Sperg about comic books here

[God of Nothing]

oh neat we have a comic's thread

I'm taking pictures of pages, the review for isom will probably be short because the book itself is short. I'm surprised I have as much to say about it as I do.

I'm surprised too. It's an open and shut case of someone aiming far above what they can actually do. The premise of the comic alone is extremely disjointed: you don't make a story about a hero coming back that hasn't actually been established unless it's a sort of meta-commentary (Watchmen and Bratpack) with stand-ins. Motive for writing it is to own the libs rather than to tell an actual story as well. Little different than those one-off grift comic crowdfunds that died immediately after the first issue.

 

[Null]

I pulled Isom #2 out and the cover is completely different in texture. Hard to explain, but I'm curious why. The #2 has a smooth, glossy cover that reminds me of a magazine. The #1 is matte and has a very high friction feel to it. When you hold it, you can feel the grooves of your finger stick to it. #2 is not like that at all.

 

[dvnc]

It is their release cover. Liken it to a collector's edition. Because you have first printing also, it's important. This, however, is how bigger companies do things, and most likely is what they are going for. Then you'll get into variant covers, the worth of those and so on and so forth.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I pulled Isom #2 out and the cover is completely different in texture. Hard to explain, but I'm curious why. The #2 has a smooth, glossy cover that reminds me of a magazine. The #1 is matte and has a very high friction feel to it. When you hold it, you can feel the grooves of your finger stick to it. #2 is not like that at all.

Most likely he went with a cheap printer for the first one. Paperback comics and the volumes you got are different quality. My guess is that Eric most likely got the first person he could to print them and the paper quality is worse than it should be, but he likely just wanted to get the product out. How does the ink contrast.


Here’s some really gay sperging about the comics industry:



Comics are usually printed on cheap paper because they were designed on being produced cheaply and thrown away. Japan still does this by basically bundling stories and then selling high quality volumes of individual stories. the UK and Franco-Belgian comics still kinda do this

You hate Japan, but their Industry is a lot more successful do to a number of reasons. I could go into history, but it’s kind of gay and basically some psychologist argued that Batman was a faggot who molested Robin and the US companies creates a moral code that banned anything other than capeshit out of fear that Congress would legislate the industry.
Prior to this horror and romance were the dominate genres in the US.

 

[God of Nothing]

You hate Japan, but their Industry is a lot more successful do to a number of reasons. I could go into history, but it’s kind of gay and basically some psychologist argued that Batman was a faggot who molested Robin and the US companies creates a moral code that banned anything other than capeshit out of fear that Congress would legislate the industry.

Is that how the comics code began? What the fuck?

 

[dvnc]

paper quality is worse than it should be

He's speaking about the cover of the book, not its contents. Matte is cheaper, yes, but it's also a much more catchy way of broadcasting the first printing of your comic.

Is that how the comics code began? What the fuck?

More or less. Originally it was from a psychiatrist's book, The Seduction of the Innocent which included several different strips. The CCA is pretty much dead now, anyways.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I mean, cool that they're just letting Claremont's whackass fetish idea be canon. Don't care much but it's kinda pointless to powerscale Mystique this much. Like, at least make this power level boost come with caveats because it creates a fuckton of issues when using her in the future. You know, one of the most prevalent mutant villains around (and mercenary and occasional antivillain).

Destiny's fine. I do think it's interesting seeing how more stable Mystique's been since Destiny came back. I do wish the krakoa era was tighter-written so we could see Moira's inner workings better than "oh yeah she's probably royally mentally fucked because of living through 9 timelines of really screwed up shit that got worse."


Also you're telling me Orchis has done all this shit? We've been getting hints for years that SHIELD was onto something fucked up in the bg. Why not tie that into this as well? (Yeah, look at the Nick Fury solo stories that've popped up here and there for the last 7-8 years.)


G.O.D.S. feels like Hickman really trying to do more cosmic stuff, but I feel like it's going to get messed up by either editorial or retarded hacks that want Hickman to slow down his story to use the new status quo he introduces.

Marvel fucked up Mystique's power to the point that I'm shocked they haven't given her the power to outright copy other peoples abilities at this point.

It's insane, since even Claremont downplayed Mystique's powers when he introduced her. In her first full appearance in Ms Marvel, Mystique impersonates Nick Fury and has to beg away Val (Nick's GF/fellow SHIELD agent) because it's explicitly stated that Raven's shapeshifting power isn't fully 1:1 copying someone's appearance. She still retains her slim supermodel body size even if she say, takes on a buff he-man like Nick's face/form and is wearing a coat to hide this in said scene and tells an accomplice of hers that she can't let Val near her because she might try and hug Raven as Fury and realize he's a fake when they embrace given Mystique's feminine body size.

Claremont dropped this when Raven showed up in X-Men as she was able to do a 1:1 copy of Nightcrawler that was so uncanny that Wolverine was ready to stab BOTH of them and just hope the real Kurt would teleport away, due to him not being able to tell the two apart. At this point, Claremont firmly established that while Raven could change forms, she was ONLY ONLY able to change into a human form and elaborate aliens and animals and anything not strictly human/earthling couldn't be done. And she DEFINATELY couldn't do Plastic Man shit morphing her body into crazy forms.

Then cut to 2000, when Claremont came back and synergy had Raven and Toad looking like their movie counterparts with no warning. Which ironically got dropped a couple of issues in before Dreams End had Raven back to normal. But in her appearance in her movie form in X-Men #106, Raven suddenly claims she "has an immunity to poison" when Toad uses a previously unseen poison power on her. Both their changes in appearances were ultimately handwaved in X-Men Forever; Toad got injured protecting X-Factor's Ship from the Stranger and while healing him, Ship decides to fix Toad's damaged genetics (that made him look like a fat hideous freak) and but a power cord got damaged by the Stranger and Raven had to hold the pieces of the cord together and got exposed to Celestial energies which turned her into her movie form.

Then came the shortlived fanservicy Mystique ongoing that ran after Mystique killed Moria and slit Banshee's throat in Joe Casey's Uncanny X-Men run, after hijacking X-Corps via a series of elaborate ruses. Besides the failed retcon to try and handwave the above to an unnamed imposture (which went over so badly that they dropped it after a couple of issues), it had Mystique do Plastic Man shit with her power that was later handwaved to be a power upgrade from the Celestial energies IIRC in one of the Marvel Handbooks from the 00s.

Also, Orchis has done a lot but they ditched the people running Orchis under Hickman for a Duggan OC (a clone of Mr Sinister) and Moira, with Omega Sentinel only appearing rarely and Nimrod acting like Homelander.

 

[jspit2.0]

Most likely he went with a cheap printer for the first one. Paperback comics and the volumes you got are different quality. My guess is that Eric most likely got the first person he could to print them and the paper quality is worse than it should be, but he likely just wanted to get the product out. How does the ink contrast.


Here’s some really gay sperging about the comics industry:



Comics are usually printed on cheap paper because they were designed on being produced cheaply and thrown away. Japan still does this by basically bundling stories and then selling high quality volumes of individual stories. the UK and Franco-Belgian comics still kinda do this

You hate Japan, but their Industry is a lot more successful do to a number of reasons. I could go into history, but it’s kind of gay and basically some psychologist argued that Batman was a faggot who molested Robin and the US companies creates a moral code that banned anything other than capeshit out of fear that Congress would legislate the industry.
Prior to this horror and romance were the dominate genres in the US.

Is that how the comics code began? What the fuck?

He glosses over the fact that the man in question, Fredrick Wertham, was vindicated posthumously.

Today, Tim Drake is a faggot. Superman is a faggot. They have more or less done everything including trying to groom minors that he accused them of wanting to do in the 50s.

Wertham's book, seduction of the innocent, followed the Psychological standard laid out by the likes of Sigmund Freud, making outlandish claims to draw attention to his substantive work.

There was fire beneath the smoke Wertham ginned up and the Code was created BY comic professionals who then turned around and produced amazing comics like of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko's Marvel work in the 60s, Nick Fury by Jim Steranko, and countless others.

The comic book industries fall in America versus everywhere else (comics exist and have found there way to thrive outside of Japan) is complicated and somewhat boring. There's the abandonment of any community outside of comic stores; the increasingly dark, myopic, and Vertigoziation of American comics; the lack of a viable indie market for children's comics in the 80s and 90s; the speculator bubble and the pandering leading to dip in quality turning existing readership off; and the trend after the early 00s to alienate everyone to the right of Stalin and Mao.

These are just a few things. The Comics Code Authority played no role in that decline. Its authority waned to the point of irrelevance, a rubber stamp practically by the 90s and was wholly defunct by the end of the 00s.

 

[FuckMeGentlyWithAChainsaw]

Is that how the comics code began? What the fuck?

Batman and Robin used to sleep in the same room, in adjoining beds.

And then there's stuff like this.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

@jspit2.0

I’d argue the Comics Code more or less ensured that the decline would happen by making it so Capeshit was the only dominant genre(?) on the market. It created a bottleneck that fucked over the industry.

 

[MirrorNoir]

The biggest complaint about the comic code is that it "stifled genre diversity" in comics. Which isn't true: DC basically bought a rival company (Quality Comics) after the CCA went into effect and got their entire line of war comics, which lasted until the 80s (with Sgt Rock being the last holdout of the line ending in 1988, when it was finally canceled) and turned their fledgling horror book (House of Mystery) into a sci-fi series. Marvel meanwhile had their romance comics and turned to sci-if and giant monsters from outer space, before both companies doubled down on super-hero stuff. And even then, DC went all in on horror the second the CCA loosened their rules to allow horror books to exist again (partly because Warren's magazine line showed there was still a market for it) while Marvel cornered the sword and sorcery market with Conan and later their toy/cartoon tie-in comics.

Also, losing the newstand/spinner rack was a mixed blessing as getting your comics from the newstand was always a crapshoot since newstands only carried a fraction of the books being published and could stop carrying a title with ZERO warning, and oftentimes were 90% Marvel, 5% Image, and 5% DC and those DC books tended to be just the Batman titles and maybe one Superman book. I know, growing up, I often had to go to about 4-5 stores to get all of my books each month since there were multiple books that I could only find at one particular grocery store or drug store.

 

[dvnc]

I’d argue the Comics Code more or less ensured that the decline would happen by making it so Capeshit was the only dominant genre(?) on the market. It created a bottleneck that fucked over the industry.

The majority of the code is split between how capeshit justice is carried out and the other end of it is focused on the horror and detective comics. I don't know if you follow Old Hollywood at all, but it was based loosely off the pre-code film era. It didn't really bottleneck it so much as it became confusing and a juggling act for publishing houses before the realized they can just publish it without the code and carried on as they were the ones doing the censoring.

I find it amusing, though, that Archie Comics was the last to hold onto it.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

The biggest complaint about the comic code is that it "stifled genre diversity" in comics. Which isn't true: DC basically bought a rival company (Quality Comics) after the CCA went into effect and got their entire line of war comics, which lasted until the 80s (with Sgt Rock being the last holdout of the line ending in 1988, when it was finally canceled) and turned their fledgling horror book (House of Mystery) into a sci-fi series. Marvel meanwhile had their romance comics and turned to sci-if and giant monsters from outer space, before both companies doubled down on super-hero stuff. And even then, DC went all in on horror the second the CCA loosened their rules to allow horror books to exist again (partly because Warren's magazine line showed there was still a market for it) while Marvel cornered the sword and sorcery market with Conan and later their toy/cartoon tie-in comics.

Also, losing the newstand/spinner rack was a mixed blessing as getting your comics from the newstand was always a crapshoot since newstands only carried a fraction of the books being published and could stop carrying a title with ZERO warning, and oftentimes were 90% Marvel, 5% Image, and 5% DC and those DC books tended to be just the Batman titles and maybe one Superman book. I know, growing up, I often had to go to about 4-5 stores to get all of my books each month since there were multiple books that I could only find at one particular grocery store or drug store.

My question is was Sargent Rock kept around or did it actually have good numbers?

 

[jspit2.0]

@jspit2.0

I’d argue the Comics Code more or less ensured that the decline would happen by making it so Capeshit was the only dominant genre(?) on the market. It created a bottleneck that fucked over the industry.

The biggest complaint about the comic code is that it "stifled genre diversity" in comics. Which isn't true: DC basically bought a rival company (Quality Comics) after the CCA went into effect and got their entire line of war comics, which lasted until the 80s (with Sgt Rock being the last holdout of the line ending in 1988, when it was finally canceled) and turned their fledgling horror book (House of Mystery) into a sci-fi series. Marvel meanwhile had their romance comics and turned to sci-if and giant monsters from outer space, before both companies doubled down on super-hero stuff. And even then, DC went all in on horror the second the CCA loosened their rules to allow horror books to exist again (partly because Warren's magazine line showed there was still a market for it) while Marvel cornered the sword and sorcery market with Conan and later their toy/cartoon tie-in comics.

Also, losing the newstand/spinner rack was a mixed blessing as getting your comics from the newstand was always a crapshoot since newstands only carried a fraction of the books being published and could stop carrying a title with ZERO warning, and oftentimes were 90% Marvel, 5% Image, and 5% DC and those DC books tended to be just the Batman titles and maybe one Superman book. I know, growing up, I often had to go to about 4-5 stores to get all of my books each month since there were multiple books that I could only find at one particular grocery store or drug store.

I mean, mirror beat me to it. You got Conan, Swamp Thing, and so many alt books both after the code was created and during its heyday.

Here's the BIGGEST fallacy of the people who use capeshit or whatever. Your tastes....are not as popular in the marketplace.

It's not that other markets are more 'diverse' in genre, but that they are healthier, thus allowing less popular genres to flourish. A healthy industry has room for low sellers like Vertigo.

The majority of the code is split between how capeshit justice is carried out and the other end of it is focused on the horror and detective comics. I don't know if you follow Old Hollywood at all, but it was based loosely off the pre-code film era. It didn't really bottleneck it so much as it became confusing and a juggling act for publishing houses before the realized they can just publish it without the code and carried on as they were the ones doing the censoring.

I find it amusing, though, that Archie Comics was the last to hold onto it.

The Code nuked the gross out over the top horror. But just like everything else, creative people worked AROUND it. And in some cases, the work was better for the creators needing to be more judicious with their content.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I’d argue that Conan and Swamp Thing are flash in the pan. Comics do not attract new audiences, Vertigo and Image were just the result of people getting annoyed by Capeshit and burning out good will at an astonishing rate.

 

[MirrorNoir]

My question is was Sargent Rock kept around or did it actually have good numbers?

Sgt. Rock largely survived a decade longer than most DC war books (which were largely put to bed around 1978-1981 outside the brief Blackhawk revival) because Joe Kubert was running the book and it became something of a containment/retirement book for him to keep him financially going after he set up his art school (which DC recruited talent from).

Sgt Rock was the only non-cape book to survive Crisis; House of Mystery was briefly revived post-Crisis with a gimmicky twist (DC cut a deal with Cassandra Peterson to be allowed to use her Elvira character as "host" for a 12 issue revival of HoM) along with the infamous "Hex" reboot of Jonah Hex, but Haunted Tank (which had a sales stunt where Monitor was fully revealed in said book), Scalphunter, House of Mystery, and the classic Jonah Hex series all got canceled around the time of Crisis. Sgt Rock survived largely due to the fact that it was Kubert's passion project and DC wanting to stay on his good side and keep having a steady access to graduates of his art school.

 

[Cpl. Long Dong Silver]

Ngl, the modern incarnation of Venom has probably been the best the character has been written since his inception. I really loved Remender's Venom as Flash and Cates more or less made Eddie enjoyable and gave him a fitting ending.

Revisting Flash Thompson as Venom is really surprising given how unabashedly America the character is, seeing how left leaning Remender is.

View attachment 5489215

I loved that look.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Sgt. Rock largely survived a decade longer than most DC war books (which were largely put to bed around 1978-1981 outside the brief Blackhawk revival) because Joe Kubert was running the book and it became something of a containment/retirement book for him to keep him financially going after he set up his art school (which DC recruited talent from).

Sgt Rock was the only non-cape book to survive Crisis; House of Mystery was briefly revived post-Crisis with a gimmicky twist (DC cut a deal with Cassandra Peterson to be allowed to use her Elvira character as "host" for a 12 issue revival of HoM) along with the infamous "Hex" reboot of Jonah Hex, but Haunted Tank (which had a sales stunt where Monitor was fully revealed in said book), Scalphunter, House of Mystery, and the classic Jonah Hex series all got canceled around the time of Crisis. Sgt Rock survived largely due to the fact that it was Kubert's passion project and DC wanting to stay on his good side and keep having a steady access to graduates of his art school.

So it was effectively a Savage Dragon deal where he had enough sway for it to keep going.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

My question is was Sargent Rock kept around or did it actually have good numbers?

It was mostly kept alive due to the rumors that a movie would be made of it with some reports being that they wanted Arnold to play Rock in the 80's. You now get a new rumor being spread every decade about a new movie.

 

[jspit2.0]

Sgt. Rock largely survived a decade longer than most DC war books (which were largely put to bed around 1978-1981 outside the brief Blackhawk revival) because Joe Kubert was running the book and it became something of a containment/retirement book for him to keep him financially going after he set up his art school (which DC recruited talent from).

Sgt Rock was the only non-cape book to survive Crisis; House of Mystery was briefly revived post-Crisis with a gimmicky twist (DC cut a deal with Cassandra Peterson to be allowed to use her Elvira character as "host" for a 12 issue revival of HoM) along with the infamous "Hex" reboot of Jonah Hex, but Haunted Tank (which had a sales stunt where Monitor was fully revealed in said book), Scalphunter, House of Mystery, and the classic Jonah Hex series all got canceled around the time of Crisis. Sgt Rock survived largely due to the fact that it was Kubert's passion project and DC wanting to stay on his good side and keep having a steady access to graduates of his art school.

Is Swamp thing and all that now counted as 'cape'? I'm sorry but the definition is just getting so broad.

So it was effectively a Savage Dragon deal where he had enough sway for it to keep going.

No, more like Denny O'Neil on Azrael.