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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Nov 13, 2022 20:04:33 GMT -5
Didn't DC recently decide that EVERYTHING was canon... which... realistically should make everyone go insane... stuff like Barbara suddenly remembering she was a Congresswoman... Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Donna Troy all laying in a corner in the fetal position questioning how anything is real >_> Nah what they actually decided was dumber. They decided that nothing was canon or contradictory anymore. When this became a huge mess they panicked and said "ok ok the canon is mostly the pre-Flashpoint stuff but we won't be elaborating beyond that so nobody really knows what is and isn't canon anymore"
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Nov 13, 2022 21:41:13 GMT -5
Didn't DC recently decide that EVERYTHING was canon... which... realistically should make everyone go insane... stuff like Barbara suddenly remembering she was a Congresswoman... Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Donna Troy all laying in a corner in the fetal position questioning how anything is real >_> Sometimes creatives will pick up these ideas. For example, Tom King's Batman run played with how Batman and Catwoman remember their first encounter. Was it Kane and Finger's Batman #1 from 1940 or in Miller and Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One from 1987? I don't think whatever the correct answer, if there is one, they're both correct, after all, necessarily matters as a chronological fact of the characters. But this chrono-narrative ambiguity does reveal something about how each character perceives their relationships. Grant Morrison's run on Batman, similarly, roughly condenses Batman continuity over the decades into 1 in-universe year being approximately 10 IRL years of Batman publication. And then you have books like Astro City's "The Nearness of You" that makes a meal out of crisis event retroactive continuity as something that is especially traumatic for the regular people who inhabit superhero universes. More recently, I was struck, but not surprised, by some online reactions to The Human Target, published under the DC Black Label branding, by Tom King and Greg Smallwood. The naysayers claimed that King is sullying the reputation of the Bwah-Ha-Ha era of the Justice League International, character-assassinating Guy Gardner, and making characters like Ice and Fire into sex objects. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I'm not invested enough in Ice, Fire, or Guy Gardner to be offended by their portrayals in The Human Target. I realize that Black Label is a (mostly) out-of-continuity publishing line. And I like King developing a D-list character like Christopher Chance into something that will be another evergreen book in the DC catalogue. But more importantly than all that, I like how King and Smallwood play with the genre tropes of film noir but within the superhero comic landscape. How do readers' baggage of prior knowledge about characters inform our engagement with voiceover caption boxes, flashbacks and alternate perspectives about a specific moment, and the tension between noir as a film style and four-colour superheroics as an American comic book style? If Black Label specifically, for example, is all non-continuity anyway, then why not take some risks in telling a great stand-alone story? That's why I read and enjoy The Human Target. But a lot of kneejerk fandom responses have been about how Guy Gardner, Ice, or Booster Gold are forever ruined by Tom King's post-CIA trauma trauerspiel. But I want exactly that kind of different creative take on superherodom and these characters than the same old that has been republished plenty of times before I was ever born. Spider-Man can only kick Doctor Octopus in the face in the same way in whichever continuity so many times before that story gets played out!
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Nov 14, 2022 0:00:36 GMT -5
Not really sure how that fits with my joke about how all continuity being in continuity would make characters like Hawkman and Donna troy whose backstories have been changed so often their retcons retcons have retcons... would have no idea what's going on would work >_>
Stories being out of continuity not getting characters exact personalities right are fine... since it doesn't matter how they act since it's not related to the main books.
the overall issue is if you are trying to create a connected universe you NEED to make it clear what did and didn't happen and when... you can make little jokes at weird retcons as people not remembering exact details... but DC tried the nothing is in continuity do whatever a few years ago dubbed the "Harley Quinn" or "Batgirl style" and subsequently almost went entirely out of business.
It lead to things like Harley confronting like silver age Joker while he was still like the man with no face in the other bat books, and basically confusing all the readers because people would act or look wildly different depending on the book.
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Nov 14, 2022 2:36:39 GMT -5
the overall issue is if you are trying to create a connected universe you NEED to make it clear what did and didn't happen and when... you can make little jokes at weird retcons as people not remembering exact details... but DC tried the nothing is in continuity do whatever a few years ago dubbed the "Harley Quinn" or "Batgirl style" and subsequently almost went entirely out of business. It lead to things like Harley confronting like silver age Joker while he was still like the man with no face in the other bat books, and basically confusing all the readers because people would act or look wildly different depending on the book. It does seem a bit cart before the horse, though, doesn't it, that the maintenance, the canonicity, of the story universe has become more important than the stories told within that universe. There's a difference in reading stories that take place in the Marvel and DC universes and reading stories for the Marvel and DC universes. I'm very much for the former and much more skeptical about the latter. From the video, it seems like Benny and Sal, and I assume many regular, month-to-month readers of the Big Two, read either for universe>character>story>creator or character>story>universe>creator. As someone who trade-waits, I read either for character>story>creator>universe or creator>story>character>universe. It's the only way I can make sense of fan reactions to things from the past 10 years like Guy Gardner in The Human Target, Ric-Dick Grayson, the aging up of Jon Kent, the Krakoan era of X-Men, or the period in Marvel when books were led by Jane Foster, Kate Bishop, Sam Wilson, Amadeus Cho, Miles Morales, Riri Williams, and Sam Alexander. (That, and as a trade-waiter, I have less money invested in my reading than those who pay $5-$10 an issue, so I'm rarely burned by bad books I don't like because I already curate or have had curated what I want to read, and even if I were disappointed with a book, I lose less money on the experience than a monthly reader of single issues.) For example, I read a book like Immortal Hulk because I heard good buzz about it, was impressed by Bennett's art from images I saw on social media, and was interested by Ewing's premise. That book spun out of an event, Civil War II, and had tie-ins to books like Fantastic Four, minis like The Best Defense, or events like Maximum Carnage. Besides the one The Best Defense book illustrated by Greg Smallwood, I have little interest in any of these books. Not reading them doesn't impact my enjoyment of Immortal Hulk like I feel that I'm missing something; although they do have some connection to the goings-on of the Marvel universe at that time, the shape of the Marvel universe at the time matters little to what I got out of Immortal Hulk. With this specific book, I wanted to read a good story with good art more than I wanted to read maintenance, placeholder work that, by fiat, has to connect to a bigger Marvel world. More precisely, I like books like Immortal Hulk because Ewing and Bennett made continuity work for them rather than other way around and working on behalf of continuity. Nowadays, I simply don't understand why people keep reading a book that they don't enjoy. When it comes back to the Spider-Man of it all, in some cases, waiting 15 years for the book to go back to the status quo of the Peter-MJ marriage (and maybe even waiting 25+ years for the marriage not to be bogged down by events like OMD in the 200s or the Clone Saga in the 90s). Like, if you ain't getting that dopamine hit of reading a good story month-to-month, year-over-year, then what, exactly, are you reading the book for? Or, why not read the book a la carte, and pick and choose what you like, and skip over what you don't like? Is next month's Amazing Spider-Man #15 by Zeb Wells and Ed McGuiness really that much better, or more impactful, or more meaningful, or whatever, if one has read the past 5, 10, or 20 years of the book, or why not the past 60 years of Spider-Man history? I hate to pick on Spider-Man specifically, though it's been just as bad with Batman since the New 52, but Peter Parker is so emblematic of the contents of this discourse. Continuity always matters, until it doesn't, or continuity doesn't matter at all until it does. Because of its quality, a book like Watchmen as a singular work will always be non-canon, despite the many attempts to make it canon to the DC universe as a whole (and one of those books, King and Fornes' Rorschach, I actually really like!). Most people have never fretted about whether it's canon or not because that doesn't matter to the book itself. And even though it's canon now, Watchmen doesn't matter more (or Moore) because it's canon, nor did it matter less because it wasn't canon at the time. But as your Harley Quinn confronting the Silver Age Joker example proves, most books, unfortunately, are not Watchmen-esque in their quality!
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 14, 2022 4:50:37 GMT -5
the overall issue is if you are trying to create a connected universe you NEED to make it clear what did and didn't happen and when... you can make little jokes at weird retcons as people not remembering exact details... but DC tried the nothing is in continuity do whatever a few years ago dubbed the "Harley Quinn" or "Batgirl style" and subsequently almost went entirely out of business. It lead to things like Harley confronting like silver age Joker while he was still like the man with no face in the other bat books, and basically confusing all the readers because people would act or look wildly different depending on the book. Nowadays, I simply don't understand why people keep reading a book that they don't enjoy. When it comes back to the Spider-Man of it all, in some cases, waiting 15 years for the book to go back to the status quo of the Peter-MJ marriage (and maybe even waiting 25+ years for the marriage not to be bogged down by events like OMD in the 200s or the Clone Saga in the 90s). I don't think the marriage was 'bogged down' by the Clone Saga. Other than a couple of bumps (particularly when Peter went through his "I Am The Spider" phase and when he physically struck MJ out of blind emotional rage), it remained relatively healthy and stable, even after they lost the baby, the problems all started after Aunt May came back and the book was then relaunched, but for the remainder of the 90s it was just fine. And if you didn't like the relaunch, Spider-Girl had just started, and the marriage was at peak bliss there and represented well. I would be fine with the marriage not coming back if it's history was actually respected, which it seems Marvel have been finally doing with Nick Spencer's recent run as well as the new Lost Hunt mini-series, which explicitly shows Peter and MJ were husband and wife and expecting a child. Throughout the 2010s, while Slott was on ASM, we had Renew Your Vows, we had the newspaper strip also, both featured Peter and MJ married. For all the talk over how Marvel 'disposed' of it, the reality is it has not once left the market and Marvel still publish new stories about it. The concept has never, not once, been let go of. I don't buy Zeb Wells' run, for the record, I byrne-steal books I don't enjoy (that means I'm just reading it in the store), I like to keep well informed of development in characters I'm invested in, even if I disagree with what's going on, one should always be educated so they have something to discuss, if you leave people to their echo chambers, the books don't improve. Period.
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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Nov 14, 2022 10:06:42 GMT -5
Moral of the story here: if you f***ing hate the current run in Spider-Ma/X-Men/whatever, just don't buy it or follow it and dedicate more time to things you actually like. I'm kind of sick and tired of this thread constantly turning into bitching about Spider-Man instead of people recommending books they actually enjoy. Spider-Man is still going to be there when someone else takes over and writes a run you actually like. In the meantime there's lots of wonderful books being published that won't piss you off. Before anyone comes after me, I'm not singling out any one specific person about this, it's an overall trend in this thread thats just starting to really irk me.
FWIW Ice Cream Man is an absolute delight. Best kind of surreal batshit insane horror that still manages to be scary as hell.
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 14, 2022 10:42:02 GMT -5
Moral of the story here: if you f***ing hate the current run in Spider-Ma/X-Men/whatever, just don't buy it or follow it and dedicate more time to things you actually like. I'm kind of sick and tired of this thread constantly turning into bitching about Spider-Man instead of people recommending books they actually enjoy. Spider-Man is still going to be there when someone else takes over and writes a run you actually like. In the meantime there's lots of wonderful books being published that won't piss you off. Before anyone comes after me, I'm not singling out any one specific person about this, it's an overall trend in this thread thats just starting to really irk me. It's literally just me and Duke 'bitching' about it, because that's one of our big interests, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it, and can continue to recommend books you enjoy. I'm not going to shut up about it in the meantime. Spider-Man's my favourite hero, and despite all that's been done to him, there's still things I enjoy about the franchise, for example I recommended Lost Hunt.
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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Nov 14, 2022 10:47:39 GMT -5
Moral of the story here: if you f***ing hate the current run in Spider-Ma/X-Men/whatever, just don't buy it or follow it and dedicate more time to things you actually like. I'm kind of sick and tired of this thread constantly turning into bitching about Spider-Man instead of people recommending books they actually enjoy. Spider-Man is still going to be there when someone else takes over and writes a run you actually like. In the meantime there's lots of wonderful books being published that won't piss you off. Before anyone comes after me, I'm not singling out any one specific person about this, it's an overall trend in this thread thats just starting to really irk me. It's literally just me and Duke 'bitching' about it, because that's one of our big interests, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it, and can continue to recommend books you enjoy. I'm not going to shut up about it in the meantime. Spider-Man's my favourite hero, and despite all that's been done to him, there's still things I enjoy about the franchise, for example I recommended Lost Hunt. Take it to PMs then if it's just the two of you.
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 14, 2022 10:54:17 GMT -5
Or you could, y'know, just not read what we're saying.
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Post by Duke Cameron on Nov 14, 2022 13:14:16 GMT -5
It's literally just me and Duke 'bitching' about it, because that's one of our big interests, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it, and can continue to recommend books you enjoy. I'm not going to shut up about it in the meantime. Spider-Man's my favourite hero, and despite all that's been done to him, there's still things I enjoy about the franchise, for example I recommended Lost Hunt. Take it to PMs then if it's just the two of you. I have to PM someone because you don’t like reading so many posts “complaining” about Spider-Man? Get the heck out of here with this nonsense. I also don’t buy or support the current ongoing Amazing Spider-Man or Spider-Man books, but I sure do keep up with what’s going on with the characters that got me into comic books in the first place. You want to know what I do pay for, read and am positive about? She-Hulk. I’m open to discussing the current She-Hulk run with anyone who’s been reading it. Want to talk about She-Hulk? If not, don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t discuss in here.
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Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Nov 14, 2022 13:27:41 GMT -5
I just think its sad. I keep getting updates for this thread and 90% of the time it's just further whinging about Spider-Man like it's the only comic that exists or something.
FWIW the new run on She Hulk is great.
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 14, 2022 14:03:42 GMT -5
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 14, 2022 15:08:13 GMT -5
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chrom
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Post by chrom on Nov 14, 2022 15:29:14 GMT -5
It'll end with Jason Todd getting killed off again.
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CMWaters
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Post by CMWaters on Nov 14, 2022 15:31:55 GMT -5
They should just tribute Wonder Woman's creator and give them a poly relationship at this point.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Nov 14, 2022 20:36:24 GMT -5
Bleeding cool just wanted to write Dickfire.
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Nov 14, 2022 21:00:16 GMT -5
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El Pollo Guerrera
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Post by El Pollo Guerrera on Nov 14, 2022 21:00:54 GMT -5
Bleeding cool just wanted to write Dickfire. Otherwise it would've been Dickstar and Dickgirl. Oh wait...
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thechase
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Post by thechase on Nov 15, 2022 5:06:25 GMT -5
So, yeah, I read Nightwing#98 {Spoiler}Night Mite is indeed a Dick and Kory 'shipper and needles Babs about it Twitter's kind of pissed, they think this is a 'take that' from Taylor
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Post by Mike Strike on Nov 15, 2022 18:29:19 GMT -5
Has any writer ever tried to bring in Babs' husband from Batman Beyond? like a younger, present day version of him? Seems like an obvious direction for her love life.
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