Comics/Manga Discussion Thread

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, whenever I read about comics criticism, there's never really much in the way of praise or interest for 90s Marvel besides Infinity Gauntlet, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man work, or Marvels. Or anything X-Men, but that's a given. It wasn't a coincidence that the 90s was the point when Marvel almost collapsed and they had to sell the film rights to all their well-known characters. And you can definitely tell much of the company's 00s decisions like Ultimate and Marvel Knights were reactions to that ennui.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I do think DC was doing more interesting things come the mid 80's and into the 90's, as well as allowing Vertigo to blossom. It's telling that this was around the time that Marvel was going bankrupt, although they definitely had their commercial successes as well, like how anything with an X would break records, or the height of Venom-mania.

To be fair, the Marvel bankruptcy was more around the mid-90's, and DC wasn't doing too hot either during that stretch of time. It was a bad time for comics in the United States in general, and it wasn't just due to perceived poor quality (there were good comics during even this time in the history of the medium, after all), but also had a lot to do with how the publishers (especially Marvel) were conducting themselves and how they were producing their products to capitalize on the speculator period of people trying to buy up issues of comics in hopes of reselling them at a higher value several years later. Marvel became far more focused on catering to that market without any regard for the quality of their output that it ended up turning a lot of their core fans away and once the bubble burst on the speculator market, that's when they felt the effects and crashed HARD. Oddly enough, DC actually went through a similar period back in the 70's, but didn't get hit nearly as badly as Marvel did in the 90's.

It's funny, because I have learned quite a lot about this period of time through the natural osmosis of seeing it brought up countless times from various articles and content creators on YouTube that I have followed over the years. I never specifically set out to research it but couldn't help but learn a ton about it due to how big of a deal it was in the history of Marvel as a company and in the comic book medium at large. That and the death of EC Comics in the 50's in conjunction with the birth of the Comics Code Authority are topics that I have absorbed a lot of information about over time.

Yeah, whenever I read about comics criticism, there's never really much in the way of praise or interest for 90s Marvel besides Infinity Gauntlet, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man work, or Marvels. Or anything X-Men, but that's a given. It wasn't a coincidence that the 90s was the point when Marvel almost collapsed and they had to sell the film rights to all their well-known characters. And you can definitely tell much of the company's 00s decisions like Ultimate and Marvel Knights were reactions to that ennui.

Wasn't Heroes Reborn also kind of an early attempt at trying to soft reboot their long-established IPs? I ask that question genuinely because I've never read any of the comics from that brief period, but I've seen it brought up that way before.

Oddly enough, I think what saved Marvel at least as far as the comics are concerned were the fresh takes on their classic characters during the mid 2000's to early 2010's, like with Ed Brubaker on Captain America or Warren Ellis on various titles, including Iron Man and Moon Knight (Nextwave was great, but I don't think it was a big hit at the time or anything like that). And whether you like it or not, I don't think that you can deny that writers like Bendis and Millar were a big proponent of this as well. As much as I don't care for Civil War as a comic-book event, it's undeniable that it had a big impact on readers at the time and helped drum up a lot of interest in Marvel comics again. The Ultimates Universe was also initially successful, but I think that those other titles in the main Universe really probably helped bring in a lot of readers again

[Dr. Insomniac]

Wan't Heroes Reborn also kind of an early attempt at trying to soft reboot their long-established IPs? I ask that question genuinely because I've never read any of the comics from that brief period, but I've seen it brought up that way before.

Yeah, though its legacy seems to amount to little more than that one Liefeld drawing of Captain America. The one with the hideous pectoral proportions.

And with Bendis and Millar, I've got tons of gripes with them as writers, but they know how to make event comics feel like events for better or worse, like in a Michael Bay sense. Civil War was awful, but it got people who otherwise didn't read comics talking about it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Knew it. Morrison's back at DC, if just for a oneshot.

And a tweet reminded me that while they haven't been upfront about it, Morrison made quite a few jabs at Superman Rebirth in their later DC work, some more lighthearted than others.

[Daikun]

Kodansha is launching its own manga app on May 10.

[Daikun]

MAL has launched MyMangaList

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

[close]

So how long until Charles resurrects her?

[Avaitor]

November.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Been looking at all the reception toward the recent ASM run, and it's interesting seeing the few defenders insisting that it's great aside from offing Kamala, and the fandom won't accept change. Of course, some of those same defenders are the ones who think Heroes in Crisis was a misunderstood gem and aging up Jon was a good idea, so YMMV.

It does strike me how much of a deep, parasocial connection Spider-Man fans have with Peter and MJ getting together. Enough that I saw people say they'll watch Spider-Verse 2 purely just so they can watch something where the two are married and have a daughter. You can usually gauge how loathed a Spider-Man story is based on how much it interferes in that relationship. And I've seen the people who like the run insist looking at a story like that is unhealthy, comparing it to judging a work's quality purely on how much it panders to shippers, which I understand, but it's still so messy.

Anyway, Strange Brain Parts made a funny video about the lightning rod of the whole arc.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Been looking at all the reception toward the recent ASM run, and it's interesting seeing the few defenders insisting that it's great aside from offing Kamala, and the fandom won't accept change. Of course, some of those same defenders are the ones who think Heroes in Crisis was a misunderstood gem and aging up Jon was a good idea, so YMMV.

It does strike me how much of a deep, parasocial connection Spider-Man fans have with Peter and MJ getting together. Enough that I saw people say they'll watch Spider-Verse 2 purely just so they can watch something where the two are married and have a daughter. You can usually gauge how loathed a Spider-Man story is based on how much it interferes in that relationship. And I've seen the people who like the run insist looking at a story like that is unhealthy, comparing it to judging a work's quality purely on how much it panders to shippers, which I understand, but it's still so messy.

Anyway, Strange Brain Parts made a funny video about the lightning rod of the whole arc.

I wonder how this run will stack up against the upcoming manga of Doctor Octopus getting Isekai'd into the body of a Japanese school girl, which is not quite the Superior Spider-man sequel that I was expecting.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Probably as well as that one Batman manga where Joker babysits a baby Bruce. Or the one where Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are schoolgirls.

Though it is annoying how the Spider-Man movies and games are all doing these wonderful things with the character and his world, while the comics are stuck in this rut. Shame Zdarsky said he has no interest in ASM, and nobody's apparently thought of throwing Ewing on to do Immortal Spider-Man or something.

[Daikun]

R.I.P. John Romita, Sr.

[Dr. Insomniac]

RIP Keith Giffen

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, this is yet another one of those times where I'll come out and insist that more of you guys who aren't should really try and get into One Piece. The series has been on a constant streak of excellent material for the last few years (since Whole Cake Island, IMO), and it's absolutely insane to me how Oda keeps things this interesting over 1,000 chapters in. If the length is what scares you, I should say that it's really not as much of marathon as you might think since the writing is not necessarily that dense (though it gets a bit more wordy in later arcs). For the most part, you could down an entire volume in under an hour, and that's coming from a relatively slow reader. Even the more verbose parts of the manga still wouldn't take as much time to read through as a single issue of most comic books since it still tends to be less wordy than those. While it is a shonen at it's core, it has battles as creative as anything from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and the actual story-telling is on par with some of the best manga out there, IMO, granted it does take some time for Oda to reach that skill level as an author, so don't expect it to be excellent right away.

Honestly, I'd say the best way to handle this series' length is to take it one saga at a time. A saga usually tends to last around 100-ish chapters on average, with some being shorter and other stretching longer, but by consuming it that way it hardly feels that long anymore. Just take breaks in-between each one if you feel like you want to try other stuff, but I think past a certain point the series will really just hook you and you will want to read more just to find out what happens next, like any good serialization would make you want to do.

On the comic book side of things, I finally decided to sit down and start reading Brian Michael Bendis's entire run on Ultimate Spider-Man aside from the Miles Morales era which I have already read, what with Hickman now being the one to revive that series. And here's the thing: I avoided this series for a long time simply because I know a lot of people who aren't particularly fond of Bendis as a writer. Indeed, the few things of his that I have read have ranged from OK to pretty bad, but to be fair it was only small bits and pieces of other random comic book runs.

So, having read the first 10-issues so far with a fresh perspective and no nostalgic bias for this series, I can say....it mostly falls into that aformentioned "OK" camp of Bendis's work. However, I feel generous so I will say as a compliment that I can already clearly see why this series got so popular. Bendis actually does a legitimately good job of streamlining his story-telling to make it extremely easy to follow, and while his decompression style may be a turn-off for some, it actually helps to keep the material from feeling too dense which I think would usually scare off younger readers or those not well-versed with the style of western super-hero comics. His dialogue is pretty cringe, but to be fair I'm not sure if it would have come off as more natural at the time it was originally released, and to be even more fair it's not like a lot of the comics I like from earlier decades aren't equally as guilty of awkward dialogue (though those were clearly not trying to have the characters sound realistic, in their own defense). In many ways, he reminds of of someone like Masashi Kishimoto with Naruto, at least pre time-skip Naruto, in that the writing isn't necessarily all that good, but it is simplistic in way that each author uses to their benefit to showcase cool things that would grab the attention of a less experienced reader and then keep them hooked with themes that they could relate to.

I kind of see Bendis from that era as Marvel's equivalent to what Geoff Johns was for DC. Both seemed to have their hands in tons of series, and while both had their duds, they mostly saw success through a very safe, stream-lined approach to writing their stories. They tend to lack depth and mostly repackage old ideas in a more watered down fashion, but once again to their credit, managed to do so in a way to keep a fairly decent-sized base of readers sticking with their stories on a consistent basis for a fairly long time throughout their careers.

In fact, it's because of how easy it is to read through this material that, even though I'm not all that wowed by what I'm reading so far, I would find it relativel easy to make it through this run at a few issues a night so long as it doesn't do anythig monumentally stupid for entire consecutive story arcs (and yes, I already know about Ultimatum, but from what I understand Ultimate Spider-Man only loosely ties into that).

RIP Keith Giffen

We're unfortunately getting to that time where many of the unique voices that brought us classic comic books from the 60's to the 80's and even beyond in some cases, are getting up there in age. Sad to see him go, of course, and his JLI run with J. M. Dematteis will forever be among my favorite DC comics.

[Dr. Insomniac]

At least he took his end in stride.



And while I'm not making promises, I'm almost sure one day or another, maybe when the series is nearing its final chapters or after it wraps up, I'll end up speedrunning through One Piece. Kinda like when the Attack on Titan anime reaching the endgame convinced me to go through all of that and see what everyone was talking about, though hopefully with much brighter prospects than how that ended up.

As for USM, Bendis can be a good writer when working under a certain niche. Alias, Powers, and Daredevil can attest to that. It's just that he'd rather work well outside of that niche, leading to many of the more questionable to say the least Marvel event comics, or his Superman run (I'm still baffled when I see comic critics I usually like insist his Superman run is a misunderstood masterpiece and he saved Jon as a character). Kinda like how Johns was much more celebrated when he was working on JSA and Green Lantern, but then expanding his reach on other DC characters and mediums showed his limitations and blind spots, culminating in him making sequels to Watchmen and The Killing Joke that no one liked.

And limitations is the key word with USM, because it excels at being somebody's first Spider-Man comic, but I don't think its best moments compare to stories like Kraven's Last Hunt, Life Story, or If This Be My Destiny. Which I guess is my way of saying USM is more interesting for people with hardly any previous history with Spider-Man.