While it might not exactly be praise, it was flattering to see my earlier post about superhero fans fearing bad things happening to their favorite characters referenced by Miguel of Comics Without Frontiers. Miguel's blog is always great, thought-provoking reading, but this is an especially good piece.
The just of Miguel's post is a comparison between the drama of Mutant Massacre (one of my favorite comics of all time) and the drama of Fear Itself (the absolute height of mediocrity, without even the entertaining terribleness of Ultimates 3 or Cry for Justice). THere are many great points here, especially the observation that the Avengers never remove their costumes in Fear Itself. They're in their tights the whole mission, without showing any life outside of their battles and missions. You'd figure they'd at least change clothes to ward off the inevitable jock itch of sweaty spandex/leather/latex/armor.
I remember Mark Millar, when he was doing the Ultimates, commenting how he didn't like when Iron Man attended social functions in full armor. This is clear from the Ultimates series, where Tony (and the rest of the cast for that matter) spend as much time in their civvies doing normal-person things as they do on the battlefield in their action suits. Unfortunately, Millar fell victim to the no-life-outside-tights problem in Civil War, where most of the characters just hang around in their tights the whole story, and tense meetings have their drama undercut by the fact that characters are wearing their bird/bee/banana yellow wolverine costumes.
So in the middle of a War in which they are battling to save the world you want them to run around in their civilian clothes and talk about their personal lives. Even tho the event focused on Thor and his world in which everyone is wearing their usual attire and Commander Rogers who is wearing his commander uniform cause he was on duty when everything started. It was an Event Comic. One that the span of time was very limited not leaving much room for outside of spandex time. Your complaint fails to hold water as it because more about personal preference then about the quality of the story. In reference to your parting comments on Civil War "Millar fell victim to the no-life-outside-tights problem in Civil War, where most of the characters just hang around in their tights the whole story, and tense meetings have their drama undercut by the fact that characters are wearing their bird/bee/banana yellow wolverine costumes". If the drama of the story is undercut by their costumes then you might want to reconsider reading Super Hero comics. Again anther complaint that seems to just go against everything that the comics your reading are about.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous, I'd like to disagree. Something that was brought up in the comments at my blog, is that conflict needs quiter moments to be effective. Mutant Massacre was no less intense and urgent than the threat of The Serpent, and yet Claremont and the other writers involved depicted their characters in ordinary scenes without making the story less exciting. Indeed I'd argue that humanizing them prior to a great danger makes the reader care more deeply for them. Now although I've read Marvel for many years and know most of its heroes, I felt very indifferent to the fates of Thor and Captain America throughout the story.
DeleteI don't know what the sentence "It was an Event Comic" really explains. I've read many event comics, like DC One Million, Operation Galatic Storm and Final Night, and I don't recall the disdain for the mundane aspect of superheroes' lives. All of these stories made me care for the heroes, they didn't presume I'd be invested in them just because I knew them.
If the drama of the story is undercut by their costumes then you might want to reconsider reading Super Hero comics. Again anther complaint that seems to just go against everything that the comics your reading are about.
I've been reading comics for more than 15 years, I've read tens of thousands. I've read enough to notice changes in the writing, and not necessarily for the best, as some want us to believe. I, for instance, remember a time when Steve Rogers had a secret identity, lived in a New York apartment, worked for an advertisement agency, was an artist, dated a Jewish woman and had a homosexual best friend. Steve Rogers in Fear Itself is a SHIELD agent without a personal life, who can't have a personal life because everyone knows who he is, and so only mingles with other superheroes. Perhaps you've arrived at comics at a time when all drama and humanity have been sucked out of them, and you think that's what's normal. But people like me who've known better ages can't read these anemic comics without lamenting their emotional poverty.
It's not a literal complaint so much as a semiotic one, because while these kinds of event comics can justify having the characters stay in costume 24/7, that's because they're so focused on the action that they don't have time for quiet moments or character development.
ReplyDeleteYou know what one of the best moments of the original Galactus Trilogy was? Reed Richards taking a break to get a shave and a shower. He justifies it by saying that the end of the world is no excuse for poor hygiene. You could say he's putting up a front to encourage his friends, trying to convince them that if they still have time for the little things, the big things might not be so dire. You could also say he's trying to distract himself so he doesn't crack under the enormity of the situation. It's those kind of quiet moments that make the big stuff actually mean something.
Hello, Nitz.
DeleteThank you for mentioning me in your blog and trying to start a discussion about this topic. I think it's one of the most importhing matters to discuss in modern superhero comics. The characters used to be more down-to-earth and rounded, and can't continue to be satisfied with these counterfeit versions they give us nowadays where being a superhero seems to be part of an elite club.
As if to underline the point, Fear Itself went so far as to double-costume and double-codename many of its heroic and villainous characters, putting Asgardian stylings on top of their extant costume designs as if intended to make them even less relatable.
ReplyDelete...and unless they actually make toys of The Worthy and The Mighty, the entire series will be rendered a complete waste of time. The only reason I can see for the double-costume/double-name stuff was to make merchandisable designs.
ReplyDeleteGiven that Grey Gargoyle and Attuma haven't had toys since the good old days of 1995, while Titania and Sin have never, ever had toys, it would seem hard to believe that the "Worthy" revamps of them could possibly have been done just for the sake of creating new toy-friendly costumes. If that was the reason, they'd have picked higher-profile villains for the story.
ReplyDeleteI dare say we'll eventually get some Fear Itself figures of Hulk/Thing/Juggernaut, and probably some of the Tronned-up heroes of "The Mighty" as well, but current prominence in comics doesn't seem to automatically result in characters, especially villains, getting figures (despite them headlining crossover events in recent years, we still don't have figures of the Jackal, Vulcan or Bastion, in any scale). So I'm inclined to believe that the Worthy, at least, were something to be taken at face value as part of the plot; a load of Marvel's Big Strong Guys get possessed by Dark Asgardians and get new looks because of that plot.
For an event as long-running as it was, most of Fear Itself's effects seem to be been swiftly reversed, or utterly irrelevant in the first place. Weirdly, the only thing that seems to have stuck is Colossonaut, and that can hardly be something that'll last much longer (and is presumably only lasting this long so the X-Men have someone with enough brute strength to stand up to two Hulks and a Thor in AvX).