Comic Book Resources

I don’t care what point you’re trying to make, linking people to Michael Medved is just wrong. It’d be like filling a column with Liefeld art.

It’s true. People do suck. I don’t so much care about spoilers, though, because I know I’ll inevitably cave in and seek them out anyway, just like I did for Serenity (and I will never forgive myself for that).

I am, however, fascinated by how much DC wants me to hate the new JLA. Seriously, I absolutely hated Identity Crisis with the fiery intensity of a thousand suns, and I think Ed Benes is a very not-good artist. And now we’ve got the worst! line-up! ever! Woot.

Civil War vs. JLA: Battle of the ugly Turner variants!

Frighteningly, the Justice League 0 issue got a friend of mine back on the book…

Because, you know… it was a zero issue.

Spoilers serve a marketing purpose. It costs the publisher almost nothing to ‘accidently’ leak some secret onto the internet to build anticipation and hype for a product (be it comic, book, movie or anything else).

And it isn’t just nerd culture or anything, it is just curiosity. I mean, look at how much football fans listen to every little rumor over who is going to be drafting and at what number. (Unless you want to argue that they are different subset of the overall nerd culture, but that is a different discussion) It seems to be a basic human desire to be in the know.

Of course thats where the first part comes back in, marketing people know this and they exploit it.

Even though this is a comic book website, I still think you are vastly overgeneralizing how nostalgic -just- comic book fans are. A large majority of people will say that X was better when they were kids (be it sports, movies, games or even food). What happens is that comic books is such a small, but active, culture, so their voices are much louder than they would normally be.

And you know what, I agree with you. Comic books sucked when I was younger. I tried to reread some of the some of the early 80s x-men and it was terrible. I even hated the art. But I’ll leave it at that.

I will not be buying Justice League, I think he’s a hack writer (novel and comic) and I hated IC. But I will read reviews on it, in hopes it will be as bad as I fear it will.

Was Red Tornado in Super Friends?

I agree with you on the rest of it. And I point to bruce jones as another example. No matter how good his quality may have been in the past, his hulk was terrible and his nightwing was just.. wow.

I fully expect it to suck. And I plan to buy it. I will not blog about it however. But why will I buy it? This will sound strange, but…two reasons.

(1) Bad comics, particularly DC Didio Superhero books, can be so bad they’re good. I got Infinite Crisis #7 and it was so bad I was highly entertained.

(2) Bad comics really hone your critical skills and teach you a lot about writing. Good comics are fine to read, but they often make it all seem so easy and effortless. It’s the bad people who really get your mind working and help you work on your analysis and critical thinking skills. I’ve learned alot about writing from reading Jeph Loeb’s, Michilinie and Ben Raab’s work, moreso than I’d say I learned from people like Alan Moore, DeMatteis and Morrison. Not saying those 3 aren’t great as learning tools, but reading people like Loeb and Raab help you realize why Moore, DeMatteis and Morrison stories work and are not as easy as it looks.

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, Greg. Are you saying that spoilers are bad, or that spoilers don’t matter, or that you don’t care about them at all? Because this:

I am, frankly, getting a little sick of spoilers. I have really no problem with it when the book is already out, because it’s in the public domain and if I haven’t read it yet so I don’t know that Batman is a pederast, that’s my fault, innit? But this idea that we must know who’s in the Justice League before it hits the stands smacks of, to be frank, nerdishness at its absolute worst.

Does not quite mesh with the sentiment expressed in this:

Who the fuck cares who is in the new JLA? Won’t you find out when the issue actually comes out?

Here’s the thing: either spoilers matter or they don’t. Either you’re actually ruining something for someone when you give away a plot point (spoiler alert: Moby sinks the boat!), or the experience of reading a story is greater than the experience of reading a summary of its plot points. I knew how Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run ended before I ever read it; I knew what happened to Dream before I ever read Sandman. A good story holds up even when you know how it’s going to end.

Of course, we rarely get spoilers that big in superhero comics fandom. It’s all pretty petty stuff: who’s going to be on what team, which Flash is getting his own series, etc. The JLA roster reveal is the quintessential meaningless spoiler: it reveals details most of us could’ve guessed by now anyway and that don’t actually tell us anything significant about the quality of the actual book (except that the cover art is going to be crap). So Red Tornado’s in the series; well whoop-de-do and la-de-da. That tells me nothing about whether Meltzer plans to do anything intelligent, interesting or original with the character, much less whether that’ll be competently executed. As you yourself suggest, the creative team on any book is far more important to evaluating a book than any hints as to future plot points. One tells you details about what happens in the story; the other tells you whether it’s likely to be any good.

So maybe the spoiler people are being insufferably nerdish by spoiling this meaningless trivia. But how much nerdier is it to actually get upset at such trivial nerdishness? It’s like making a national security case over someone leaking the contents of the president’s breakfast.

I don’t like spoilers, sure.
But I liked Justice League #0. A lot. Enough to make me want to pick up the series, when I had been considering not getting it.
I’m a total geek for DC’s superheroes, and I don’t see the point in denying it or acting like it’s somehow beneath me.
What I really hate about comics fandom, more than spoilers and much more than people who buy a comic for the characters, is overly critical, too-cool-for-school bloggers.
You’re not one of those guys, Greg. But honestly, I don’t know why you have to begrudge people the right to enjoy a freaking DC superheroes comic book.

For the record, my point with the whole A reaction is not enough is that A reaction is not enough for a writer to be satisfied with their story. In that piece, I quote Bill Willingham as saying, “Here’s something you readers need to realize: Though we generally hope readers will like our stories, hating them is almost as good. Hating them so much that yours is the one book everyone is talking about now — well that’s golden. One can’t hate without passion and involvement. The one reaction we most fear is indifference.” That’s just a silly attitude to have.

Also, did I forget to bring that one over to this site?

My bad!

There’s a difference between “begrudging” someone “the right to enjoy a freaking DC superheroes comic book” and making fun of them for it. And I’m getting real sick and tired of people thinking that they’re somehow entitled to not be made-fun-of, just because THEY like it.

Welcome to the playground. Sorry if you get some sand in your pants.

“There’s a difference between “begrudging” someone “the right to enjoy a freaking DC superheroes comic book” and making fun of them for it. And I’m getting real sick and tired of people thinking that they’re somehow entitled to not be made-fun-of, just because THEY like it.

Welcome to the playground. Sorry if you get some sand in your pants.”

Well, that was kinda my point. I don’t feel like I did get any “sand” in “my pants”, and I actually think it’s kind of silly to take a playground, we’re-so-much-cooler-cuz-we-like-indie-comics approach to talking to fellow comics fans.

Greg didn’t like ‘Identity Crisis’, that’s cool. It doesn’t mean people who buy ‘Justice League’ are idiots. I agree with Greg’s points there- I don’t like spoilers, and it seems stupid to buy something just to mock it- but I actually enjoyed Meltzer’s work on the 0 issue, and I don’t see anything inherently wrong with that.

I do have to say (after reading Claws #1) that the tolerance and acceptance of shite in this industry is amazing. I used to think it was surprising that fans keep returning to drink from the well of shite, but what gets me now is the eeditors. Do they not feel a twinge of regret at sending some of this stuff out into the world, or do they really think that it’s worthwhile? And which is worse?

err no, Identity Crisis is shit. Objectively. Any mystery which relies on someone accidentally bringing a flamethrower is. Even if Agatha Christie wrote it.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying it in spite of that, I certainly do enjoy a lot of stuff that is crap. But the mockery is nonetheless well deserved.
(I would however agree that it’s unfair to generalise this to other works withouthaving read them. My own expectations of the new JLA are too low to even consider picking up the book for free, but it’S possible it might be good.)

“err no, Identity Crisis is shit. Objectively. Any mystery which relies on someone accidentally bringing a flamethrower is. Even if Agatha Christie wrote it.”

A FULLY FUNCTIONAL flamethrower, at that!

Guess the novelty shop was all out of fake flamethrowers that day.

“There’s a difference between “begrudging” someone “the right to enjoy a freaking DC superheroes comic book” and making fun of them for it. And I’m getting real sick and tired of people thinking that they’re somehow entitled to not be made-fun-of, just because THEY like it.

Welcome to the playground. Sorry if you get some sand in your pants.”

WOOHOO!

But wait! What about belittling those who get a perverse sense of self-satisfaction and superiority from demeaning other human beings??? Do we get to make fun of them too??!!!

There’s obviously nothing wrong with buying stuff like Identity Crisis and the Meltzer JLA if you actually like them (besides the fact you’re reading crappy comics). What bugs me is the people who really can’t stand Writer X or Plot Direction Y and keep buying issue after issue of them anyway. This came up not too long ago at some Marvel-centric blog I was reading, where the blogger in question hated Bendis’s Avengers, and not only hated them now, but seemed to have hated them since Disassembled, and yet had gone and bought something like sixteen issues of Bendis’s run. I mean, really, people, what’s the motivation here? Not only are you paying to read something you know you won’t like, but you’re sending an economic signal to these companies that indicates that various things you hate are more popular than they really are. That’s just perverse.

Is there any genre or medium outside of superhero comics where this behavior is so widespread? People usually stop watching TV shows when they stop enjoying them; people don’t generally go to see movies they think will be awful (barring social pressure and an MST3K factor). I definitely can’t remember the last time I saw someone with a shelf full of novels by a writer they couldn’t stand. So what’s the deal?

Yeah, I think I remember that New Avengers thing too. Was it ‘2 Guys Buying Comics’? I dunno.

“There’s obviously nothing wrong with buying stuff like Identity Crisis and the Meltzer JLA if you actually like them (besides the fact you’re reading crappy comics).”

Whatever, man. Identity Crisis looks like something I’d hate, so I didn’t go near it. JLA, on the other hand, hooked me with the 0 issue and I’m genuinely looking forward to the ongoing.

I thought the zero issue of JLA was too cloying and sentimental, and it turned me off to future issues. The “reading crappy comics” line was meant as a joke; I’m obviously not the supreme and objective Arbiter of Taste in the superhero comic book world.*

*That would be the Arbiter, an all-seeing, all-knowing comic book critic from beyond space and time who monitors The Comic Journal from his secret orbiting satellite, and is opposed by his evil, Wizard-reading nemesis, the Anti-Arbiter.

Greg, your post made me think of an Animals song, and for that you have my thanks.

Sha la, lalalala, live for today…

That’s an interesting point, T., about bad writers. It’s not enough to get me to buy it, but it’s an interesting point.

Moose – I was just ranting. It’s supposed to be incoherent! But actually, it’s not the spoilers that bother me as much as the idea that it’s somehow cool to do them. And David, you’re right – it’s a symptom of society at large, not just comics, but you’re also right – this is a comics web site, so I’m sticking to that. The idea that we somehow MUST know everything before it happens ruins things a bit, in my view. And I did mention that spoiling things doesn’t matter to me if the book is good. Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and Watchmen all fall into that category. Still, how cool was it to discover those secrets the first time you read them? Subsequent readings don’t depend on the secrets because those books can stand on their own, and it wouldn’t have mattered if we know them going in (I too knew Animal Man’s big reveal before I read them), but it’s still a bit cool. And it is nerdy to be grumpy about this. Hail nerds!

Rohan – I didn’t mean to imply that people who bought this are idiots. I certainly won’t buy it, but if you like Meltzer and Benes or even if you love the Justice League, knock yourself out. I’m speaking more of the people, like Chris from 2 Guys Buying Comics (I think it was Chris) who kept buying New Avengers and whining about how it sucked (as you and Moose pointed out). I’m also talking about the people who DIDN’T like Identity Crisis or hate Ed Benes but will buy this, thinking it will be somehow good. David brought up Bruce Jones, and that’s a good example. I bought Deadman, but am very wary of it, because of Jones’ track record. His Hulk didn’t piss me off like IC did, so I can still buy his work and hope for the best, but he did show a tendency to do awful work, so we’ll see.

I’m not sure if you brough that over, Brian. I just knew about where it was on the old site and just looked for it there.

And I’m pretty sure the first time I saw Red Tornado was when he guest-starred on The Super Friends. I know that there was a tornado dude on it, and I could have sworn it was him. Oh, my memory is not what it used to be. Sad.

Archer’s Quest was lovely. It’s my hope that we get that Meltzer.

Hey, I like Don Kramer.

Actually, Jon, I like him too, even though I’ve just seen his Batman stuff recently. Everyone else seems to hate him, though.

The tornado dude on Superfriends was Samurai. I wouldn’t mind to see this guy come back if they turned him into an actual samurai, with, like, armor and swords and stuff. Whirling sword death! Yeah. There you go.

Greg, your post made me think of an Animals song, and for that you have my thanks.

Sha la, lalalala, live for today…

Not the Animals. The Grass Roots.

I’m with Rohan W, above, in that I haven’t read Identity Crisis (although I’ve sure heard all about it) but liked JLA #0; I’ve been looking forward to this JLA series for a while now.

As a reader, I can’t be bothered chasing spoilers; as a blogger, I doubleplusextra can’t be bothered. I’d rather post something that someone might still be interested in reading if they stumble across the site for the first time next year.

Not that I mind knowing ahead of time who’s going to be in the League. You know what I’m most looking forward to about the membership of this League? Seeing the invitations delivered, whether they’re physical (like on the cover) or not. Specifically, I want Batman to deliver the invitation to Zatanna in person (and, I guess, have it refused, but that’s not the point). I want to see the reaction played out as alluded to in this Meltzer Q-and-A at Newsarama recently (I paraphrase):

Q: Which old-time Leaguers are going to resent the Big Three unilaterally deciding the membership? Aquaman?
A: YES. Martian Manhunter? YES. Ollie Queen? DOES A FROG BUMP HIS ASS A-HOPPING?

As I say, I’m looking forward to it.

*Sigh* Greg, I meant that I would be mocking the cover after the book came out. I put the cover itself under a cut with some smartass comments about the lineup. I didn’t have a chance to get into the serious hideousness of the “art” on the image, and I decided to put that off until after Wednesday came and everyone who didn’t want spoilers knew the lineup and could read it.

Whoops! Silly me, Ragnell. You did a fine job mocking the cover in the post, however, so I didn’t think you had more to add. I thought the issue itself would be the target!

Well, I’ll cop to being a nostalgia reader guy. Hell, that was what got me the gig here, according to Cronin– him trying to fill out the geezer quotient on the roster.

What I fnd, though, is that when I look at the older stuff now, though it’s certainly more JUVENILE than the books coming out today, the level of craft involved is often higher than currently. It occasionally surprises me, because I didn’t actually REMEMBER Gerry Conway’s Spider-Man or Bill Mantlo’s Sons of the Tiger as being that good. At the time I thought they were just okay. They’ve aged better than many people give them credit for. Doug Moench I always thought was good, but again, for me back then he was still a B-lister.

On the other hand, the marquee names at the time, guys we all thought were setting the world on fire — Jim Starlin on Warlock, Don McGregor on Black Panther — oh my GAWD, you wince at every page.

I sometmes think guys like Warren Ellis or Mark Millar or Bendis have kind of the same flavor-of-the-month heat to them, the work won’t stand the test of time; but fans are responding to the same too-cool-for-school vibe in their work that you got from Don McGregor or someone like that in the 70’s. They love superheroes but rather than just own that and write the best ones they can, they are out to prove they can make them hip for adults. And invariably what you get with that approach is some hybrid arrested-adolescent piece of shit story like Identity Crisis or Civil War or whatever. It has exactly the same seething need-to-prove-I’m-a-grownup feel of a fifteen-year-old kid counting the days to getting a driver’s license.

Wandered rather far afield there, I suppose. What was I talking about before I went off on the rabbit trail? Nostalgia, that was it. I wll own up to buying Justice League #0 and Flash #1 out of nostalgia, because I WANT to love them. I want them to be out there for new fans to find and for them to have those characters as an entry point to comics as well. DC talks a lot about back-to-basics, lightening the tone, etc.; that’s how they get me and I give them a chance. That’s how the nostalgia buy works.

But one chance is all they get. I am certain that I will not love the new JLA book after reading #0 and therefore, problem solved. Likewise Flash. And so on.

To be honest, I was kind of hoping that Melter’s League was going to be some kind of apology/redemption after two years of having fans in his face about IC — you know, if you’re going to prove something to fans with your comics, that would be a good starting place — but if anything, it was more of the same. So no thanks.

I thought the issue itself would be the target!

If it turns out to be a more worthwhile target tomorrow, maybe.

A big “Amen” to people who say comics were better back in the day. Yes, there was some GREAT stuff, and I’m pushing 40, so I was there when a lot of it came out. And yeah, I enjoyed them a lot because I was a nerdy little boy. Well, now I’m a nerdy grown man and LOVE a lot of what I’m reading! Some hits, some misses, but God bless DC for trying to keep the quality high! I don’t love everything they’ve done, but there’s some great writing and beautiful artwork coming out of there, and I’m an appreciative reader!

You’ll find as you get older that there really was never a “golden age” of anything…. music, television, movies-there’s always been some great, some good, some crap of every era. It’s just that the crap tends to fade into history and we forget it was ever there. But don’t worry, it WAS there! The Brady Bunch Kids made albums and toured; there was a show called My Mother, the Car; and Mystery Science Theater 3000 was only one way of reliving horrible movies of yesteryear.

It’s fine to criticize, but I encourage fellow readers to be constructive. Rather than just fuss about what was done, be sure to share your ideas about what can make it better. “It sucks” is a waste of everyone’s time.

Reading back over your post, I just wanted to add that I do agree with virtually everything you said, except the bit about the Justice League selling despite a lack of quality. And even that was directed at the folks who do think it’s a bad book and keep buying it, so yeah, I apologise. I just think the argument that the quality of the book ‘doesn’t matter’ doesn’t totally work, because I have heard a lot of people say that they liked issue 0.

You were dead-on with your point about people only enjoying what they had 20 years ago and 20 years from now. There are some great, great comics being made this year, this month, this day. I hate spoilers- at least the types that aren’t clearly marked- because they don’t let people have the fun of enjoying a new story for themselves. Often- like when the spoiler hasn’t been asked for- spoilers aren’t just the height of ‘nerdity’, they’re the height of dickery.

Anyway, thanks for the good read.

I prefer to read spoilers for bad books that I will never, ever read, if only to justify my avoiding them. Is that so wrong?

I don’t see why Ellis is mixed in with your Millar/Benid/Civil War “too-cool-for-school superheroes” rant, Greg. First, Ellis doesn’t love superheroes at all; second, he isn’t writing them outside of Nextwave, where he’s writing one of the best superhero books from the Big Two – and he makes it as good as he does precisely because in this instance at least, he’s recognized that superheroes are stupid and silly and is reveling in the stupidity.

Now, I’ve got no problem with “seething need-to-prove-I’m-a-grownup” comics; if we never had attempts to fuse awkward maturity and quasi-realism onto superheroes, we never would’ve had Spider-Man or the Claremont X-Men or basically any development of the superhero genre in general. So once again I have no idea what you’re saying. A lot of what these writers have produced is mediocre-to-crap; quite a bit of it is really very good. Generalizing to the point of condemning superhero hybridization – or pretty much any attempt to make a long-stale genre interesting again – isn’t particularly helpful.

I really have to say that most of fandom is starting to sicken me, because it’s starting to see like 99% of fans seem to just want to buy the exact same comic book they first picked up, over and over again for the rest of their miserable lives. For myself, I just want comics to be good, and I want a lot of variety (which really is my biggest complaint about the American comic book industry: domination by Marvel and DC and a handful of “hot” writers, to say nothing of the superhero genre itself, has not been good). But most fans I see seem to want all comic books to look the same way they looked when they were twelve, which is just asinine.

I don’t see why Ellis is mixed in with your Millar/Bendis/Civil War “too-cool-for-school superheroes” rant, Greg.

I was thinking of Stormwatch, Authority, and to a lesser extent Planetary. Haven’t read NEXTWAVE.

Actually, though, now that I think about it Ellis did some really nice work on the Ultimate books that seemed very much in line with the idea of, “I’m just going to do superheroics the best I can,” without tagging a lot of this deconstructionist look-ma-grownup-superheroes! Sex! Violence! stuff on it. So maybe he should come off the list. You can replace “Ellis” with “Rucka” and get the same rant. How’s that?

Sure, I’d go with that, but really, when you come down to it, Stormwatch and Authority and Planetary were all just really well-done superhero books. You thought those books were “too cool for school”? The guys who stuck with Silver Age Superman probably thought the same thing about Peter Parker. I don’t see any overriding principle at work here that’s decidedly “bad,” per se. Some attempts to inject realism/maturity/grittiness/etc. into superhero comics have worked out pretty well, and others have been failures. It doesn’t even break down neatly along individual creators. “Avengers Disassembled” was crap; “Alias” was pretty great. “Wanted” was dreck; “Ultimates” has been highly entertaining. I reject the notion that any one way to approach a story is “right” or “wrong”; it’s unsupported by the evidence and it makes the world a more boring place.

Okay, I’ll say it: I enjoyed Identity Crisis a lot. I know lots of folks enjoy hating on it, but I liked it when I read the trade at a friend’s house, and then reread it a few days ago. In fact, that’s one of the things which reintroduced me to DC after a long absence.

Regarding the flamethrower and accidents, did it ever occur to you that Mrs. Palmer might have been lying in her big reveal? sheesh. Next time you want to slam stories for their plot holes, make sure they’re actually there…

“Regarding the flamethrower and accidents, did it ever occur to you that Mrs. Palmer might have been lying in her big reveal? sheesh. Next time you want to slam stories for their plot holes, make sure they’re actually there…”

…wait, like reading a *character motive* into the story that isn’t actually there either?

At least the plot hole(s) *exist*.

At no point in IC or Day of Vengeance is it ever even hinted at that Jean actually DID want to kill Sue. This is never, ever expanded upon or present in any of the books.

In IC, she says she “took some extra weapons along just in case”.

Assuming that she just wanted to scare Sue, what is the point of taking weapons along – especially weapons that work? Unless she actually *wants* to kill her, which (again) is never even alluded to.

Which means if you go with the “Jean actually wants to kill Sue for x reasons” theory you just made Meltzer’s plot even more stupid because he never, ever works that possibility into the story. I can just about cope with the flamethrower goof, even if it is entirely illogical (though not the fact that the entire justice league seemed to miss the fact that a flamethrower had been used completely. Presumably Ralph ordered a new carpet after the death and threw the old one out before everyone turned up to “investigate”.)

In Day of Vengeance, the (short) moment that we see her before Eclipso takes over, she seems to still be wholly repentant for what she did to Sue, in an “I’m going slowly nuts” fashion.

In addition, at no point before IC is it ever hinted that Jean is a nutball or wants to “get even” with Sue in any way – and of course, due to being stuck orbiting the Sun for all eternity (nice touch DC), you wouldn’t have seen her pop up and give an I HATE SUE speech at any time *after* IC either.

In conclusion, Meltzer goofed.

Trying to pin Jean as a liar who had every intention of killing Sue is trying to twist the character into something she’s not, and reading something into the story that was never even remotely suggested.

Then again, they had to this character twisting with Martian Manhunter and pretty much anyone else to shunt Blue Beetle onto a path of bullet assisted suicide so I can’t say I’m surprised.

Oh, and one final parting thought – if Jean intended to kill Sue, why bother with the elaborate tap dance on the brain then finish off with the flamethrower and make it obvious?

Why not just continue doing the riverdance on Sue’s grey matter and finish her off that way?

Even with the rather spectacularly presented SUE GOT MURDERED crime scene, they *only just* spotted the footprints. If she’d just appeared to have dropped down dead, its even more unlikely anyone would have noticed anything.

What is presented in the book does not fit with what you’re suggesting for any number of reasons.

You shouldn’t be buying JLA #1 to make fun of the comic.

You should be buying it to make fun of the first chapter of Meltzer’s crappy new novel that will apparently be included with it.

“On the one hand, we have people who are, frankly, sadly stuck in the past. “Comics were better when I was a kid!” we hear. Well, probably not. You may have enjoyed them more when you were a kid, but that’s probably because kids like a lot of shit that’s shit.”

Well Meltzers himself has actually inadvertantly just proven this point on Newsarama! Quote: “Most surprising is how much love came out for the Detroit Era. I thought I was alone in that.”

Maybe I’m missing something, but even though I agree with your general point about spoilers (that they are evil and the people seeking them out are insane), I can’t for the life of me imagine how knowing the new JLA lineup could possibly spoil anything for anyone. Isn’t the identity of the main protagonists usually the one thing people know, and even are supposed to know, before they buy a comic book, see a movie, or whatever? Or is it supposed to go like this:

DC: “There’s going to be a new Manhunter comics starting in December.”
Me: “Damnit! Now I know who’s in it! I don’t have to read it anymore! The whole thing is totally spoiled for me!”

I just can’t figure this out.

The first issue of JLA #1 is going to be about WHO they pick for the team.

DC had kept it a secret up until this point, even releasing the solicitation cover for #2 with the members blacked out.

Oh, I didn’t know that, thanks. But if the first issue is going to be about who gets picked up for the new JLA, then the cover itself kind of spoils the whole thing anyway, whether people see it on the internet or in the comic book store, doesn’t it? Well, anyway, thanks for the answer.

There was honestly so much gibberish in there that I’m not even sure where to start.

Well, OK, yes I do know where to start: “Meltzer is responsible for one of the most egregious insults to comic fandom in the past decade”. So you’re telling me that ‘Identity Crisis’ was a bigger insult to comics fans than Teen Iron Man, Rob Liefeld’s ‘Heroes Reborn’ comics, Avengers Disassembled, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and having Superboy beat the original Superman to death with his bare hands? The last issue came out in the same year as Infinite Crisis #1–it wasn’t even one of the most egregious insults to comics fandom in the year it was published, let alone the last decade. I’m all for hype, but sane hype, please. Nobody can lay claim to “most egregious” so long as Rob Liefeld continues to solicit late books in the industry.

JLA is probably going to be a decent book, just like his Green Arrow story was decent. It’s not his fault that Identity Crisis was hyped to hell and back, and then taken up as the standard-bearer for the next year’s worth of storylines.

And I’m totally unclear as to what the rant about ‘Civil War’ was doing in there…you seem to be suggesting, “No, Marvel shouldn’t have delayed the book, they should have dumped in any old s*** because you suckers will buy it anyway!” (It’s possible you were using sarcasm, there, but you do seem to be condemning anyone who thinks that the late book is OK, which is an odd stance, to say the least.)

And no, DC and Marvel don’t continue to make bad comics because they think we’ll buy them anyway–at least, that’s not the historic rationale. They continue to make bad comics because they think a new generation of suckers…err, kids…will be along soon enough to replace the people who’ve grown up enough to realize how bad this stuff is. The fact that we haven’t is just gravy, as far as they’re concerned. The Direct Market is changing all that, as the industry is slowly waking up to the realization that the next generation of kids doesn’t know what a comic book is, except for those Archie comics they sell in supermarkets, but they’re still getting used to the idea that their audience is now a bunch of 20-somethings.

So yeah, you’re right, you shouldn’t buy stuff you don’t like just to keep up with the characters. Been saying that for years. But it’s amazing how you can boil that down into one sentence without having to insist that Civil War #4 should have been stick figures and dog vomit, huh?

Only I am allowed to be so bitter here, John! How dare you!

I will stick by my contention that Identity Crisis is one of the most egregious things in comics in a long time, simply because it was so very stupid yet we were supposed to take it so very seriously. I don’t take Liefeld seriously at all, so I don’t count him. As for Superboy beating Superman to death, that was just AWESOME!

But that’s just an opinion. My point about Civil War, and JLA, and Infinite Crisis, and any of these other EVENTS that the Big Two keep publishing is that nobody really cares if Steve McNiven is drawing it. I’m sorry, but I really believe that’s true. For certain comics, it’s the characters that matter. Plain and simple. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone, and if I were buying Civil War and its innumerable tie-ins, I’d be pretty pissed off that I have to wait so long because Millar and McNiven can’t get their act together. I would just want to see Captain America and Iron Man beating the shit out of each other. THAT is why people are buying Civil War. It’s not for Millar’s subtle political arguments.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the best parts of Identity Crisis were the scenes with the non-Dr.Light/Deathstroke villains. Those were well-written, reestablished the cool of some underused characters, and seemed to be setting up all sorts of interesting ideas. But then, I’m a mark for “super-underworld” plots and stories. I just dig all the scheming and treachery and the sense of desperately needing to win next time out among bad guys.

But yeah, the main plots — the mystery and the mindwipes — were just painfully overserious and miserably underwritten, almost exactly the sort of thing indicated in that oft-quoted line from Flex Mentallo #3 about grim-n-gritty comics obsessively trying to “rationalize all [those] wacky past adventures.”

Greg just said:

“My point about Civil War, and JLA, and Infinite Crisis, and any of these other EVENTS that the Big Two keep publishing is that nobody really cares if Steve McNiven is drawing it. I’m sorry, but I really believe that’s true.”

That’s what I’d say, too…part of that being that I’m not a big “art” person, and don’t really notice the art unless it’s very good or very bad (and in fact, I’m not really a big fan of McNiven, either.)

But Marvel, when they talked about this in the press release, said that fill-in artists hurt the sales more than late books, and that they can see the effect even when the trade is released (ie, it lasts longer than a late book’s effect would). They say they’ve got sales data to back them up–unless someone can show me some numbers to contradict that, I’m going to have to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

For the record, though, I’ll agree with you that it seems counter-intuitive.

(And what about Teen Iron Man? We were supposed to take that seriously at the time, too. I know _I_ couldn’t, but…)

Yeah, there were points in Identity Crisis that were quite good. Particularly the villain stuff (although even that included an insanely dumb scene where Batman is using a listening device that the villains circumvent – and the listening device is the size of a half-dollar, shaped like a BAT! What the hell?!!?). Archer’s Quest was a lot of fun, too, I thought (except for Catman).

People don’t suck just Michael Moore, that fat tubby bastard