Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The All Avengers Thread

Not been reading the two Earth's Mightiest Heroes minis then, huh?

You got it. I wouldn't touch either of the EMH minis with a twenty-foot pole. On other forums, I've seen a lot of posts that say they want Casey on an ongoing Avengers book. I hope that never comes to pass. It would probably be a lot like the Busiek era, only worse.

Again, I must offer a (somewhat) dissenting opinion. I admit I'm not that familiar with JMS's comics work (and, even then, mainly his Top Cow series, RISING STARS and MIDNIGHT NATION), but my all-time favorite TV series is "Babylon 5," which JMS co-created, executive produced, and wrote the lion's share of episodes.

I did read some of JMS's SPIDER-MAN work last year, on the "rebirth" arc (or whatever it was called; I borrowed the issues from a friend and no longer have them), which started out really well, but ended up going in an all-too-famliar direction:

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Spidey dies and comes back to life. Where have we seen that before?</span></span>

As I recall, JMS wrote the early parts of the arc, which I liked best.

So, just out of curiosity, why is he writer non grata on The Avengers?

I disagree. Casey is an Avengers fanboy he loves the history like Busiek BUT most his other books are very progressive. Heck, even EMH shows the inbetween issues things as progressive.

I think it was Buscema? Maybe Heck but I wanna say Buscema.

You are far too kind. Bendis is a political hack who wants to express his contempt for what is going on in this country by tainting and destroying and trashing everything he gets his hands on, like a frustrated child having a tantrum. Everything from 'do you think this A on my head stands for France' on has been nothing more than him crapping on the characters and fans in an attempt to highlight how pissed off he is at the world and how we are too damn stupid to appreciate his very important point.

Joey Q is just clueless enough to not have noticed how much BiMBo is flipping him off (and Marvel as a company, it's properties and it's customers as a whole) with every single genre convention or fan favorite character he derides and pisses all over.

Bendis just stomps around screaming, "Pay attention to me! I'm so controversial! This is my face while I'm ****ing you in the ***!" like a 90 lb goth prepubescent pretending to be Godzilla.

And he can't get a book out on time to save his chapped hide, so he's also incompetent.

Other than that, I don't much like him...

Ummm... that was all Millar ("A for France" = Ultimates v1)

And, whatever Bendis' many and copious faults, he <strike>makes the trains run</strike> gets his books out on time as a general rule.

They aren't the same person? Well crud. That conspiracy theory shot to heck. I could never tell any of the Authority / Ultimates writers apart. The stories always seemed to be the same. Someone punches someone in the brain. Stuff blows up. Look into the camera and say something nasty.

I'm with you! That was very well said. And Millar goes along with that as well. They both are good writers but both seem to have an agenda...especially Bendis.

"I think it was Buscema? Maybe Heck but I wanna say Buscema."

Well, as seen here...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20047&zoom=4

...it debuted in AVENGERS #28 (May'66), pencilled by Don Heck, but the cover was Jack Kirby. John Romita had already come back some months before, but as far as I know John Buscema didn't return until some months later (his return being in STRANGE TALES #150 and TALES TO ASTONISH #85 / both Nov'66).

You know, it's fairly simple-- it could be a Romita design!

I thought the blue/yellow came later for some reason. Oh well.

I definately never want JMS on a Marvel or DC comic book again, because of his runs on Spider-Man or Fantastic Four.

He's on par with Chuck Austen for me of writers I never want on my favorite comics.

I am terrified of him writing Thor already. I agree with Stealth about all the writers I don't want on Avengers except Joe Casey. Ofcourse can it get any worse?

I hate that JMS is bringing back Donald Blake. ugh!

Here's a nice John Buscema GOLIATH (blue & yellow)...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21128&zoom=4

...and another one...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21793&zoom=4


Now here's a good question: who designed THIS one?

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=22654&zoom=4

Re: J. Michael Straczynski -- I only started disliking JMS recently. During the mid-late 1980s, he was one of my favorite TV cartoon writers, thanks to his work on She-Ra, He-Man, and especially The Real Ghostbusters, the last of which he story-edited for its first 65 episodes. And although I never really got into Babylon 5 -- despite the show starring one of my favorite actresses, Claudia Christian -- I certainly respect how JMS achieved his ambitious plans for the show.

Being completely unfamiliar with his comics work when I started reading comics again two years ago, I was very excited that he was going to be doing Fantastic Four. And even after his character asassination of Reed Richards in the FF's Civil War tie-ins (which I'm sure was at least partly dictated by Millar and the editors), I still think his Pre-CW FF issues were quite good, including the ones with Dr. Doom and Thor's hammer, which were advertised as a CW prologue but ended up having nothing to do with Civil War.

What made JMS lose a lot of my respect was when I found out after-the-fact that the did a retcon in Spider-Man where Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborn (if that's not a vomit-inducing midlife-crisis fantasy, I don't know what is.) And when he did a recent interview, talking about his plans for Thor, where he announced it was going to be a "comedy of manners" with the Asgardian gods living in the American heartland, that was really the last straw for me. And I agree with Jorge about bringing back Donald Blake -- that's adding insult to injury.

Re: Joe Casey -- Casey puts the first 200 issues of Avengers on a pedastal, and the Harras era doesn't fit into Casey's narrow view of what the Avengers are "supposed" to be. I respect his opinions, but I don't want anyone with those opinions to write Avengers. And if any of the writers on my list of writers I DO want has the same opinons as Casey, then I would no longer want them writing Avengers. I firmly believe that setting limits to what the book is "supposed" to be and that holding up a certain bunch of issues as un-reachable are the reasons the Avengers haven't had an approach that feels fresh to me since the Harras era.

Re: Bendis and Millar -- I think Bendis is basically an arrested nerd who, even as a supposed grown-up, still thinks it makes him "cool" to act like a schoolyard bully, and who is too self-centered to ever convincingly write a character who is not an extension of himself. Millar is the one who really angers me, with his flippancy, his utter contempt for America and Americans, and his cynical pandering to the lowest common denominator (and he's not the only one -- see also Ellis' Thunderbolts.)

I can't speak to Millar's disrespect towards Americans or cynical pandering to the lowest common denominator, since his Ultimate Cap and Ultimate Hank left such a bad taste in my mouth not too long ago, but I do think he's gotten quite a bad rap for Civil War, where the blame shouldn't really fall on him. I think he's a extremely talented writer and lots of his Marvel work has restored a sense of granduer and escapism that other writers imitate, and fail at doing so. But Tony being a facist and Reed being a McCarthist are not Millar's fault, and he's said so. Neither really come across that way in Civil War #1-7, especially Tony. No, the fault there lies with JMS. JMS is the one who made Tony look so over the top facist in Spider-Man, and then did the worst Reed scenes in comic book history in Spidey and FF--which are unforgivable. Jenkins, the Black Panther writer and a few others just added insult to injury with their bit of hack writing. But Millar all along stressed that Tony had a more conservative point of view and was really trying to do the right thing. But its Joe Q and Marvel editorial's inability to understand that viewpoint that helped them push for a more and more facist Tony, which is what we've gotten. Add in Bendis writing him like some strange version of 'an uneducated American's view of a smarmy business man' (which is how I read it) and you get Tony in the Avengers title. The ultimate blame must go to Tom Brevoort though, for allowing all of the Civil War related titles to be nothing at all like Civil War. Tony really comes across as villianous, hell, as a strait-up DICK, in the spin-offs and tie-ins, while Millar tries for seven issues to show a logical, in-character way for Tony to be on one side against the side that the fans are obviously going to side with all along.

I honestly think Millar tried to make Tony a complex character in Civil War, and JMS, Joe Q, Bendis and Brevoort made him out to be Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, and every other conversative figure that people love to hate. So I think Millar is off the hook here, and JMS, once more, gets a large portion of my blame.

As for Bendis, I can't understand how he can be so damn brillant sometimes, as with Alias, Daredevil, and Ultimate Spider-Man, and be so damn terrible other times, as with all of his Avengers related titles. Even his USM stories are often lacking, but he makes up for it by being able to convey the 'spirit' of a young Spider-Man. Probably b/c that is who is really is (Bendis I mean), still a real life Peter Parker who grew up, got married, had kids and has a pretty cool life, but still feels that anxiety of old. He simply can't write team comics, fight scenes or cosmic widescreen epics.

Ellis I don't know why anyone likes. His comics should be 10 cents for the amount of content you get in each one.

Jenkins is another one that I just don't know why people like. I think the last semi-decent comic book he wrote that didn't star the Sentry was probably an issue of Spider-Man in 1999 or 2000. He obviously doesn't know the characters or material and has no problems hiding it (like Ellis, who gloats about that in interviews).

So if I'm the biggest Speedball fan of all time and Jenkins introduces some new reporter in Civil War: Frontline, what am I supposed to think? If I was breaking into the comics industry, I'd bide my time, get hired by Marvel and give that new character a gruesome death in retribution. Okay, I'm kidding, because that's obviously way over the top and no one would really do that. Right? I'd say wrong, because I'm pretty sure that's what John Byrne has been doing for the last ten years, and so have a bunch of other creators.

It's much easier to deconstruct a character or concept that build upon it and create new things. There should be little praise left for deconstructionalists after Watchman and Dark Knight Returns in 1986. We got it. We've moved on. No more Avengers: Dissessembled. No more tear everything down at one time and render it inert, so something new can take its place. Be creative and be fresh, and if a character dies and it fits the story, than so be it. No one screamed when the Swordsman met his end, or few can argue that Phoenix's original death wasn't brillant. But people do get mad about Hawkeye for a reason.

Guess I started ranting

Really. I don't think Millar hates Americans. You guys have to realize he writes Americans as the rest of the world sees you, especially in the current climate. And it's certainly not entirely their fault the world sees you as the Kobe Bryant of Nations. (Actually that analogy is so perfect I'm claiming dibs on it.)

And yes they've hijacked the MU to tell an allegorical tale of what it's like to deal with Americans these days. And yes Reed and Tony infuriate me. But the comics medium was always an allegory. Be it joining the war effort, why snitching on criminals is good or standing up to bullies one day they'll find a new morality tale and they'll move on.

Tamper Lad Trust me on this, it's not real fun for half of the people living in this country in the current climate. Many of my best friends I just can't talk to about anything substantive, since they get red-faced and screaming if I bring up Guantanamo Bay or Pat Tillman or something.

And yet, I pick up Civil War, supposedly an entertainment, and Reed Richards is throwing people into the Negative Zone without due process or trials or habeas corpus or any of those quaint things. I'm the liberalist peacenik wussy that ever wussed, and yet *I* don't want to pick up my comic books to see super-heroes preaching at me, and the WWII hero representative of spirit of America being chased through crowded New York City streets and buildings by people launching explosive missiles at him because 'they are the responsible ones.'

That's a bit over the top in the 'see how hypocritical they are' area. I got it. We're dicks. There are two kinds of people in America. The half who don't like it, and the half who do, and Civil War isn't going to change either of our minds. Millar, Bendis, etc. may or may not have an ounce of talent, but they sure aren't Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh.

More super-heroes please, less 'you people reading this comic suck.' Lead by example. If there must be a timely comic-book analogy to current political events, show Captain America presenting the moral argument, and in the time-honored fashion of superhero funny books *winning, because he's right.*

Sure, that's not how it works in the real-world, but when I pick up a comic-book with the word 'Avengers' in the title, I'm wanting to read about superheroes. (or, possibly, a British woman in a catsuit named Emma Peel)

Quick thoughts.

Kobe Bryant? I can tell if that's a compliment or not. I mean he has no individual awards like an MVP like that selfish canuck Nash or anything but has three team 3 rings! (i love Steve Nash!)

You know I went to Spain last summer and hung out with some adults from all over Europe. At first they said how bad the USA is seen across the world. I proposed the USA is on a big stage and they don't have 30 neighboring countries to worry about. We are the cowboys. But for every "atrocity" every other country may have more. These people were mostly English and German. The funny part is they said that France is worse than the USA just hide it better. I couldn't stop laughing when they told me that one. I think the US sadly seems to be dominated by extremes and the rational silent majority needs not to speak up. Speak up in a logical wise way. I always say the extremes in every country/culture are a minority...but minorities have napolean complexes and like to be seen and heard.

Bendis and the Marvel lefties are like this. They certainly want to be heard.

I actually have no problem with Millar's politics. His American politics (and Jenkins) are more thought out and realistic. The Americans IMO are the ones that make us look bad.

Stealth, how do we know he doesn't care for the Harras run? Has he said it in an interview? I can say you hold the Harras run in a pedestal. Just because Casey loves the old Avengers doesn't mean he will write that. He honestly is one of the more progressive writers out there. He's not Kurt Busiek who I agree was too retro.

Bah. If people around the world really feel like all Americans are like this, than they deserve to be conquered

True only your leadership is Kobe. The rest of you are collectively knonw as, 'The 11 other Lakers'.

You know, 95% of real Americans hate Los Angeles and hate seeing it in movies, TV shows, the news, etc.

I know I never root for any L.A. teams. Then again, I prefer if the Yankees won every World Series from here on out, but that's neither here nor there...

Millar still writes Americans in the same stereotypical vain as Luke Cage was written in the 70's.

Who had a pretty good night last night.

I don't understand the hate for the big city teams personally.

IMO Bendis writes Luke Cage in a 2000s stereotypical way.