Standing in line is nothing. Watching 10-20 minutes of freaking COMMERCIALS after paying 10 dollars to escape TV is an outright kick in the nads. {/quote]
I'm not trying to mitigate or apologize for the self-interested greed that goes into jacking up comics prices beyond what is reasonable by comparing it to things that go on elsewhere. I am saying that across the board in the entertainment industry there's a sense that people will pay more for less. And this isn't INFINITE CRISIS's fault, and righteous rage against this shouldn't manifest as a passive-aggressive sentiment against that book in particular.
(The notable exception is in music - you can buy a single song on pay download services for less than a dollar. )
Old Yiddish proverb: "the grave calls if you drink. The grave also calls if you do not drink."
It certainly is funny that the great classic comics of yesteryear were printed on cheap pulp paper for 10 cents a book, while the junk of today is preserved forever on high-gloss, archival quality paper. Just like it's funny that a thieving moron like Todd McFarlane could get rich on comics while geniuses like Wayne Boring and Bill Finger died in poverty and obscurity. In other words, the unfunny kind of "funny."
Also, there's the pricy computer coloring. I didn't hear anybody complaining about Four-Color printing. And the glossy computer "lens flare" sheen given to everything makes everybody look like their heads are made of plastic. Astonishing how good something like say, Marvel UK books or the Malibu line, who used solid colors instead of the "dot" coloring scheme, but did not go for computer colorization, look today. I can't help but feel the industry missed a boat there with the Malibu color model.
Is McFarlane STILL a millionaire? I would imagine that now worthless home run ball of his set him back a bit, and I haven't heard about anything he's done lately (with the notable exception of bothering Warren Ellis, and while I consider that angry Irishman to be a talentless wanker, a broken clock still tells the right time twice a day).
There was a story, supposedly, that people in the Marvel Bullpen said that Todd McFarlane only had a vocabulary of 200 words, and 100 of them were "f***".
Didn't Neil Gaiman describe the legal strategy that McFarlane used on him as "Ha ha, I tricked you?"
The problem with Roy and Chris, I think, is that they'll never say in five words what they could say in 500. I still remember reading Chris' X-Men, where a character could get punched in the face and deliver a four-paragraph soliloquy before hitting the pavement.
Roy the Boy's Caption Boxes work when he does them right.
At the start of his career, we see nonsense llike for instance, this line from "Kree-Skrull Wars:" "
The Doomsday Button. What matter WHICH hand touches it? Even if it is...PROTESTANT?" Hey Roy, here's an idea: could you maybe ratchet the fruity philosophical musing back a notch? I'm too busy watching the Wasp and Goliath devolve into apes.
Later on, though, we see Roy the Boy's technique develop in extraordinary ways: in the CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE MEDUSA EFFECT one-shot (which I wholeheartedly recommend), we see him describe Madrid, Spain and Berlin, with the caption boxes being quotes from travel guides, which really describe the locations very, very well.
Also, there are occasions where Roy's prose is downright poetic and power-packed, like this quote from INCREDIBLE HULK #135:
"THE 41ST CENTURY! No longer is the earth a green-bedecked jewel, it's once-bright face is pockmarked with bomb-blasted craters. Yet on this dying world. ONE MAN now raises his voice in joyful TRIUMPH...!" The BEST use of caption boxes in comics history has to be by Steve Englehart in his DETECTIVE COMICS - and Stainless was pretty liberal with his word count. Steve used the caption boxes to create atmosphere and things that are detectable to the other senses, like the musty, antique smell of Wayne Manor.
"Any night in the dark he could die..."
"But NOT TONIGHT!"
As for Chris...well, like everything else, his caption boxes on IRON FIST were packed with descriptions whereas his X-books tended to waste space; Claremont seemed to know that a comic book, whose panels are basically flat, could never duplicate movement (which is what a Martial Arts book is all about), so he used caption boxes to describe the whizzing of blows.
The last thing a writer likes to hear is that his old stuff was better, but seriously, Claremont peaked on IRON FIST. His MS. MARVEL had its moments - particularly the issue where she hunts Sabretooth in the subways, and the battle with the underground race of lizard men. But it never got more cornball cool than it did with IRON FIST.
As for Roy...that guy keeps on getting better and better. His AVENGERS in the sixties was great, his ALL-STAR SQUADRON and ARAK, SON OF THUNDER was a delight, as was his recent things like the Kirby SECRET CITY and MEDUSA EFFECT.
I firmly believe that Thomas's best work is ahead of him instead of behind.
And I agree he did a lousy job writing female characters, which was doubly annoying as he seemed obsessed with them (apparently he thought he was great at it).
When it comes to women, Roy Thomas is the Bono of Marvel Comics.
Haven't you ever wondered why Bono's never done a solo album? Because that means he wouldn't have The Edge's guitar to bail his ass out.
Same thing for Roy. Englehart saved Wanda, who was something of a distraction in his AVENGERS run, by having her become a stronger and more confident woman who learned magic and come GIANT-SIZED AVENGERS #4 (1974) actually DICTATED TERMS to a guy like Dormammu. Yowza! Ditto for the Roy Thomas created Valkyrie; it was up to Englehart to bring her back into the Marvel Universe and make her possibly the most interesting character in DEFENDERS.
Right. I understand what you are saying. However, there are things that are different from a standard comic universe.
Sparkplug. This is a girl who was raised and still believes in the Nazi ideals. She actually was doing her best to save a person she believed to be innocent and refused to accept the truth about his role in the death camps and chewed out the goverment agents who shot and killed him for resisting arrest. In US comics, a Nazi is always a villian. Not this time. Sparkplug is a heroine.
There are a few other things that are new to the Heroic Universe, but that is the biggest one right there.
The tight plotting to the stories is there. It's no worse or beter than a lot of other comics from yesterday or today.
As to the complaint that Flare is derivative? Of course it is. It was based on characters used in the 3rd edition Champions RPG as background bits. The Champions game itself was based on the Marvel universe.
Wasn't the Tick also based on a Champions game? And the Wild Cards novel?
I did like the idea that the Valkyrie/Sparkplug had fought for the Nazis and later became an American heroine. And I did like the flashback issue, and how it went into ideas of mass psychology. However, it doesn't feel like enough.
Mathematician Douglas Hofstadter described creativity, in "scientific" terms as it were, as being a series of dials that represent the parameters of a situation. Doug gave the example of a guy going to a busy restaurant, and tells his friend, "gee, I sure wouldn't want to be a waitress in here tonight." The man in the restaurant just used creativity, because he turned two dials: one on his role being a customer and turning it to employee, and on his gender, from male to female.
A World War II heroine who works for the Nazis instead of the good old US of A is one interesting dial to turn, but not enough other dials were turned. For instance, Flare is a fashoin model. Wasn't that the occupation of like, Halo, Big Bertha, Supergirl, Starfire, and Jem and at least two of the Holograms?
Also, it's about a sexy blonde woman that beats up monsters and robots with a vaguely retro flavor. Now, if that's your concept, you have to do everything in your earthly power to prevent comparisons to that Richard Levins superfemmes book with Lady Liberty and the She-Cat. But when you've got a superstrong flying blonde woman with a connection to World War II, it's SCREAMING "Miss Liberty."
how do you know it wasn't the artist's idea to draw in those obscure Lanterns rather than Johns'?
The answer is I don't know, but considering Johns's current JSA run hinges on plot points from the 1980s INFINITY INC., and involves the Wizard of Ys showing up for the first time, literally, since he first appeared back in the
sixties, and he brought back the Puzzler, a Golden Age villain that never even had an
Earth-1 incarnation, and a big hero of IC is Black Lightning...would it really be the biggest jump to conclusions ever made?
Also, Stanley and his Monster had dialogue. Under the full-script method used at DC, this implies that it was Geoff Johns's idea they be put in there.
Glad Bizarro's murderous act was off-panel, but just the fact that Bizarro kills tells me this isn't the book for me. And anyway how embarassing would it be to be killed by freaking Bizarro?!
You can blame Alex Ross. When he did Bizarro in JUSTICE, it was as a terrifying Frankenstein-esque monster made all the more frightening by the fact he didn't know what he was doing. This seems to be the interpretation of the character that has been popping up in recent times, including in Gail Simone's VILLAINS UNITED and INFINITE CRISIS.
If history is anyway way of juding these things, unless you are reading a Alan Moore book, it is nearly always the artist's idea to sneak in little easter eggs for fans to catch.
Also, it seems that JulianPerez have not been clicking on links like the rest of us, since most of the important pages have been scaned and post on-line since issue 1.
So, we have all seen every single death and the few good spots here and there.
Like when Alex said...
"There are recorded rumors of Superman's activities before his appearance in Metropolis" - IC No. 7
So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss our opinions. There is no need for us to try and justify spending 27.93 (3.99 x 7) on that thing, I mean with that money I could have gotten about THREE Showcase books from Amazon and help charities and this site in the process.
That's not entirely true. For one thing, my JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and JONAH HEX Showcases were $16.99 plus tax. That's not bad, but not exactly the greatest bargain in the world for a book without color, especially considering that you could get ESSENTIAL THOR or ESSENTIAL GODZILLA for $14.99.
For a REALLY astonishing bargain, check out the AVENGERS: 40 YEARS DVD, which on DVD has 525 issues of Avengers, pretty much all of them, from Stan Lee to Thomas to today for $29.95.
Be warned, however: it does not contain the Giant-Sized issues, which is a gyp - or the WEST COAST AVENGERS book.
But yes, there IS a problem with taking a book piecemeal, one that renders a view based on it as misinformed
at best: read like that, no context is given to what is going on. Context that makes something poignant or makes something make sense or "click."
In the aforementioned example of the death of the Freedom Fighters, it would be easy to assume the whole thing was a grotesque and pointless massacre. That is, if
all you saw were the pages of the deaths and not the pages before, where Geoff Johns showed the Freedom Fighters as essentially likeable and valiant heroes, with caption boxes that made Uncle Sam, previously a throwaway character in crowd scenes, as a grandiose figure with every entitlement to the name. Thus, when the deaths happened, not only were they sudden, shocking and tragic, but also they were tear-inducing, because Johns characterized the Fighters so WELL.
Thanks to Johns, it transcended a throwaway death into the best moment the Fighters had since Roy Thomas.