The iFanboy Letter Column – 01/23/2009!

Friday means many things to many people. For some, Friday means you have to spend the next 48 or so hours with your horrible horrible family, begging to go back to the sweet mind numbing sanctum of the corporate office. For others, Friday is the day you attend a possibly awkward group dinner.

At iFanboy, Friday means it’s letter column time.

You write. We answer. Very simple.

As always, if you want to have your e-mail read on the any of our shows or answered here, keep them coming – contact@ifanboy.com

 

---

I was wondering what you guys thought about comic reveals. For example, Red Hulk who is he? We still don’t know. On the other hand, in Dark Avengers Bendis reveals who the team is right away and moves on with the story. Do you guys love/hate the long drawn out reveals? Do you like reveals that don’t linger or do you have some middle ground? How does this influence your comic purchasing?

Jesse a.k.a JesTr

I think people make too big a deal out of these “who’s behind the mask?” reveals, and it sure feels like we’ve had a lot of them lately.  And it seems like if every reveal isn’t earth shattering most people are disappointed.

Story wise I don’t think they are always meant to be a big deal. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. It all depends on what serves the story that is being told. Occasionally these “who’s behind the mask?” mysteries exist just to introduce a new character or to bring back an old one. And sometimes these reveals happen to shake everyone to their core and change everything. But that’s not always the case. The two most recent reveals that I can think of were Iron Patriot being revealed to be Norman Osborn in the pages of Dark Avengers and Red Robin being revealed to be Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong in Robin. I don’t believe either reveal was meant to rock me to my core, I think they were just story telling devices. Hell, there was really no mystery at all to Iron Patriot, his identity was revealed right away. We were meant to be left in the dark until the writer wants us informed. Writing is sometimes about withholding information as much as it is giving it.

The problem usually comes when the companies seize upon the mystery because from a marketing standpoint nothing gets the tongues wagging like a good mystery and that creates buzz around a book which hopefully leads to higher sales.

These “who’s behind the mask?” devices don’t really affect my purchasing either way. I do like a good mystery, and I might seek them out if the book or characters interest me, but there are usually bigger factors at play deciding what I buy.

Conor Kilpatrick

 

---

Kevin Smith once said that comics are hard to write because they are all act two. I just finished New Krypton, a crossover that I genuinely enjoyed start to finish, and realized something. Geoff Johns is one of, if not the, best writers in the business, but this ending felt rushed. It wasn’t bad, and it came to it’s natural conclusion, but still felt anti-climactic and too short somehow. Then I thought back to all of the recent events from both Marvel and DC, and realized that I had this same feeling for most of those as well. Am I crazy, or is it that comic book writers aren’t that great at writing third acts because they so rarely have to do it.

Ryan from The OC

First of all, don’t call it that. Second of all, Kevin Smith doesn’t know a thing about finishing a comic, so I don’t know why anyone would take that advice. Okay, I’m kidding a bit, but he set himself up for it. To be more specific, he means mainstream superhero comics, not comics, because a comic is just a certain kind of story. Smith is referring to the idea that comics from DC and Marvel mostly have to keep the status quo going, and at the end of the story, you can’t kill Batman (which may not be true so much anymore).

But enough flippancy. You’re not wrong about Geoff Johns. There is no one working in classic ongoing superhero comic books who is better, certainly no one at DC Comics. In fact, it’s odd since we often hear so many other creators can’t wait to get away from the confines of those kinds of comics, but Johns seems to fit in that mold so well. It’s as if it’s what he was born to do.

I suppose that you could say, however, that the ending to New Krypton felt rushed, but I think that’s a bit of a misnomer. The “ending” I mean. The very nature of ongoing comic books is just that, they go on. Therefore, and ending will never really satisfy. Lately it does seem to be de rigeur to have one major storyline lead directly into another storyline, and so on, and on, and that can get tiring. But that’s just sort of the way it feels reading superhero comics. Luckily there are other kinds of books we can read, like mini-series, Elseworlds, maxi-series, and Vertigo books with long term, but finite stories. But if you’re looking for a big satisfying ending from a Geoff Johns book, I think you’ll be waiting for a long time, because the guy keeps thinking of new things to do, and one leads into the other, and it goes on, just like the lives of the characters in the story. It’s interesting that we expect these endings, as the ongoing nature of the books is more closely related to how our real lives are than stories with actual endings.

Then again, I wonder if it’s the nature of what the publishers find attractive in their writers today. I mean, what sells books? It’s the idea, the concept, the pitch. Put something together that sounds good in a solicit, and make it a relatively exciting set of covers, and the series is sold, even if the ending is less than thrilling. There’s no shortage of big idea guys who get by on that. Fortunately, I don’t think Johns is close to the worst offender with folks like Mark Millar, Grant Morrison (who has gotten better on the endings to be honest), and Jeph Loeb out there setting up big stories, and moving on to the next idea before completing he play on the first story. But then, that’s the nature of the game, and as a wise man once suggested, I do not hate the players, but in fact, the game.

Josh Flanagan

 

---

Every month when Marvel’s new solicitations come out, the first thing I check is to see if there is any sign that the Young Avengers series is coming back. Now, it looks like Stature and Vision are going to be featured in The Mighty Avengers. After an my initial excitement, I thought, “The Young Avengers are never going to have their own series again.” Am I being too doom-and-gloom or is this a sign that Marvel doesn’t have any plans to revive the franchise? Every time I see a Grey’s Anatomy commercial I say a quick prayer that the show will get canceled and Heinberg will come back to comics. I’ve heard rumors for years now about the series being revived, but are the fightin’ fanboys ever really going to come back?

Kirk from Austin, TX

Kirk, you and me both! You may have seen a post I made a few months ago bemoaning the stall on Young Avengers and I haven’t changed my tune at all. The fact that Marvel has banished these characters to just being in the crowd during big events and the like is a travesty. It was great to see Vision and Stature in The Mighty Avengers, but the skeptic in me doesn’t think they’re going to be permanent cast members there. That story has a temporary feel to it, to me at least.

A few years ago, Marvel had two of the most exciting team books featuring younger heroes, with Runaways and Young Avengers. It was so easy to recommend both titles to anyone who wanted something new and fresh from Marvel and/or for younger readers. I gave Josh the Young Avengers hardcover for Christmas and as I predicted, he loved it and like me and you and everyone else, he wanted more. The difference between Young Avengers and Runaways though, is that they’ve stalled on giving us more Young Avengers, whereas with Runaways, after Brian K. Vaughan left, they continued giving us stories, first from Joss Whedon and currently from Terry Moore. Nothing against Terry Moore’s run (which has been okay, not great but okay) but Runaways suffered after BKV left. It’s amazing how everyone is ignoring the fact that Whedon pretty much killed that book with the combination of a boring/convoluted story and immense and massive delays. So while I moan and groan about wanting more Young Avengers, I look at Runaways and wonder if maybe Marvel is making the right decision here.

Ultimately it’s a lose/lose proposition with them and the Young Avengers. I suppose there’s some agreement to only allow Allan Heinberg to write the next Young Avengers story, which sucks because it means that we have to wait until he feels like it (or until they cancel Grey’s Anatomy). But let’s say they handed the characters and the book to another writer, and it sucks. What then? Look at the sub-par Runaways/Young Avengers crossovers from Civil War and Secret Invasion. It’s possible that the return of the Young Avengers might not be what we want it to be.  It’s an interesting quandary.

On a side note, my love of Young Avengers applies to that first story arc. The second story arc? Not nearly as good. It was still good, but not the genius that was that first story arc.

Ron Richards