Happy Fear Itself Eve!
I know It probably sounds silly to a lot of hardened veterans in 2011 to talk about an “event” comic like one of your more gift-laden holidays (though I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you an early Blessed Flashpointmas). This event in particular seemed to inspire a lot of post commenters to start a hotly competitive disaffectedness contest at the sight of the first preview image.
“Here we go again with the events. Ho hum. In the end, everything in the status quo will be exactly the same, including this complaint which I have cut and pasted from the witty rejoinder I left in 2008’s Countdown thread.”
“I skimmed the one-sentence plot summary and have decided that’s impossible for a talented writer and the best artist in the business to tell that story in an interesting way. PASS.”
“I don’t care about this at all, and for my money there is no better use of my time than clicking on the article to tell that to anyone who might be excited. A lot of people would use this time to hug their kids. A lot of people are losers.”
In the end, the prize went to someone who didn’t care so much, he just logged in to say that he didn’t even know what we were talking about. He got a box of Sour Patch Kids and some smirk polish.
I don’t care, though. I’m keen to see where this is going. As long as you stay off my cloud, you can cross your arms as hard as is comfortable. Enjoy preemptively deciding not to enjoy. And, okay, to be fair, you could hardly be faulted for a little skepticism; anyone who’s been hitting the comic shop for the last couple hundred Wednesdays has been burned. We all have our Civil War: Heroes For Hires, our Daredevil issues where the Beyonder pops in like the Great Gazoo and gives Matt Murdock his sight back for ten pages until he begs to go blind again. I may be sitting next to you at the Group Gripe in six or seven months. One of the things I find most exciting about Fear Itself is that, with two days left to go, I basically have no idea what it’s about. Something about hammers.
In an age when they're trying harder than ever to hype things up, nothing excites me more than not knowing. I love the prospect of reading a story that actually starts within its own pages for a change. Normally, that sort of clean slate is impossible. Particularly where Marvel is concerned, so many recent events have started in the previous year’s event or tied into five years of collective storytelling that skipping one would be like a car manufacturer not making seats a standard feature. “Oh, sure. The budget-conscious motorist can opt right out of those.”
(They always say “you don’t need to read the tie-ins to enjoy the event.” They don’t talk as often about what happens to the tie-ins if you decide the event isn’t for you. Imagine being a regular reader of Ms. Marvel or Fantastic Four when you were skipping Civil War. “So… America’s Sweetheart just woke up and became a tool of the fascist oppressor, I guess? Reed is the warden of a gulag now? Is this an issue of eXiles?”)
As someone who at least nominally has to pay attention to previews and press releases, the only way I usually get a pair of fresh eyes like this is by reading the faded and forgotten. After making him my pet character for a couple of years, I am finally working my way through the last twenty issues or so of ROM, for example. (If you don’t know ROM, you need to know ROM.) The more I read of ROM, the more I’m struck by how it does things you can almost only do in crossovers today, unless you’re Abnett and Lanning and you set your book 300 light years from the rest of the line.
For its first forty issues or so, ROM reads like a book that Tom Katers should be narrating to you through your earbuds. ROM is a purple-prosy spaceknight fighting shape-shifting Dire Wraiths around the world from his home base in small-town West Virginia (naturally), but he decides not to tell anyone what he’s doing. He’s trying to keep from freaking people out with the news that shape-shifters are among them; instead, he just freaks them out by constantly landing in their yards and massacring their neighbors. Just muttering “they were aliens” before flying away could have saved him a world of bullet-dodging, but not our ROM.
The book has some “body snatcher” horror elements and Serious Business in it, but by and large you’ll spend entire story arcs thinking, “Every panel of this book is a Great Moment in Comics History.”
Then, in issue #50, Bill Mantlo gets tired of f***ing around and just murders the entire supporting cast.
Kills every single one of them, on panel, then burns small-town West Virginia to the ground like he caught the book cheating on him with Micronauts. And Dire Wraiths don’t cuddle you to death, either. From this point on, the book is a nonstop godforsaken bloodbath. I don’t know what the Comics Code was for if this was kosher. This is two years before Watchmen and Dark Knight, mind you. I shudder to think what Bill Mantlo would have done with this in the “grim and gritty” era.
After he becomes one of the two remaining characters in the book, ROM goes public and Ronald Reagan declares total global war on the Wraith menace… again, without explaining at all to the apparently fainting-prone American people. (He may yet trade arms for Wraith hostages; I haven’t gotten that far yet.) At this point, anyone in 2011 can’t help thinking, “This would be a three-year, 198-book event epic today. This would be a maxi-series and 83 one-shots.” But ROM’s war is all but completely cordoned off in the pages of ROM, due in part to some help from a Marvel proto-crossover: it turns out none of the other heroes are around to cross over and help him because they’re all offworld fighting the Secret Wars. When I saw that page, I stood at my kitchen table and applauded a stack of stapled paper. Now that’s putting continuity to work for you, Billy boy!
It’s pretty rare to see anything like ROM’s arc happen in a major comic today. Someone must have told Mantlo he had 25 issues left; there’s no Wraith War in a book that doesn’t have a hard end. Unless the writer owns the book, of course, as anyone who read last week’s Walking Dead can attest. These days, you don't get to go All In unless everyone else is in on it with you.
Instead, we get Secret Invasions and Fear Itselves, and we complain if they tie into everything, and we complain if they come from out of nowhere. And that’s okay. Fun is fun. It’s going to be a good summer, even if West Virginia is unscathed come the fall.
Jim Mroczkowski is checking to see if GroupGripe.com is taken. Until it is, Twitter has it covered.
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Seriously, there needs to be a way for ROM to return.
My new years resolution is to enjoy stories for what they are and not worry too much. It was put to the test last weekend when I watched sucker punch. The story wasn’t great, but it was visually stunning. A year ago I’d have discribed it as a hollow cgi event. Fear Itself isn’t going to change the world, and probably won’t be mentioned in many of the books i read but Im going to try enjoy it for what it is
Ah Rom, loved that book. BTW, funny you mentioned how the other good guys were off on the Beyonders world fighting the Marvel SuperHeroes Secret Wars. The picture of Cap on this article makes me think of the end of Secret Wars, after Doom kills all the heroes but then accidentally brings them back. Cap is fighting with a shattered shield because Doom’s bolt from the blue shattered it. Cap “thought” the shield whole again at the end of the story after the heroes win. God, I loved the 80’s
“Enjoy preemptively deciding not to enjoy”
I feel like its become the fashion to be loudly critical/skeptical/negative about everything (comics etc.). Especially prior to really experiencing anything…..
the line about people hugging their kids made me choke on my coffe. well done sir. i’m excited about this one two, also because i have only the vaguest notion what its about. Blah blah god of fear, blah blah hammers, cue Fraction and Immomen genius happy fun time.
second attempt at comment
I know Rom is tied to the toy company. Does that stop Marvel from reprinting the issues? Even on Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited?
Am I correct in remembering that Rom shows up out of the armor at a Hulk family wedding?
Wouldn’t tomorrow be Fear Itself Eve?
I think people on the iFanbody message board say they’re tired of big events because…they’re tired of events. Do they speak for the majority? Obviously not, because these books sell like hotcakes.
However, unlike film or tv, you have a much smaller audience, so the opinions of what you might see as a “vocal minority” carry more weight. And just because someone doesn’t care about certain events or characters doesn’t mean they don’t care about comics. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be posting in the first place. Personally, I don’t think they’re tired, but rather frustrated with a medium they know can do better (case in point: “ROM”).
So ignore them if you want, but articles such as this that actively discourage comments you percieve as negative or apathic make things very uncomfortable for people who aren’t ready to jump on the bandwagon and might potentially turn a few away. I don’t think anyone wants that.
I imagine some of it has to be chalked up to the constant rotation of people who are just getting tired. Anyone who’s been reading comics for say…. over 3 or 4 years has probably hit a “comic fatigue” at some point or another. This justification is probably like my way to calm roadrage: if you think about a time when you’ve accidentally cut someone off when you’re having a bad day… statistically it’s wholly possible whenever you get cut off that it’s *that* person’s accident cause they’re having a bad day. Yeah, sometimes there’s just jerks, but you generally don’t know. All I know is it’s way happier over here on the rainbow and lollipops, glass half full side of understanding people rather than the judgey-judge “why don’t you think exactly like I do” side.
My approach to events? If it’s a creative team I’m excited about, or a character I’m particularly loyal to I’ll try that book, otherwise I just catch up with wikipedia. I know I tend towards obsessive collecting so I’ve had to force a very strict lackadaisical attitude mandate on myself.
I think the competitive disaffectedness thing stems from the way a lot of comic book fans (or rather, comic book fans that post comments) behave like scorned lovers.
Whether it’s justified or not, they feel like their hearts have been broken too many times, and so to show any emotion resembling affection for or interest in anything like the thing that broke their hearts might expose old wounds to new pain.
So they overcompensate with apathy. “Meh” is a defense mechanism. Sad for them.
I like Fraction and I love Immonen, so I’m on board for the main series.
FREE ROM!
Dear Marvel,
2 words : ROM ESSENTIALS.
Thank You.
If only Rom tied in to one issue of Fear Itself I would buy every issue/mini/one-shot just to show support.
I should take this and every other opportunity to point out that there are spaceknights and Wraiths all over Abnett and Lanning’s new “Annihilators” miniseries.
Isn’t Bendis using a space knight in something? I remember him commenting on them. Forget the context. It’s not like this is my job or anyth–
ROM is Bendis’ go-to nerdbaiting joke. God love him, any time someone asks him what he’s working on next, there’s a 60% chance he will say ROM.
I read the opener by Brubaker, I’ve listened to the interviews, I looked at the sketches. I’m not doing it.
I love Marvel. I love their events.
Still not buying this.