Saturday, August 8, 2009

This is Entertainment?????....or I am officially out of the demographic!

"Ultimate Avengers will have a Red Skull villain variant cover. This Red Skull will be the illegitimate son of Cap from the ‘40s. You’ll see the “Cap sex scene” in issue #2; Cap’s girlfriend has to give the baby up to SHIELD, and this is the result."

This is a direct quote from Marvel's panel at the Comic convention being held in Chicago by Mark Millar. The architect of the new Ultimate's comic line from Marvel.
When I was a kid, all I could think about each day was when I grew up maybe I could work for Marvel drawing all those great heroes and stories. And maybe if I could draw good enough I could get to draw the great Captain America. It was a dream, and that dream officially ended today. That statement above drove the final nail in the coffin of a dream....thanks Mark Millar. I guess I am too old, to set in my ways to even care about a storyline that has sex and illegitimate children of heroes as the central story points. Hell even as a kid I figured Cap had sex sometimes, he was a man after all, But I sure as hell didn't care to peek in on it. Or really even care who it was with. I figured that was his business. Hell they are just characters anyway so why do I even care. After all dropping comics like this from purchase only saves me money....thanks again Marvel. You have cured a comics junkie, or Marvel zombie or whatever you want to call me. I have been gradually breaking the comic habit for years. Especially since companies are reprinting so much classic material I never really had access to before. Complete collections of Raymond's Flash Gordon, Complete Caniff Terry and the Pirates, and the upcoming Rip Kirby books. Of course I am more interested in the art of these creators, the storytelling, the framing, and all the aspects of storytelling.
I don't even recognize most comic book heroes anymore. The hero with 'feet of clay' thing has pretty much gone too far for me. It is becoming harder to tell the heroes from the bad guys. I realize that is the point of some of the stories, but for me that just doesn't really entertain me time after time after time. I kind of like my heroes to have less faults than I do, that is what makes them heroes along with the fact they do the right thing.
Forgive me for the rant, but it is a important thing to me. And hopefully my heroes are more hero than they are normal people. I know alot of normal people and I don't really want to read their adventures anymore than I want to read some of the comics I have seen in the last few years.

8 comments:

  1. I stopped buying/reading new Marvel comics years ago.

    I'm glad I got out before this happened. What utter uncreative crap.

    That's okay though, because all these classic heroes still live and are doing very well in the Archives and Showcase books.

    That's where my comics money goes, and they don't even seem so expensive anymore with regular comics being four and five bucks an issue.

    'Nuff said.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is sad indeed. It used to be like the Charlie Rich song said,"No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." Now the door stays open for all to see.

    Marvel pissed me off may years ago, and I don't care about them anymore.
    I used to be an X-Men and Wolverine fan, but they had a way of messing with the fans, so I left.

    My favorite comic book hero is still, Batman. But I can't afford to buy comics, so it is now only reading my back issues.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree on the point of I can't afford comics. That pretty much put the nail in the coffin for me. I wish some company would start up comics on cheap newsprint again, and drop the price, where it would be reasonable again (plus still write good stories). So mostly I buy something used off Ebay or try to finds stuff cheaply some way. But over the years too I've gotten a backlog of things to ready, and I'm glad I did now due to the price hikes.

    Re: Peeves--aside from the price, is the plots of killing off characters, then bring them back. If they are going to do that, which we all know they are not going to kill off such a hot, main character: Superman, Phoenix, Batman, Cap America, or who ever they should leave them dead. I know there's somewhat an interest perhaps in reading a story with that plot, but it seems it has become a fad to sell titles.

    Plus I think there used to be totally good heroes and bad guys. They branched out and made the anti hero, which I thought made for an interesting read as well: Punisher, Vigilante, Wolverine etc. But it does seem that now a lot of the characters are a mixture of hero/anti hero, so the true hero has become muddled these days.

    But as others have stated, there's still something out there that's cool to buy, it just might take a bit of tracking down. Recently I've picked up some of those Marvel Essentials Conans and Savage Swords.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks to all for backing me up on this idea....I was beginning to feel all alone.
    Thank goodness for all those fine reprint projects of good old entertainment comics. Archives, Essentials, Showcases, and collections keep me going.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, at least we have Captain Spectre, an old fashioned hero.
    It's good to finally meet the Gunhawk and Midnight.

    And yes, I believe we are officially outside of the target demographic. Waaaaaay outside. which is just fine with me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm with Mousie.

    Somehow I even feel oddly comforted being so obviously outside of the target demographic.

    It's a nice place to be these days.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow. I havent been into the mainstream companies for a long time and its exactly for reasons like this. I think it was Superman dies. Yeah, uh, sure, whatever. just bad writing. When did this turn into Dawson's Creek on Acid? Why can't they just write real stories, that are compelling because they are WELL WRITTEN? sadness.

    ReplyDelete