tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15742539.post114600392840388356..comments2024-03-28T03:10:19.013-07:00Comments on Fraggmented: State of ComicsJohn Seaveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07530526320973807452noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15742539.post-1146182933845628652006-04-27T17:08:00.000-07:002006-04-27T17:08:00.000-07:00I like continuity too--part of what's complicated ...I like continuity too--part of what's complicated about this is that I think that the 50s comics went too far in the opposite direction (simplicity, self-containment, and a belief that only kids read comics, and then only as a phase.) That's why Marvel trounced them, because readers were looking for more growth and development. There's room for continuity in comics.<BR/><BR/>But I think that what you've got now is writers pandering to our desire for continuity, like heroin dealers giving us increasingly stronger drugs even though we're on the verge of overdosing. Everything's about introducing new, big, life-changing events every six months. Everything's obsessed with what already happened, with bringing back the past. It makes it very hard for new readers to get involved. (I noticed when I picked up "7 Soldiers" that there was a distracting feeling of having to assume every flashback was a reference to an old comic, because it was so old-comics obsessed. And I agree with you...stuff like killing off Dr. Thirteen was just unnecessary, ditto with most of the other deaths. Very little irritates me like the current comics trend of bumping off second-string characters to show how "serious" an event is.)<BR/><BR/>(Although the Weapon Ten stuff was great, it added to the mythos rather than revamping or subtracting from it, I thought. The idea that Wolverine is part of something even bigger, that there was a Weapon V and a Weapon I...I thought that was cool.)<BR/><BR/>I'd like to see a happy medium found between fans like me and kids like the kid I was when I first discovered comics, because I think it can be there and I think it's been lost.John Seaveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07221569513392130884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15742539.post-1146145595302513052006-04-27T06:46:00.000-07:002006-04-27T06:46:00.000-07:00It's verrry, verrry hard to get into Legion "conti...It's verrry, verrry hard to get into Legion "continuity" at this point, because there are far too many versions (I was going to mention them here, but there's too much. :) )<BR/> I think the stories that comic writers are telling are more interesting to me today than they have been in the past. I love Geoff Johns, and would consider reading anything with his name on it (I didn't buy his Flash or Green Lantern titles, though). I even muddled through Avengers when he took that title over for a few issues. He saved JSA and made it into the best title at DC. <BR/> I'm all about continuity. Geoff Johns is a master of that, as are the other writers I have really liked in the past. Nothing annoys me more than people like Grant Morrison taking apart classic characters for the sake of updating them ("Weapon Ten", "7 Soldiers of Victory"). It's not necessary to chuck "continuity" to have a successful comic... Geoff did a fantastic job with JSA and his other titles.<BR/> I agree with you, though, that there ought to be a newsstand comic that has rotating stories of popular characters... for DC it might be Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Titans, Green Lantern, the JSA, and so on. Marvel? I don't much know. I haven't even bought Joss' X-Men stories, though I might pick up a collected graphic novel or something. I couldn't deal with "Avengers Disassembled" and everything else that's going on over there at Marvel. <BR/> BTW, I think you'd like the new Legion (get it before the Supergirl and... starts), and especially the letter column. The reader mail is read and answered by characters from the comic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com