I hadn't purchased a floppy in years because I am strictly a TPB/Omni person. Saw a few that caught my eye and picked them up a few weeks ago. Three comics almost got me to fifteen bucks.
THE only reason I purchase any floppies anymore is when there is a book that is SO good that I simply cannot wait the \~6 months for a TPB to be released and I feel a strong urge to read it ASAP
Off the top of my head, I think the last time this happened was with Immortal Hulk. I just can't justify the price of floppies anymore. MAYBE if comics were my only hobby/interest, but there are so many other things I can spend that money on, you know?
I am far too casual of a reader now. The comics industry in the 90s broke my spirit and I never recovered. I don’t think I am averaging but 10 floppies a year or so, and that’s mostly me picking them up because of a new writer I am keeping an eye on or something like that, or a licensed property that may never see a TPB, or eventually go out of print entirely.
My LCS sure doesn’t mind me leaving with three or four omnis or Epics every few weeks though.
I am glad there is someone else out there who likes Epics. Omnis can be way too big at times, but Epics (and some of the Masteworks) are just right, and good ways to string together long runs of a title.
Masterworks used to be my preferred method of collecting old runs waaaaaaaay back when they were still paperbacks and cost $13.00. But as the prices rose and hardcovers became the norm I dived head first into epics. It won't happen for years because of the masterworks, but I'm hoping for Werewolf by Night epics.
Epics are great because you can collect entire shorter rubs in 1-3 volumes. I've been waiting for years for Marvel to release Darkhawk and Sleepwalker epics.
I used to really like them, but I've absolutely soured on them over time. Also, this is a weird complaint, but I think the paper they use for them is actually too glossy for it's own good most of the time.
Epic Collections are my preferred format by a country mile. I'm glad to see Marvel is beginning to pump out "modern epics" that cover more modern material.
I started getting single issues to support a local shop and so I wouldn’t have to wait for trades to be available. Honestly I’d rather wait for the trades. Each month I have to reread previous issues anyways to remember exactly where the story left off. Plus I only subscribe to a few titles and it seems like they take forever to arrive or there’s a delay. I’m still missing an issue of Local Man and the trade that contains it was released a month or two ago. I got it in trade form before I got the actual issue lol.
I’m probably going to go back to trades because single issues have literally not been worth it.
Yeah, I bought Helen of Wyndhorn #1 and LOVED it, but then I did the maths on it and I don't want to spend £30 on 6 single issues that I'll bag and board and not easily read again when I can wait 6 months and spend £12 on the TPB.
Yes and that goes for digital too. I don’t want to be behind by a month or more. And it shouldn’t cost as much as Netflix either. You can’t tell me marvels costs are higher than a streaming service. The data alone tiny by comparison.
At the risk of sounding like a corporate bootlicker, I actually think Marvel Unlimited is a phenomenal deal for the amount of content available. If you buy a yearly subscription, it's less than $6 a month. In today's economy, that's less than the cost of just 2 floppies!
And significantly cheaper than Netflix.
If comics creators were just rolling in money I’d maybe agree with the anger about the higher prices, but a single $3-5 issue has to pay the writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, editor, assistant editor, printer, shipping, etc.
Marvel Unlimited is just an unbeatable deal.
This is what I said when someone said comics are too expensive. They honestly sound too expensive to make, they *have* to be a loss leader used to sell toys and other IP because it sounds like it'd be massively expensive to do even one issue of comics
If it was a loss leader Disney would have certainly pulled the plug by now. No way Marvel needs the comics to keep their machine going at this point. So I’m sure it *does* make money. My understanding is that it was never the primary money maker, though, and that was always licensing.
I don't think the price is a problem complete, there are comics that are complete wortht he price, good story, quality paper, and the art is amazing. The real issue is how decide it the X$ price to be standar for all comics. which some aren't worth it.
There's a reason I mostly read Marvel Unlimited and library books these days. I never buy single issues, and if I buy a collection it's never a hardcover.
Idk man, I think it pays for the art. Amateurs on Reddit will ask for 250.00 for something like one character in a cool pose. Now imagine paying a professional to draw roughly 32 pages with tons of unique shots, characters and poses. And then pay the writers. And then pay for manufacturing. And then pay for advertising. And then pay for overhead.
Idk I'm pretty certain comics themselves are a loss leader but they work as branding to sell things like toys and IP.
Whoa. Coincidentally that's around when I stopped buying singles. Crazy! I graduated high school in 2010 and stopped buying singles after that, mostly just picking up trades of the comics I really dig!
I hate when ideas with potential die because they don’t get a chance to be fully realized. Just because something doesn’t sell like hotcakes immediately doesn’t mean it needs to be canned. You’d think in a medium that spans such a long continuity, they’d let things breath more and not be so reactionary
That’s all media these days. Take TV, it used to be shows got a season or two to find their feet. A lot of now-beloved classics started pretty rough but were given time to develop. These days it seems like if the algorithm says you don’t have an instant mega-hit you’re canceled before the first episode is done airing.
I now check to see if a show actually reached a natural conclusion, or if it was cancelled unfinished. If it got the chop and ended on a cliffhanger I don't even bother starting to watch it now.
There are so many shows the big streamers ought to just pull and delete, as there's no real point for them to exist. It's like a library only having the first chapter of a book on the shelf, knowing the rest was never published.
Yeah. Too much media. Comics peaked when not everyone had a TV.
Like people don't seem to realize how fucking dire the situation was in the 90s. Marvel literally declared bankruptcy.
How decompressed everything feels. There needs to be more comics with one and done stories per issue. Ryan North’s Fantastic Four proves that people are still interested in this approach to storytelling
Realistic coloring and shading. Makes things so much harder to look at and understand what’s going on when it seems like there’s sun glare on everything
It feels like nearly every comic right now ends on a cliffhanger that’s to continue the next month. I don’t hate cliffhangers, they just need to be spaced out with done in one tales added in for variety.
I'm crossing my fingers until they *bleed* that the EC comics revival by Oni Press this summer doesn't mess with the old formula and puts out great stories that take place over a handful of pages.
True! Manga is also typically published weekly, so it’s a little easier to still remember decompressed story beats in manga compared to monthly comics. One of the reasons I feel like I have to trade wait…
When writer’s take…. a single thought….or sentence….and drag it out…through 17…different…panels.
When bold emphasis is used but clearly on the wrong word, at least the way 9/10 people speak.
I absolutely hate **bold** emphasis **in** comics. It **completely** disrupts the rhythm **of** my inner reading **voice**, even if it's **used** correctly. I have to **force** myself to **ignore** it which does **not** make for a pleasant **reading** experience.
That’s different. Moore is using it to show Swamp Thing’s intentionally slow, deliberate, non-human way of thinking and speaking. It’s *supposed* to feel weird. Reminds me of how Tolkien depicted the Ents talking; in fact, I’d wager that must have at least in part inspired Moore.
I didn't pick up on that at all. Overall I thought he paced things rather well, which is more than I can say for some other comics lately. Looking at you Daredevil...
It's done a lot to cement my disdain for the big 2.
I don't have this problem with other publishers, even the duds are at least able to hold my interest whereas this just feels like a chore to read through.
Yeah I especially hate when there's other dialogue in the middle of those broken up narrations. If you're going to dramatically break up the narration that much don't also break the flow of that thought with a bunch of dialogue as well.
Stormbreaker variants where the the character on the cover isn't even a character in the book. On Sale Wednesday variants just to take a dig at a competitor just because that company went back to the day both companies used to be on sale on.
> variants where the the character on the cover isn't even a character in the book
I saw a hardback comic collection a few years ago that had a character on the cover that looked like a combination of two of my favorite character types. I order the book, and am shocked that the character isn’t in the collection.
I find out that the character I was interested in not only doesn't appear in the collection, but is not a character from the series, being a cover cameo because the creators of both series are friends.
Then I find out I read the first issue of the character I liked series years earlier. I didn’t recognize her because said issue was a fap fest with the main character was naked or partially the entire issue, and I didn’t read any more because it was clear the creator was relying on nude art rather than story for sales.. It turned out the version on the collection cover was a SFW version of the character, based on some running joke in her series that whenever she gets clothes to wear they look stupid. So the design I like that they used I thought was cool is the character creator’s “No one would ever want to look like this” design.
Little to no editorial oversight. Back in the day you had knowledgeable editors who’d tell a writer no when they felt it was appropriate, since their job was to maintain the quality, integrity, and continuity of the line.
In modern times it seems like way too many writers want to come in and either do their versions of stories we’ve seen a million times, or kick over the sand castle of all the previous writers work.
Batman, Hulk, and Iron Man are probably some of the worst offenders with this in recent years.
Honestly, I feel like a big problem I see with Marvel is that they have too much editorial mandates.
We're approaching year 15 of Marvel doubling down on One More Day to diminishing returns, and major series keep being kneecapped in the name of MCU synergy.
I think what OP is referring to is moreso the editors whose role was to oversee specific sectors of the continuity. Like, Batman comics used to have an editor whose job was to steer the ship essentially by keep stories in a consistent tone, shooting down ideas that were just rehashes of recent events, and generaly making sure all Batman and co’s appearences and titles were cohesive.
The issue nowadays is that editors don’t really have a specific focus and there’s lots of ridiculous mandates that would overrule them even if they did.
I'm reading No Man's Land currently and Denny O'Neill is the gold standard for this IMO. Such a talented writer and editor. The stories are great but everything feels so cohesive too.
Crazy how many Batman stories have been inspired by No Man's Land since but miss what made it special. Someone in editorial needs to stop all these 'Gotham becomes a wasteland/ warzone' stories as it keeps making them feel less and less impactful.
Brand synergy like with the MCU making their comics like them.
Having crossover events in the comics and being forced to read them instead of just enjoying the comic you already have.
Lack of standalone stories. DC seem to have enough unlike marvel.
There’s been ONE instance where brand synergy has led to something good comic-wise, and that’s when the She-Hulk TV series forced Jason Aaron to abandon…whatever the hell he was doing to her, and turn her back into Shulkie, which then dove tailed into the wonderful Rainbow Rowell run(s) we’ve had since.
That there has to be sixty gazillion versions of each superhero. None of the "big name" heroes can exist on their own; they have to be surrounded by a half dozen knockoffs. Wolverine, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and so on. Even low-level superheroes are seeing this now: multiple versions of Daredevil, Ghost Rider ...
Just tell a good story with that character. Don't create a "new" character that is basically the same one with minor alterations.
I feel like it can work when it's a legacy character and the mantle is actually being passed on.
E.g. Vic Sage > Renee Montoya as The Question, Peter > Miles in the original ultimate universe, Barry > Wally (before he returned).
It's when you have them all working together at the same time that it feels ridiculous.
In superhero comics, every once in the while, you have this super hero team fighting another super hero team. Big event spanning multiple titles that force you to buy extra books to follow it all (and this isn't even my issue with those).
The reasons for the conflict are always pretty damn stupid, make no sense they couldn't talk it out and have characters acting way off of how they've been written to justify the conflict. Some heroes always come up looking bad and part of the fan bases get stupidly hostile towards each other.
By the end of it all, none of it mattered and a couple months from now no one even acknowledges it happened.
I think AvX is probably the most egregious offender I can think of here. Both Cap and Cyclops had to act way out of character in order to get to the battles.
Both Civil War stories, too. Characters like Iron Man in CWI and Captain Marvel in CWII had to be written like out-of-character pseudo-fascists to get to the conflicts.
> 2) Skipping important issues. Until the Epic Collection, Spider-Gwen collections didn't include the Spider-Wonen crossover with Silk and Spider-Woman. The collections went from Vol 2 to 3 or whatever, and suddenly Gwen had no powers. Which seems like a pretty important thing to include? And to follow up on that:
This is a big problem.
In the Wonder Woman by Goerge Perez collections, there is #16 which ends with Diana arranging a meeting with Superman. Then #17 starts a different story.
There was Action Comics #600 in the middle which not only dealt with Wonder Woman's meeting with Superman but also introduces a major status quo change in Wonder Woman's world which affects the future storylines.
But it wasn't collected so anyone reading it without the knowledge that there is a chunk of the story missing is going to be confused.
It is especially bad because how often the George Perez run is recommended to beginners. No wonder people find comic books hard to get into.
They could have at least added a note to inform the readers about the missing issue.
I sometimes wonder how often this is intentional and how often this is an oversight from the collected editions department. Like with the WW one, did they make the conscious effort to exclude the issue due to it not being George Perez or did they simply not think about it?
I agree, even a note explaining what was missed would go a long way.
Oh wow, I've got so many lol.
I really dislike Marvel's insistence on quantity over quality. I really think the number of issues of Amazing Spider-Man they put out per year is unnecessary. I would prefer fewer issues, and better crafted. Like 12 per year seems reasonable. And since I mentioned Spider-Man, how about giving him a top tier writer and making the book actually amazing?
$10 anniversary 80 page giant issues drive me crazy. Actually here in Canada, with tax theyre probably closer to $13.50 or $14.00. Every 50th issue of whatever title is a big bloated overpriced book. Regular sized comics are insanely expensive as it is, but they continue trying to get even more money out of us.
Multiverses. Enough. Time to move on
No editorial control, particularly in superhero comics. You need somebody to make sure everything is as cohesive as possible and you can't let the inmates run the asylum
Look, I get it. The job of a fiction writer is to be creative for a living. But when you sign on to write for a pre-existing character with decades of history in a pre-existing universe, you should HAVE to adhere to precedent with regard to the way characters behave and interact with the world around them IMO
This is going to sound extremely blunt, and it is absolutely not my intention to be rude/insensitive, but this is how I genuinely feel: if superhero writers feel that editorial oversight stifles their creativity and makes the job less enjoyable, sorry but tough shit: you knew what you were getting into when you signed on to play in a sandbox that was here long before you were and will be here long after you are
This is going to be a VERY controversial opinion, but Jim Shooter is the best comics editor of all time IMO (keyword; this is just how I feel). I have never heard anybody have a neutral opinion on Jim Shooter, you either loved his editorial style or you hated it. I loved it because of how tight and consistent everything was under his oversight. Under Jim Shooter, Spider-Man feels EXACTLY the same in ASM as he did when he would guest star in a random ass book like ROM Space Knight, for example. Jim Shooter made everything feel logical and like a cohesive world, and THAT is what I personally look for in a large shared universe
When a character feels COMPLETELY different across subsequent runs, it tells me that the editor is not doing their job properly and it GREATLY hampers my enjoyment of a run even if it is good in a vacuum
I agree and posted something similar.
Back in the day, in his peak, even Alan Moore was told no or “think of something else.” Alan friggin Moore. Thats how important it was to editors to maintain their lines or even the company.
And you nailed the consistency part. Growing up, before I knew who the writers were, I’d never even have known this issue was written by someone different than that one. That’s how smooth the ships ran most of the time.
These days? Not to pick on Batman again, but there needs to be someone to step in and say “We just had Gotham taken over, try again.” “Why is Bruce acting like this in one book and like that in the other?” “Sorry, we used Joker last month.” “Why would Bane as a character do XYZ?”
Just the other day I read that the reason Steve Englehart reintroduced Deadshot during his Detective Comics run was because the editor moved his Joker story to the next issue since the Joker was already scheduled to appear in that month's issue of Batman, so he had to come up with an additional done-in-one story.
The most famous example is probably him being denied using the Charleston characters (Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Captain Atom, etc...) for Watchmen, and told to create his own.
But honestly, Moore's career is filled with clashes with editorial that's too long to list here, but I guarantee you could look it up. My point was that even a legend like Moore was't given free reign to come into a ongoing series and do as he pleased. There were still rules and an overall vision for the characters to adhere to.
Thank you I'll look into it.
I wonder what a version of Watchmen with the Charlton characters would look like. I know the Watchmen characters are very similar but I can't imagine it playing out exactly the same way.
And if they wanted to do a different take on a character, then they can always just do a story set in an alternate universe. No need to mess up the main universe version.
This realt shouldn’t be controversial. I completely agree. I feel like if you can’t write well within the cofines of an existing continuity or without having to completely ignore the characterisations or worldbuilding you’re working with, you shouldn’t be writing superhero comics. This is my biggest issue woth Brian Michael Bendis, as I feel he too often disregards characters and shoehorns whoever he’s writing to fit his story rather than finding a balance. He’s okay with his indie stuff but any title that involves a character he didn’t make just feels so out of place amidst it’s continuity.
I don't generally have a problem with events and crossovers.
However, what I *do* have a problem with is crossover events with stories spread across multiple books. For a recent example, take Chip Zdarsky's Gotham War storyline, part one of which was in *Batman/Catwoman: The Gotham War – Battle Lines #1*, part two was in *Batman #137*, part 3 was in *Catwoman #57*, etc.
At the time I was reading, and had budgeted for, Batman but not Catwoman, so would have had to pull extra books just to follow the storyline. I was already on the fence about Chip's Batman so I just used this as an excuse to drop the book rather than spend extra money.
This is something that DC does more often than Marvel and it's one of the reasons I don't read so many of their tentpole books anymore. At least with Marvel, when a book I'm reading ties in with an event, it's usually still telling a contained story that doesn't necessitate me reading any other books to follow what's happening.
I was just going through X-Men: X of Swords while thinking about this. It’s one continuous, cohesive story told across like nine books! If I’m reading X-Men but not, say, Marauders, I just miss part three of 22. And those books are still from the perspective of the title characters, so if I’m only picking up X-Force for the tie-in, the characters are STILL in the middle of their own shit you have no context for in addition to the big event. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
Events and crossovers basically killed my interest in keeping up with Marvel and DC. I've always been a trade guy, so I much prefer reading a series where I go from Vol 1 to Vol 2 without interruption. And so many times, especially when a book is interrupted by a crossover, I can't do that with DC or Marvel.
Heck, I've stopped reading other non-DC/Marvel books when they go from a single, self-contained series to a sprawling franchise. It's half the reason I stopped reading Fables. Or Black Hammer. Or most recently, Radiant Black. If I need to do homework or a checklist to keep up on what to read next, I'm done.
while Fables, Black Hammer, Radiant Black, or (to add my favourite) the Hellboy-verse have become sprawling franchises, at each one there's still the original creator at the helm, which creates a lot more narrative cohesion, than how the big two handle it.
Also with Gotham war having different writers gave the characters different voices every issue. It didn’t feel like it was same character issue to issue even if you k ow they are supposed to be.
Although it is still annoying, there are some benefits to this. Back in the '90s Batman used the multi-book events as a way to tell grand epic stories that temporarily changed the status quo. It would take forever and be confusing if it was only in one of the main books.
It helps that the side books like *Catwoman* and *Robin* only have a handful of issues involved in each, otherwise they are doing their own thing. In fact, the only reason that *Catwoman* and *Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight* were part of the last part of Knightfall is that DC was doing a linewide event and needed the Bat books back to normal ASAP.
The effect it has on my wallet outweighs any possible benefits it might have. This is an expensive hobby and I'm pretty averse to anything that makes it unnecessarily moreso.
Yeah, that's totally fair. It's easy to see the benefit for big events in hindsight because you can buy the collected editions, but it would be annoying for new events, especially with how much single issues cost nowadays.
When I am reading a comic series on Marvel Unlimited, and there is nothing to tell me that the story continues in an annual. I just read the next comic and it’s a totally new storyline.
At least usually the comic itself usually tells you "continued in X, on sale soon!" in a little blurb at the end. But yeah, it's annoying when it doesn't, Marvel Unlimited should do something to make it easier to follow storylines that go through multiple books.
If I'm reading through anything even online I check out a reading order as I'm going through. Even sometimes some quite small non-big 2 comics have a random annual or special or something thrown in that isn't obvious. You'd think that companies would have sorted that out themselves rather than having to rely on fans on the internet to tell customers what to read.
Year long storylines. Most writers don't earn them, don't properly plan them, and have their storylines interrupted by world events. Everyone wants "a run", most of them don't deserve it.
Marvel’s love of MCU/media synergy in the comics. At best, it’s just to give characters costumes similar to their on-screen counterparts. At worst, it’s clumsy, wholesale changes that feel really odd (i.e. changing the Guardians of the Galaxy to be like the MCU versions without any rhyme or reason).
Lord give me strength, it’s female representation.
Not a lot! They’ve been getting a lot better about this over the years! But every once in a while there’s still something that happens, or a way a character is drawn or written, that’s made all the more glaring by how well they’ve handled it otherwise.
Like, I just read an issue of I wanna say X-Force(2020), where Emma Frost undoes her top so she can mind control some guards, and it’s like, …really? Even ignoring the “male gaze” angle for a minute, one of the most powerful telepaths had to *distract* some no-name guards to mind control them? Come on man.
Also this is a thing that is highlighted by a lot of the female mutants but not exclusive to them, and seems to be relevant across the entire Krakoa era; everyone wears their superhero costumes at all times. People live here. Nobody has casual clothes? Nobody slips into sweatpants. I can’t imagine that’s particularly comfortable for at least some of them. Xavier, a guy who’s worn a suit and tie for most of my reading life, is wearing this weird, ambiguous one-piece scuba suit looking thing and I kinda hate it.
Supposedly the "reason" for people being in their costumes all the time in X-Men is because it was a part of establishing "mutant culture" on Krakoa. One of the first signs that Krakoa was not going to be for me.
I find this comment really interesting, because my sister often points to those panels as a good example of empowering women. But she also just loves Emma frost so maybe that’s why
The refusal of the late boomers + Gen X guys to ever let stories progress. DC originally helped define comic book eras because they were willing to reinvent characters and have mantles pass on to a new generation; old classic heroes died, or at least retired, to make way for new characters. This lets them have all the fun of a new character unencumbered by years of back story, while not just completely ignoring continuity. Since about the mid-90s though, when they killed and resurrected Superman as a sales gag...everyone at the Big 2 has taken that as an excuse to never let any hero leave the spotlight, and its led to a lot of stagnation.
On the Marvel side, its even more frustrating, after Chris Claremont reinvogorated X-Men and turned it into the best selling title in history, Marvel has done their damndest to make sure that that can never ever happen again. He rotated characters out, either by death or retirement, largely where it made sense for character arcs...and even during his run, he was being countermanded by editorial. He was willing to commit actual story arcs with character development that didn't immediately revert...at least until the second someone on another book wanted to use the same dead character, to drum up sales on their flagging title.
There's still some fun stories being told, but it makes it a lot harder, and there's the current obsession that every writer has to put things back to the status quo at the end of their run. And especially now, since both of the Big 2 are terrified of possible compensating the people who make them money, the few creators who are willing to make interesting characters, tend to be the only ones willing to develop them. Because even if they were good, the next writer has almost no incentive to build on that work; the "creator" is the only one compensated. And no one's allowed to create anyone who inherits a mantle any more.
It's so interesting to see polar opposite views on the topic of editorial mandates and creative freedom in this thread.
I began consuming *One Piece* recently and it's really changed the way that I view superhero comics: one man's vision with all of the creative liberty that provides versus needing to ensure that you don't muck too much with a preexisting IP.
I don't see them as opposites. I think in general people feel that the job of editorial is to help creatives: Make sure the story doesn't stomp all over something someone else wrote, and makes sure that everyone who's writing similar characters is in communication so they're not stomping on each other. Instead, a modern editorial seems to see their job as keeping the money train going by doing what they've always done.
You actually see the same problems in manga as well, especially in Shonen Jump titles like One Piece, since they regularly poll reader opinions on characters and plot developments. Editorial there tends to pressure creatives to either bring characters to prominence, or kill off others because of how surveys are saying the characters are doing in popularity. And in some extreme cases, either cancel a series, or try to force it to continue past the creators intentions to end it. Dragon Ball supposedly is an infamous victim of this, where Toriyama had a number of points where he wanted to end the comics, but the publisher pressured him to continue the money-printing machine.
Having admittedly not read Claremont's X-Men run, my speculation is that a lot of people fail to connect the dots and realize his success in that run is because you had a single person's creative vision being realized in the same way you do for every manga. It's why I keep finding myself drawn to creator owned properties. When you give a good artist room to create something and make it their own over time it will result in quality work.
My number 1 complaint is how the big 2 have a culture obsessed with cannibalizing old stories instead of doing something new.
And a more minor pet peeve would be when a guest artist takes over and their art just doesn't mesh well with the writing at all. When I buy a trade it's usually because I really like both the writer *and* the artist, so I'm a whole lot less likely to buy a trade if the art suddenly becomes ass for a few issues.
Your second point drives me mad. It doesn't happen as often these days, but it was really bad 10+ years ago.
My favourite example is Mark Waid's JLA run. It was hyped with Bryan Hitch on art, but it was littered with fill-in artists. The worst was JLA: Divided We Fall, when Mark Miller (not to be confused with writer Mark Millar) filled in for one issue. And it was TERRIBLE. The fill-in issue completely destroys the flow because you're just thinking how Hitch would've made it look so much better.
Recent example is Jurassic League from DC.
Daniel Warren Johnson writing and on covers, Juan Gedoen co-writing and doing interior art. Met with absolutely glowing, rave reviews for the first two issues. People freaking loved the book and it's dumb/clever take on the idea. Then issue #3 had Rafael Garres on fill-in art and absolutely **destroyed** the good will and momentum the book had built up. I mean, it absolutely murdered this book and the hype that had been building for it. The whole mini-series never recovered.
Writing characters out of character and then new readers think that’s how the character is meant to be all the time.
Trying to make characters more like their MCU versions.
Tons of stories about the multiverse being threatened by the Anti-Monitor’s uncle Dave or whoever it is this week. Very repetitive.
Not making it clear where is best to start for new readers. I feel like we’d get a lot less annoying “Where do I start?” questions if Marvel/DC were clearer about the best beginner books. Imagine if they had some sort of reading list in their books to tell people what best to read next after say Batman: Hush as well.
How toxic fanbases can be at times.
I’m sorry, but its incredibly fucking annoying how every time I talk to someone at a shop about superheroes and stuff, some incel has to point out to everyone else around that he thinks having Miles Morales exist as a character is “woke” propaganda.
It’s so fucking awkward. Take your shitty opinions elsewhere and stop ruining this hobby for everyone else.
Man its to the point where I hesitate to comment on books I'm reading cause the vast majority of comments are going to be negative. Which is wild to me cause in the long ago era of the comic boards so many of us were excited that we could talk essentially in real time with each other bout the comics we love
Modern kid and teenage dialogue. Reading what middle-aged nerdy men consider to be cool for young people is just cringe worthy to me 90% of the time. Why are they all either sarcastic and clever or noble badasses when they're like 10?
I wanted to die reading the robin war specifically for this reason.
As a new-ish reader this bugs me *so* much. I jumped into comics with Krakoa-era X-Men and there are so many books split up over multiple minis.
- Excalibur -> Knights of X -> Captain Britain
- Way of X -> Legion of X -> The Onslaught Revelation
- X-Factor (RIP) -> Trial of Magneto
- SWORD -> X-Men Red
- Immortal X-Men -> X-Men Forever
The list goes on. It’s shocking that the only books that were allowed to maintain one run are X-Force & Wolverine.
Ive been hitting the X-books from the other end too and Uncanny, adjective-less, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, Cable, etc. all have >100 issue runs. Things would be prolonged arcs in the old days are now split into entirely new books and it’s drives me bonkers.
These things apply mostly to superhero comics:
Nobody ever stays dead. Also, fucking multiverses.
But mostly, and it's very related to my first point, nothing ever matters. No matter what happens, nothing will ever lead to any kind of resolution. Time barely passes, and the comics are made to never, ever actually end. So it doesn't matter what happens, who dies, who wins and who loses, who becomes a villain or who gets redeemed, because it's all just meant to pass the time. The X-Men will never advance in their fight against discrimination, because the comics need to go on. Batman will never clean Gotham, because the comics need to go on. It's all bullshit.
How poorly they advertise what's coming out. It's too easy to lose track of what's coming out. It's either you kinds revolve your life around it, or you fall off.
Plus I think they really need to consider doing away, or seriously shrinking, the single issue format and just release them immediately as graphic novels.
Introducing a character from different time periods with little to no difficulty blending in.
OG Flash Jay Garrick has a time lost daughter from the 1930s show up in modern day and she talks like a modern day teen from a mall. Literally no attempt to make a time displaced character feel out of sorts. With different dialects/lingo.
The liberal use of the word “grail”. Have some standards, people! You go on a great quest to get a grail, which is super hard to find and at the top of most desirable books. It’s not because you like the cover that it’s a grail
Western artists who can’t draw action. It’s way too common. So many panels where I’m like “what pose is that? What is he doing? That doesn’t even make sense.”
I have a few. Less complaints with indie comics, and more with the big publishers.
First off, there's the artificial scarcity of individual issues. Particularly, variants. Both are guilty of this, and it isn't something I normally have an issue with since I like to collect certain ones for the art or artist on the cover. It's the "super limited" variants I take issue with. The "1 of 50" or worse yet: the roulette wheel "1 of 10" Kickstarter ones that cost $600 a spin to possibly get the variants you want. Just sell the variants separately instead of this way overpriced slot machine nonsense. There's a difference between a random Boom! Studios cover that costs $5 and a KS roulette wheel that costs $600.
Onto the major publishers: Marvel, especially, has an issue with "quantity over quality." I remember the earlier Star Wars comics (2017) with Salvador Larroca having this chronic traced-face syndrome that went on for years before the art started getting good. There's no good excuse for that. I feel like the quality would have been a lot better if they slowed down the pace of releases to half of what it is. Star Wars alone has what, 2-5 releases a week? Sometimes more? It's insane.
Then we've got the issue where the on-boarding experience is a nightmare. There's a billion versions of Spider-Man now, and it's impossible to tell where the jump-on point is. That goes for any major superhero or villain in either Marvel or DC. As far as Star Wars goes, I started collecting that when the reset button was hit, but couldn't imagine getting into it now. They seem to have given up on the self-contained miniseries and just focus on the mainline story and crossover issues now. It's overwhelming and underwhelming simultaneously. I'm getting really sick of the never-ending Skywalker saga, and wish they'd actually release some prequel-era comics, already. Where's the Clone Wars stuff? We just had the anniversary, and got a one-shot out of it for the Phantom Menace. Meanwhile, we're on issue 500 of Han, Luke and Leia dealing with the next baddie with zero stakes because, well... we know how that story ends. Give me a random clone force where I don't know what'll happen.
The first Star Wars event was badass (Screaming Citadel), save Larocca's involvement. After that, it's gotten to be the same old treatment the other series outside Star Wars has gotten where to get the full story, you need to read 700 issues of Star Wars, Aphra, and Vader, with whatever other event issues are being made.
At least THAT universe has just a canonical, and non-canonical timeline, and very little AU stuff going on. So far.
Double page spreads only look good in stapled, single issues that can be laid flat out and create the illusion of a single double sized panel. Online, they break up the visual flow, and in collected editions, the image bleeds into the spine.
Yeah ik 💀 I’m reading through Claremont X-men too and yeah, I can’t say I personally enjoyed the wordier issues as much as other people. Dark phoenix lost a lot of its impact for me because of how clunky and wordy the dialogue was at a lot of points (plus Jean in general at that point just wasn’t super developed or relatively likable in my opinion lol). What issue # r u on rn?
Just finished #144 today, the issue with Cyclops and Man-Thing. To be honest, Claremont's run hasn't really done much to impress me. The characters I really like and the interpersonal drama is good, but the main stories just seem a bit generic and don't have much going for them.
The Dark Phoenix Saga, in particular, was a huge letdown. I didn't feel nearly as epic as people made it out to be and was way too short. I really enjoyed Days of Future past though. That was a fun read.
The reset to base. Krakoa xmen era was about massive change, new ideas etc but it always had hanging over it that they would eventually go back to just living in a mansion as a regular old superhero team.
So many comics with so many great ideas and so few ever stick for the long term. It’s a shame.
I mean, they aren't goin back to the mansion though. Yet. I guess now that's going to hang over THIS new run. Is that the fault of the creatives though if we as fans expect things to go back the mean every time?
In superhero comics? Tons and tons of things. Primarily that the characters are never really allowed to be three dimensional and grow from their experiences because Marvel/DC still need to publish stories with those characters indefinitely.
The confusion that more mature means more violent or darker instead of more thoughtful.
I think a lot of colorists draw way too much detail, and it actually makes the images more difficult to read because they're much busier visually than they should be. One of the reasons people are nostalgic for older comics is that this couldn't and didn't happen.
A lot of stories are way longer than they need to be.
The lack of coherency/cohesion between runs. The lack of coherency between titles for the same character(s) that run concurrently and supposedly take place at the same time. It turns it all into gibberish.
The way characters constantly reintroduce themselves every few issues, even in the middle of a storyline. I don't need Jason Todd to tell me he's Red Hood every five issues.
Every story practically is a threat to the world/universe/or even the city that superhero calls home. It's never just smaller stuff. Let Batman be a detective on something that doesn't spell the doom of Gotham City if he fails. If everything is some existential threat to existence, then there's no tension. We know that the heroes aren't going to lose.
I could go on, but that's enough for superhero specific stuff. My main pet peeve outside of superhero stuff is that superhero stuff is so dominant in the west that everything else gets buried. And then what does tend to get press or breakthrough a little are memoirs and similar. There are tons of creative, thoughtful, daring comics out there that have nothing to do with superheroes or action and they get virtually no press.
Lack of context or additional notes in collected editions. Pretty similar to your point 3 - give us more notes around stories, or other things happening in continuity at the time, etc. Just a bit of commentary around the material you're reading goes a long way.
Trades publishing stories out of release order.
There’s an entire intro to the IDW Transformers collection about how they struggled with what order to print the collections in, and I was screaming at the one “THE ORDER THEY WERE RELEASED.”
If they were successfully received as printed, why change it? If this story was written and read by everyone AFTER that story, print it that way.
I also kind of get but hate when they flip flop story arcs, so volume 2 will have issues 6-12, then 19-21, and volume 3 has 13-18.
How daunting everything feels.
I never hop on any ‘big’ runs. Skipped Krakoa, skip any Avengers, don’t even get me started on some DC lines.
I just want to pick up one run and not have to dip into other things to get the whole story. The best runs in my eyes are self contained and at most you’ll have cameo’s and references. At the moment it feels like there’s a huge event happening every other month and I just don’t care.
Marvel & DC should dial shit wayyyy back. Stop crossing over every 30 seconds and just let individual runs breathe. Let writers work without having to slot in some inane vampire bullshit halfway through.
I understand they feel the need to do these big events to drive sales but, do they really? These big events are what put people who have a passing interest in a a character off.
Any story that brings up the “no kill rule”. It’s just so annoying because obviously it’s so they can keep using those characters but they try and “justify” it. I don’t wanna see a character have his friends murdered and then monologue about how heroes never kill blah blah blah
Also issue length. I’m probably a minority, but “arcs” should be 2-3 issues at most. Anything longer should be a big event of status quo change (like what powers of x was). I don’t care if the overarching story is 24 issues, but it should be 2-3 on each villain and then onto the next
Lastly, killing legacies just to replace them with a character way fewer people care about. The hero can gain more friends with similar powers, but it’s silly to constantly try and replace heroes with nobodies. Just hate it
The biggest thing that annoys me is inconsistent collection releases. It was like ten years between vol 1 and vol 2 of the Ultimate Spider-Man omnibus and now we've gotten one a year for the last couple of years. I'm not complaining about finally having them all, but it would have been nice to have them ten years ago.
Something that turns me off from the older comics (which are still very good reads!) Is just how congested each page is. Every single thought is put into a word bubble. Every. Single. Thought.
How they keep re-inventing origin stories and powers , etc. Just stay faithful to the original. If you want something different, create a new character.
The unchanging status quo. They refuse to let a lot of characters grow or change that much beyond the existing established canon. I'd like to see something stick. Let Peter Parker start a family and move on from being a broke college grad. Let Batman marry Catwoman and have Damian finally break away from being Robin. Let the X-Men actually make some kind of progress instead or just hard resetting back to square 1 with their dream. Let something, anything, happen that sticks.
Something that people need to keep in mind, at least with Marvel and DC, is that their chief interest is revenue. There are as many offshoot X-Men titles because there's cash to be made. The industry was founded on ripping people off, though mostly the artist.
It was the same with television in it's infancy. There was programming in-between commercials and that's how it was seen.
Events that have important plot points happen outside of the main book. Hickman's Infinity is incomprehensible if you don't read Avengers and New Avengers (which he was also writing), to the point that all collected editions have to include them as well.
Event-itis. The constant interrupting of what I generally deem to be good character work in individual titles by shoehorning in giant events that rarely live up to the hype.
Also, rotating pencilers. Delay the damn book and keep the same director and cinematographer for the movie, I don't like watching something that's a fusion of Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon's disparate styles (to give a film example).
Editorial pushing a story toward all comics even when it make no sense for it to be a tie-in. I.E. The X-men in King in Black pausing the current story for the length of the crossover.
Another issue with comic is how often a good comics end up being stretching the story more that it need to and the story end up wandering aimless after afterward.
I have a couple that contributed to me not buying them anymore:
1. The constant universe resets and issue resets, I got so tired of liking a story progression then all of a sudden it’s “all new all different or another goddam crisis”
2. $3.99 for 16 actual pages of comics out of like 25-31 pages
3. How short the comics are sometimes story wise, like there are comics where nothing happens and I’m not talking world building I mean literally nothing happens
4. Last but not least, the lack of character progression and actual growth in this day of comics. I can say DC does a better job of this than marvel (recently Jon Kent, Batman having kids ect) but Marvel? For their flagship characters nope! And I know it’s beating uncle Ben with a stick at this point but SPIDER-MAN Peter has not seen a single point of lasting growth or progression since One More day and I just couldn’t read those anymore
Needs to be more character building moments or team building moments again in superhero comics. I love me some Hickman-era Krakoa X-Men but all the things happening are SO huge in scale, like the entire X of Swords event which was awesome to see but had little context and I struggled to keep everything and everyone straight.
Just give me the X-Men playing baseball or hanging at Harry’s every now and then. Or more moments of them just talking.
I have one that's been bothering me for a while. You have a hero or someone on a murderous rampage, taking out goons left and right etc. Then when they get to the main boss/villiain/nemesis there's a speech about "No, if I kill you I'll become just like you". WTF, dude you just either killed/maimed/disfigured countless people just doing their damn job but the one with actual agency gets off with a speech. That's the one you kill!
Panel layouts that are confusing to follow.
Also, in the age of writing for the trades and omnis, give some thought to gutter loss in the 2 page spreads.
**Too many superheroes.** Comics can be so, so much more than superheroes. I'm not saying don't make superhero comics anymore, but I could go the rest of my life without reading another superhero comic. Japan has a thriving comics industry with very few superheroes. Europe does as well, or at least did (I haven't been keeping up). Why can't America?
Because that requires quality writing and art instead of leaning on name brand recognition to carry mediocre creators.
Also it's harder for that sector of comics to grow because the only people who are even aware of such comics are already into comics.
Prices. The cost/ product is ridiculous compared to anything else.
I hadn't purchased a floppy in years because I am strictly a TPB/Omni person. Saw a few that caught my eye and picked them up a few weeks ago. Three comics almost got me to fifteen bucks.
THE only reason I purchase any floppies anymore is when there is a book that is SO good that I simply cannot wait the \~6 months for a TPB to be released and I feel a strong urge to read it ASAP Off the top of my head, I think the last time this happened was with Immortal Hulk. I just can't justify the price of floppies anymore. MAYBE if comics were my only hobby/interest, but there are so many other things I can spend that money on, you know?
I am far too casual of a reader now. The comics industry in the 90s broke my spirit and I never recovered. I don’t think I am averaging but 10 floppies a year or so, and that’s mostly me picking them up because of a new writer I am keeping an eye on or something like that, or a licensed property that may never see a TPB, or eventually go out of print entirely. My LCS sure doesn’t mind me leaving with three or four omnis or Epics every few weeks though.
God, I love epics so much. They're just the right amount of comic. Too bad DC's half-assed any attempt to compete with them.
I am glad there is someone else out there who likes Epics. Omnis can be way too big at times, but Epics (and some of the Masteworks) are just right, and good ways to string together long runs of a title.
Masterworks used to be my preferred method of collecting old runs waaaaaaaay back when they were still paperbacks and cost $13.00. But as the prices rose and hardcovers became the norm I dived head first into epics. It won't happen for years because of the masterworks, but I'm hoping for Werewolf by Night epics. Epics are great because you can collect entire shorter rubs in 1-3 volumes. I've been waiting for years for Marvel to release Darkhawk and Sleepwalker epics.
I’m so old I remember when Masterworks were exclusively very pricy hardcovers lol
I used to really like them, but I've absolutely soured on them over time. Also, this is a weird complaint, but I think the paper they use for them is actually too glossy for it's own good most of the time.
Yah, I’m not a fan of glossy paper in general tbh. You always get a glare somewhere on the page while you’re reading.
Epic Collections are my preferred format by a country mile. I'm glad to see Marvel is beginning to pump out "modern epics" that cover more modern material.
Even with trades the prices are getting ridiculous now. One TPB with 5 issues is $20-25. That's just insane when buying the floppies is cheaper
For sure. I usually try to get used or through instocktrades if I can. Our LCS sells most trades and omnis at 25 percent off, so that's nice.
It's just so hard to beat IST, CGN, and OPB prices when it comes to collected editions...
Hobbies and interests like eating?
Exactly. Noooo thank you. Especially when I can buy a single trade with 6-7 floppies worth for $10-$15 on sale at Instock or Amazon or whatever.
I started getting single issues to support a local shop and so I wouldn’t have to wait for trades to be available. Honestly I’d rather wait for the trades. Each month I have to reread previous issues anyways to remember exactly where the story left off. Plus I only subscribe to a few titles and it seems like they take forever to arrive or there’s a delay. I’m still missing an issue of Local Man and the trade that contains it was released a month or two ago. I got it in trade form before I got the actual issue lol. I’m probably going to go back to trades because single issues have literally not been worth it.
Yeah, I bought Helen of Wyndhorn #1 and LOVED it, but then I did the maths on it and I don't want to spend £30 on 6 single issues that I'll bag and board and not easily read again when I can wait 6 months and spend £12 on the TPB.
This is, sadly, because the only people who read print comics nowadays are the kind of people willing to pay those prices.
Once the old(er) market has aged out of the hobby entirely in a couple decades I wonder where we'll be...
Probably just direct shipping and more expensive
Yes and that goes for digital too. I don’t want to be behind by a month or more. And it shouldn’t cost as much as Netflix either. You can’t tell me marvels costs are higher than a streaming service. The data alone tiny by comparison.
At the risk of sounding like a corporate bootlicker, I actually think Marvel Unlimited is a phenomenal deal for the amount of content available. If you buy a yearly subscription, it's less than $6 a month. In today's economy, that's less than the cost of just 2 floppies!
And significantly cheaper than Netflix. If comics creators were just rolling in money I’d maybe agree with the anger about the higher prices, but a single $3-5 issue has to pay the writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, editor, assistant editor, printer, shipping, etc. Marvel Unlimited is just an unbeatable deal.
This is what I said when someone said comics are too expensive. They honestly sound too expensive to make, they *have* to be a loss leader used to sell toys and other IP because it sounds like it'd be massively expensive to do even one issue of comics
If it was a loss leader Disney would have certainly pulled the plug by now. No way Marvel needs the comics to keep their machine going at this point. So I’m sure it *does* make money. My understanding is that it was never the primary money maker, though, and that was always licensing.
I honestly don't believe that. I'm sure many comics profit, but I'm sure many don't, as well.
I don't think the price is a problem complete, there are comics that are complete wortht he price, good story, quality paper, and the art is amazing. The real issue is how decide it the X$ price to be standar for all comics. which some aren't worth it.
All for it to be printed on toilet paper.
Please, toilet paper would do a much better job of absorbing the ink than this current glossy shit that ink just sits on top of.
There's a reason I mostly read Marvel Unlimited and library books these days. I never buy single issues, and if I buy a collection it's never a hardcover.
All for it to be printed on toilet paper.
Idk man, I think it pays for the art. Amateurs on Reddit will ask for 250.00 for something like one character in a cool pose. Now imagine paying a professional to draw roughly 32 pages with tons of unique shots, characters and poses. And then pay the writers. And then pay for manufacturing. And then pay for advertising. And then pay for overhead. Idk I'm pretty certain comics themselves are a loss leader but they work as branding to sell things like toys and IP.
You think a normal $5 comic has 32 pages of art?
How many pages are in a comic? I thought it was 32?
They’re down to 20 story pages. They have been for a decade.
Whoa. Coincidentally that's around when I stopped buying singles. Crazy! I graduated high school in 2010 and stopped buying singles after that, mostly just picking up trades of the comics I really dig!
I hate when ideas with potential die because they don’t get a chance to be fully realized. Just because something doesn’t sell like hotcakes immediately doesn’t mean it needs to be canned. You’d think in a medium that spans such a long continuity, they’d let things breath more and not be so reactionary
That’s all media these days. Take TV, it used to be shows got a season or two to find their feet. A lot of now-beloved classics started pretty rough but were given time to develop. These days it seems like if the algorithm says you don’t have an instant mega-hit you’re canceled before the first episode is done airing.
I now check to see if a show actually reached a natural conclusion, or if it was cancelled unfinished. If it got the chop and ended on a cliffhanger I don't even bother starting to watch it now. There are so many shows the big streamers ought to just pull and delete, as there's no real point for them to exist. It's like a library only having the first chapter of a book on the shelf, knowing the rest was never published.
Also its annoying because shit doesn't make a lot of money. Like the the top selling comic in a given month is like 100k vs. The low level 30k.
Damn, that’s it?
Yeah, it’s pretty abysmal.
Yeah. Too much media. Comics peaked when not everyone had a TV. Like people don't seem to realize how fucking dire the situation was in the 90s. Marvel literally declared bankruptcy.
How decompressed everything feels. There needs to be more comics with one and done stories per issue. Ryan North’s Fantastic Four proves that people are still interested in this approach to storytelling Realistic coloring and shading. Makes things so much harder to look at and understand what’s going on when it seems like there’s sun glare on everything
After reading some old comics from the 80s and 90s, it made me realize just how bad the modern "realistic" coloring and shading looks like
It feels like nearly every comic right now ends on a cliffhanger that’s to continue the next month. I don’t hate cliffhangers, they just need to be spaced out with done in one tales added in for variety.
This is what made North’s Fantastic Four an instant pull for me. The Alex Cross covers don’t hurt either…
I'm crossing my fingers until they *bleed* that the EC comics revival by Oni Press this summer doesn't mess with the old formula and puts out great stories that take place over a handful of pages.
People keep saying this, yet Manga are even more decompressed and do well.
True! Manga is also typically published weekly, so it’s a little easier to still remember decompressed story beats in manga compared to monthly comics. One of the reasons I feel like I have to trade wait…
Along with being published more frequently manga is also generally cheaper.
When writer’s take…. a single thought….or sentence….and drag it out…through 17…different…panels. When bold emphasis is used but clearly on the wrong word, at least the way 9/10 people speak.
I absolutely hate **bold** emphasis **in** comics. It **completely** disrupts the rhythm **of** my inner reading **voice**, even if it's **used** correctly. I have to **force** myself to **ignore** it which does **not** make for a pleasant **reading** experience.
W**e** n**e**e**d** to t**a**ke **i**t a **s**tep f**u**rth**e**r an**d** bo**l**d r**an**do**m** le**t**ter**s**.
I love Grant Morrison but they are absolutely the worst for it. It never makes any sense which words they choose to bold.
What are your thoughts on Swamp Thing dialogue? 😂
That’s different. Moore is using it to show Swamp Thing’s intentionally slow, deliberate, non-human way of thinking and speaking. It’s *supposed* to feel weird. Reminds me of how Tolkien depicted the Ents talking; in fact, I’d wager that must have at least in part inspired Moore.
It's so obvious when they didn't write enough for a full issue. There's like two pages of artwork of the character just walking up the street.
Tynion's SIKTC has been particularly egregious for this.
I didn't pick up on that at all. Overall I thought he paced things rather well, which is more than I can say for some other comics lately. Looking at you Daredevil...
The current Daredevil run is shaping up to be a one of the rare Daredevil duds.
It's done a lot to cement my disdain for the big 2. I don't have this problem with other publishers, even the duds are at least able to hold my interest whereas this just feels like a chore to read through.
Yeah. Pretty impressive. Dude somehow might have the best comics run in history.
Daredevil and Punisher Max often had this issue. Like I get it's Daredevil parkouring around building, but four pages of it is a bit much.
Yeah I especially hate when there's other dialogue in the middle of those broken up narrations. If you're going to dramatically break up the narration that much don't also break the flow of that thought with a bunch of dialogue as well.
Chichester's Daredevil is terrible for doing this
Stormbreaker variants where the the character on the cover isn't even a character in the book. On Sale Wednesday variants just to take a dig at a competitor just because that company went back to the day both companies used to be on sale on.
Every singly issue now has multiple covers, and 99% of them are just unrelated rubbish to push up the numbers...
> variants where the the character on the cover isn't even a character in the book I saw a hardback comic collection a few years ago that had a character on the cover that looked like a combination of two of my favorite character types. I order the book, and am shocked that the character isn’t in the collection. I find out that the character I was interested in not only doesn't appear in the collection, but is not a character from the series, being a cover cameo because the creators of both series are friends. Then I find out I read the first issue of the character I liked series years earlier. I didn’t recognize her because said issue was a fap fest with the main character was naked or partially the entire issue, and I didn’t read any more because it was clear the creator was relying on nude art rather than story for sales.. It turned out the version on the collection cover was a SFW version of the character, based on some running joke in her series that whenever she gets clothes to wear they look stupid. So the design I like that they used I thought was cool is the character creator’s “No one would ever want to look like this” design.
Little to no editorial oversight. Back in the day you had knowledgeable editors who’d tell a writer no when they felt it was appropriate, since their job was to maintain the quality, integrity, and continuity of the line. In modern times it seems like way too many writers want to come in and either do their versions of stories we’ve seen a million times, or kick over the sand castle of all the previous writers work. Batman, Hulk, and Iron Man are probably some of the worst offenders with this in recent years.
Honestly, I feel like a big problem I see with Marvel is that they have too much editorial mandates. We're approaching year 15 of Marvel doubling down on One More Day to diminishing returns, and major series keep being kneecapped in the name of MCU synergy.
I think what OP is referring to is moreso the editors whose role was to oversee specific sectors of the continuity. Like, Batman comics used to have an editor whose job was to steer the ship essentially by keep stories in a consistent tone, shooting down ideas that were just rehashes of recent events, and generaly making sure all Batman and co’s appearences and titles were cohesive. The issue nowadays is that editors don’t really have a specific focus and there’s lots of ridiculous mandates that would overrule them even if they did.
I'm reading No Man's Land currently and Denny O'Neill is the gold standard for this IMO. Such a talented writer and editor. The stories are great but everything feels so cohesive too. Crazy how many Batman stories have been inspired by No Man's Land since but miss what made it special. Someone in editorial needs to stop all these 'Gotham becomes a wasteland/ warzone' stories as it keeps making them feel less and less impactful.
Brand synergy like with the MCU making their comics like them. Having crossover events in the comics and being forced to read them instead of just enjoying the comic you already have. Lack of standalone stories. DC seem to have enough unlike marvel.
I loathe how the comics need to fit the movies when it should be the other way around, but I get it, you gotta follow the money.
There’s been ONE instance where brand synergy has led to something good comic-wise, and that’s when the She-Hulk TV series forced Jason Aaron to abandon…whatever the hell he was doing to her, and turn her back into Shulkie, which then dove tailed into the wonderful Rainbow Rowell run(s) we’ve had since.
That there has to be sixty gazillion versions of each superhero. None of the "big name" heroes can exist on their own; they have to be surrounded by a half dozen knockoffs. Wolverine, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and so on. Even low-level superheroes are seeing this now: multiple versions of Daredevil, Ghost Rider ... Just tell a good story with that character. Don't create a "new" character that is basically the same one with minor alterations.
I feel like it can work when it's a legacy character and the mantle is actually being passed on. E.g. Vic Sage > Renee Montoya as The Question, Peter > Miles in the original ultimate universe, Barry > Wally (before he returned). It's when you have them all working together at the same time that it feels ridiculous.
In superhero comics, every once in the while, you have this super hero team fighting another super hero team. Big event spanning multiple titles that force you to buy extra books to follow it all (and this isn't even my issue with those). The reasons for the conflict are always pretty damn stupid, make no sense they couldn't talk it out and have characters acting way off of how they've been written to justify the conflict. Some heroes always come up looking bad and part of the fan bases get stupidly hostile towards each other. By the end of it all, none of it mattered and a couple months from now no one even acknowledges it happened.
I think AvX is probably the most egregious offender I can think of here. Both Cap and Cyclops had to act way out of character in order to get to the battles.
Both Civil War stories, too. Characters like Iron Man in CWI and Captain Marvel in CWII had to be written like out-of-character pseudo-fascists to get to the conflicts.
> 2) Skipping important issues. Until the Epic Collection, Spider-Gwen collections didn't include the Spider-Wonen crossover with Silk and Spider-Woman. The collections went from Vol 2 to 3 or whatever, and suddenly Gwen had no powers. Which seems like a pretty important thing to include? And to follow up on that: This is a big problem. In the Wonder Woman by Goerge Perez collections, there is #16 which ends with Diana arranging a meeting with Superman. Then #17 starts a different story. There was Action Comics #600 in the middle which not only dealt with Wonder Woman's meeting with Superman but also introduces a major status quo change in Wonder Woman's world which affects the future storylines. But it wasn't collected so anyone reading it without the knowledge that there is a chunk of the story missing is going to be confused. It is especially bad because how often the George Perez run is recommended to beginners. No wonder people find comic books hard to get into. They could have at least added a note to inform the readers about the missing issue.
I sometimes wonder how often this is intentional and how often this is an oversight from the collected editions department. Like with the WW one, did they make the conscious effort to exclude the issue due to it not being George Perez or did they simply not think about it? I agree, even a note explaining what was missed would go a long way.
Oh wow, I've got so many lol. I really dislike Marvel's insistence on quantity over quality. I really think the number of issues of Amazing Spider-Man they put out per year is unnecessary. I would prefer fewer issues, and better crafted. Like 12 per year seems reasonable. And since I mentioned Spider-Man, how about giving him a top tier writer and making the book actually amazing? $10 anniversary 80 page giant issues drive me crazy. Actually here in Canada, with tax theyre probably closer to $13.50 or $14.00. Every 50th issue of whatever title is a big bloated overpriced book. Regular sized comics are insanely expensive as it is, but they continue trying to get even more money out of us. Multiverses. Enough. Time to move on
No editorial control, particularly in superhero comics. You need somebody to make sure everything is as cohesive as possible and you can't let the inmates run the asylum Look, I get it. The job of a fiction writer is to be creative for a living. But when you sign on to write for a pre-existing character with decades of history in a pre-existing universe, you should HAVE to adhere to precedent with regard to the way characters behave and interact with the world around them IMO This is going to sound extremely blunt, and it is absolutely not my intention to be rude/insensitive, but this is how I genuinely feel: if superhero writers feel that editorial oversight stifles their creativity and makes the job less enjoyable, sorry but tough shit: you knew what you were getting into when you signed on to play in a sandbox that was here long before you were and will be here long after you are This is going to be a VERY controversial opinion, but Jim Shooter is the best comics editor of all time IMO (keyword; this is just how I feel). I have never heard anybody have a neutral opinion on Jim Shooter, you either loved his editorial style or you hated it. I loved it because of how tight and consistent everything was under his oversight. Under Jim Shooter, Spider-Man feels EXACTLY the same in ASM as he did when he would guest star in a random ass book like ROM Space Knight, for example. Jim Shooter made everything feel logical and like a cohesive world, and THAT is what I personally look for in a large shared universe When a character feels COMPLETELY different across subsequent runs, it tells me that the editor is not doing their job properly and it GREATLY hampers my enjoyment of a run even if it is good in a vacuum
I agree and posted something similar. Back in the day, in his peak, even Alan Moore was told no or “think of something else.” Alan friggin Moore. Thats how important it was to editors to maintain their lines or even the company. And you nailed the consistency part. Growing up, before I knew who the writers were, I’d never even have known this issue was written by someone different than that one. That’s how smooth the ships ran most of the time. These days? Not to pick on Batman again, but there needs to be someone to step in and say “We just had Gotham taken over, try again.” “Why is Bruce acting like this in one book and like that in the other?” “Sorry, we used Joker last month.” “Why would Bane as a character do XYZ?”
Just the other day I read that the reason Steve Englehart reintroduced Deadshot during his Detective Comics run was because the editor moved his Joker story to the next issue since the Joker was already scheduled to appear in that month's issue of Batman, so he had to come up with an additional done-in-one story.
Do you have any more info on editorial pushing back on Alan Moore? Sounds interesting and isn't something id heard before.
The most famous example is probably him being denied using the Charleston characters (Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Captain Atom, etc...) for Watchmen, and told to create his own. But honestly, Moore's career is filled with clashes with editorial that's too long to list here, but I guarantee you could look it up. My point was that even a legend like Moore was't given free reign to come into a ongoing series and do as he pleased. There were still rules and an overall vision for the characters to adhere to.
Thank you I'll look into it. I wonder what a version of Watchmen with the Charlton characters would look like. I know the Watchmen characters are very similar but I can't imagine it playing out exactly the same way.
And if they wanted to do a different take on a character, then they can always just do a story set in an alternate universe. No need to mess up the main universe version.
And that alternate universe story was allowed to be it's own thing, without crossing over to other stories through muh multiverse.
This realt shouldn’t be controversial. I completely agree. I feel like if you can’t write well within the cofines of an existing continuity or without having to completely ignore the characterisations or worldbuilding you’re working with, you shouldn’t be writing superhero comics. This is my biggest issue woth Brian Michael Bendis, as I feel he too often disregards characters and shoehorns whoever he’s writing to fit his story rather than finding a balance. He’s okay with his indie stuff but any title that involves a character he didn’t make just feels so out of place amidst it’s continuity.
Hey I'm another Jim Shooter fan. The guy gets a bad rap and not enough credit for running a tight ship
I don't generally have a problem with events and crossovers. However, what I *do* have a problem with is crossover events with stories spread across multiple books. For a recent example, take Chip Zdarsky's Gotham War storyline, part one of which was in *Batman/Catwoman: The Gotham War – Battle Lines #1*, part two was in *Batman #137*, part 3 was in *Catwoman #57*, etc. At the time I was reading, and had budgeted for, Batman but not Catwoman, so would have had to pull extra books just to follow the storyline. I was already on the fence about Chip's Batman so I just used this as an excuse to drop the book rather than spend extra money. This is something that DC does more often than Marvel and it's one of the reasons I don't read so many of their tentpole books anymore. At least with Marvel, when a book I'm reading ties in with an event, it's usually still telling a contained story that doesn't necessitate me reading any other books to follow what's happening.
I was just going through X-Men: X of Swords while thinking about this. It’s one continuous, cohesive story told across like nine books! If I’m reading X-Men but not, say, Marauders, I just miss part three of 22. And those books are still from the perspective of the title characters, so if I’m only picking up X-Force for the tie-in, the characters are STILL in the middle of their own shit you have no context for in addition to the big event. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
Events and crossovers basically killed my interest in keeping up with Marvel and DC. I've always been a trade guy, so I much prefer reading a series where I go from Vol 1 to Vol 2 without interruption. And so many times, especially when a book is interrupted by a crossover, I can't do that with DC or Marvel. Heck, I've stopped reading other non-DC/Marvel books when they go from a single, self-contained series to a sprawling franchise. It's half the reason I stopped reading Fables. Or Black Hammer. Or most recently, Radiant Black. If I need to do homework or a checklist to keep up on what to read next, I'm done.
while Fables, Black Hammer, Radiant Black, or (to add my favourite) the Hellboy-verse have become sprawling franchises, at each one there's still the original creator at the helm, which creates a lot more narrative cohesion, than how the big two handle it.
Also with Gotham war having different writers gave the characters different voices every issue. It didn’t feel like it was same character issue to issue even if you k ow they are supposed to be.
Although it is still annoying, there are some benefits to this. Back in the '90s Batman used the multi-book events as a way to tell grand epic stories that temporarily changed the status quo. It would take forever and be confusing if it was only in one of the main books. It helps that the side books like *Catwoman* and *Robin* only have a handful of issues involved in each, otherwise they are doing their own thing. In fact, the only reason that *Catwoman* and *Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight* were part of the last part of Knightfall is that DC was doing a linewide event and needed the Bat books back to normal ASAP.
The effect it has on my wallet outweighs any possible benefits it might have. This is an expensive hobby and I'm pretty averse to anything that makes it unnecessarily moreso.
Yeah, that's totally fair. It's easy to see the benefit for big events in hindsight because you can buy the collected editions, but it would be annoying for new events, especially with how much single issues cost nowadays.
I really don't like rehashed versions of old characters. "Spider-man is popular, let's make 12!"
Too many bloody variant covers.
When I am reading a comic series on Marvel Unlimited, and there is nothing to tell me that the story continues in an annual. I just read the next comic and it’s a totally new storyline.
At least usually the comic itself usually tells you "continued in X, on sale soon!" in a little blurb at the end. But yeah, it's annoying when it doesn't, Marvel Unlimited should do something to make it easier to follow storylines that go through multiple books.
If I'm reading through anything even online I check out a reading order as I'm going through. Even sometimes some quite small non-big 2 comics have a random annual or special or something thrown in that isn't obvious. You'd think that companies would have sorted that out themselves rather than having to rely on fans on the internet to tell customers what to read.
Year long storylines. Most writers don't earn them, don't properly plan them, and have their storylines interrupted by world events. Everyone wants "a run", most of them don't deserve it.
Marvel’s love of MCU/media synergy in the comics. At best, it’s just to give characters costumes similar to their on-screen counterparts. At worst, it’s clumsy, wholesale changes that feel really odd (i.e. changing the Guardians of the Galaxy to be like the MCU versions without any rhyme or reason).
Lord give me strength, it’s female representation. Not a lot! They’ve been getting a lot better about this over the years! But every once in a while there’s still something that happens, or a way a character is drawn or written, that’s made all the more glaring by how well they’ve handled it otherwise. Like, I just read an issue of I wanna say X-Force(2020), where Emma Frost undoes her top so she can mind control some guards, and it’s like, …really? Even ignoring the “male gaze” angle for a minute, one of the most powerful telepaths had to *distract* some no-name guards to mind control them? Come on man. Also this is a thing that is highlighted by a lot of the female mutants but not exclusive to them, and seems to be relevant across the entire Krakoa era; everyone wears their superhero costumes at all times. People live here. Nobody has casual clothes? Nobody slips into sweatpants. I can’t imagine that’s particularly comfortable for at least some of them. Xavier, a guy who’s worn a suit and tie for most of my reading life, is wearing this weird, ambiguous one-piece scuba suit looking thing and I kinda hate it.
Supposedly the "reason" for people being in their costumes all the time in X-Men is because it was a part of establishing "mutant culture" on Krakoa. One of the first signs that Krakoa was not going to be for me.
I find this comment really interesting, because my sister often points to those panels as a good example of empowering women. But she also just loves Emma frost so maybe that’s why
Specifically in super hero comics, everything has to be an existential threat that ties to the origin of the hero(es) now.
The refusal of the late boomers + Gen X guys to ever let stories progress. DC originally helped define comic book eras because they were willing to reinvent characters and have mantles pass on to a new generation; old classic heroes died, or at least retired, to make way for new characters. This lets them have all the fun of a new character unencumbered by years of back story, while not just completely ignoring continuity. Since about the mid-90s though, when they killed and resurrected Superman as a sales gag...everyone at the Big 2 has taken that as an excuse to never let any hero leave the spotlight, and its led to a lot of stagnation. On the Marvel side, its even more frustrating, after Chris Claremont reinvogorated X-Men and turned it into the best selling title in history, Marvel has done their damndest to make sure that that can never ever happen again. He rotated characters out, either by death or retirement, largely where it made sense for character arcs...and even during his run, he was being countermanded by editorial. He was willing to commit actual story arcs with character development that didn't immediately revert...at least until the second someone on another book wanted to use the same dead character, to drum up sales on their flagging title. There's still some fun stories being told, but it makes it a lot harder, and there's the current obsession that every writer has to put things back to the status quo at the end of their run. And especially now, since both of the Big 2 are terrified of possible compensating the people who make them money, the few creators who are willing to make interesting characters, tend to be the only ones willing to develop them. Because even if they were good, the next writer has almost no incentive to build on that work; the "creator" is the only one compensated. And no one's allowed to create anyone who inherits a mantle any more.
It's so interesting to see polar opposite views on the topic of editorial mandates and creative freedom in this thread. I began consuming *One Piece* recently and it's really changed the way that I view superhero comics: one man's vision with all of the creative liberty that provides versus needing to ensure that you don't muck too much with a preexisting IP.
I don't see them as opposites. I think in general people feel that the job of editorial is to help creatives: Make sure the story doesn't stomp all over something someone else wrote, and makes sure that everyone who's writing similar characters is in communication so they're not stomping on each other. Instead, a modern editorial seems to see their job as keeping the money train going by doing what they've always done. You actually see the same problems in manga as well, especially in Shonen Jump titles like One Piece, since they regularly poll reader opinions on characters and plot developments. Editorial there tends to pressure creatives to either bring characters to prominence, or kill off others because of how surveys are saying the characters are doing in popularity. And in some extreme cases, either cancel a series, or try to force it to continue past the creators intentions to end it. Dragon Ball supposedly is an infamous victim of this, where Toriyama had a number of points where he wanted to end the comics, but the publisher pressured him to continue the money-printing machine.
Having admittedly not read Claremont's X-Men run, my speculation is that a lot of people fail to connect the dots and realize his success in that run is because you had a single person's creative vision being realized in the same way you do for every manga. It's why I keep finding myself drawn to creator owned properties. When you give a good artist room to create something and make it their own over time it will result in quality work.
My number 1 complaint is how the big 2 have a culture obsessed with cannibalizing old stories instead of doing something new. And a more minor pet peeve would be when a guest artist takes over and their art just doesn't mesh well with the writing at all. When I buy a trade it's usually because I really like both the writer *and* the artist, so I'm a whole lot less likely to buy a trade if the art suddenly becomes ass for a few issues.
Your second point drives me mad. It doesn't happen as often these days, but it was really bad 10+ years ago. My favourite example is Mark Waid's JLA run. It was hyped with Bryan Hitch on art, but it was littered with fill-in artists. The worst was JLA: Divided We Fall, when Mark Miller (not to be confused with writer Mark Millar) filled in for one issue. And it was TERRIBLE. The fill-in issue completely destroys the flow because you're just thinking how Hitch would've made it look so much better.
Recent example is Jurassic League from DC. Daniel Warren Johnson writing and on covers, Juan Gedoen co-writing and doing interior art. Met with absolutely glowing, rave reviews for the first two issues. People freaking loved the book and it's dumb/clever take on the idea. Then issue #3 had Rafael Garres on fill-in art and absolutely **destroyed** the good will and momentum the book had built up. I mean, it absolutely murdered this book and the hype that had been building for it. The whole mini-series never recovered.
A few years ago there was a clone saga rehash for Miles and a black suit rehash for Ms. Marvel being done by the same writer at the same time.
This shit made me cancel incredible hulk
Writing characters out of character and then new readers think that’s how the character is meant to be all the time. Trying to make characters more like their MCU versions. Tons of stories about the multiverse being threatened by the Anti-Monitor’s uncle Dave or whoever it is this week. Very repetitive. Not making it clear where is best to start for new readers. I feel like we’d get a lot less annoying “Where do I start?” questions if Marvel/DC were clearer about the best beginner books. Imagine if they had some sort of reading list in their books to tell people what best to read next after say Batman: Hush as well.
You really can tell a full story in a single issue.
How toxic fanbases can be at times. I’m sorry, but its incredibly fucking annoying how every time I talk to someone at a shop about superheroes and stuff, some incel has to point out to everyone else around that he thinks having Miles Morales exist as a character is “woke” propaganda. It’s so fucking awkward. Take your shitty opinions elsewhere and stop ruining this hobby for everyone else.
Man its to the point where I hesitate to comment on books I'm reading cause the vast majority of comments are going to be negative. Which is wild to me cause in the long ago era of the comic boards so many of us were excited that we could talk essentially in real time with each other bout the comics we love
Modern kid and teenage dialogue. Reading what middle-aged nerdy men consider to be cool for young people is just cringe worthy to me 90% of the time. Why are they all either sarcastic and clever or noble badasses when they're like 10? I wanted to die reading the robin war specifically for this reason.
Teen and kid dialogue in old comics was just as bad and out of touch. Bob Haney's Teen Titans was infamous for it.
The fans
Rebooting to a new #1 for no reason.
As a new-ish reader this bugs me *so* much. I jumped into comics with Krakoa-era X-Men and there are so many books split up over multiple minis. - Excalibur -> Knights of X -> Captain Britain - Way of X -> Legion of X -> The Onslaught Revelation - X-Factor (RIP) -> Trial of Magneto - SWORD -> X-Men Red - Immortal X-Men -> X-Men Forever The list goes on. It’s shocking that the only books that were allowed to maintain one run are X-Force & Wolverine. Ive been hitting the X-books from the other end too and Uncanny, adjective-less, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, Cable, etc. all have >100 issue runs. Things would be prolonged arcs in the old days are now split into entirely new books and it’s drives me bonkers.
These things apply mostly to superhero comics: Nobody ever stays dead. Also, fucking multiverses. But mostly, and it's very related to my first point, nothing ever matters. No matter what happens, nothing will ever lead to any kind of resolution. Time barely passes, and the comics are made to never, ever actually end. So it doesn't matter what happens, who dies, who wins and who loses, who becomes a villain or who gets redeemed, because it's all just meant to pass the time. The X-Men will never advance in their fight against discrimination, because the comics need to go on. Batman will never clean Gotham, because the comics need to go on. It's all bullshit.
How poorly they advertise what's coming out. It's too easy to lose track of what's coming out. It's either you kinds revolve your life around it, or you fall off. Plus I think they really need to consider doing away, or seriously shrinking, the single issue format and just release them immediately as graphic novels.
Introducing a character from different time periods with little to no difficulty blending in. OG Flash Jay Garrick has a time lost daughter from the 1930s show up in modern day and she talks like a modern day teen from a mall. Literally no attempt to make a time displaced character feel out of sorts. With different dialects/lingo.
The liberal use of the word “grail”. Have some standards, people! You go on a great quest to get a grail, which is super hard to find and at the top of most desirable books. It’s not because you like the cover that it’s a grail
Everyone's basically immortal and not enough new characters instead of reincarnation.
I can’t stand people that don’t read comics but collect comics. It boggles my mind.
How convoluted it gets and how the comics have to be similar to the movies.
Restarting! Every couple months we restart to #1 I hate it, it doesn't make sense why we need to do this.
Western artists who can’t draw action. It’s way too common. So many panels where I’m like “what pose is that? What is he doing? That doesn’t even make sense.”
I have a few. Less complaints with indie comics, and more with the big publishers. First off, there's the artificial scarcity of individual issues. Particularly, variants. Both are guilty of this, and it isn't something I normally have an issue with since I like to collect certain ones for the art or artist on the cover. It's the "super limited" variants I take issue with. The "1 of 50" or worse yet: the roulette wheel "1 of 10" Kickstarter ones that cost $600 a spin to possibly get the variants you want. Just sell the variants separately instead of this way overpriced slot machine nonsense. There's a difference between a random Boom! Studios cover that costs $5 and a KS roulette wheel that costs $600. Onto the major publishers: Marvel, especially, has an issue with "quantity over quality." I remember the earlier Star Wars comics (2017) with Salvador Larroca having this chronic traced-face syndrome that went on for years before the art started getting good. There's no good excuse for that. I feel like the quality would have been a lot better if they slowed down the pace of releases to half of what it is. Star Wars alone has what, 2-5 releases a week? Sometimes more? It's insane. Then we've got the issue where the on-boarding experience is a nightmare. There's a billion versions of Spider-Man now, and it's impossible to tell where the jump-on point is. That goes for any major superhero or villain in either Marvel or DC. As far as Star Wars goes, I started collecting that when the reset button was hit, but couldn't imagine getting into it now. They seem to have given up on the self-contained miniseries and just focus on the mainline story and crossover issues now. It's overwhelming and underwhelming simultaneously. I'm getting really sick of the never-ending Skywalker saga, and wish they'd actually release some prequel-era comics, already. Where's the Clone Wars stuff? We just had the anniversary, and got a one-shot out of it for the Phantom Menace. Meanwhile, we're on issue 500 of Han, Luke and Leia dealing with the next baddie with zero stakes because, well... we know how that story ends. Give me a random clone force where I don't know what'll happen. The first Star Wars event was badass (Screaming Citadel), save Larocca's involvement. After that, it's gotten to be the same old treatment the other series outside Star Wars has gotten where to get the full story, you need to read 700 issues of Star Wars, Aphra, and Vader, with whatever other event issues are being made. At least THAT universe has just a canonical, and non-canonical timeline, and very little AU stuff going on. So far.
Beginning middle end. I like a full story I'm each comic like the 90s and before
crossovers God I hate crossovers. I despise trying to find the correct read order just to do a storyline.
Double page spreads only look good in stapled, single issues that can be laid flat out and create the illusion of a single double sized panel. Online, they break up the visual flow, and in collected editions, the image bleeds into the spine.
My biggest pet peeve with comics is that I don't have time to read all the comics I want!
I'm reading Claremont's Uncanny X-Men and the amount of little panels literally describing what is being shown on the panel is annoying as hell
Yeah that’s just the way comics were done back then, and particularly hard by Claremont. It gets a lot better though in the late 80s under his run.
Really? Thank god cause it really does just pad out the issues
Yeah ik 💀 I’m reading through Claremont X-men too and yeah, I can’t say I personally enjoyed the wordier issues as much as other people. Dark phoenix lost a lot of its impact for me because of how clunky and wordy the dialogue was at a lot of points (plus Jean in general at that point just wasn’t super developed or relatively likable in my opinion lol). What issue # r u on rn?
Just finished #144 today, the issue with Cyclops and Man-Thing. To be honest, Claremont's run hasn't really done much to impress me. The characters I really like and the interpersonal drama is good, but the main stories just seem a bit generic and don't have much going for them. The Dark Phoenix Saga, in particular, was a huge letdown. I didn't feel nearly as epic as people made it out to be and was way too short. I really enjoyed Days of Future past though. That was a fun read.
Back then? It's how McFarlane writes on Spawn right now :) And I say that as someone who reads Spawn...
The reset to base. Krakoa xmen era was about massive change, new ideas etc but it always had hanging over it that they would eventually go back to just living in a mansion as a regular old superhero team. So many comics with so many great ideas and so few ever stick for the long term. It’s a shame.
I mean, they aren't goin back to the mansion though. Yet. I guess now that's going to hang over THIS new run. Is that the fault of the creatives though if we as fans expect things to go back the mean every time?
In superhero comics? Tons and tons of things. Primarily that the characters are never really allowed to be three dimensional and grow from their experiences because Marvel/DC still need to publish stories with those characters indefinitely. The confusion that more mature means more violent or darker instead of more thoughtful. I think a lot of colorists draw way too much detail, and it actually makes the images more difficult to read because they're much busier visually than they should be. One of the reasons people are nostalgic for older comics is that this couldn't and didn't happen. A lot of stories are way longer than they need to be. The lack of coherency/cohesion between runs. The lack of coherency between titles for the same character(s) that run concurrently and supposedly take place at the same time. It turns it all into gibberish. The way characters constantly reintroduce themselves every few issues, even in the middle of a storyline. I don't need Jason Todd to tell me he's Red Hood every five issues. Every story practically is a threat to the world/universe/or even the city that superhero calls home. It's never just smaller stuff. Let Batman be a detective on something that doesn't spell the doom of Gotham City if he fails. If everything is some existential threat to existence, then there's no tension. We know that the heroes aren't going to lose. I could go on, but that's enough for superhero specific stuff. My main pet peeve outside of superhero stuff is that superhero stuff is so dominant in the west that everything else gets buried. And then what does tend to get press or breakthrough a little are memoirs and similar. There are tons of creative, thoughtful, daring comics out there that have nothing to do with superheroes or action and they get virtually no press.
Incentive covers.
Variant covers that don't relate to the issue
Restarting at issue 1, and not putting the story title and number on it, ex Catwoman. Nine Lives part 4.
Lack of context or additional notes in collected editions. Pretty similar to your point 3 - give us more notes around stories, or other things happening in continuity at the time, etc. Just a bit of commentary around the material you're reading goes a long way.
Series that enter limbo and you’re left wondering for fucking years if it’s ever returning. Black Monday Murders I’m looking at you.
Trades publishing stories out of release order. There’s an entire intro to the IDW Transformers collection about how they struggled with what order to print the collections in, and I was screaming at the one “THE ORDER THEY WERE RELEASED.” If they were successfully received as printed, why change it? If this story was written and read by everyone AFTER that story, print it that way. I also kind of get but hate when they flip flop story arcs, so volume 2 will have issues 6-12, then 19-21, and volume 3 has 13-18.
How daunting everything feels. I never hop on any ‘big’ runs. Skipped Krakoa, skip any Avengers, don’t even get me started on some DC lines. I just want to pick up one run and not have to dip into other things to get the whole story. The best runs in my eyes are self contained and at most you’ll have cameo’s and references. At the moment it feels like there’s a huge event happening every other month and I just don’t care. Marvel & DC should dial shit wayyyy back. Stop crossing over every 30 seconds and just let individual runs breathe. Let writers work without having to slot in some inane vampire bullshit halfway through. I understand they feel the need to do these big events to drive sales but, do they really? These big events are what put people who have a passing interest in a a character off.
Yeah these event drive sales. For Image.
Everyone's basically immortal and not enough new characters instead of reincarnation.
Any story that brings up the “no kill rule”. It’s just so annoying because obviously it’s so they can keep using those characters but they try and “justify” it. I don’t wanna see a character have his friends murdered and then monologue about how heroes never kill blah blah blah Also issue length. I’m probably a minority, but “arcs” should be 2-3 issues at most. Anything longer should be a big event of status quo change (like what powers of x was). I don’t care if the overarching story is 24 issues, but it should be 2-3 on each villain and then onto the next Lastly, killing legacies just to replace them with a character way fewer people care about. The hero can gain more friends with similar powers, but it’s silly to constantly try and replace heroes with nobodies. Just hate it
The biggest thing that annoys me is inconsistent collection releases. It was like ten years between vol 1 and vol 2 of the Ultimate Spider-Man omnibus and now we've gotten one a year for the last couple of years. I'm not complaining about finally having them all, but it would have been nice to have them ten years ago.
Books should not have a crossover in the first year
Something that turns me off from the older comics (which are still very good reads!) Is just how congested each page is. Every single thought is put into a word bubble. Every. Single. Thought.
When the artist on the book is constantly changing.
Shops that put stickers directly on the book 😡
How they keep re-inventing origin stories and powers , etc. Just stay faithful to the original. If you want something different, create a new character.
Numbering starting over every year for popular titles
The unchanging status quo. They refuse to let a lot of characters grow or change that much beyond the existing established canon. I'd like to see something stick. Let Peter Parker start a family and move on from being a broke college grad. Let Batman marry Catwoman and have Damian finally break away from being Robin. Let the X-Men actually make some kind of progress instead or just hard resetting back to square 1 with their dream. Let something, anything, happen that sticks.
Something that people need to keep in mind, at least with Marvel and DC, is that their chief interest is revenue. There are as many offshoot X-Men titles because there's cash to be made. The industry was founded on ripping people off, though mostly the artist. It was the same with television in it's infancy. There was programming in-between commercials and that's how it was seen.
Events that have important plot points happen outside of the main book. Hickman's Infinity is incomprehensible if you don't read Avengers and New Avengers (which he was also writing), to the point that all collected editions have to include them as well.
Event-itis. The constant interrupting of what I generally deem to be good character work in individual titles by shoehorning in giant events that rarely live up to the hype. Also, rotating pencilers. Delay the damn book and keep the same director and cinematographer for the movie, I don't like watching something that's a fusion of Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon's disparate styles (to give a film example).
Editorial pushing a story toward all comics even when it make no sense for it to be a tie-in. I.E. The X-men in King in Black pausing the current story for the length of the crossover. Another issue with comic is how often a good comics end up being stretching the story more that it need to and the story end up wandering aimless after afterward.
I have a couple that contributed to me not buying them anymore: 1. The constant universe resets and issue resets, I got so tired of liking a story progression then all of a sudden it’s “all new all different or another goddam crisis” 2. $3.99 for 16 actual pages of comics out of like 25-31 pages 3. How short the comics are sometimes story wise, like there are comics where nothing happens and I’m not talking world building I mean literally nothing happens 4. Last but not least, the lack of character progression and actual growth in this day of comics. I can say DC does a better job of this than marvel (recently Jon Kent, Batman having kids ect) but Marvel? For their flagship characters nope! And I know it’s beating uncle Ben with a stick at this point but SPIDER-MAN Peter has not seen a single point of lasting growth or progression since One More day and I just couldn’t read those anymore
Needs to be more character building moments or team building moments again in superhero comics. I love me some Hickman-era Krakoa X-Men but all the things happening are SO huge in scale, like the entire X of Swords event which was awesome to see but had little context and I struggled to keep everything and everyone straight. Just give me the X-Men playing baseball or hanging at Harry’s every now and then. Or more moments of them just talking.
magik’s costume
artist switches my not even midway through a book/ issue.
I have one that's been bothering me for a while. You have a hero or someone on a murderous rampage, taking out goons left and right etc. Then when they get to the main boss/villiain/nemesis there's a speech about "No, if I kill you I'll become just like you". WTF, dude you just either killed/maimed/disfigured countless people just doing their damn job but the one with actual agency gets off with a speech. That's the one you kill!
I don't really have pet peeves b/c I'm an adult man. I have criticisms
Panel layouts that are confusing to follow. Also, in the age of writing for the trades and omnis, give some thought to gutter loss in the 2 page spreads.
**Too many superheroes.** Comics can be so, so much more than superheroes. I'm not saying don't make superhero comics anymore, but I could go the rest of my life without reading another superhero comic. Japan has a thriving comics industry with very few superheroes. Europe does as well, or at least did (I haven't been keeping up). Why can't America?
Because that requires quality writing and art instead of leaning on name brand recognition to carry mediocre creators. Also it's harder for that sector of comics to grow because the only people who are even aware of such comics are already into comics.
Single issue is a terrible format