Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

2021 Marvel Comics Omnibus Thread


odessasteps

Recommended Posts

The story needed at least one more Harry Osborn.  Three is never enough.

Not sure I agree that the Harry reveal and the twins stuff should have both happened 25 issues ago, but, yeah, it definitely does feel like the story was drawn out far too long for no particular reason.  Far too much was crammed into the last handful of issues.  I think the story would have been stronger if they hadn't tried to shoehorn AI Harry in at the last moment.  You could probably still get to the twins retcon some other way and post-OMD Harry would have sat better with me if he had a supernatural explanation instead of being yet another clone.

The core story of Kindred as a creature from Hell worked for me and I liked that the explanation wasn't simply "OMD had Peter inadvertently screw over Harry", though, as I said before, how many separate deals with the devil do you need in the same story?  The shoehorned-in clones, retcons, and Mysterio involvement didn't work for me well.  It was weak storytelling to hand-wave away events we previously saw with "Mysterio did hocus pocus"   

Still not a bad run.  Certainly stronger than the back half of Slott's run. 

 

Edited by Eoae
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I think to what this story accomplished (other than either being a compelling 75+ issue story or not), it feels like, as opposed to building something, it spent more time in a petty Byrne-ian way of cleaning away old stories that the writer/editors didn't like or approve of. The biggest thing it built was probably developing Boomerang as a character and the Syndicate as a viable team. And the Jameson/Peter team dynamic which will end up reset before long anyway. And of course, ultimately, Mephisto's motivations which can be a big story for someone someday. Hell of a lift to clean up 20-30 year old messes though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was sin past related from the start if you look at the two diff colored Kindreds. Something else going on with Meppy in Avengers, not sure if they will undo timeline stuff, someday later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Eivion said:

So any chance the everything ended up rushing to the end due to Spencer leaving for Substack?

Probably.  Bleeding Cool has an article addressing that question, and says the long game was always to undo Sins Past and partially address One More Day by giving Mephisto a stronger motivation to undo the Parker's marriage (the fan rumor is that editorial changed Spencer's ending).  BC does say that Spencer left the book sooner than he expected and that's why some of the early clues don't add up and the reveal of the twins and AI Harry seems abrupt.  Apparently some arcs were cut out/compressed and the twins and AI would have been hinted at well before the eleventh hour with the truth being wound out much more slowly.

Interestingly, BC compares Spencer's exit to King's Batman run.  I'm not sure how to take that, though.  King was basically fired from the main book unexpectedly, so I'm wondering if Rich is hinting that Spencer was fired once Marvel got wind of his Substack deal?  I'm not sure that's what Rich is implying but it seems possible.

Edited by Eoae
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Eoae said:

Probably.  Bleeding Cool has an article addressing that question, and says the long game was always to undo Sins Past and partially address One More Day by giving Mephisto a stronger motivation to undo the Parker's marriage (the fan rumor is that editorial changed Spencer's ending).  BC does say that Spencer left the book sooner than he expected and that's why some of the early clues don't add up and the reveal of the twins and AI Harry seems abrupt.  Apparently some arcs were cut out/compressed and the twins and AI would have been hinted at well before the eleventh hour with the truth being wound out much more slowly.

This makes sense to me. I was wondering because where I'm at it feels like there was at least another two years of issues to go, and I last read vol. 12.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Probable editorial interference, @Eivion and shortening Nick Spencer's run on The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 5) like Tom King's Batman run. I've read TASM #74 but need to gather my thoughts together on that and Spencer's run on TASM (Vol. 5) now it's over. @Matt D's right when it comes to poor pacing, that would be my biggest criticism of the book.

Edited by The Natural
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I'd think you would want to peak at #75, especially if there's a creative change on the horizon.

I’m wondering if the original plan was to wrap the run at 99 or 100 instead of 74.  With the twins and three Harry’s in play, I feell like you could have gotten 24 more issues out of the overarching story.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SPOILER WARNING.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/did-amazing-spider-man-74-really-end-the-way-nick-spencer-intended/

Interesting read about The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 5) #74 and Nick Spencer's run on the book with rumours of editorial interference we've been discussing.

Edited by The Natural
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Roy Thomas was also able to exit Conan on a high, penning the 10th anniversary issue where Conan finally deals with his grief over Belit's death. Conan had spent a couple of years wandering about having adventures in the wake of her death. Occasionally, there would be references to her, but we never saw Conan grieve over her. This actually bugged me a bit as I wanted to see how a barbarian would react to these types of circumstances. I didn't expect him to have an arguments with God like Jonah did, but I wanted to see how his brooding would play out. Thankfully, Roy handled it beautifully and signed off with one of his best stories. Not sure where I'll go next with Conan. There is so much content I haven't read yet. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its Claremont so it is always building toward something but when Lee takes over art you already sense that editorial sided with the art teams over Claremont's idea of the team in UXM always evolving. Lee wanted to draw classic X stuff storywise and Claremont always saw the characters as more complex than silver age superhero fights. Hell, the whole "Logan's healing factor isn't  working" storyline was all but dropped because of editorial

James

Edited by J.H.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

People should read the complete Wolverine history year by year over at House to Astonish. 

They would likely surprised about the evolution of the character, esp the early years before Claremont had figured some of his better known traits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think my overall issue with Mephisto going after Spider-Man in general is that what I want from Spidey is a more grounded story (at least as far as a super-hero book goes). Spidey is a street level guy who, from time to time, finds himself in over his head. So when you start having him being fucked with by Mephisto for over 2 decades I kind of say "why?". Before OMD, I don't even think Spidey or Mephisto ever actually knew who each other were simply because it made 0 sense they interact outside of a Marvel Team-Up story. It's like the the old WHAT THE?!?  story where Daredevil laments how miserable he is always written only to have Ghost Rider (as the Ghost XMas) show him life under different creators only for DD to realize how better off he is being a street level Marvel hero (DD under Byrne "Oh no its back to basics!"

James

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/12/2021 at 8:31 AM, paintedbynumbers said:

i haven't read much X-Men, how are the Claremont- Jim Lee stories?  Vol 1 and 2 omnibusses are on sale and I'm thinking of picking them up. Is this a good starting point?

 

Thanks in advance!!

It's not a terrible starting point because it's the transition between the Claermont era and the 90's era so if you want to dive into the 90s stuff it will help lay ground work a bit but just a little bit because a lot of what Claremont's plans were dropped when Marvel had Lee become co-plotter. 

X-Men have a lot of good spots to use as starting points so you wouldn't be wrong to start there, you could also check out the Giant Size X-Men/Start of Claremonts run, Grant Morrison's New X-Men, House of X/Powers of X, the time right after X-cutioners song would work as well (I started reading during X-Cutioners Song but I wouldn't recommend starting that as a starting point because it references a lot of stuff from Claremont and Simonson work from the past) when Nicieza and Lobdell are the guiding forces but you could start with the Claremont/Lee stuff and work to there pretty quickly too. Age of Apocalypse is a great story and someone could start there (as Jay Ediden of Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men did) but you're getting a very different version of a lot of the characters.

Also to note if you have Marvel Unlimited I really recommend checking out Jay Ediden's Captain America series in the new Infinity comics, it is a really good Captain America story that really understands what the character of Cap is all about. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Claremont really hits hisstride tarting with the introducction of Phoniex in Uncanny X-Men #101 and pretty much hits his peak from 168-200. It remains high quality afterwards but man it takes a deep and dark turn with Magneto as headmaster of Xavier's as Michael Xavier (which dovetails into Mutant Massacre). Really, you can drop off Claremont after X-Tinction Agenda. I pretty much hated every run after Claremont until Morrison came along (the exceptiomn re original satelite books like  New Mutants and X-Factor, which even though written by Noncenti and Louise Simonson, still had Claremont's fingerprints on them since they were part of his writing circle/circle of friends. In fact, New Mutants  is amazing right up until Leifeld came along)).

James

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I stopped initially at Fall of The Mutants but later came back adter X-Tinction Agenda and through the first 7 issues of adjectiveless X-Men. I went back in the last ten years and read everything from Claremont and was in awe of it being just one giant narrative that still held my attention and imagination, like the Lee/Kirby FF did.

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Months ago got for a buck or 2 each a pile of the post Fox X-men Movie X-men tpbs.

Finally read two over the last week and a half.

 

X-men The Movie Prequel Wolverine #1-This $4.95 priced comic is maybe 48 pages of average art and a ok story. Leads up to where we see Logan in the first film. 

 

X-men the Movie Adaptation and other stories-This is a 15.95 tpb,glad I dropped 2 bucks for it. Has the movie adaptation,which is decent. Then 3 or 4 classic stories,mostly reprinted from Uncanny X-men. One is the issue where Magneto has the X-men all trapped and the robot named nanny,but this reprint isnt from the issue of Uncanny nope it is from the reprint in Classic X-men. Another of the reprinted stories is the issue of uncanny when Rogue joins the team. Not a bad trade but I am glad I got it cheap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...