Here's a question for my 4 dedicated followers out there,WHAT KIND OF COMICS DO YOU WANT FROM MARVEL & DC. A simple enough question you may think but a more puzzling one is why Marvel & DC are not asking it? Boring predictable stories with tired old characters continually re-booted, re-done and re-vamped. Worse however is the blatant lack of imagination demonstrated by the big two in recent years. Exhibit A; Marvel killed off Steve Rodgers the original Captain America and replaced him with his long thought dead former side-kick over at DC they killed off Bruce Wayne the original Batman and replaced him with his former side-kick while bringing back an other long thought dead former side-kick as a villain. Exhibit B; DC run the Blackest Night story line in it's Green Lantern books which saw dead heroes rise from the grave over in Marvel they run the Necrosha story line in it's X-Men books which saw dead heroes rise from the grave (and if that's not bad enough they are also running a story line at the moment Chaos War which has dead former X-Men rising from the grave! how original). these are only two examples but there are many, many more and still sales continue to plummet and so again gentle reader I ask WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM MARVEL & DC? If your a regular comic reader I'd love to hear what you think, are you happy with multiple Batman and Avenger titles and spin offs do you look forward to trying to wade through the convoluted gloop of X-Men and Spider-man continuity or do you yearn for another attempt by DC at making Superman dark and edgy, let me know.
I reckon it's fairly simple, but next to impossible. Get the effing editors out of the planning rooms, and let writers and creators make the comics they were paid to do. Let's stop writing by committee, and instead give the characters over to people who actually care about them. To be honest, the comic book world is falling apart, so is it really going to matter all that much if some funky new writer skews the internal consistency of these hulking, bloated universes? Who cares if a few fan boys get huffy?
ReplyDeleteI reckon I'm a good indicator of your typical Marvel/DC fan. I LOVE a lot of these characters, but when I'm talking about them it tends to go something like this: "Y'know, [insert character here] is great when they're written well, but they haven't been well served for years..."
Grant Morrison has done audacious things with the DC universe, which I applaud, but they still tie into vast continuities that require shed loads of backstory reading to keep up. I've all but abandoned the majors because of this. I REFUSE point blank to by some second rate super team comic because it contains a[n honestly not that important, honest, you don't *really* have to buy it] plot point that means that if I don't, the rest of the MEGAUNIVERSALENDOFTIMEULTIMATECRISIS Reloaded doesn't make sense.
Eff off. I want to see a return to self contained, character driven stories that absolutely don't have to relate to the rest of the universe. I want to see stories that are pop, fun, throwaway, disjointed, disconnected, non mythological, not legendary, not remaking the wheel, not reinterpretations, not any of that old crap.
If you really want to see what I want from comics, let me refer you to the single best superhero comic of the entire last decade, and one with an acronym that seems to refer to the posterior: I am of course talking about All Star Superman.
Out of main continuity, and yet not *really* doing anything to damage it until the end, this purely FUN distillation of all things Superman really made that character important to me again. It made him pop, made him vital, full of action, referenced everything while attaching to nothing about his history, and felt like nothing less than his early serialised adventures redrawn for the modern age.
Now, imagine this: imagine ASS, but not as a twelve story arc. Imagine it *without* the mythological concepts overlaid. Imagine a monthly book where things that fun, that colourful and that exciting happened every issue. Can you imagine it? I can. And I want it. I want it from all my favourite characters. Is it too much to ask that Morrison just writes THEM ALL?
And what kind of world are we creating when I can only really point to one man who can do this - not because he's the only one capable, but because he's the only one with enough clout and will to get away with it?
It's time the majors started trusting in the young, exciting young writers they're paying. And the artists too. And on that note, let's stop trying to be too clever with the art - I'm sick of these digitally coloured messes where everything is 'painted' and it all ends up looking like a hundred shades of grey. There's a reason why comic art works the way it does - it helps to *tell the story*. That's right, the story - remember that?
Anyway man, you asked :) That's all I got...
Oh, and it's nice to be one of your four followers, by the way :)
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