Marvel Comics blabbery

Tsum Tsum will be there to save the day.

the stores in my area are the same, funko is insane. one store is exactly as you described, ~50% funko, but then the rest of it is like sadly 10% comics, 40% cards and figurines. it's also bad because funkos are sold everywhere, not just comic shops, it's just screaming for a market crash sooner than later
(also, the actual product is garbage, even compared to the rest of the minifig market. look how shit they are compared to Disney Infinity or Amiibos. it baffles me)

also am forcing myself to occasionally frequent a local store opened by a guy i went to high school with. i don't even really know the guy, but i appreciate the principle of him even opening a comic book store in town after there hasn't been one in about 15 years. small world lol/sigh

I mean, all of the signs are there that in a post-apocalyptic or hell-ravaged world the figurines will be one of the few things with high value -- from Fallout 3 onward, finding a Vault Boy bobblehead is a rarity but one of the most valuable things in the game world. Same for the new Doom game and finding Doomguy figures.

Some of the funko figures are pretty well made! Some batches have bad painting, but they're really pretty consistent. They have to be a significant force in the local economy where they're actually manufactured (the two I have sitting here leads me to believe it's Vietnam, but they might be sourced from several places)

I guess I'm blissfully oblivious cuz I've never noticed these funko things - my local shop is all comics + books + art, plus a kids section and a few standup vintage video games

Uhhh so just read SPIDER-WOMAN #17, and it turns out to be the final issue of the series! (...at least this time Jessica wasn't banished to the astral plane, and all memories of her erased). So now I gotta ask Marvel (Midtown) to replace it with another title for the rest of my subscription (or they start sending me SPIDER-GWEN or something)?

The series was going downhill, btw (as I mentioned somewhere above)... but this feels like another nail in the coffin, for the moment (as discussed more recently above).

Good "state of the publisher" piece by Brian Hibbs -- http://www.comicsbeat.com/titling-at-windmillls-259-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-marvel-comics-anyway/

Good piece, but it's interesting/irksome that he never mentions WRITERS (although some commenters do).

Weird take on Black Panther too - surely reader attrition has more to do with it completely sucking than with brand dilution?

Also not convinced by his faith that readers will return to Marvel if the product improves. I'm sure Vision would still be in print if it had been published at Image with a made-up-replacement hero.

this is the part where i remind everyone to read sheriff of babylon as proof that Tom King can do more than just play with other people's toys

Unrelatedly this is one of the most goddamn ugly covers I've seen in a long time

Not sure what look they're trying to cultivate here, it's sort of "early 90s RPG back cover art"

https://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/STL043704.jpg

(x-post)

Re: a point made at the end of the article... Marvel has done "side" reboots / continuity resets (M2, Ultimate), and they've been pretty successful, yeah? I wonder about the "value" of the storied Marvel continuity at this point... a new reader of "Capt. Marvel" doesn't care about Carol Danvers' 40-year history; and for longtime readers, the continuity seems to be treated by Marvel as either often irrelevant, something to be glancingly referenced, or an in-joke (the idea that the characters never age, etc.).

But of course there's more immediate value in the backstory to the characters introduced more recently, like in the 2000s. And if Marvel really did do a "true" reboot, I'm sure they'd just end up going over familiar ground, and/or the old continuity would eventually be reintroduced (as in DC)... one more familiar "trick."

"continuity" is worthless imo. It really backs comics into a narrative corner. I was thinking about Dr C's defunct X-Men blog and how much Claremont's handling of the characters contributed to this by virtue of the series popularity and impact - centering your narrative around the emotional conflicts/growth of your characters requires some kind of continuity in order to be coherent or have any kind of impact. But that bucks up against the industry's other needs of having things continue in stasis, indefinitely (maintaining value of intellectual copyrights, characters that don't age, etc.) So you end up with this muddle, where things are continually being "reset" or retconned or hand-waved away in order to reconcile these different needs, but after decades of this shit the "continuity" is just a total incomprehensible mess.

idk what the solution is. Maybe just self-contained series that have their own internal consistency but that's it.

tbf Claremont also had so many captions and so much expository dialogue that after a couple issues you'd get the hang of what was going on

right, but I'm not talking about the reader having a hard time following it. What I'm getting at is that if you're writing a soap-opera style serial that's all about the characters relationships, past histories, internal struggles, etc., that *requires* that you have continuity. It's a totally different way of writing stories from, say, the early issues of the Justice League where no one has a discernible personality and the story is all centered around solving a specific, isolated problem. The latter can be easily self-contained, the former can't. That's why Claremont kinda *had* to have all those captions and expository dialogue, because those were the things that *mattered* to the story, all of that stuff is what made the narrative make sense and hooked the readers.

but unlike with televised soap operas (where they're unable to avoid characters/actors aging naturally) superhero comics got stuck with their characters torn between two mutually exclusive demands: 1) never change/maintain statis and 2) be part of a lengthy, sprawling, convoluted, internally-consistent narrative.

I mean, that's partially true, but Claremont also did the "this character is a hero, they have this superpower, they're normally the steadfast heart of the team, but today events have..."

so you have this character development and soap opera element, but it's balanced with the fact the reader is constantly being retold the origin and main attributes of a character

Tom King's doing this well on Batman - it's not a great comic, but individual issues make sense as discrete units, even when they're part 2 (of 6) or whatever.

TBH I love comics but I find most Marvel/DC stuff unreadable at the moment - I literally don't have patience to read them without skimming.

oh yeah, Claremont def went overboard in that dept, not denying that

xp

It was a little grating but also adaptive -- for a while after a major change, like the X-Men being in Australia, you'd get more exposition about it but it'd taper off as it became the status quo. So if you were reading comics from the newsstand, you'd be able to miss an issue or two and still jump back in.

I hate to be cranky old man about this, but the few comics where you can miss a couple issues now are those where _nothing fucking happened_

Anytime people start suggesting that Marvel should just ditch continuity, my eyes start a-rollin'. Like, the fact that there's been an attempt by hundreds of creators, over basically the span of a human lifetime, at maintaining an ongoing narrative and shared universe (however shaky it is and however batshit and ultimately doomed to failure such a gargantuan effort may be) is a huge part of the appeal. There's plenty of other modes of serialized fiction out there if this one doesn't float your boat.

and hey that's why I don't read Marvel comics!

(well, one among many reasons)

And I'll acknowledge again: this attempt was never going to work as a fully-satisfying narrative. Part of its charm is its reflection of the ultimate futility of grand human endeavor. I find it humbling.

so you would prefer for it to continue indefinitely, no matter how awful or stupid it gets?

it doesn't matter if there's all this shit that happened as long as you're telling new stories without specifically requiring readers to know all that history in order to enjoy your new work

I mean, it's cool if something in your story is kind of a macguffin but there's a little footnote explaining it's a reference to, say, a prior story from years past that you could pick up in trade paperback. Or not read at all! Knowing backstory should be complementary, not mandatory

For instance, I've been reading Jason Aaron's stories in the new Thor comics and there are some callbacks to Thor history (and additions) but, secret shame time, I've never read the full Walt Simonson run or many other classic stories. All I know is that Thor is a norse god dude with a hammer and he (well, she in this case) is a good guy. And it's all perfectly enjoyable

having past continuity doesn't mean you have to write all your stories in service to it, or even acknowledge it in depth

I mean, most novels set in the real world assume you know a bunch of shit about class, social norms, cities, but are still comprehensible if you lack that grounding.

I very much agree with the above two comments -- and have read some recent titles that do clever things with old history (e.g., "Patsy Walker Aka Hellcat") -- but I also think the deep continuity can get in the way sometimes; like when you end up having to suspend disbelief and try to reconcile the idea that (to pick a random example) today's Hawkeye is "the same guy" as the '80s Hawkeye.

Also, the Thor titles are a good example of something -- for me, Marvel's gonzo continuity begins to feel more like a "mythology" (with bits and pieces that can be referenced or discarded/ignored at will), than it does any kind of "real" history that all these characters could possibly have shared... and that mythology approach seems like a more natural fit for something like Thor, than for human/earthbound characters whom we saw in 1960s NYC and somehow they're still only in their early '30s.

I'm new to Marvel (in the past two years). I read regularly USG, Black Panther, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, Mockingbird, Spider-Man, Black Widow, and Dr. Strange. I started/stopped three times as many series in the same period because of crossovers, new number ones, proliferation of new lines, and specialty events. Non-Marvel titles I read are: 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank (limited), Backstagers, Lumberjanes, Bitch Planet, Gotham Academy, Paper Girls, and a bunch of weird indie stuff. I'm deliberately trying to cultivate a feminist collection, and these are the only titles with which I've been able to continue due to frustration and/or fatigue. There've been lots of other attempts (Jane Foster Thor, Mockingbird, Vision, Spider-Woman, Captain Marvel, Luke Cage, Nova, Silk) that've petered out due to the fact they were *planned* as a limited run or lost their initial talent. Nothing at all in DC is interesting to me, and I gave Wonder Woman a hell of a shot after reading the Jill LePore book on the title.

oh, i also like the slott/alread silver surfer but i can't afford to keep up

You might want to check out Mariko Tamaki's new (She-)Hulk series.

I started/stopped three times as many series in the same period because of crossovers, new number ones, proliferation of new lines, and specialty events.

Sounds like empirical (or a least anecdotal) evidence to support the thesis of the article linked above!

There've been lots of other attempts (Jane Foster Thor, Mockingbird, Vision, Spider-Woman, Captain Marvel, Luke Cage, Nova, Silk) that've petered out due to the fact they were *planned* as a limited run or lost their initial talent.

I'd probably still be reading Silk today if it hadn't lost its original artist. Mighty Thor continues to be good (and AFAIK has retained its original talent), but I find the Jane/Thor character to be fairly ill-defined (almost a supporting player in her own book), so I can see how it wouldn't necessarily appeal from the feminist / "strong female character" perspective (also a focus for me).

Have you read "Patsy Walker"?

Also, "The Unstoppable Wasp" is cute (and ties into the same backstory as Black Widow); though it's so gentle as to barely even qualify as a "superhero" comic. The series promotes STEM education for girls / young women -- both in the story itself and back-of-book material (several women scientists/engineers are interviewed at the end of each issue) -- which is an interesting angle, even if not very relevant to me personally (an older dude who's bad at math).

Also...no mentions of Squirrel Girl?

Did USG mean Unbeatable Squirrel Girl?

Doreen is chill

USG did mean Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. I haven't read Patsy Walker yet, but it's in the hopper. I tried the Riri Williams Iron Man (Iron Heart?) line too, but Bendis's racial blundering put me off.

Check out the "L.A. Woman" volume of Matt Fraction's HAWKEYE run (it's the book with Kate's adventures in L.A.).

(There's also a current/ongoing series featuring Kate, but I have not read it. Waiting for the TPB.)

Is that where should I start w/ Kate Hawkeye? The Fraction TP? I haven't really ventured into the Avengers universe except for incidentally. The sheer amount of history and number of different titles are pretty intimidating. I don't, frankly, know anything about Hawkeye except that he shacked up with Bobbi Morse, that Jeremy Renner plays him in the MCU, that he wears a t-shirt and has a dog, and that sometimes he is a woman.

also he was dead for a while, is from Iowa, and has a villain brother named Barney

hawkeye series is good, it has comedy russian mobsters and a dog

OT: how do you guys do that thing where you make a humorous pseudonym appear next to your (login handle)?

site preferences, under "profile" it's the "display name" you can set

Thx!

good pick

also he was dead for a while

He was also deaf for a while (which plays a role in the Fraction series a bit).

As a partially deaf person, I love a "conveniently deaf until everyone forgets" style recovery

I'm sure paraplegics were equally thrilled with Professor X's on again/off again disability.

Kate is really good in the Gillen/McKelvie Young Avengers book as well.