Face Front, True Believers! A Marvel Comics Thread

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

I've lost count of how many times I've read that book. It's really wonderful.

So it's not going to leave me seething anger at their screw-ups, then?

 

[balder the brave]

Vince Coletta may be infamous for… umm… wrecking every comic he ever put ink to; but gal dang Tomb of Dracula is a great looking book;

Granted, I don’t know if he inked anything beyond the second issue, but still! That’s a real good looking page! From Vince!

I think Vince Colletta is misunderstood. Yes - he sometimes erased Kirby backgrounds and/or background characters to make his jobs easier. Yes - it's rumored that he sometimes would ink from his swimming pool.

But he also worked in an era where deadlines were more important than quality. And there are FAR worse inkers for Kirby. Coletta may not have been a great talent, but he was a competent inker and far better than Syd Shores, Don Heck, Chic Stone.

Colletta's work on Thor produced some of the best Kirby art. Compare it to the hack inking work on Captain America after Joe Sinnott left the title.

 

[balder the brave]

Any other readers of Marvel Epic Collection line? There have been generous collections of Lee, Claremont in color on nice paper. Cheaper and more comprehensive than the Marvel Masterworks line.

They've been holding back on issuing a lot of the premier 80's work from Miller, Byrne, and Simonson, but I think it will eventually come.

 

[Adrenaline]

My understanding is that the Epic Collections line is focused on collecting issues that aren't already in collections. So a lot of those famous runs which already have collections aren't a priority.

 

[balder the brave]

My understanding is that the Epic Collections line is focused on collecting issues that aren't already in collections. So a lot of those famous runs which already have collections aren't a priority.

They haven't been shy about bringing classic Stan Lee stuff from the 60's or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man (which have been collected many times) to the Epic Collections.

BUT they do seem to be avoiding 80's - 90's runs that received Marvel Visionaries collections. Are these even still in print? Just my own observation.

Walt Simonson Thor
John Byrne FF
PAD Hulk
Miller DD

I've been trying to re-read Simonson Thor for years

 

[Adrenaline]

David's Hulk is currently being collected in the Epic Collection series. The rest of those are all in print in their own collections/omnibuses. I don't pay a lot of attention to classic reprints because it's much cheaper and easier to read comics digitally.

 

[Octopus Prime]

So Ryan Norths Fantastic Four started in MU

Perhaps unsurprisingly having my absolute favourite comic writer work on my favourite comic makes for a book that’s really good

 

[Octopus Prime]

Started reading Nick Spencer’s Astonishing Ant Man run from 2015.

I will, charitably, say that Nick Spencer is a writer I like half of the time; when he’s writing about minor characters being kind of generally scummy, but not outright bad, he’s terrific. And, luckily, this book has that energy in spades. The main thrust of the story is both about Scott trying to get his small business of the ground (superhero security company, where his only employees are guys like The Grizzly and Machinesmith), while trying to secretly reconnect with his daughter and also having to contend with the development of supervillains going to the gig economy.

Made me say “Oh heck, this is fun as hell!”

 

[estragon]

With the usual caveat that no one in this era can take blame or credit for the general direction of the line because it's infamously editorially driven, I'm finding the late 90s Alan Davis written era of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men (with a few separate scripters, like Joe Casey and Fabian Nicieza) to be a huge improvement over the Kelly/Seagle in terms of basic storytelling competence. Also, Davis coming on as a writer also means he does art for one of the books, which is a huge plus, and the issues where Davis appears to be getting room to riff instead of going through the paces of editorially mandated events definitely have that Alan Davis whimsy, too—for example, Juggernaut absorbs too much Cyttorak energy and starts punching through barriers between dimensions.

I'm prepared for it to go sour at any moment because this run is not exactly beloved and I've got The Twelve looming ahead, but so far it's just nice to have issues that meet basic standards of readability again. My hope is that with Kelley and Seagle over I'm through the worst of the worst now. (I know Chuck Austen's run is infamously bad, but my understanding is that it often verges on so-bad-it's-good territory.)

 

[Olli]

Man, I love Juggernaut. He's seemingly a very one-dimensional character (he's strong and he can't be physically stopped, so our heroes must find a non-physical way of doing so), but that just lends into many fun creative things

 

[Fredde]

I know I've already mentioned how funny it is for all Swedish comic book readers that one of Marvel's big villains is named "Knull" (Swedish for "fuck"). But today I learned that Marvel released a number of alternate covers with characters drawn to be under the influence of Knull, described as "Knullified".

I haven't giggled this much about a Marvel comic since I first learned of Giant-Size Man-Thing.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Nearly caught up on New Mutants (started with Krakoan era) and… I largely really like it but it is hard to peg down. Book categorically refuses to pick a lane. Definitely benefits from reading a whole lot at once rather than month-by-month.

Each arc is *drastically* different from one another, and can’t even seem to pick a central group for the team (Dani, Wolfsbane and Magik seemingly being the closest thing to mainstays), but each of those arcs is largely self contained so you don’t get a lot of, say, Boom Booms bored melancholy being relieved by finding Bad Guys to Explode getting mixed up with Shadow King trying to corrupt Krakoan youths, say.

And those arcs are, individually good, if not necessarily *fun* (sometimes VERY fun, mind), but they don’t hang together great.

Also; as per the issue I read most recently, Magik straight up had a Sailor Moon moment;

 

[Adrenaline]

Yeah it's a weird book. Hickman's initial arc was straight up comedy which I've never seen him do before.

 

[Octopus Prime]

So… started reading the Sabertooth mini from last year (or so)

You know, The super violent comic about the murdering cannibal wolfman. That Sabertooth.

It’s about encouraging prison reform and what it means if you have a penal system in a supposedly utopian society.

I… *really* did not expect that content from a Sabertooth miniseries

 

[Adrenaline]

And yet Sabretooth is still Sabretooth. Fun mini

 

[Octopus Prime]

the whole premise of the first issue is that Krakoa does not like or condone his stomach being repurposed as an inescapable hell-prison, so he tries to be accommodating by making sure the prisoners are treated nicely, and living out their hearts desires…

Which for Victor means a 24/7 slaughter of everything he sees.

And yet

You gotta admit that the unstoppable murder-machine has a valid point

 

[estragon]

Ike Perlmutter is gone, part of a campaign to fold the "redundant" Marvel Entertainment into other parts of Disney.

Good riddance to Perlmutter, but wondering what if any implications this has for the comics side of things. Probably a wait and see issue.

 

[Adrenaline]

I guess I would hope for them to leave the comics division or whatever as it is rather than roll the dice on what could happen in a big shakeup, but we'll see.

 

[Octopus Prime]

HA!

HA!!

 

[estragon]

I guess I would hope for them to leave the comics division or whatever as it is rather than roll the dice on what could happen in a big shakeup, but we'll see.

I have complicated feelings.

Whenever I hear an interview with a Marvel author in recent years talking about a story that was well received by readers, there's this constant refrain that mysterious unnamed corporate forces resisted many of their ideas. It's possible it's all or at least partly kayfabe to show how hard they're working for readers and fighting The Man to do so. I primarily pay attention to X-book related news, and they do basically all specify that they're not taking about their direct editor (Jordan White). Maybe that's just the BS excuse White gives them to shoot down ideas (no evidence of this, but it's a pretty common management tactic in general), maybe that means it's just one step removed (C.B. "Akira Yoshida" Cebulski), maybe it really is some Marvel corporate division focused on protecting intellectual property that sometimes does veto stories that might alter longstanding characters who are likely to show up in the movies too much.

But, if it's actually not just White or Cebulski, then it's theoretically possible that a different corporate approach could be good for the comics side of things. On the other hand, I'm skeptical that basically any changeup under Disney ownership is going to free up the creatives in any substantial way, and also somehow Marvel comics are in a relatively good place now (creatively, at least) compared to most of the first two decades of the 2000s, so this moment isn't exactly when I would ask for a big shakeup in how things are run.