Comic Book Collecting.

When they gave Wolverine his memory back that was the end of the character. Yea still a tough little runt who can heal but all the mystery gone. So now he is just like all the other tough little runts in comics, no big deal.
Of course bringing him back with his memory clouded or erased or wrong would help to improve that.

 

Sure, Logan's character might have changed over the years, but as far as I know he was still one of Marvel's most popular characters. There's no way Marvel is going to leave him alone forever. Sure Old Man Logan might be closer to what 616 Logan might have been like, but he's still just an alternate version of the character. Old Man Logan isn't the version of the character that sells cups, bed sheets, action figures, and posters.

 

I was never sure what it said about comic fans that Marvel's most popular character is a cold killer with rage issues and built-in knives in his hands.

Back before Wolvie, their most popular hero was a hard-luck teenager, driven to help people, who knew that with great power came great responsibility.

 

Teenage Iron Man was so stupid. ITs funny how comic companies worry so much about the age of their characters that they de-age them by ret cons or stories that de-age them. Its like if a character is older than 30 or go forbid over 40 or 50 the character is no longer viable. That's one of the main reason for so many of the lame reboots and universe restarts.

 

In the Early Silver Age, the marvel characters were aging in real time. We got to see teen aged Spiderman, and Human Torch and the x-men grow up. Then, they suddenly stopped. And Franklin Richards never got to grow up. This stagnation is hurting comics driving away old readers like me. What's better about drastically changing old characters instead of creating new ones?

But recently I have come back to comics, reading electronic reprints of my old ones from the bronze age. But it irks me that I can't read new adventures by my favourite writers. Many of whom were driven out of the business along with me. and then died.

 

Most of the old favorites (the ones that are alive anyways) lost their writing skills a long time ago. This is imo why there is such a high turnover in the comics industry, the necessity of churning out numerous monthlies burns people out creatively especially writers.

 

I will concede that this is true of Claremont, Byrne and Miller. This was even true of Shooter at one point after he'd used up all his ideas starting two companies, need a committee to write from Broadway Comics. But I'll bet, he has some new ideas now.

But Engelhart, Gerber and Gruenwald never seemed run out of ideas. They were driven out of the business by editorial meddling.

I think the real reason for the high turnover is that the creators can't own their creations and they don't have the pay and benefits that a work for hire person ought to have. They leave for hight paying professions with benefits.

 

IMO that certainly does play a role. But the likes of Claremont and Byrne and Shooter were certainly well compensated by all accounts. Maybe someone like Chris Priest or Stern or Micheline, but others who come to mind weren't very good in the first place.

Grunewald wasn't driven out. He went onto the big leagues and passed away shortly after. He was still involved with Marvel and was involved supposedly with DC vs Marvel.

Not so much for Engelhart. I don't think Millenium and New Guardians were very good. I liked Strangers (probably one of the few who remember it) and also Dark Detective (mostly for Rogers art), but none of it can hold a candle to his earlier work such as on Cap.

 

Right it depends a lot on the specific circumstances of how and who were involved in the creation of the product.

 

Chris Claremount was so well "compensated" that his family had to ask the comic book community for help when he got seriously ill a few years ago and they couldn't afford his care.

Writing for comics is at best "piecework", and it's been increasingly turned into outright sweatshop level compensation with all the foreign hires they've brought in the last few years.

My advice for anyone collecting these days is to stick with indies. Marvel and DC have both become IP farms/advertising auxiliaries.

 

It seems to me that the editors and people in control seem to still think their core readership and target audience is 12 year old boys, when it seems like most of the people who are the most avid comics readers are actually significantly older. I read a few comics when I was younger than that, but that was Star Trek and Sonic The Hedgehog. I did read my first superhero comics when I was around that age, but didn't start really getting into them, and reading them on a more regular basis until I was in my 20s.

 

Teen Iron Man is something that happened in 1995, so the mean audience was younger than it is now, mostly because it's the same audience.

The road to Teen Iron Man was I thought superb, Tony Stark revealed as Kang's Sleeper Agent from whenever he'd thought that he was blackout drunk, murdering the Wasp and the Avenger's cook, but it's just later after Teen Iron Man got boots on the ground, they didn't really have long terms plans for him, unless the writers knew that Onslaught/Heroes Reborn was coming and there was room to invent a batshit weird story... Oh God, they totally knew.

"Hi, we're throwing the Avengers into an alt reality, mindwiping them and reseting everything back to zero, so feel free to work yourselves into the worst possible corner imaginable, becuase we have the ultimate hallpass, and his name is Onslaught."

The only glitch in this Theory was that the Waid/Garney Captain America was the best it had been in years, and the best it would be for years.

 

Unfortunately this is not true.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/08...ope-he-could-draw-scooby-doo-but-not-kamandi/

 

Totally agree Morfius. I collect silver age and bronze age now. Marvel was aging their characters nicely. We saw Peter Parker graduate college. Aging the characters made them see more real then it just stopped. They even started to retcon Peter Parkers age back in the late 90s and early 2000s and then made him single again. Ridiculous.

 

I was most into it in my 30s. Spidey has always been my favorite, and I loved that Pete grew up with me, got married, became a teacher... GREW!

Then of course they decided to throw all that shit away and alienate me.

 

I liked that too. But it's water under the bridge now though I still don't find the appeal of Slott's Spider-Man.

 

Jim Shooter has talked about how when he was in charge, he often had to restrain writers from doing things that would hurt underoo sales like giving Spidey an out of wedlock child. But after he was gone . . . .

. . . . Spidey sold his marriage to the devil!

 

No. A later retcon explained that it was Tony Stark, Dr Strange and Reed Richards who had planted that impression in Peter, so that he wouldn't fight the gift they were giving him.

A current "mini" I don't want to read is called "Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows" which seems to maybe be about putting Peter and Mary-Jane back together again as man and wife, so I guess that that will be something that will or will not be in place as fact after Secret War.

(Google, google.)

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There's a Secret Wars stamp on the cover.

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Alt Universe garbage.