Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Lord Liaden]

Besides the stories, I find what passes for artwork in most contemporary comics very disheartening. The art of graphic storytelling is dying. Most artists create what amounts to collections of splash pages. There's no action flow, no shifting perspective, no support of the narrative through-line. What I hear among criticisms of the industry, is that artists today focus on creating imagery they can sell on a poster or t-shirt, rather than serving the story.

[Greywind]

George Perez's portfolio was nothing but splash pages when he was trying to get into the business. He was informed by different people that the companies didn't want to see nothing but splash. They wanted to see sequential.

[Lord Liaden]

Indeed. But artists today have much greater legal control over the profits from their own work. Resale is profitable.

[dmjalund]

2 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Indeed. But artists today have much greater legal control over the profits from their own work. Resale is profitable.

unless you work for Disney

[Twilight]

So a friend linked me to the first issue of Power Pack's Outlawed tie in and I have to say Ryan North actually gets the characters.  He writes them well and before Civil War Jr used the comic as it's commode the story was fun, interesting and generally delightful.  The Power Pack was handling the situation like true professionals, like a super team should (Champions take note) and if the story had ended with the Powers thwarting Boogeyman and going home it would have been perfect.  Instead we have "blatantly fascist organization that Captain America would be beating the crud out of if Marvel hadn't deballed him in Civil War" interfering and sucking any fun from the comic.  Sadly I don't imagine this is gonna lead to Power Pack effortlessly trouncing said goons, en route to exposing the villain behind this plot to take down teenage heroes either.

[zslane]

Comics are being subjected to the same political and social pressures that movies and tv shows are. There is the perceived mandate to add diversity and focus on "woke" narratives despite the lack of sales to support it. Comic companies don't know which master to serve, and so they serve whichever one gets them in the least amount of trouble with social media. This strategy appears to be accelerating the (inevitable?) demise of the industry. I think we need look no further than Marvel's aborted New Warriors reboot, with characters like Safespace and Snowflake, to see the dubious merits of such a strategy.

[Scott Ruggels]

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Besides the stories, I find what passes for artwork in most contemporary comics very disheartening. The art of graphic storytelling is dying. Most artists create what amounts to collections of splash pages. There's no action flow, no shifting perspective, no support of the narrative through-line. What I hear among criticisms of the industry, is that artists today focus on creating imagery they can sell on a poster or t-shirt, rather than serving the story.

Or worse, they hire objectively bad artists because they are cheaper. The latest Marvel anthology is an example. This never would have occurred when I worked in the industry.

The art was atrocious on two of the three stories, and few of them told anything remotely heroic. As an artist I always look at the article first, and the writing brings me back.  Just look at that thumbnail.   Blech. 

[Spence]

12 hours ago, Greywind said:

Most comic books sales recently seem to be along the line of trade paperbacks of story arcs, rather than the individual issues. From B&N and the like.

 

Yes, but changing the presentation method is meaningless if the content is garbage. 

38 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Or worse, they hire objectively bad artists because they are cheaper. The latest Marvel anthology is an example. This never would have occurred when I worked in the industry.

The art was atrocious on two of the three stories, and few of them told anything remotely heroic. As an artist I always look at the article first, and the writing brings me back.  Just look at that thumbnail.   Blech. 

 

OMG!  I'm in!

 

I've been able to sorta draw too.  Can I get a job now?

 

57 minutes ago, zslane said:

Comics are being subjected to the same political and social pressures that movies and tv shows are. There is the perceived mandate to add diversity and focus on "woke" narratives despite the lack of sales to support it. Comic companies don't know which master to serve, and so they serve whichever one gets them in the least amount of trouble with social media. This strategy appears to be accelerating the (inevitable?) demise of the industry. I think we need look no further than Marvel's aborted New Warriors reboot, with characters like Safespace and Snowflake, to see the dubious merits of such a strategy.

 

Nailed it.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

There's always been bad artists. Al Milgrom was mediocre and Bret Blevins was god awful.

[Lord Liaden]

Even Milgrom still knew how to tell a story.

[Spence]

1 hour ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

There's always been bad artists.

 

Well art has always been pretty subjective.

 

But I could name an artist that people pay millions for their work and universities consider them masterworks which I have always considered pure garbage and I really do believe that most people agree.  But if they admit it is garbage they will also have to admit they were scammed. 

 

I really can't put names to many of the artists of comics over the last couple decades.  I had already stopped buying comics when they shifted from superheroes to degrees of evil, but I can tell you that when the cover art became completely different in quality and style than the interior art, it did nothing to make me want to buy it.   If anything, the so called splash art on the cover made the interior look worse. 

[unclevlad]

Art is subjective, but those panels are *awful*.

 

If you buy the reasoning about DC's imminent collapse, then this 'effort' by Marvel fits into that narrative too.  Disney doesn't need new comics, just as AT&T doesn't.  They can simply farm the storylines they own.  And both are drowning in assumed debt...*especially* Disney when the theme parks are closed.  So they may well just let the comics go down for the third time, and not care.

[zslane]

If Marvel and DC remain on their current trajectories it won't be long before Japanese manga are the only comic books still being bought in America.

[Scott Ruggels]

6 hours ago, zslane said:

If Marvel and DC remain on their current trajectories it won't be long before Japanese manga are the only comic books still being bought in America.

True, to a point. It may also  be a generational thing.  Manga has the advantage of not being under control of the American publishers. Manga has a very wide array of genres, but only recently has it had anything similar to American Superheroes ( Tiger & Bunny was I think around 2012? ) but they aren’t as popular as the cheerful hung-Ho teenage protagonist with the indomitable spirit that are the top sellers of Manga, though Romance manga come in a solid second. Unlike US comics Manga has an equal market penetration with boys and girls. 

 

There are plenty of American creators that are compelled by inner demons to create  stories, so there will be material out there, but this may be the demise of the Superhero story, as the audience fragments again to what it was after WW2 when there was a multitude of genres available, but in competition with screens, the readership will not be as large.  Superheroes, like radio drama and the Western may be artifacts of the 30th century, which will serve only a niche audience.  

[Bazza]

Marvel likely considers the comics as “R&D” for the films & tv shows. So will keep it around. 

[Spence]

Well, refocusing on DC/Marvel and the other current US labels.  I don't think the issue is that people have lost or are losing interest in Superhero stories.  It is that current US labels are not actually writing them anymore.  And I don't think that the Manga series like Tiger & Bunny, One Punch Man and My Hero Academia were such hits by accident.  People like superHero stories with good heroes that are self-sacrificing and good.  Most non-super manga still has the good protagonist that powers through adversity to do the right thing. 

 

The concept is a mainstay of storytelling and people like it. 

What people don't like is being preached at.  Stories about powerful beings with all the depressing problems of regular people isn't exactly a great draw either, we can see plenty of that in the news.   The entertainment industry in the US across the board, not just comics, has forgotten that they are an entertainment industry.  And they are paying for it.

 

For myself the vast majority of content I consume is from outside the US these days.  Manga, Graphic Novels, TV, movies, even books.  Sometimes I just want an entertaining story and I am really tired of being preached at about the new catch-phrase/agenda of the minute because I am not a telepath able instantly recognize today's vitriol. 

 

When you look back at the greats from old Hollywood, they all had one thing in common.  All of them had occupations and life experience before they became stars or directors and so on.   They experienced the real world before they began creating the fictional one. 

 

I live in the hope that the US comic industry will remember that they are entertainment. 

 

As for Bazza's point.  I'd say he is more right than possibly wrong on that.  My interesting thought on them using it as R&D for their shows, is that it is very interesting that they always reach decades back for inspiration.  Not anything from the last five years.  At least that I am aware of. 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

 

As for Bazza's point.  I'd say he is more right than possibly wrong on that.  My interesting thought on them using it as R&D for their shows, is that it is very interesting that they always reach decades back for inspiration.  Not anything from the last five years.  At least that I am aware of. 

 

 

 

It kind of depends. What they've done with the new Captain Marvel is based on Carol Danvers' story arc starting in 2012. Captain America: Civil War came out only around six years after the Civil War comic series. OTOH most of Marvel's character origin movies draw from their classic backgrounds from the past century, e.g. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man, Black Panther.

[Spence]

Well, Civil War was my least liked movie and I never was able to actually get past the first issue of crappy comic.  Though CW does highlight just how craptacular comic have become. 

 

And Captain Marvel was OK.  Not great.  Squandered a lot of potentially great possibilities to land firmly on "OK".  But it wasn't anything to really make me rush out and add it to my shelf. 

 

But they both were still from older material and not the last five years. 

[slikmar]

And the X-Men still keep going back to Claremont's stuff or thereabouts. DC still keeps redoing Dark Knight Returns even when there isnt an original Dark Knight to start with.

[Old Man]

What's the point of R-rated ("gritty") superheroes?

 

Warning: 40-minute YouTube video.  It doesn't encompass all my thoughts on the subject, but it raises a lot of good points, and it does an especially good job of going into the classic gritty stories and how they fit into the evolution of the medium as a whole.

[Scott Ruggels]

Interesting essay, and makes a lot of oof pints especially about brand confusion. Very thoughtful, and Alan Moore  was not entirely wrong in his assessments. 

[zslane]

Alan Moore is not the first, nor will he be the last, to have his work misinterpreted/misunderstood and become inspirational to others who take it "in the wrong direction".

[Spence]

Not a bad video, except the consistent and relentless demonstration that they failed basic English in high school.

 

Basic concept.

Superhero

Supervillain

Supervigilante

Those are compound words and all mean something different.  Very different.

 

He was talking about the Supers genre and yet kept calling it Superheroes. 

It is not. 

They are different.

 

 

Grrrrrr.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

9 hours ago, zslane said:

Alan Moore is not the first, nor will he be the last, to have his work misinterpreted/misunderstood and become inspirational to others who take it "in the wrong direction".

No, The James Gunn quote was particularly predictive of what would happen after Deadpool, in that Hollywood copied the surface, but did not understand the structure of it. 

8 hours ago, Spence said:

Not a bad video, except the consistent and relentless demonstration that they failed basic English in high school.

 

Basic concept.

Superhero

Supervillain

Supervigilante

Those are compound words and all mean something different.  Very different.

 

He was talking about the Supers genre and yet kept calling it Superheroes. 

It is not. 

They are different.

 

 

Grrrrrr.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was all comic books to him anyway. 

[Greywind]

On 11/27/2020 at 2:05 PM, dmjalund said:

unless you work for Disney

 

Then you just improperly paint posters, covers, and use the action scrolling across the screen to "hide" words in the clouds.