Marvel Comics Omnibus thread

[odessasteps]

Namor could not go 7 years waiting for Pon Farr

[Spritenaut 32]

Namor could not go 7 years waiting for Pon Farr

 

Can't blame him there.  Neither could I.

[Loki]

Namor is one of my favorite characters. Can't explain why, I just always liked him. I had a buddy that used to forget his name and just referred  to him as "Undersea Spock" until I pointed out that Namor got laid a lot more than Spock does.

 

James

 

He's one of my favorite characters too. There's something compelling about how he's so self-righteous about everything. Have you ever checked out any of the old Bill Everett books? They're very well done for golden age comics.

[Big Fresh]

Namor is the best. He makes no attempts to even pretend to not be a douchebag. He's the Dolph Ziggler of Marvel.

[Eivion]

Namor is the best. He makes no attempts to even pretend to not be a douchebag. He's the Dolph Ziggler of Marvel.

 

i thought you said you were a fan of Namor's. Why would you insult him like that?

[Big Fresh]

Ha, I still like Dolph! Mostly for his Total Divas appearances, but still....

[Eivion]

I don't know, even liking Dolph that feels like an insult to Namor.

[Jingus]

I've said on here before, I'm a huge fan of Stan Lee's legendary run in the 1960s when he basically created the entirety of how modern superhero comics are done. (And yeah, I know Kirby and the others had a hand in it, that's irrelevant to my point here.) With characters ranging from the Fantastic Four to Iron Man to the X-Men to Daredevil to especially Spider-man, this run so quickly created such a huge percentage of today's comic status quo that it's really insane to look back on. The stories were fresh takes on a decades-old narrative model, working real-life concerns into the tales on a level that neither DC nor anybody else had ever done before.

Welp, I was SORELY disappointed to have just now found out the exception to the rule: the first six issues of The Hulk. THEY SUCK. Bad! It's a generic Jekyll & Hyde tale with absolutely none of the subtlety or intelligence which was later overlaid on the character of Bruce Banner. In the early days, "don't make me angry" had jack shit to do with it; Banner turned into the Hulk at night. That's it. Sun goes down, Banner grows; sun comes up, Hulk shrinks, the end. Later on they change it to a more properly Jekyllian gimmick with Banner and Hulk voluntarily (albeit reluctantly) using a gamma-ray gizmo to change themselves back and forth. But that's not much better.

And it doesn't help that the Hulk himself has no real personality that stays consistent in any ways. One moment, he wants to literally kill every human being on the planet; the next, he's heroically rescuing school buses full of children from runaway trains (again, literally, not a hypothetical example). Sometimes he talks in "Hulk smash puny humans!" idiot speech, but other times he's just as articulate and eloquent as any regular guy. All this could've worked if it made the character seem complex or ambivalent, but in practice it just comes off like Stan Lee and his collaborators never had a grasp on what the fuck this character was supposed to be.

The supporting characters are even worse: none of the ridiculous monster-of-the-week villains (ranging from multiple Communist agents to alien frog-people) bothered to stick around as long-term Hulk foes, and with good damn reason. Sure, we've got General Ross, Betty, and Rick Jones; but Rick Jones is just a generic teenage sidekick, Betty has NO personality whatsoever besides "she really likes Bruce", and Thunderbolt is little more than a beta test version of J. Jonah Jameson in an army uniform. So yeah, while years from now we'll still treasure those early Spider-man issues as the masterworks that they are, most people will hopefully skip right past the Hulk origin to go read some stories by Peter David and others who did much better with future interpretations.

[Matt D]

For what it's worth, I think that All New All Different Avengers is pretty much a miss. It doesn't have the zing that you get from a normal Waid launch. Some of the specific character interactions are good, but he doesn't have the real estate to make them carry the book. Very frustrating.

 

New Avengers on the other hand is finding its stride. 

[odessasteps]

I think new and ultimates are the interesting ones. But i could use a moratorium of future versions of characters showing up to stop X.

[The Unholy Dragon]

I've said on here before, I'm a huge fan of Stan Lee's legendary run in the 1960s when he basically created the entirety of how modern superhero comics are done. (And yeah, I know Kirby and the others had a hand in it, that's irrelevant to my point here.) With characters ranging from the Fantastic Four to Iron Man to the X-Men to Daredevil to especially Spider-man, this run so quickly created such a huge percentage of today's comic status quo that it's really insane to look back on. The stories were fresh takes on a decades-old narrative model, working real-life concerns into the tales on a level that neither DC nor anybody else had ever done before.

Welp, I was SORELY disappointed to have just now found out the exception to the rule: the first six issues of The Hulk. THEY SUCK. Bad! It's a generic Jekyll & Hyde tale with absolutely none of the subtlety or intelligence which was later overlaid on the character of Bruce Banner. In the early days, "don't make me angry" had jack shit to do with it; Banner turned into the Hulk at night. That's it. Sun goes down, Banner grows; sun comes up, Hulk shrinks, the end. Later on they change it to a more properly Jekyllian gimmick with Banner and Hulk voluntarily (albeit reluctantly) using a gamma-ray gizmo to change themselves back and forth. But that's not much better.

And it doesn't help that the Hulk himself has no real personality that stays consistent in any ways. One moment, he wants to literally kill every human being on the planet; the next, he's heroically rescuing school buses full of children from runaway trains (again, literally, not a hypothetical example). Sometimes he talks in "Hulk smash puny humans!" idiot speech, but other times he's just as articulate and eloquent as any regular guy. All this could've worked if it made the character seem complex or ambivalent, but in practice it just comes off like Stan Lee and his collaborators never had a grasp on what the fuck this character was supposed to be.

The supporting characters are even worse: none of the ridiculous monster-of-the-week villains (ranging from multiple Communist agents to alien frog-people) bothered to stick around as long-term Hulk foes, and with good damn reason. Sure, we've got General Ross, Betty, and Rick Jones; but Rick Jones is just a generic teenage sidekick, Betty has NO personality whatsoever besides "she really likes Bruce", and Thunderbolt is little more than a beta test version of J. Jonah Jameson in an army uniform. So yeah, while years from now we'll still treasure those early Spider-man issues as the masterworks that they are, most people will hopefully skip right past the Hulk origin to go read some stories by Peter David and others who did much better with future interpretations.

I mean, for all the characters he launched, most of them got popular much later due to the efforts of entirely unrelated people. I only hear hype about one Lee issue of Daredevil and his X-Men was notoriously weak leading to it hovering around cancellation until Giant Sized happened. For all the stuff he co-created, his great works were mostly Spiderman and Fantastic Four and it's hard not to wonder how much of that was Kirby and Ditko.

[Brian Fowler]

Well, Spider-man stayed great after Ditko left, albeit it lost its unique horror tinged tone and became more of a standard superhero book. But a nearly flawless standard superhero book.

In truth, I like the Lee/Romita years better.

[Victator]

I enjoy the X-Men run a lot. It laid a real foundation for what Chris Claremont did.

Thor, Iron Man, Avengers and to a lesser extent Ant Man were hits. Hulk is really the only miss of that age and he was fixed.

[J.H.]

In all fairness, Lee only wrote Uncanny X-Men 1-19 after which Roy Thomas took over. The book was hovering around cancellation by the Arnold Drake run and when Roy Thomas returned, switching ot Bi-Mponthly after reprints AFTER Denny O'Neil did #65.  The last Reprint was #93 in 1975 and the Giant Sized #1 by Wein came out same year..

 

The first 13 issues of Uncanny X-Men are actually pretty great. Especially #12-13 which introduce Juggernaut.

 

James

[steve]

In my post Deadpool watchin' euphoria, I decided to sign up for a Marvel Unlimited sub and start reading through his stuff again. In the last two weeks or so, I've burned through the first two limited series, the '97 solo book, Agent X, and the first 12-13 issues of Cable and Deadpool.

 

I didn't hate the Priest run like I remember the first time around. I think at the time, he was just the guy that followed Kelly, so I took it out on him unfairly.

 

A lot of the later fill-ins annoyed me though, like, "Deadpool can break 4th wall, so we don't have to try."

 

Mini-Rhino on a keychain was funny, and I'd totally forgotten about it.

 

So far, Unlimited has had everything without any gaps, hoping that continues.

[cool arrow]

I have a question that's probably going to seem odd but I promise I have a good reason for asking.

 

Which issue of New Avengers has the Hood shooting Wolverine's penis off, followed by Logan hoping it'll grow back bigger?

 

My wife doesn't believe this actually happened.

[Eivion]

Is it honestly a case of not believing it, or more not wanting to believe something so damn stupid happened?

 

Also I just saw something similar like that on Bleeding Cool with the Punisher a few weeks ago. How many times have writers shot Logan's dick off? The fact that you're telling me its happened more than once is just a tad disturbing to me.

[Spritenaut 32]

I have a question that's probably going to seem odd but I promise I have a good reason for asking.

 

Which issue of New Avengers has the Hood shooting Wolverine's penis off, followed by Logan hoping it'll grow back bigger?

 

My wife doesn't believe this actually happened.

 

Google says it is issue 34.  Sigh.  There's a whole Reddit thread dedicated to what would happen if Wolverine lost his penis.  It's just as disturbing as you'd expect.

[Big Fresh]

In my post Deadpool watchin' euphoria, I decided to sign up for a Marvel Unlimited sub and start reading through his stuff again. In the last two weeks or so, I've burned through the first two limited series, the '97 solo book, Agent X, and the first 12-13 issues of Cable and Deadpool.

 

I didn't hate the Priest run like I remember the first time around. I think at the time, he was just the guy that followed Kelly, so I took it out on him unfairly.

 

A lot of the later fill-ins annoyed me though, like, "Deadpool can break 4th wall, so we don't have to try."

 

Mini-Rhino on a keychain was funny, and I'd totally forgotten about it.

 

So far, Unlimited has had everything without any gaps, hoping that continues.

 

If you haven't read the most recent run, Duggan and Posehn, I cannot recommend it more. It's my favorite Deadpool run.

[Cliff Hanger]

In my post Deadpool watchin' euphoria, I decided to sign up for a Marvel Unlimited sub and start reading through his stuff again. In the last two weeks or so, I've burned through the first two limited series, the '97 solo book, Agent X, and the first 12-13 issues of Cable and Deadpool.

 

I didn't hate the Priest run like I remember the first time around. I think at the time, he was just the guy that followed Kelly, so I took it out on him unfairly.

 

I *loved* the Priest run at the time, but Priest has probably pegged my sense of humor better than any other comics writer, ever.  I've cooled on it a little in the past 15+ years, but I still like it more than anyone who followed him except Simone and Nicieza (though I need to read more than the first year of the Duggan series, which I liked but didn't love).

[Eivion]

 

In my post Deadpool watchin' euphoria, I decided to sign up for a Marvel Unlimited sub and start reading through his stuff again. In the last two weeks or so, I've burned through the first two limited series, the '97 solo book, Agent X, and the first 12-13 issues of Cable and Deadpool.

 

I didn't hate the Priest run like I remember the first time around. I think at the time, he was just the guy that followed Kelly, so I took it out on him unfairly.

 

I *loved* the Priest run at the time, but Priest has probably pegged my sense of humor better than any other comics writer, ever.  I've cooled on it a little in the past 15+ years, but I still like it more than anyone who followed him except Simone and Nicieza (though I need to read more than the first year of the Duggan series, which I liked but didn't love).

 

Priest's run is far more amusing than the Duggan/Posehn run, but I would say the latter is the better run if only because it actually moved treated Wade like an actual character and moved forward with him.

[Cliff Hanger]

Like I said, I haven't read anywhere close to the whole Duggan run.  "Dead Presidents" was great silliness, but it and the issues after it didn't really give me anything to really grab me by the face.  I expect to work my way thru the series as a whole, but I need to finish Kanan first.  And all the Secret Wars tie-ins that I liked enough to not regret buying #1 but not enough to buy #2 of.

[steve]

I'm going in order, so I'm about 8 issues into the Way run right now.

 

Nicieza is my guy, I can't think of anything of his I haven't enjoyed.

 

Fun Fact: I actually have a copy of Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1 autographed by Fabian, but I didn't realize it for years because I was a dumb kid who never noticed the black marker on the (mostly) black cover.

[cool arrow]

Is it honestly a case of not believing it, or more not wanting to believe something so damn stupid happened?

 

 

Probably one from column a, one from column b.

[Matt D]

Too much Deadpool talk.