Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
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Post by Sephiroth on Jan 30, 2013 0:03:12 GMT -5
While going through my old comic book collection recently, I camea cross the issues that marked two major points in my comic collecting days; The Death of Superman, at which time my obsession was at its peak, and The Clone Saga, at which point my interest was fading and I eventually just gaev up altogether. I can't help but be struck by the fact that the two stories are very similiar in many ways, but where The Death of Superman succeeded The Clone Saga arguably failed (despite its initially gangbuster sale numbers). The Death of Superman is considered a turning point in comics overall and it is still referenced today, while The Clone Saga is considered a black-mark and Marvel has done everythign to white-wash it since. Just what went wrong for Marvel and right for DC? I have some theories of my own, but am curios to get some feedback.
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Post by BorneAgain on Jan 30, 2013 0:10:51 GMT -5
Death and Return of Superman thankfully wasn't stretched out so far long like the clone saga was. Also made for some interesting interaction with the Cyborg Superman, Superboy, Steel, and the Eradicator.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2013 0:21:04 GMT -5
The Death of Superman is at worst an average story that got blown out of proportion to sell comics to people that a) thought they could sell these issues for thousands in the future and b) don't know that death is a revolving door in the comic world. Ignoring all of that, heck even ignoring that Superman didn't really die, it is still a pretty solid story that contributed to Superman's growth and defined what makes him the ultimate hero.
The Clone Saga was pretty much WCW in 2000. Pointless swerve after swerve, the writers were told to drag out certain stories beyond their narrative purposes, the resurrection of Norman Osborn, and ill-defined characters that were introduced as super important (Judas Traveller). It could have been a decent story but it ended up becoming a convoluted mess. But really the most damning aspect of the whole storyline was that it introduced the possibility that Peter Parker wasn't the real Spider-Man and that for the last 33 years fans had gotten attached to a clone.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
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Post by Sephiroth on Jan 30, 2013 0:35:39 GMT -5
Both good points. The cross-media attention was not something DC had intended to happen, and it definitely contributed to how big The Death became and the effect it still has. While reading up on it, I was amused to learn that the whole thing was very last minute-they had intended for Superman marrying Lois Lane to be "the" event, but publishers held it up because they wanted the wedding to conincide with the wedding on the tv show Lois and Clark, so they had to come up with The Death almost as an afterthought filler to drag it all out till then. I suspect that being "on the clock" is a big part of what kept The Death from spiraling out of control the way the Clone Saga did; the writers knew they had to have it all wrapped up by a certain time and thus they were not tempted to drag out certain things, case in point-Doomsday's origin was not explained till over a year afterward. I might add that I've long thought that revealing Norman Osborne as the mastermind of The Clone Saga could have been HUGE-a major Spidey event, a shocker that readers would never forget. But the whole thing had been so thoroughly beaten to death and convoluted that but the time he was unveiled it was totally anticlimactic and predictable. A major wasted opportunity.
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El Pollo Guerrera
Grimlock
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Post by El Pollo Guerrera on Jan 30, 2013 0:39:19 GMT -5
For me, the Death of Superman had more respect for the stories that came before it, while the Clone Saga seemed to take the previous stories and throw them in the trash.
"You know all the good will that you have for THIS guy? Well, he's a fake. Put all your good will into THAT guy now."
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Post by crowwreak was WRONG on Jan 30, 2013 1:45:34 GMT -5
Clone Saga was better up until it stopped heading towards an end. I didn't hate Ben and I hated the retcon of him not being the original.
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Dat Dude
Dennis Stamp
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Post by Dat Dude on Jan 30, 2013 1:54:46 GMT -5
Clone Saga was worst and it's not even close. It's made a lot of loyal lifelong Spider-Man fans swear off the character in droves. Controversial Events like OMD, Sins Past, Civil War, and #700 never resulted a drop of readership at the same level of the Clone Saga.
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Post by Cela on Jan 30, 2013 4:15:42 GMT -5
Both still better than Ultimatum.
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Post by Jedi-El of Tomorrow on Jan 30, 2013 8:06:06 GMT -5
Both good points. The cross-media attention was not something DC had intended to happen, and it definitely contributed to how big The Death became and the effect it still has. While reading up on it, I was amused to learn that the whole thing was very last minute-they had intended for Superman marrying Lois Lane to be "the" event, but publishers held it up because they wanted the wedding to conincide with the wedding on the tv show Lois and Clark, so they had to come up with The Death almost as an afterthought filler to drag it all out till then. The best thing about the origin of Death of Superman, is that it was a joke. The writers would all meet and come up with stories for the year, and whenever they got to a point where they were stuck, Jerry Ordway would joke "Let's just kill him." It always got laughed off, until they had to scrap the wedding storyline. He made the joke, and the rest of the writers said "You know what? Let's do it, let's kill him." Also to what's been said, Death had something awesome, that you didn't realize till somebody told you. In the final 4 issues, the number of panels on a page were counted down, you had 4 panels, the next issue there were 3, the next issue there were 2, and in the final one there was 1.
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Turd Ferguson
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Post by Turd Ferguson on Jan 30, 2013 8:11:17 GMT -5
Both good points. The cross-media attention was not something DC had intended to happen, and it definitely contributed to how big The Death became and the effect it still has. While reading up on it, I was amused to learn that the whole thing was very last minute-they had intended for Superman marrying Lois Lane to be "the" event, but publishers held it up because they wanted the wedding to conincide with the wedding on the tv show Lois and Clark, so they had to come up with The Death almost as an afterthought filler to drag it all out till then. The best thing about the origin of Death of Superman, is that it was a joke. The writers would all meet and come up with stories for the year, and whenever they got to a point where they were stuck, Jerry Ordway would joke "Let's just kill him." It always got laughed off, until they had to scrap the wedding storyline. He made the joke, and the rest of the writers said "You know what? Let's do it, let's kill him." Also to what's been said, Death had something awesome, that you didn't realize till somebody told you. In the final 4 issues, the number of panels on a page were counted down, you had 4 panels, the next issue there were 3, the next issue there were 2, and in the final one there was 1. Well it was a joke because they couldn't figure out how to postpone the wedding of Clark and Lois so it could coincide with the TV wedding on Lois and Clark. I find the storyline to be acceptable because it gave us Conner/Kon-El. And despite the fact that they shit all over him in this New 52, I have many happy years with the original really cool character. Also, the Shaquille O'Neil Steel movie.
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Jan 30, 2013 8:18:55 GMT -5
the Death of Superman worked because DC never tried to make it a "permanent change" whereas the Clone Saga was a misguided attempt at giving us a "hip, single 90s Spider-man who was totes going to permanently replace boring married Peter". the writing being consistent accross multiple titles certainly helped Superman as well. Clone Saga was a huge clusterf*** where every different writer had different ideas about where the story was supposed to go and it created major continuity errors that made things seem like a jumbled mess.
it also helps that while Death is always a revolving door in comics, it didn't get used as a plot-device nearly as often as it does now (see Marvel saying they were going to kill off a character every quarter).
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
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Post by Sephiroth on Jan 30, 2013 8:58:47 GMT -5
Also good points. The Clone Saga had its moments to me; Kaine was actually a pretty cool character, Mary Jane getting pregnant was something fans had anticipated for a while, and the return of Norman Osborne-but as I said, all of those could have been done SO much better. If they wanted to get Peter Parker back to being single, at least for a while, I think it would have been better to have Mary Jane suffer a miscarriage and walk out on him. It would have been major drama, and I'm sure a lot of readers would have been begging for her to eventually come back.
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Post by BayleyTiffyCodyCenaJudyHopps on Jan 30, 2013 9:09:18 GMT -5
Both still better than Ultimatum.
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Dr. T is an alien
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Post by Dr. T is an alien on Jan 30, 2013 9:30:25 GMT -5
The Clone Saga bothered me because it was such wasted potential.
Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider was an interesting character that they had to scrap in order to white wash the stink of such bad planning away. They could have kept him as a clone all along that started to find value in his life again by throwing his all into crime fighting and left most of the new villains in the saga as the start of his own rogues gallery. He could have been a character who more or less completely surrendered to the crime-fighting and at times completely lose himself because it is the only thing in his life that makes him feel worthy of a continued existence, leaving him a hollow shell of a man when the costume is off. If any comic book company could pull off a self-loathing and selfless hero it would have been Marvel.
Kaine could have been Ben's Venom, a recovering psychopath who finds himself attempting to regain some level of normalcy by attempting to mimic his rival's nature. He can hate Ben for being a perfect clone who could go out into society to be a full member of it, something Kaine cannot do, only for Ben to refuse to do so. His motivation for doing good could be, at least originally, to demonstrate to Ben that he could do better at the only thing that Ben finds to be of value in his life, though in reality he winds up behaving more like a superpowered Punisher.
Having Peter decide that with Ben's return that he could spend less time being Spiderman and more time as Peter Parker, husband and father, could have been an interesting side story for the original character. He can "lose his smile", so to speak, in regards to crime fighting. Sure, he will eventually regain it as his normal life starts deteriorating (come on, can Spiderman ever be truly comfortable for long periods of time?)
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Jan 30, 2013 10:05:48 GMT -5
/\oddly enough what you feel should have happened with Ben is what actually DID happen with Kaine when he came back and became the Scarlet Spider.
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Post by Friday Night SmackOwn on Jan 30, 2013 10:20:11 GMT -5
There's a bit during the Clone Saga where Ben comes face to face with multitudes of Spider-Man clones, which pretty much sums up the silliness of the storyline for me.
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Post by BayleyTiffyCodyCenaJudyHopps on Jan 30, 2013 14:44:36 GMT -5
the Death of Superman worked because DC never tried to make it a "permanent change" whereas the Clone Saga was a misguided attempt at giving us a "hip, single 90s Spider-man who was totes going to permanently replace boring married Peter". the writing being consistent accross multiple titles certainly helped Superman as well. Clone Saga was a huge clusterf*** where every different writer had different ideas about where the story was supposed to go and it created major continuity errors that made things seem like a jumbled mess. it also helps that while Death is always a revolving door in comics, it didn't get used as a plot-device nearly as often as it does now (see Marvel saying they were going to kill off a character every quarter). And to be fair, how hard is it to keep Spider-Man relevant and relatable with all the crap he puts up with outside of the suit?
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dav
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Post by dav on Jan 30, 2013 14:57:55 GMT -5
the Death of Superman worked because DC never tried to make it a "permanent change" whereas the Clone Saga was a misguided attempt at giving us a "hip, single 90s Spider-man who was totes going to permanently replace boring married Peter". the writing being consistent accross multiple titles certainly helped Superman as well. Clone Saga was a huge clusterf*** where every different writer had different ideas about where the story was supposed to go and it created major continuity errors that made things seem like a jumbled mess. it also helps that while Death is always a revolving door in comics, it didn't get used as a plot-device nearly as often as it does now (see Marvel saying they were going to kill off a character every quarter). And to be fair, how hard is it to keep Spider-Man relevant and relatable with all the crap he puts up with outside of the suit? It's for that reason I can't relate to Spider-Man. He's a complete loser who screw up his own life to the point I think he has self-sabotaging issues.
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Jan 30, 2013 15:43:20 GMT -5
the Death of Superman worked because DC never tried to make it a "permanent change" whereas the Clone Saga was a misguided attempt at giving us a "hip, single 90s Spider-man who was totes going to permanently replace boring married Peter". the writing being consistent accross multiple titles certainly helped Superman as well. Clone Saga was a huge clusterf*** where every different writer had different ideas about where the story was supposed to go and it created major continuity errors that made things seem like a jumbled mess. it also helps that while Death is always a revolving door in comics, it didn't get used as a plot-device nearly as often as it does now (see Marvel saying they were going to kill off a character every quarter). And to be fair, how hard is it to keep Spider-Man relevant and relatable with all the crap he puts up with outside of the suit? because Marriage is a bizarre out-there concept that nobody on this planet could ever relate to so is your octo-genarian mother-figure dying after a long life. I can say I can believe a handsome photographer marrying a supermodel a hell of a lot more easy to wrap my head around than "he sells his marriage to the devil" however the hell THAT works, as if a marriage was even some tangible thing you could own. Quesada said OMD was supposed to make Peter more relatable but I don't see how armies of clones, deals with the devil etc. ever make a character someone you can relate to.
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Goldenbane
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Post by Goldenbane on Jan 30, 2013 17:17:12 GMT -5
With the Death of Superman, I was able to buy this Doomsday guy as a credible threat to Superman. He was out there, constantly, destroying the JLI, crushing cops and military sent to stop him, ect. When Superman finally went head to head with Doomsday, I was more happy to give Doomsday a little bit of a pass...I was willing to believe that he could hang with the Man of Steel.
With The Clone Saga we mainly got just the Jackal, sitting on his ass doing nothing but giggling to himself about how awesome he is. What we knew about the Jackal is that he used to be a lame and actually rather creepy elderly college professor who had a crush on Gwen Stacy, was killed, and has now come back as some ramped up Jackal hybrid thing. I'd have been willing to buy that he had great strength and speed (barely) but he was also kicking the daylights out of Spiderman...a hero who'd been actively fighting for years since Jackal's death and revival. I wasn't buying that this guy, who, in my eyes, just sat on his ass, was any match for Spiderman, whether he was stronger or not.
I realize that in both cases, competent heroes were unfairly jobbing to both villains, but in Doomsday's case he looked and acted like the Hulk...and I was ok with Hulk physically taking down teams of heroes. But Jackal acted and looked like the Joker, and I wasn't buying that Joker could physically take down even one Spiderman let alone 2-3 (if we counted Ben and Kaine).
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