What Are You Reading?

[Dr. Insomniac]

I liked the Civil War movie, but the way Marvel as a whole keeps bringing up the Civil War comic as one of their biggest events on par with the Dark Phoenix Saga or the time Gwen Stacy died instead of treating it for what it is, a poorly-written mess with horrible characterization and political messages that have aged miserably, it's like if DC kept celebrating Amazons Attack or Cry for Justice and made adaptations and sequels of those comics.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I've been following the 2016 run of Spider-Man (Miles Morales), which I got around to after reading Secret Wars. I was enjoying it about as much as the Ultimate Comics run until the story had to get itself involved in the Civil War II story-line. Not only did it make the solo-run for Miles feel narratively disjointed (and no, I'm not buying into Marvel's crap and won't read Civil War II just because it heavily features Miles in it), but every tidbit I learned about the events of it from off-screen really didn't sit well with me. Also, having had no prior exposure to Carol Danvers aside from AEMH (which I liked her in, but unfortunately the series didn't last too long after she joined the team), everything that I've heard about her makes her seem like the biggest ass-hole ever. So, is this just character assassination on the level of what the original Civil War did with Tony Stark, or is this more or less what her character is normally like?

[Dr. Insomniac]

So, I've been following the 2016 run of Spider-Man (Miles Morales), which I got around to after reading Secret Wars. I was enjoying it about as much as the Ultimate Comics run until the story had to get itself involved in the Civil War II story-line. Not only did it make the solo-run for Miles feel narratively disjointed (and no, I'm not buying into Marvel's crap and won't read Civil War II just because it heavily features Miles in it), but every tidbit I learned about the events of it from off-screen really didn't sit well with me. Also, having had no prior exposure to Carol Danvers aside from AEMH (which I liked her in, but unfortunately the series didn't last too long after she joined the team), everything that I've heard about her makes her seem like the biggest ass-hole ever. So, is this just character assassination on the level of what the original Civil War did with Tony Stark, or is this more or less what her character is normally like?

For sanity and amusement's sake, I suggest you read this "version" of Civil War II and pretend this is the canon edition. As for Carol herself, she's a... difficult person. Even when the writers try to write her as an all-loving hero, she's not the most likeable character. And the movie's gonna have to majorly overhaul her personality if they want audiences to like her, like how they removed many of T'Challa and Wakanda's unsavory aspects for the Black Panther movie. It's the reason why she's had multiple Issue #1s over the past decade alone.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm actually pretty confident that the MCU take on her will be a lot more appealing than her comic book counterpart. They seem to have a pretty good track record with taking less than savory elements from the source material and doing interesting new things with them to make for an overall better product. And as I said, I found the way that Danvers was characterized in AEMH to be perfectly fine, even though she didn't get all that much screen-time in her Captain Marvel persona before the show got canned. If they have something along those lines for the movie I think we'll be fine.

They could also do what they've done in the past for some of their villains and give her some attributes of other likable heroes mixed in with some of her own personality. For example, they could use some of the naive innocence and buoyant optimism of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) combined with a more Captain America-like sense of non-hostile but still stern authority rather than being the female Hitler that Civil War II seems to portray her as. They'd still have to retain enough elements of Captain Marvel's original persona to still have her resemble her comic book counterpart in some way (like they did with T' Challa), but that seems pretty doable to me.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Reading The Filth. What was apparently Grant Morrison's pitch for a Nick Fury comic, but was then retooled into something so bizarre that it led to Grant attempting suicide at least once when writing the book. So far, there have been several cat corpses, a Communist Monkey murdering people, some vague commentary about superhero comics that makes no sense, and a critique on pedophile-hunting mobs.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So I recently finished Ms. Marvel volume 4, and it's a good example of how a shared Universe in comic books that need to build up to major reboot events every several years can be a bit of a double-edged sword. I was really into the series and the natural progression of Kamala's character arc, so when it had to inevitably tie into the Universe-shattering (literally) event of Secret Wars, it was a bit sad that certain plot points and character beats that were being built up to naturally over time had to be rushed to a quick conclusion (and mind you, I actually did enjoy Secret Wars as a story in itself). I have yet to get to the current run of Ms. Marvel from after that event, but if it's handled like what happened with Miles Morales, it'll cherry pick pieces of continuity established from the original Universe's run while either resetting, altering, or completely removing other pieces of background from the first run, which doesn't kill the series for me by any means, but it does essentially dial back all of the momentum that it had built up for me when it was going on before the event took place. And it just feels jarring and disjointed from a narrative standpoint, to say the least. And even if I end up starting to enjoy Kamala's adventures again just like I did with Miles, I'll inevitably have to get around to HER portion of Civil War II....uugghhh....

Well, at least after that point it might pick up again....

**Looks up next major Marvel event**

Oh no....

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, it seemed like Marvel wasn't expecting Kamala to be the breakout success that she became when she first came out, so they went jittery and started shoving her in every team and event possible whether or not it made sense, and turning what should have been a look into a little corner of the Marvel universe uninterrupted by everyone else into something that had to follow along with whatever Bendis, Nick Spencer, or Charles "Mutant genocide is just a peanut allergy" Soule were planning. I think that's why the Guardians of the Galaxy comics from the mid-2000s are still admired, because the writers didn't have to throw future plot point because Tony Stark was being an asshole back on Earth.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, and it doesn't do these events any favors either by trying to overstuff them with so many characters to the point of feeling like fanservice trumps any sense of narrative focus (and not even good fanservice st that). The reason that I did still enjoy Secret Wars was because the story only focused on certain core characters with some other heroes being relegated to mostly cameos. I could follow it just fine despite not knowing a lot of the comic book lore and history leading up to it. Meanwhile, in addition to having an infuriatingly bad message, Civil War reads like an incoherent mess even if you are familiar with most of its core characters.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Mostly seems like it's because Marvel doesn't know the strengths of their own writers at times. Instead of hiring a writer who can handle juggling around dozens of characters in a massive event comic, they often pick writers like Bendis who are better at small street-level tales than huge ones. It's like if Marvel Studios hired the Netflix showrunners to direct and write Infinity War.

[Avaitor]

Their incessant need for crossover events is one of Marvel's biggest problems as of late. The stories aren't strong enough to justify keeping up with the main books, let alone the numerous crossovers, and there's zero casual appeal. It really feels like they're doing everything they can to turn movie and TV fans off from the actual comics.

Which is a shame, since there are good books being made by them, but even a lot of the best ones get screwed over by the numerous events.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Crossover events could work. It's just they're all dumb ideas like Carol and Tony getting into a fight because they don't know how psychics work, everybody treating Cyclops like he's worse than Hitler just because he doesn't want the Inhumans to gas his people to death, or Captain America becoming a Nazi. These events are the big comics that even casual fans who barely read comics will notice, so it's baffling how these books with the most exposure have stupid plots like these. Wouldn't they want the most popular comics they're selling off shelves to not have a dumb premise anybody could see?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I mean, you look at an event like Infinity Gauntlet which has several heroes, villains, and even cosmic entities coming together and temporarily unifying to stop an ultimate Universe-shattering threat. That sounds pretty epic and makes me want to know more about the characters and larger Universe surrounding such an event.

Meanwhile we have these other ones that seem pretty hell-bent on finding new ways to ruin well-established characters and lore for no other reason than Marvel's top writers and editors apparently having a free-pass to do whatever they want without anyone of sense reigning them in.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Marvel should really lay off the "heroes fight each other" trope. It seldom works well and they keep finding more contrived reasons for characters to start fighting each other. They've done it for so many times that comics where heroes all have to team up to fight an overpowered villain like Apocalypse sounds refreshing by comparison.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Saw that Demon in a Bottle was available to read for free for Comixology Unlimited members. I've been wanting to read this one for a while so I added it to my Borrow list, though it'll take me a bit of time to get around to it.

I've actually been making a conscious effort to try and read any of the stories featured on Avaitor's old list from several years ago (boy does that bring back memories) whenever I manage to come across them.

[Avaitor]

Wow, that's a throwback. If I was to do the list now, it would be totally different. Although I honestly don't read nearly as many western comics as I used to.