Dark Avengers - Your thoughts

[M'rk son of Mogh]

And the aftereffects of Onslaught gave us one of Classic Marvel's BEST EVER new launch titles: Thunderbolts.

Heh. And it gave us Rob Liefeld's Captain America. And all of the other Heroes Reborn garbage.

Yes, there were a few good things in there. But look at comics as a WHOLE. The glossy hologram cover was just the tip of the iceberg. That was how they treated the insides as well. Remember death of Superman?
Single. Image. Per. Page. Remember Image? The guys who flat out stated "we don't need good stories, as long as the art is good!"

THAT was the 90's. That was the majority of it. Thunderbolts and X-Factor were the minority. When you look at all of the miniseries and new series that were started, how many were good? 10%?

If you remember the 90's fondly that's great, so do I. I have every issue of the clone sage and think Ben Reilly was a better character than Parker, he should have stayed the real one. But it's not tough to take a step back and see the garbage that was everywhere else.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Exactly. The '90s were so bad that Comics Should Be Good actually has a dictionary entry for "'90s Good."

Priceless and so true!

 

[Thrall]

Meh. The 90's were to comics what Hair Metal was to Rock N' Roll. Alot of it was bad, over the top, and stupid. But all of it was just good natured fun meant for kids. And thats something the industry hasn't been about for a long, long time. Or if not meant for them, was bad in that Tales Of The Crypt kind of way. It made no bones about what it was about. But at least they weren't a bunch of pretencious, deconstructive, self-important, gits who couldn't have enough contempt for The Classics.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

That was how they treated the insides as well. Remember death of Superman?
Single. Image. Per. Page.

As a matter of fact I do. The shrinking panel count per issue over the final few issues was done VERY deliberately as a stylistic point to heighten the tension. It was groundbreaking at the time, and not to be faulted for what happened after.

Death of Superman was quite frankly the Lord of the Rings of modern comics: the greatest story told in the modern times.

 

[Thrall]

Death of Superman was quite frankly the Lord of the Rings of modern comics: the greatest story told in the modern times.

It was damn good. So groundbreaking and a tale that everyone could get into. If anything, it was a knock on all the 90's anti-hero trend and it reminded people of why Superman is so important to people.

I'm partial to The Dark Phoenix Saga myself. Easily the best love story ever told in the genre. I cried after it was done, it was that good. Yeah, I'm a wuss.

 

[Captain Craig]

Queasda may marginally have sales on his side but any advantage he has is nearly gone. ASM at thrice monthly now sells nearly at what all 3 titles sold prior to OMD/BND. For all the hoopla about this being such a great new era of Spidey its proven to be a creative failure and is on the verge of being a financial one.

The econony is not a factor. Other peer books(aka flagship/top tier titles) have not fallen off at any where near the percentages of ASM.
Other entertainment factors are also a non-variable. The same options have existed for the past 5 years that exist now. Fact is the product is not appealing.

When one dives into the numbers to see how ASM is buyoed its by variants. Marvel has been offering more variants on ASM than any other title. Order 50 copies get a special cover and retailers do it(albeit less and less) in order to please their "variant cover" customers. The do it with gimmicks and guest stars. Wolverine, Punisher, Daredevil, Venom, Eddie Brock in a new symbiote as Anti-Venom and the mother of all whored out guest appearances....Barack Obama in #583. ASM 583 will inflate the overall ASM sales for the month and or year. There are 8 pages on Ebay or people preselling that thing for $50.


As for the 90's--it wasn't the stories that were bad it was the gimmicks. Sure you could cherry pick the bad ones to highlight but we could do the same for the good. The industry was killed in the mid-late 90's cause they bought into the gimmick trend and catered to it thus leading to the collapse when speculators left.

I'll take Clone Saga and Maximum Carnage over the last year of BND Spidey any day. Give me the Infinity Gauntlet trio over Civil War.

The Dark Avengers may be the most intriging thing to come yet from the fiasco lorded over by Joey Q...we shall see.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

As for the 90's--it wasn't the stories that were bad it was the gimmicks.

And the art, son. The art. There's some shitty stuff on the shelves now, but it's shitty in a different way. Drawing Namor like he's Prince of New Jersey is pretty crap for comic book art, but at least the anatomy and such are right. The average superhero book in the '90s looked like shit.

Of course, part of that was because the publishers were much more strict about scheduling. If the regular artist couldn't finish in time, they'd get someone else to bang out the rest of the issue.

These days, for whatever reason, they just wait for the artist to finish it up. I suspect that this is for the benefit of the trade paperbacks, instead of the monthlies.

I'll take Clone Saga and Maximum Carnage over the last year of BND Spidey any day.

No way in hell.

Give me the Infinity Gauntlet trio over Civil War.

I'll give you this one, though. Infinity Gauntlet gets extra points for being mostly self-contained.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Death of Superman was quite frankly the Lord of the Rings of modern comics: the greatest story told in the modern times.

It was damn good. So groundbreaking and a tale that everyone could get into. If anything, it was a knock on all the 90's anti-hero trend and it reminded people of why Superman is so important to people.

I'm partial to The Dark Phoenix Saga myself. Easily the best love story ever told in the genre. I cried after it was done, it was that good. Yeah, I'm a wuss.

DPS was excellent, no doubt (I cried too). But something about DoS made it that much more poignant for me. The last panels as Kal-El died moved me to the point I could almost hear the Williams fanfare playing dirge-like in the background.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

The industry was killed in the mid-late 90's cause they bought into the gimmick trend and catered to it thus leading to the collapse when speculators left.

I'll take Clone Saga and Maximum Carnage over the last year of BND Spidey any day. Give me the Infinity Gauntlet trio over Civil War.

QFT!!!!!

 

[DarKush]

Wow,

I didn't realize how many people reviled the 90's. I really got into buying comics in the 90s. I loved a lot of what was going on in DC at that time-Death of Superman, Knightfall, Artemis as the New Wonder Woman, Emerald Twilight. I also liked some of the Blue Beetle/Booster Gold JLA stories. Kingdom Come, which I thought was overrated, was an almost universally praised story of that period, so it couldn't have been all bad.

On the Marvel side there was Mutant Empire, Age of Apocalypse, the Clone Saga (which I enjoyed for the most part and far better than Brand New Day), Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther (which I've read reactively). I really liked X-Force back in the day too.

Even Spawn was cool back then. I can't really say the stories were all that good, but they definitely had style.

I guess it's hard to compare the two decades. I stopped buying comics for a long time in the late 90s and just got back into it. Now I'm reading more diverse works-a lot more smaller stuff. However, in comparing Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman comics that I read in the 90s to those today, I liked the 90's stuff, with the exception of the New Krypton arc. Batman RIP looks like it's going to be a variation of Knightfall. I think WW's about to be replaced again, so a lot of this stuff is retreading the 90's it seems.

Today I'm enjoying Captain America, Daredevil looks good (but I don't have a lot of money to get invested in another book), Ennis's run on Punisher at Marvel. I'm also reading Black Panther, Iron Man, New Warriors, just getting into New Avengers, the Blue Marvel miniseries, Moon Knight, War Machine, Elektra's miniseries (liked that too) and I check out Nova occassionally. But I don't really have a basis to compare many of those works since I didn't read them in the 90s. I just can't get into X-Men anymore-loved Wolverine: Enemy of the State though. It just seems way overcomplicated, though I recently read the Death of the Shi'ar Empire (got it from the library) and enjoyed it immensely. I thought Civil War was good for the most part, didn't care for Secret Invasion, though Dark Reign looks promising. I can't say there is that much of a difference in quality from the 90s to now at Marvel, though the 90s storylines seemed more fresh and consquential. I'm old enough now to understand the concept of the reset button.

Though I like the artwork and many of the new characters in Spider-Man's BND I just think the OMD concept was so stupid I just can't support the Spider-Man books anymore.

Same with DC. They were really shaking things up back in the 90s and it was interesting to see where they were going. Now, it appears they and Marvel are just going in circles.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I don't even have regular pull-books at my LCS anymore. Instead of following specific books and characters, it has become easier to just jump from evcent to event to event in the MU.

 

[Nick Ryder]

Sure there was a lot of filler, but at least there was a lot of good stuff that was just fun and even if they did a major 'dark' change, they were able to counterbalance it a bit later. Like after X-Cutioner's song, they had a rather nice, light, if odd story in Uncanny with Jubilee and Prof X... rollerblading. It was odd, but in a way, it was a good refresher after a dark, serious story. And that's really what they need to do, balance the dark with some light. Enough depressing shit now. I mean, I READ comics to avoid watching all kinds of depressing stuff on tv. I want to escape to a world of super heroes. Guys and gals in spandex kicking some ass and doing some weird cosmic stuff. There has been a serious lack of the 'cosmic' lately

 

[Morfius]

I think Marvel went bad after Jim Shooter left. But there was still inertia plus the fact that Marvel and DC were flooding the market with titles that allowed some gems to come out in the 90's.

My gems of the 90's would be:

Captain America (Grunwald)
Quasar
X-Factor (David)
Hulk (David)
Age of Apocalips
Marvels
Sandman
Valliant (before Shooter left)
Defiant
Broadway Comics
Thunderbolts (Buisek)
Astro City
Guardians of the Galaxy
Sludge
Strangers
Night Man


When those artists left Marvel to start Image, I said: "good ridance!" They were ruining Marvel.

 

[Nick Ryder]

Well what I really think made a '90s comic' was the fact that yeah some of the writing was crap, some of the art was pure turd and even some of the ones people loooved to see, they had some really bad stuff out - I'm talkin' to YOU Mr. Mike Deodato Studios! LOL I mean some of his stuff wasn't bad, but nearly EVERY guy he drew looked like the Hulk and every woman looked like a porn star. Not bad things, but hell he even drew Jubilee nearly naked and that just ain't right.

But what I guess I'm tryin' to get at is... in the 90s you had far more stand alone stories, what happened in X-Men would maaaaybe get a mention in Spider-Man or Avengers, but now you've got soooo many crossed stories. Dark Reign oka - we've got a Spider-Man character, an X-Men, an Avengers, a Fantastic Four its as if ever 'family' is now merged in. Why didn't they just throw in Dan Ketch or John Blaze to bring in the Ghost Rider family as well?

I really hope that the next storyline that comes after this redeems our heroes and brings things to center. Fine, have a sorta 'outcast' feel to some of the mutants, maybe even re-power them again, Wanda's still alive right? I'd love to see her back on the side of angels.

 

[TheArsenal]

In a fairly spoiler filled article, Bendis explains Dark Avengers #1

 

[Captain Craig]

In a fairly spoiler filled article, Bendis explains Dark Avengers #1

I only read about half of it cause I may buy it and don't want to be totally spoiled.

I like this statement from Bendis.
Re: Villians as the Heroes

Brian Michael Bendis: Really, what the Dark Reign is about, and Dark Avengers in particular, is this idea that everyone is the hero of his own story. This is one of the mantras of recent modern fiction. Norman never sees himself as the villain. Everyone's got their own point of view.

I was riffing on this back in Goldfish. Every once in awhile I see someone refer to themselves in a comic book as a criminal, or "I'm the bad guy." They'll actually say, "I'm the bad guy." And I'm like, no one actually thinks they're a bad guy! You know? Even the sociopaths have a complete agenda. So I really wanted to explore that. Norman is the hero of his story, and everyone on his team is the hero of their story. Yes, they have vendettas, and absolutely, they want to stick it to the man and let everyone have it. But how they're doing it is through this idea of being the hero of their own story.

We've probably all heard an actor or two describe playing a villian and the villians we love are usually the ones where their prespective can be seen if not empathized with. Not sure if I can recall a time in the comics where outside of Kravens Last Hunt I've seen the bad guy try to identify with the counterpart by actually becoming him.

 

[Leroy]

Thrall wrote:
He does this because he knows all of those little kids and young adults and people who like light-hearted fun, who cried at the end of The Dark Phoenix Saga or cheered when Peter and Mary Jane got married, aren't there anymore to support the company. They're all watching Dragonball Z or reading Naruto mangas. They could care less about the adult-oriented Superhero genre of comic books that 20-30 something year old Internet Geeks love. Naruto and Inuyasha are escapist fun that cater to things they want to see and read about. Spider-man and The X-Men are confusing, overbearingly adult, and involve storylines that would be better suited for episodes of Deadwood or Nip/Tuck then Stan Lee's universe.

To be fair the Manga/Anime industry is having it's own struggles namely fans who refuse to buy the DVDs thinking they're a waste of money while downloading all the shows for free off the net. Kids are going into stores and reading the mangas then put them back on the shelf without paying a dime. Also add the fact that if a title doesn't do to well it may not get finished. (who wants to buy a book with no ending?)

As for the OT the only thing that's bothered me is how Stark supposedly went through and erased all his tech data and destroyed all his previous armor models, and conveniently leaves behind a suit for Osborne to find? I'm hoping that's a plant a trap left by Tony since Iron Man armors after the first armor wars were equipped with an anti theft device which destroys the armor if somebody other than Stark puts it on or tries to copy the technology.

 

[Hermiod]

What the frak does that bitch Moonstone think she's doing in my Carol's costume ?

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

What the frak does that bitch Moonstone think she's doing in my Carol's costume ?

That doesn't look like Ms. Marvel's costume. It looks closer to Captain Marvel's to me.

 

[Hermiod]

What the frak does that bitch Moonstone think she's doing in my Carol's costume ?

That doesn't look like Ms. Marvel's costume. It looks closer to Captain Marvel's to me.

It's the original Ms. Marvel costume.