  

[TupennyConan]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:15 PM, kimik said:

Vellani delivers the kind of contagious, just-happy-to-be-here enthusiasm that buoys every single second of her screen time.

Good news. She was great in the Disney+ show. 

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 11:50 AM, VintageComics said:

No 'team' was as popular as Spidey, Wolverine (or Batman) but then no team will EVER be as popular as a single character

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?

Edited November 9, 2023 by VintageComics
Edited for typos, not for content.

[fantastic_four]

On 11/9/2023 at 1:03 PM, Buzzetta said:

On 11/9/2023 at 12:55 PM, fantastic_four said:

(I re-grew into buying action figures just a few years ago when I had kids ). 

Based on our mutual collecting habits and seeing what you buy in the plastic crack thread, I believe that part of your decision to have kids was to justify your eventual action figure purchases.  

That definitely would have fueled my decision to have kids if things had gone that way...I was kinda 50/50 on the fence about having kids anyway when I did, which is why I didn't until I was 44.  But no, I had seen Marvel Legends back in the early 2000s Toy Biz days, but they just looked completely goofy to me due to the proportions.  I was already buying Bowen statues at the time and didn't see a reason to get into those dumb-looking Toy Biz figures.

But in 2018 my kids were 2, so I figured I should buy my son a Wolverine since he already really enjoyed the Spider-man and X-Men cartoons.  I got him the Apocalypse wave tiger stripe figure, and over the next few months I started playing with it myself and was amazed at how far the articulation and aesthetics had come.  I eventually realized that between Hot Toys and the advancements Hasbro had made in making better action figures that they were WAY better than buying statues that are stuck in one position forever.

[mr_highgrade]

Batman has always been my favorite DC character. I used to have all Neal Adams covers in CGC 9.2 to 9.6. Sold them wayyyy to early.  He's the only modern DC that I still buy from time to time. 

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:55 PM, fantastic_four said:

First newsstand comic I bought was GI Joe #1 in 1982.  The next title I started buying was FF somewhere in the 240s, I imagine whichever issue came out the month GI Joe #1 or #2 came out.  It wasn't far into Byrne's run, and I went back and picked up the rest of it at conventions over the next year or two.  It was WAY more interesting than GI Joe, but GI Joe had the figures too and Marvel didn't so I stuck with it for a while until I outgrew buying action figures (I re-grew into buying action figures just a few years ago when I had kids ).  I vividly recall pretending my GI Joe figures were the FF, or the X-Men, and playing with them as if they were superheroes.  I also remember imagining Destro from GI Joe was Doctor Doom.

The only concept I had about the popularity of FF at the time was that most of my friends who read comics didn't read FF.  But they all read X-Men and were crazy for Wolverine, so that's what I tried next after FF.

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. 

Edited November 9, 2023 by VintageComics
Removed 90's as I was wrong

[fantastic_four]

On 11/9/2023 at 1:24 PM, VintageComics said:

Does anyone disagree?

No, you're right, people tend to like specific characters more than teams.

Having said that there are some teams with no individual character that's more popular than the team.  Rorschach is the most popular member of Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan probably being second, but do people really like either of them more than the entire team?  I don't think so, I think Watchmen fans like the Watchmen as a whole.  I think I could come up with dozens of similar examples.  Fantastic Four is probably an example too; I don't think most people like Thing, Reed, Sue, or Johnny more than that team as a whole.

Edited November 9, 2023 by fantastic_four

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 1:33 PM, fantastic_four said:

No, you're right, people tend to like specific characters more than teams.

Having said that there are some teams with no individual character that's more popular than the team.  Rorschach is the most popular member of Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan probably being second, but do people really like either of them more than the entire team?  I don't think so, I think Watchmen fans like the Watchmen as a whole.  I think I could come up with dozens of similar examples.  Fantastic Four is probably an example too; I don't think anyone likes Thing, Reed, Sue, or Johnny more than that team as a whole.

It's been a LONG time since we've agreed.

I think I'm going to mark this moment with a 

[VintageComics]

On 11/9/2023 at 1:00 PM, Buzzetta said:

If you are gauging overall monetary value then I would use OSPG as a metric.

If you are gauging popularity of a intellectual property at or over a specific point in time then I would go by sales numbers.

 

If I remember @RockMyAmadeus usually has that information or knows where to get it. 

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?