Everything wrong with Marvel

I just watched this, and kinda wanted to talk about it, at least the basics of it. To summarize, it's about how "All New, All Different" Marvel isn't New or Different. Also how they're pushing out so many books that smaller titles drown out regardless of quality. Also brought up is how, since it wasn't a real reboot, it is not really a good jumping on point for new readers, it's just as confusing as it was before. Everyone just gets a bunch of new #1s.

The biggest points brought up are general issues that effect all of Marvel, all the time.
How many of the new heroes do you really consider relatable? Hell, since most people in America actually are still white, the more characters they straight up replace with different ethnicities means more characters are LESS relatable, and require a lot more good writing to get them back to relatable. People have grown to like Miles, but regardless of color he has a very simple backstory, and has been around for years now. Not many can relate to a 15 year old black college girl who steals to make a suit of armor, and there is NOTHING about her personality yet, so that's really all people can latch on to.

And consistency… shit, does anyone at Marvel READ Marvel books?

Since "How do we fix Marvel" is a pointless endeavor, let's pose a question that is more useful:

Other urls found in this thread:

ew.com/article/2015/03/20/looks-female-thor-outselling-her-predecessor
twitter.com/AnonBabble

And an obvious addition to the subject of consistency: Riri never needed to be an "original" character. And by original, a rip off of Steel, but a teenage girl.

Lila Rhodes here, who is Rhodey's niece, was introduced only TWO YEARS AGO in Iron Patriot. But Bendis didn't know, or care, that a character that could do everything Riri is meant to do (but is already established, already being trained by Tony, and has ties to Rhodey) already existed. Does Marvel have anything like a 'continuity team'? Because, I get it, Bendis can't read every book, but he HAS EDITORS. An editor read Iron Patriot, at least one of them, and the head editor should know the basics of what's going on. Hell, the writers all get together for planning shit events like Civil War II, you're telling me NONE of them read Iron Patriot? Marvel Wiki is open to anyone and everyone, so why can a fan pull up this character but no one at Marvel can?

The drive for every writer to be the one to "make something new" may be to blame. But if people aren't building off the works of other writers, why even have a shared universe? Why not just say ever book is a separate continuity, if the books are going to be full of redundant characters anyway? At this point, continuity is disregarded enough to piss off old fans, but held up just enough to make your average Marvel comic completely uninviting to new readers.

Although I do applaud the fact that you summarized the dudes video, you still lack a webm.
Now, Marvel is losing customers not because of unnecessary renumberings (although its a problem) but mostly because of the stupid publicity stunts (Hail Hydra, killing character and bringing them back in less than a year, etc) and the fact that they are pushing out existing characters an customers.
For example, who cares about black Iron Womyn? people like Tony, why push him out?
People liked Thor so why change him with Jane Foster? etc, etc.

Eliminating characters and changing them to a new, younger and racially different version of the character does nothing but push people away but Marvel insists on it.
Im actually glad that Convergence and Secret Wars happened because I finally managed to drop the Big Two altogether (even though I didnt buy most of their products).

[WebM quality is shit but since its mostly pictures and audio, who cares]

This was pretty obvious to anybody with even a fourth of a brain. Or anybody aware of the other relaunches Marvel previously did.

Hard to believe, because he's the same as Riri: an bland OC made to usurp someone else's role for the sake of publicity. And with the Ultimate universe dead, he's functionally redundant and has nothing going for him aside from being the token character Bendis created him as.

This means nothing because people can relate to anything, even the stuff that shouldn't be relatable.

Arguably Marvel has been struggling with consistency for a long time. This is just the latest manifestation of that struggle.

You're implying that there's an editor willing to veto Bendis, someone with seniority, over a character from a failed comic that was silently downgraded to a mini. All editors do nowadays is make sure everybody turns their shit in on time. If they're not lording over the writer, that is.

I would say this is a problem, but not for the reasons you gave.

Relatability is a problem because Marvel thinks it's an excuse to pander through forced diversity, often with the excuse that "little girls and black kids don't have any heroes to look up to!" which is a fucking lie. Female and non-white characters have existed for decades. Ignorance of material is no excuse to pretend like its never existed.

Furthermore, this idea that not having a superhero or a character in media that's superficially similar to you is somehow emotionally crippling to children is just absurd. Kids like stuff that's interesting, that captures their imagination, that excites them, that makes them laugh.

To say that skin color or hairstyle matters the most is like saying that only Ghosts reads the old Casper comics, or that only robots could enjoy Transformers.

So right off the bat, one of their biggest motivators to utterly fuck up everything is a deeply flawed, ideologically driven need to pander to an audience that is already sick of being pandered to, for the sake of an audience that won't buy their books because they are such a clusterfuck of twisted continuity, bad writing, and bad art.

And I just watched the video and now I'm even more sure of my opinion on the matter, because that guy insists that "relatability" has to do with making bullied nerds feel accepted through allegories about being fat and facing unfair odds.

Well to be fair some of the characters he mentioned were created before comics/capes were the new hip thing.

Man, its just bad editors, writers and artists. Just that.

I can't help but think this is residual 90's crap. The 90's were a very lucrative time for comics, what with the bubble and all, and a big part of it was new heroes. Kyle Rayner, Jack Knight, Cassandra Kane, Conner Hawke, Jean-Paul Valley, Wally West, Jared Stevens, lots of fresh faces took up the mantels of older heroes during this time.

However, there's key a difference between then and now. Currently, it's agreed, that the reason Marvel is introducing these new characters is a vain attempt to get new readers by being more "diverse". That wasn't the case with the 90's heroes. They were created to inject new life into old franchises. Green Lantern was losing readers. Batgirl was crippled. Flash was dead. Nobody really cared about Green Arrow, Dr. Fate, or Starman. Batman needed to insulate itself against the edge of the 90's. Even something as stupid as Ben Riley was Marvel's attempt to get back to classic Spider-man.

I feel this difference in motivation is why it's failing. Marvel is adding nothing new to their line with these changes. It's all superfluous.

I have to disagree with the reliability argument because that really is a goddamn co op argument to put over tokenism over storytelling and good writing.

People read comics because they wanna escape the fucked up shit going on in the world right now, they don't wanna be talked down to or be told that feminism is awesome and that being a white man is bad.

For example, one of my all time favorite characters in comics is Judge Dredd and he's anything but repeatable, he's a goddamn fascist who sees himself as the be all end all authority on justice. But what makes him great is that his stories are well told stories that balance stuff like sci-fi, satire and the overall absurdity of comics.

Same reason why so many people enjoy The Punisher, he's a crazed psycho who runs around murdering everyone and everything he deems bad and doesn't care how many lives he takes as long as he gets the job done.

It was drumming up controversy to improve sales in the 90s and it's drumming up controversy to improve sales now. The only reason it worked then and doesn't work now is because the market collapsed and the speculator bubble burst.

lol 90s muscles

At least back then we got good characters like Cassandra, now what do you have? A self insert OC as Spider Man, Falcon (a d-list hero at best) as Cap, Stork Woyman as Thor and some token chick as Iron "Man".

as far GL is concerned, they always had room to introduce new GLs
Guy Gardner was introduced fairly early as a potential backup GL (and would have been the ring's first choice if he weren't on the other side of the continent (thanks to Booster Gold, btw)) but didn't get his ring until 1979 and didn't become a permanent addition until after Crisis (because lolphantomzone)

meanwhile, in the mid-70's they had introduced John Stewart as not only a black superhero but a damn good one–a GL with a community focus who could address the root cause of a crime (such as on his training run when he goes after the guy who hired an assassin instead of the assassin himself). He didn't come into his own until just before Crisis

and then there's the aliens. Earthlings too boring? Pick an alien species, give it a green lantern ring and a ridiculous crisis to defeat and you have a recipe for at least one entertaining story per issue

As much fun as it would be to dive in to shit-kicking Marvel's dumbfuck decisions, I'll try to answer your question OP.


At the risk of sounding like a disgusting little shill, I have been working on my own comic universe as a sort of pet project. Its meant to be more "pulpy" than a modern superhero comic, similar more to Hellboy/Lobster Johnson comics than Spider-Man.

So first thing I did was establish "commandments" on what the theme of the world was. So for me it was:

1. Set in an alternate Earth around the 1920-30s. Many facets are similar but key historical facts are changed to justify the new world here and there. The point of this is to avoid going anywhere near "real world issues". No awareness comics, no agenda drivel, no "My ward's a junkie!?". Just stories and the characters that drive them. I also drew up a bunch of shit on what technology people are using and the limits of it even when considering mad scientist shenanigans (like computers), but I'll contain the autism.

2. I drew up a sort of key staging ground for most of the stories: Imperius: The City of Wonders.(still working on the name, pls no bully) A sort of combination Gotham/Metropolis/New York City that almost has mystical quality. (Like an Art Deco Valhalla) City Limits are kept vague, as their is always some new unexplored neighborhood or alleyway to have stories. The city isn't meant be looked at as a whole, but as a container for the greasy diners, high rise apartments, and hidden corner stores that all the protagonists will live in and experience.

3. The setting takes place as a backdrop for some unexplained, never-ending great war happening across the sea. With the adversary never quite explained, only given a vague title like "The Homeland". Now, the whole war effort is meant to be suitably vague and mysterious, as its not meant to be a center focus but as a means to introduce new plot points. Foreign spies, deadly weapons, military coups, political intrigue, etc. This may be just because I have a thing for Noir settings but eh.

4. No Superhero Alliances or literal hordes of costumed vigilantes. Superman-like characters when not in their own independent settings only serve to trivialize street-level heroes with constant cosmic level threats to handle. More so, giant leagues of superheroes invalidate the threat an individual superhero might face because why the hell wouldn't he call for backup? So what I want is to keep most characters relatively mundane so as to lend a certain seriousness to their varied adventures.

5. Each protagonist would have a mini-Bible to establish character personality and story continuity. Writers should approach established characters with the same reverence Don Rosa had for Carl Bark's Scrooge.

6. If a character can't stand on its own in an independent story without constant "guest heroes", it doesn't get to exist. Something like Batman Beyond would be great because even though Batman is already established and Bruce Wayne still a central character, Terry has his own personality and struggles, and doesn't rely on being the new Batman to be good, he just is.

I have no experience with this sort of thing, but its what I've come up with. Beyond this all I have is character concepts, like a animal-talking hobo-sage or a shovel-wielding Irishman who fights necromancers and ghosts. But I don't wanna bore.

It does sound interesting, thanks for sharing. Yeah, I agree that having general world commandments and character specific bibles would be the first step. I'd also think a big universe eventually needs a team specifically for keeping continuity and keeping things from being redundant. One thing I think about Marvel's current run of new teen replacement heroes, is each one devalues the group as a whole.

At least Miles Morales somewhat resembles an actual character and isn't entirely SJW bullshit (he even said at one point that he didn't want to be "the black Spider-Man", he wanted to be Spider-Man; this was in response to some random tumblrina progessive sjw bitch vlogger character).

And at least Falcon was already an established character, rather than someone who was explicitly created to be black Captain America and nothing else.

Fun Fact: Falcon was only a member of the Avengers because their manager demanded diversity; Falcon himself didn't even want to be an Avenger.

I never really got why some people complained about Falcon being the new Cap because it did make sense. They were friends for years and you could see something like that coming. Maybe it was because people began using Falcon as a mouthpiece for political shit that soured alot of others.

Also where the hell is Patriot? I think he gave up the superhero gig after the Young Avengers disbanded. Hell he's another example of 'WE NEED MORE DIVERSITY BUT DON'T WANT TO USE OLD CHARACTERS' you could easily write a story about how he comes back into the superhero lifestyle. Fuck with the negative media attention Falcon was getting as Cap that could have been Patriot's chance to come back.

but Bendis needs his OC character. Look how everyone loves Jessica Jones and miles sue.

winter soldier had ss serum + metal arm. He could handle the shield. No idea how Falcon does it.

Spiderman would have been the better pick for it.

Why didn't they just give Falcon the hardlight shield?

buckey was Captain America after he died.

So she's a rip-off of Natasha Irons?

Just like others have already said, relatability isn't worth shit, unless you want to peddle romance novels for sexually frustrated women. Characters and their stories have to be interesting and entertaining first and foremost. People don't read Lovecraft, Poe, Hemingway, Kafka, and Dostoyewsky because their characters are relatable. Same goes fore comics - Spider-Man wasn't so popular because he was a teenager, but because he was an interesting character and being a teen was just one of many parts that made him what he is. It is hard to relate to Swamp Thing, Silver Surfer, or Hellboy, yet people like them a lot.

Consistency is a non issue, when Marvel comics are not even written or drawn well. They just are poorly written and drawn. Almost anything from any indie publishers will be better than what Marvel churns out right now, aside from Vision, Carnage, and maybe Hawkeye.
Poor writing itself is not everything. Decent chunk of Marvel books is preachy and at times borders on being a straight up propaganda. If author has nothing to offer besides justifying and pushing their own ideals, only people liking the book are ones agreeing with the author. There is a reason why Ayn Rand's books are liked by people who hold the same views, while being reviled by everyone else for being poorly written drivel. Meanwhile, authors like Victor Hugo or George Orwell also wrote politically charged books, but they are held in near universal high esteem. It's because those books offer much more than just propaganda, and can be appreciated on other levels even by those who disagree. That's also why you won't see anyone praising Marvel's new titles outside of social justice crowd.


That could actually make for an interesting anthology series. DC would get artists and writers, and then let them write a 1 to 6 issue story about lantern(s) of their choosing. Rinse and repeat with new writers and artists. DC might even be able to attract some talented people who would like the freedom and only a short term commitment.

This is what I keep saying. He should have one for each arm but only be able to use one at once.

I should add that all of these characters are actually well-written, especially Robinson's Starman.

Didn't even want the damn job but more or less gult-trip into it. He was a wimp, someone that is a ganky geek and holy shit did he looked like it, but under that surface there was something there. He just didn't go with the flow like his brother. He had goals and could complete it (actually learning Jujitsu and was pretty good with it). I also loved his connection to the golden age; the JSA getting their dues.

It felt…right, I suppose. That's the word.


Consistency isn't the problem; its quality. Each of these characers can be plucked out and exchange. They are bland and worthless.
Hell, that new Iron-Man chick would be interesting…if she wasn't written like the other thousands oif quirky female characters that was shat-out the past ten or so years.

Sorry on the typo.

While this is true, the original intent, as told by their creators, was that these were meant to be universal stories. Not stories for a specific, niche audience. Not chicken soup for the social awkward soul. These were tales of justice and duty and archetypal heroism.

Peter Parker wasn't a character that was all about struggling with getting stuffed into lockers. He never was supposed to be. His story was about humility and responsibility.

The Black Suit story arc highlighted what happened to Peter if he gave into all those bad urges that he forced down because the responsibility of being Spider-Man could not allow him to be a petty nerd who wanted to beat up the bullies.

Same goes for the X-Men. Parallels can be drawn to the civil rights movement of the time, but ultimately, it was a lesson about rising up and being better people. The X-Men weren't just heroes because they saved the day. They were role models because they fought to overcome the same petty impulses and rage that motivated the people who hated them.

These aren't stories that matter because they let little black gay nerds feel like someone gets them. They are stories that need to be heard because they encourage the best in us while acknowledging the worst things about us.

They tell their audience that, yeah, the world can be mean and it's easy to be a violent prick, but there is so much more value and so much more good that can be brought to the world by confronting and overcoming it.

This, all of this.

I am so sick and tired of these goddamn idiots coming in and thinking comics are meant to be a feel good medium for gay black trans women, comics like every other medium can and should be able to tell whatever story they wanna tell.

People like Batman because his character is all about dealing with the loss of a family member and overcome the burden of losing your parents at a young age.

And people like Superman because he's someone who always does the right thing regardless if humanity understands him or not.

But that's not how these idiots see comics, they think that if they add a non white female lesbian character into the mix then that will make the kids feel good.

I don't mind Falcon as Cap either, it coudl easily feel like a natural progression for the character.

Unfortunately, it was done under the guise of "Diversity" rather than just letting it naturally happen.

You know that's something I miss about heroes of the past years. The message they always tried to get across was to always try and be a better person, to do the right thing for your fellow man, these are characters who go out every day/night to defend people not for a paycheck but because it's the right thing to do.

They're being written by people who don't understand that. Capes at Marvel and DC were taken over by people who only know how to tear other people down through slander and deceit. It's ironic that villains seem to become more well written and agreeable than the heroes these days.

The comics just seem to exist for the movie people to pick and choose what they want.

They could dump all the existing comic story arcs and put them completely in line with the movies like Star Wars did but the comics were here first and their stories will outlast the movies.

Screw relatibility! People read comics for fucking escapism! If you're trying to relate yourself to characters with superpowers there is something fucking wrong with you

But super powers aren't what's relatable, the stuff user mentioned here are:

Even though this user is mostly right about Judge Dredd, I think a lot of people can relate in some way to Frank Castle. Not the kill and methodical ability to murder, but the vast majority of people but a moment of thought into what they'd do if their loved ones were all taken from them, it wouldn't be pretty. Even the core feeling that justice isn't being served by others, that criminals get away too often, is something a lot of people feel.

There are lessons or just feelings inherent with the best characters that we can summarize without bringing up a single power or costume. But all bottom of the barrel characters like Riri are is a costume and a powerset, she's had a handful of pages to establish her character and the writing was even flatter than the cg traced art.

Honestly, most of what I'm saying just boils down to Bendis being a terrible writer

I remember watching Ninja Turtles and Rescue Rangers and Duck Tales and thinking, "I can't relate or enjoy their adventures cause they are not real people."
I fucking swear feminist types suck the fucking mojo and purpose of comics and cartoons cause they lack imagination and understanding for people that are not them.

or his wings are hardlight and they can form a shield like in civil war

Does anyone have that miles sue picture of all everyone kissing his ass?

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I think Lucas did a good job of keeping things straight in the Expanded Universe. They would be the example to follow.

1. I know I can't write every book myself, so most of my time would be world building. Either internal writer's guides and references, or series meant to build the rest of the world.
Maybe a comfy series about an everyman (not a hero of villain) with a gig that has him traveling a lot. For example: a truck driver that generally tries to do right by his fellow man.

2. Once things pick up, a full time continuity team. Their job is to consume every piece of media made for the universe (before release) and ensure continuity. Their say overrides everyone but me.

3. Keep a core team of artists and use them for all books. This means we have to keep the number of concurrently running books down, but ensures a consistent quality across the board. Any additions to the art team will be done in a sort of blind interview. Art team gets the portfolio without any info, myself and continuity team handle the interview. All parties have to agree on a hire. Either you're already top-notch, or you're hungry and capable of growth.

4. ALL new characters must be ran by me after approval of continuity team. They need to organically fit in the setting. Also comfy everyman might need to spend a little while in the new characters setting. Get groundwork laid with existing titles.

5. Do everything with an eye to expand into other media, and that media having a place in the continuity. I agree with Brian Hibbs, either we're at "peak geek" or we've already passed it. Make contacts in other industries and pitch things that make sense. I'd put a big focus on vidya. Good licensed vidya would expand a characters market and the universes market by the merit of it being good vidya. Interactive media I believe would be king. Vidya and tabletop games. Make them fun.

6. Maintain a good stable of writers and give them freedom within reason. Writing will be done well ahead of time, and ideas will be evaluated for other media. If they come up with a plotline that would make for a better vidya than comic, we'd start pounding pavement to get that vidya made.

7. Keep the organization LEAN. A small group of talented people paid above market for their positions WILL produce better results than a leviathan filled with mediocre and worse talent. I should never be the smartest or most capable person in the room. If I am, I HAVE FUCKED UP.

8. My pimp hand shall remain strong. Bullshit will not be tolerated. Renumberings are for the weak. Forced diversity is marketing to a market that doesn't fucking exist.

Reminds me of Astro City and Top10.

Astro City is so fucking underappreciated. It did capeshit better than the people who invented capeshit ever did.

user let it stay that way, that means they will try when they write it. Astro City does well because its made by people who like the genre and its hailed more as a reconstruction than deconstruction. The cast for it is so colorful and you're always learning new things about them because the stories are all from different viewpoints.

I loved the one about the comic publisher who kept pissing off heroes and villians by making up stories about them.

So kind of like Valiant back in the day, but with more pimp hand and not being raped in the ass 24/7 by investors, with a hint of Image.

I really enjoyed the one about the hero whose sons from alternate timelines kept showing up to try and prove to him that they were the superior descendant.

I like the pulpy, 1940s feel of the stories, but they usually take unusual and interesting turns. And you really believe there's all this story that has happen before.

Oh yeah that was the one starring Jack In The Box. And one version who was his son from the future who became a college professor only wanted to see his dad since he died in his timeline.

Then he felt it was time to pass on the mantle. Astro City does it right, all the changes they do are for good.

Basically.

I practice FMA (Fillipino Martial Arts) and we have a motto: "We're not proud people, we'll steal from anyone"

I like the way Lucas ran his EU from an organizational standpoint, Wizards of the Coast manages their art, and the way Nintendo basically ignores their investors.

I know it's a hypothetical, but personally I don't think there's any way to do this without going full Shooter eventually. You either lay down some ground rules and give the talent enough space to do their work, or micromanage the fuck out of everything and deal with the drama that entails.

Again I don't know why so many people keep saying comics need to have relatable characters, if you can write a good story then I'm enjoy reading it but if you just create a token character to make assholes "feel good" then I'm not gonna bother reading your comic.

It's funny, for a characters that was meant to be the face of an authoritarian regime, the writers have always fought over how he should be portrayed, Grant wanted full fascist asshole Dredd while Wagner went for tough-but-fair Dredd, nevertheless it added more flavor to the ways Dredd can be portrayed: He can be a hero and a reasonable guy in one prog, and a total authoritarian dickhead in the next one

What cancer!

Bendis seriously needs to fucking kill himself.

I'd say relatable characters are BAD characters. A character only needs to be relatable if they're a villain you're trying to humanize, or if they're the Watson-type character in the series that you're supposed to be able to envision yourself as.. Characters should not be relatable otherwise. That's fucking boring.

You can find a character relatable even if he's a "bad guy". For a character to be relatable, you dont have to agree with his view of the world, you have to understand where he's coming from and why. Case examples Alan Moore's Hyde and Rorscarch, they both do some pretty evil shit but are fan favorites anyway.


As for what is the modern Marvel's problem, is the fact they've forgotten the fact these comics are escapism. When people go for superhero stories, they yearn for adventure with cool powerful heroes. They're not looking for some soap opera which has some "shocking" dramatic moment every single fucking issue. They simply mistake gimmicks for fully-fledged stories. Ironically nowadays people go to get that fix from fantasy and sci-fi instead since the superhero comics dont provide it. Modern superheroes aren't SpiderMan or Thor or Hulk. Modern "superheroes" for the audience are Jon Snow, Avatar Aang and his friends and so on.

And thats really what the audience wants and have always wanted. Self-contained, fully-fledged stories that have a beginning and the end. Marvel's writing is just a clusterfuck of ideas that either go nowhere or contradict with each other constantly, just for the sake of selling something by pure shock value.

Imagine if superheroes were treated more as recurring high-fantasy characters. Like say Drizzt for example. The stories are divided into self-contained arcs and the only really constantly recurring character in those stories is the superhero (and possibly his friends) himself. Thats what 2000AD tends to do with its comic book stories. They're self-contained and rarely if ever retconned. Dredd is a very simple character but has plenty of backstory now, same with the setting Mega-City itself which is almost a character with a personality and history as well. Thats really what Marvel should be doing as well, instead of just going through a gimmick after gimmick until the superheroes themselves are nothing more than just a mess of retcons.

Relatability is a stupid ideal to strive for. What good is it for me that Spider Man is kicking ass while I'm getting picked on? Is the message that the only way to stop being a punching ball is to get spider superpowers? That's a shit message, because spider superpowers are not real.

Comic characters don't need to be relatable, they need to be believable (within the rules of their universe of course).

Man the late 90s-early 2000s where a great time for comics. Maybe its nostalgia but I mean. It seemed to have more fun with itself

FUCKING THIS.

Oh cool, Peter Parker is a super-genius who became super-powerful because of a radioactive spider-bite, kicks the asses of middle-aged super-villains in his spare time, is friends with a billionaire's son, is married to a redheaded supermodel, and has acrobatic, rooftop casual sex with a voluptuous, platinum blonde cat-burglar in skintight leather who is also his partner-in-crimfighting? And he's also friends with other superheroes, and runs his own company?

Yeah, well, that doesn't change the fact that I'm a middle-aged, friendless loser who got picked and mocked in school, had average school grades because I'm not a super-genius who invented his own formula for synthetic spider webs, and I'm a kissless virgin whose never even intimately touched some ugly landwhale, much less had wild sex with some athletic, crime-fighting hot chick with big tits because when I got bit by a spider, all I got was an infection.

Relatability was never a viable concept to begin with. For average people, it's an amusing story. For losers, it's just a bitter reminder that they don't have a genius intellect and they won't get super-powers that will turn their shit lives around every-time they open the damn comic.

*partner-in-crimefighting

I think you guys get the wrong idea of relatability, the same basic shallow one that Marvel has a problem with. See, Marvel thinks "Oh, we want girls/blacks/muslims to buy comics, that need a girl/black/muslim hero!" but that's not relatability means. You DO fucking relate to Peter Parker, regardless of color or gender. Because you have had people think you're no good, cowardly or insensitive, when all you were doing was focusing on taking care of other people in your life, or doing what you thought was right. You've been stressed out by work and family stuff at the same time, and had to find a personal balance in your day to day life. You know what it's like to struggle to own up to your own responsibility.

You don't need to look a damn thing like Peter Parker to relate to him.

This is why the Japanese manga industry will always be superior.

And that's what makes him such a great character, because he can be written either way and still be in character.


I agree but at the same time there is nothing wrong with having a villain who is just a sadistic fuck for the sake of it.


Yeah I noticed that too and it's fucking depressing, you can write a superhero story that features drama but at the end of the day it needs to still be about a hero who goes on an adventure and does shit that would never otherwise be able to happen in the real world.

I don't wanna read a Cap book because I care about Spencer's political views, I wanna read a Cap book because I wanna see him fight Hydra agents in giant mech suits while also fighting a guy with a skull for a face and a guy with a purple sock on his head.

because they thought it would sell better
and it does
in 20 years there won't be any white male superheroes left in comics, better get used to it now, white men have been show willing to buy stuff like this which also gets in more women and minority readers, so win/win from marvels pov

What the fuck are you on? That shit tanked hard.

It died with Gruenwald.

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AKA the guy who writes all the books that they don't wanna promote.

nope

ew.com/article/2015/03/20/looks-female-thor-outselling-her-predecessor

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Even the sales they show are a third of what the first issue was. And it's only been getting worse. And the article is only comparing it to one other Thor comic, clearly by someone that doesn't understand the huge amount of different comic series for a single character. Other Thor series were getting what Whor only got in the first issue, well into their run.

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And here I thought Marvel was trying to be PC.

I am using it in the way the guy in the video was using it, and why it is stupid that nerds somehow got empowered by Captain America punching Hitler in the face. What you mean is not so much a character I can relate to, but a character I can believe could be a real person, an everyman so to speak.

idk if you're talking about some other aspect, but I'm pretty into Magic: the Gathering, and the art has been increasingly mediocre or outright bad if it's not on a marquee card. Less traditional mediums, and more streamlined digital stuff.

Otherwise, the Lucas approach is quite admirable, especially in regards to the tiered canon. I think that such an open door allows for plenty of stories to flourish, and if something is really great, you can elevate it to a strong canon level. If something's retarded, you just write another story that gets rid of it.

You have to take a looser view of your universe to make that work, though. You can't be cranking out crossovers every time the audience turns around.

Really, the problem is comic books do literally everything wrong. The crossovers are stunts because they are desperate for attention at all times.

I liked God of thunder damnit

I think they pushed too hard on that. There's some artists that truly excel in the transition and going full digital like John Avon, but ya I think the art quality did suffer because of how hard WotC went. My favorite era for MTG art is Mirrodin. They went with a style guide but still kept it traditional media.


That would also be a use for the comfy trucker series.

not all comics are capeshit