Marvel Universe

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Deathlok 1-11. The M-Tech version from 1999. The most radical reinterpretation of the character yet. This one was a SHIELD Agent whose mind is transferred into a completely robotic body. The series tried some interesting things, like making D-list villains like Ringmaster credible threats in an interesting new way. And issue 10 was one of the last works by the late John Buscema.

[anarky]

M-Tech. AKA "Y'know whad'd be kewl? If Machine Man was half-Sentinel and kept fighting the X-Men but didn't want to."

Aaron Stack is one of my favorites, but, goddamn, that series was mediocre.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I haven't found/read that or the Warlock series yet. But they're on my list.
What struck me most about the Deathlok book (as well as M-Tech and most of the 1999-2002 Marvel books in general) was Marvel's willingness to try new things and be more risky, creatively speaking.
Nowadays, they seem to stick as close to original conceit of their properties as possible, for fear of alienating corporate shareholders or some shit.
Now they're even rebranding Thunderbolts as "Dark Avengers" to fit their Two-flavor paradigm. I'm surprised New Mutants hasn't been rebranded "X-Men Second Class" or something.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

The Mystic Hands of Dr Strange. Marvel did a series of B/W oneshots in 2010 meant to invoke their 70s Magazine sized issues. Wolverine, Daredevil, Iron Man, ShangChi, and others all got issues. This one is Dr. Strange's. It has three short comic stories, and one short two page prose story. Being Strange, it's fairly bland, as all Strange stories are basically the same.
Dr. Strange:Flight of Bones 1-4. Boring 1999 mini. As I said, all Strange stories are pretty much the same. Somebody(either Mephisto, Baron Mordo, or most likely Dormammu) is trying to invade/attack/destroy/take over our dimension and Strange stops them. Trying to stretch that plot out for four issues just grates so much, I literally leafed through issues 3 and 4 in like two minutes. And I rarely do that, even with books I'm not enjoying (coughClaremont'sFantasticFourruncough). Surprise, it was Dormammu. Yawn.

[vynsane]

Nowadays, they seem to stick as close to original conceit of their properties as possible, for fear of alienating corporate shareholders or some shit.
Now they're even rebranding Thunderbolts as "Dark Avengers" to fit their Two-flavor paradigm. I'm surprised New Mutants hasn't been rebranded "X-Men Second Class" or something.

a lot of that probably has to do with the movies. the owner of my shop on long island said he felt bad selling x-men comics when the first movie came out because he thought they were so awful. at least now they have comics that are recognizable to the people who like the movies enough to seek out the comic it was based on. synergy and all that...

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I get that. And it's a sound rationale as a business model. But it also makes the comics subservient to the films, rather than the opposite. It also doesn't help that the creatives have learned the hard way over the last five decades not to bring anything creative to the table like new characters and themes. The Big Two have shot themselves in the foot(and by that, I mean fucked themselves in the face). Creators just keep their new ideas for themselves as Creator Owned projects, and simply play with exceedingly old toys, recycling exceedingly old material when working for Marvel and DC.

Anyhoo, I read Elektra:Root of Evil. A 1995 mini series that's satisfying to conclude after 17 years. I bought the first issue back in 1995 just as I was stopping collecting altogether, so I never finished it until just now. There's nothing remarkable about the series itself. Elektra fights a sinister ninja clan called Snakeroot, while dealing with her Daddy issues. But I did read it with a mind towards the parallels between Elektra and Watchmen. Elektra hadn't been written by anyone except Frank Miller, until Marvel brought her back in the "Fall from Grace" storyline in DD. Which led directly into this RoE mini series. Had the Internet existed back then, I'm sure there would've been more of an uproar about Marvel 'taking' Elektra away from FM(they had had a sort of 'Gentlemen's Agreement' about the character up until then) and using her as a stock character. Now, it's not that big a deal. She's gone on to have a couple ongoings, and a few miniseries. But at the time, it was kind of a big deal.
I wonder if in 10-15 years, people will look back and say "Remember when everybody freaked out about doing Watchmen sequels?" because there will have been so many at that point it will seem commonplace. Hmmm.

[anarky]

Marvel and DC both underestimate the intelligence of new readers. I got into Batman around the time the first movie came out; it didn't confuse me. As long as the comics are good, people will get hooked, and folks definitely know by now that the book does not always equal the movie.

If necessary, put a brief recap text piece in all issues shipping while the movie's in theaters to bring people up to speed on the new continuity. Nothing in depth; one for Batman in 1989 could mention that the second Robin had been killed by the Joker and Batman was descending into self-destructive behavior.

They also underestimate the willingness of people to read back issues, which is especially bizarre given the availability (and cheap prices) online and the tendency to reprint almost everything in paperback form a few months later. I don't think people have changed fundamentally in 20 years; if we were willing to get back issues when it was almost a burden to do it, geeks will do it now when it's pretty easy. I know every other collector here had one or two issues they desperately wanted and hunted for for years in the late 80s or early 90s, only to buy it at an overpriced comic shop in another town or find it in a quarter bin at a flea market while on vacation. Nothing especially rare or valuable, just an issue you couldn't find locally for whatever reason. And I'm sure each of these "holy grail" issues is available on eBay with less than ten seconds of searching.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I'm Still looking for a couple of those "holy grail" comics. Least ways, at prices I don't consider Abuse.

And going back to Elektra, I followed up the RoE mini with the 'Flashback' -1 issue from 1997. Which, considering, the less than two year gap between publications, completely contradict each other in terms of Elektra's backstory. In RoE, Elektra trains in martial arts from a very young age, and trains with Stick and the Chaste as early as age 12.
Whereas, in the Flashback book, she doesn't even begin to think about training until after her father dies(which takes place after she meets Matt in college.) and when Stick shows up, she says "Who are you?" and then bumbles around trying to get revenge for her father, picking up a sai "for the first time" at the end of the book. Editor FAIL.
I'd have to go back and reread Miller and Romita's TMWF miniseries, but it seemed to me that Elektra was already a badass by the time Matt met her in college, so it makes Peter Milligan's Flashback story even more retahded.

[anarky]

I didn't mean "First Appearance of Sabretooth leaving a hole in an otherwise unbroken classic Iron Fist run." I was talking about random comics that simply weren't supposed to be hard to find but were. For me, Transformers #53 was damned impossible to get. No local comic shop had it. Whenever I visited family in other states, I looked for it, with no luck. I finally found it for $0.50 at a used book store in some random town near somewhere we went on vacation once. I think I saw a second copy for $2 at a comic shop a day or so later, and still have never seen a third issue in person (though I know I could get it online easily if I wanted extras for whatever reason). This was after at least two years of hunting at every single store or convention I went to.

Sure, it was an early Jim Lee cover. But it was pretty shitty by his standards, and that never seemed to affect the price, since no one ever seemed to notice famous artists doing TF or GIJoe (McFarlane's Joe #60 notwithstanding, but even that only meant it was worth $5 instead of $1 back then). Lee did a much better cover about a year later that's still one of the great Galvatron images, and he was more famous by that point... but that issue was available everywhere in my area for cover price.

Keep in mind I started collecting TF comics in earnest with #56. It was only three months old. I was able to get every single other issue within a few months (availability wasn't the problem with any other issue, cost was). The story wasn't even anything special. I just really wanted it to get part two of the story to find out what happened to Sky Lynx; didn't give a fuck about the Pretenders and Powermasters who were the actual stars, and Sky Lynx was completely dropped in typical late Budiansky fashion immediately afterwards.

[vynsane]

I get that. And it's a sound rationale as a business model. But it also makes the comics subservient to the films, rather than the opposite.

yes and no. i don't think it has to have a detrimental, stifling effect on the books. despite being the lead-in to "one more day", the "back in black" storyline was obviously an editorial edict to have spider-man don the black costume again because it coincided with the black costume storyline in SM3 and was a compelling story. i still maintain it made more sense for him to wear the black costume as a means of not being seen as easily when he was on the run, but still - it was a good read. it's not necessarily a direct tie-in to the movie (he didn't fight venom, and it was just the fabric version of the costume) but it at least reflected the arguably more high-profile media event at the time.

Marvel and DC both underestimate the intelligence of new readers. I got into Batman around the time the first movie came out; it didn't confuse me. As long as the comics are good, people will get hooked, and folks definitely know by now that the book does not always equal the movie.

again, it's not necessarily about confusing/not confusing people, or about underestimating their intelligence. it's about a semblance of continuity. imagine if, instead of batman lamenting the death of robin, it was the jean-paul valley "azbats" version of batman in the comics when the movie came out. people would have gone into a store looking for bruce wayne batman comics and saw a fully-masked man with razor fingers killing the fucking shit out of people and said "what the hell is this? that's not the batman i just saw in the movies..." - if i'm not mistaken, this was basically the state of x-men comics at the time of the first movie, it was so far removed from what was on the screen.

They also underestimate the willingness of people to read back issues, which is especially bizarre given the availability (and cheap prices) online and the tendency to reprint almost everything in paperback form a few months later. I don't think people have changed fundamentally in 20 years; if we were willing to get back issues when it was almost a burden to do it, geeks will do it now when it's pretty easy.

i think you're overestimating the general populace's knowledge of the comic book industry. you went from "willingness of people to read backissues" to "geeks will do it now" without going into the long process it takes for "people" to turn into "geeks". i've been talking about non-geek non comic-fan general populace people who see "iron man" and seek out a store that stocks comics in order to buy an issue because the movie was cool. the general populace has no idea of the huge amount of backissues available. if they're lucky enough to find an actual comic book store, and the store owner has the social skills and business sense (two things severely lacking in that demographic) to inform this prospective new customer about such availability, then they might take their first steps into a larger world.

i didn't even know backissues were a thing for the first couple of years i collected, because i was buying them at a card store first, then a video store. i have no idea what they did with backissues, but it was probably something involving the dumpster out back, or they had a deal with some older hard-core collector who bought the extras off them for cost. comics are a major oddity in the periodical publication industry what with the no-returns policy. most people wouldn't know you can still buy old issues, since other monthly publications they buy (heh, right) disappear when the next issue hits the stands.

that said, i think trade paperbacks are more the answer in these situations than backissues - they're new (which a lot of people prefer) and hold higher value, being reprints of previous issues for a lessened cost.

[anarky]

When you started collecting, people didn't know about eBay. (Granted, it wasn't around, but bear with me here.) Now, everyone knows you can find pretty much anything on eBay, even if they think it's the only outlet for getting old stuff of any sort.

If they brought back editorial notes and didn't worry so much about making stories as self-contained as possible, they could build a back issue market easily. Maybe not the speculating boom of the 90s, but an interest in finding and reading old comic books. Everyone I know who's ever collected back issues got started because of something along the lines of a villain saying, "I still haven't forgiven you, Spider-Man, for running over my dog with your blasted Spider-Mobile*!" and a handy editorial note that says, "*--Way back in Spider-Man: I'm a Shitty Driver #2."

Factor in that, if they'd actually embrace digital in a meaningful and economical way, THEY would be getting that money, not a reseller. They have no reason to not do it. Put a blurb in the back of the issue that says, "Missed an issue? Check your local bookstore for Marvel trade paperbacks, or find almost any back issue at marvelbackissues.com." Hell, set up your storefront to spotlight back issues that'd be helpful for background on that month's issues!

Of course, both of the Big Two kinda suck at digital, which is setting up Apple and Comixology to be the new Diamond and Capital City....

[Diabolical]

Of course, both of the Big Two kinda suck at digital, which is setting up Apple and Comixology to be the new Diamond and Capital City....

Plus, like all ebooks, paying full price for an issue that doesn't need to be printed and shipped is rid-damn-diculous.

[anarky]

That's the big issue. I thought I kinda touched on it when I said "economical," but, re-reading, it's not clear.

If the printed comic costs $3.99, the digital version of the same should, under no circumstances, cost more than $1.99. It should be closer to $0.99. Not only do you cut out almost all production costs (a competent guy with a good scanner and the latest version of Creative Suite should be plenty for everything aside from writing, drawing, and lettering--heck, you could even train the letterer how to set up the file properly on the off chance he doesn't know how to do it already and cut that out as well since most lettering now is done in Illustrator), but you have a theoretically limited print run and shelf life. A few pennies to store that file forever, and people could buy ten million copies in the month the movie comes out, twelve years from now.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Heh. I wasn't collecting when the first X-Men movie hit, but I think I've read those issues. It was the most forgettable god awful line up the team has ever had. Douches like Lifeguard, Thunderbird III, and the jackass whose power was invisible skin. Never heard of any of those guys? Exactly.

I agree with anarky. Marvel is sitting on a gold mine of 50 years of back issues, 100,000s of issues just waiting to be purchased at 49 Cents a pop.

[anarky]

If Marvel is sitting on a gold mine, DC is sitting on an unobtainium* mine. There wouldn't be much demand for, say, old Millie the Model comics, but DC was the only major publisher (if not the only one, period, I'm not sure) to keep publishing superheroes during the 50s when they weren't as popular.

When you consider most of those stories are still in continuity (well, they were until July, and will probably be again once Jim and Geoff get fired), and that they're completely ungettable on a normal person's salary, that's serious moola right there.

*--And I still haven't seen Avatar! Funny that they give their mythical element such a ridiculously obvious name.